Dead Unlucky

by Andrew Derham

  The Headteacher arrived at half past seven exactly, and the two men stood to greet her. ‘Thank you for coming in so early, Mrs Hargreaves,’ said Hart as he shook her hand.

  She was slim and as tall as Redpath, with a thin nose of length in proportion to her body. She used it like a rifle sight to look down at Hart in a manner which she clearly adopted instinctively – to make an immediate statement that her height conferred superiority and a consequent advantage in any future disagreement.

  ‘Not at all. It was the least I could do in circumstances like these, Chief Inspector Hart,’ she said, as she turned a key in the lock of her office door. ‘Won’t you please come in.’

  Hart and Redpath assumed different vantage points in two of the four easy chairs which surrounded a glass-topped coffee table. They waited for Mrs Hargreaves to hang her maroon wool coat and to place her handbag in the bottom drawer of her desk before she sat down to join them. Like the walls outside, those in her office were plastered with an abundance of framed certificates: her degrees, diplomas, courses attended, and proof of the many and various educational achievements which merited praise. Only a visiting parent who was a complete simpleton could fail to be impressed.

  ‘We’re very sorry for the loss your school has suffered, Mrs Hargreaves,’ volunteered Hart.

  ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector. It is such a terrible shock, of course.’

  After a respectful pause, Hart continued. ‘Our job is to catch the person responsible, with the least possible disruption to the routine of Highdean. However, we will of course need to interview all the staff and students who knew Sebastian. We’ll need a space in which to set up an office and, all being well, we’ll be out of here within a day or two, Friday at the latest. Of course, nobody here is a suspect and nobody will be treated like one.’ Hart managed to throw out a pair of great big lies in a short easy sentence.

  ‘You’ll have everything you need, I can assure you, Chief Inspector. This is a terrible tragedy and one we all want to put behind us as quickly as possible. The term finishes on Friday and I would rather we return in January with the matter closed.’

  ‘Can you give us an idea of what Sebastian was like, as a student and as a person?’

  ‘That’s simple. He was a delightful young man, a great credit to the school community. He excelled at sport and had many friends. He enjoyed an unfailing popularity with staff and students alike. Everybody knew him and, I think it’s fair to say, we all had considerable affection for him.’

  ‘And academically?’ quizzed Hart.

  ‘Always punctual with his assignments and always well-behaved in class.’

  ‘That’s handy to know but, not wishing to be too blatant, how bright was he?’

  ‘Well, if I were pushed, I would have to admit that he was not at the very top of his classes but, of course, our academic standards are so exceedingly high. Have you visited the school’s website?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ replied Hart, doing his best to maintain a neutral tone.

  ‘You really should. You would see that our examination results are most impressive, comparable with all the top private schools in the country, of which we are most definitely one, of course. There is also a list of alumni, detailing the universities they gained admission to and their subsequent employment and achievements. Our graduates have gone on to make highly significant –’

  ‘Mrs Hargreaves, I would prefer us to focus on Sebastian, if you don’t mind.’

  She did mind. She minded a great deal, and her eyes shot a harsh glance all the way down her lengthy nose to tell him so.

  ‘Sebastian was a fine student, Mr Hart. There’s really very little else to say.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why he was in Lockingham yesterday evening? I mean, surely he boards at the school.’

  ‘Some of our students are day students, of course, although Sebastian himself was a boarder. Our older students do, however, have the option of signing out if they wish to spend the night elsewhere, as long as we know where they are going and that their destination is, how shall one say, appropriate. We prepare our students well for the freedoms of university and beyond, encourage them to make suitable lifestyle choices. I happen to know that Sebastian frequently went to stay with his parents as his journey home is relatively short and he does own a car.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Hargreaves. I’ll need to chat with you again but, for now, if you could let me know where Sergeant Redpath and myself will be working, I would be most grateful.’

  ‘I’ll make one of the deputy head’s offices available for any time you may wish to use the phone or computer, and you can have a couple of classrooms for your exclusive use for all of the time you are here.’

  ‘That’s very kind. And a list of all of the pupils with their contact details would be appreciated. And the teachers’ timetables and addresses, of course.’

  ‘We do have an excellent administrative system on the computer network, it’s the very best. We only had it installed over the summer and are rather proud of it. You’ll be able to gather all the information you need from there. It requires very little skill to use it.’

  ‘I’d prefer to have hard copies, if that’s all right.’

  ‘The secretaries are very busy, Mr Hart, I’m sure you’ll quickly get the hang of using the computer yourself.’

  ‘Mrs Hargreaves, we are all going to be very busy for the next few days. I would like those timetables because then I won’t need to take teachers out of lessons, with all the disruption that would cause, I can see them during their free periods instead. However, I’m not too fussed about that either way.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, Chief Inspector, I have to prepare for the arrival of the staff and for the assembly. The students are going to be devastated by the news.’

  *****

  However the income from the school fees at Highdean was distributed, not much of it made its way into the staffroom. Of course, the key employees would need to be well compensated to make sure they didn’t move to somewhere more attractive; Mrs Hargreaves and one or two of the senior educators, for example. The bursar and the extensive but vital non-teaching management team were also entitled to receive a just reward commensurate with their efforts and abilities. And the facilities for the students had to be top notch or there wouldn’t be a horde of prospective income jostling at the gate each September. So, by the time the owners had taken their share of what remained, there wasn’t much left to squander on regions of the school which were out of sight of the public.

  A young woman wearing a burgundy PE skirt stood before the staff mail boxes, which were painted cream with brown specks where the paint had been chipped off, clutching a mug of coffee in her right hand. Her left was holding a neat A5 memo topped with the school logo and a few words of Latin she had never got around to finding out the meaning of.

  ‘A whole-school assembly,’ she announced to no one in particular. ‘I wonder what’s got up old Hag-greaves’ nose this time,’ she added before sipping her coffee.

  About twenty teachers were sharing the staffroom with her, most of them having a chat on some decrepit chairs that looked like they had been cleared out when their Victorian owners had decided to spruce up their country home. A couple of men nattered by the metal sink as they rinsed out their mugs, while a woman recoiled and twitched up her nose before hurriedly closing the fridge door.

  ‘It’s probably a lecture to warn the kids about the perils of chewing gum, about how it’ll stick to your ribs if you swallow it. Whatever it is,’ continued the young woman after another sip of coffee, ‘at least it gets me out of touch rugby with Grade 10. There’s that kid, David Higgins, drives me nuts.’ She moved over to a small settee. ‘Shove up, Paul,’ she ordered a brown-haired colleague wearing a pair of specs containing enough glass to construct a champagne magnum. ‘He refuses to catch the ball. Says it’s dirty. It’s been on the grass, it’s got mud on it. And people spit on the pitch. How can he be expected to touch something lik
e that? Nuts,’ she repeated, shaking her head. ‘Even listening to Hag-greaves for half an hour is better than suffering that.’

  ‘I was going to give Grade 12 a test on cell metabolism today,’ commented Paul gloomily, shuffling his glasses along his nose. ‘I feel sorry for the students, they’ve been preparing for weeks. It’s a bit unfair on them to have it cancelled at such short notice.’

  ‘Sure. They’ll be well miffed they’ve missed that.’

  ‘It’s all right for you two,’ came a man’s voice from across the coffee table. ‘You can guess what I’ve got first thing. A double free. That means I won’t get the homework marked ready to give back this afternoon.’

  ‘Should have marked it last night, like a good boy.’

  ‘That’s all right for you to say, you’re a PE teacher, you never have to mark any.’

  ‘And there’s no such thing as a free period,’ returned the young woman. ‘It’s correctly referred to as a non-contact session; if the thought police are listening in, Hag-greaves will have you strangled with your own guts.’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ came a soft voice from behind the young PE teacher. A grey-haired woman crouched down so that her eyes were level with her sitting colleagues’. ‘But the assembly could be being called for something serious, don’t discount that. I don’t want to sound prissy, but you might regret speaking so lightly about it if it is.’

  ‘The last disaster to hit the place didn’t have us all trooping into the hall to have Hag-greaves put us to sleep,’ commented the young woman in the burgundy skirt. ‘And disasters don’t come bigger than that.’

  ‘No. No, they don’t,’ agreed the grey-haired woman sadly as she stood up straight.

  7

  Hart and Redpath spent an hour wandering around the school, watching it wake up. Teachers were arriving, dumping their bags in their classrooms before checking their pigeonholes in the staffroom and preparing that all-important first caffeine fix of the working day. The secretaries went to settle their belongings in their offices and then off to powder their noses. And then the students drifted in and out to fetch and carry books and knick-knacks from their lockers. Some of the older ones looked distressed; it was amazing how the news had begun to leach out already.

  The two men took a stroll to survey the grounds. Centuries ago the school had been the country home of some knight of the shire and so all the more modern additions were in buildings outside the Old House, as the admin block was affectionately known. A cavernous gym adjoined the swimming pool, the changing rooms facing out towards a dozen pitches for rugby, football and hockey. The science block was arranged into a spacious single-storey rectangle and the classrooms were housed next door. There were separate buildings for art and music and a glittering steel and glass library constituted the newest feature of the school. Set away from the teaching areas stood the boys’ dormitory, with the refectory downstairs. The girls slept in the Old House, sharing the building with its creaks and ghosts.

  The sky began to reveal that lovely pale blue that only appears on a few biting winter days, when the temperature doesn’t manage to creep high enough to melt the frost hiding in the shadowy places. The two policemen made for the school hall, where they sat down on the chairs at the side, towards the middle. Not a very discreet location, but one from where they could turn and look into the senior students’ eyes.

  ‘Does this remind you of your old place then, Sir?’

  ‘It’s a dead ringer, young Redpath. I well recall frolicking in the heated indoor pool, gambolling on acres of grass, then off to the computer room to finish my drama skit expounding the delights of modern schoolboy slang, and lastly capping a happy day by strolling to the cosy library, settling down in a comfy armchair and catching up on the sport at the back of the newspaper. That’s the joyous reality I remember, and any nightmares of being continually whacked on the backside by the deputy head’s cane, slapped around the bonce for my inability to learn the Ten Commandments in the order in which the Good Lord dispensed them, and completing the day’s meticulously planned learning activities by lying in freezing mud for ten minutes as a loving reminder to polish my football boots into a mirror, are lapses in memory brought about by old age.’ He shook his head as he recollected a dismal past. ‘If school days are the happiest days of our lives, then it’s no wonder we’re so ruddy miserable now we’re adults.’

  As Hart and Redpath watched the pupils of Highdean School file into the hall to take their seats for assembly, it was clear these kids inhabited an altogether different world. Girls wearing their neat navy skirts, their hems flapping at the knees, topped with their crisp white blouses and blue jumpers bearing the school logo. Boys sporting ironed black trousers, navy blazers and knotted ties, no shirt tails flapping about their own behinds. Eight hundred young models of sartorial rectitude. This was a pukkah school, and no mistake.

  The mood was sombre, the air ached with expectation, even though only a few knew why; the gravity of the situation had transmitted itself to the pupils via some form of telepathy. They were seated in a literal deathly hush, rising as one when Mrs Hargreaves appeared from the back of the stage, now standing behind her desk higher than them all, head swivelling and bobbing above its black gown like a pecking crow’s.

  ‘Please be seated.’ As the school sat down, a swish of clothing uplifted by air glided through the hall, and the scraping of a few chairs squealed across the floor before settling into silence. After she had gathered herself, the shrill voice of Mrs Hargreaves ruptured that silence.

  ‘I have called a special assembly this morning because it is my duty to tell you some extremely tragic news.’ As she paused, the silence returned, but now it seemed to fret expectantly as it recognised the grim nature of the announcement which would crack it again. ‘Yesterday evening, one of our students, Sebastian Emmer of Form 13C, was killed.’ Now the silence became a murmur, heads turning to their neighbours, rather to register shock and take in breath than to chatter. The buzz quickly evaporated as the heads returned their gaze to the front, not because they were commanded by Mrs Hargreaves, but because they craved the remainder of the story. ‘It appears that Sebastian was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered!’ hissed the heads as one. That did it! They were now babbling like the power of speech was a gift that had just been simultaneously visited on them for the first time. ‘Did you know him?’ ‘Was he that ginger-haired kid?’ ‘No that was Aaron Southall.’ ‘He had fair hair.’ ‘He was that tall kid in the rowing club.’ ‘No that was someone else.’

  To Hart’s surprise and, he thought, to Mrs Hargreaves’ credit, she let them get on with it for half a minute or so, let them shift some of it off their chests. Then she called time.

  ‘Quiet please. I said silence!’

  The heads stopped their talking and it was eyes front again. For some the most tragic part of the proceedings was now over, for others the most juicy bit; the hall was a mishmash of thoughts and emotions sweeping right across the spectrum from nobly compassionate to selfishly callous.

  ‘School will continue as normal today, although those students in Year 13 who knew Sebastian well may be excused lessons until recess; teachers will exercise discretion in this matter. The School Nurse and Student Counsellor will be available as usual, as will the Chaplain, of course.’

  Mrs Hargreaves paused and then moved on to practicalities, the tone of admonishment in her voice punishing her students for sins yet to be committed.

  ‘This matter is not one to gossip about, particularly to persons outside of the school. A letter will go home today to all parents to explain the situation and to notify them of the date of the memorial service. This letter will be a short communication giving the facts. It will contain neither mindless speculation nor foolish rumour,’ she noted accusingly. ‘The use of mobile telephones is prohibited until lunch time tomorrow, and anybody caught using one will be reported to me personally.’

  At that very moment The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fai
ry skipped its way out of a teacher’s handbag. On that occasion, looks very nearly did kill.

  ‘Police officers will be interviewing many people as a matter of routine throughout the day. Parents will be invited to attend such interviews; if they decline then a senior teacher will be present. Dismiss yourselves in the usual fashion. In silence!’

  The students filed out of the hall, many with heads bowed and carrying leaden insides. A few of the girls embraced one another, some for comfort, others to prove they could grieve with the best of them. There were blotchy eyes and sobs into hankies as they walked away, many tears being shed by students who had never even known Sebastian Emmer: Death had been a stranger to ones so youthful, but now he had arrived to reach his black hand into their school and pluck away one of their own. Most of the younger boys just wanted to get the heck out of the place, escape from the embarrassment of it all.

  ‘Nothing to help us there, was there Sir,’ suggested Redpath, not really asking a question.

  ‘Nope. Nothing at all. Not likely though, was it, that somebody would just blurt out a name and then we’d all be able to go home?’

  ‘I don’t like this one, though. There just doesn’t seem to be any sense in it, any motive for killing a schoolkid. I can’t see where we’re going to get a lead, get a handle on it.’

  ‘There’s always sense and a motive for somebody, that’s why these things happen, and we’d better get cracking to find out what they are. We’ll start by getting off to our base in the classroom, sort out some interviews and then we’ll take a break at midday for a chat about progress and have a snack.’