A Shred of Evidence (29 page)

“So what?” she cried. “The only reason he doesn’t know the truth now is that he keeps avoiding me! Do you seriously think I’m going to let this situation go on? I’m telling the police, Patrick, make no mistake about that. I just haven’t told them yet because you—” She broke off and looked at him, some of the anger going as she saw his stricken face. “You’ve been very kind to me,” she said. “And I’m … very fond of you. I felt I had to tell you first.”

Kind to her. Fond of him. That was good, that was good. “No,” he said. “I’ve caused you nothing but trouble. You didn’t have to do anything for me.”

“You’ve caused plenty of trouble now,” she said. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that you were around when I needed you, and you didn’t put any pressure on me when … well, when it would have worked.” She shook her head. “But you knew what I must have thought when I saw the car!” she said. “You knew, and you said nothing, Patrick! You let me go on thinking that Colin was there with her!”

“Yes,” he said, sitting forward. “It was wrong of me. But I
was
there, Erica. Anything that they’ve found there will point to me. A DNA test would
prove
that I was with her. They’ll charge me if they find out.”

“They will find out,” she said.

“But it doesn’t have to happen,” said Patrick.

“It does, Patrick.”

Patrick sat back and ran his hands down his face, parting
them to look at Erica. “You know I didn’t kill her,” he said. “Because you saw me leave, and you saw her alive and well.”

“I know you didn’t kill her,” she said, her voice flat.

“Please—think about it, Erica. Colin is going to be cleared. You know he had nothing to do with Natalie, and in a few days the police will know he had nothing to do with Natalie, then everyone will know. His life will go on as normal.”

Erica was shaking her head in disbelief. “Normal?” she said. “I accused him of having sex with a minor,” she said. “The police thought he’d murdered her, for God’s sake! Look at the paper! Look what you did to him! Normal? He’s not even living with me now! Do you think his life is going to be normal once the dailies get hold of this?”

Patrick shook his head. That was a tough one. “No,” he said. “Right. But … he’s going to be cleared—that’s probably money in the bank to him. He can sell his story.”

“Don’t you dare be flippant about this!” she said.

“No. I wasn’t … I just meant that it won’t harm him professionally—not once people know the facts.”

“What I did can’t be undone,” she said.

Patrick was losing; he fought desperately to regain ground. “It’s not like you accused him of …” he said, deliberately shying away from the word. “Natalie wasn’t a child, you know.”

“Oh,” she said, sitting back a little. “I wondered when Natalie would get the blame.”

Miscalling Natalie wasn’t going to work. He had to retrieve the situation somehow.

“And whatever she was like, it’s still a crime,” she said. “And I accused him of it.”

“Yes. Right. But …” Patrick sat forward again, and kept his voice low. “If you tell the police about me, then I lose my job, my wife, and my liberty as likely as not.”

“You went cruising in Colin’s car, picked up one of your own pupils from a bus stop, and seduced her! You deserve whatever you get!”

Patrick shook his head. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. It wasn’t. He had to make her understand.

“I don’t care what it was like!”

“Just—” Patrick held up a hand. “Just listen, please. I didn’t pick her up from a bus stop. Well—yes, I did, but not the way you mean. I already knew her.” He paused before the make-or-break statement that would seal his fate. “I’d been seeing her since the beginning of June,” he said.

Erica stared at him. “What?” she said. “She only turned fifteen last month!”

“I didn’t know how young she was. I didn’t know she was still at school.” The truth. The truth. He, Patrick Murray, was having to rely on the truth to get him out of trouble. “And I didn’t find out until Tuesday morning when I took the register. I swear, Erica, I didn’t know.”

She had gone silent. He plunged on.

“On Tuesday evening I saw her by chance, and I only picked her up to tell her that it was impossible for us to go on seeing one another.”

“Oh, that’s what you were doing, was it?” said Erica. “At the council depot? Explaining to her how impossible it all was?”

“No,” sighed Patrick. “That was what I meant to do, and I tried to, but …”

“But? You knew how old she was then!”

Patrick hung his head. “I know,” he said. “I know it was wrong.”

“And then you left her there—you just drove off and left her there!”

He looked up. “Yes, I did,” he said. “And now she’s dead. I have to live with that, Erica. But if you tell the police they’ll charge me, and I’ll go to prison for sure because of what happened afterwards. And that had nothing to do with me. You know it had nothing to do with me.”

Erica closed her eyes.

Patrick got up and walked slowly round the desk, crouching down beside her, moving in for the final assault. “Erica,” he said. “What’s happened to Colin has happened. And it didn’t happen because of what I did, however wrong that was, because you’re the only person who saw the car, and you haven’t told anyone. It would have happened anyway, and it
won’t change what’s happened if you tell them about me. It’ll just finish me. Is that what you want?”

“She wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t left her there,” said Erica. her eyes still tight shut. “Why shouldn’t you be finished?”

Now. Now was his chance, his only chance. “Because I didn’t hurt her, Erica,” he said. “I just made love to her, that’s all. It was wrong, I know. But I’d been seeing her all summer, and it … it just happened. I just made love to her, that’s all. like I’d done a dozen times before.”

“Love!” she said, her voice full of contempt.

“Yes,” said Patrick, seizing his chance. “Love. I loved her, Erica.”

“You were trying to pull me all the time you were seeing her,” she said, opening her eyes but looking out of the window, away from him. “You tried to get me into bed last
night
! Love? Don’t make me laugh.”

“I was flirting with you before, that’s all,” he said, his voice low. “It’s my nature to flirt. And it was only because I knew you wouldn’t have any of it. I loved her, Erica, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

She still wouldn’t look at him, but he was getting through to her now that he was lying in his teeth. He was.

“And last night was different,” he said. “We were both hurting … I just thought we’d be good for one another, that we both needed a bit of comfort, that was all. Not because I didn’t love Natalie.”

“I don’t think you’re capable of love, Patrick,” she said.

“I can understand that,” he said. “But I did truly love her. I was … devastated when they told me what had happened. A moment’s panic—and God knows what I left her to face. I don’t know who killed her,” he went on, desperately. “But throwing me into the ring is just going to make it take even longer to find him.”

He had never worked so hard in his life. Sweat trickled down from his hairline and settled uncomfortably in his collar. “I was a coward,” he said. “And a fool. But don’t tell them,” he pleaded. “Please.”

“I’ll have to tell Colin,” she said.

“But he’ll tell the police,” said Patrick. “You know he will.” He caught her chair and swivelled it round so that she was looking at him. “Erica,” he said, suitably on his knees. “Ask yourself what good it would do to destroy me. It won’t bring Natalie back. It won’t change anything that’s happened. Colin’s going to be in the clear any day now. And it’s not all my fault, Erica—not all of it.”

She looked down at him. “Oh, Patrick,” she said.

“I made a stupid mistake,” he said. “One stupid mistake. I’ve already paid for it by losing Natalie—don’t make me pay for it again with everything I’ve got left.”

She closed her eyes again and sighed. There was an eternity before she spoke.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said, quietly, tiredly, reluctantly.

But she had said it, she had said it. Patrick resisted the impulse to kiss her. He didn’t imagine that would go down too well. But he was safe, he thought, as he left her and went back up to the now deserted staff room.

He settled down to do what he always did after school; preparing lessons that he hoped his students would find diverting and amusing, and not just educational. He possibly liked this bit better than anything else about teaching.

He thought he heard someone at the staff room door, and lifted his head to listen. He could feel rather than hear someone on the other side. “Yes?” he said. “Is someone there?”

The door opened slowly, hesitantly, and Kim, the girl who had been Natalie’s best friend, put her head round.

“Hello, Kim,” he said. “Do you want me?” He smiled. “How long have you been out there?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, didn’t come any further in.

“I know,” he said. “You collect door numbers. Fascinating hobby.”

She smiled, which was a start. “Could I talk to you?” she asked, in a voice so quiet that he had a job hearing it though she was only ten feet away.

“You can,” he said. “But if you want me to hear what you’re saying you’d better come further in.” He got up and pulled a chair round to face his.

She sat down, he sat down, but she was looking at her feet, slightly pink, tongue-tied.

“Right,” he said, realizing that he was going to have to open the conversation, or they would be here all night. “I won’t ask what’s wrong, because I know what’s wrong. This whole dreadful business.”

She nodded. “The police have been questioning Mr. Cochrane,” she said.

Patrick shook his head, smiling. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Kim,” he said. “Everyone wants whoever did that to Natalie found—the police have got to ask questions. They spoke to you too, remember. Don’t take any notice of what it says in the paper.”

“They think he killed her,” said Kim.

Oh, God. Half the girls in the school were in love with Colin. He wanted to reassure her; he took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. It’s just that they think … well, I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t, but it might set your mind at rest. They’re questioning him because they think Natalie had a … sort of crush on him.”

“Natalie?” said Kim, incredulously.

“You don’t think that’s likely?” asked Patrick.

“No,” she said.

No. She obviously had known Natalie quite well, then. He smiled. “They’re probably wrong,” he said. “But anyway, I think that’s all it is. They’re hoping he can—”

“It isn’t all there is,” said Kim, the words coming out in a rush. “They suspect him because of something I told them. That’s what I want your advice about.” She looked down at her feet, and took another moment before speaking. “At the beginning of the holidays, she told me she was going with a married man,” she said. “A teacher.”

So that was how they had got hold of that. Patrick stood up and went to the window, opening the blinds a little to the evening sun.

“That’s what I told the police,” she said. “And there was that rumour about Mr. Cochrane. That’s why they keep questioning him, because they think it was him she was seeing, but it
wasn’t—I know it wasn’t. Because now I’ve remembered something else Natalie said.”

Had she, now.

“She said that he didn’t know she was still at school,” said Kim. “He didn’t know how young she was. So it can’t have been Mr. Cochrane, can it?” she said.

He turned and looked at her. The afternoon light streamed in through the half-closed venetian blinds, casting dusty strips of sunshine over her, neat and demure in her school uniform. He should have guessed that Kim would know all about him—he had heard all about Kim, hadn’t he?

She didn’t look like a blackmailer, but she was, and a very accomplished one at that, telling the police just enough to take the heat off him, then letting him know, oh-so-shyly and hesitantly, that she could just as easily switch it on again.

My God, butter wouldn’t melt, he thought, as she looked earnestly back at him, her eyebrows drawn together as she considered this weighty problem. “I think I ought to tell the police,” she said.

He turned back to the window. He liked schools. He liked them when they were full of teachers and pupils and comings and goings; he liked them when they were quiet, and he was alone in their chalky, echoing rooms. Oakland didn’t use chalk any more, but somehow its dust still seemed to be suspended in the air.

Oakland School suited him admirably; the ancillary staff had been reduced to Erica and the caretaker now that all that came out of the budget. The contract cleaners came in the morning, and the building was always quiet at night.

Tonight it was quieter than ever; all the extra-curricular activities had been suspended, so that the children—my God, no, not children, not if his experience of them was anything to go by—so that the students didn’t have to go home at dusk.

“It could be stopping them finding out what really happened,” she said.

“What is it you want?” he asked, still not looking at her.

“Advice,” she said, still shy, still hesitant.

He smiled. “On whether or not you should go to the police?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He liked schools, he liked Oakland, and he loved teaching. He wanted to have his life the way it was right now, and he had fought hard to keep it. But all that hard work with Erica could go slipping down the drain, with just one word from modest, unassuming Kim.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think you should go to the police.”

He had never been blackmailed before; he knew you were supposed never to give in to it, that it was regarded as the worst crime next to murder, but … well, that rather depended on where you were standing.

Hannah was riding as fast as she knew how towards the school, and Kim, and Mr. Murray, hoping against hope that she could catch Kim before she saw him, but knowing that too much time had elapsed if she really had just been on her way.

Kim had rung while Hannah had been at the doctor’s. She had been wrong, she had said, and that had to be about Colin—it was the only thing they had discussed. Without giving her mother time to object, Hannah had jumped on her bike and headed for the school.