The Good Teacher: A gripping thriller from the Kindle top ten bestselling author of ‘The Perfect Neighbours’. Rachel Sargeant
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‘boxer short intactus’ so you’ll have to wait a little longer for that one. There is an older injury to the right knuckles. I’d say it occurred several hours before death. He banged his fist against something sharp. However, cause of death seems to be one thrusting action up through the ribcage.”
I keep looking at the doctor’s face, not at the descriptive movements he makes with his hands. My nails dig into my sticky palms. And this isn’t even the full PM. I force my eyes onto the ivory face and try to think of him as the corpse, the victim, the case, but he’s still Carl Brock, a human being. The darkly shadowed eyelids will never again open to scan the books on his bookcase. The unshaven jaw won’t need the razor from the tidy bathroom cabinet. The stiffening shoulders, fleshy and wide, will never again share the warmth of the double bed.
“It’s a boat-shaped wound, suggesting a knife with one sharp edge. And long,” Dr Spicer says.
“We found a blood-covered kitchen knife close by the body,” Bagley replies. “Could it have been suicide?”
“Not with that angle of penetration.”
“Can you tell us anything about the killer?”
“You won’t find the assailant soaked in the victim’s blood, a few spatters at most. There was little external bleeding. He haemorrhaged internally.”
I swallow hard and concentrate on the doctor’s face.
“Man or woman?” Matthews asks.
“Hard to tell. The blow was strong and quick. It’s a clean incision and it seems to have taken the victim by surprise.”
“So we are looking for someone big and powerfully built,” Bagley concludes.
“The height of the killer is difficult to gauge. The attack apparently took place on the side of a ditch. The victim may have been standing on lower ground. With a sharp knife, the attacker would have needed little force. Even a woman could have managed it if that was how they were standing. Once the knife had penetrated the skin, it would’ve been like stabbing a water melon.”
“When will you do the full PM?”
“Tomorrow at eleven but we need a formal ID before that. Even when we’ve stitched them up, the deceased never look the same after we’ve had the hacksaw to them. The bereaved don’t like to see that.”
Queasiness wraps itself around me like a tight woollen blanket.
“We’ll get the wife to do it when we know what state she’s in,” Bagley says.
“The police surgeon examined her about an hour ago,” Dr Spicer says.
“Do you mean Dr Tarnovski?”
“Of course.”
There’s a pause as Dr Spicer and DI Bagley exchange a glance.
Dr Spicer resumes his briefing. “Apparently she’s being treated for shock. Mild concussion, badly beaten up. Black eyes, cracked cheekbone. Fresh bruising to the arms and legs consistent with being chained and handcuffed.” He looks at Bagley again and adds, “No sign of sexual assault.”
“Is she fit to interview?”
“You’ll have to check with Dr Tarnovski. She’s suffered a major trauma. Her own ordeal was bad enough and now she has to cope with her husband’s murder.”
“Of course, doctor. I realize that. DC Adams and I will be back for the full PM tomorrow.”
My heart drops like a stone.
Dr Tarnovski sits at his desk and scrutinizes the lines of text. His eyes linger over every weight and schedule as he crosschecks them against the recesses of his encyclopaedic memory. He’ll find a match, an absolute, however long it takes. He just needs to locate The Evidence. He takes a sip from the plastic cup by his hand, smacking his lips together and rubbing away the taste. With The Evidence, he could make his predictions and test his hypothesis. His elbow nudges a half-eaten curry tray, relic of another late night at the office. His methodology deserves perseverance. It will reap its own rewards – soon.
What time is it now? He lifts his sleeve in an automatic gesture, forgetting that his wrist is bare. A temporary setback. He reaches across the paper-strewn desk to the old transistor radio. It crackles weakly as he turns the dial. If only he hadn’t been called out to that assault victim, Gaby somebody. At least the examination was straightforward. She’d had a good beating but not life-threatening. It’s up to her if she chooses not to take the sedatives and sleeping tablets he suggested. Another ill-informed hippy isn’t his problem. She can always try her own GP for some alternative therapy.
He ponders for the nth time why he remains a police surgeon, calculating an exponential rise in his job dissatisfaction. Of course the profession has its value. Its contribution is not without merit. Someone has to treat traumatized victims and assess prisoners keen to feign illness.
He’s a strategist, a mathematician, a man of reason – and speculation. It’s a case of horses for courses. The creases in his face deepen into a grin. He marvels at his gift for irony. Police duties take him away from his real work, although he has to admit that the income is useful. The allowance and expenses – thank the Lord for travel claims and a DCI who doesn’t probe them.
Only Mary probes. In the early years of their marriage, he tried to explain the nature of his empirical investigations. But she isn’t a scientist. He has no time to listen to her weakminded debates and to counter her abstract reasoning. He’s taken the pragmatic line and concealed his research, continuing in secret to build the necessary experience to achieve results.
He scans the page again. He must have missed it. He drains his cup. His head begins to ache but he forces the print back into focus. Suddenly, there’s The Evidence. Yes, The Evidence, but are the conditions viable? He snatches up a page of formulae and scribbles in the numerical values. The first equation balances. Now to manipulate the figures on the second one. Adrenaline starts its familiar stampede around his body. One more test needed, then it will be irrefutable. He roots through a pile of charts and diagrams and retrieves some graph paper. Hand shaking, he plots the data and joins the crosses. There it is, a straight line. Better than he’d dared hope. Perfect positive correlation. It’s incontrovertible. After so many challenges – not sacrifices, as Mary called them – here is the eureka moment.
With his eyes fixed on the newsprint, his right hand opens his top drawer and his left dials the sacred number.
It takes an age to be answered. Such impudence. He has an urgent theory to verify.
At last. “The name is Tarnovski. I have an account.” He takes the whisky bottle out of the drawer and refills the cup.
“What limit?… I can’t hold. There isn’t time.”
During the silence on the phone line, he strains to make sense of the buzzing sounds from his radio.
“I see. And you can’t override it? I’m a long-standing account holder … Well, of all the nerve. Wait a minute …” Another confounded woman who doesn’t understand the science. He slides open the top drawer again and removes a debit card from underneath a second, empty, bottle. It slips in his clammy fingers.
“It’s the eleven thirty at Lingfield. I want to place …” He hesitates as another, weaker, force tugs against his resolve: Sara’s gap-year fund. But he’ll be more than able to replenish it. And retrieve his wristwatch from the pawnbrokers. A statistician of his standing doesn’t miscalculate.
“I want to place £800 on number five, The Evidence.” He drains his cup again. It’s an absolute constant, a dead cert.
Still feeling flushed after the meeting in the mortuary, I take off my jacket and clutch it to my stomach as I follow DI Bagley into