A Line to Kill

21 The Full English

Elizabeth Lovell and her husband were the first to leave the next morning. They were actually going through the front door as I came downstairs and I hung back, not wanting to have to talk to them again. Sid had his arm around his wife, guiding her, even though he knew she could see perfectly well, and I wondered how much longer they would continue to keep that up now that Hawthorne and I had latched on to their secret. As far as I can tell, they haven’t appeared in public again since Alderney.

I noticed Anne Cleary paying her bill and went over to her. ‘Are you on the eleven o’clock flight?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I just couldn’t wait that long, I’m afraid.’

I was sorry to hear it. Maïssa Lamar and Elizabeth Lovell had both turned out to be frauds. I’d barely spoken to Marc Bellamy or George Elkin. Anne was the only writer I’d actually connected with during my long weekend in Alderney and I’d thought that at least we’d travel back together.

‘I suppose this has been all right for you,’ she went on. ‘You like murders and all that sort of thing.’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, I’ve had enough of it. I’d have taken the first flight this morning except that it was sold out.’ She glanced out of the door. The Alderney Tours bus was parked on the other side of the street with the driver, Tom McKinley, loading up the cases. ‘Do you know who did it yet?’ she asked.

‘No.’ I didn’t want to tell her about Derek Abbott.

‘Well, I hope you find out. Charles le Mesurier may not have been a very nice man, but nobody deserves to die in that way. And as for his wife, I don’t understand that at all. It seems to me, the only thing she ever did wrong was marrying him.’

The sound of hooting came from outside.

‘I’d better be on my way.’ She picked up her suitcase. ‘Do come and see me if you happen to be in Oxford.’

‘I’d like that.’ We kissed and she went on her way.

She had no sooner gone than the lift doors opened and Kathryn Harris came out, struggling under the weight of two bags, her glasses slipping off her face. There was a third case behind her in the lift. I went over to her. ‘Can I give you a hand?’

‘Thank you.’ She let me take them. They were just as heavy as they had been when they came off the plane. ‘They’re both Marc’s,’ she explained. ‘I’m afraid we didn’t sell as many books as we’d hoped.’

‘Where are you heading to?’ I asked.

‘Back to London. Marc’s filming a guest spot on the Christmas edition of Celebrity Storage Hunters.’ She pulled a face. ‘Don’t tell him I told you! It’s meant to be a secret.’

I left Kathryn’s cases by the front door, then went to the reception desk to pay my bill (the last two nights had not been included). The same young receptionist who had checked us in was behind the desk and she looked at me sadly. ‘We’re going to miss you,’ she said. ‘We’re not used to this sort of excitement in Alderney. We’ve never had a murder here before.’

‘You’re not the first person to tell me that,’ I said.

Finally, Hawthorne came down, carrying his suitcase, his coat neatly folded over his arm. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

He looked surprised. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I couldn’t sleep at all,’ I said. ‘After what happened, I had to go out and get some air.’

I wanted him to tell me where he had gone after our session with the Lovells, but he wasn’t playing. ‘I slept fine,’ he said. He looked past me at Kathryn, who was waiting to take the lift back up. ‘Have you seen Marc Bellamy?’

The receptionist overheard him. ‘Mr Bellamy is having breakfast on the terrace,’ she said.

We went out and found him.

He was sitting on his own at the far end, tucking into the sort of breakfast that he would have promoted on his television programme: eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, fried bread, mushrooms. He was wearing a tweed jacket and a cravat. It was as if he had already dressed up for his appearance on Celebrity Storage Hunters.

‘How do!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you on your way out of here?’

‘The same flight as you,’ Hawthorne said. Without asking, he sat down at Marc’s table. ‘You enjoying that?’

‘There’s nothing to beat the full English,’ Marc exclaimed. ‘And don’t you give me any of that continental rubbish. Yoghurt and croissant and that horrible concoction they call muesli. If you ask me, that’s the best thing about getting out of the EU, and there’s a long list where that’s concerned. Bring back the great British breakfast!’ He poked his sausage with his fork. ‘Mind you, this is a poor excuse for a decent banger. The skin’s synthetic and it’s got way too much rusk and water. You can tell from the way it’s shrunk.’ He was enjoying himself, playing to invisible cameras.

‘There was something I wanted to ask you,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Ask away. But you don’t mind if I eat while we talk, do you? I’ve got a car coming at ten and I don’t want this to get cold.’

‘I was wondering if you’d let me have the pen back.’

‘What pen is that?’

‘The pen that was taken from Anne Cleary’s room. She said it was a Sakura, made in Japan.’

Marc had just pronged a piece of bacon, but he didn’t lift it off the plate. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, without looking up.

‘I’m talking about the pen that you stole.’

‘I didn’t steal anything. And I think you should watch what you say to me, Mr Hawthorne. I’ve been threatened by experts.’

‘I’m not threatening you,’ Hawthorne said, reasonably. ‘And we can do this two ways. You can give me what I want or I can call Deputy Chief Torode and he’ll arrest you and take a look in your luggage. What else will we find in there, I wonder? My guess is that there’ll be a gold Rolex watch and also a fifty-euro note.’

‘Did he also take my £5?’ I asked.

Hawthorne nodded. ‘Probably.’

‘I didn’t take anything!’ Marc exploded, his face darkening. ‘And I’m warning you—’

‘Charles le Mesurier didn’t call you Tea Leaf because you drank lots of tea,’ Hawthorne interrupted. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot? It’s cockney rhyming slang. Tea leaf … thief. And every time he spoke to you, he was rubbing it in. He had a way of doing that, sneering at people. That first night at The Divers Inn: You always did like to get your hands on a steak pie. And a minute later: I always remember you being the quiet type, stealing up into the dorm and knocking off the snacks. Then, at the party: I’m going to lift one of those, if you don’t mind. Every time he spoke to you, he was hinting at what he knew about you and my guess is, when he said, You left so suddenly! he was reminding you that you didn’t leave Westland College, you were kicked out.’

‘I was unhappy there.’

‘You were expelled.’

Marc Bellamy’s collapse, when it came, was remarkable. It was as if a plane crossing the sun had cast its shadow over him. In that single moment, the bombast, the jokiness, the sense of authority, the self-confidence were all wiped away. The celebrity was gone and in his place sat a frightened schoolboy with a plate filled with too much food, wondering what was going to happen next.

He pushed the plate to one side.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he muttered in a voice that was suddenly husky. He looked across the terrace to make sure nobody could hear what was being said. But we were alone. ‘I don’t take these things because I want them,’ he went on. ‘I can’t stop myself. I’ve had treatment. I’ve been to shrinks and I’ve been to doctors. What I have is an addictive disorder—’

‘There are a lot of people in jail with addictive disorders,’ Hawthorne reminded him.

‘You don’t know what it’s like. I hate it. I hate myself for doing it. It’s not as if I’ve ever taken anything valuable.’

‘Like a twenty-thousand-quid gold-plated Rolex, for example?’

Marc’s eyes blazed. ‘That was different. I took that because it was his and I wanted to hurt him.’

‘Did you take it off his wrist?’

‘No! He left it in the kitchen. Just before he went out into the garden.’

‘He left through the kitchen door?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was that?’

‘Just after nine forty-five. Maybe ten to ten.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘There was someone waiting for him outside. I didn’t see who it was. He took the watch off and put it on a shelf and I thought, you know what? There are still plenty enough people in the house. He’ll know it was me, but he’ll never be able to prove it. And it really made me smile to think of him losing it, his precious Rolex. I didn’t keep it, by the way. I threw it in the sea.’ He pointed. ‘It’s out there.’

‘You really hated him that much?’

‘You have no idea what that man did to me – at Westland College. How much he hurt me.’

‘So tell me.’

‘I can’t.’

Hawthorne was pitiless. ‘You have to, Marc. We only have your word for it that he left that watch on a kitchen shelf. You could have taken it off his wrist after you’d killed him.’

Charles le Mesurier had worn his watch on his right hand, the same hand that had been left untied.

‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ Marc rasped. ‘What sort of person do you think I am?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ Hawthorne paused. ‘Tell me about Westland College.’

‘I’ve never talked about it. Not in my entire adult life.’

‘Charles le Mesurier can’t hurt you any more.’

‘There’s nothing left to hurt.’ Marc Bellamy had begun to cry. I was shocked. It wasn’t just the demolition of the man, in this bright morning sunlight. It was the fact that Hawthorne and I had been the cause.

We waited in uncomfortable silence until he had contained himself.

‘Westland was a minor independent school outside Chichester,’ he began. ‘I told you. I was sent there in 1983, when my dad got posted to the south coast. I was eight years old. Do you have any idea what those places were like back then? It was a bloody bear pit. I’d been perfectly happy up in Halifax. Ordinary school, ordinary friends. I never knew what was going to hit me when I walked in. Boarding school, dormitories, tuck shop. Even the uniform made me feel like a pillock. The teachers were ignorant bastards. The food was fucking horrible.

‘But the worst of it was the other boys. If you were going to survive with that lot, you had to be one of them and if you weren’t, they knew it in seconds. They’d come from the right homes – rich parents, nannies – and it was like their whole life they were prepared for that sort of place. There was a pack mentality and I felt it the moment I arrived, like some bloody sacrificial lamb. I was small for my age. I could have had the word PREY tattooed on my forehead.

‘Well, it started soon enough … the bullying. Apple-pie bed the first night. Tie cut in half. Letters from my mum stolen and read out so that everyone could have a good laugh. That was the end of the first week. Then there was the name-calling. About six weeks in, I got caught stealing a postal order. Remember those? A £2 postal order. Well, I was up in front of the housemaster for that and three strokes of the cane, but it was the other kids who were worse. After that I was Tea Leaf. Always Tea Leaf. They never let me forget it.

‘Charles le Mesurier was the ringleader. I never understood how he got the power because he wasn’t stronger or smarter than any of the others. I remember him as a scrawny little kid and there was always this gleam in his eyes as he worked out what sort of cruelty he might get up to next. You know, when you describe all these things later they sound small and petty and you wonder what all the fuss was about. But at the time … it hollows you out. It makes you feel worthless. I saw it when I met him again here. It was exactly the same. Flash. He loved being called that. His nickname wasn’t an insult to him. He loved it. He revelled in it.

‘Every night he’d pick on another new bug, which is what they called the first-years. He was two years ahead of us and he was part of a gang, four or five of them, that used to prowl the corridors after prep. They’d pick you up and throw you in the laundry basket with everyone’s dirty clothes and then tie down the lid. You might be there for an hour before someone let you out. Or he’d do the same thing in your study … tie you to a chair with parcel tape so you’d be late for chapel and get a bollocking from the housemaster. One day, I came into my study and he’d vandalised all my photographs … my mum, my dad, my dog. He’d drawn things with a Magic Marker. I don’t need to tell you what sort of things. He was sick, I really believe that.’

He drew a breath.

‘I went on stealing. And when I got caught the third time and was thrown out of Westland, it was the happiest day of my life. My dad never forgave me, though. He was a lieutenant commander on a frigate – Broadsword. And having a son who’d been caught pilfering, he thought it reflected on him. He never really spoke to me very much after that. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen.’

Marc Bellamy reached into his inside pocket and took out a slim silver pen. He placed it on the table. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘That’s Mrs Cleary’s pen, and when you return it to her, you can tell her I never went into her room. She lent it to Kathryn, and Kathryn left it in the bar.’

‘You took fifty euros from Maïssa Lamar’s purse.’

‘I can give you that back too …’ He fumbled for his wallet.

Hawthorne stopped him. ‘There’s no need. She’s gone. Did you take any coins?’

‘No. Nothing else.’

‘Yeah. Well. Thank you for being so frank with us.’ Hawthorne stood up and I wondered if he might be a little bit ashamed about what had just happened. As for myself, I felt nothing but pity for Marc Bellamy. I’d been through the private-education system myself – another version of the full English – and knew only too well how the casual cruelty and the pack mentality that he had described could stay with you for the rest of your life.

We left him sitting there and went back into the hotel. I’d lost any appetite for breakfast, but Hawthorne poured himself a black coffee.

‘That story he told,’ I said as we sat at another table. ‘Charles le Mesurier tying him down with parcel tape.’ Suddenly it was obvious to me. ‘Bellamy killed him!’

But Hawthorne shook his head. ‘We haven’t told anyone the full details of how le Mesurier was killed,’ he said. ‘So if Bellamy had decided to re-enact some sort of revenge, do you think he’d have told us what was done to him back in his schooldays? It would have been the same as confessing to the crime.’

‘Maybe that’s what he just did.’

Hawthorne didn’t reply, but it only allowed my thoughts to race ahead of me. Was it possible that someone else had been to Westland College at the same time as Charles le Mesurier? Colin Matheson, perhaps, or Dr Queripel? They were both about the right age. Could it be that despite all the evidence, Derek Abbott wasn’t the true killer?

Everything had changed. I might have a book after all.