The Sleeping and the Dead (27 page)

‘State sector or private?’

‘Private.’

Another silence. Then: ‘Did he take any public examinations?’

‘O levels. He must have taken O levels because he went on to the sixth form.’

‘You could try the exam boards then.’ The official hesitated then offered tentatively: ‘If you don’t mind giving me the details I can phone round for you. Call you back
later.’

Porteous didn’t mind. He gave both Theo Randle’s names and his date of birth. ‘We think he was in school somewhere in Yorkshire.’

He replaced the receiver and felt he was easing back into contention in the race with Eddie Stout. Then he remembered two kids had died and wondered how he could have been so petty.

The next phone call was to Hannah Morton’s house. It was answered sulkily by a girl who sounded as if she’d just woken up. If anything when he identified himself she was even ruder.
‘Don’t come to the house,’ she said. ‘I’ll be working. The Promenade. A big white pub on the front. You’ll need to talk to Frank anyway and I’ll make sure
Joe’s there. Make it mid-afternoon when we’re not so busy.’ She replaced the receiver before he had a chance to object.

He was wondering whether to break his routine and have another cup of coffee when the DFEE officer phoned him back.

‘I think I’ve traced your lad.’

‘Go on.’

‘He took O levels in the name of Michael Grey. Passed seven well. A grades in Art and English. Failed Latin.’

That’s all it took, Porteous thought. One phone call. Why didn’t I think about the exam boards before?

‘Have you got the name of the school?’

‘Marwood Grange. It doesn’t exist any more. I checked.’

‘Where was it, when it did exist?’

‘Out in the sticks. Yorkshire.’ He paused. He was good at dramatic pauses. ‘I tracked down one of the teachers. He works in the state system now. You can phone him if you like.
Name of Hillier. This is his number.’ Porteous was just about to replace the receiver, when he added, ‘By the way. There’s no record of A levels.’

‘No,’ Porteous said. ‘There wouldn’t be.’

Hillier must have been waiting for his call because he answered immediately. ‘Marwood Grange,’ he said. ‘What a nightmare. It put me off private education for life.’

‘Do you remember Michael Grey?’

‘No. I was only there for a couple of terms before the place closed down and that was a bit of a blur. Like I said. A nightmare.’

‘Why did it close?’

‘Well, the fire was the final straw, but I don’t think it would have survived long anyway. A couple of parents had complained and several more had taken their kids away.’

‘Tell me about the fire.’

‘It started late one night. I was junior housemaster. It started in a classroom they think, but it spread to the dormitories. We got all the boys out but only because a kid got up for a
pee. There were no fire doors. No extinguishers. There should have been a court case. It was gross negligence. I’d have been a witness . . . The guy in charge must have had friends in high
places because it never came to that. He cut his losses, claimed the insurance and agreed not to run a school again.’

‘You’re sure you don’t remember a boy called Michael Grey?’

‘Certainly. I really only remember the boys in my house.’

Porteous saw Stout hovering outside his office door, ready for his trip to the coast, and waved him in. Another fire, he thought. Can that be a coincidence?

The Gillespie house had the dense quiet of an old church. It struck Porteous so strongly because he could tell that usually it wouldn’t have been like that. As they
approached the front door he saw through the living-room window an electric guitar and a practice amp, a battered upright piano with music on the stand and scribbled manuscript in a pile on the
floor. In the hall the telephone had been unplugged.

Richard Gillespie let them in and took them to a room on the first floor which he called his office. It had a desk and a computer but it was big enough for a leather sofa and a couple of
armchairs. He left them there while he went to fetch coffee. The room was at the back of the house and looked over the garden to public tennis courts. Two women were playing a scrappy if energetic
game and occasionally shouts of triumph and cries of ‘well done’ floated through the open window, emphasizing the quiet inside.

When Gillespie returned with a tray he was still alone.

‘Mrs Gillespie will be joining us?’ Porteous asked.

‘If you insist that it’s necessary. She’s resting.’

‘It is, I’m afraid.’ Porteous was glad Eddie Stout was with him, solid and unimpressed. He found Gillespie intimidating without being able to work out exactly why. Perhaps it
was an impression of anger, only held in check with great self-control. Without Eddie as minder he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand his ground.

‘While we’re on our own I want to know what’s going on,’ Gillespie said. ‘No one’s told us anything. I’ve a right to know.’

‘Of course. We’re linking your daughter’s murder to that of a boy called Theo Randle, nearly thirty years ago. Does the name mean anything to you?’

‘Any relation to Crispin Randle?’

‘His son.’

‘Crispin never told me his son had been killed.’

‘He didn’t know. We retrieved the body from Cranford Water a couple of weeks ago.’

‘
That
body?’

Porteous nodded. ‘Did you know Crispin well?’

‘Through business really. We had a couple of boozy nights together, but everyone who worked with Crispin ended up drinking with him.’

‘Was Mr Randle involved in the computer business?’ It was hard to picture.

‘Hardly. No. And I was never a computer scientist or engineer. Still don’t really understand the technology. I trained as a lawyer and worked my way up through the company’s
legal department before becoming MD. When I first qualified I worked briefly for a firm of solicitors in town. We sold some property for Crispin.’

‘Snowberry?’

‘No, he’d already sold that. This was a house in Gosforth. We got a good price for it considering it was nearly falling down round his ears.’

‘Tell me about your daughter,’ Porteous said.

Gillespie shifted in his seat. For the first time the suppressed anger gave way to uneasiness.

‘It must seem like prying but we’ll need all the information you can give us.’

Eddie sat with his pencil poised over his notebook, waiting.

‘She wasn’t my daughter.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I mean, not biologically. Legally of course. I adopted her when I married Eleanor.’

Porteous wondered if that explained the anger. His position was compromised, ambiguous. Eleanor’s grief would be more straightforward. Had she made him feel he couldn’t possibly
understand what she was going through?

‘Does Melanie’s natural father know that she’s dead?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. We’ve no way of tracing him. He’s a musician. That, at least, is what he calls himself. I think there was a card at Christmas. From North Africa,
Marrakesh, somewhere like that. He travels a lot. I don’t know how he supports himself. Not now.’

‘What do you mean? “Not now”?’

There was a pause. Eventually Gillespie said, ‘I gave him money. Enough to last for a while.’

‘Why did you do that, Mr Gillespie?’ Eddie Stout spoke for the first time, shocking them both. Both, too, sensed the disapproval in his voice. Not now, Eddie, Porteous thought.
Now’s not the time for a moral crusade.

But though the question seemed to make Gillespie defensive, he wanted to explain. ‘It was when Eleanor and I married. I didn’t want Ray around, dropping in every afternoon with his
unsuitable friends, confusing Mel. I wanted to be her dad.’

‘So you paid him to go away?’

‘And to agree to the adoption, yes.’

‘How old was Melanie then?’

‘Five. Six by the time we went through the whole process.’

‘And he just disappeared from her life?’

‘Yes. Look, I thought it was the best thing at the time, all right? Ray Scully was mixed up in all sorts. He’d been convicted of fraud. He’d even been to prison. What could
someone like him give Melanie?’

‘Did Mrs Gillespie know about the financial arrangement?’

‘Look, it was no big deal. A one-off payment. I wasn’t stopping him keeping in touch for ever. Like I said, he wrote to her, sent her cards.’

‘So Mrs Gillespie knew?’

‘No. She just thought it was Ray being irresponsible again. He’d been disappearing on and off since Mel was born.’ He stood up and stared blankly out of the window. The tennis
game was over. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘No,’ Porteous said. ‘I’m very pleased that you did.’

‘You won’t tell Eleanor?’

‘I really don’t think that’s any of my business. Though we’ll want to trace the father. Is there any possibility that he’s been in touch with Melanie
recently?’

‘She didn’t say anything. But I don’t suppose she would have done. Communication had pretty well broken down here.’

‘You know a middle-aged man went into the Promenade looking for her. It didn’t occur to you that it might have been her father?’

‘No. He knows where we live. He could have come to the house.’

‘That wasn’t part of the deal, was it? You’d paid him to stay away.’

Gillespie shrugged. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. ‘Eleanor thought that was the start of all Mel’s problems. Ray going away.’

‘What problems?’

‘She was never an easy child. Bright of course, but attention seeking, hyperactive. Then in the last few years there’s been the anorexia.’

‘Was she being treated for that?’

‘Oh, she’s been treated for everything.’ He must have realized that sounded callous. ‘We wanted her to be happy. I don’t think she ever has been, really. When we
moved here and she started making friends I thought things were looking up. But in the couple of weeks before she died she was more disturbed than I remember.’

‘Who was her psychiatrist?’

‘Dr Collier at the General. He seemed a decent enough bloke, but I don’t know how effective he was.’

Oh, he’s effective, Porteous thought. Trust me. I know.

‘He wanted to treat Mel as an inpatient. She hated the idea. He was talking about sectioning her. Not on the food issue. She was eating enough, just, to keep her alive. But because she
seemed to be depressed.’

‘How did that manifest itself?’ Porteous thought he sounded a bit like a doctor himself.

‘Listlessness, insomnia, withdrawal.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes I thought she’d lost all touch with reality.’

‘In what way?’

‘She seemed to hate her mother and me. She couldn’t believe we were trying to help her. There was some fantasy about us trying to control her.’

Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, Porteous thought and stopped the facetious words slipping out just in time. It was true. In hospital
he’d met a man who was convinced he was about to be blown up by the IRA. The staff thought he was psychotic. A week after leaving the place he’d been killed by a car bomb. He dragged
his attention back to the present, was aware of Eddie staring at him. He nodded at Eddie to take over the questions.

‘Had Melanie complained of any unwanted attention? Unusual phone calls, perhaps, strangers trying to engage her in conversation.’

‘I told you. In the last few days before she was killed she didn’t go out.’

‘She hadn’t had a problem with her boyfriend?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They hadn’t had a row, for example?’

Clever Eddie, Porteous thought. On the look out for another connection. But Gillespie shook his head.

‘I don’t know how Joe put up with her but he was always remarkably patient. Eleanor and I like him a lot. He’s respectable, despite the hair and the clothes. Comes from a good
family. He was devoted to Mel. It was a relief when they started going out together. It was someone else to keep an eye on her. You know?’

Porteous nodded. ‘Would it be possible to speak to Mrs Gillespie now? We could talk in her room if that would be easier.’

‘No. She won’t want that. But you’ll have to wait while she gets ready.’

‘Perhaps in the meantime we could look in Melanie’s room. Is it as she left it?’

‘Yes. The police said not to touch anything. I’ll show you.’

The room was on the next floor, long and narrow, with two bay windows, each with a padded seat. The furniture was expensive, much of it custom built to fit the space, but the posters and cards
on the walls, the candles and joss-sticks, the piles of clothes and papers turned it into any other student pit. On the desk there was a CD player and a rack of tapes. A door in the opposite wall
led to a small bathroom.

‘You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ Gillespie said. ‘She wouldn’t let our cleaning lady in. Something else to fight over.’

‘You can leave it to us, sir. We’ll come down when we’ve finished.’

Gillespie turned. They waited in silence until they heard his footsteps retreating down the polished wood stairs.

‘Well?’ Porteous asked. ‘What do you think of him?’

‘He’s told us some of it.’ Eddie had already started on the dressing table. He pulled the top drawer right out and began feeling carefully through an octopus of tights.
‘Thrown us a few crumbs – like the fact that he’d paid the dad to go away. But he’s not told us everything. Not by a long chalk. Perhaps it’s not relevant. If
he’s having an affair with his secretary, for instance. I don’t suppose that would have anything to do with the murder. But he’s keeping secrets and I don’t like
it.’

‘I’m not sure.’ It was unlike Eddie to get so heated. Lack of sleep, Porteous thought. He felt more sympathy for Gillespie. ‘Perhaps he just feels guilty because he sent
the father away and screwed up the kid.’

‘No,’ Eddie snorted. ‘His sort don’t do guilt.’

They sorted through the mess but they didn’t find a hiding place. No cache of love letters. No diary, which Porteous had been hoping for. He’d thought an introspective young woman
like that would have kept a written record of her thoughts and feelings. No photo of her father, which he’d been looking for too. He’d have liked something to show the manager of the
pub.