The Red Herring (6 page)

The feeling of mild euphoria had sustained her all the way through to break time, but once she had stepped into the playground the familiar feelings of isolation and depression began to assail her. She was a stranger in the school. More than that, she was
strange
– at least as far as the local boys were concerned. It was not her fault she hadn't been brought up in Whitebridge, she thought. She couldn't be blamed for the fact that while Cyprus and Germany were just names to the boys, they held vivid memories for her.

She should have been able to get on better with the few kids from the base, because at least they shared the same experiences. But there was a problem there, too. On the base, the officers and their wives mixed socially – but also cautiously. Even drunk, the flying officers and flight lieutenants had to be careful what they said to a squadron leader – especially when that squadron leader was Reginald Dunn. And somehow this attitude had been communicated to their children, so that Reginald Dunn's daughter was not merely another girl in their eyes, but an extension of the situation which existed on the base.

There were times when Helen saw herself as the maiden of the old legends, bound tightly to a post and constantly menaced by the dragon who was her father. But the maidens in the pictures were tall and beautiful, with long slinky hair. She, on the other hand, was skinny and, at her father's insistence, had her hair cut almost like a boy's. So even if there had been a knight in shining armour riding around and searching for someone to whisk away, he would have taken one look at her and then gone in search of a girl more worthy of rescue.

She brushed a tear away from her eye. Perhaps there was hope yet, she told herself without much conviction. Perhaps, somewhere out there in the wide, wide world, there was a short-sighted knight errant who would ignore the surface look and see her as she really felt she was inside. And if he could do that – if he could make that great imaginative leap – then perhaps he would take her away from the dragon who dominated her life.

T
he deputy headmaster's office at Eddie's was considerably smaller, and much less impressive, than the headmaster's study. It was also, Woodend thought as he looked around him at the stacks of paper resting on every available surface, much more like the sort of place where the real work of running the school was done.

The deputy's name was Walter Hargreaves. He was about the same age as his boss, though without any of the other man's crisp starchiness. He had a pencil-thin moustache and slightly hollowed cheeks. His pale blue eyes could probably look amused and preoccupied with equal success, though at that moment they merely seemed wary.

‘The headmaster's told you what's happened to Miss Beale, has he?' Woodend asked.

Hargreaves nodded gravely. ‘Yes, he has. It's a shocking thing to have occurred.'

But he looked no more shocked than the headmaster had, Woodend thought. If there was any difference at all between his reaction and his boss's, it was that Hargreaves seemed to be a little more fatalistic about the murder.

‘It will come as a blow to the staff, too,' the deputy continued.

‘I'm sure it will.'

‘Which is why, with your permission, Chief Inspector, I'd like to announce it at the end of morning school. That way, they'll have the whole of the lunch hour to absorb the news and pull themselves together again. Would that be acceptable?'

‘Sounds reasonable to me,' Woodend agreed. ‘What can you tell me about the dead woman?'

‘About her background, very little,' Hargreaves said. ‘Her personal record will be on file in the secretary's office, but I haven't seen it myself.'

‘That surprises me,' Woodend said.

‘Does it really?' Hargreaves asked. ‘I can see no reason why it should. The headmaster makes all the appointments in this school. I'm not really concerned with what the staff have done in the past, only how they perform once they're here.'

‘And how
did
Miss Beale perform?'

Hargreaves's eyes flickered. ‘You'll have to speak to her head of department if you wish to know how good she was at imparting her knowledge of her subject,' he said.

‘You give the impression of a man who has his finger on the pulse of this place,' Woodend told him, ‘but you certainly haven't shown me any concrete evidence of it yet.'

Hargreaves looked away. ‘My main concern is how well teachers impose discipline, and Miss Beale's class control was more than adequate.'

‘Was she reliable?' Woodend asked.

‘I suppose so.'

‘You don't sound too sure.'

‘Young teachers like Miss Beale don't always know how to pace things at first.'

‘You couldn't spell that out for me, could you?' Woodend asked.

‘They throw themselves into their lessons with an enthusiasm which is commendable but also very, very draining. They go home exhausted, which means that they are rather vulnerable to infections.'

‘What you're really sayin', in a round about way, is that she'd had a lot of time off work?'

‘No more than some other young teachers I've come across,' Hargreaves said evasively.

‘Couldn't be that she'd been burnin' the candle at both ends, could it?' Woodend asked.

‘She did do extra classes outside school, if that's what you mean,' Hargreaves said.

‘It wasn't – but tell me about it anyway.'

‘This school is very highly thought of in the area, and that means that the teachers who work here tend to be highly thought of, too. So when any organisation such as the technical college needs part-time lecturers in the evening, they contact us first, to see if any of our staff are willing to take on the work.'

‘So Miss Beale was workin' at the tech?'

‘No, I merely mentioned the technical college as an example. Miss Beale gave some classes at the Blackhill Air Force base.'

‘I thought she was a history teacher,' Woodend said.

‘She was.'

‘So why would any of our lads, who we're relying on to bomb the hell out of the civilised world, need to know about Henry VIII an' his six wives?'

Hargreaves laughed, though it sounded as if he were unsure whether Woodend was joking or not. ‘She wasn't teaching “our lads”,' he said. ‘She was giving a general cultural orientation course to some of the officers in the USAF who share the base with them.'

‘I see,' Woodend said. ‘An' how often did she give these cultural courses of hers?'

‘Two or three nights of the week, I believe.'

‘Now that
is
interestin',' Woodend said.

‘What is?'

‘From what you've told me, Miss Beale was missin' school because she kept gettin' ill, which, as the man who runs things, must have made life a bit difficult for you.'

‘It's always a little awkward when a member of staff is away,' the deputy head admitted. ‘It means asking other teachers to take her place, and they work quite enough hours as it is.'

‘An' if I remember rightly, you said the reason young teachers get ill is often because they're exhausted.'

‘That's right.'

‘So why didn't you take it on yourself to have a fatherly word with Miss Beale?' Woodend asked.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘She was obviously findin' it a strain, which meant that she was also puttin' a strain on you an' your staff. Why didn't you have a word with her – suggest that she cut down on her outside commitments?'

Hargreaves looked a little uncomfortable. ‘It's not very easy to tell other people how to run their lives.'

‘Even if the way she ran hers was damagin' the efficiency of the school you're responsible for?'

The deputy head shrugged. ‘I probably
would
have had a word with her if it had gone on for much longer,' he said, ‘but I wanted to give her a chance to find her feet.'

‘What about her social life?' Woodend asked. ‘How did she get on with the rest of the staff?'

‘You could ask them,' Hargreaves said.

‘I will,' Woodend replied. ‘But first, I'm askin' you.'

‘This is a very traditional school,' Hargeaves told him. ‘Quite a number of the teachers were pupils here themselves. Most of those went to single-sex Oxford or Cambridge colleges to earn their degrees, and then came straight back to King Edward's to teach.'

‘Strange,' Woodend said.

‘Not at all,' Hargreaves countered. ‘They – and I myself am one of them – consider this a very special institution, a place where excellence is encouraged, a shining beacon which––'

‘You're startin' to talk just like a school prospectus now,' Woodend interrupted.

The deputy head grinned abashedly. ‘I suppose I am,' he agreed.

‘Anyway, the main point you were makin' is that a lot of your staff don't like women,' Woodend continued.

‘No, I wasn't saying that at all,' the deputy head protested. ‘Most of them are married and have children of their own. All I meant was that they're not used to dealing with women within their working environment.'

‘So how are they gettin' on with the girls from the base that you've taken in?'

Hargreaves smiled. ‘It's not always easy for them. Some of the comments they've got used to making in front of a class of boys are, shall we say, inappropriate, now that there are a couple of girls in the room. But they're learning to adjust to the situation. This school has survived for so long mainly because it's learned to adjust to changing times.'

‘Let's get back to Miss Beale,' Woodend suggested. ‘You were sayin' that she wasn't very welcome in the staff room.'

‘I was saying that some of the old boys here were slightly uncomfortable in her presence. But not all the staff, by any means. Some of them got on very well with her.'

‘Could you give me an example?'

‘Simon Barnes, one of her fellow historians. I believe they went to the same church, every Sunday.'

‘Oh, she was a God-botherer, was she?' Woodend asked.

The deputy head gave Woodend a long, speculative look. ‘I wonder how much of this crass, blunt Northern image you project is the real you, Mr Woodend,' he said.

Woodend smiled. ‘More of it than you might think,' he replied.

Roger Cray sat in his office at the British Aircraft Industries' Blackhill plant, staring at the reports which lay on his desk in front of him. But though his eyes moved along the lines of words, and up and down the columns of figures, he was taking none of it in – and when his phone rang, he jumped like a startled rabbit.

With a slightly shaking hand, he picked up the receiver, and said, ‘Yes, who is it?'

‘It's me,' said a voice on the other end of the line.

‘What the hell are you doing ringing now?' Cray demanded.

‘I'm ringing now because it's when I
can
ring,' Martin Dove said. ‘I'm not an executive like you, able to pick my own time. I was in the classroom until ten minutes ago – and I'll be back there in another ten.'

‘Yes, of course. I'm sorry,' Cray mumbled.

‘I was just calling to make sure we're still going ahead as planned,' Dove told him.

‘Going ahead as planned!' Cray repeated. ‘After last night!'

‘Last night was unfortunate,' Dove conceded.

‘It was more than that, it was––'

‘But we've got things timed too tightly to let that upset us. If we don't do it now, there's no telling when we might get another chance.'

He was right, Cray thought, as he felt his hands start to sweat. Damn him, he was
right
!

‘If we do go ahead with it, we're going to have to be careful,' he said.

‘We were
always
going to have to be careful,' the caller replied. ‘Let's make sure we've got the details straight, shall we?'

‘All right.'

‘I'll be standing by the statue of William Gladstone, halfway up the park, at exactly twenty minutes to one. I've deliberately taken to going there most lunchtimes, so if some of the other teachers notice me going, they won't think it's anything out of the ordinary. As for people in the park – in this weather, there shouldn't
be
any. But it's better to be safe than sorry, so you just walk past me without looking at me. Then, when you get to the top of the path, turn around as if you've walked far enough and decided to go back to your Sapphire. If there's
still
nobody around, keep your hand by your side but waggle your fingers. That'll be the signal for us to meet in the bushes. Have you got that?'

‘Of course I've got it! I'm not an idiot, and we've been through it half a dozen times.'

‘It's very important you do it exactly as I've outlined it,' Dove said, as if Cray had never spoken. ‘Very important – because later, when it's all over the papers, anybody who's seen us together might remember and start to put two and two together.'

‘I know.'

‘We can do this,' the caller said. ‘We
have
to do it. We
need
to do it.'

‘Yes,' Cray admitted dully. ‘We
need
to.'

‘
I'm standing on the dockside of the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
' said the voice of the reporter from the wireless in the police canteen. ‘
It is still night here on the other side of the ocean, and under the floodlights I can see groups of women and children, holding a few hastily packed belongings and waiting for the ship which will take them away from what could, potentially, become a very dangerous place indeed to be.
'

Bob Rutter lit up a Tareton cork-tipped cigarette, and looked around him. The normally noisy canteen had fallen silent, and all the officers there were staring up at the wireless as if that were, in itself, an aid to them hearing better.