An Academic Death Read online

  He gave her a smile which was meant to be encouraging, but it felt forced and mirthless, even to him. There was something about this woman which made him think she was not given to hysterical reactions, that she retained an objectivity even about those whom she loved. She said, ‘That wife of his. Elizabeth. Liz, as she likes to be called.’

  Lambert nodded, intervening before she could be too intemperate to remind her, ‘It was Liz Upson who reported Matthew to us as a missing person.’

  ‘Yes. After he’d been gone for four days. She rang me and told me. It was the first time I knew that anything was wrong.’

  ‘You speak as if you are not very close to your daughter-in-law.’

  She glanced at him sharply, as if she suspected irony. ‘We’ve never got on. I don’t feel I know her very well, even now, after all these years of the marriage. Matthew realised it was a mistake, of course, when it was too late. She was quite a beauty, you know, when he first knew her.’ She offered the fact as if it might serve as an explanation for her son’s blindness to other things.

  ‘Do you think your daughter-in-law might be involved in any way in your son’s disappearance?’

  She looked full into the grey eyes and the long, serious face. ‘I’ve thought about it. She might be, as an accessory. I think she’d had enough of Matthew, of the rows and the arguments. I’m not saying the faults were all on one side, you understand. I’m sure Matthew has given her cause enough for complaint, over the last few years.’ She spoke the last sentence reluctantly, delivering the phrases without her previous flow, as though they came only because she was determined to be fair.

  ‘Wouldn’t a divorce have been much less dramatic?’

  ‘Matthew didn’t want one. He still thought he could patch things up with Liz. And there are two children, you know: he didn’t want to lose them. Eight and ten they are, a boy and a girl.’ For a moment the blue eyes of this formidable septuagenarian shone bright with a grandmother’s pleasure and pride.

  Lambert threw her back immediately into the harshness of her suspicions. ‘Mrs Upson, I have to remind you that you are making a most serious accusation, even if it is not as yet against any specific person. You are suggesting, to put it at its bluntest, that your son might have been murdered. You must therefore be completely frank with me. Are there people other than his wife whom you think might have had some hand in his sudden disappearance?’

  It was her turn to pause, to weigh the consequences of this situation she had been so determined to create for herself. The bright, intelligent blue eyes stared for a moment into the observant grey ones of the man on the other side of the desk. Then she said reluctantly, ‘I can’t give you names. Matthew has associated with some pretty doubtful people over the last few years. I told him what I thought about the way his life was going, but I didn’t want to know the detail of it. But I’ve no doubt if you investigate his disappearance, you’ll turn over some stones and find some pretty unsavoury creatures underneath them.’

  Lambert smiled grimly. ‘You may well be right. The resources we assemble for a murder investigation throw up all sorts of associations. But let me be as frank with you as I think you have been with me, Mrs Upson. We can’t begin such an investigation without a body, or at least without more tangible grounds for suspicion than you have been able to offer me thus far. At present, your son is no more than what the police call a MISPA, one of the many thousands of people in this country who go missing each year, for an infinite number of reasons. The vast majority of them eventually turn up unhurt, and I hope that your son may be one of that majority.’

  ‘So do I, Superintendent. I have never hoped more strongly in my life that I might be wrong about something. But your statistics do not convince me: I am still sure that something has happened to Matthew.’

  Lambert regarded her gravely. There was still something about this doughty woman in her mid-seventies that convinced him, despite the flimsiness of the evidence she brought with her to support her thesis. He said, ‘I’m not saying I shan’t be treating what you have brought to me this afternoon seriously. But we have to proceed with caution. I shall institute some discreet enquiries, beginning among my own officers. If we think there are grounds for suspicion, we won’t let matters rest until we have some answers. I shall report any findings to you in due course. Meantime, if you find anything to support your fears — or, more happily, something which might allay them — please let me or someone else in the CID section here know immediately.’

  He stood up. Mrs Upson rose, stiff but erect, and shook his hand. ‘I shall certainly do that. Thank you for listening to me, Mr Lambert. I pray God these have been no more than an old woman’s wanderings. But I have a feeling that neither you nor I believe that.’

  *

  At eight o’clock on a perfect June evening, Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook were off duty and wandering among leafy glades. Most people would have said they were relaxing after the cares of the working day, but Bert Hook would have disputed that. For they were playing golf.

  And Bert, who had come to the game late and reluctantly, contended that you could never be completely relaxed on a golf course. He maintained steadfastly that golf was the most stupid of games, though it now had him securely in its clutches. After twenty years of fearsome pace bowling and late-order big hitting on the cricket fields of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, Bert Hook had thought that any game where you approached a dead ball and hit it in your own time must be an effete charade, unworthy of his attention.

  He was still trying to demonstrate this. Usually the most mild-mannered of men, Bert now yelled, ‘Come out of there, you bastard!’ after his unhearing ball as it disappeared comprehensively into the trees to the right of the fourth.

  Lambert allowed himself the superior smile of the single figure player. ‘Fairly tight driving hole, this,’ he said unnecessarily, after he had despatched his controlled slice over the rise and on to the invisible fairway.

  ‘Too bloody tight,’ growled Hook. They didn’t speak again until they met on the green, several shots later.

  Lambert looked across to May Hill, with its knoll of trees on the summit looking surprisingly close in the still evening light. ‘Nice course, Ross-on-Wye,’ he observed contentedly.

  ‘But the fairways are too bloody tight!’ repeated Hook. ‘Don’t know why I joined this club. Don’t know why I persist with this stupid bloody game!’

  Yet even as he spoke, he knew that this wasn’t true. He was glad he had been lured into this game he could go on playing as long as he could walk round the course, felt privileged to be walking these rich green and almost deserted acres on an evening like this. He would just have to get better. Then he would enjoy it more. He smote a surprisingly straight drive down the long fifth and was gratified to find it fifteen yards in front of John Lambert’s effort. That would keep the smug bugger in his place.

  Bert, who would have defended his chief to the death against station gossip and the envy rank brings with it, found Lambert sometimes insufferably patronising on the golf course. But he was beginning to realise that his feelings varied a little with how they both happened to be playing.

  It was not until they were returning towards May Hill up the long sixth that Lambert said, ‘It was you who saw Matthew Upson’s wife when she came in to report him as a MISPA, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Strange woman. Came in to report he was missing, and started by telling me she hoped she’d never see him again!’

  ‘Hmm. His mother came to see me this afternoon. She thinks something’s happened to him. That her son hasn’t just made off with another woman or fled from his debts. But she’s no real evidence to offer in support of that.’

  Bert thinned the 4-iron he had chosen for his second and hurled a lurid oath after it. Then he said, ‘The wife was bedworthy. What you’d have called buxom, she was.’ He allowed himself a low animal growl of appreciation as he recalled the retreating contours of Mrs Liz Upson.


  ‘But you say she didn’t get on with her husband?’

  ‘She said he was an arsehole, to be precise. Quite early on, she said that. And she added other words, all equally unsavoury. But I got the impression that that wasn’t her normal vocabulary. She was quite well spoken, otherwise. Well dressed, well made-up.’

  ‘But she did come in to report he was missing.’

  ‘Not until he’d been gone for four days, she didn’t.’ Bert played his ball from the rough near the out-of-bounds fence on the right and succeeded in concealing his surprise when it bounced appealingly on to the green. ‘Rather gave me the impression she was just covering herself against future events, the buxom Mrs Upson did.’

  Lambert ignored what he considered his opponent’s good luck. ‘We have to allow for the fact that old Mrs Upson who came in to see me this afternoon is a mother, naturally anxious about her missing son. But she didn’t strike me as a panicker. I think we should look into this a bit, not just keep Matthew Upson upon the MISPA register.’

  Which just goes to show that quite sensible decisions can occasionally be taken on a golf course.

  Three

  The Malvern Hills are Herefordshire’s most striking physical feature. On a map, they make no great impression: they are no more than nine miles long, and the Welsh mountains not far to the west of them are much higher and hugely more extensive.

  Yet the Malverns are more significant and command more affection than their size would suggest. They were a source of inspiration to the nation’s greatest composer, Edward Elgar. They are set between two of the realm’s ancient cathedral cities, Hereford and Worcester, and the lands stretching away from their feet witnessed some stirring battles in the nation’s civil wars of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  Moreover, they rise almost sheer from the fertile plain of the Severn and the picturesque town of Malvern below them, so that they appear both grander and taller than they are, and offer splendid perspectives in all directions, over at least ten counties. The Worcestershire Beacon, which is their highest point, is no more than 1,395 feet high, and there is even a paved path snaking along the spine of the ridge towards it. Certainly there is not here the remote grandeur or the airy magnificence of the great mountains of the Lake District or the Scottish Highlands.

  But the Malverns are accessible to all but the seriously aged and infirm, being surrounded by roads and crossed by a honeycomb of paths, and they well repay the modest effort involved in walking them. The old can pant a little, take their time, recall the climbs of youth, and assure themselves that there is life in ageing limbs for a few more years yet. And the young are safe here: the slopes are ideal for children. And with sheep not usually in evidence, the Malverns are a wonderful playground for dogs.

  On the longest day of the year, 21 June, when their primary school day was over, three boys and a dog took a picnic and cans of gassy mineral water to the sun-kissed western slopes of the Malverns. The eldest of the boys, Thomas, was eleven and the youngest eight, and the eleven-year-old took his leadership duties very seriously. Thomas insisted on going first along the track, and he supervised the smallest boy diligently upwards across the gently rising ground, though that sturdy climber gave every sign of having the greatest energy of the three. It was Thomas who yelled a series of futile commands at the black Labrador cross-breed, which had long since learned to ignore his shrill insistence.

  It was Thomas who determined that they should walk some way between the head-high bracken and the trees on the lower slopes of the hill before they fell upon their picnics, which would otherwise scarcely have travelled half a mile from home before being consumed. They felt no need to climb to the very top of the hill: such goals were part of the impenetrable world of adults. They found a secluded spot halfway up its slopes, off the path and in the shade of a mountain ash.

  Thomas became more officious. He urged his two juniors not to bolt their food, not to feed the persuasive dog, to wait for their drink of pop until they had finished eating. The youngsters ignored him for the most part, but they found that his commands echoed the admonitions of their absent parents, and were thus curiously reassuring.

  The boys lay for a while on their backs, peering through narrowed eyes at the blaze of the sun through the waving seed heads of tall grasses. They knew that this was what you did when you were replete after a picnic: they had seen people do it on the telly. But as they were boys, this interval between action lasted for scarcely ninety seconds. Then all three of them were active again in this private world they had discovered, and Thomas was trying to dictate what games they would play.

  Resentment in his juniors welled into a physical challenge, and Thomas and his brother rolled in a trial of strength which was only half playful. It might indeed have become serious had the dog not joined in, with a joyful barking and a frenzied licking of faces which was quite indiscriminate. The two boys fell apart in red-faced laughter and fruitless instructions to their pet to cease his attentions.

  With only three boys and a dog, there was really only one game which was possible, as the golden afternoon turned into evening and fatigue crept into the minds and bodies of even these hyperactive young beings: hide and seek. Their activities resolved themselves into a sporadic and rambling game, creeping ever lower down the side of the hill, interrupted pleasantly by diversions such as huge furry caterpillars and the sighting of a bright green woodpecker in the dappled shade of a copse of birch.

  Unconsciously, they were making for home and the end of this long Monday. Though there were plentiful hiding places among the bracken and the bushes in this area where no paths ran, no one preserved his disappearance for long, because the dog, unaware of the rules in this strangest of human pastimes, would discover the hider and reveal his whereabouts with a delighted barking, amidst futile recriminations from his quarry and delighted laughter from the searchers.

  They were not far from the road and the short journey home when the dog made another find. This time his barking rose to a new pitch of excitement and a more rapid frequency. ‘Here, boy! Come, boy!’ called Thomas, with a belated attempt to re-establish his leadership. The dog did not come. Instead, the urgency of his barking increased, as if he was summoning them rather than being summoned.

  They were tired now, and each of them called in turn to the dog to come, rather than pursuing him into the undergrowth. His excitement only increased; his barking grew into a crescendo.

  It was Thomas who eventually decided that the eldest had better go to fetch him. With a muttered grumble, he set off towards their invisible but voluble pet. The dog half-crouched beside his find, bristling with excitement, uncertain yet what the reaction to this would be, but certain that it must be of interest. He looked from Thomas to the thing beneath the bracken and back again, but his barking never ceased.

  Curiosity was stronger than exhaustion, and the two younger boys trailed wearily after Thomas towards the source of the canine commotion. They found that Thomas had turned to stone as he stood above the excited black dog and its discovery. But their arrival stirred him into slow-motion activity. Conscious of his senior status and the responsibility he bore to protect his siblings, he raised his left arm towards shoulder height, to prevent them from approaching nearer to the thing beneath the gently swaying fronds of the bracken.

  They had no inclination to do so.

  The face stared upwards and unseeing towards the sky above the undergrowth. Or rather it would have done, if its eyes had been still undamaged within their sockets. Bluebottles buzzed gently around the mouth and ears, as if anxious to protect their trophy from this human intervention. They rose for a moment as he stooped towards the face, then settled again around the small, neat hole in the temple, where blood and something else unimaginable had oozed forth and been consumed.

  Thomas had stilled them all with the raising of his arm. but it was the youngest boy who broke their silence and forced the tableau into movement. His long, piercing scream of high-pitched
terror sounded scarcely human, and caused the other two to start with their own horror. Without a word or a glance at each other, they seized a hand each and bore their brother and themselves away from the sight. This time the dog. sensing that they would not return, gave a last gruff bark over his discovery and then trotted quietly behind them.

  Matthew John Upson had been transformed from missing person into corpse. Into a victim of foul play. Dispatched from this life by person or persons unknown.

  Four

  Detective Sergeant Hook glanced covertly at the woman in his passenger seat as he drove towards the mortuary. Liz Upson was carefully made-up and wore a navy blouse and a dark skirt. Her plentiful fair hair was carefully in place, drawn back over her temples, and her pale face was as inscrutable as a Buddha’s.

  Bert wondered if she realised that he had volunteered to drive her to the identification specifically to study her reactions. He decided after a few minutes that she probably sensed quite clearly why he was beside her. She remained perfectly composed throughout the three-mile journey to the mortuary. Neither of them spoke a word.

  He parked carefully, twenty yards from the door which led to the small reception area, then paused for a moment before he got out of the car. ‘It’s not an easy thing to do, the identification of a body. But it has to be done by someone: the law demands it.’

  ‘And I’m the nearest relative. No matter how far we’d grown apart, the law says that I’m the person to do this.’ She afforded herself a grim little smile, perhaps in appreciation of the irony of that thought.

  The mortuary assistant, John Binns, glanced at the detective sergeant speculatively as he brought the bereaved wife into the comfortably furnished but slightly clinical reception area. They were old acquaintances, Bert Hook and he, and Binns knew that there might be something significant in the sergeant’s attendance here, rather than that of the policewoman he would have expected.