Death of a Teacher (3 page)

‘Talking of books,’ Suzy asked, equally keen to change the subject, ‘did you get the one you wanted?’

Robert nodded. His latest fiction attempt was historical, tracing the branch of the Clark family which had emigrated to Canada. Now he could look forward to a few blissful hours of good old-fashioned research, reading his massive tome on the history of Ontario. He smiled at Suzy. They both knew that he enjoyed reading more than writing.

‘You’ve had an upsetting morning. Shall I do lunch?’ he asked.

‘No, it’s OK. I’ll make it, except I can’t find the casserole dish. It’s too heavy to be mislaid but it’s not in the cupboard.’

Suzy went back into the kitchen and started banging pans around. Robert left her to it, and popped his head round the door. Molly, lank hair tucked behind a garish pink headband, wearing wellies with black tights and football shorts, was discussing a big drawing with a small dark girl in small dark clothes. The girl looked up and flashed Robert a look of surprising intensity.

So that was Becky Dixon. She looks all right despite this accident, Robert thought. In fact, both girls seemed happy and absorbed. Maybe Molly would really turn out to be gifted at art, as Miss MacDonald had said. He hoped so. Something had to explain her dress sense.

Alison MacDonald trudged irritably behind her mother around the Pelliter superstore. Teaching wasn’t a job you could leave behind at the weekend. She was thinking about her meeting with Molly’s mum the afternoon before. Liz Rudder, the deputy head at St Mungo’s, knew everyone in the area. So how come she had got Suzy Spencer so wrong? Mrs Rudder had certainly given 
the impression that Mrs Spencer was an irresponsible parent with a
dysfunctional
lifestyle. She’d been keen to explain that Molly was the child of a broken marriage, likely to turn out badly – and Mrs Rudder was absolutely certain there was no hope for Becky Dixon with her dead druggie mother, despite the Dixons’ love and money, and Becky’s own brains.

But Liz Rudder had been wrong, about Molly at least. Mrs Spencer had been desperate to do anything she could to help, and was well aware that Molly was having a difficult time.

‘But it isn’t just Molly,’ Alison had reassured Mrs Spencer. ‘They were all unsettled when Mrs Findley was ill at the start of the year. Now there’s all this panic about the Dodsworth House private school scholarships, and the end of year tests too.’

‘I know, it’s a really difficult time. Everyone is so competitive.’

‘Exactly. The children need to focus on something else, otherwise the pressure will reach boiling point. I think a concert planned for the end of term might give everyone a chance to shine. Molly has certainly become more withdrawn, and her work isn’t as good as it used to be, or so I’ve heard. But she’s very good at art, Mrs Spencer.’

‘Is she? But how could that help?’

‘Molly and Becky Dixon could paint the scenery for the concert. We could start them off on it now. It would boost Molly’s confidence and give her a new role in the group. But it would mean some extra work, coming in on Saturday mornings and things like that. I’d really need your support.’

‘Well, of course, I’d do anything I could. My background’s in TV
production
. Maybe I could make a little film of the project? How would Mr Findley feel about that?’

‘Mr Findley wouldn’t be the one to ask. It would be probably be Liz Rudder. She’s really at the helm at the moment.’

‘Oh.’ For a second Suzy Spencer’s face had fallen. When Mrs Rudder had been Molly’s teacher in Year Five, Suzy had been put off by the deputy head’s smug manner. And the older teacher had been dismissive when Suzy had first noticed the changes in her daughter. But Miss MacDonald was different.

And as Alison outlined her plan, Suzy Spencer had brightened up. The idea was that Molly and her new friend could paint a mural to be used as a
backdrop
for an end-of-term talent show, which would feature the rock stars and catwalk models of Year Six. ‘The Six Factor’ or something. Everyone in the class would be involved at a level which was right for them. A DVD of their efforts would make a great leaving token. It could actually turn the tide for Year Six, and make them all friends again.

It was a great idea. Enough to make you daydream by the frozen foods. But Alison was suddenly brought back to reality. 

‘Hey, Miss MacDonald, over here!’

A cackling voice cut through the supermarket aisle like a fire alarm. It was Callie McFadden, a teaching assistant at St Mungo’s, beckoning Alison over, with an air of giving an order. There was never any escape from a summons from Callie, even on a Saturday morning. The teaching assistant was, as usual, dressed like a hippy, but she certainly wasn’t laid back and relaxed. Her little eyes watched everything, with a view to the main chance for herself or her family. Her eleven-year-old son Jonty was the most aggressive boy in Alison’s class, spoilt by his mother and feared by his peers.

‘Well, Miss MacDonald! Fancy meeting you here. I thought you were more of a delicatessen type,’ Callie sneered loudly.

The two other women in Callie’s orbit both watched Ali’s reaction with interest. Surprisingly, one was Faye Armistead, wife of a wealthy local landowner, who also had a son in Ali’s class. Faye Armistead had a superior manner, and she stood slightly to one side, watching Callie McFadden as if she were a useful but smelly gundog who might just snap.

Even more surprisingly, the other woman with Callie was veteran teacher Brenda Hodgson, Liz Rudder’s best friend.
Fat Miss Hodgy, pasty podgy
in the rhyme that had been chanted the evening before in the school toilets.

The three of them stared at Ali.

‘We called you over to see if you’d heard the news. It was on Radio Cumbria.’ Callie McFadden paused for effect, looking at Alison like a
chocoholic
saving a soft centre. ‘A man’s been found dead. Head smashed in and face knifed. He was on the Dixons’ land.’ She added the last remark with relish.

The two other women seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for Alison to say something. They had the same hungry look. Alison shivered in the aisle, not just because of the fridges. The accident really did sound terrible. But the way Callie savoured it was worse.

Alison said, ‘It’ll be a matter for the police, I suppose. You’ll have to excuse me. I need to catch up with my mother …’ She looked round madly for an escape route. Her mother had disappeared.

But luckily Callie was suddenly distracted. ‘Hey, there’s that local
community
policewoman,’ she said to Faye and Brenda. ‘The poor man’s bobby. Let’s see what she can tell us. See you on Monday, then, Alison.’

Looking at Callie’s trolley, laden with frozen chips and instant sauces, Alison made her escape towards the fresh fruit-and-veg aisle. Not Callie’s food of choice. Alison would be safe behind the grapes and apples for a while at least.

P
CSO Ro Watson stood in the supermarket wondering how long she could deliberate over buying wholemeal pasta or organic long grain rice. Ben was at his grandparents’ and she should have been enjoying a few moments to herself, even in the grocery aisle, but she was tired and still distracted by thinking about the body at the chapel. And since when had shopping become a moral maze? She almost longed for the days when it was either instant mash or spaghetti hoops and you didn’t have to worry about the planet. Her thoughts were interrupted by a frowsy woman in a floppy skirt. Callie McFadden. Ro vaguely recognized her from an incident in Norbridge, where Callie’s son had been involved in some mayhem in a local park. His mother had arrived on the scene breathing fire, and accusing people of picking on the boy, who had stood there smirking.

This time, it was Callie McFadden herself who smirked. She grinned at Ro in a fake friendly manner as she went on asking questions about the death at St Trallen’s Chapel, but Ro didn’t respond to the insistent tone. She could cope with Callie McFadden. There were times when coming from Liverpool was an advantage, she thought with amusement.

‘I really can’t tell you anything,’ Ro replied, refusing to be bullied. Ro tuned out of the other woman’s badgering, and remembered a joke she’d heard from one of her colleagues on the Norbridge Force.

You had to laugh, even when it made you mad. But there was some truth in it. Liverpool could be a tough place, and that meant Callie’s hectoring manner cut no ice with Ro.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ro said to Callie finally. ‘I can’t tell you anything more. I think you’ll hear all the details about the accident on Radio Cumbria.’

‘Accident, was it?’ Callie pounced.

‘Excuse me. I really need to go.’ Ro smiled in a final sort of way, and left Callie and her two acolytes behind. So much for the wholemeal pasta, but there was no way Ro was going to wait to be interrogated by this woman and her coven.

Callie made a face and watched Ro disappear towards the check-out. Then she marshalled Faye Armistead and Brenda Hodgson towards the patio outside the coffee shop. Callie needed a fag. Her New Age image was spoilt by the
cigarette
she had dangling from her mouth whenever possible. It made her maroon lipstick creep further into the wrinkles running upward to her nostrils like little rips. Callie’s face was sunburnt and her small eyes were untouched by mascara, but she always wore lipstick in reddish-brown colours. Her fair hair was greying now but there was lots of it, gathered into a floppy bun on the back of her head. She wore scooped necklines with plenty of cleavage, and long flowing skirts.

Callie had been a meals supervisor at St Mungo’s, serving school dinners. When the teaching assistant jobs had been introduced, she had applied and been appointed straight away. Since then she’d insinuated herself into the centre of school life. When Mr Findley had been at the top of his game, Callie had been under control. But now he was distracted, she was becoming more and more key to everything that happened at St Mungo’s. She had cosied up to deputy head Liz Rudder. And she was loving the power.

‘Well,’ Callie said with satisfaction to the other two women with her, as she sucked at her cappuccino, ‘we got nothing out of Juliet Bravo, but we’ve certainly given Miss Alison MacDonald, queen of Year Six, something to think about. She thinks the Dixons are the dog’s bollocks around here.’

Brenda Hodgson, the teacher, tittered. She was a stocky woman, with
pale-brown
hair and a shiny clean, smooth face. Until recently she had spent most of her free time with her best friend, the new deputy head, but since Mrs Rudder’s husband had had a stroke, Brenda had found herself at a loose end. Liz was so taken up with the invalid that Brenda had been rather sidelined. Now, she smoothed her short hands with scrubbed fingernails over her pastel-coloured tracksuit trousers, her standard Saturday wear. She was really rather thrilled to have been taken up by Callie McFadden, such a driving force at the school. It almost made up for Liz Rudder’s neglect. But not quite. Brenda flicked a tiny speck of fluff away. 

‘Oh, the wretched Dixons at St Trallen’s!’ Faye Armistead sighed. ‘We all sympathize, but really, one has to ask about the daughter who topped herself. Becky Dixon’s mother.’ Her two friends knew what she was thinking. Just because Philip Dixon had been born in Pelliter didn’t mean he could suddenly return to join the gentry on account of buying a bit of land. And the way his brainy granddaughter thought she was above the others was
outrageous
! Fay’s son Toby was not the brightest lightbulb, but he was part of the landed gentry. The real landed gentry. A place at the local public school, Dodsworth House, was Toby’s by right, and should not be even dreamt of by someone like Becky Dixon.

Brenda Hodgson sympathized perfectly. Like Faye, she felt that people who left Pelliter and expected to come back trailing clouds of glory should be brought down a peg or two. Brenda Hodgson had gone away to university herself, but things hadn’t worked out. She had come home with her tail between her legs, and gone to a local teacher training college instead. She and Liz Rudder had both got jobs at St Mungo’s, and settled in for life. Pelliter was Brenda’s world and that was quite enough, thank you.

‘Well,’ Faye Armistead drawled in her upper-class way, ‘one wonders if all these sad things are just a coincidence. Perhaps this poor dead man at the chapel was on drugs too, like the Dixons’ daughter. You don’t really think Becky Dixon will get one of these Dodsworth House scholarship places, do you?’

‘Maybe this tragedy will affect her work,’ Brenda Hodgson suggested.

‘Yes.’ Faye raised an immaculate eyebrow. ‘Maybe it will.’ She sipped her cappuccino.

At the same time, in the Norbridge suburb of High Pelliter, in the
breakfast-room
of her large Edwardian villa, Liz Rudder was enjoying an espresso alone. For years she had spent Saturday mornings with Brenda Hodgson, but lately she had really enjoyed the peace of being by herself. These days, she no longer needed someone to listen while she moaned about her husband’s roving eye. His stroke had left him harmless as a baby, though just as much trouble, from what she’d heard of motherhood. She listened to the squeak of John’s wheelchair as he came through the hall. But she could also hear the crumbling sound of earth flaking from dirty shoes. Her brother Kevin was pushing John in from the garden where the carers had parked him – and Kevin would be scattering muck, no doubt.

Liz called, ‘Just leave your shoes at the door. Kevin, are the boys with you?’

‘Nope – a dad’s work is never done, but I’ve left them playing footie at the school pitch. Under supervision. Is the coffee on?’

‘Of course it is!’ Liz couldn’t help smiling, though she shook her head at the 
lacy brown dried mud disintegrating from the tread of Kevin’s trainers. She was always pleased to see her brother although he had the friendly messiness of a large golden Labrador. ‘I’ll just get you both a cuppa. Do you want some, John?’

But she didn’t wait for an answer, because it cost her husband too much effort to speak. And everyone knew she anticipated John’s every need. She paused to stroke her husband’s dark curly hair. Kevin smiled at her in approval. His big sister had had a lot to cope with since John’s terrible stroke. John Rudder had been a big handsome fellow, a real hunk. Now he was a heavy burden. Liz Rudder, on the contrary, was a small, pale woman with small, delicate hands and feet – and a surprisingly luscious figure, which provoked lewd comments from the kids at St Mungo’s. Kevin had heard the chant.
Mrs Rudder, what an udder
. His own sons were at Dodsworth House, but they still hung out with the local lads, and they’d brought the rhyme home.
When she screams it makes you shudder
.

‘Have they identified the man who died?’ Liz Rudder asked.

‘No, not according to the radio,’ her brother said, ‘which means he
probably
wasn’t local, which is one good thing.’

‘Absolutely,’ Liz said. ‘That’s a relief.’

And she smiled at her husband. John Rudder grunted back at her from his wheelchair, but it was impossible to understand anything he tried to say. Tragic, Kevin thought.

The week ahead brought no new information about the dead man, but at work Ro Watson felt more and more as if she was really settling in to life as a PCSO. Having been sent to the scene of a fatality seemed to give her some status. On occasions she spoke to Constable Jed Jackson, and their time spent at the chapel seemed to have made a bond between them. Stupid, Ro told herself. There’s no way a young bloke like Jed would really want to discuss things with her. But there was no doubt he deliberately stopped to speak to her more than once.

The following Friday was a night off for Ro before she went on weekend shift at the police station. Ben would stay with his grandparents over Saturday, but their Fridays alone before her weekend shift had already become a sort of ritual. Ben insisted on trying his hand at cooking, a
procedure
which usually had Ro on the edge of her seat in terror as he manoeuvred boiling water and slippery pans of pasta. At this point, his good right arm was slicing maniacally at the tomatoes while his bad hand held them in place. I know he’s going to cut his hand off, Ro thought, forcing herself to sit calmly at the kitchen counter, but she gulped her red wine rather than sipping it. A fat lot of use she’d be if Ben did stab his hand. How would she get him to A&E? – pissed Police Support Officer and bleedin’ kid … ha ha…. 

But Ben wasn’t a child any more, and the tomatoes slipped into neat rings. He was laughing, knowing she was nervous.

‘Hey, Mum, what did the man say when he walked into the bar?’

‘I don’t know, what did the man say when he walked into the bar?’

‘Ouch!’ Ben gurgled with laughter. It wasn’t that the joke was funny; it was that he could tell it and cut tomatoes at the same time. ‘Hey, Mum, what’s the difference between a bad marksman and a constipated owl? The bad marksman shoots but can’t hit, and the owl hoots but can’t …’

‘Enough!’ Ro said, and Ben snorted with laughter again. It was a joy and a blessing that he had such an easygoing nature. It was as if he saw his life as one long triumph over adversity. Where did he get it from? His father had been a dour young man reading history at university, where they had met. Their relationship had been a lukewarm sort of thing, on and off for a few years, and she had been four months pregnant before she had realized. They had married in haste. It was as if there had always been something odd about Ben from the start – his conception unnoticed, his development in the womb slightly out of step. But she knew there was no real explanation for his sudden dramatic arrival at thirty weeks, and the panic that followed. Except that, from the start, the fear and misery had been hers, not his. Ben had smiled the day he came home from hospital and he’d been smiling ever since. Not like his mother.

But she had tried. At one stage, she’d even gone back to work, hired nannies and babysitters, gone to bars and parties. But that had gone wrong too, and Ro had gone back to her mother’s smart little semi in the posher part of Liverpool – yes, there were posh parts. She and her mum had supported each other, and Ben, until he was seven. That year Mrs Lloyd suddenly announced that she had fallen in love with her next-door neighbour, and now she wanted to move away. Ro had been devastated and it had taken her at least a week to see the funny side. Her mother and new boyfriend, aged
seventy-six
, had wanted to sell up and move to a seaside flat in Llandudno, and Ro had given them her blessing. The proceeds from the family house sale had funded her move to Cumbria at precisely the time when Ben was ready to change schools. And it was Ro’s in-laws’ turn to help, something they’d done gladly, to Ro’s relief. Ben had survived the move with a mixture of sunny fortitude and a sensitivity which more mature people might have envied.

We’ve managed all right, Ro thought. Even though we’re pretty much on our own now. Her PCSO’s uniform was hanging on the back of the kitchen door. It looked sort of comforting. Protecting. But whether it was to protect the community or to protect Ro herself, she wasn’t quite sure. She wondered what this weekend would bring. Not as much drama as the last one, she hoped. 

Friday night meant family night in for a lot of people. A few miles away, the phone rang at The Briars in Tarnfield. Suzy Spencer recognized her estranged husband’s number on the display again. Nigel Spencer had called fifteen minutes earlier and they had argued about Molly. Suzy had slammed the phone down on him in anger. She regretted it now, and was glad Nigel had rung back, but she couldn’t resist poking fun.

‘Patronizing old gits’ helpline. How may I help you?’

Nigel sighed noisily at the other end of the phone. ‘I don’t know why you say these things, Suzy. I was only trying to offer some advice.’

‘And I was only trying to be funny.’

‘It didn’t work. I just called back to suggest that maybe Molly come and visit again.’ It was an olive branch which he immediately used to beat her with – ‘But I don’t want her looking like something from a pantomime.’

Nigel and Suzy Spencer had been apart for six years, but Suzy still felt herself bristling at his criticism. Nigel had been the one to leave, but somehow he had regained the moral high ground. Perhaps that was because his affair with his PA in Newcastle had ended up in the out-tray, while she had found herself a lover.