Fell Purpose

‘Arthur’ was Paxman, the sergeant on the night relief.

‘How come he always knows everything?’ Slider complained.

‘People tell him things. He’s like the river that king in the legend stuck his head in, to whisper his secret. He flows.’ Nicholls demonstrated a beautiful smoothness with one hand. ‘Men may come and men may go but he goes on for ever.’

‘Well, thanks for telling me, anyway,’ Slider said. ‘Oates liked to use the women’s own tights, didn’t he?’

‘That’s why I thought you ought to know right away,’ said Nicholls. ‘The trouble with people like him is that they escalate. The sin loses its edge so they have to sin a bit harder to get the same thrill. And he’s just stupid enough to want to earn his sobriquet. He may have finally crossed the line, Bill.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider. It was a dismal prospect.

‘I’ll wheel up your woman,’ Nutty said. He got to the door and turned back to say, ‘His ma used to tie him up when he was bad, you know – Oates. When he was a wean. Used to tie him to the banisters by the neck so he wouldn’t struggle. Used to use a pair of her old tights.’ He shook his head. ‘The things we do to our children.’

The woman moved so briskly across the room that Slider only just had time to get to his feet before she thrust her hand out to be shaken.

‘Elizabeth Finch-Dutton, head teacher of St Margaret’s,’ she said crisply. ‘Zellah Wilding’s head teacher. They tell me you are the officer in charge.’

He’d forgotten they didn’t call themselves masters and mistresses any more. ‘Detective Inspector Slider,’ he said. Despite the warm day, her hand was cold and dry, and the grip was hard and brief, like a politician’s, and quickly withdrawn.

‘I heard the dreadful news this morning, on the radio. I’m so shocked I can hardly believe it. Is it true the poor child was murdered?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘But – how? I mean, what—?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t go into any of the details,’ Slider said.

She pulled herself together. ‘Of course. I understand. It’s just so incomprehensible. In the absence of information the imagination tends to run wild.’

Let it run, said Slider’s sturdy silence.

‘I thought I’d better come here and see if there was anything I can do,’ she said meekly. ‘It’s good of you to see me, when you must be so busy. But if I can help in any way, I will gladly rally any forces at my command to find out who did this dreadful thing.’

Slider gestured to her to sit. She was tall and thin, in her late fifties probably, with cropped grey hair, large glasses and a professional smile – a ritual baring of teeth. It seemed to be coming and going rather randomly, as if she kept finding herself doing it automatically and then realizing it wasn’t appropriate to the occasion. She was not as much in control of herself as she wanted to appear, and Slider liked her the better for it.

‘Any background information you can give me?’ he suggested. ‘What was your impression of Zellah?’

‘She was one of our stars. A very able girl. She was a prefect, you know, and she was under consideration for Head Girl next year. Exemplary behaviour and academic prowess. Such a good example to the lower forms. We all thought a great deal of her.’ Her accent was crisp and her enunciation perfect, and she spoke with an emphasis carefully placed on one word in each phrase – a learned trick of rhetoric, presumably, but which made her sound authoritative. What she said would be the last word on any subject. ‘It’s so terrible to think of all that potential cut short in this senseless manner. She was the sort of girl we all long for but rarely get through our hands: a girl with a real academic intellect. Her A levels were sciences, you know.’

‘I expect that’s unusual.’

‘More so every year. One feels so for the Wildings, because they encouraged her just as they should, and that’s even more rare. Mr Wilding,’ the smile flashed out briefly, like a lighthouse beam passing, ‘is quite one of our treasures. He’s on the Board of Governors; he involves himself in all our projects, always willing to help in the most practical way. I believe he does a great deal of charity work outside as well, and sits on various committees – residents’ association, parish council, Neighbourhood Watch and so on. He’s a pillar of society.’ She used the phrase as if it were placed in inverted commas: a cliche, you were to understand, but one that could not be bettered. ‘And a most conscientious communicant. We expect all our parents to attend service regularly, but one can’t command the spirit in which they do it. But Mr Wilding is a true Christian in the best sense. And he recognised Zellah’s abilities and was most anxious that she should study serious subjects and do well at them. Most of our girls,’ she said with a sad shake of the head, ‘want to go into media studies, fashion, journalism, the soft options, and their parents encourage them. They want them to make easy money and good marriages, nothing more, as if the height of their ambition is to see their daughters emulate Victoria Beckham. Thirty years on from so-called Liberation, and women’s minds are still not valued in the least! I sometimes think it’s impossible to educate adolescent girls at all. And then someone like Zellah comes along and restores one’s faith in the species.’

It seemed a lot to be resting on one girl’s shoulders, Slider thought. ‘So you would say she was a serious-minded girl. Was she a . . . a good girl, for want of a better phrase?’

‘I understand you. And yes, she was a good girl. That was why we made her a prefect. But she wasn’t, shall we say, dour and humourless. She had great charm and vivacity. And her intellect was very well rounded. We wish our girls to be balanced, and Zellah’s science subjects had their counterpoint in the arts. She took part in many of the after-school activities. She was a member of the choir, the drama society – she took a leading part in our play at the end of the spring term. Her father helped make the scenery, by the way. I believe she did ballet, though of course that was outside the school. And she had quite a talent for art. Quite a talent. Our art master, Mr Markov, thought the world of her.’

‘So, it sounds as if she was the ideal pupil.’

‘The ideal student,’ she corrected. They didn’t say ‘pupil’ any more, either. ‘She will be a great loss to the school. And of course to her poor parents.’

Slider nodded, thinking. After a pause, he said abruptly, ‘Did you like her?’

There was a small hesitation. Then she said, ‘I never allow myself to become emotionally attached to any of my girls. You will see the necessity. Affection is not in my remit, and indeed would be too likely to affect my impartiality were I to permit it to develop. And Zellah was in many ways a very private person, hard to get to know. But she was a credit to the school, and the manner of her death has come as a great shock. A great shock.’

Was that a long way round of saying that she didn’t like her? Was there something a little intimidating in all that perfection? Or perhaps that Finch-Dutton simply had not known her well enough to like or dislike. A head teacher these days was probably fairly remote from the pupils, stuck in an office with reams of paperwork and government returns to fill in. Or, another possibility, Miss Finch-Dutton – he was sure it was Miss – didn’t really know what liking a girl felt like.

But there did seem to be quite a discrepancy, he thought when he had seen her out, between the jewel of St Margaret’s crown and delight of Mr Wilding’s eye, and the girl Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson described as her mate. It was a large crack for the real Zellah to get lost down, and Slider, who would never now meet her, felt an aching need to know what she had been like.

Meanwhile, there was Ronnie Oates, the Acton Strangler. He got up to go and see Porson. Leaning on a pervy little sex-offender was the kind of policing an old-fashioned copper like Porson would feel comfortable with, and Slider liked his bosses to be happy.

Chloe Paulson had evidently modelled herself on Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson to a large extent. Though her hair was mouse-fair, it was cut short and teased into moderate spikes on top of her head, and she wore purple lipstick and nail varnish, though the black around her eyes was much more subtle. Perhaps the fact that her parents were not in South America, and that her mother was actually at home, had moderated her fashion statement somewhat.

The Paulsons lived in a large Edwardian semi in Stamford Brook, the quality of whose paint-job alone declared them to be wealthy and sophisticated. Mrs Paulson was in her well-preserved fifties, slim and very smart,