Death of a Teacher (9 page)

When she got back to Norbridge, Ro wondered what she should do now. Sergeant Liddle had gone home and the CID were in control. But there was no point her leaving before the end of what would have been her normal shift. Ben was safe with his grandparents and it was pointless disrupting his routine. Of course, there was always her plan to go and speak to the younger teacher from St Mungo’s about the broken window. The vandalism seemed trivial and irrelevant now.

Ro’s mobile phone rang. Thinking of Ben as always, she fumbled for it in panic. She didn’t recognize the number on the display.

‘Ro, it’s Gerard Jackson.’

‘Oh. Hi, Jed.’

‘I’ve been home after working all night, and grabbed about two hours’ 
sleep, but I can’t relax. You wanted to talk to that other teacher about the vandalism at St Mungo’s. You’ve got her address, haven’t you? She might be able to tell us something relevant to the murder. We can take a car. I’ll be back at the station to pick you up in half an hour.’

‘Great.’ Ro felt a tingle of pleasure and then told herself to stop being an idiot.

A
lison MacDonald had woken really late on Sunday and stayed under the duvet with Mark. When they eventually got out of bed, they didn’t watch the television or listen to the radio, and for once Mark didn’t log on to his laptop as soon as he got dressed.

The night before they’d had a Chinese meal, and then gone to one of Mark’s favourite clubs, staying till about four in the morning. Alison hated these late night sessions, but she felt she owed him the time, as she had been such a misery the day before. At about midday on Sunday, they had dressed dopily before leaving the flat to wander in the summer sunshine to a bistro for brunch.

Ali felt much better in the morning sunshine. St Mungo’s seemed
manageable
at a distance. And Mark was right: they did need the money. Leaving school wasn’t an option. She felt new enthusiasm talking about the future, discussing the house they wanted if they could possibly afford it in Timperley or Sale. There would always be a need for primary-school teachers, Mark said, and she had experience in two schools now.

Mark was good with figures, and as they sat outside sipping cappuccinos and waiting for the food, he made calculations on the paper napkin with a biro. If Alison went on earning – and, he hinted, if she didn’t walk away in hysterics from a perfectly good job – a mortgage for a terraced house was definitely within their reach.

He said, ‘So next year we should be able to afford to buy. It will be brilliant not to be in a flat. I’ll be the first one in the sales team to have my own house!’

One of Mark’s five-a-side football pals had recently got married and bought a house in Urmston. He and his wife had a cream leather sofa and laminated wooden floors with a plain cream square rug. It all toned in
mushroom
and magnolia, like something out of a catalogue, and Mark had mentioned more than once how it was all do-able for him too.

And meeting at weekends had its advantages, Mark thought. It was exciting. And it gave him a bit of space for doing his own thing in the week. 
Once he was married he’d give all that up, but you were only young once. And it meant he was always ready for a bit of real bedroom action by Friday. That was the most annoying thing – if Alison would only get her act together and arrive on Friday night, they could have much more nookie. He said as much over his Full English Breakfast.

‘Next Friday?’ Alison said. ‘But I have to be at school again on Saturday morning. This mural is huge and we didn’t get much done yesterday. And I’m not going to let little thugs like Jonty McFadden stop me working when I want.’

‘You’ve changed your tune. Yesterday you wanted to jack it in.’

‘It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do.’ Alison looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Mark hadn’t let her sleep much. But in the early hours when he dozed, she had lain there thinking. He was right: living together in the tiny studio flat would be hell. And this mural was the best thing she had done since coming to St Mungo’s. It was possibly one of the best things of her career. She wasn’t going to give up on it, or give up on the children who were relying on her. Like the PCSO woman had said, it should be business as usual, despite the broken window.

Mark’s face darkened. ‘But, Ali, you said that you’d be here every weekend.’

‘But not till Saturday afternoon. You know I have to help Mum with the shopping. And other times I can’t face the long drive. And then there are school things. Like the mural.’

Mark felt the acid of irritation interfering with his scrambled egg. ‘That’s not fair, Ali. It wasn’t the deal.’ He coloured slightly. He looked pink and shiny in the sunshine. ‘It’s tough enough having no sex Monday to Thursday. Three times a week is the average for old married couples, not people like us. I’m missing out. You should get here on Friday night.’

‘Is that all you care about?’ Lately, Alison had felt that some of Mark’s bedroom demands were going a little too far, and the result had been to put her off, not turn her on. It would be different when they were together all the time, she thought. Their desire would be mutual and properly paced, without this pressure for a weekend marathon.

She glanced at the short fuzz of Mark’s blond hair and the breadth of his shoulders. He had put on weight since she had gone back to Norbridge. His muscular stockiness had always attracted her in the past, but today in the bright sun he looked slightly greasy and tough. Perhaps she was prejudiced by overexposure to the bulky beta males of Pelliter with their tattoos. Most dads in Pelliter looked like football hooligans. Except that smart young man she had seen in the playground, a week ago. The one in the black cab. She had never found out who he was. There had been that confused expression on his face which she couldn’t place. 

She’d read in the free paper about that dead man at the chapel being unidentified, with no bag or coat, but dressed like the young man at the school. How many unknown smart types were there in Pelliter on a Friday night? Maybe it was the same guy. Perhaps she should tell someone, although it really seemed too trivial to mention to the police.

But there was always that Police Community Support Officer. Alison had told her that she would be home by five o’clock on Sunday night if they needed to talk further about the vandalism. Maybe she should mention the young man in the school playground at the same time.

‘If you want to go to back to bed after we’ve been to the pub, we need to think about eating up,’ she said in a conciliatory tone to Mark. ‘Even if I just have one glass of red, I’ll need a chance to sleep it off before driving.’

‘And I’ll need a chance to tire you out,’ Mark said, more cheerfully now. ‘Let’s go back to the flat straight away.’ They left the bistro and wandered back. But this time they didn’t hold hands, and Alison pulled her jacket tight around her even in the pools of thin spring sunshine.

Further north, the not-so-chic greasy spoon café on Pelliter High Street had made a brave attempt to re-invent itself for the police and press who had gathered at the west side of the Marshes. They were serving cappuccinos and lattes; the creaky old espresso machine had been forced into action. The proprietor’s wife had made trays of ‘millionaire’s shortbread’ and they were doing a roaring trade; usually on Sunday they stayed closed.

Jed and Ro sat together at a rocky, plastic-topped table. They nodded to a few blokes from CID, and avoided a reporter who was trying to get
information
out of a flirtatious waitress.

‘So what are we going to ask Miss MacDonald?’ Jed said.

‘Well, she’ll already know about Brenda Hodgson, I suppose. Someone will have told her. She’ll probably think we’re unbelievably misguided, wanting to talk about a broken window at a time like this.’

‘But vandalism is still an offence. Remember zero tolerance?’ Jed asked.

‘Not really. I think it was a buzz phrase before I came into policing.’

Jed stirred his coffee. ‘So why did you do it? Come into policing? Well, community support anyway. You know what they call you lot? CHIMPS: Completely Hopeless in Most Policing Situations.’

‘I didn’t do it to be popular. I really do want to support the community. Even if they don’t think they need it.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes, seriously. The vulnerable people anyway. My son Ben has cerebral palsy,’ Ro said. It sounded very matter-of-fact. She thought, if Jed Jackson uses the word ‘spastic’, I will kill him, big brown eyes or not. 

Jed stirred his coffee more vigorously. Ro waited for his response. Ben’s condition was both absolutely vital to her life and peripheral to her job at the same time.

‘I suppose it’s very interesting,’ Jed said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Interesting. Dealing with cerebral palsy. I don’t know much about it. Ben obviously gets out and about though. You said he was away this weekend? That must be quite an achievement.’

Interesting? Well, that was one way of putting it. When most people heard about Ben, they either gushed with embarrassed sympathy, or rabbited on about their own children’s minor ailments. And often, people wanted to be able to blame her, to make Ben’s cerebral palsy to be someone’s fault, so they could enjoy their own good fortune as if they deserved it. But Jed wasn’t going down that road. He had impressed Ro by remembering Ben’s name and she found his curiosity much easier to deal with than the usual fake sympathy covering shock and blame. And Jed was right. Dealing with cerebral palsy was interesting. As well as awful.

‘Yes, we’re actually quite lucky. Ben’s made massive progress. He goes to Norbridge High and has a teaching assistant for support. They’ve been
brilliant
. He’s getting more independent all the time. He’s at his grandparents’ this weekend.’

‘How limited is his movement?’

‘He has what we call his wobbly walk. And his left hand isn’t good. But these days the worst thing is his sight. Ben had a bad fall when he was three and the trauma led to cataracts developing.’

‘I thought it was old people who had cataracts?’

‘Not always. Ben’s cataracts started affecting his sight when he was about seven. They have to wait for them to grow to a certain stage before anything can be done.’ And we’ve reached that stage now, she thought with a shudder. It was a simple procedure, but it meant a general anaesthetic for a kid of his age. Without it, Ben would go blind.

She said, ‘There’s an operation they can do. We’re pretty nervous about it, but we’re hoping to go ahead with it this summer.’

‘That must be tough, but it still doesn’t explain why you wanted to be a PCSO.’

‘Yes it does. I didn’t have much of a career after Ben was born. At least, not after his fall. And as he grew up I thought – I want my son to be able to go out in the High Street and have a couple of pints and lark about and be protected. I think we’re all weak in some ways, and need protection. What about you?’

‘Oh, I take the opposite view. I think weakness is the problem. I think we should make people face up to their responsibilities.’ Jed’s face took on a set 
sort of look, as if he was used to having to defend his position, but was sticking to it. He was less attractive when he was on his high horse, she had noticed. But being less attractive was better as far as she was concerned. Blushing every time he spoke to her was deeply embarrassing.

‘That’s sounds a bit uncompromising.’

‘Maybe.’ Jed bridled slightly. ‘Anyway, what time are we seeing Miss MacDonald?’

‘Five o’clock. And I need to be away at six at the latest. I need to pick up my son.’

‘And you don’t feel happy until he’s home? Until you’re both home? With the drawbridge up?’

Ro looked at him in surprise. For such a self-righteous young man he could still be perceptive. I must come across as defensive myself, she thought. Ro Watson, chatelaine of her own little castle. The remark about the
drawbridge
rankled a little bit but she had to admit he was right.

Alison listened to music as she drove up the motorway back towards Pelliter. The traffic wasn’t too bad, but it would be brilliant when she didn’t have to do this any more. Then she remembered something Mark had said….

‘If you’re feeling so much better about your job, it wouldn’t do any harm for you to stay on there after we’re married, till we could get a really decent house. Your mum doesn’t charge you any rent and your car’s in good nick. As long as you’re here from Friday to Monday morning it might be silly to give up a secure job these days.’

At the time Alison hadn’t really been listening. But now, in the car, singing along with Jamie Cullum, a nasty little worm of thought wriggled in her brain. For all his fuss about having her there for the whole weekend, why did Mark actually want his weekday evenings to himself? Was it because he really liked clubbing and socializing and she wasn’t so keen?

She had met Mark in Manchester on a night out with her colleagues. It wasn’t really Alison’s scene and she had been hanging back. He had come over to buy her a drink. It had been serious from the first night and she had been swept off her feet by his determination. People said men were scared of commitment, but that had not been true of Mark. He’d wanted a partner and a conventional family life, and he’d been honest from the start about wanting to get promotion too. She had always liked his drive and practicality, and she had appreciated the
luxuries
he took for granted on his wage as a sales manager. Foreign holidays, the way he dressed, the clothes he bought her, the meals out, and their mutual fantasies about fitted kitchens and soft furnishing all suited her. Mark had modern taste, in contrast to her parents’ clutter-filled terraced cottage.

But despite all the insecurity and preoccupation with money, he wasn’t 
scrimping and saving as she was. She suddenly felt frustrated with the dreamy music she was playing: she snapped on the radio for the news.

It had been a quiet news day – except in Pelliter. The national bulletin still led with Brenda Hodgson’s murder. Alison drove for another five miles on autopilot. Then she started taking deep, rasping breaths and pulled over on to the hard shoulder. She sat there in silence for a few minutes. She called Mark, but got his irritating voice message system. It struck her with physical force that there was no one at St Mungo’s she could talk to. Liz Rudder was out of the question. Ray Findley was out of the frame. She had no colleague she could call, to share some of her shock.

She rang her mother who said yes, everyone in Norbridge was talking about Brenda Hodgson’s death, and that a killer was on the loose. Her mum always enjoyed a bit of drama. She added that the police had telephoned, and wanted to interview Alison about a broken window.

‘You’d think they’d have better things to do,’ her mother said. ‘But that’s what they wanted.’

Ro Watson and PC Jed Jackson were waiting in the car outside the MacDonalds’ house in Norbridge. They had been talking for half an hour, mostly about Ben.