Graham looked at her hard. ‘Are you afraid he’ll try to interfere with any of them?’
Kate got to her feet, ringing her hands. ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. He loves them, there’s no doubt of that. The classic favourite uncle.’
‘Is that what they think?’
‘They love him. But he does touch them, try to get close to them. And they don’t like it. Maybe it’s just because he doesn’t fully realise they’re too old for cuddles. Or maybe there’s something a hell of a lot more sinister. The younger daughter has nightmares. She wakes screaming,’ she added flatly.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. You’ll be there as usual, this weekend, won’t you, Kate?’
‘But I sleep at night!’
‘And no doubt he’ll go home at night.’
‘And I can’t be with them all the time!’
‘Hey, calm down. Let’s try to work this out. Is there a match this weekend?’
‘Against Halesowen. I’ll invite him and the kids. Whether they’ll want to come –’
‘Miss seeing your first home win? Of course they’ll be there.’
‘But what about the rest of the time?’
‘Safety in numbers, I’d have thought. So what we have to worry about is if he splits them up.’
‘Which can only be at night, surely?’
‘Possibly. I don’t like this. Leave me to think it through. I think my brain got addled when I knocked my head. You and Colin go and get the files. When you get back we’ll scan them fast as we can. We’ve got to get the Family Protection people talking to the boys in the Brigade – find the source of this –’ he flipped the photograph with his index finger – ‘assuming, of course, that they have the same source. Which I think, for the moment, we must. I take it the current files are available?’
‘Giles’ll have those. You’ve got his number?’
He nodded.
‘And there’s Royston, my next-door-neighbour’s son. He left the BB for some reason his mother couldn’t – or wouldn’t – tell me. In fact, whatever it was, the whole family stopped going to the Baptist church. Might be worth someone talking to him, too.’
‘Right.’ He made a note. ‘Off you go then. I don’t need to tell you to be careful.’ He smiled, but dropped his head and was already writing when she closed the door of his office.
Colin hauled on the hand-brake and stared at the college carpark barrier: ‘How do we get in here then? Told you we should have come in something more official than this.’ He patted the steering-wheel of the unmarked Rover. ‘We could have dumped it on double-yellow lines.’
‘Don’t worry. Here’s someone now. Except he could be a job’s-worth.’
The ID worked, however, and they were soon nosing into a slot. There were quite a lot of free spaces.
‘Looks like your educated elite don’t work Friday afternoons,’ Colin said.
‘Ah – this is the management section. Looks as if the plebs are still toiling away. Let’s hope Paul’s one of them.’
They locked up, walking briskly towards the entrance. Students singly and in groups drifted around. Many of the girls were swathed from head to toe in black. Kate thought of her rape victim. The men were nothing like so self-effacing, jostling and shoving.
A middle-aged receptionist ruled the foyer. She smiled, checked their IDs, asked them to sit and offered them coffee. They shook their heads, and sat, staring at their hands.
‘You’re not happy about this, are you? Best let me do the talking, maybe,’ Colin said.
‘Might look a bit unnatural. After all, I know him quite well. Ah!’
The receptionist was returning. They got to their feet, smiling.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid. Mr Taylor left for a dental appointment ten minutes ago. He’s unlikely to be back.’
‘We’d like his address, then, please,’ Colin said. ‘This is a very urgent matter – a matter of life and death,’ he added, persuasively.
The receptionist bridled. ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose such information. I’ll have to refer you to Personnel.’
Who were at lunch.
‘Come on, Kate – you must have some idea where he lives! You’ve been out with the man!’ Colin flared his fingers in frustration.
‘Isn’t it odd? The question of going to his place never arose. No problem, anyway. I’ll phone Maz. I’ll have to grovel and say I should have taken her advice in the first place.’
‘So much the better – people usually like to be in the right.’
‘Why, I was talking to him only half an hour ago. Yes, I said you were going to pop into college to, see him. I didn’t say what for, though, since you’d told me this was confidential.’
‘Thanks. I’ll have to catch him when he comes back from the dentist.’
There was the tiniest pause. It sounded as if the dentist had been a hastily invented excuse.
‘Oh, right. Of course. Anyway, you’ll be able to make him a cup of tea when he gets back, won’t you? Here’s the address.’
They parked behind a crop of black plastic sacks awaiting the maw of the dustcart. They’d overtaken it a few hundred yards back: the sacks wouldn’t have to wait long.
‘He’s done remarkably well for himself,’ Colin observed, looking at the cottage behind the high wall. ‘This is practically the country. These teachers must get a good screw if he can afford to live here.’
‘I think that could be better rephrased,’ Kate said, smiling sourly. ‘But they’re not all that well-paid. We were talking about it once. So how come he lives in a posh little place like this?’
‘Lottery win?’
She shrugged. ‘Colin – if he’s been on all these camps with the BB, he could have used his video camera and sold the results. He tried to film the kids the first time we trained. It was a nice evening and they were all stripped down to shorts.’
‘And you thought he wanted to do it for his holiday records. Kate, you were a bit slow, weren’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Or maybe a bit fast now in jumping to conclusions. I don’t know. Let’s go and see if he’s recovered from his dental treatment. He’s back, all right. That’s his car.’
The engine was still warm – just.
They exchanged glances.
‘Colin – I’m going to do the talking, on my own. And you’re going to check those sacks aren’t full of files. Sorry.’
‘OK. Unless you’d prefer to do it the other way round, seeing as you know him.’
She looked at the cottage, bland in its rather dull garden. There was a depressed air about it – flowers that should have been dead-headed, the grass over-long. To be fair, he’d been too busy painting her window to do much for himself.
‘When it comes down to it, who knows anyone?’ she asked. ‘OK. She flipped an invisible coin. ‘Look, it’s heads. I’ll do Paul.’
She set off up the path.
Paul answered her ring promptly. If he was surprised to see her he didn’t show it. She hoped Maz hadn’t phoned to warn him that he should officially have been at the dentist’s. She hadn’t wanted Maz involved at all – Paul had obviously been a cherished, perhaps spoiled, baby far too long.
‘Kate?’
‘Paul. Obviously I’m not here just to thank you for all your painting. It’s work, too. Shall we –?’ She gestured.
He stepped back, but with some reluctance. Just puzzlement, perhaps. ‘Work?’ He stopped just inside the front door. There was no hall – they were in his living room.
‘My work. There’s some rumour about Brayfield BB – things going wrong ten to fifteen years ago. Nothing serious, so far as I know. But we need to have the files to check who was in charge then. Giles says you’ve probably got them.’
‘My God! Have I still got them? Oh, I was young and crazy once, Kate – had this idea of writing a history of the chapel. And then I realised that history’s more than listing facts in chronological order – that’s if you want anyone to read it! I suppose I must still have the files somewhere.’ He looked around the room doubtfully.
So did Kate. However good he was with a shovel or a paintbrush, Paul was hardly house proud. There were newspapers in a couple of piles at least two feet high – months of dust-harbouring paper. They’d have toppled if anyone had added so much as another freebie. There were other piles, too – books, notes, letters. The bookshelves were crammed, with books stacked in all directions.
‘I suppose they might be in my study. Follow me.’ He led the way upstairs which opened off the corner of the room. ‘What sort of problem are we talking about? Someone been diddling the finances?’ he asked derisively.
She’d been waiting for the question – was rather surprised it had come so late. ‘That sort of thing,’ she said, off-hand. ‘Probably nothing at all. But once my boss gets hold of something he’s not going to let it go without checking first.’ She stopped, trying not to gasp with horror. Paul had opened his study door to reveal the sort of chaos that she was living with – cardboard boxes in hazardous stacks. There was a space on the desk for his computer, a neat-looking lap-top complete with modem, but he’d have to shift what looked like stacks of teaching notes if he wanted to use the printer.
‘I always meant to sort this out,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Looks as if I’m going to have to – if you really want that stuff? Right! Now, where might it be?’ He stood in the middle of it all, shaking his head.
Kate peered at the side of some of the nearest boxes: oranges from Morocco, South African grapes, Geest bananas. No more recent, more apposite labels. Each was full of envelope files, only the spines of which were visible. He hadn’t written the contents on them. Many had split and were bulging. Not many clues there, either.
‘I’ve always meant to develop a system,’ he said. ‘Maz was going to come and help me. She’s never got round to it – too busy. And now – well, where would you start?’
What she really would have done was get a skip and throw the whole lot into it, on the principle that if he hadn’t looked at it since he moved, it could scarcely be vital to his wellbeing.
‘There’s more in the loft, too. Now, it might be in there, come to think of it.’ He backed out of the room. She followed. ‘The loft door’s in my bedroom – I hope you won’t be embarrassed. Hang on while I shove some of this stuff in the linen basket. Heavens, it’s time I put a load through the washer.’
It was. The room was thick with the smell of male. And male socks.
‘Why don’t you go and do it now? I can have a quick look at the boxes in your study. Well, one box!’ She stood in the doorway watching him gather up pants and T-shirts, standing aside as he headed with a stinking armful for the stairs. Would he be offended if she opened a window?
Preferring the mustiness of the study, she started on the nearest box. Shakespeare’s sonnets; Marlowe’s Edward II. Not promising. His university notes, perhaps. She’d started on the next when she heard him come back upstairs. Monet’s gardens; Pre-Raphaelite sexuality. She’d never known they had any, all those glum, goitred creatures.
‘Will you hold the steps?’ he called. ‘Only they’re a bit wobbly,’ he added as she went back into the bedroom. He was already half-way up, pushing at the small hatch in the ceiling. ‘It’s a bit of a tight fit, this.’
It was. But he heaved and kicked his way upwards, finally disappearing. His face quickly reappeared. ‘Could you pass me that torch?’ He pointed to what was intended as a dressing table but was hidden under a detritus of coffee mugs and dust. Standing on the steps, she reached up.
Had she made a ghastly mistake? He was so innocent, so helpful, she was sure she must have done. And there was poor Colin fossicking in all those bags. Talk about egg on your face. His and hers, both – if in different ways.
‘There’s some more up here,’ Paul called. ‘D’you want to have a flick through while I hold the torch?’
She popped her head through the hatch. ‘Have you got boards down or is it just joists?’ Like the floor of her back bedroom, the one through which the wires ran to her security light … No, she didn’t want to be in that loft with him, come to think of it.
‘A few boards. Mostly joists.’
‘And you’d trust me not to put my foot through your ceiling? I wouldn’t!’ she laughed. ‘Why don’t you pass them down here, and we can check them in more comfort?’
‘They’re pretty heavy, mind. Take care – you don’t want to rick your back. Got it?’
They managed to bring down five altogether. None was labelled, and all were filthy. He came down, feet flailing for a safe hold. She grabbed his right ankle and steered him to a tread.
‘My goodness,’ he said staring at the mess.
She supposed it was touching, his refusal to swear. In his place she’d have unleashed a string of expletives.
‘It’s going to take a bit of time to check that lot,’ he said. ‘And I’m supposed to be looking after the kids this weekend. I suppose I could bring them here …’
Not on his life. She kept her face impassive. ‘I shall still be at the Manse this weekend,’ she said.
‘How urgent is it? To find whatever it is you want?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure: the Gaffer didn’t say. Tell you what,’ she said, more brightly than she felt, ‘if it is desperate, why don’t I get one of my colleagues to come and sort through it? Or they could take it all away if you’d prefer? You never know, it might even come back indexed and labelled.’
‘What if they don’t find anything? Do you think they’ll charge me with wasting police time?’ he laughed.
She grinned back. ‘For someone, it gives a whole new meaning to the term dirty weekend, doesn’t it?’