One Last Lesson by Iain Cameron Page B

some impropriety, someone who might just be a well-regarded academic for all we know, have you considered it might be college tittle-tattle by disgruntled students, keen to get back at him for marking their papers too low or something? When my brother was on leave from Afghanistan, he told me the story about an Army patrol sent out to arrest a car dealer that was suspected of being a terrorist. When they got there, they arrested him and were taking him in for questioning when they were stopped by one of the locals who told them it was put-up job, done by rival car dealers to try and put him out of business.’
    ‘ I expected you to say something like that so I got them to name specific times and places and whether they actually witnessed the incident or if the story was told to them by someone else. If they were present at the party or the pub or wherever this incident happened, I asked them to describe exactly when it was, the address of the place and who else was there, and more importantly, what it was they were getting up to.’
    ‘And your conclusion is?’
    ‘Several people saw them kissing and feeling one another up on one or more occasion, and one claimed he heard them having sex when he was standing outside the bedroom door at a party.’
    ‘The kissing and fondling part I’ll buy but the sex behind a closed bedr oom door is nothing but hearsay, possibly malicious hearsay at that. So unless they’re caught in the act or he actually admits it, I don’t think its safe to assume they were having an affair, just yet.’
    ‘Trust you to spoil the fun, but if that one doesn’t convince you, this one will floor you. Are you ready for this?’
    ‘Get on with it Walters.’
    ‘ There are rumours,’ she held up her hand to stop him telling her off, ‘which I believe we can substantiate, that Jon Lehman is a partner in a company which owns an internet porn site and wait for it, a couple of guys claim to have seen pictures of Sarah on it.’
    ‘Good God! That’s incredible!’ He immediately thought back to the first time he saw her lying on the golf course, her beautiful innocent face and then her devastated parents in their middle-class house in Epsom. What the hell was this girl mixed up in?
    Five minutes later , Walters left to enjoy her lunch in peace while he returned to his desk and waited for the indigestion that this latest revelation would cause. How could he break this news to Sarah’s parents as there was no way he wanted them to read about it in their morning newspaper?
    He was about to reach for his computer and access Lehman’s porn website when he suddenly realised he would be making a serious mistake. Looking at such material was prohibited under a document he signed after joining Sussex Police, a practice that was common in most public and private organisations across the UK.
    From memory, the document stated that accessing inappropriate web sites on a police force computer was punishable with a suspension and possible dismissal, depending on the seriousness of the breech, and the defence that it was an important part of an on-going investigation was unlikely to be deemed sufficient justification. Thinking about it, he nearly gave CI Harris a gold-plated opportunity to shoehorn his man into CID, or even better from the Super’s point of view, a chance to get rid of the annoying Scotsman in his midst forever.
    He was about to lift the phone and talk to George Watson, a sergeant of twenty-odd years who knew everything that was worth knowing in Sussex Police and ask his advice, when it rang.
    ‘Hello sir, it’s Harry Wallop. I’m still with the SOCO’s at Mike Ferris’s place but they’re not hopeful of finding anything , as there’s been no obvious ground disturbance in the garden or fibres and such on the fence, and the search I did of the cupboards and all the normal hiding places uncovered sod-all. More significantly, it looks to me like a suitcase is missing and there’s a gap in his