Murder In School (25 page)

While the songbirds aloft press on allegretto,
beneath the canopy the still ether is striped with dank woodland smells. 
Skelgill has not gone far before he baulks at the sudden hot stink of fox, a
musky marijuana blast that marks reynard’s recent passage.  Next his
progress is ambushed by honeysuckle draped above the path, which leaks invisible
molecules of sweet sickly scent upon him.  And shortly he stoops, arrested
by another unmistakable aroma, the cloying reek of carrion, to admire an
immodest stinkhorn thrusting from the leaf litter, its glistening cap a sticky-bun
breakfast bar for bluebottles.

As he is about to stand there’s an
onrushing patter of feet, and almost before he can react their owner is upon
him, licking lavishly at his ear: Cleopatra.

‘Down girl, down!  My apologies,
Inspector.’

Skelgill rises and the muscular piebald dog
turns its attention to snuffling for the digestives concealed in his
jacket.  Meanwhile its master, Dr Jacobson, who has followed his canine
charge around a twist in the path, makes uncertain progress with a walking
stick at his side.  The pyjama-like trousers are back on display, with
open-toed sandals; his upper half is clad in an oversized white collarless
shirt and an unbuttoned floral waistcoat, of the sort that was in fashion
during their nineties’ heyday.

‘Good morning to you, Inspector –
you appear to have developed an affinity with Cleopatra – she is rarely
so affable.’

‘Perhaps it’s just folk with biscuits,
sir.’  Skelgill draws out one such sweetmeat from his pocket.  ‘May
I?’

‘Oh, she will be forever in your debt,
Inspector.’

The dog wastes no time in despatching the
treat, but then her ears prick up and she trots determinedly into the
undergrowth.

Dr Jacobson makes an affected
cough.  ‘Inspector, I owe you an apology.’

‘Sir?’

‘On Friday – when I made that
flippant remark about London buses – I rather feel I tempted fate, what
with the unfortunate disappearance of young Cholmondeley.’

Skelgill shrugs.  ‘In my job, sir,
these coincidences happen all the time.’

‘Well, nevertheless, it was a little
gauche of me.  And just now I thought Cleopatra must have interrupted you
looking for clues – rather like Sherlock Holmes, with his nose to the
ground.’

Skelgill grins self-consciously. 
‘No, sir – I was distracted, by an unusual toadstool – I’m on my
way to the cricket pavilion – our temporary HQ.’

‘Of course, Inspector.  You have
chosen the scenic route.’

At this moment Cleopatra bursts from the
bushes, her legs and lower abdomen now wet and mud-encrusted.

‘Oh dear, Cleopatra – you found a
pond.’

Skelgill takes a step backwards as she
shakes her coat.  ‘Give her a wash off in the lake, sir.’

‘I am sure she would love that, Inspector,
but I keep her well away – she is so headstrong, heaven knows what could
happen.  And isn’t it always the owners that drown trying to rescue their
dogs?’

Skelgill nods ruefully.  ‘I’ve
certainly had cases where a dog walker falls through ice – and the pet eventually
gets itself out.  Animal survival instinct kicks in.’

Dr Jacobson affects a shudder.  ‘It
doesn’t bear thinking about, Inspector.  In my condition I could not even
risk a paddle.’  He shakes the stick at his side.  ‘And how is your
burden, Inspector?’

‘I’m sorry, sir?’

‘The investigation – any news of
the boy?’

‘Ah, well, sir...’  Skelgill gives
the impression that he is about to trot out the standard platitude about lines
of enquiry, but then he relents and says, ‘We’ve had a good number of reported
sightings – we’re just in the process of following them up – I’m
hoping my Sergeant will have some news for me shortly.  We’re optimistic,
sir.’

‘Excellent, Inspector.’  Dr Jacobson
grins in his forced clownish manner.  ‘I had better not detain you from
your business any longer.  And please do let me know if I can be of any
assistance.  Even if it is only to offer you a decent cup of tea.’

‘Thank you, sir.  Good luck with the
dog’s bath.’

Dr Jacobson makes a gurning face and hobbles
away, calling reprimandlingly after Cleopatra, who seems to have disappeared
again.

Skelgill watches him for a few moments,
before turning and striding out at a much brisker pace than before.

It takes him about ten minutes to reach
the boathouse, and upon arrival he makes immediately for the landing
stage.  Ever the alert angler, he treads cautiously upon the weathered planks. 
However, if there are any fish stirring, their presence is concealed by a light
but persistent ripple.

There is a small raft of duck out on the silvery
water, but their colourless silhouettes at such a distance make them unidentifiable
without binoculars.  Then a large dark species he does know beats
purposefully past, and he raises an angry fist like an irate farmer plagued by
crows – it is a cormorant, pelagic scourge of inland fisheries.

Still watching the lake, he munches his
way reflectively through a couple of biscuits, before he turns and retraces his
steps to the boathouse, where Querrell’s tired craft lies chained.  Then
he makes what appears to be a cursory inspection of the shoreline and the short
grass close to the dilapidated building.

Perhaps satisfied that the water level is
indeed falling, he consults his wristwatch.  Then he surveys the rising
ground ahead of him: the pavilion and the school sit upon the same azimuth,
though neither edifice is visible owing to successive barriers of shrub and
tree.  He selects an apparently random route into a patch of willows, but
emerges in due course from the thicket correctly moving in parallel to the low
ridge of ground that he had noted from Sale Fell.  Passing through another
brake of springy ash saplings he reaches the perimeter of the first eleven
cricket oval, with the pavilion not far ahead.

As he pauses to take stock, he espies a short
tracksuited figure push what looks like a large hosepipe-reel out from behind
the building.  It is Mike Greig, and the mechanical device is a boundary-rope
wheel.  Skelgill stares intently, although on this occasion it is probably
not the luxury item of cricket equipment that makes his eyes widen, but the
rifle that is slung over Greig’s shoulder.

Oakthwaite’s Director of Sport has his
head down as he gets to grips with the contraption – two hundred and
forty yards of one-inch diameter rope weighs in at about the same as a typical
fourth-former – but at any moment he will look up and find Skelgill standing
in his direct line of sight.  Skelgill has just a second or two to make up
his mind what to do – retreat, to hide and observe, or step out and
reveal himself as a casual passer-by.  In the event he chooses the latter
course, and hops quickly onto the short-cropped outfield to assume a casual
gait towards the approaching sports master.  In due course Greig glances ahead
and, while he seems surprised to see the oncoming detective, he betrays no sign
of concern as regards being caught in possession of a firearm.

‘Howzit, Inspector?

‘Expecting trouble, Mike?’

Greig grins in his laid-back way. 
‘Nah, Inspector, vermin – another one of my new duties – we’ve had
jack rabbits sabotaging the square – their urine kills the grass –
I’m on the warpath, ja?’

Skelgill tilts his head briefly to one
side and puckers his lips, acknowledging the validity of this explanation. 
‘What is it, a point-two-two?’

Greig lets go of the rope wheel and
slings the gun around, keeping the barrel pointed at the ground.  He hands
it stock first to Skelgill.  It is an ominous-looking weapon, with a
telescopic sight and a long matt-black silencer.  Skelgill gives it a
once-over – he checks that the safety catch is engaged, and breaks the
barrel to satisfy himself that it is indeed an airgun.  Then he holds it
up and weighs it, before sighting on a rook that rests in a treetop in the
direction of the lake.

‘I could have done with this a few
minutes ago.’

‘Inspector?’

‘A cormorant – one of my main
competitors.’

Greig nods.  ‘Let me tell you this,
Inspector, these things are just pea-shooters compared to what I grew up
with.  I take it I’m legal, ja?’

Skelgill hands back the air rifle. 
‘As long as you’re over eighteen you can walk into a gun shop and buy
one.  To use it, you need to be on private land, at least fifty feet from
the centre of the public highway.’

‘Sounds like I’m fine, then?’

Skelgill nods.  ‘It is yours, Mike?’

Greig shakes his head.  ‘I found it
in Hodgson’s equipment store – tucked away behind a stack of marker
poles.  I’ve seen him creeping about with it in the past, so I had an idea
it would still be there.’

Skelgill gestures towards the boundary-rope
winder.  ‘You’ve got a match today?’

‘Nah – all the external fixtures
have been put on hold.  I’m just running an inter-house twenty-twenty
tournament this week to keep the boys occupied, ja?’

Skelgill glances across at the pavilion. 
‘It appears we’ve commandeered your office.’

Greig shrugs.  ‘You’re welcome,
Inspector – anything I can do to help.  Anyway – I wouldn’t
like to get into an argument with your Sergeant.’

Skelgill grimaces apologetically. 
‘I believe the office was originally Mr Querrell’s – before you came?’

Greig’s expression is blank.  He rubs
a palm absently over his short ginger hair.  ‘Not that I know of,
Inspector.  He occasionally borrowed it after school hours – for his
outward-bound briefings, ja?’

Skelgill seems satisfied with this reply,
and in fact relatively disinterested.  He casts about the cricket oval, as
though he’s trying to spot the telltale signs of rabbit damage.  His eyes
settle instead upon a couple of fresh peaty molehills that might be at deep
square leg.  He shrugs, then he begins to move away.

‘Mike, I’d better let you get on with
your work.  If you’re serious about the rabbits, you need to come out at
night with a spotlight – though I wouldn’t recommend it at the moment.’

‘You mean in case I’m mistaken for a
kidnapper, ja?’

‘Something like that.’  Skelgill
winks.  ‘We’ve got marksmen on all the rooftops.’

Greig looks momentarily flummoxed by the
British irony, but then he grins, before switching to a more serious tone to
ask, ‘No news of the boy?’

‘Nothing concrete.’  Skelgill shakes
his head slowly.  ‘At the moment you’re still the last person to have set
eyes upon him.’

Leaving Greig perhaps a little taken
aback by this parting remark, Skelgill makes a beeline for the pavilion. 
However, when he arrives at the foot of the wide wooden steps, he seems to have
a change of mind, and continues past the building, and on towards the main
school.

Rather in the way that the general
population never set foot inside one of HM’s prisons, nor have any real notion
of how such an institution looks and sounds and smells, so they are insulated
from Britain’s great public schools, which operate in oddly comparable bubbles
of splendid isolation.  As Skelgill approaches the grand neoclassical
façade he must be struck by the incongruity that many a comprehensively
educated pupil, past or present, would experience: that this imposing palace
set amidst stately parklands could be where you actually went to school.  But
if he is accosted by this thought, he does not allow it to delay him, and when
he crosses from the great lawn onto the expensive ornamental sandstone
chippings of the curving driveway, he veers left and begins deliberately to
make his way around the perimeter of the imposing construction.

The majority of its windows are too high
to afford the opportunity to peer inside, but in any event this does not seem
to be his object.  Indeed, whether he has an object at all is uncertain,
and perhaps he is just whiling away some time before rendezvousing with DS
Leyton and dealing with the inevitable disappointment and frustration of the
failure of the operation to produce any concrete leads.  Clearly, it is
apparent that Skelgill does not set great store by either of the main theories
that propose to explain the disappearance of Cholmondeley junior: that he is
lost in the fells, or has left the district, whether by his own volition or
otherwise.  However, the Inspector is unable to articulate either his
doubts, or his certainties.

The conundrum with which he wrestles can
perhaps best be compared to his method for angling, which ostensibly
approximates to a process of divination.  Setting out on any given day to
fish Bassenthwaite Lake, many subtle factors impose themselves upon his senses. 
For instance, there are the water conditions – the level, flow, colour
and temperature.  There is the season and its concomitant effects –
the breeding cycle and territorial or migrationary behaviour of his target
species; the constantly changing food supply – a whole myriad of invertebrates
that may be displaying, laying, hatching, moulting or emerging.  There is
the local weather – sunlight, cloud cover, precipitation, barometric
pressure.  The breeze alone creates eddies and wind lanes that gather and funnel
food, enticing smaller fish which in turn attract bigger ones.  There is
the distressing presence of predators, like ospreys and otters, and disturbance
from other less inconspicuous lake users than Skelgill.