CHAPTER I
Round about 6.30, Chrissie had got a phone call from the police. Would she mind popping over to the Field Centre?
When she'd arrived the place was all lights. Police car and a van outside, an unmarked Rover pulling in behind her.
When the two CID men from the Rover walked across, they looked as if they'd been laughing. Now, facing her across her own desk, they were straight-faced but not exactly grim.
'I'm Detective Inspector Gary Ashton,' the tall one said. 'This is DS Hawkins' – waving a hand at the chubby one in the anorak. 'Now… Miss White.'
'Chrissie,' she said.
'Lovely: He was a fit-looking bloke, short grey hair and a trenchcoat. Fancy that… even with policemen, fashion goes in circles.
'If you've been trying to get hold of Dr Hall,' she said helpfully, 'he went to a funeral, but it should be well over by now.'
'Thank you. We know,' Ashton said. 'He left early, apparently, and went home. He's on his way. Now, just to get our times right, when exactly did you go home?'
Oh, sugar, Chrissie thought. 'We finish at four forty-five,' she said.
Actually she'd left at 4.15. Just before four, Alice had fallen back on the irrefutable – claiming she had one of her migraines coming on. Chrissie had stuck it for fifteen minutes on her own and then thought, sod it, and gone to fetch her coat.
'Four forty-five,' Ashton said. 'Right.' They could tell when you were lying, couldn't they? If he could, he didn't seem too concerned.
'Now,' he said. 'You're responsible for locking up, are you?'
'I do it if there's nobody else. I wouldn't say I'm responsible. There's the caretaker, he comes on at five. And then a private security firm comes round a few times at night… that's just since he's been here. They were worried there might be a few, you know… weirdo types, wanting to have a look. Or something. What's happened, then? Has there been a break-in?'
'So when you left, everything was locked up. What d'you do with the keys?'
'The front and back door keys we drop off at the caretaker's office at the main college building. The keys to the bogman section… we keep those in here, I'm afraid. Is that bad? In one of the filing cabinets – but that's always locked at night, of course.'
If this chap's an inspector, she realised, it's got to be more than just a break-in.
'And the big doors at the back?'
'We never open them. Well, only when… when the bogman arrived in a van. They brought him straight in that way.'
'Do you go round and check those doors, Chrissie, before you leave? Round the outside, I mean.'
'Do I buggery,' said Chrissie. 'I'm an office manager, not a flaming night watchman. Look, come on, what's this all about? What's happened?'
Ashton smiled. 'So you didn't see or hear anything suspicious before you left?'
'No. Not tonight.' Oops.
'What d'you mean, not tonight?'
'Well… I thought I heard a noise in there, where… he is… a couple of nights ago, but it was nothing. Probably a bird on the roof.'
'You didn't raise the alarm?'
'What for? It was locked. I knew nobody could get in through those doors without making a hell of a racket, so there didn't seem…'
'Somebody got in tonight, Miss White.'
'Oh, hell,' said Chrissie. 'They didn't damage him, did they? Roger'll go hairless.' She was cold. The BMW beckoned.
She could, after all, simply drive away from this.
Nobody invited you, girl.
Frost on the cobbles. No one else on the street. Curtains drawn, chimneys palely smoking.
Ah, the burden of guilt and regret. All he'd done for you, all he meant to you, and the thought that you'd never see him again.
Well, you saw him.
She shivered.
Problem with this place was there was nowhere you could even get a cup of coffee… except the pub.
She stood and stared at it from across the road. It was a large, shambling building set back from the street, with a field behind it and nothing behind that but peat. Dark sooty stone. Windows on three floors, none of the upper ones lit. Outside was a single light with an iron shade, a converted gaslamp, quite a feeble glow, just enough to light up the sign above the door: The Man I'th Moss. In black. No picture.
Didn't look like Lottie Castle's kind of place. Lottie was big sofas and art-nouveau prints.
Moira stepped lightly across the cobbles, peered through the doorway. Only a dozen or so people in the bar, Lottie not among them. Willie was there, with Eric Marsden. The big dollop of hair over Eric's forehead had gone grey but he looked no more mournful than he always had. Eric: the quiet one. In every band there was always a quiet one.
Go in then, shall I?
Why, it's Moira…
Come to help us re-form the band?
Just one problem. We had to bury Matt.
Never mind. Have a drink, lass.
She turned away, gathering her cloak about her. Moved quietly across the forecourt to the steeply sloping village street.
There was a guy leaning against the end wall of a stone terrace, smoking a cigarette. She kept her distance, walked down the middle of the street, along the cobbles.
Nothing for you here. Go back to what you know. The fancy clubs and the small halls. You can play that scene until you're quite old, long as the voice holds out. Save up the pennies. In twenty years you can retire to a luxury caravan, like the Duchess. Sea views. All your albums collected under the coffee table.
As she came abreast of him, the guy against the wall turned and looked at her, muttered something. Sounded like 'Fucking hell'.
Then he tossed his cigarette into the road at her feet. 'And they tell me,' he said, 'that this used to be a respectable neighbourhood.'
'Who's that?' Too dark to make out his features.
'You don't know me.'
'But you know me, huh?'
'Yeah,' he said. 'But not nearly as well as my dad did.'
'Oh,' Moira said.
His voice had sounded different when she last heard it. Like high, pre-pubertal.
She sighed.
'Dic,' she said. 'You want to go somewhere and discuss all this?'
He laughed. A short laugh. Matt's laugh, A cawing.
'Well?' she said.
'I'm thinking,' he said from deep within his shadow.
''Cause I don't mind,' Moira said. 'I'm easy.'
'Yeah,' he said, 'we all knew that.'
Moira paused. 'That was your chance, Dic. I threw you that one. You gave the predictable, adolescent answer. So go fuck yourself, OK?'
