We had coffee and shop-bought cake and talked about our days. One of her assistants was causing trouble and the rents in the mall were going up. I rambled meaninglessly about what went off behind closed doors in this wicked world we lived in.
"You're stressed out," she told me.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm not very good company."
"How are the midge bites?"
"Agonising." I smiled as I said it.
She went away for a while and returned carrying a box filled with coloured bottles, like a paintbox. She placed it on the coffee table alongside me and drew a chair up directly in front of mine. "Prince Charles swears by lavender oil," she said.
"Right," I replied. "Right." If it was good enough for him it was good enough for Charlie Priest.
She lit three small porcelain burners about the room and turned the lights low. I relaxed. I had a feeling I was in for a treat. Jacquie sat facing me and took my hand. "First the lavender, to absorb all your stresses," she whispered. I watched her long fingers caress my wrists, her scarlet nails skimming my skin but not touching it. She did my fingers, one by one, and I discovered things about myself that I'd never imagined.
"And now the aloe vera," she said.
I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, and wished this could go on forever. She removed my shoes and socks and stroked my feet, fingertips and exotic oils mingling together so I couldn't tell touch from smell, pleasure from torture, arousal from relaxation. I stopped trying.
"This is where the problem is," Jacquie told me. She was massaging my neck now, harder than before, her thumbs probing muscle, searching for knots. "You're tight here." I let my head loll up and down in agreement. It could have been the most magical evening of my life, but it wasn't. She cured the itching and the stress; all I had now was confusion and frustration.
It was the hottest night of the year, which didn't help. I lay on my bed with just a sheet over me and the window open. When the blackbird on the roof started singing at about three thirty I got up and read a book. I don't mind him singing, but he will insist on tapping time with his foot, and he has no sense of rhythm. At seven I went to work.
Terence John Alderdice, Dave told me, remembered Duncan Roberts but was mystified about the girl. "He reckoned Duncan was. a right plonker,"
Dave said. "He was quite friendly with him the first year. They became mates on day one and were in the same tutorial group, whatever that means, then drifted apart as they found more kindred spirits, as you do. He said Duncan developed some repulsive habits. They were in a hall of residence, and Duncan took great pleasure in never washing his plate or coffee mug. He just used them over and over again."
"Sounds delightful," I said.
"In the second year," he continued, "Alderdice said Duncan just gave up studying. He lost interest and moved into a squat with a bunch of other dead-beats. Alderdice didn't see much of him again and never saw him with a girl and doesn't remember ever seeing one with purple hair.
So there. How did you go on?"
"Similar. Waste of time. Except that the cycle is repeating itself. I saw Pretty's girlfriend come to visit, just as I left. Black girl, early twenties, with a little daughter, 'bout five."
Dave said: "Number three lining up for the chop. What can we do about it?"
"Not much. I'll have a word with his probation officer, see if he's any suggestions. She was gorgeous."
"The little girl?"
"No, turnip brain, the mother. The little girl was… little."
Chapter 6
The high pressure moved around a bit, bringing breezes from the north.
The nights were clear and cold and early-morning mists rolled off the hills, causing havoc on the roads. Two people were killed in a fifteen-vehicle pile-up on the M62 and a golfer was struck by lightning in Brighouse. We made ten more contacts, some by telephone. It's all right having carte blanche with expenses, but driving a hundred miles for an interview takes a big chunk out of the working day. And although Nigel was running the big show there were some jobs I had to attend to myself and some I wanted to. Arresting Peter Mark Handley was one of the latter.
Handley was forty-four years old and taught physical development at Heckley High School, the local comprehensive. When I was a pupil there it was called the Grammar School and we learned PT. Because of financial constraints there was no games mistress as such for the girls, just a reluctant succession of uninterested teachers seconded to take a lesson when they could. The net ball and hockey teams suffered, as did a group of girls who showed promise as swimmers. To prevent a further slide in the school's fortunes Handley had volunteered to take over as their coach, too.
We'd heard via an older girl who spent a week with us on a job awareness programme that he subscribed to the touchy-feely training method. We held off while the school was in session to avoid rumours spreading, but as soon as the summer holiday came we put him under observation and started interviewing specially selected pupils. Another girl, called Grace and wise beyond her years, said he would give them group talks before a match, extolling the virtues of the East German training methods. He showed them videos of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and modern ones of powerful Teutonic maidens out-sprinting, out-throwing and out-swimming their mortal competitors. Winning was all, he exhorted. Any means of achieving victory was acceptable, and "Simply the Best' became the unofficial team song.
Later, after the game, when senses were heightened and bodies pleasantly tired, he would offer a lift home to his current favourite.
Let's have a McDonald's he'd insist. In the restaurant he'd tell her more about East German training methods. They had relied heavily on the administration of huge amounts of the male hormone testosterone. It was a wonder drug for female athletes, and drastically cut down on the amount of training required to achieve international status. There could be problems, of course, if the dosage wasn't carefully controlled. He' dlaugh, and suggest that some of the women shot-putters who'd taken massive doses now left the seat upright when they came out of the toilet. What it did for their sex lives he couldn't imagine, he said, studying the girl's reaction as he broached the subject.
In the car, near the end of her street, he'd park while talking about the game to hold her attention. His arm would reach across the back of the seat and his fingers caress her hair. There were other methods, he'd say. She was special. She could make it, right to the top. The coach-and-athlete relationship was like no other. The other way, his way, was the loving way. There were no tests for it, and anyway, it wasn't against the rules. His way of administering the male hormone brought only happiness and contentment, plus improved performance. And there were no unwelcome side effects. He didn't mention pregnancy.
Grace told him to go play with himself and slammed the car door so hard the mirror fell off. He never spoke to her again but she thought the next girl he approached fell for it. Two others gave us the same story but different names of girls they thought had had affairs with him.
Three refusals, three successes, not a bad score line A female DC had a quiet word with the girls we'd been told about and two of them admitted it. The other one told her to mind her own business.
Trouble was, they were over sixteen. A schoolteacher is in loco parentis, and is not expected to seduce his charges, but it ain't illegal. We could get him sacked, but that looked like all we could do. Then one of the girls mentioned the magazines he'd shown her and that was all we needed.
The good news was that his wife had left him about a month earlier.
Whether it was related we didn't know, but she'd packed two suitcases and decamped to her mother's in Wombwell, near Barnsley. We have to tread delicately in cases like this, but with her out of the way we had a free hand to go round and put the shits up him. Thursday morning, nine a.m." me, Maggie Madison, Sparky and Annette Brown swung into the street of mock-Georgian link-detached dwellings and knocked on his door. The neighbour's sprinkler was drenching the shared lawn and a sun bed was deployed, all ready for duty. The forecast said thunder and a few big cumulus clouds were sailing overhead, but it looked unlikely.