When she returned, she found her boyfriend in a brown study.
‘Penny for them?’ she said softly.
‘Oh, I was just running different scenarios through my mind but getting nowhere. No thanks, sweetheart, I won’t have another, but you go ahead. I know you had double English with 9F this afternoon.’
‘Yep. And let’s just say I’m not managing to sell them on the glories of Macbeth.’
‘Plenty of blood and gore to appeal to your average juvenile psychopath, I’d have thought.’
‘It’s poetry, innit?’ She had the disaffected whine off to a tee. ‘But enough of the Bard.’ Olivia scanned his troubled face. ‘This case is really getting to you. I mean, more so than usual.’
Markham could have replied that the association with Hope Academy was giving him an uneasy feeling of déjà vu, but he answered lightly, ‘It’s always the same at the start of an investigation.’ He hesitated. ‘But you’re right, there’s something peculiarly . . . well, malevolent at work here . . . And it chills me to think I’ve almost certainly met the murderer . . . down in that shiny, stainless-steel, nicey-nicey centre, someone’s festering with hatred and bile.’ Despite the warmth of the evening, he shivered convulsively.
She reached for his hand once more. ‘And you haven’t . . . got an instinct for any of the staff?’
‘Not a clue . . . but I know the answer lies in that centre, Liv, I just know it.’
‘Oh dear . . . looks like you’re succumbing to a hunch, Gil.’
‘God yes. Sidney’ll have me up on a charge of thoughtcrime in no time.’ He looked out pensively at the cemetery. ‘Rebecca Shawcross wasn’t universally liked, that’s for sure.’ He described the reaction of Mesdames Macdonald and Bolton to news of her death.
‘You make them sound like a couple of pantomime dames.’ She shrugged. ‘I haven’t had much to do with Shirley, but she’s always been perfectly civil . . . and, well, ordinary.’
‘Fair point, but that’s just it . . . sometimes evil is banal, Liv. So I can’t rule them out.’
‘And the rest?’
‘Nondescript, really.’ He stretched out his long legs with a sigh.
‘Could Rebecca have been involved with a student? Something to do with the study centre . . . a sixth-former?’ Olivia’s voice was small.
He wanted to be honest with her. ‘It’s possible, Liv. We’ll be talking with some of the pupils tomorrow. But I mean, at the moment anything’s possible.’ He paused. ‘I got the feeling Leo Cartwright was holding out on us about something. He might be more forthcoming away from that bossy-boots bulldozer of an assistant head.’
Olivia snorted. ‘Mary Atkins. Good luck with that!’
‘Noakes reckons she had to have slept her way to the top.’
‘Shrewd observer of human nature is our George. She’s had quite a career trajectory. From food technology to the dizzy heights of senior leadership by way of horizontal callisthenics!’
‘I won’t tell Noakesy. It’d only give him a swelled head, and he’s quite obnoxious enough already.’ Markham half smiled. ‘We were meant to go back to the centre this afternoon, but somehow Sidney knocked the stuffing out of us. After what you might call a council of war in the canteen, we went back to my office and continued going round in circles till we were sick of the sight of each other. At which point I told Noakes to get off home and did a bunk to Doggie’s.’
‘Aren’t George and Muriel meant to be tripping the light fantastic this weekend?’
‘Yes, they’ve got a competition in Brighton and I gather Noakesy’s glissades aren’t up to scratch. That meant extra practice tonight, so I sent him on his way.’
‘Via the chippy.’
‘No doubt.’
At that moment Markham’s mobile trilled, shattering the tranquillity of the evening. They looked at each other resignedly.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind.’
He moved into the living room to take the call.
A moment later, he trudged back out onto the balcony and Olivia knew exactly what was coming.
‘There’s been a break-in at the centre. One of our patrol teams called it in.’
‘Off you go then.’
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’
‘It’s alright, Gil. With all this Chablis in my bloodstream, I’m feeling unusually benign tonight!’
A light kiss dropped on the top of her head and he was gone. Olivia remained on the balcony for a long time afterwards, gazing dreamily out at the cemetery as though invoking its quiet sleepers to find a way through the riddle.
* * *
The sullen weight of summer bore down on Markham as soon as he got out of the squad car. ‘DS Noakes will be joining me, Constable, and I see Dave Elson’s here already,’ he said to the fresh-faced driver. ‘No need for you to wait.’
With an awkward little salute, the other took off. Markham was amused to note that he drove as sedately as a pensioner on a Tupperware outing, no doubt anxious to make a good impression on CID’s rising star.
No cooling breeze, no hint of refreshment in the air. Well, at least the combined effect of Doggie and the Chablis had taken the edge off. Thanks to them, he felt almost mellow.
There was a horrible grinding of gears and spraying of gravel, and Noakes arrived in his battered old jalopy (he was banned from using Muriel’s immaculate Honda Jazz).
‘How did your soft-shoe shuffle go then, Noakesy?’
‘The missus still ain’t happy.’ His DS looked decidedly disgruntled. ‘But then she wouldn’t be satisfied even if that Rudolf Neveroff was ’er partner.’
Markham’s lips quirked. ‘Good to see you’re on nodding terms with the virtuosos of ballet.’
‘It was that gig down at the Royal Court — the Baranov murder, guv. I could do bloody Mastermind on it now.’
The Baranov murder. Now there was a web of sexual intrigue and hatred. And,
