The Daughters of Cain

(i)

On Mondays to Fridays it was fifty-fifty whether the postman called before Julia Stevens left for school.

So, at 8.15 a.m. on 25 May she lingered awhile at the dark blue front door of her two-bedroomed terraced house in East Oxford. No sign of her postman yet; but he’d be bringing something a bit later.

Occasionally she wondered whether she still felt just a little love for the ex-husband she’d sued for divorce eight years previously for reasons of manifold infidelity. Especially had she so wondered when, exactly a year ago now, he’d sent her that card — a large, tasteless, red-rosed affair — which in a sad sort of way had pleased her more than she’d wanted to admit. Particularly those few words he’d written inside: ‘Don’t forget we had some good times too!’

If anyone, perhaps, shouldn’t she tell him?

Then there was Brenda: dear, precious, indispensable Brenda. So there would certainly be one envelope lying on the ‘Welcome’ doormat when she returned from school that afternoon.

Aged forty-six (today) the Titian-haired Julia Stevens would have been happier with life (though only a little) had she been able to tell herself that after nearly twenty-three years she was still enjoying her chosen profession. But she wasn’t; and she knew that she would soon have packed it all in anyway, even if…

Even if…

But she put that thought to the back of her mind.

It wasn’t so much the pupils — her thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds — though some of them would surely have ruffled the calm of a Mother Teresa. No. It wasn’t that. It was the way the system was going: curriculum development, aims and objectives (whatever the difference between those was supposed to be!), assessment criteria, pastoral care, parent consultation, profiling, testing… God! When was there any time for teaching these days?

She’d made her own views clear, quite bravely so, at one of the staff meetings earlier that year. But the Head had paid little attention. Why should he? After all, he’d been appointed precisely because of his cocky conversance with curriculum development, aims and objectives and the rest… A young, shining ideas-man, who during his brief spell of teaching (as rumour had it) would have experienced considerable difficulty in maintaining discipline even amongst the glorious company of the angels.

There was a sad little smile on Julia’s pale face as she fished her Freedom Ticket from her handbag and stepped on to the red Oxford City double-decker.

Still, there was one good thing. No one at school knew of her birthday. Certainly, she trusted, none of the pupils did, although she sensed a slight reddening under her high cheekbones as just for a few seconds she contemplated her embarrassment if one of her classes broke out into ‘Happy Birthday, Mrs Stevens!’ She no longer had much confidence in the powers of the Almighty; but she almost felt herself praying.

But if she were going to target any prayer, she could surely so easily find a better aim (or was it an ‘objective’?) than averting a cacophonic chorus from 5C, for example. And in any case, 5C weren’t all that bad, really; and she, Julia Stevens, mirabile dictu, was one of the few members of staff who could handle that motley and unruly crowd. No. If she were going to pray for anything, it would be for something that was of far greater importance.

Of far greater importance for herself…

As things turned out, her anxieties proved wholly groundless. She received no birthday greetings from a single soul, either in the staff-room or in any of the six classes she taught that day.

Yet there was, in 5C, just the one pupil who knew Mrs Stevens’ birthday. Knew it well, for it was the same as his own: the twenty-fifth of May. Was it that strange coincidence that had caused them all the trouble?

Trouble? Oh, yes!

In the previous Sunday Mirror’s horoscope column, Kevin Costyn had scanned his personal ‘Key to Destiny’ with considerable interest:

‘Maximum mental energy’ had never been Kevin’s strong point. But if such mighty exertion were required to win his way through to such a person, well, for once he’d put his mind to things. At the very least, it would be an improvement on the ‘brute-force-and-ignorance’ approach he’d employed on that earlier occasion — when he’d tried to make amorous advances to one of his school-mistresses.

When he’d tried to rape Mrs Julia Stevens.

(ii)

At the age of seventeen (today) Kevin Costyn was the dominant personality amongst the twenty-four pupils, of both sexes, comprising Form 5C at the Proctor Memorial School in East Oxford. He was fourteen months or so above the average age of his class because he was significantly below the average Intelligence Quotient for his year, as measured by orthodox psychometric criteria.

In earlier years, Kevin’s end-of-term reports had semi-optimistically suggested a possible capacity for improvement, should he ever begin to activate his dormant brain. But any realistic hopes of academic achievement had been abandoned many terms ago.

In spite of — or was it because of? — such intellectual shortcomings, Kevin was an individual of considerable menace and power; and if any pupil was likely to drive his teacher to retirement, to resignation, even to suicide, that pupil was Kevin Costyn. Both inside and outside school, this young man could be described only as crude and vicious; and during the current summer term his sole interest in class activities had focused upon his candidature for the British National Party in the school’s annual mock-elections.

Teachers were fearful of his presence in the classroom, and blessed their good fortune whenever he was (allegedly) ill or playing hookey or appearing before the courts or cautioned (again!) by the police or being interviewed by probation officers, social workers, or psychiatrists. Only rarely was his conduct less than positively disruptive; and that when some overnight dissipation had sapped his wonted enthusiasm for selective subversion.

Always he sat in the front row, immediately to the right of the central gangway. This for three reasons. First, because he was thus enabled to turn round and thereby the more easily to orchestrate whatever disruption he had in mind. Second, because (without ever admitting it) he was slightly deaf; and although he had little wish to listen to his teachers’ lessons, his talent for verbal repartee was always going to be diminished by any slight mis-hearing. Third, because Eloise Dring, the sexiest girl in the Fifth Year, was so very short-sighted that she was compelled (refusing spectacles) to take a ring-side view of each day’s proceedings. And Kevin wanted to sit next to Eloise Dring.

So there he sat, his long legs sticking way out beneath his undersized desk; his feet shod in a scuffed, cracked, decrepit pair of winkle-pickers, two pairs of which had been bequeathed by some erstwhile lover to his mother — the latter a blowsy, frowsy single parent who had casually conceived her only son (as far as she could recall the occasion) in a lay-by just off the Cowley Ring Road, and who now lived in one of a string of council properties known to the largely unsympathetic locals as Prostitutes Row.

Kevin was a lankily built, gangly-boned youth, with long, dark, unwashed hair, and a less than virile sprouting on upper lip and chin, dressed that day in a gaudily floral T-shirt and tattered jeans. His sullen, dolichocephalic face could have been designed by some dyspeptic El Greco, and on his left forearm — covered this slightly chilly day by the sleeve of an off-white sweatshirt — was a tattoo. This tattoo was known to everyone of any status in the school, including the Head; and indeed the latter, in a rare moment of comparative courage, had called Costyn into his study the previous term and demanded to know exactly what the epidermal epigram might signify. And Kevin had been happy to tell him: to tell him how the fairly unequivocal slogan (‘Fuck ’em All’) would normally be interpreted by anyone; even by someone with the benefit of a university education.

Anyway, that was how Kevin reported the interview.

Whatever the truth of the matter though, his reputation was now approaching its apogee. And with two sentences in a young offenders’ unit behind him, how could it have been otherwise? At the same time, his influence, both within the circle of his immediate contemporaries and within the wider confines of the whole school, was significantly increased by two further factors. First, he even managed in some curious manner to exude a crude yet apparently irresistible sexuality, which drew many a girl into his magnetic field. Second, he was — had been since the age of twelve — a devotee of the Martial Arts; and under the tutelage of a diminutive Chinaman who (rumour had it) had once single-handedly left a gang of street-muggers lying pleading for mercy on the pavement, Kevin could appear, often did appear, an intimidating figure.

‘KC.’ That was what was written in red capital letters in the girls’ loo: Kevin Costyn; Karate Champion; King of the Condoms; or whatever.

Tradition at the Proctor Memorial School was for pupils to rise to their feet whenever any teacher entered the classroom. And this tradition perpetuated itself still, albeit in a dishonoured, desultory sort of way. Yet when Mrs Stevens walked into 5C, for the first period on the afternoon of her birthday, the whole class, following a cue from Kevin Costyn, rose to its feet in synchronized smartness, the hum of conversation cut immediately… as if some maestro had tapped his baton on the podium.

And there was a great calm.

(iii)

‘It’s only me,’ he’d spoken into the rusted, serrated Entryphone beside the front door.

He’d heard a brief, distant whirring; then a click; then her voice: ‘It’s open.’

He walked up the three flights of shabbily carpeted stairs, his mind wholly on the young woman who lived on the top floor. The bone structure of her face looked gaunt below the pallid cheeks; her eyes (for all McClure knew) might once have sparkled like those of glaucopis Athene, but now were dull — a sludgy shade of green, like the waters of the Oxford canal; her nose — tip-tilted in slightly concave fashion, like the contour of a nursery ski-slope — was disfigured (as he saw things) by two cheap-looking silver rings, one drilled through either nostril; her lips, marginally on the thin side of the Aristotelian mean, were ever thickly daubed with a shade of bright orange — a shade that would have been permanently banned from her mouth by any mildly competent beautician, a shade which clashed horribly with the amateurishly applied deep-scarlet dye that streaked her longish, dark-brown hair.

But why such details of her face? Her hair? The mind of this young woman’s second client that day, Wednesday, May 25, was firmly fixed on other things as a little breathlessly he ascended the last few narrow, squeaking stairs that led to the top of the Victorian property.

The young woman turned back the grubby top-sheet on the narrow bed, kicked a pair of knickers out of sight behind the shabby settee, poured out two glasses of red wine (£2.99 from Oddbins), and was sitting on the bed, swallowing the last mouthful of a Mars bar, when the first knock sounded softly on the door.

She was wearing a creased lime-green blouse, buttoned up completely down the front, black nylon stockings — whose tops came only to mid-thigh, held by a white suspender-belt — and red high-heeled shoes. Nothing more. That’s how he wanted her; that’s how she was. Beggars were proverbially precluded from overmuch choice and (perforce) ‘beggar’ she had become, with a triple burden of liabilities: negative equity on her ‘studio flat’, bought five years earlier at the height of the property boom; redundancy (involuntary) from the sales office of a local engineering firm; and a steadily increasing consumption of alcohol. So she had soon taken on a… well, a new ‘job’ really.

To say that in the course of her new employment she was experiencing any degree of what her previous employer called ‘job satisfaction’ would be an exaggeration. On the other hand, it was certainly the easiest work she’d ever undertaken, as well as being by far the best paid — and (as she knew) she was quite good at it. As soon as she’d settled her bigger debts, though, she’d pack it all in. She was quite definite about that. The sooner the quicker.

The only thing that sometimes worried her was the possibility of her mother finding out that she was earning her living as a cheap tart. Well, no, that wasn’t true. An expensive tart, as her current client would soon be discovering yet again. Yes, fairly expensive; but that didn’t stop her feeling very cheap.

At the second knock, she rose from the bed, straightened her left stocking, and was now opening the door. Within only a couple of minutes opening her legs, too, as she lay back on the constricted width of the bed, her mascara’ed eyes focusing on a discoloured patch of damp almost immediately above her head.

Almost immediately above his head, too.

It was all pretty simple, really. The trouble was it had never been satisfying, for she had rarely felt more than a minimal physical attraction towards any of her clients. In a curious way she wished she could so feel. But no. Not so far. There was occasionally a sort of wayward fondness, yes. And in fact she was fonder of this particular fellow than any of the others. Indeed, she had once surprised herself by wondering if when he died — well, he was nearly sixty-seven — she might manage to squeeze out a dutiful tear.

It had not occurred to her at the time that there are other ways of departing this earthly life; had not occurred to her, for example, that her present client, Dr Felix McClure, former Ancient History don of Wolsey College, Oxford, might fairly soon be murdered.

(iv)

Only one communication, it appeared, was awaiting Julia Stevens that same day when she returned home just after 5 p.m.: a brown envelope (containing a gas bill) propped up against the table-lamp just inside her small entrance-hall.

The white envelope, unsealed, lay on the table in the living-room; and beside it was a glacé-iced cake, the legend ‘Happy Birthday, Mrs Stevens’ piped in purple on a white background, with an iced floral arrangement in violet and green, the leaves intricately, painstakingly crafted, and clearly the work of an expert in the skill.

Although Brenda Brooks had been Julia’s cleaning-lady for almost four years now, she had never addressed her employer as anything but ‘Mrs Stevens’; addressed her so again now, just as on the cake, in the letter folded inside the (NSPCC) birthday card.

After re-reading the letter, Julia looked down lovingly at the cake again, and suddenly felt very moved — and very angry. Brenda (she knew) had hugely enjoyed the cake-decorating classes at the Tech. and had become proudly proficient in the icer’s art. All right, the injury was hardly of cosmic proportions, Julia realized that; yet in its own little-world way the whole thing was so terribly sad. And as she looked at the cake again, Julia could now see what Brenda had meant. On closer inspection, the ‘Mrs’ was really a bit of a mess; and the loops in each of the ‘y’s in ‘Happy Birthday’ were rather uncertain — decidedly wobbly, in fact — as if formulated with tremulous fingers. ‘Lacks her usual Daedalian deftness’ was Julia the Pedagogue’s cool appraisal; yet something warmer, something deeper inside herself, prompted her to immediate action. She fetched her broadest, sharpest kitchen knife and carefully cut a substantial segment of the cake, in such a way as to include most of the mis-handled ‘Mrs’; and ate it all, straightaway.

The sponge-cake was in four layers, striated with cream, strawberry jam, and lemon-butter icing. Absolutely delicious; and she found herself wishing she could share it with someone.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang.

‘I didn’t say nuffin’ in class, Miss, but I want to say ’appy birfday.’

‘Where are you phoning from, Kevin?’

‘Jus’ down the road — near the bus-shelter.’

‘Would you like to come along and have a piece of birthday cake with me? I mean, it’s your birthday too, isn’t it?’

‘Jus’ try stoppin’ me, Miss!’

The phone went dead. And thoughtfully, a slight smile around her full lips, Julia retraced her steps to the living-room, where she cut two more segments of cake, the second of which sliced through the middle of the more obviously malformed ‘y’; cut them with the same knife — the broadest, sharpest knife she had in all her kitchen armoury.

(v)

Much earlier that same day, Detective Sergeant Lewis had found his chief sitting well forward in the black-leather chair, shaking his head sadly over The Times crossword puzzle.

‘Not finished it yet, sir?’

Morse looked up briefly with ill-disguised disdain. ‘There is, as doubtless you observe, Lewis, one clue and one clue only remaining to be entered in the grid. The rest I finished in six minutes flat; and, if you must know, without your untimely interruption—’

‘Sorry!’

Morse shook his head slowly. ‘No. I’ve been sitting here looking at the bloody thing for ten minutes.’

‘Can I help?’

‘Extremely improbable!’

‘Don’t you want to try me?’

Reluctantly Morse handed over the crossword, and Lewis contemplated the troublesome clue: ‘Kick in the pants?’ (3–5). Three of the eight letters were entered: — I — L— S —.

A short while later Lewis handed the crossword back across the desk. He’d tried so hard, so very hard, to make some intelligent suggestion; to score some Brownie points. But nothing had come to mind.

‘If it’s OK with you, sir, I’d like to spend some time down at St Aldate’s this morning — see if we can find some link between all these burglaries in North Oxford.’

‘Why not? And good luck. Don’t give ’em my address though, will you?’

After Lewis had gone, Morse stared down at the crossword again. Seldom was it that he failed to finish things off, and that within a pretty smartish time, too. All he needed was a large Scotch… and the answer (he knew) would hit him straight between the eyes. But it was only 8.35 a.m. and—

It hit him.

Scotch!

As he swiftly filled in the five remaining blank squares, he was smiling beatifically, wishing only that Lewis had been there to appreciate the coup de grâce.

But Lewis wasn’t.

And it was only many months later that Lewis was to learn — and then purely by accident — the answer to that clue in The Times crossword for 25 May 1994, a day (as would appear in retrospect) on which so many things of fateful consequence were destined to occur.