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might have decided in advance that this was a good place for a killing, might have brought him here in his car at gunpoint, or even forced him to drive himself here. His car was parked by the entrance. Forensic have taken it away to examine it.’
    Lambert said, ‘We’ll need to find out if he’d any reason to be in the area of his own accord.’ As usual, he was thinking practically, wondering where the resources of a large murder team might best be deployed. They would need house to house enquiries throughout the quiet roads around the park. Someone might have seen something in the darkness of that early autumn night; someone might be able to suggest a reason why Logan would have come here willingly.
    Johnson interrupted his thoughts. ‘He was shot at point-blank range. Through the back of his head.’
    â€˜What with?’
    â€˜No details of the weapon yet. Forensic might come up with something after the PM, I suppose, but there wasn’t much of the head left to study. They did suggest that the entry wound indicated that there’d probably been a silencer on the murder weapon.’
    â€˜You haven’t found the bullet?’
    The SOC sergeant shook his head sadly. ‘No sign of it in the SOC area. The top back of the head had gone completely. I’d guess a pistol was placed against the back of his head and fired with a slight elevation. The bullet may have continued onwards and upwards. Anyway, I’m satisfied it isn’t anywhere in the immediate vicinity. We’ve looked hard enough.’
    Hook looked at the ground in front of them, at the flattening of the sparse grass which indicated where the body had been found, at the sinister staining around the bole of the tree. ‘How tall was he?’
    He didn’t need to explain the basis of his question to the old hands around him. Jack Johnson shook his head and said with a mirthless smile, ‘He was over six feet, Bert. His assailant may have been only a little shorter. I’m afraid you can’t assume it was a woman, or a resentful kid from his school.’
    Lambert looked up at the quiet semi-detached houses by the park as they left. He had a curious sensation that he had sometimes experienced before that their killer was watching their efforts, was smiling mockingly at their minimal progress. But the houses might have been unoccupied; their fronts looked square and unhelpful, their windows were as blank and unfocussed as blind eyes. There was no twitching of a curtain to indicate a curious watcher, no sign of the nosey parker who might have witnessed useful things thirty-six hours earlier.
    Lambert had the feeling already that this was going to be a complex case.

Eight
    T here was a curious air of subdued excitement hanging over Greenwood Comprehensive School.
    Lambert and Hook felt it as soon as they got out of the police Mondeo in the staff car park. The weather was warm for the last day of September, but there had been no sun for several hours and the atmosphere was heavy under low cloud. There was not much movement evident in the place during the last hour of the school day, but a febrile, almost guilty, expectation hung over everyone who greeted them. The staff and the students of Greenwood were still absorbing the unthinkable tidings of their leader’s death. Now they were waiting to see how the police would go about exposing his killers.
    A tall woman with blonde hair met them before they could reach the Secretary’s office. ‘Pat Dean, Deputy Head,’ she said tersely. ‘Thank you for your phone call. Needless to say, we’re all still very shocked. Needless to say also, we want you to find out who killed Peter, as quickly as possible.’ She said this while taking them into the privacy of her office, as though even that short journey must be filled with assurances of support.
    When they were sitting on the armchairs in her room, she said guiltily, ‘I can organize