A Room Full of Killers

by Michael Wood

  ‘What about the other inmates?’

  ‘Keep them locked in their rooms. Nobody is to unlock those doors without my say-so.’

  Everyone left to conduct their duties. Matilda went over to a window and looked out. Thankfully, the heavy rain had washed the press away. There were no cars, news van or waiting journalists. The two uniformed officers were standing at the gates with their torches aloft. She didn’t blame them for not noticing the escape. She fished out her phone and searched for a number. It was several rings before it was answered by a groggy greeting.

  ‘Ma’am, it’s DCI Darke. We have a situation at Starling House,’ Matilda said to ACC Valerie Masterson.

  FORTY-THREE

  It took over an hour for every single room, cupboard, nook and cranny in Starling House to be searched. There was no sign of Jacob Brown anywhere. The rain had stopped, and Matilda had called for a fire engine to pump out the water on Limb Lane so a search team could get through and begin a search of the grounds and surrounding fields at first light.

  There was nothing the ACC could do. She told Matilda to keep her informed, and as soon as she was able, she wanted a meeting to be told ‘what the fuck was going on at that bastard place’ as she so beautifully put it.

  Matilda had spoken separately with Rebecca Childs and Peter McFly. Their stories were identical. Kate had left them in the staffroom just before half-past nine last night. It was quiet from then until an alarm sounded over four hours later.

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ Kate said for the hundredth time. ‘I don’t understand this at all. How can an inmate break out of his room and escape? It’s not possible.’

  Kate and Matilda were sitting in Kate’s office. They were trapped by the localized flooding on Limb Lane. There was nothing they could do. Although Matilda felt a degree of sympathy towards Kate, she was beginning to tire with regards to how blind she was towards her own staff.

  ‘Kate, I think it’s time you realized that one of your staff is a killer and, for reasons unknown, helped Jacob Brown to escape.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No. I’m sorry, no, that’s not … no.’

  ‘What do you know of your staff?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, fiddling with the collar on her shirt.

  ‘We’ve searched their rooms as well, you know. Did you know Richard Grover has a stack of pornography magazines under his bed? Some of them you can’t even buy in this country due to their content.’

  The colour drained from Kate’s face. ‘Oh God. It’s not kids, is it?’

  ‘Let’s just say if they’re not kids they’re extremely close to the legal age limit.’

  ‘But that has no bearing on this case. Ryan Asher wasn’t interfered with in that way, was he?’

  ‘My God, you’re still defending your staff,’ Matilda yelled. ‘Does one of them need to walk in here carrying a bloody knife and dragging a corpse behind them before you realize they’re not saints?’

  With shaking hands, Kate swept away a tear before it had time to fall down her face. ‘I know they’re not saints,’ she said quietly. ‘I also know they’re not qualified. Not a single bloody one of them. Why would anyone want to work here? These inmates, these boys, these murdering scum,’ she spat out her words. ‘Nobody wants to be surrounded by the most evil children in Britain. I have to hire anyone who applies for the job whether they’re capable or not. I have no choice.’ Kate’s entire body was shaking with anger. ‘For all I know, any one of them could be a killer or a rapist or part of a paedophile ring. You want to arrest them, go ahead. Take them all. Close us down. I don’t fucking care anymore.’ Kate stormed out of the office and slammed the door firmly behind her leaving Matilda sitting in silence.

  She was more shocked by the outburst than the language Kate used. She wasn’t surprised Kate was beginning to unravel; it had been a long time coming by the look of it.

  By the time it was light, a fire engine was parked at the gates of Starling House, draining away the water to allow access. It would be a long process. The field opposite was saturated and the water had to go somewhere. The water seeping through the cracks in the drystone wall onto the road was slowing down, but not by much.

  Matilda looked out of the window watching the scene, wondering how far Jacob Brown had got during the storm overnight. He could be anywhere by now.

  ‘I’ve got some news but you’re not going to like it,’ Rory said as he entered Kate’s office.

  ‘It’s been so long since I’ve had some good news, Rory, that I don’t think it exists anymore. Let’s have it.’

  ‘I’ve just got off the phone with Sian. By the way, her house flooded last night. She’s fuming.’

  ‘Oh God. I’ll give her a call. There’s no reason for her to be at work.’

  ‘She said she’d rather be here than at home. Her husband’s dealing with it all, apparently. Anyway, Sian’s been doing some digging into the staff here, and the tutor, Fred Percival, has a record.’

  ‘Of course he has,’ Matilda said, not surprised anymore by anything that happened in Starling House. ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘In 1999 he was questioned for sexually assaulting a boy in Leicester. It went to trial and he was found not guilty. In 2002 he was found guilty of sex with a minor and sentenced to two years. He was out in nine months. In 2006 he was questioned for having sex with a boy under the age of sixteen. It didn’t get to court.’

  ‘Didn’t he say he was married with kids though?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And he was. At the time. What he didn’t tell us is that his kids are now over eighteen and have disowned him. His wife committed suicide in 2010.’

  ‘Jesus. Surely Kate knew all about this when she hired him.’

  ‘I’ve been looking through the files again while we’ve been trapped here. They’re very meticulous until around 2005. Then she stopped requesting references and DBS checks.’

  ‘What’s DBS?’

  ‘Disclosure and Barring Service. It’s what we now call CRB.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. But Kate told us she vigorously checks all staff before they’re given a job here. She told us that on our first meeting with her.’

  ‘She was obviously telling porkies.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think Starling House is built on lies.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  It was time to take off the kid gloves. She understood the ACC wanted a fast result on Ryan Asher’s murder, and now she did too. She was tired with everyone holding something back. It seemed strange how the convicted killers seemed to be telling the truth while the supposed honest, law-abiding staff kept wrong-footing the investigation at every turn.

  Still using Kate’s office, Matilda gathered Christian, Rory and Scott. She kept looking out of the window to see how the fire crew were getting on with draining the water. They appeared to be standing around chatting and looking at the large pool of water like it contained all of life’s secrets.

  ‘It’s started raining again.’

  ‘Thanks, Rory.’

  ‘I bet we’re going to be stranded here all day,’ he said, looking up at the heavy grey sky.

  ‘I don’t want to have to spend the night with a bunch of killers,’ Scott said, a genuine look of horror on his face.

  ‘The same thing will happen as when you spent the night in Norwich with Faith – absolutely nothing,’ Rory said with a smirk.

  ‘Just because you spend the night in a hotel doesn’t mean you have to have sex.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Scott, what generation are you from? Of course it does. If I’d been there and Faith wasn’t having any of it, I’d have been straight on Tinder.’

  ‘Remind me not to send you anywhere that requires an overnight stay then, Rory,’ Matilda said. ‘Now, can we get on?’

  ‘Sorry boss.’

  ‘Right, there’s no sign of Jacob; we haven’t caught Ryan’s killer. I think it’s safe to say that whoever killed Ryan has somehow managed to get Jacob out of Starling House.�
��

  ‘You don’t think he escaped then?’ Christian asked, sitting in the far corner of the room picking his fingernails.

  ‘No, I do not. Those cells cannot be opened from the inside, and Kate, Oliver, Rebecca, and Peter said they were all locked in at nine o’clock last night. Someone went back to A corridor and let Jacob out of his room.’

  ‘I’ve had a word with Gavin Ryecroft about the CCTV camera and he hadn’t turned it back on. He said until he knows exactly what happened to it on Monday night he couldn’t trust it not to fail again.’

  ‘Knobhead,’ Rory said. ‘It didn’t fail; someone turned it off, it’s obvious.’

  ‘I said that,’ Christian admitted. ‘He seems to have got the Kate Moloney syndrome and doesn’t want to think his colleagues would do anything underhand.’

  ‘And we all know the CCTV cameras in the recreation room are dummies.’

  ‘It looks like everyone else knows too.’

  ‘If it was the same person who killed Ryan why not just kill Jacob in his room or somewhere else in the building? Why let him escape?’ Rory asked.

  ‘Maybe he hasn’t escaped,’ Scott pondered. ‘Maybe we’re meant to think he’s escaped.

  ‘We’ve had this entire building upside down,’ Christian said. ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘There are six rooms we haven’t searched,’ Matilda said, turning back from the window.

  The three men looked at each other with heavy frowns.

  ‘Six?’

  ‘The rooms the inmates are currently locked up in.’

  ‘You think Jacob is hiding in one of the other inmates’ rooms? What would be the point of that?’ Rory asked.

  ‘To be honest, I don’t think Jacob is hiding in this building at all. I also think it is highly likely he’s dead. The question is, why has the killer’s MO changed? Why not have Jacob spreadeagled on a pool table or a table tennis table with twelve stab wounds? Why smash a window and make it look like he’s hopped it?’

  ‘To make it look like Jacob’s the killer,’ Scott said.

  ‘Well done, Mr Andrews. If we ever get back to HQ help yourself to two items from Sian’s snack drawer.’

  ‘So you think that whoever killed Ryan is setting up Jacob? Why? Why Jacob above all the other boys?’ Christian asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Matilda scratched her forehead. This case was beginning to give her a headache. Every day something else occurred to add to the confusion. She wasn’t helping herself either by throwing Thomas Hartley into the mix.

  ‘Maybe Jacob was the easiest to bribe,’ Scott said, breaking the silence.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Let’s say the killer is a member of staff but didn’t want to get his hands dirty – or her hands dirty. He, or she—’

  ‘Let’s just go with “he” for the moment, Scott,’ Matilda interrupted. ‘It’ll save a lot of confusion, and I can already see smoke coming out of Rory’s ears.’

  ‘OK. He obviously knows the inmates, they’re all killers, they all have the potential to kill again, but how many are open to be bribed into killing again? He arranges for Jacob to lure Ryan to the recreation room and kill him with the promise that a few days later he’ll help Jacob to escape. The member of staff isn’t going to care if Jacob is out there or not. He’s achieved his goal: Ryan is dead. And, if Jacob is eventually caught and tells the truth, who are the police going to believe? A convicted killer on the run or a member of staff at Starling House?’

  ‘You could be onto something there, Scottmeister,’ Rory grinned.

  ‘But we’ve been through all the files of all the members of staff, past and present,’ Christian said. ‘None of them have any links with Ryan Asher before he arrived at Starling House. As he was only here for a day nobody could have taken against him enough to warrant killing him the way they did.’

  ‘Yes, Scott, idiot. You should have thought of that,’ Rory again, smiling.

  ‘Scott has a point.’ Matilda had sat down on Kate’s comfortable chair and was resting her head on her hands. ‘All the boys were locked in the rooms on Monday night. Someone had to unlock Ryan’s room to get him out. They unlocked the recreation room and killed him in there. When Oliver Byron went the next morning, the recreation room was locked. Last night, Jacob’s room was unlocked from the outside for him to escape. Someone with a key is doing this. The only people who have keys are the staff.’

  ‘That we know of,’ Christian added.

  ‘We’re going round in circles here.’

  ‘So where do we go from here?’ Rory asked.

  ‘We get the inmates out of their rooms and into the dining room, and I want their rooms ripped apart. I don’t care if Jacob isn’t hiding under the bed, I want them searched. Christian, you and Scott lead the search and use some of the staff we know are sort of decent to give you a hand.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘What about me?’ Rory asked.

  ‘We’re going to talk to Kate again.’

  ‘She’s not going to like this.’

  ‘Not our problem, Rory. We’re hunting for a killer among killers here. It’s time to stop pissing about and get some answers.’

  FORTY-FIVE

  ‘Good morning. I’m Detective Constable Faith Easter from South Yorkshire Police. I’d like to speak to someone who can tell me about Ryan Asher.’

  The open plan CID seemed quiet without Matilda, Christian, Scott and Rory. Scott was always quiet, but the exuberant Rory Fleming more than made up for it with his puppy-like demeanour. Faith liked working with what used to be the Murder Squad again. She enjoyed Scott’s company; they seemed to have a similar work ethic. Rory, she could tolerate. Yes, he was handsome, but he knew it, and that overconfidence could sometimes get on her nerves. Unfortunately for her, he was funny, and she couldn’t help laughing at his jokes which seemed to encourage him. He was harmless enough, though. Sian, she loved. She respected Sian and looked up to her. Although their careers were going on different paths – Sian was a DS and was happy to stay that way until retirement – Faith had ambition. She would like a family, maybe, one day, but at the moment she was concentrating on her career. She liked the idea of having DCI in front of her name at some point.

  It hadn’t taken Faith long to discover which school Ryan Asher went to in Norwich. Unfortunately, it took her longer to find a member of staff willing to talk to her. Hellesdon High School predominantly served pupils in the north-west area of Norwich and currently held around 1,300 students. While Faith was waiting for someone to answer her call, she perused the school’s website and found out more than she needed to know about the school and the extracurricular activities it offered. It seemed like a very impressive school. If she did ever marry and have a child, Norwich was a possibility as a place to raise a family.

  ‘DC Easter?’

  Faith jumped as a loud booming voice came through the phone. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m Geoffrey Hillingdon. I’m the head teacher here. I believe you have some questions about Ryan Asher.’

  ‘That’s right. Thank you for taking my call. I was wondering if you could tell me something about him: what he was like as a student, his academic success, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I shall certainly try. I’m afraid that it’s a sad state of affairs that only the really disruptive students seem to register on my radar so I do recall Ryan Asher before, well, before what he did. Academically, he was an above average student. He wasn’t going to be a straight-A student but with a little hard work he would have passed all his GCSEs with excellent pass grades.’

  ‘Was he disruptive in his lessons?’

  ‘No, well, not in the beginning. Most of his incidents came during breaks and at lunch. I heard of a few moments, shall we say, out of school hours and at weekends, but they were not the responsibility of the school to sort out.’

  ‘What kinds of incidents?’

  ‘Fights and scrapes. The usual things that happen among t
eenage boys.’

  ‘So what led from him being a typical teenage boy to murdering his grandparents?’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. Faith knew they hadn’t lost connection as she could hear everyday life of a normal secondary school taking place in the background. She could also hear Mr Hillingdon’s strenuous breathing.

  Sian placed a mug of tea on Faith’s desk and added a Tunnock’s Teacake from her snack drawer. Faith mouthed ‘thank you’.

  ‘I’m not a psychologist, detective. I’m just an ordinary head teacher. I have no idea what went through his mind to make him commit the crime he did.’

  ‘Were you surprised when you found out?’

  ‘Absolutely. I was devastated. To be perfectly honest with you, there are some pupils here who, if I heard they had killed someone, I would not be surprised. Ryan wasn’t one of them.’

  Maybe Norwich wasn’t such a decent place to raise a child after all, Faith thought. A head teacher has admitted to there being potential killers in his school and he didn’t seem too bothered by it. And she thought being a detective was a difficult job – who’d be a teacher?

  ‘So what happened at the school for Ryan to appear on your radar?’

  ‘In the last few months of Ryan being here his behaviour was more disruptive than usual. The number of fights, and their severity, increased. I had two meetings with his parents, who expressed concern for Ryan. They had spoken with him on many occasions. They’d grounded him a few times, removed certain privileges, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.’

  ‘Was Ryan mixing with any different people around this time?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘But surely something must have switched in his life for his behaviour to have changed so much.’

  ‘I’m sure it did, but that was not at this school,’ he seemed quick to add that Hellesdon High School was not to blame for the making of a murderer.

  ‘Is there anyone else I could speak to who you think could help me find out more about Ryan Asher.’