A Little Learning Read online

  Peach shook his head. ‘That’s the way those students got in. The ones who found the body.’

  Chadwick brightened up a little. He didn’t like students, thought most of them were a waste of public money, even if they didn’t get grants any more. ‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance those buggers did for him, is there? Resenting being slung off their courses, or getting lower grades than they should have? Or in a drug-crazed orgy of violence?’

  Peach smiled. ‘Afraid not, Jim. Dr Carter was cold and dead long before they found him, I think. It will be small consolation to a fascist hyena like you, but the tale they told us at first was a right bucket of you-know-what. They found him a couple of hours before the time they claimed. And it wasn’t because they saw any mysterious light in here. They were bent on a little petty pilfering. Well, not so petty, as a matter of fact. A set of valuable first editions. I think they got a hell of a shock when they found the late Dr Carter.’

  He looked down at the corpse, with its single remaining eye like glass and the foot-wide pool beside the head, which had thickened until it looked more like crimson jelly than blood and brains. If those lads had really never seen a dead body before, it must have given them a hell of a shock when they came upon it in the darkness as they crept into the room. As a guardian of the law, he found that imagined picture very satisfying. That would teach the young Turks to go breaking and entering.

  Chadwick nodded his agreement to a sentiment which had remained unvoiced. ‘Did they say they found the window already forced when they got there?’

  ‘No. They admitted to using a tyre lever on the bottom of the frame, where the wood was rotten.’

  ‘In that case, your killer was probably known to the victim. There’s no other sign of forced entry. Either he had a key or he was let in, probably by the deceased. Unless you think he came in whilst a door was open and simply waited a few hours for the chance to surprise the Director.’

  The two men grinned at each other. They had the working policeman’s contempt for such more unlikely possibilities, which they regarded as the material of crime fiction. Peach said, ‘I expect that there are a lot of keys floating about, in a place like this. And probably a lot of people who might have had reason to be let into the house, as this is a college. Sorry, a university, as we must now call it!’

  Another grin, in which the two old male sweats allowed Lucy Blake to join them. The locals had a scepticism about this grandiose label clapped on a college which even ten years ago had been ‘Brunton Tech’ and well down the academic hierarchy. Now it had this spacious greenfield site and undreamt-of new resources. And a rather smarmy new Director who appeared frequently on regional television news programmes; a Director who was now extremely dead.

  Peach walked out on to the landing. Inured as he was to crime and death, he still found it a relief to be free of that sinister thing on the floor, with its accusation of violence as yet unpunished. He watched the photographer taking pictures of the stairs, noted the fingerprint girl industriously lifting prints from the grey powder on the banisters, and said tersely, ‘Anything missing?’

  Chadwick followed immediately the train of his thought. Had someone engaged in some form of burglary been surprised by the man who lay dead behind them? Someone who had killed him in panic? It was usually the first thing relatives thought of, perhaps as part of a reluctance to admit that the man they had known had any enemies among his intimates who hated him enough to kill him like this. He said, ‘Nothing obviously missing. We shan’t be sure until the wife gets back and goes round the place, of course. Where is she, by the way?’

  ‘At her mother’s. I’ve encouraged her to stay there for a couple of days, until you’ve gone through this place thoroughly. The porter’s identification of the body will do for the moment; she can do the official one after the post-mortem, when he’s been tidied up a bit. Her mother’s place is up near Kendal; I’ll go and see her up there, I think.’ All three of them knew that spouses were always the first source of police interest in a sudden, violent death.

  ‘Are there children?’

  ‘Two. But they’re eighteen and twenty. Old enough to be away at university themselves. I’ve told them not to come here. They’re going to comfort their mother at their grandmother’s house.’

  Very soon now, as soon as Chadwick signified that his body could be removed from the scene of crime, the mortal remains of George Andrew Carter would be placed in their fibreglass ‘shell’ and taken to the pathologist’s laboratory in the ‘meat van’ which waited outside. Peach pushed open the door next to that of the bedroom where he lay.

  This room was a small, neat study, its walls lined with bookshelves, its small desk without paper, pen or word-processor upon it. Over years of experience, CID men develop a ‘feel’ for empty rooms. Perhaps this one was used by someone obsessively tidy, who insisted upon leaving everything neat. But DI Peach sensed that this was a room which had been little used.

  He walked over to the single glass-fronted bookshelves, on the north side of the room, where the sun would never fall. He saw the gold-tooled titles of the Jane Austen novels which the students had been planning to appropriate. The rich leather spines of Emma and Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice seemed to carry more than their normal significance, after this ill-starred youthful enterprise.

  When they went out again onto the landing, the two constables who were going through the house on hands and knees with tweezers had reached the area outside the room where the corpse lay. It was a necessary but time-consuming business, this gathering of any fibres, hairs or tiny pieces of detritus which might be of later significance in proving that a suspect had been here. Chadwick said, ‘The refuse collection is on Fridays, so there’s nothing outside the house. Just our luck. We’ve bagged what little rubbish there is inside. I haven’t had the chance to look at it in detail yet, but I’m not hopeful.’

  It was DS Lucy Blake, feeling herself a little shut out of this male colloquy, who said, ‘I made a few discreet enquiries around the offices when I got here this morning. I gather Dr Carter wasn’t at all popular with his academic staff.’

  Six

  By two thirty on that November afternoon, when Percy Peach had forsaken the green pastures of the University of East Lancashire for the industrial centre of Brunton, the November sun had disappeared and the skies were full of low cloud.

  An appropriate setting for a meeting with his chief, Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker, thought Peach, as he glanced up at the sky before disappearing through the portals of Brunton Police Station. He didn’t like the man he called Tommy Bloody Tucker, who in his view was a pompous windbag, a hypocrite, an idle sod and a craven wimp. Apart from those things, Percy conceded, Tucker might be no more than dislikeable.

  As the superintendent responsible for the CID section, Tucker was in charge of all murder investigations. It was his habit to claim the credit for all successful cases and to blame the incompetence of his staff for any failures. He would not stir from his desk throughout this case. Percy didn’t mind that: it was par for the course with the modern police hierarchy, and even what the system suggested they should do. What he didn’t like was the total incompetence of Tucker, so that he got neither support nor direction from the man who should have been giving him both.

  Denis Charles Scott Peach, universally known to his colleagues and a considerable number of people in the nation’s prisons as Percy, compensated himself by enjoying a certain amount of fun at his superior’s expense. In a service which was highly conscious of the respect due to rank, this had earned Percy an almost legendary reputation. Percy rode his luck and taunted Tucker mercilessly, because he knew two things.

  The first was that he himself had no promotion aspirations: he was perfectly content with the role of inspector, which kept him working at the crime-face rather than in the office culture of the police top brass. The second was that he knew that Tucker was totally dependent upon him for the successes he claimed in his CID s
ection, and could thus not afford to do without him. Threats of transfer had been raised from time to time, but never implemented. Tucker and Peach were metaphorically joined at the hip, Percy said, with as much in common as Karl Marx and Margaret Thatcher.

  He went up to Tucker’s office on the top floor to report on events at the University of East Lancashire as soon as he had eaten a belated sausage and chips in the police canteen. Tucker looked at him accusingly over the half-moon glasses he wore at his desk. ‘Couldn’t find you this morning. Had to send you a memo!’ he said accusingly.

  Percy wondered whether to string him along for a while. He always enjoyed Tucker’s feeble attempts at bollocking, but he hadn’t a lot of time to waste. He said, ‘No, sir. Had to go to court first thing, to deliver a statement. Told you on Friday, if you remember.’

  ‘Did you? Well, perhaps you did, I suppose, if you say so. Anyway, it was inconvenient. Serious crime occurring, and you nowhere to be seen. It was urgent. I had to type the note myself.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I thought you might have.’

  Tucker looked at him suspiciously over the gold-rimmed half-moons, then glanced at the word-processor on the side of his desk which was his gesture towards modern technology. It had taken him ten minutes before he could get the thing to print out the three-line missive he had laboriously typed. But Peach surely couldn’t have known that. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you got yourself belatedly out to the campus at the UEL.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was puzzled at first, but I knew you must have something serious in mind. Trust your leader, I told myself, whatever he says; he never lets you down. So I grabbed a toilet roll and went out there.’

  ‘Toilet roll?’ Tucker’s long-suffering face showed what Percy considered an agreeable degree of bewilderment.

  ‘I suppose it’s some new kind of code, sir, to keep things confidential where necessary. Well, it had me fooled, for one! I took it quite literally, when I read it.’ Peach cackled uproariously at his own expense, a noise which made his long-suffering superintendent cringe in anticipation.

  ‘Code?’

  ‘You really must explain it to me, sir. My dull old brain hasn’t got the hang of it at all, I’m afraid.’

  Tucker said between teeth that were beginning to clench, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Peach. Explain yourself, please.’

  Peach’s expressive countenance managed to look both puzzled and pained. Then, moving in slow motion, he produced the Superintendent’s carefully preserved note from the pocket of his jacket and handed it across the desk. Tucker had typed in capitals to emphasize the importance of his command: ‘DIRECTOR OF THE NEW UNIVERSITY OF EAST LANCASHIRE HAS SHIT HIMSELF. TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION AND GET OUT THERE IMMEDIATELY.’

  Tucker read his message three times before his eye caught the error. He sighed heavily. ‘Shot himself, Peach. Shot himself ! The meaning would have been obvious to a six-year-old child!’

  ‘Didn’t have one available, sir, at the time. Course I realized that was probably what you meant, when I got to the UEL. Felt a bit of a fool, though, brandishing my toilet roll, with the Director lying dead. Still, I showed them your note and explained the misunderstanding. The Bursar’s staff and I had quite a laugh about it, in the end, so that was all right.’ Peach smiled his satisfaction at the memory of his public-relations triumph.

  ‘Right, Peach! You’ve had your fun, if that’s what you think it is. Let’s have your damned report!’

  Temper, Tucker, temper, thought Peach. But even Percy recognized that he could go too far, when he saw his superior bristling with fury. ‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Well, the first thing is that when I’d realized your typing error and explained it to the Bursar, you were still wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Wrong, sir. Not only had the Director not shit himself. He hadn’t even shot himself. Foul play, sir.’

  ‘Not suicide?’ Tucker’s face fell. A high-profile murder was the last thing he needed, with staff off sick and Christmas already looming in his mind. Barbara would give him hell if he couldn’t take his usual long break between Christmas and New Year.

  ‘Definitely not suicide, sir. Man would have to have been a contortionist to do it himself, Jack Chadwick says. Don’t expect that was one of the requirements laid down for a university leader.’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Oh, I should think so, sir. Socking great hole in the back of his head. Big pool of blood and brains on the carpet beside—’

  ‘Don’t give me all the detail, Peach. Just tell me who the hell did it!’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. Not yet.’ Peach refused to be thrown off balance by the colossal effrontery of the man. He leaned forward confidentially, as if about to impart information of great importance. ‘Matter of fact, sir, between the two of us, I haven’t a clue. George Andrew Carter had been dead for at least twenty-four hours before we got there, the pathologist says. Found by two students, he was. Eventually.’

  ‘Ah! Leading suspects, then.’

  Peach nodded, pretending to weigh the idea. Then he said decisively, ‘Already eliminated them from the inquiry, sir.’

  ‘Oh!’ Tucker’s face fell, then assumed an expression of immense craft as he said, ‘Well, you’ll check their home backgrounds before you rule them out completely, if you take my advice. And see if they’ve run up any debts.’

  Peach wondered quite how killing off their Director might be expected to solve a student debt problem. But he didn’t care to probe further into the labyrinthine depths of Tucker’s reasoning when there was work to be done. ‘We could do them for breaking and entering, if we’d a mind to. And they’ve contaminated the site of a murder, plodding around the place. But they didn’t kill Claptrap Carter.’

  ‘Claptrap Carter! Peach, this is an academic of considerable standing. A scholar and a gentleman. You will remember that during your investigation. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Member of the Lodge, was he?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with it! I’ve told you before that Freemasonry — mine or anyone else’s — has nothing to do with police work.’

  A Mason then, the Director, thought Percy. No relevance to his death, in all probability, but a fact to be stored up against the possibility of further fun with Tucker. ‘You don’t think he might have had rivals for Master of his Lodge, sir? People who might have cared enough to kill him, to remove a powerful contender from the field?’

  ‘I do not, Peach. Your melodramatic ravings about motive sometimes make me worry whether you’re the right man for the job or not! If it’s not those students you have so readily dismissed, consider the family. Three-quarters of murders are committed by people within the family, you know.’ Tucker delivered his well-worn and slightly out-of-date statistic with satisfaction, then sat back further in his chair. ‘You would do well to remember that.’

  ‘Really, sir? Well, you’ll be happy to hear I’m off to see the wife and family now, sir.’

  ‘Get about it, then! Don’t waste your time here, Peach. I’ll hold the fort for you here!’

  ‘Very good of you, sir. Tower of strength as usual.’ Before Tucker could move it from where he had set it down on the desk in front of him, Peach picked up the memo about the late Director of the UEL’s bowel trouble. Might be useful during some pub gathering of the CID section, that, to add to the folklore of their leader’s gaffes. ‘I’ll get off right away, then.’

  He didn’t see any need to tell him that the wife was sixty miles away to the north, well out of the Brunton ambit of Tommy Bloody Tucker.

  *

  Most people didn’t consider a chaplain a key appointment when they thought about the staffing of a new university. And the UEL was so new that its leader still hadn’t changed his title yet from Director, which he had been in the old college of higher education, to Vice Chancellor, which he was entitled to call himself, now that the new institution had been confirmed as a university. Nevertheless, the UEL had a chaplain.

  Thom
as Matthews wasn’t a chaplain with an established chapel, like those in the older and larger universities. He had been grudgingly allotted a terrapin building on the edge of the campus, with an old industrial oil heater which seemed to give off more fumes than heat. He held services here twice a week and gave Communion on Thursdays. In the ecumenical spirit of the new century, he had encouraged his Roman Catholic, Methodist and Islamic fellows to come and use the building and minister to their flocks, but there had so far been little enthusiasm from either clergymen or students. Well, it was early days, yet.

  And Thomas Matthews himself, although an official appointment, was only a part-time chaplain. He had a parish of his own, two miles away on the edge of the industrial town of Brunton; his meagre stipend there was considerably supplemented by his salary for two days a week at the new university.

  Tuesday and Thursday were his official days. But the Reverend Matthews spent most of the Monday after the death of the Director on the UEL campus. He saw the entrances of Paul Barnes and Gary Pilkington into the Bursar’s office on the first floor of the old mansion, as well as their discomfited exits. He wanted to speak to them, to offer them spiritual support, and to find just what they had been up to that they were of such interest to the police.

  But neither of them was a regular attender at the distant wooden building with the distressingly small sign announcing ‘University Chaplaincy’ on its wall. And neither of them, despite their distress, showed any signs of seeking spiritual consolation when their ordeals had finished. The Reverend Matthews, DD, despite his anxiety to know just what was going on, had more sense than to invite a rebuff by approaching them.

  Sometimes he envied the Romans their sacrament of confession.

  In the afternoon, he secured himself a seat by a west-facing window on the first floor of the library. He could just see the garage of the Director’s house from here, though the house itself was hidden in the trees. He watched the grey polystyrene ‘shell’ being taken from the police van and then returned with its grim contents, to be driven slowly away and off the site. He watched the various comings and goings of the Scene of Crime team, saw little groups of students collect around the path to the house, then melt away, as they realized they were going to discover nothing of the action within it.