Death of a Teacher (25 page)

‘And don’t you think that’s odd?’

‘Not necessarily. I told you, Ro, things are only neat in TV cop shows.’

Ro drove home cursing herself. Why had she been so stupid? She might have known that Liz Rudder would complain. She had let her curiosity get the better of her, and she should leave detecting alone. Yet at the same time she was sure there was something odd about the Rudders’ reaction to the visit from the police. She remembered John Rudder’s arm striking out wildly when she had been at the house. Why had he been so agitated? Had they been too tough? But this time, Jed had been a model of sensitive policing.

As she was sitting with the inevitable coffee, looking at the steel grey hills and the dark, rushing river, the phone rang. It took her a moment to
recognize
Jed’s voice again. And his excitement.

‘Ro, listen. Never mind what Sergeant Liddle said, I need to talk to you. I’ve been in touch with the Toronto police and they’ve got back to me really quickly. A Ricky Rudder’s been reported missing by his flatmates. He’s a teacher. An art teacher.’

‘So what? It doesn’t mean he was the man at the chapel. And what would a Canadian art teacher be doing in Pelliter? Especially if he was nothing to do with Liz and John Rudder?’

‘But that’s just it! I called the flat, it’s first thing in the morning there. They told me Richard Rudder was originally from the UK. He emigrated from England to Canada about ten years ago. You can transfer as a teacher
relatively
easily. You just need your certificate of professional training or something.’

Ro said tersely, ‘But
you
told
me
not to start imagining things! This doesn’t really mean anything and we’re just going to get into serious trouble—’

‘Well, get this. He was doing a doctorate on Fraktur Art!’

‘You’re kidding! Really?’

‘Yes. He told his flatmates he was coming over to visit his brother to sort out some really difficult family business. And at the same time he wanted to look at some artwork which he felt proved a link with Fraktur Art and medieval illuminated manuscripts. Something he remembered seeing with a girlfriend years ago. He was quite sentimental about it, his friends said.’

‘That sounds like the
Book of St Trallen
.’

‘Yeah. But here’s the funny bit. He had problems with his sight. That’s why he wanted to come over now and see his brother and this artwork at the same time. He feared he was going blind; that’s why he got in touch. He had
something
called retinitis pigmentosa.’

‘I know what that is,’ Ro said. ‘It’s commonly called night blindness. It’s inherited. And John Rudder had it too. Jed, they
must
be related.’

P
eter Hodgson had spent all day Thursday stewing. What an awful way Liz Rudder had treated him when had called her with his kind and
innocent
invitation for a meal! Women! They were all such conniving creatures. Liz Rudder had obviously schemed to get him into her clutches, so she could humiliate him by a rude refusal. They enjoyed such petty power. Even his own sister had been like that, glowing with excitement about her silly little secrets.

‘You’re the only one I don’t have any secrets from, Peter,’ she had said more than once over Sunday lunch, flattering him as the senior sibling. And then, when he was half asleep after three helpings of pudding, he would sit in his chair, feeling his eyelids drop, as she burbled on about another of the petty scandals or misdemeanours she had come across.

And hadn’t there been something in all that rabbiting about the Rudders? Slowly, Peter Hodgson rooted through those slumbering Sunday afternoons, searching for what it was that Brenda had actually told him which rang a bell now.

‘I’m going to make sure the right person gets it,’ she had said. ‘But in the meantime I’ve made rather an exciting little plan to hide the will somewhere no one will ever think of. I know Liz used to be my best friend, but I don’t feel I owe her any loyalty any more.’

Peter remembered agreeing with Brenda, though he was half asleep, that Liz Rudder had treated her in a way that was somewhat cavalier. And now he, too, felt furious with Liz Rudder. It was one thing for her to insult Brenda but it was quite another when she insulted him! Who did the woman think she was? How appallingly rude and disrespectful she had been. To suggest that he was inebriated when he phoned her! And she’d had the effrontery to think that he would help her scupper the school concert.

In fact, he thought suddenly, the more St Trallen’s was seen at the forefront 
of village life, the more his plan was likely to succeed. The concert might actually be a good thing. He should never have listened to Liz Rudder’s silly arguments. She didn’t even have a university education. He really ought to put things right with the school. He was more than happy for the concert featuring St Trallen’s to go ahead if the school would back his campaign to have the chapel reopened as a church, housing the fragment of the
Book of St Trallen
.

He positively leapt out of his chair to get the phone and call Mr Findley’s office in order to backtrack. After all, any inconsistent behaviour on his part could surely be explained by his grief.

The secretary said, ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Hodgson. Mr Findley is teaching Year Five. Mrs Rudder’s absent. Her husband has been rushed into hospital with another stroke. He’s unlikely to live. It’s very tragic. It must be all the stress.’

‘Oh how dreadful. Thank you for telling me,’ Peter Hodgson said. What an interesting development.

Now, what was it Brenda had been chattering on about that Sunday lunchtime? Peter Hodgson sat down in his favourite armchair and treated himself to a few chocolate marshmallows. A will. That was it. Brenda had been going on about John Rudder and a will. Apparently Brenda was helping John Rudder. She had said that Liz was doing nothing to help John regain his movement, while Brenda and Liz’s rather dim little brother were giving him exercises to do. Absurd. As if Brenda could really help anyone. But in the middle of all this, John Rudder had somehow communicated something to Brenda about a will.

Oh yes. Peter Hodgson remembered now. Ha! This really would put the cat amongst the Rudder pigeons, especially if Liz thought she was going to come into money. In fact Liz Rudder reminded him of a little fat little pigeon herself: big-chested, bright-eyed and waddling. What impeccable timing, remembering all this today! God really did have a plan, and Father Peter was being repositioned at the centre of it after a very uncomfortable few years.

‘Mr Clifford!’ Peter Hodgson boomed down the phone a few moments later to Neil Clifford, the rector. ‘I’ve recalled something Brenda told me which could be very important. As you’re my vicar, in the circumstances I would like your advice.’

When Peter Hodgson put the phone down five minutes later, he felt he had done a good job. He had offloaded the problem on to Neil, and he was sure that it would percolate down to Liz Rudder and cause her inconvenience at least, and downright damage at most. Serve her right, he thought. Now he could have a small sherry and make plans about something that really mattered – the future of the chapel under his stewardship. Father Peter Clifford, Chaplain of St Trallen’s, West Cumbria. It had a very superior ring 
to it. What a pity that the young man had died outside the building – a death inside would have guaranteed that the place needed reconsecrating – and then there would have to be a priest in charge! What an interesting thought….

At St Mungo’s the after-school class for the Dodsworth examinees was about to start.

‘Jonty?’ Alison McDonald asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be going home now?’

‘Me, miss? Nah. I’m going to do the test as well. Effin’ loony, but that’s what me mam says.’

‘Oh!’ Alison was surprised, but it wasn’t her business to question or comment which parents were putting their children forward. She knew better than to bring that down on her head. ‘OK, everyone, I’ve got some old exam papers here. I’ve photocopied them. Let’s go through the model answers.’

It was teaching of the most routine sort, but it might give them all some experience of what they would be up against in the Dodsworth House scholarship exams.

Molly Spencer had gone home. Without her, Becky Dixon looked even paler and more stressed than ever. At the end of the class, the parents arrived to pick up the children, except for Jonty, whose bike was parked against the school railings. While the parents waited, Alison made a little speech.

‘Good luck, everyone. You’ve done some good work today. I wish you could all get a place at Dodsworth, but we don’t know how many they will choose. But the point is – don’t ever think this is it. You have all your lives to grow better and better in, and what you are now isn’t necessarily the way you are always going to be. If you get to Dodsworth it will be brilliant, and I hope you’ll have great success. But if you don’t get to Dodsworth, it could still be brilliant and you can still have great success. See you on Monday.’

As she said it she realized it would be the first weekend for months that she hadn’t seen Mark. She actually had no idea where he would be. The thought distracted her. The children and parents were milling around, but she hurried out to her car, not wanting to get involved in good luck wishes that might lead to allegations of favouritism, or cheerleading, which would wind the children up.

Becky stood in the playground as the rest of the crowd dissolved. There was no sign of either Grandad or Grandma. But she had known they wouldn’t be here. The Devil would have seen to that. She felt the metal keys in her pocket. She had done as she had been told to do. If she hadn’t, then who could know what might happen to Molly?

Becky slunk back against the school wall. Jonty’s bike was still there. Perhaps someone will still be inside the school, she thought. Maybe I can put 
off the evil hour and still escape? She began to creep along the wall in the shadows. No one was hanging around to chat in the cold wind, and the cars were revving up and disappearing.

She smelt the Devil before she felt his arm round her neck.

‘Trying to creep away, are you, you little bitch? Well you can’t get away from me this time.’

Jonty McFadden twisted her round with his left hand as if she was a doll. The cat-skinner knife was in his right. He flicked his wrist and slit open her jacket. Becky looked mesmerized at the split. He really could do it, she thought.

‘Have you got the keys?’ Jonty breathed in her ear. ‘Yeah, I can feel them in your pocket. Take them out and show me.’

Becky groped in her pocket and pulled out the keys to St Trallen’s Chapel.

‘Good. Come on.’

‘But you said that all you wanted was the keys.’

‘Yeah, well, that was what I
said
. But not what I
meant
.’ Jonty gave his funny half-man, half-child high-pitched laugh. Like the demon he was, she thought.

They walked together towards the playground exit in a parody of kids in an old-fashioned advertisement, the boy holding her hand and the smaller girl scurrying after. Except that this time she was being pulled against her will. There was a car at the gate, and the front passenger door swung open. Becky felt the point of the knife cut through her coat and into the small of her back; she jumped forward.

‘That’s OK, Becky, climb in,’ a voice said. The driver was wearing a big waxed jacket with the hood up, and was looking out of the driver’s window. The door slammed behind her. As Becky turned to the passenger window to shout or signal, she felt a blindfold being pulled over her eyes. The last thing she saw was Jonty grabbing his bike and cycling away, putting two fingers up in the air at her and rearing his bike. The funny smell of the cloth round her eyes and mouth made her feel sick. She gagged, biting the material. And from then on everything seemed to be happening in a strange, woozy dream as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

The rector, Neil Clifford, had worried what to do about Peter Hodgson’s strange information. On one level, he could try and locate Liz Rudder, or John Rudder’s solicitors, and alert them. But when it came to Brenda’s involvement he felt he might be wading into murkier waters. On the face of it, all this spiteful anecdotal chitchat about a will seemed irrelevant. But then again …

Neil had a good relationship with the local police, but he knew they liked straightforward information. This was a lot woollier. A PCSO was supposed 
to be a bridge between the public and the police, surely? What about calling that woman Robert Clark had told him about? Ro Watson. She had done a good job at the school too. He looked up her number in the phone book and was pleased to catch her at home.

‘Hello, Mrs Watson. I’m Neil Clifford, the rector. We have friends in common. Philip Dixon and Robert Clark. I wonder if you could help.’

Ro put the washing basket down and listened to what Neil Clifford had to say. He went on, ‘This could be important, or maybe not. Peter Hodgson, Brenda’s brother, has been bending my ear. Apparently Brenda spent every Wednesday night trying to give John Rudder special physiotherapy exercises. Liz Rudder didn’t do anything in that respect for her husband, but her brother Kevin, and Brenda, used to help him. It was an attempt to get him walking again.’

‘Kevin seems that sort of person. Rather sweet.’

‘But apparently John Rudder asked Brenda to draw up a will for him.’

‘Really? How could he do that? When I met him he couldn’t speak.’

‘Father Hodgson says he thinks John Rudder managed to type things on the computer.’

‘You’re kidding! But why didn’t his wife help him?’

‘I gather there was some sort of issue about her not knowing how he was disposing of his property. It’s all rather complicated.’ And Neil had heard the malice in Peter Hodgson’s voice. He went on, ‘Now I gather from Peter Hodgson that John Rudder is very seriously ill. Perhaps the police should be alerted to the fact there might be a controversial will in Brenda’s house.’

‘Why didn’t Peter Hodgson mention this before?’

‘He says he only remembered when he heard the news that John Rudder was seriously ill.’

‘But why did he tell you and not the police?’

‘Peter feels rather hostile towards the police. Apparently they asked him some question he described as impudent, about his sister’s death. And I’m on the board of governors for St Mungo’s. Like a lot of people, I suppose he felt he’d unburden himself by telling me, and that what to do next was my problem.’

‘I think the CID should know if Brenda was involved in anything, even something which seems irrelevant like you say. But I can talk to our
community
sergeant if you like?’

‘Yes, thank you. I’d appreciate that. I think the community people would be much more sensitive about something like this. John Rudder really is very seriously ill so contacting his wife with upsetting news like this might be very tricky….’

Don’t I know it, Ro thought. She immediately rang off, took a deep breath, 
and called Sergeant Liddle. To her surprise, he took her call, but he cut in when she started to tell him what Neil Clifford had said.

‘Never mind all that. I thought you were calling me because you’d already heard.’

‘Heard what?’

‘A kid’s gone missing. We got the call minutes ago. Let’s hope it’s nothing but a hysterical grandmother, but it’s on your patch and you’ve got good antennae. With luck she’ll come home soon, or be at one of her friends’ houses. They usually are. Do you know where PC Jackson is? He’s not answering his phone.’

‘No. Why should I know?’

‘Because you’re big mates. You and your toy boy, they say in the canteen. Look, I know I sent you home, but I need you. Pretty damn quick. Get straight down to the school. Let me know as soon as the kid shows up. This is your chance to redeem yourself with me.’

‘OK. Which school and which kid?’

‘St Mungo’s, Pelliter. And the kid’s name is Becky Dixon.’

Ro tried to phone Jed as she hurried out to her car, fumbling with her mobile in the growing cold wind and smattering rain, and she missed him twice. Wherever he was, he would want to be involved in searching for his niece. As she drove towards St Mungo’s, she thought of calling Suzy Spencer too. Ro stopped the car and pulled out her phone with Suzy’s number in it.

In The Briars’ kitchen a white-faced Molly listened to Suzy’s end of the conversation and began to cry in great howling sobs.

Suzy said anxiously to Ro at the other end of the phone, ‘Judith’s already called us, Ro. Becky’s definitely not here. Molly left school much earlier than Becky today. Look, Molly’s upset. I’ll ring you back.’ Suzy put the phone down, went over and hugged her daughter. ‘Molly, I need to ask you again: do you know where Becky is?’