Winsome held her hand up. ‘Sorry, Lisa. I have to ask these questions.’
‘Yeah, I suppose you do... but it just makes me so... If you want to know the truth, I don’t do drugs. Well, except for a little dope now and then. But no speed, no E, no crystal meth, no downers, coke or heroin. Never have. Not even acid. Don’t touch them. I was drinking and smoking too much, sure, but no other illegal drugs. And, no, I don’t care to explain or justify myself. So just move on, will you.’
‘OK. Did you ever tell Gavin Miller about what you’d overheard?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘What was the point? It was too late, like I said. They weren’t going to reopen the inquiry. It would only make him more bitter. Besides, it was after he left, moved away, and we’d lost touch. We didn’t see each other again, not until quite a while later when... you know, he phoned and asked me about the weed and all. I mean, we weren’t mates, we didn’t socialise or anything. I didn’t even know where he was living. And I was away a lot of the time.’
‘He sought you out?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he get in touch?’
‘He phoned me on my mobile. This was ages after he got the sack, like, maybe three years or more. I’d left Eastvale for two years and come back and all that.’
‘Why you?’
‘When I was at college, when we had our little chats, he once talked about the old days and how they all used to smoke up and listen to the Grateful Dead or whoever and talk about enlightenment and the Tibetan Book of the Dead — like getting wasted wasn’t just a bit of fun for them, but part of some sort of deep spiritual search, and how all that had changed — and I laughed and told him, damn right, the people I smoked up with wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything like that. They just wanted to get stoned. He laughed with me. He wasn’t judgemental, and he obviously remembered that I was someone who might know where he could get hold of some hash or grass when he wanted it.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Less than a year. Spring.’
‘Did he say why he wanted it all of a sudden?’
‘No. We met in a coffee shop. Not this one. He told me he had a lot of time on his hands, and he’d been doing a lot of thinking about those old times he told me about, remembering, you know, what it was like back then, the music, the eastern religions and tarot cards and stuff. He sounded like he’d done it all before, but not for a long time. He said it had been years since he’d done anything like that. He wanted to try smoking a joint again and maybe dropping a tab of acid, and he asked if I could help him out.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘I don’t know. He seemed sort of defeated, a bit sad. Like his life didn’t have much meaning, and he was trying to lose himself in the past.’
‘Were you surprised by his request?’
‘Of course.’
‘Didn’t you suspect it was some kind of entrapment?’
‘No. Why should I? He was always good to me. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t a snitch. To be honest, he was also a bit of a deadbeat when we met, a bum, with the old clothes and straggly beard and all. Not that some of your undercover colleagues don’t do a pretty good job of looking like deadbeats, but there’s always the tell. Their shoes are too clean, or their teeth, or something. But Mr Miller was genuinely down on his luck. I honestly thought he just wanted to recapture something from his lost youth, or something like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’d had visions of angels and heavenly light or something. There was just something sort of... haunted... about him.’
‘Let’s get back to what you were saying before. What did you do to help Gavin Miller after you’d overheard Beth and Kayleigh admit they’d set him up?’
‘Best thing I could think of when I was together enough. I talked to his mate, didn’t I? Told him the whole story.’
‘Who? Jim Cooper?’
‘No. Not that useless pillock. Mr Lomax, the head of the department. He’d stuck up for Mr Miller before, at the hearing, or so Mr Miller told me. He said he’d see what he could do.’
‘And what happened?’
‘You know as well as I do. Fuck all happened. Kyle McClusky was gone. Mr Miller was gone. Beth and Kayleigh were graduating. The boat wasn’t rocking any more, and that’s the way everyone wanted to keep it. Including, I should imagine, Mr Trevor fucking Lomax.’
‘So it appears that the college disciplinary board sold Gavin Miller down the river,’ Winsome said in the Queen’s Arms that evening, after she had finished telling Banks and Annie about her meeting with Lisa Gray.
‘According to Lisa Gray,’ said Annie.
‘She’d no reason to lie.’
‘Everybody lies,’ said Banks.
‘More so if you cosy up to them,’ said Annie. ‘Then they think you’re their mate.’
‘But they also tell you far more than they ever would if you kept your distance,’ Banks argued. He had long been a proponent of the casual, chatty interview, leading the interviewee slowly through shared interests, opinions and small talk towards more pointed questions. True, it gave him more chaff and wheat to sort out, and it posed a few challenges when it came to discerning the truth, but in his experience people tended to clam up, or lie outright, when he came at them with a stiff and official approach. Not everyone agreed, of course, and Banks was also quite willing and able to use the harder method when he felt it was justified. The only thing you had to remember was that people lied no matter which approach you took.
‘I’m not saying that Lisa didn’t lie,’ Winsome said. ‘I think there’s a lot she didn’t tell me, and a lot she evaded. But I also think there’s a good deal of truth in what she said, that’s all. Remember, Trevor Lomax also seemed to think Gavin Miller had been ill-treated.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Banks. ‘No wonder the poor sod was bitter. This Lisa have an alibi?’
‘At home watching telly with her mates.’
‘Check it out, will you?’
‘Lomax didn’t do much to help the situation, though, did he?’ said Annie. ‘Not according to your Lisa. And he certainly didn’t tell me about her coming to see him.’
They sipped their drinks. Even Winsome was having a gin and tonic. She said she needed it after her meeting with Lisa Gray. ‘But it’s still the sort of break we’ve been looking for, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Now we’ve got another possible suspect in Kyle McClusky. I know it’s a long time after the events at the college went down, but something could have put him and Gavin Miller in touch again — drugs, for example — and something could have flared up. McClusky shouldn’t be too hard to find. We’re going to have to talk to the girls, too.’
‘There was no record of calls to any of them on Miller’s mobile,’ Banks pointed out. ‘Not Kyle McClusky, not Beth, not Kayleigh.’
‘Maybe they were too careful for that.’
‘And as Annie said, there’s still Trevor Lomax,’ Winsome went on. ‘Lisa said she told him what she knew about Gavin Miller warning Kyle off, and what she overheard the girls talking about in the toilets, but he didn’t do anything. Maybe he was involved, too. Maybe he didn’t try to help Miller as much as he professed to do because something would come out about him?’
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ said Banks. ‘Maybe if Miller had actually reported Kyle McClusky — you know, officially — then things might have turned out differently. But the incident was well over by the time Lisa Gray knew and told Lomax about it, and I doubt very much that he wanted it all raking up again on the say-so of some young junky student friend of Miller’s. Imagine how well that would go down. They’d probably try and prove he was having it off with her, too.’