A Reason to Kill (15 page)

Paul kept his head down as they got off the bus. Staff watched as they filed into school, pointed and whispered to one another as they saw his face. One stopped him, laying a pale, manicured hand on his shoulder. ‘What happened to you?'

‘Got into a fight, Miss.'

‘That isn't like you, Paul. Does your form tutor know?'

He shrugged. ‘Dunno, Miss, me mam phoned in on Friday. I was off.'

George shuffled awkwardly as Paul mumbled his reply. Dwayne, already in the corridor, had turned, inane grin in place as he mimed someone with their arm twisted behind their back.

George looked away, afraid someone would notice. Someone would guess. They would guess that part and then know everything.

‘Well, get along both of you or you'll be late,' the teacher said finally, seemingly blind to the irony that she was the one responsible for their tardiness. Silent and tense they made their way to their classroom. Their form teacher, Miss Crick, eyed them both thoughtfully, her gaze resting longest on Paul's face. She said nothing but entered their ‘present' mark into the electronic register that linked to the central computer system.

‘Everyone have their ID cards?' she said. The standard morning question. Today, unusually, everyone did. ID cards, scanned through readers, allowed library books to be borrowed, lunch to be paid for, attendance in class to be registered as they filed through the electronic doors and swiped their cards. Not to have a card was a serious offence and involved a trip to the principal's office to beg for a temporary replacement. Dwayne was a regular in that particular queue.

Then the bell for first lesson rang and they were heading out again, Paul separated from George by the press of the crowd and, George felt, because Paul had contrived for it to be like that. George blinked angrily at tears that forced their way to the corners of his eyes; he suddenly felt so terribly alone.

Andy put the call through to Eden's phone. ‘Anonymous tip,' he whispered to Mac and Sergeant Baker as he re-entered the room.

Mac raised an eyebrow and turned his attention to the one-sided conversation going on at Eden's desk. Finally, Eden laid down the receiver.

‘Anonymous phone call to our colleagues in Exeter,' he said. ‘A woman, calling from a phone box in Dorchester, naming one Mark Dowling as the culprit.'

‘Dowling,' Mac said, the name that had been unfamiliar a few days before now all too common. ‘Any details?'

Eden shook his head. ‘Just the name. She stayed on the phone just long enough to give them that.'

Mac glanced at the others and knew they were thinking the same thing. ‘There's absolutely no reason we should think …'

‘That our informant is Karen Parker? No, none at all, but …'

‘So,' Mac got to his feet, ‘where do I find Mark Dowling?' he asked. ‘Time for a talk.'

Rina had dragged Tim off to the local library. ‘The fresh air,' she told him, ‘will do you good.'

‘In a library? Library air is full of dust and microbes, Rina. Books that haven't been opened so long we probably don't even have immunity to the microbes any more. Full of Victorian microbes.'

‘The fresh air on the walk there will do you good. It's bracing out there this morning, and anyway we aren't going to look at books, we're going to look at the newspaper archive and we might make use of their internet connection too.'

‘Rina, you've got internet here.'

‘I've got dial-up here. The library has broadband. Get your coat.'

Still grumbling, Tim did as he was told. ‘What are we looking for anyway?'

‘Smugglers, of course. Didn't you listen when I told you about the cigarettes, the people?'

‘I listened,' Tim said. ‘I just don't see what it has to do with us?'

Rina shrugged. ‘Look upon it as your civic duty,' she said.

‘I can't.'

‘And why not?'

‘Because,' Tim told her grandly, ‘Frantham is only a town. To have a civic duty you have to be a citizen and for that one must live in a city.' He looked sideways at her, received Rina's best brand of withering look and fell silent. Well, he'd thought it rather clever. Maybe she was right and he should get out more.

The walk to the library was only short. The walk to anywhere in Frantham was pretty much the same. Tim entered the red brick Victorian edifice in Rina's wake and looked about with interest, noting the high galleries that ran around three sides and housed what looked to be an extensive reference collection and a music section. The gallery was supported on high Roman-style arches in red brick and white stone that reminded him vaguely of the Natural History Museum in London.

‘Never been here either, have you?' Rina asked him.

Downstairs was a more utilitarian affair. A pair of librarians sat behind a Formica desk that supported a computer attached to a barcode scanner and a stack of box files. Behind them, file cabinets acted as a divider between them and the suite of computers Tim glimpsed beyond. Rina, of course, knew them both and Tim endured the inevitable five minutes of chat before they moved on. It wasn't actually Rina's need to stop and exchange pleasantries that irritated him, Tim realized, so much as his profound inability to make that kind of small talk; that lack left him feeling awkward and self-conscious. He nodded politely at what he hoped were the right moments and then, gratefully, followed Rina once again right to the back of the building, past the newly refurbished computer suite to where, she told him, the newspapers and the microfiches were stored.

‘Can't I go and play with the computers?' Tim asked.

Rina sighed indulgently. ‘Soon, Tim,' she said. ‘We'll see what we can find here first, then you can go and play on the internet or whatever.'

Tim gave in with reasonable grace. After all, he had nothing better to do with his day. ‘OK, so how far back do we want to go?'

It was actually more interesting than he had anticipated, though that was largely because he kept getting sidetracked and reading articles that were not totally relevant to the search. He was surprised that Rina had been right about the smuggling in the area. Frantham had its own weekly paper, the
Frantham Echo
, mostly taken up by advertising but also carrying a round-up of the local news and also some original reporting. Smuggling in Frantham had been a major story both times it had been discovered, and the second report had put this in the context of historical occurrences going back several hundred years. Rina's little cave and others like it dotted along the coast had certainly seen some action.

Tim cross-referenced the abridged articles taken from other papers and, following Rina's guidance, printed the sections they wanted. A couple of hours in, they had a stack of cuttings and notes to add to Rina's file, and Tim was bored.

‘Can I go and play now, Mummy?'

Rina slapped him with her cuttings folder. ‘Go on then, but I doubt you'll find anything fresh. I think we've gleaned all we can.'

Tim wandered back into the library and sat down at the nearest terminal, following instructions for logging on. One of the Exeter papers had an extensive website, but it told Tim little more than he had already discovered – at least, so far as he could remember. The articles had tended to run together in his mind after a while, though he knew from experience that later on, when his brain had time to figure it out, the articles he read would collate themselves almost of their own accord. That, Tim knew, was the way his mind worked.

Idly, Tim began to enter other things into the search. His own name – yes, he did have a website, though it was badly in need of updating. Rina Martin, of course, both as Lydia Marchant and in other less famous roles, provoked a clutch of entries, and the Peters sisters, he was pleased to discover, were still remembered with great affection by fans of music hall.

On a whim, he entered Mac's name. Detective Inspector Sebastian McGregor. He hadn't expected anything and was surprised to come up with a whole raft of hits. Reports in national as well as local papers and even a couple of entries on TV news sites.

Curious, Tim opened one of them up and read it quickly. ‘Bloody hell.' He read on, then returned to the back room.

‘Rina? Rina, I think you should take a look at this. Our pet policeman has a past.'

Rina shrugged. ‘Of course he does, dear. We all do.'

‘Well yes, but I mean a
past
, past. No wonder he looks so bloody harassed.'

Rina came back with him to the computer and together they read about Sebastian McGregor. He was, it seemed, something of a hero. Twice over. He had saved a motorist from a burning car, faced down an armed man in a hostage situation, had an impeccable record, or so the papers said. Then it had all fallen apart, big time.

A child had been abducted by a friend of her family. He had a record for violence and sexual abuse but her family had not known that until afterwards. The reports were unanimous, that no one was quite sure what happened in the intervening time but that three days later, DI McGregor had come face to face with the man and the child on a deserted beach. A handover had been arranged, so someone claimed. Another claimed that McGregor had tracked him down. A third that it was a tip-off from a member of the public. Tim was astonished at the vagueness of it all.

There were arguments too about Mac's actions on that night. Had he called for back-up? Had he decided to go it alone? The fact that other officers arrived only minutes after the terrible events indicated that he had in fact called for help, but the statements made by the police were vague and there was nothing from Mac himself.

The one thing that was indisputable was that the child had died.

Tim and Rina studied the picture of Cara Evans. Six years old, pretty, with light brown hair, smiling out of the picture. She wore a party hat and hugged a doll and she looked happy and vibrant and so very much alive.

‘He killed her on the beach,' Rina said softly. ‘The man that took her. Cut her throat. You know, Tim, I remember this. It was all over the news because it was so utterly horrible.'

‘And our policeman was there.' Tim was oddly moved. ‘But he couldn't do anything to stop it happening. My God, Rina. How must he feel?'

‘We don't mention this,' Rina told him. ‘Mac has travelled a long way to get away from this; we don't tell him that we know.'

I
t was mid morning before George managed to get Paul alone for long enough to tell him what he had confessed to Karen. Morning break was only fifteen minutes, just long enough to grab a drink, and it was under the pretext of going to the vending machine that George managed to get his friend out of the classroom.

Finding a relatively empty stretch of corridor, George stopped, forcing Paul to halt beside him. ‘Listen,' he said. ‘Karen knows. I know I said … But you can't keep anything from our Karen and I'm glad I told her. She said she'll help.'

Paul grew so pale beneath his bruises that George honestly thought he was going to faint. He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. His breathing became frighteningly fast and shallow.

‘Paul, I'm sorry … Actually no, I'm not. We can't do this on our own.'

‘He'll kill me,' Paul whispered. ‘He really will. I'm dead.'

‘He won't know. The police will come for him now. It'll be OK.'

Paul opened his eyes and stared at his friend. ‘You mad?' he said. ‘What's your Karen going to do? Phone them up and say “I know who killed the old woman. It was Mark Dowling. You know, psycho Mark what beats the shit out of you soon as look.”?'

George didn't know what to say.

‘How they going to prove it? You think we'll get home and he'll be gone, just 'cos your sister says so?'

George shook his head but it occurred to him that, naively, that's exactly what he was thinking. That's what had happened with their dad. Karen said she'd sort it after the ambulance took their mum away and she'd sent George off to the shops. Their dad had disappeared when the ambulance arrived but George knew he'd be back as soon as the police cleared off. He always did and he'd been worried about leaving Karen there alone, but she'd insisted. ‘Go,' she'd said. ‘Here's a list of stuff we need.'

And when he'd come back, their dad wasn't there. Karen was still cleaning up the mess, scrubbing blood off the kitchen floor. But their dad wasn't there and Karen said he was gone for good.

She'd been wrong though, hadn't she? George had seen him.

And if she'd been wrong that time, maybe she was wrong about this. Maybe Paul had been right all along. Say nothing, do nothing. Hope it all went away.

‘Look,' he said. ‘It'll be OK. It's got to be.'

Paul pushed away from the wall and began to walk away.

‘Paul!'

‘Just leave me alone. Just leave me alone!'

George stared after his friend, hurt beyond words and terrified that he really had done the wrong thing. ‘Paul!'

The bell rang for the end of break and the corridors began to fill. Gnawing at his lower lip, George headed for class, wondering what the hell he should do now.

Mac had half expected to be going to the Jubilee to see Mark Dowling, but instead Andy drove them both to a neat detached house out on the main road close to the tin huts.

‘Dowling senior's OK,' Andy said by way of explanation. ‘He worked hard to get this place. The oldest son, Terry, works with his dad, but my dad reckons he's a lazy sod and not that good either when it comes to cars. Then there's another brother, Alan. He left a couple of years back. I don't know where he went to but he was like an insipid version of Mark. Fancied himself as a hard man but never did quite hack it. Rumour has it he and Mark didn't see eye to eye and Alan thought it was safer to leave.'

‘You know the family well?'