Mortal Taste (2 page)

Various sponsorships had been arranged with local industry, which would not only defray educational costs for hard-pressed taxpayers but also establish employment links for the future. The governors nodded sagely: schools must not be ivory towers.

This meeting, on the twenty-first of September, was the first one of the new academic year, so Peter Logan gave a simplified summary of the summer examination results and the final count of the number of pupils entering higher education, which had climbed over a hundred for the first time. He smiled with modest confidence at the earnest faces round the big table, and almost provoked a round of applause.

The Chairman of the Governors thanked the Head for his lucid account of past successes and future plans. The meeting broke up in a quiet aura of self-congratulation: it is always more pleasant to be involved in a winning enterprise, to be agreeably swept along in the momentum of success.

Tea and biscuits were brought in at the end of the meeting. The buzz of conversation and informal exchange of ideas sounded almost muted at one end of a school hall which could accommodate a thousand pupils. Inevitably, Peter Logan's voice sounded continually above the rest; he was constantly asked for information, and his genuine enthusiasm for present achievement and future potential encouraged him to hold forth at length about his school.

His Chairman of Governors announced eventually that he must be away, and most of his colleagues on the governing body drifted off in his wake. Peter Logan thanked them individually as they left, then retired to his own room for a brief period of silence and recuperation. Even a naturally gregarious man needed time alone. Even a man as much at home with his destiny as the successful head of a big school found some strain in meetings such as the one which had just gone so successfully. And there were preparations to make for the next school day, which would begin in another eleven hours.

Logan's was the last car to leave the car park. He walked out serenely to it in the warm darkness of early autumn, sniffing the air appreciatively in unaccustomed isolation. Usually there was the sound of childish voices all around this part of the school. He eased his Rover 75 past the caretaker's house and drove unhurriedly and contentedly through the school gates and into the wider world outside the one he controlled.

He did not see the other car which came from beneath the trees of the cul de sac near the school gates. It followed him at a discreet distance when he turned on to the main road, its attendance marked by no more than the twin beams of dipped headlights, a good eighty yards behind him.

The last thing Peter Logan was thinking about was murder.

T
hey met on Mondays. Each of them felt a little easier arriving at the house in autumn, as the evenings drew in and night came earlier. You did not want to be seen attending such gatherings in the daylight. Next month, at the end of October, the hour would have gone back, and they would bring the times of their meetings forward. Somehow winter seemed to most of them the most appropriate season for these exchanges.

All of them were men, and one or two of them looked seedy as well as shifty as they arrived. These were the kind of people you would look back at when you had passed them, to check that they were not up to something; they had a naturally furtive air about them, and behaved as if they had long since recognized the impossibility of appearing respectable. They wore clothes which were not just shabby but dirty as well, and their hair was lank and unkempt.

But these few were the exception. For the most part, the members of the group who assembled at the semi-detached house in the quiet suburbs of Cheltenham were dressed neatly, even expensively, and both their clothes and their bearing were respectable to the point of anonymity. This was an activity where you cultivated anonymity, as the best defence against discovery.

None of them stood for long at the door of the house. Not one of them rang the bell and waited for admission. The door was not quite closed, and each of them as they arrived pushed at its paint-blistered surface and moved softly inside, before carefully restoring the door to its previous position, ready for the next quiet entry. Low-key movement and an awareness of the need to frustrate the curious world around them came naturally to each member of this group. When you were breaking the law, it behoved everyone to be careful.

Inside the house, with the protection of solid walls about them, people gradually became more relaxed. The conversation flowed a little more easily as the cheap wine encouraged it. But the atmosphere was never lively, and the decibel level never rose above a quiet hum. Even as they sipped the wine and talked to their fellows, many of the men who met like this felt an unvoiced contempt for their companions. It was an emotion which was only surpassed by the deeper contempt they felt for themselves.

Not all of them, however. Some of them had gone beyond that stage to something more reckless, a defiant proclamation of their strangeness which brought them near to something like elation.

These were the men who produced the video cassettes and outlined their contents with pride and excitement. There was a heavy silence, then a tense, suppressed animation among the group as the videos were slipped into the player. Then came a sigh of collective satisfaction as the wide eyes of the children looked at the camera and the entertainment began.

None of the men looked at each other as the showing proceeded. The sounds in the dimly lit room were confined to the occasional involuntary groan of pleasure.

Even when the single light in the middle of the room went on at the end of the showings, there was not much conversation. This was a diverse group of men; they had little in common except their perversion, and words did not flow easily from many of them.

There was one exception, however. The man who had watched the videos from the corner of the room was articulate enough, when he chose to be. But that was in contexts other than this. He was a good conversationalist in these other settings. In the rest of his life, he liked to think of himself as completely normal: doing the conventional thing was becoming more and more important to him in that other, public section of his existence. It was almost as if he could compensate for his membership of this group by being excessively normal in other areas.

He was an intelligent man, so he did not disguise from himself that this dark interest of his was – well, illegal. At one time, he might have said sinful, but he had long since forsaken the concept of sin.

He bought copies of two of the video cassettes to take away with him. And he left the house as soon as he could, once he had got what he wanted. Later, in the privacy of his own room, he would feel the now-familiar disgust with himself and what he was about. For the moment, his distaste extended only to the excited men around him. In truth, he found his fellows at this gathering a sorry crew and was happy enough to leave their company quickly.

He looked carefully to left and right from the darkened drive of the house before he went swiftly to his car. You couldn't be too careful, with video cassettes like these in your briefcase. And he felt he had more to lose than the rest of the men he had left behind him.

When a schoolteacher was a paedophile, he had to be very careful indeed.

‘How did the governors' meeting go?'

Jane Logan threw him the question as soon as he came into the sitting room. Might as well get it over with.

Her husband did not treat it as a conventional enquiry. ‘Well enough. They were interested to hear about the numbers going to university and our plans for the future. They'll support me in the scheme for the new library and information centre, I think. Mind you, I haven't told them how much it's going to cost yet!' That small, unconscious grin came to Peter Logan's lips, the one he had when he anticipated a challenge. The one she had once found so attractive.

‘Have you eaten?'

‘Yes. I sent out for a pizza from the shop near the school.'

She might have ribbed him once about fast food and the example he set to his pupils. Instead, she said, ‘I'll get us a drink, then,' and went into the kitchen. She was shocked by her own feelings. She hadn't seen Peter for fourteen hours, yet already she wanted to be away from him.

She knew he was studying her over the top of his paper when she took the tray with its teapot and cups back into the room. ‘You've kept your looks, Jane,' he said, as if he was noticing it for the first time. He sounded slightly surprised, and rather spoiled the effect of the compliment by following up with the observation: ‘They say that's especially difficult for blonde, blue-eyed types like you, but my wife seems to have managed it.'

‘Whereas you have just got yourself more and more important jobs. Working on the theory that power is the great aphrodisiac, I suppose.'

‘Haven't noticed it working that way recently. Not where you're concerned, that is.' He was behind the pages of the
Guardian
, studiously avoiding any eye contact, trying to cloak a serious observation as a throwaway remark. He had always done that; she realized now that she hated it.

‘Perhaps you should pay a little more attention to your wife and a little less attention to the job.' She said it tartly, more bitchily than she intended, and answered his retreat behind the paper by returning to the book she had been reading when he arrived. He had turned off the Schubert CD she had been listening to and put on the television. It flickered inconsequentially in the corner of the room, with neither of them watching or listening to it.

To her surprise, he took her comment seriously. ‘You're right, darling, I have been neglecting you. Now that I'm in the job I wanted, you deserve much more attention.' She noted his priorities with a wry smile, but didn't speak. She had never used the term ‘darling' to him; it seemed to drop falsely from his lips now, where once she had accepted it.

He waited for the reaction which did not come from her, and then said, ‘It's always busy at the beginning of a new school year, but I must find time for you now that everything is under way. Perhaps we should book a weekend away. A long weekend, at half-term, perhaps?'

That was the very last thing she wanted. She felt her heart thumping as she said, ‘There's no need for that, really. I quite understand that you're very busy at school.'

It came out as though delivered by an understanding stranger, but he did not seem to notice. ‘No, I've been neglecting you. I must do something about that, or someone else will step in. Pretty women like you shouldn't be neglected!' He grinned at her over his teacup, then raised it in a mock toast to her beauty. She looked steadily back at him, putting on the poker face she had cultivated over these past few weeks, concealing what she really felt about him, forcing herself eventually into a small, answering smile.

He was easily enough deceived, but that had its consequences. Twenty minutes later, as she undressed, he ran his fingers down her spine, took her roughly into his arms, insisted on making love to her.

The familiar hands in the familiar bed were like a stranger's upon her, but without the excitement that strangeness should have brought. He was rough in his love-making, and she tried to give him enough response to allay any suspicions he might have had. As he came noisily, she arched her back and simulated an orgasm of her own, her low moans lost in the ecstasy of his pleasure.

It worked well enough, apparently, for when he fell back, Peter Logan breathed the words, ‘That was good, Jane,' into her ear. And she felt the shame of her deception surge through her body, still rigid as her husband's went suddenly limp. He stroked the back of her neck a couple of times, the gesture he had always used to suggest that affection went beyond sex, and then fell heavily asleep.

Jane Logan lay awake on her back for a long time, staring at the invisible ceiling. She could not go on like this. She would have to do something about Peter, and quickly.

S
teve Fenton dressed rapidly. At least there was no problem getting into the bathroom these days, but the house still felt curiously empty without Josie and the boys.

He didn't miss his wife and the rows they used to have: the silence was a blessed relief from the blazing arguments over trivialities which had dominated the last two years of their marriage. But he still missed the boys; he stared glumly at the empty table as he came into the kitchen and wondered what they were doing at this minute.

He told himself he was avoiding the most tiresome aspects of adolescence, that he still had a good relationship with them, but he no longer attempted to disguise from himself that he missed them, for all the teenage shrapnel which had occasionally flashed around his ears. Perhaps he even missed that: he had enjoyed fighting the war that was never a real war with his sons, being gracious in his occasional victories, regrouping after his small defeats.

He looked out down the narrow, trim rear garden as he sat at the table with his bowl of cereals. At least he hadn't let things go since the divorce, either at home or at work. The house was clean and tidy and the garden was still full of colour even at the end of September. It was in better condition than ever, now that the boys and their ball games had gone, he thought sadly. The busy Lizzies and dahlias might have been looking a little blousy and jaded at the end of the season, as if the first frost, which would cut them down, might be something of a release, but given a mild autumn, he'd be able to cut the odd perfectly shaped rose almost up to Christmas.

He grinned at himself: get yourself a life, Stephen Fenton. But he had always enjoyed making things grow, even when he'd been the age his own boys were now. And anyway, his own life was looking up, thank you. Things had taken a decided turn for the better since he'd got himself involved with—

The phone shrilled sharply, no more than three feet to his right, shattering his morning reverie with its insistence. A secretary's voice: ‘Mr Fenton, I have Mr Weatherly for you. One moment, please.'