A Line to Kill

Marc Bellamy’s collapse, when it came, was remarkable. It was as if a plane crossing the sun had cast its shadow over him. In that single moment, the bombast, the jokiness, the sense of authority, the self-confidence were all wiped away. The celebrity was gone and in his place sat a frightened schoolboy with a plate filled with too much food, wondering what was going to happen next.

He pushed the plate to one side.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he muttered in a voice that was suddenly husky. He looked across the terrace to make sure nobody could hear what was being said. But we were alone. ‘I don’t take these things because I want them,’ he went on. ‘I can’t stop myself. I’ve had treatment. I’ve been to shrinks and I’ve been to doctors. What I have is an addictive disorder—’

‘There are a lot of people in jail with addictive disorders,’ Hawthorne reminded him.

‘You don’t know what it’s like. I hate it. I hate myself for doing it. It’s not as if I’ve ever taken anything valuable.’

‘Like a twenty-thousand-quid gold-plated Rolex, for example?’

Marc’s eyes blazed. ‘That was different. I took that because it was his and I wanted to hurt him.’

‘Did you take it off his wrist?’

‘No! He left it in the kitchen. Just before he went out into the garden.’

‘He left through the kitchen door?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was that?’

‘Just after nine forty-five. Maybe ten to ten.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘There was someone waiting for him outside. I didn’t see who it was. He took the watch off and put it on a shelf and I thought, you know what? There are still plenty enough people in the house. He’ll know it was me, but he’ll never be able to prove it. And it really made me smile to think of him losing it, his precious Rolex. I didn’t keep it, by the way. I threw it in the sea.’ He pointed. ‘It’s out there.’

‘You really hated him that much?’

‘You have no idea what that man did to me – at Westland College. How much he hurt me.’

‘So tell me.’

‘I can’t.’

Hawthorne was pitiless. ‘You have to, Marc. We only have your word for it that he left that watch on a kitchen shelf. You could have taken it off his wrist after you’d killed him.’

Charles le Mesurier had worn his watch on his right hand, the same hand that had been left untied.

‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ Marc rasped. ‘What sort of person do you think I am?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ Hawthorne paused. ‘Tell me about Westland College.’

‘I’ve never talked about it. Not in my entire adult life.’

‘Charles le Mesurier can’t hurt you any more.’

‘There’s nothing left to hurt.’ Marc Bellamy had begun to cry. I was shocked. It wasn’t just the demolition of the man, in this bright morning sunlight. It was the fact that Hawthorne and I had been the cause.

We waited in uncomfortable silence until he had contained himself.

‘Westland was a minor independent school outside Chichester,’ he began. ‘I told you. I was sent there in 1983, when my dad got posted to the south coast. I was eight years old. Do you have any idea what those places were like back then? It was a bloody bear pit. I’d been perfectly happy up in Halifax. Ordinary school, ordinary friends. I never knew what was going to hit me when I walked in. Boarding school, dormitories, tuck shop. Even the uniform made me feel like a pillock. The teachers were ignorant bastards. The food was fucking horrible.

‘But the worst of it was the other boys. If you were going to survive with that lot, you had to be one of them and if you weren’t, they knew it in seconds. They’d come from the right homes – rich parents, nannies – and it was like their whole life they were prepared for that sort of place. There was a pack mentality and I felt it the moment I arrived, like some bloody sacrificial lamb. I was small for my age. I could have had the word PREY tattooed on my forehead.

‘Well, it started soon enough … the bullying. Apple-pie bed the first night. Tie cut in half. Letters from my mum stolen and read out so that everyone could have a good laugh. That was the end of the first week. Then there was the name-calling. About six weeks in, I got caught stealing a postal order. Remember those? A £2 postal order. Well, I was up in front of the housemaster for that and three strokes of the cane, but it was the other kids who were worse. After that I was Tea Leaf. Always Tea Leaf. They never let me forget it.

‘Charles le Mesurier was the ringleader. I never understood how he got the power because he wasn’t stronger or smarter than any of the others. I remember him as a scrawny little kid and there was always this gleam in his eyes as he worked out what sort of cruelty he might get up to next. You know, when you describe all these things later they sound small and petty and you wonder what all the fuss was about. But at the time … it hollows you out. It makes you feel worthless. I saw it when I met him again here. It was exactly the same. Flash. He loved being called that. His nickname wasn’t an insult to him. He loved it. He revelled in it.