‘With the schools or the kids?’ I asked.
‘Both,’ said Sam. ‘The kids loved him. He had that way with them that the best teachers have – strict but friendly – not an easy balancing act.’
He’d also had a bit of an American accent that young Sam had thought really sexy.
‘He’d spent time in San Francisco,’ he said. ‘I found him quite irresistible.’
They’d bought the house in the spring of 1986 and got married the same year at St Kentigern’s – it was just down the road.
‘Is that the same church where Preston attended mass?’ asked Seawoll, and he gave me a look. Jocasta had said she’d met Preston at a special mass.
‘Yes, it was,’ said Sam.
Seawoll asked me to tell Danni and Monkfish to run up to the church and see if anyone remembered Preston in his mass-going prime.
‘Oh, I doubt anyone from that time is still there,’ I heard Sam say as I stepped outside to pass on the instructions.
The rain had slackened to a drizzle and the pair asked if they could grab some refs while they were at it – I said yes, but to canvass the church first.
‘And text us if something startling turns up,’ I said, knowing that it probably wouldn’t.
As I went back inside it was obvious that Seawoll had circled back to Preston’s religiosity. In an interview, even a non-confrontational one, you always look to cover the important facts from several directions at once.
‘In any case, it wasn’t sudden,’ said Sam. ‘Like I said, Preston had always gone to church on Sundays. Then he started going in for special masses as well – remembrances, All Saints’, Ascension Thursday. I remember over breakfast one morning he told me he was running a prayer group with some students, but I didn’t really pay attention.’
‘Do you know whereabouts he was running the prayer group?’ asked Seawoll as I re-entered the living room.
‘In a community hall around the corner,’ said Sam, and he gave an address which I noted down. ‘It really was just a weekly prayer meeting.’
Until suddenly something happened.
‘He didn’t come home one night,’ said Sam. ‘I thought he’d gone out to the pub at first. But by three in the morning I was getting angry. By six I was getting worried, and I was wondering whether to call the police when he turned up on the doorstep.’
Manic is the word Sam used. Manic, demented … he would have said hyped up on uppers, except that Preston never took drugs.
‘“I’ve been one with the Holy Spirit!” he said. “And he has shown me so many things.”’ Sam shook his head. ‘I thought it was rubbish. And then he turned to me and asked me why I wasn’t living as a man.’
And then he passed out on the living room floor – Sam had considered calling an ambulance, but his breathing seemed natural and even.
‘We separated less than a month later,’ said Sam. ‘He announced it one morning over breakfast as if we were discussing the shopping. It was like he was a different person.’
‘What exactly changed?’ I asked.
‘This is going to sound weird,’ said Sam, and I saw Seawoll perk up at the word weird. ‘But he used to be much angrier.’
‘At you?’ I asked.
‘Not at me,’ said Sam. ‘At the world, at society, at things he couldn’t change like Margaret Thatcher and Section 28 and the miners’ strike.’
‘The poll tax,’ said Seawoll.
Sam rolled his eyes.
‘Oh God, the poll tax,’ he said.
But when I asked whether Preston had been politically active, Sam laughed and shook his head again.
‘Not active,’ he said. ‘Just angry and shouty. I didn’t mind because he used to be funny about it. I used to tell him that he should do stand-up. If he’d taken my advice he’d be on Mock the Week by now.’
And then after the first manic phase, it changed. He’d become eerily calm.
‘I mean, I like mellow … but suddenly I was living with the Buddha,’ said Sam. ‘If the Buddha was a Roman Catholic.’
In mundane policing, such a sudden change in personality might lead to thoughts of drug use or coercion. But in my line of work I had to consider the possibility of sequestration or the glamour.
The glamour, in which magic was used to influence someone’s mood or intentions, was usually short-lived. Sequestration was our technical term for possession by an entity or entities unknown and could last longer, but was nearly always fatal.
‘Did he ever experiment with drugs?’ I asked.
‘I thought it was drugs, too,’ said Sam. ‘But I think in the end it was religion. He said that he had been charged to go out and do God’s work. I asked him what he’d been doing all this time and he said “messing about”. But now he could see clearly what he was supposed to do.’
‘Did you stay in contact?’ asked Seawoll.
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘The next time I had any contact at all, it was ten years later and he was asking for a divorce. Which was just as well really, because I’d transitioned by then and was looking to divorce him in absentia.’
‘Did you want to marry someone else?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Sam, and he made a face. ‘But I did want to be legally unencumbered – he signed over his stake in the house as part of the settlement.’
‘Generous,’ I said.
‘Not really – I’d been paying all of the mortgage for a decade. It was mostly mine already.’
Sam stared gloomily into his coffee mug, Seawoll caught my eye and tapped his ring finger.
‘Did your husband have a puzzle ring?’ I asked. ‘In silver or platinum?’
Sam gave me a surprised look.
‘More than one,’ he said. ‘Were they stolen – is that what this is all about? No … that was thirty years ago. They can’t be important – can they?’
‘We think they may be connected to Preston’s death,’ I said.
‘He had seven,’ said Sam. ‘I remember because he kept on quoting Tolkien – “Seven rings for Dwarven kings, one ring to rule them all.”’ Sam frowned. ‘That’s not how it went …’
‘When did he acquire these rings?’ asked Seawoll, before I could correct the quotation.
‘He didn’t steal them,’ said Sam, straightening up. ‘He was a very honest man – at heart.’
I assured him that we didn’t have any reason to think that Preston had stolen the rings, but were interested in when and under what circumstances they came into his possession. Sam relaxed a little. That’s the purpose of that kind of long-winded police speak – it lulls witnesses into a false sense of security.
‘It was February 1989,’ said Sam. ‘And he found them inside a book.’
Literally inside a book, an old one with a leather cover – a hole had been cut into the pages to make a space.
‘Like they use to hide booze,’ said Sam. ‘Only smaller.’
‘Do you remember the name of the book?’ I asked.
‘No, sorry,’ said Sam.
And I thought, Shit, dead end.
But Sam jumped up and shook his finger in the air.
‘I might still have it,’ he said, and we watched him scamper up the stairs.
‘After thirty years?’ I said to Seawoll.
‘You’d be amazed what you end up keeping,’ he said.
Sam was gone for fifteen minutes, in which time I took the opportunity to rifle through his Blu-Ray and DVD collection, stick my nose in his kitchen cupboards, read all the notes stuck to his fridge and, because I’m a nice guy, rinse and put the used rainbow mugs in his dishwasher.
What I learnt, apart from the fact that he had a fondness for Wes Craven and Wim Wenders, was that Sam was neat, organised and self-contained.
I was about to push my luck and start exploring on the next floor up, but Sam came down with a book-shaped Co-Op bag held out before him.