Death of a Teacher (18 page)

But rather than running away like this, back to Cumbria on a Bank Holiday Monday, wouldn’t it be better to confront the problems? She and Mark were hoping to marry in just over a year. Her mum was already making pointed remarks about a venue and a budget for bridal wear. If she went back now, she could tell Mark that she had just popped out while he was asleep, to get some petrol and pick up a newspaper. He might even still be in bed. The crisis would have passed and they could try and talk about it.

She shunted her car towards the pump, jumped out, and filled up with petrol. The pungent smell seemed to energize her and she felt new
resolution
. She would turn around, go back, and tackle Mark that evening – about the money, about what he really wanted, and about her own future. 

Alison paid in the shop and came back with a newspaper and jumbo packet of crisps. Mark loved Roast Chicken flavour. She dumped them on the front seat, drove out of the garage and made a u-turn. Then she drove back the way she had come, singing along with Jamie Cullum.

An hour later, Liz Rudder opened her front door.

‘Father Peter, do come in.’ Liz ushered the priest into the luxurious lounge of the High Pelliter villa. Brenda’s brother looked paler but even plumper then before. White rolls of flesh curved over his collar.

Liz had made an effort, even though she knew it was probably wasted. She wore a tight-fitting beige cashmere pullover, and deep brown trousers which emphasized her small waist. She had dried her hair into a shiny
chrysanthemum
and used straighteners to primp the ends. There was just a touch of make-up and small gold ear-rings. Tasteful, but rather feminine, she thought.

‘Sherry? Or G&T?’ she asked.

Father Peter opted for sweet sherry. Before she had returned from the drinks cabinet, he had started scooping up nuts and raisins from a little cut glass dish on the occasional table.

‘And how are you?’ Liz asked in her light, sympathetic, professional voice.

‘I think I’m coping,’ Father Peter said. ‘Of course, there is always less support at these terrible times than one would hope for. My own vicar has only been to see me three or four times, and I’m sorry to say the bishop has merely called once.’

‘Dreadful. You’ve been through such a lot. But Peter, I would very much appreciate your advice on how to deal with a matter which is worrying me. I know you believe that it’s so terribly important to keep up standards….’

‘I cannot think of anything which matters more.’

‘I’m glad we agree. More sherry?’

For a moment when she stood up, her round bottom bouncing away from him towards the drinks cabinet, Father Peter had a rather repulsive reminder of how Liz Rudder had once made advances to him. But that had been over forty years ago. She seemed like an exemplary matron now. He glanced round her home with approval. It was immaculate. Warm, clean, not cluttered with ornaments like Brenda’s little front room, or smelling of damp like his own. It did occur to him that he had no idea where her husband might be; but as he had never considered visiting the sick to be one of his talents, he put it out of his mind.

‘You see, Peter, now Brenda is no longer with us, I fear we are slipping a little bit at St Mungo’s school.’

Peter Hodgson couldn’t for the life of him imagine Brenda having the slightest influence on standards at St Mungo’s, but he nodded gravely. 

‘The problem,’ Liz went on, ‘is the new teacher of the top class. It’s a very sensitive time in a child’s life, Year Six. It’s a time when hormones are just starting to play up, and when there’s a great deal of anxiety about tests and secondary school. You know how important it is for the right children to go to the right school.’

‘Absolutely,’ Peter Hodgson breathed.

‘Sadly we have a new teacher for Year Six. She’s very excited about a sort of concert she’s putting on. She sees it as a lowest common denominator, with everyone joining in. It’s based on that awful TV talent show and they are going to video it. I personally feel it’s encouraging the children to act in what I can only call a precociously sexual way. What’s more, she has encouraged people from outside to get involved, without the agreement of senior members of staff.’

‘Not a good idea,’ Father Peter said roundly.

‘And worst of all, from your point of view, the scenery features a sort of pastiche of our lovely St Trallen’s Chapel. I really don’t feel it’s appropriate to have girls in mini skirts gyrating around the nearest thing we have to a sacred monument.’

‘Good heavens, it sounds most tasteless.’

‘But you see, in my position I really don’t want to be seen to be stepping on anyone’s toes. Mr Findley, the head teacher, is really rather taken with this young woman and, as you may have heard, his wife is an invalid. It’s a very difficult situation.’

‘I can see that it is!’ Peter Hodgson sat back in his chair and sipped some more Bristol Cream. ‘Would you like me perhaps to have a little word?’

‘Do you know, I think that would be most apt! Now, do come into the dining area. I’ve got some really delicious little smoked salmon nibbles, and those tiny profiteroles for afters. And we can talk about St Trallen’s. One of the last things Brenda said was how interested you were in the chapel. More sherry?’

I
n the little room which used to be his office, where Liz had wheeled and dumped him, John Rudder decided to take a risk. He no longer had Brenda’s help and Liz was being more vigilant these days. His grasp on reality seemed to be slipping. Sometimes he was in a complete daze. There were whole weeks when he felt he had never really woken up. How many chances would he have left?

He managed to lever the wheelchair towards the desk and heave his way towards his old office chair. It took him several minutes to lower himself down into a seating position. He had to be careful to make sure there were no signs that the desk had been touched, in case Liz found out. Not that she was on the look-out – it would never occur to her that he could do this by himself. As far as she was concerned he was the living dead; attempts to improve his condition were pointless. She wanted to see the back of him. On Bank Holidays for example, when his carers didn’t always come, Liz often failed to give him all of his pills, though she knew that he needed to stay medicated enough to get through his routine blood tests and check-ups. It would never do for anyone to think she was less than devoted.

John could move his right arm pretty well these days. Kevin and Brenda’s routine had helped a lot. He knew it was Brenda who had found out more about the exercises, going to the library to look up physiotherapy guides and using the school computer.

‘If only I had a computer myself,’ she had said, ‘but I’ve no idea how to go about it. And they’re so expensive. My brother would be horrified.’

And John, although he couldn’t speak properly, had coughed and nodded and pointed with his head until she had seen the keyboard and screen on his old desk.

‘Oh, John,’ she had said. ‘Of course! We can use yours.’

When the time had come for her to go home, he had been able to distract her by coughing and spluttering and lurching in his chair so that she had left 
the computer on. The hard drive was under his desk. Liz would never notice. She didn’t do cleaning in John’s room. If he could get to it he could use it. That, more than anything, had motivated him. That, and the fact he
intuitively
knew that Brenda would help him. He was not the only person to be neglected by Liz in the new scheme of things.

‘Oh, John,’ Brenda had simpered, fluttering her eyelashes at him when he had managed to point at what he had written on the screen with one aching finger. ‘You want me to print it? And witness it? Good heavens! And who’s it for?’

But she had done it, gasping in genuine shock, and rolling her eyes and ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ at the contents. Then she had giggled softly and rather viciously. ‘Well, well,’ was all she had said.

‘We’d better delete it,’ she had whispered when the printing was over. ‘I don’t think you want Liz to see this just yet, do you? It’s a very, very big secret. But we must keep it that way, mustn’t we?’

His sense of time was confused and he thought that had only been a few weeks ago. But now Brenda was dead. How long had it been since he had seen the news on the television, parked in front of it by his wife? He wondered if he was the only person really to mourn Brenda. He had never liked her before, but she had been there each Wednesday like clockwork to help Kevin with the exercises, turning up the moment Liz was out of the door. He had wondered what Brenda’s motive might be – until it had occurred to him that what she really wanted was to have the edge over Liz for the first time in forty years. And that had given him the idea that she might help him with what really mattered. First she had one little secret from Liz, and then, when John had managed to communicate, a much bigger one. He wondered if the delight of that secret superiority had given Brenda the taste for more. And secret power was dangerous. Perhaps Brenda had bitten off more than she could chew.

John hoped he hadn’t done the same. He only had the use of one arm. But he could lean forward and switch on the screen. He could feel his heart beating faster now, and he knew he was tense and perspiring. It wasn’t good for him. But he never knew when the opportunity might come again.

The problem would be getting to the printer. He needed to have a printed hard copy, with a signature, for what he was writing to be legally binding. He had no idea where the last document had gone. Brenda had said she would take care of it for him. But now she was dead and he had no idea where she had hidden it. He knew the police had searched her house. But if they had found it, wouldn’t they have returned it to him?

He heard Liz talking to that horrible priest fellow in the hall, Brenda’s creepy brother. He shut down the screen and levered himself back into his 
wheelchair, breathing heavily. He heard the front door close, and Liz walk on the thick soft carpet back into the lounge.

But she didn’t come near John, although he never knew when she might patter across the hall for the pleasure of taunting him. Feeling sick with the effort and the frustration, he slumped back into his wheelchair and the long lonely wait until bedtime.

It took Alison over an hour to get to Mark’s flat. She hadn’t bargained for the Bank Holiday traffic back to Manchester after the day out. Stuck at the wheel, chugging along, she couldn’t phone him either. He would be awake now, for sure, and would know that she had gone. So, in return for his agreeing to talk the whole situation over, she would offer to stay another night, and drive back very early in the morning. That would please him. She would insist that they had a real heart-to-heart.

She let herself in at the main door and pattered up the stairs carrying the crisps and the newspaper. She tucked the paper under her arm. The key to Mark’s flat went into the lock smoothly so that the door swung open without any warning.

‘Hiya!’ she called ‘I’m back.’

Mark was sitting at his computer with his back to her, but he wasn’t alone. She took in Dazza’s gloating, sweating expression.

She could see over Mark’s shoulder quite clearly. The picture on the screen was moving slowly with grunting and panting noises. What happened next seemed to be in slow motion to Alison. Mark turned, saw her, and fumbled with the mouse to exit the screen. But he wasn’t quick enough. She could see quite clearly that the caption said
Babes in Chains
; the two naked women on the screen, one black, one Chinese, were wrapped around each other.

‘Ali,’ Mark said in a throaty sort of gasp. ‘I thought you’d gone. We were just …’

Just what? She wanted to say. Just being boys? Just doing what everyone does? If she had caught Mark looking at porn by himself it would have been awful, but not nearly as awful as being with this crude, leering man, in some sort of disgusting duo.

‘Not five-a-side is it?’ she said. ‘Or do the other three turn up later?’

She threw the crisps at him with such force that the bag hit his chest and burst; the horrible smell of chemical roast chicken made her want to gag.

‘Ali, wait …’

But she turned and hurtled down the stairs before she had time to think. If it had just been Mark maybe she would have stayed to talk; but Dazza’s thick, throaty laugh echoed down the stairwell. 

In the garden of The Briars, Robert was clearing up after the barbecue when Jake came over to him.

‘I’ll take that bag of rubbish down to the bin.’

‘Thanks, Jake. Did you have a good time?’

‘Yeah, actually. The kids were fun. Ben’s famous at school for being an Intergalactic Warrior, but I didn’t know he could be such a laugh.’

‘You were very good with them. Maybe you should think about being a teacher.’ Jake would be going into his final year at Norbridge High in September. He was wondering about what to read at university.

‘I don’t think they’d let me run round schools with barbecue utensils.’

‘Maybe you should suggest it.’

They both laughed.

‘You wanted to speak to me about Becky?’ Robert asked.

Jake looked away, down the garden. ‘Yes I did. It’s difficult to explain. She was so good with Ben. And she and Molly are a great double act. Molly was in a really bad state at Easter, you know. Her friends at school had all dumped her because she had spots and only liked reading or painting. But the real problem was that she was so grumpy. And she cried a lot.’

‘I didn’t realize it was so bad.’

‘She didn’t do it in front of you and Mum so much. Anyway, she’s been much better since she teamed up with Becky.’

Robert thought about it. He hadn’t really analysed the events of the day. He was still enjoying the feeling of it having been special – remarkable, really. It was the sort of social triumph you don’t get very often, which would bind them all together as friends – even Nigel, who had been surprisingly pleasant once he had stopped being defensive.

Robert had watched Molly running around the garden. It was interesting to see her with her father. She was going to be a large dark-haired woman, the opposite of her mother. But Nigel was tall and big-boned, and his
thinning
hair was still very brown. Her face had been flushed and her eyes bright. There’s an attractive person in there, Robert thought. Just not the one we expected our petite little girl to become.

Jake was patiently stacking plates.

‘I thought you wanted to talk about Becky?’ Robert asked again.

Jake sat on the table and squirmed a bit, swinging his legs. ‘Yeah. It’s nothing horrible. Except it is really.’

Robert waited.

‘You realize, don’t you, Robert, that things go missing when Becky’s around. Metal things. The colander, the potato peeler, the Le Creuset pan.’

Robert’s first reaction was to ask, really? Are you sure? But Jake looked worried. 

‘Are you suggesting that Becky is nicking things?’

Jake looked at him as if he was mad. ‘No, of course not. Well, not
deliberately
anyway.’

‘So what
are
you saying, Jake?’

‘You mustn’t think I’m being silly or childish. I’ve thought about this and been on the net about it.’

His soon-to-be stepson looked back at him. For the first time Robert thought, I’m dealing with a man. This isn’t a kid’s concern. Jake was deadly serious, and also scared.

‘I think she’s got a poltergeist,’ he said.

When they got home from the barbecue, Ro Watson sat with her coffee at her kitchen window looking at the beauty of Burnside Valley. The sun was sinking in a red ball over the distant fells.

Ro had stopped to look at her picture for even longer that evening when they had come in. It had been given to her by one of her mother’s brothers who had emigrated to Canada in the sixties. For decades, thousands of Liverpudlians had looked west to America, rather than south to London. Ro knew she had a whole branch of the family living in Ontario. Her mother’s brother had made his money in house clearances, and he had given Ro the amazing piece of Fraktur Art which he had found in a deserted home on the shores of a northern lake. Ro had loved it on sight. For a long time she had wanted to study art. It was an ambition she would be unlikely to fulfil in the short term, but whenever she felt desperate, she would stare at the picture. At least she had one beautiful, original artefact in her own house.

But now she was in the kitchen; the beauty she looked out at was natural. Life was in danger of feeling good. It would all probably come to nothing, but it had been a really special day. Ro stared into her cup. Since she and Ben had moved from Liverpool, she knew she had kept herself a little too much to herself. She had told herself it was because of sensitivity over Ben’s condition, but it was also because of sensitivity about her own. For the first time in ages, she let herself think about their life when Ben was little, after she and her husband had parted through sheer weariness and apathy. She had tried working part-time, and met the great love of her life at an office party. Her new lover had seemed to accept everything, welcome it even, and she and Ben had moved in with him. But within months it had deteriorated into a
nightmare
. Part of it had been caused by Ben’s problems, but most of it had been her own misjudgement. Since then, she had lost faith in her ability to make relationships. Only now, slowly, through her work in the Community Police, was her confidence creeping back.

But then she had made that mistake about Jed Jackson. What an idiot she 
had been about him! Was that another example of having hopeless judgement about the male sex?

She thought about the men at the barbecue. Were they what they seemed? Surely Robert wasn’t an old fart at all, as Suzy had affectionately described him, but a considerate and gentle person who seemed really to care. Nigel Spencer she remembered well, once they had got talking. Just as he had been in his early twenties, Nigel in his forties was silly and pretentious rather than wicked. He had confided that he had now met ‘someone special’ but she guessed he was a serial romancer. And Phil? Ro sorted out the fruit in the bowl on the table. Phil had been kind, and had laughed with her, and watched her when she talked. In the kitchen, helping her wash up for Robert and Suzy, he had said, ‘You’re doing a good job with your son.’

There was nothing specific. But when Ro thought about Phil, she felt a little warmer. Was that another mistake?

Sitting in the peace and warmth of the kitchen, as darkness fell, Ro thought about the dark marks on her fingers after using the marker pen at the school. They were still there, faintly. She felt a strange affinity with the young man at the chapel because of the tracing of Fraktur Art he had carried. Now looking at her hands, she wondered if he also had held a marker pen. Could he be a teacher too, like Brenda Hodgson?

Slowly, without being too intent or focused – because this really wasn’t her job – Ro started to write out on her shopping list pad all the things they had learnt about the young man who had died at the chapel. Perhaps this was one teacher whose death had been forgotten in all the drama of Brenda Hodgson’s murder.