A Certain Malice (3 page)

Cam held out his hand for her to stay where she was. “Mrs Smithson,” he said. “At the moment the body is unidentifiable, but sometimes people have vague ideas about who a victim could be. Can you make a guess? Have you been aware of any itinerants hanging around the school grounds? Did any of your groundsmen not turn up for work this morning? Have you given anyone permission to camp on the grounds during the school holidays?”

Mrs Smithson’s thin fingers reached for the double string of pearls resting on the bosom of her silk blouse. The nervous mannerism did not escape Cam. He had a fleeting glimpse of the kind of vulnerability the headmistress of an elite school would be forced to hide.

“No, Sergeant, although there have been plenty of people coming and going all holidays to work on the renovations,” she said. “I suppose one of the builders might have decided to go for a walk and accidentally started the bush fire.”

Cam turned to Vince. “Check with the builders. See if there was anyone away from work this morning.”

The big man gave a nod.

Mrs Smithson rose from the table with a waft of Chanel.

Cam said, “Thank you for your co-operation, I don’t think we’ll be needing to ask you any more questions for the moment.” He smiled. Number 5 had always been his wife’s favourite. When she moved to stand by her husband, he noticed she was the taller by about three inches.

Mrs Smithson gave Cam a tight smile back.“Please turn the lights off when you go.”

Vince grunted out a reply. When the Smithsons turned to leave, he caught Cam’s eye and flicked the end of his nose with his finger. Cam ignored him and glanced back to one of the forms on the table. He addressed the departing couple.

“Before you go, I’d like to have a bit more of a chat with Ms Tilly, the science teacher.” He tapped at the form in front of him with his pen. “It says here she lives in a flat at the school. Can you please point me in the right direction?”

“I hope it won’t take long. We need to get home, it’s been a long day,” Mr Smithson said.

“I quite understand. I don’t need you to accompany me, just tell me where I can find her.”

“This way,” Mr Smithson said, leading Cam away from his wife into the vestibule. He glanced back at the staffroom and gripped Cam’s arm. No longer within earshot of his wife, he dropped his previous tone of forced politeness and spoke through clenched teeth.

“My wife and I have done everything in our power to co-operate with the police over this unfortunate incident. I want you to know that we found Constable Petrowski’s blunt questioning very disturbing. The details he gave us about the condition of the body were totally unnecessary. It was as if he was deliberately trying to upset us, to bully us into taking some kind of responsibility for this tragic accident.”

Cam worked hard not to show his irritation with Vince over his tactless handling of Smithson. One of the first rules of a preliminary interview is to keep the witnesses on side, talk to them in a relaxed manner, steer the questions in a way that would put them at ease and encourage them to do the talking. It seemed the only thing Vince had encouraged was aggravation. It was going to take a lot of smoothing over to get the Smithsons back on track.

“I apologise on his behalf. I’ll have a word with him and I’ll be happy to assist if you wish to make a formal complaint,” Cam said.

Mr Smithson thought for a moment. “I might just do that. I’ll discuss the matter with my wife. In the meantime, if you wish to re-address this topic, Sergeant, please ring in advance for an appointment and speak to me. It is not necessary for my wife to hear all the gruesome details. I’m sure I can answer any further questions you might have. She doesn’t have to be included.”

Irritated himself by the man’s arrogant tone, Cam could imagine how he and Vince had goaded each other. He shrugged off the hand that gripped his arm.

“I quite understand, Mr Smithson, but I’m afraid I probably will have to speak to both you and your wife again. Until then, good day, sir.”

Ruth Tilly’s flat was on the third floor of the classroom block, directly above the science lab. Access was by way of curling stone steps rounded with wear, the banister cruelly knobbed to prevent impetuous schoolgirls from taking the easy way down.

Cam was about to mount the final set of stairs when the sound of clinking glasses and female laughter caught his attention. He turned, moving towards the noise until he was standing outside a half-open door marked Science Laboratory.

The laughter grew louder.

He raised his hand to knock, glancing into the room as he did so. One of the occupants was Cecelia Bowman. He hesitated when he noticed she’d taken off her shoes and stockings and was sitting on one of the science bench tops with her legs dangling. The other woman had her back to him. She was leaning against the bench, looking out of the window. Cecelia said something and the woman erupted with laughter. She turned her head and Cam saw she was the blonde science teacher, Ruth Tilly.

Without further hesitation, he knocked and pushed the door open.

Cecelia sprang from the bench top and slid something behind her back. If guilty looks were just cause for arrest, Cam would have called for the paddy wagon right away. Ruth’s jaw fell, but when her eyes met Cecelia’s, an unspoken message triggered more helpless laughter.

Cecelia wasn’t laughing, though her face beamed with an impish grin. All her energy seemed to be directed to the task of remaining upright.

The two women were as drunk as skunks.

“Ye Gads! It’s the big bad policeman come to arrest us. Quick, Cecelia, we must make haste with our escape!” Ruth said, doing no such thing. The shining material of her fashionable summer dress clung to her generous curves like a dusting of fine sugar as she lent back against bench.

“Your private drinking is no concern of mine, Ms Tilly,” Cam said, “but I’d like to ask you some -”

“Oh, you’ve met, have you?” Cecelia said, slurring her words.

“Well, not officially,” said Cam. “I have some questions for Ms Tilly about the fire.”

“Let me introduce you then. Senior Sergeant Fraser, meet Ruth Tilly, MS, Dip Ed and —”

“Moonshine brewer extraordinaire?” Cam said.

“Curses, betrayed by our own carelessness!” Ruth glanced at the beaker on the bench and snapped her fingers. Then she moved with fluid motion towards a large chest freezer. “But how rude of me. You will join us I hope, Sergeant,” she said, hefting up the freezer lid. Cam’s attempted refusal became a gawk of surprise as the clouds of cold air settled to reveal rows of neatly piled yellow lab rats. In the middle of one row, flanked on each side by a bagged frozen rat, rested a chemical flask of clear liquid.

“It’s eighty percent proof, never freezes,” Ruth said.

Cecelia let out a snort, then a giggle. “And that’s not the only thing she brews up here.” Her hand flew to her mouth as she looked at her friend.

“It’s OK, Cecelia, this is a good opportunity to come clean.” Ruth placed her hand over her heart and bowed her head. “The Sergeant needs to know the lengths we girls have to go to protect ourselves. Go on, show him.”

Cecelia bent down to rummage in one of the newly painted cupboards.

Cam looked at his watch and frowned. “I haven’t much time, ladies. I need to get back to the scene.”

“Here it is,” Cecelia exclaimed as she heaved herself up from her stooped position, holding a tiny glass vial. “Ruth made it. One whiff guaranteed to keep away even the likes of Vince Petrowski.
Voila
!” She lifted the small glass tube above her head.

Ruth’s laugh sounded like a machine gun. At any moment, Cam expected to hear the shattering of glass.

Cecelia pulled out the stopper and tried to shove the vial under Cam’s nose. He turned his head away, but not before he caught the scent. He had to put his hand over his nose to stop himself from gagging.

Ruth puffed up with the pride of genius.“I call it
Eau De CaaCaa
.”

Cecelia laughed. “She says it works better than Mace.”

Cam fought to retain his professional composure, comforting himself with the thought of their embarrassment when they discovered he was to be a new school parent. He hoped to be present when they found out.

He shook his head when Ruth tried to thrust a beaker of moonshine into his hand.

“I’ll have a coffee though, if there’s some going. I need to ask you some questions.” He looked around the science lab, searching for a kettle. It would be a waste of time trying to get answers from the women in their present state of intoxication.

“I’ll have a coffee too please, Ruth,” Cecelia said.

Ruth sighed. “Pikers, the both of you.” She vanished through a small side door into a kitchenette and soon they heard the clattering of cups. Cecelia made a move towards the sound then stopped as if she thought her disappearance might seem suspicious. She changed direction and walked back to the bench.

Cam put his hands in his pockets and ambled around the lab, whistling something tuneless between his teeth. Benches lined the walls topped with strategically placed Bunsen burners and sunken sinks. Equipment, bottles of chemicals and jars of dead animals adorned the shelves. He tapped at a jar holding some kind of embryo; pieces of dead tissue spun around like snow in a snow globe.

He saw a brown rat in a wire-covered aquarium nibbling on a chunk of dried corn held between its tiny, needled paws. It stopped nibbling, twitched its nose and gave him a furtive glance. In another glass tank a snake followed Cam’s every move with shiny black eyes and darting tongue. Cam shivered and turned to Cecelia who was now sitting on a tall stool by the window.

“I don’t like snakes,” he said for conversation’s sake.

“Neither do I.” She laughed, smoothing the skirt over her legs. Her hand crept to the collar of her blouse, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. Some of the drunken glow had faded from her soft brown eyes, leaving in its wake the smart of self-conscious awareness. He pulled up the stool next to hers and sat down.

“I’m sorry about this,” Cecelia said. “I’m afraid we’ve made fools of ourselves. We’re not usually this bad. I’ve had a terrible day and Ruth was trying to cheer me up. I hope we haven’t made you feel too uncomfortable.”

“I’ve had to deal with a lot worse, Ms Bowman,” Cam reassured her, wrapping his long legs around the stool.

“Please, call me Cecelia,” she said.

Ruth returned from the kitchenette with a tray and put mugs of coffee on the bench in front of them. “Oh no, Cecelia,” Ruth said, “our little spectacle won’t have concerned Cam in the least. He always was a cool customer. I remember him as a man of few words.” She smiled. “And he obviously still is.”

The familiarity in her voice startled him. He swivelled on his stool and stared at her, searching back through time for a memory he felt he should have been able to grasp.

“You’ve no idea who I am, have you? You’ve changed a lot, but I suppose that’s to be expected after twenty-five years.” Ruth turned to Cecelia. “Cam was always tall, but very skinny. He’s filled out, must have been all that football. Oh yes, and he wore his hair in dreadlocks then.”

“They weren’t dreadlocks,” he said to Cecelia, for some reason feeling the need to explain. “It just gets like that when it’s long.” He ran his hands through the waves of his short greying hair, suddenly feeling hot. He caught sight of a frog hanging suspended in a jar of formaldehyde. Its long flippered legs hung motionless in its watery crypt, its skinny arms raised in supplication.

Ruth laughed. “OK, I’ll put you out of your misery. I used to go to school here. I was a couple of years younger than Elizabeth. We both kept ponies at the school stables. You used to groom for us at the weekends.”

Many of the girls had kept ponies at the school in those days. Cam still had no recollection of this woman, but it was easier to nod knowingly than continue as the clown in this circus of embarrassment. He cleared his throat and reached for the witness statement forms.

“We’ll have to get together sometime and chew over our old memories. For now I need to ask you some questions.”

“Fire away then,” Ruth said, resting her head on her hand.

“It says here that you were working in the lab when you first noticed the fire.”

She yawned, gave him a nod.

“Do you often work at the lab during the school holidays?”

Ruth lifted her head up and looked at him with eyes the colour of butane flames. “Is this an interrogation? Am I under suspicion?”

“Not at all.”

“You’re making it sound as if I am.”

“Please, Ruth, just answer the questions.” He eased the tension in his jaw with a sip of coffee.

“OK, I’ll tell you.” She glanced at Cecelia, drew a deep breath then turned back to Cam. “I was humping Jeffrey Smithson on this bench here. In the height of my passion I turned to face the window and saw the smoke. Funny, I always thought one was supposed to see fireworks.”

Cecelia almost choked on her coffee. Cam didn’t smile.

“For God’s sake, Ruth, be serious for a change,” Cecelia said, hiding her smile behind her hand. She said to Cam, “Like me, Ruth has been putting in extra work because of the renovations. The whole lab’s been rebuilt and she’s spent a lot of time cleaning, unpacking and re-stocking. That’s what she was doing when she saw the smoke.”

“Cecelia, you’re a killjoy sometimes,” Ruth said.

Cam looked out of the large front window. Ruth Tilly was trying to provoke him and he was careful not to show any sign of annoyance.

The view of the crime scene was unimpeded from here. He noticed that the coroner’s van and another vehicle had arrived. It was time to wind up this meeting and get back to Leanne.

He glanced back at the form in his hand. “It says here the smoke you saw was dirty grey. I’d like you to think hard about this.”

“I can only say what I saw, Cam.”

“Did you see any flames?”

“Not at first, just the smoke.”

“When you did finally see some flames, what colour were they?”

“Just your normal common garden variety of flame, kind of orange yellow.”

Cam considered this for a moment, nodded. “Do you think it’d been burning long when you first noticed it?”