A Hint of Death (A Bob Skinner Short Story) (Kindle Single) (2 page)

‘If you had been as persistent with your studies, Harold …’ the teacher exclaimed.

‘I’d still be a cop today; a graduate entrant, perhaps, but still a cop. I’ve made detective sergeant younger than most, and one of the reasons why is because I can tell when somebody’s telling me porkies. In CID, the gullible need not apply.’

‘Is that good, being suspicious of everyone?’

‘Oh, I’m not. At home, Cheeky can wind me up no end. But at work, where I ask questions of lots of shifty people on a daily basis, I can tell when I’m being spun a story, or when someone’s being evasive.’

‘I didn’t realise that I was.’

‘Then take my word for it, you were,’ Haddock chuckled. ‘You’re not a natural liar, but you do have some skill. You didn’t actually tell me you flogged the jewellery to top up your daughter’s university fund; you just threw out the hint and hoped I’d go with it.’ He paused and his expression changed. ‘Look, sir, I don’t need to take this any further. I’ll stop now if that’s what you want. But if you’re in trouble and I can help … well, try me.’

‘Will you keep it confidential?’ Christie asked.

‘That’ll depend on what you tell me. If you’ve run up a tab with an internet bookie, sure I can, but if a crime’s been committed, I can’t ignore that.’

‘It’s a woman,’ the teacher exclaimed, almost before he had finished. ‘I’ve been involved with a woman and it didn’t go as I’d anticipated.’

‘Involved? How deeply involved? A little while ago you said you had nothing in your life apart from Josey and work.’

‘That was part of the lie … or maybe it wasn’t, for it’s true again; I’m not involved any more.’

‘Was it a casual thing or did you see it longer term?’

‘I had hopes, I admit.’

‘Do you want to tell me about her?’

‘I might as well tell you everything now. She’s the older sister of a former pupil, a contemporary of yours, in fact. Do you remember a girl called Hazel McVie?’

The detective frowned, as he ran a series of faces through his mind, until he found her: a quiet lassie, okay at primary level, but more withdrawn the older she had grown, and undistinguished academically. She had never been one of the in-crowd, and he recalled having to tell Audrey Shields to wind it up when he had caught her bullying the kid during his prefect year.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘We went all through school together, but I never got to know her. Stewie Morrison asked her out on a date once. Being Stewie, he reported back. According to him, she said about three words all night, and when he tried his hand at the bus stop on the way home, she burst into tears.’

‘That sounds like Hazel; she had a lot of counselling from Mrs Andries, the guidance teacher. You lot wouldn’t have known about it; it was handled very discreetly, as are all such cases.’

‘What’s the sister’s name?’

‘Tammy.’

‘What?’

‘You heard. She told me her dad was into country and western at the time. According to her, Hazel was nearly called Dolly, but her mother drew the line at that. She’s Tammy Jones now; married name, but she’s divorced.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘She came to a school event for the parents of new pupils, about six months ago. Tammy’s thirty-four, but she married when she was twenty. Her son, his name’s Crawford, is twelve. He’s in my first-year class, which doesn’t help.’

Haddock sensed that the man was about to withdraw into himself once more. ‘But your relationship was personal?’ he continued, quickly.

‘It became so. We talked for a while at the event, and I told her she could always get in touch with me if she had any other questions. She did, a couple of days later. It was more convenient for us to meet outside school, so we did. She mentioned her circumstances, and I mentioned mine. She was very sympathetic. She got to me, emotionally, and it went on from there.’

‘How far did it go?’

Christie looked him in the eye. ‘Do you mean, was it sexual?’

Haddock nodded.

‘It developed that way.’

‘At whose instigation?’ he asked.

‘I’m really not sure,’ the teacher replied. ‘The first time, we had a weekend away. Was it my idea or hers? I can’t really remember now. We’d both had a couple of drinks; I don’t handle it too well, I’m afraid. I may have made the suggestion first, if the booze made me feel bold enough, or she might. Whatever, she said she knew someone with a cottage in Wooler, in Northumberland, that we could have. I admit that I was very apprehensive on the way there, but I don’t think it was a complete fiasco. We had a couple more encounters after that, at her place when Crawford was away with his dad. I felt comfortable with her, and I was getting ready to break the news to Josey; then Tammy asked me if I could lend her some money.’

‘Oh yes,’ Haddock said, heavily.

‘I thought nothing of it at the time. She told me that her husband was out of the country and had defaulted on his maintenance payments for the boy. She asked if I could lend her a thousand quid to tide her over. I always keep a couple of thousand rainy day money so I gave her half of that. A month ago she asked me for ten thousand.’

‘What was the story the second time?’

‘There wasn’t one. I went to hers one night expecting her to give me the first thousand back, but all she said was, “Trevor, darling, I need ten grand.” Just like that. I asked her why; she told me I didn’t need to know. When I told her that I didn’t have ten thou just lying around, the sugar voice turned to acid. “Bloody well find it,” she said. She’d turned into someone I didn’t know, and didn’t like, not at all.’

‘But you did. You did give her the money.’

Christie’s right eye flickered slightly. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, with a sudden look of vulnerability. ‘I did. She scared me into it.’

‘How?’ the detective asked. ‘Was there a physical threat? Did the husband get involved?’

‘No, but he wouldn’t have worried me. I might look like a wimp, Harold, but I was on my university boxing team. I’ve always kept myself fit. In fact Josey and I work out together; we do kick-boxing. She can be quite aggressive sometimes, and I see that as a way for her to externalise it. No, I’m afraid that Tammy’s coercion was much more brutal than that. She said that if I didn’t pay up, then her sister was going to tell the truth about what happened at school.’

‘Her sister? Hazel?’

‘Yes. Nothing did happen, Harold, I promise you,’ he added, quickly and vehemently. ‘Even in those days, male teachers were never daft enough to be alone with female pupils. I told Tammy as much, but it didn’t deter her. She said that Hazel would go to the police and say that I had sex with her when she was fourteen and fifteen years old.

‘I didn’t believe her at first. I told her that I was leaving and that I wanted my thousand back or I’d set my solicitor on her. And then Hazel came into the room.’

‘Jesus!’

‘I said much the same at the time, if a little more forcefully. She’d been in the kitchen listening through the door. When she heard me shouting at Tammy, it was as if it had been her cue. She came in and she showed me a written statement that she had all ready, she said, to be handed in to the CID. It purported to give details of our so-called affair when she was at high school. Chapter and verse, date, time and place. She said she was infatuated with me, and that I had taken advantage of her.’

Haddock looked him in the eye. ‘Mr Christie, I have to ask what any cop will ask. Was it a total fabrication?’

‘Absolutely!’ the man protested.

‘Then it’s your word against hers.’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘It has to be. She says you had relations with her and you deny it.’

‘Yes, but I have an … anatomical peculiarity,’ Christie said. ‘I have a large birthmark on my abdomen. Hazel’s statement described it in detail.’

‘Sure she did, as dictated by her sister.’

‘Obviously, Harold, but I can’t prove that. Tammy and I were very discreet. Other than that time in Wooler we never spent a full night together, and nobody ever saw us together. Just as what Hazel threatens to allege is her word against mine, so any relationship between me and Tammy is my word against hers.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Haddock conceded, ‘but even at that, if I was investigating this, officially, I wouldn’t be expecting to see you convicted.’

‘But I might be charged?’

‘It’s possible, post Yewtree, even though that was mainly English: but I doubt it very much. If you were, would it go to trial? I doubt that even more.’

‘It doesn’t matter; the allegation would be enough to compromise my career. They said they would “out” me on Hazel’s Twitter account if I didn’t pay up. Social media’s as big a threat as the court these days.’

‘What about the guidance teacher, Mrs Andries? You said that she gave Hazel counselling when she was at school. If this was never mentioned then …’

‘Mrs Andries died of breast cancer five years ago, and any case notes she might have made would have been destroyed after Hazel left the school. It doesn’t matter, Harold,’ Christie sighed. ‘I’ve given them the money, the nine thousand from the jewellery sale, and the other thousand I had left in cash. Now all I can do is hope that will be enough.’

‘I’d bet against that; you’ve been a mug. You’ve let yourself be intimidated. They’ll come after you again.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Two things. First you can tell Josey the truth. Second, you can leave it with me.’

‘The first I’ll do, but a formal police investigation will blow the whole thing up.’

‘I didn’t say it would be formal, did I? That would be a dead end, at best. No, these two sisters think you’re helpless, and probably you are. But they don’t know about me.’

‘After all these years, Sauce,’ Audrey Shields said, with a laugh in her voice, ‘you’re finally looking me up. I was real hurt, ken, when you never came back after our wee fling at the school.’

‘You were too much for a simple boy like me,’ Haddock replied. In fact their ‘fling’, their one-off encounter, had not taken place at school, but at a party one Saturday night, after Barry Paterson’s parents had been foolish enough to believe that their teenage son and his twin sister could be left to fend responsibly for themselves while they went off for a cheap weekend in Prague.

There had been cider, beer and vodka, the usual stuff at young people’s parties. Haddock had been nursing his third Strongbow, alone in the kitchen, thinking about going home while he still could, when Audrey Shields, Raleigh herself, had come in.

As he recalled, she had looked completely sober as she approached him, plucked the bottle from his hand and murmured, ‘I fancy you, Sauce. Come and I’ll show you something.’ She led him into the back garden; it was late September, late evening but there was enough moonlight for him to make out the shape of a garden shed. The key was in the lock; she turned it, on the inside.

‘I thought you were going with Barry,’ he remembered saying, as she unzipped her green satin dress.

‘He’s binned.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ he whispered, as she unzipped him. ‘I don’t have any Johnnies.’

‘Silly boy. I’m on the pill, ken.’

‘But you’re not sixteen yet.’

‘Bloody hell!’

Twelve years on, he smiled at his innocence. ‘That was your first time, wasn’t it?’ she said, reading his mind.

He nodded, feeling himself redden.

‘God,’ Audrey chuckled, ‘I must have seemed like a real slapper.’

He had traced her without difficulty, after leaving Christie; one phone call to Barry Paterson and he had learned that she worked for an insurance company in the Edinburgh Park complex; she had been surprised to hear from him, but more than happy to meet him for lunch at the Gyle shopping centre.

He smiled. ‘No, you were just friendly.’

‘Are you trying to find out if I still am? I’m still single, if you do want to know, but I’ve been in a steady relationship for four years.’

‘Me too. Not quite as long as that, but I’m settled.’

‘Mine’s a fireman. What’s yours?’

‘She’s an accountant.’ He held her gaze. ‘You know what I do?’

‘Of course I do, Sauce. At the school, you never stopped talking about joining the polis. You’re doing all right, I hear. I saw your name in the paper, no’ that long ago, to do with that murder, the body on Cramond Island.’

‘That’s ancient history now, all sorted.’

‘Do you ken that man Skinner, the chief constable, as was?’

‘Bob Skinner? Of course I do.’

‘Is he as hard as he looks from his picture in the papers?’

Haddock shook his head. ‘No. He’s much, much harder.’

Audrey gave a small shiver. ‘So,’ she exclaimed. ‘What has made you look me up after all this time?’

‘I want to pick your brains,’ he replied.

‘You never thought I had any.’

He laughed. ‘That’s rubbish!’ he told her. ‘I never fell for your dumb blonde act, Audrey. You always did enough work to scrape through whatever exam was coming up. Did you not go to Napier, after the high school?’

‘Aye,’ she admitted, with a shy grin. ‘I scraped by there too; I got an honours degree in computer security.’ She picked up a slice of pizza from her plate. ‘So, Sergeant Sauce, now you’ve got me to confess to havin’ brains, what do you want to pick out of them?’

‘It’s not official,’ he replied, ‘just something I’m following up on the quiet. It goes back to our schooldays, and I’d welcome your recollection of that time.’

Audrey glanced at her watch. ‘Shoot. I’ve still got half an hour.’

‘It won’t take that long. What do you remember about Mr Christie, the Classics teacher?’

‘Old Trev? Him that was always on about the grandeur of Rome?’

‘That’s the man. By the way he was about thirty at the time, that’s all.’

‘Maybe, but he was one of those guys that seemed to have been born old. I don’t remember a hell of a lot about him, truth be told …’ her eyes widened, ‘… apart from one thing. There was a rumour that he was havin’ it away with Mrs Andries, the guidance teacher. Shirley McTaggart said she thought she saw them in a hotel out in Queensferry. Nobody really believed it, though. Andries must have been ten years older than him. Mind you,’ she conceded, ‘we might think different now. There’s an eighteen-year-old boy in my office, and given half a chance …’ She winked.