You Are Dead

89

Saturday 20 December

Norman Potting drove the unmarked Ford along the congested high street of the small, rural Surrey town. The pavements were crowded with people, dressed up against the biting cold, and in the falling darkness the shop windows flashed, twinkled and sparkled with Xmas decorations and messages. As he sat waiting for traffic lights to change he could hear a brass band belting out ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

A tear trickled down his cheek and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Christmas, he thought. He and Bella had rented a cottage in Cornwall where they had been planning to spend their first Christmas together — taking her elderly mother with them. Now he had no plans. His sister had invited him to spend the holidays with her family in Devon, but although he liked her he wasn’t up for the jollity of a family gathering. His preference at the moment was to spend the time immersed in work.

Taking the winding road out of the far side of the town, he reached a picturesque humpback bridge over a river. Ordinarily, in happier times, he would have defaulted to the child inside him and accelerated hard, gleefully, and felt the car lift off over the brow. But he was in no mood for that any more — if he ever would be again, he pondered.

He reached a junction, then turned left and started driving up a long, steep hill, following the signs to The Cloisters, one of the nation’s most famous schools. He passed a row of terraced cottages, then smart, detached houses either side of the road. A cluster of large, modern, institutional buildings loomed up on his left. Towards the top of the hill he passed beneath a stone bridge, following the signs to the school, made a sharp right turn, followed by another and drove through a Gothic-revival archway with leaded-light windows above it. He entered the school grounds, with more Gothic-looking buildings all around and a huge chapel in front of playing fields, over to the left. He saw two teenage boys in tweed jackets and grey flannel trousers walking along, one with the middle button of his jacket done up, and halted beside them, lowering his window.

‘Can you tell me how I find the Bursar’s office?’ he asked.

‘Oh ya,’ one of the boys said, with a cut-glass accent.

Two minutes later, following the instructions he had been given, Potting drove past a cloistered courtyard, and several more boys similarly attired, and pulled up in front of a dull, single-storey building with a modern glass and concrete structure just beyond it. A modest sign on the blue front door read, BURSAR’S OFFICE.

The Detective Sergeant climbed out of the car, paused to look around, walked up to the door and rapped on it. Moments later it was opened by a tall man in his fifties, with a military bearing. He was dressed in a brown corduroy jacket over a checked shirt, knitted tie and beige cavalry twill trousers, and sported a short-back-and-sides haircut. He spoke with a confident, faintly patronizing, public school voice.

‘Detective Sergeant Potting?’ He gave him an enthusiastic smile.

‘Yes,’ he said and produced his warrant card. ‘Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’

‘I’m Neville Andrew, the Bursar.’

‘How do you do?’ Potting said, then added a deferential ‘sir’ as the man shook his hand, firmly. ‘Bit of a posh establishment, this.’

‘Yes, it is rather splendid here!’ he said, whilst studying the card more assiduously than most people usually did. He led Potting through into a small office, with a tiny, old-fashioned wooden desk on which sat a computer monitor flanked by a photograph of a conservatively dressed woman in her fifties, and another of three children. Two old and functional wooden chairs with leather seats faced it. The room was crammed with grey metal filing cabinets and on the wall behind him hung a framed crest and the school motto, in Latin, which Potting was unable to decipher. There was a faintly musty smell of old paper and the sterile, weekend scent that many offices had, of polish.

‘Founded in 1611, this marvellous establishment,’ the Bursar said, brightly. ‘Originally in London, then moved out here in 1843 — a bit before both our times! Are you a public schoolboy yourself?’

‘Oh no,’ Potting replied in his deep rumble of a voice, heavily tinged with his native Devon burr. ‘A comprehensive in Tiverton. Don’t think my parents could have afforded the fees for a place like this. Bet they run to a pretty penny.’

‘About thirty-five to forty thousand a year depending on extras.’

‘Pounds?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s what I earn in a year!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bloody hell! All that money to watch your spoiled little bastard get bullied!’

‘I was a pupil here myself,’ the Bursar said. ‘I don’t recall being a spoiled little bastard, or being bullied. Can I get you a tea or coffee?’

‘Er — builder’s tea, please,’ Potting said. ‘With two sugars.’ Then he added, ‘I appreciate your coming in on a Saturday, and I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.’

‘Got me out of a dreaded shopping trip to the supermarket with she-who-must-be-obeyed — so not at all.’ He thawed a little. ‘We’ve one or two of our old boys who’ve joined your finest. One we’re particularly proud of is a superintendent in the Sussex Police, who’s in regular contact with us, Stephen Rogan. Ever come across him?’

‘Superintendent Rogan? Yes indeed. Didn’t realize he’d been to a top people’s school. Do you keep up with all your old boys — alumni, isn’t that the right word?’

‘Oh, we like to keep tabs on them all, the good ones and the occasional not-so-good. Part of my role is to try to convince them to support their alma mater — and persuade them to leave bequests to us in their wills. It’s not easy to keep a place like this going, financially.’

‘Well, I’m here to talk to you about one particular old boy,’ Potting said.

‘You said on the phone it was in connection with a murder enquiry?’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘It is actually a murder and an abduction enquiry. We believe the abducted woman may still be alive and this is time critical.’

‘Most intriguing — I’ll be back in a mo.’ Neville Andrew disappeared through a doorway, and Potting took the opportunity to look around. There were several photographs on the walls of football, cricket and hockey teams, as well as an army regimental picture with, presumably, Andrew in one of the rows of officers, he thought, scanning the picture in search of him without success. He glanced back at the photographs of the woman and three smartly dressed and happy-looking children on the desk, and thought wistfully of his own private life. A string of former wives, and numerous children — most of whom he hadn’t spoken to in over twenty years. And now his fiancée dead.

The Bursar reappeared after a few minutes with two steaming mugs and a plate of digestive biscuits, handed one mug to Potting then sat down in front of the desk, his tall frame dwarfing it. ‘So how can I help you on this enquiry, Detective Sergeant? It’s fairly recent your merger of Surrey and Sussex, I believe?’

‘Within the last couple of years,’ Potting said.

‘Working well, is it?’

‘Reasonably,’ Potting replied. He felt a bit like a fish out of water here in this grand school, as if he was in a different world — almost a different universe — to the one he was familiar with. He pulled out his notebook. ‘To come to the point, Mr Andrew—’

‘It’s Brigadier, actually.’

Potting raised a respectful finger in the air. ‘Ah, mea culpa! I beg your pardon, Brigadier Andrew.’

The Bursar seemed pleased with his use of Latin, Potting thought. He ploughed on. ‘You had a pupil here during the 1970s, by the name of Edward Denning. At some point his parents divorced and he took his mother’s new name of Crisp. He subsequently became a private family doctor in Brighton and he is currently a person of interest to us in our enquiry. I’m wondering if you could give me any information on his early background?’

Andrew frowned. ‘Denning? Then Crisp? Hmmmn. This is actually ringing a bit of a bell. When I came here, three years ago, I introduced a computer program to connect us with all our alumni, and to establish links between them. If you can bear with me?’

‘Of course.’ Potting helped himself to a biscuit, which he dunked into his tea. To his minor irritation, part of the biscuit detached and floated on the surface of his tea. Embarrassed, he attempted to fish it out with his fingers and then clumsily dropped some onto his trousers.

The Bursar pulled on a pair of half-moon glasses, and tapped his keyboard for some moments, peering intently at the screen. ‘Ah yes, here he is.’ Then he hesitated. ‘You do know I shouldn’t really be telling you any of this without something more formal from you, because information I have here falls under the Data Protection Act.’ He shrugged. ‘Denning came here in the summer quarter, 1974, in Lark House, and left in the summer quarter, 1979. He continued his studies at Sussex University and King’s College medical school in London. And you are quite right. During his time here he changed his name to Crisp.’ He continued reading. ‘Not a particularly distinguished pupil. He became a house monitor in his last year. A rather solitary character, he showed no interest in sport or team games of any kind, but did join the school potholing and caving trip to Wales. Left with respectable A-level grades in physics, chemistry and biology.’ Then he frowned again. ‘But there is something a bit interesting about this chap.’

‘Oh?’ Potting said, sipping his tea. He was tempted to try another dunk, but decided against and instead put the piece of dry biscuit into his mouth and chewed.

‘Well, yes. I told you we try to keep tabs on all of our alumni, in the hope we can persuade them to support the school. Well, this concerns some of Crisp’s contemporaries, whom I’ve not been able to trace.’

‘How many pupils do you have here at any one time?’ the DS asked.

‘We have seven hundred and ten, currently. Four hundred and eighty boys and the rest girls. It was different back then, of course. Hardly any girls.’

‘How many of your past pupils are you unable to trace?’ Potting asked.

‘Gosh, there’s over three hundred on our missing list.’ He grinned. ‘But I’m bloody well determined to track them down. I began my career in the Army in the Intelligence Corps. I’m on a mission to find every damned one of them and wring whatever spondula I can out of them. For the sake of future generations.’

Future generations of toffs, Potting thought, but did not say. Instead he asked, ‘What can you tell me, Brigadier, about these contemporaries of Crisp you are unable to trace?’

The Bursar hesitated. ‘Well, I’m afraid I really can’t give out any information — because, as I said, of the Data Protection Act.’

‘This is a murder enquiry, Brigadier. I would appreciate your full cooperation. You might not think that information you have is relevant, but we need to know everything and then we can decide.’

‘I appreciate that, Detective Sergeant, but I am bound by the law. I have reluctant permission from the Headmaster to talk to you about Edward Denning, but not anyone else.’

Potting stared at him for a moment. Roy Grace had warned him earlier today about difficulties in dealing with schools like this, and the slightly high-handed attitude of this man was increasingly irking him. The power of the old boy network. He sipped some of his tea and swallowed the soggy morsel of biscuit that he hadn’t extricated. ‘I understand that venerable establishments like this operate under a certain code.’

‘Code?’ Andrew said.

‘You think you’re above the law — that you operate under some kind of privilege. You might throw pupils out, but you’ll never let them down. Would that be a fair summary?’

‘I can assure you that is not the case.’

Potting tapped his own chest. ‘Actually, Brigadier, I’m the one to give the assurances that this is not the case.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I can have a team of officers here with a search warrant within ninety minutes. We’ll remove all your computers and all your files, if that’s how you want to play it? Wouldn’t look too good if the press got to hear about it. Top people’s school raided by the police. I think a few of the papers would have a field day.’

Neville Andrew gave a nervous flick of his tongue, wetting his lips. ‘Well, I’ve never heard it put like that.’ Then he smiled. ‘I’m sure we can sort something out.’

‘Good,’ Potting said. ‘It would be extremely helpful to our enquiry if you did not withhold any information, however irrelevant you feel it might be, or however protected by any Act of Parliament.’

‘Regarding Crisp’s contemporaries?’

‘We need to know everything we can about Crisp and I need to talk to anyone who was in contact with him during his schooldays. To start with, is there anything in Edward Denning — or Crisp’s — past behaviour at this school to suggest an erratic nature of any kind?’

The Bursar peered at his screen. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I have copies of his leaving reports from his housemaster — the teacher here who would have known him best. It has always been a tradition here at The Cloisters for housemasters to write one report for the pupil — and his or her parents — and another for our records only.’

‘And?’

‘I’ll read the one for his parents to you, first. Enigmatic and unpredictable as ever, he fits into no known mould, and has clearly taxed his tutors’ powers of prophecy. He carries many grudges, as if he feels the whole world is against him. A medical career seems inevitable, although there may be a number of false starts.’

Potting wrote it down verbatim.

‘Now,’ said Andrew, peering at the screen. ‘This is the one from his housemaster for the school records only. Edward Crisp is a very strange individual. Impossible to get close to him, or to even know what he is thinking. He keeps to himself, seems to have few friends, and, frankly, I find him deeply disturbed and lacking in empathy. I put some of this down to the split-up of his parents’ marriage, and some of it down to a very traumatic incident in his life in the winter of 1976 when he witnessed a young girl drown in a recreational lagoon in Hove. During his early days here, he was bullied by a number of boys. Not to put too fine a point on it, and I have no medical training to substantiate this, but I would say that Edward Crisp displays classic symptoms of a sociopath. I am sure he will ultimately be successful, because those with sociopathic tendencies are able to play the game of getting to the top better than anyone else. But I’m not sure I would ever want to be one of his patients should he pursue a medical career.’

Potting pursed his lips. ‘Well, that doesn’t paint too good a picture of him. But it fits. What about his missing contemporaries?’

‘Well,’ Andrew said, a little hesitantly. ‘As it happens, the timing of your visit is rather coincidental. Only this past week I’ve been preparing a report on his housemates in his particular year. It would seem there are three boys who were all direct contemporaries of Edward Crisp in Lark House who seem, literally, to have vanished off the face of the earth. It’s really quite odd.’

‘Odd in what sense?’ Potting pressed. ‘Mispers — as we call missing persons — are very common. Thousands of people are reported missing in the UK every year. A large number are still missing after one year. So three doesn’t strike me as being particularly notable.’

The Brigadier frowned. ‘Direct contemporaries of Crisp, from the same house? I’d say that was very odd. Old boys die, sadly, or they emigrate overseas. But normally we’re able to trace most of them — we are pretty thorough.’ He tapped his keyboard and peered at his screen again. ‘What flags up these three is that each of them was reported missing to the police, by their families, and to our knowledge they’ve never been found.’

‘How many pupils are there in Lark House?’ Potting asked.

‘Well, it’s one of the smaller houses. There were seventy-eight boys there in Crisp’s year. So three missing is quite a high proportion and I would imagine a high proportion compared to the national average — the appalling statistics you’ve just given me.’

‘Missing, presumed dead?’ Potting asked, increasingly interested now.

‘Well, I can’t answer that. But they all came here in 1974. None of them have been heard of for more than twenty years. They were all in their late twenties or early thirties at the time of their disappearance.’

‘And each of them friends with Edward Crisp, Brigadier?’

‘I can’t tell you if they were friends. They were all slightly older — a year or so — and of course when you are thirteen, a year’s age difference is a big gap.’

With his pen poised, Potting asked, ‘Can you give me their names?’

The Bursar hesitated again, then said, ‘Felix Gore-Parker, Marcus Gossage and Harrison Chaffinch.’

Potting wrote them down. Then he gave the Bursar his mobile phone number, in case he thought of anything else, and went back to his car. He sat for some moments looking at his notes before starting the engine. As he drove out of the school grounds he felt distinctly more uneasy about Crisp than when he had arrived.

He pulled over and phoned Roy Grace.