Head Start

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Jane, I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Good. I know you have to work so very hard – and so very late.’

  ‘Any head does,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Not necessarily in such challenging circumstances.’

  I couldn’t disagree with that.

  ‘Now, I wanted you to know that we’re all praying for you – all of us Open the Book-ers. Mark – Mark Stephens – popped in to let me know that there was an emergency governors’ meeting and that he was afraid that though you’ve done an exemplary job in the very short time you’ve been with us that someone wants you gone. By hook or by crook is what he said. In fact, he went so far as to wonder if this terrible accident to Emma is part of a stunt to humiliate you that went appallingly wrong. I don’t know whether he’ll carry anyone with him when he defends you. But all of us here – that’s Dougie, Belinda and Mary, and me of course – are praying. I never know if our sending God a shopping list makes any difference, but we feel totally impotent and this helps us. And knowing we’re doing it might just help you.’

  If I’d failed to insert all the usual non-verbal prompts to show I was listening, it was because I was trying to hold back tears. I could deal with insults and viciousness – but not simple kindness.

  She must have heard a snuffle. ‘Oh, you poor dear. Would you like us – yes, we’re on our way.’

  I had hardly put down the phone when it rang again.

  ‘Tamsin here, again. By your cottage. You mustn’t worry, Jane – that friend of yours – Pat? – is out safely, and the fire brigade is on its way. Ah, here he is!’

  ‘First up, Avo, I’m fine. But my phone’s back inside and there’s no way I can get back to it.’ He gasped – his asthma was back. ‘Didn’t this friend of yours tell you? The place is on fire.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘Nothing you can do here,’ he continued between coughs. ‘Stay put. D’you hear me? Lock yourself in. Bolt yourself in. Understand?’

  I couldn’t obey him, not this time. For some reason taking the box of cassettes with me, I flung myself into the hire car – cursing that I had to get out again to scrape off all the ice – and headed for the cottage. Fire crews were already in place, and seemed to have stopped the fire spreading much beyond the kitchen. Clearly they didn’t want me popping in to check. At first I couldn’t see Pat, but then caught sight of him being transferred from a small Nissan to an ambulance, wearing nothing but a towel, a pashmina and a foil blanket.

  I fought my way through the bystanders, including what seemed like half the Open the Book team, to speak to him; he waved away the paramedic administering oxygen long enough to tell me he was fine and ask what the hell I was doing on my own. Oh, and since I was here, could I get his mobile phone, which he fancied was in the bathroom.

  The paramedic suggested that since that would take time, I should rendezvous with Pat in Ashford A&E. And why not? I couldn’t influence anything at the governors’ meeting. I couldn’t fight off a siege of the school. I might as well do what I’d always wanted to do – return a tiny favour to someone who, apart from a few moments last weekend, had been unfailingly kind and supportive all the time he’d known me. The miniest of mini favours, true. But it was a start.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Accident & Emergency at Ashford Hospital, named after the circulation of the blood man, William Harvey, was busy, and it took me some time to locate Pat. My admission that I wasn’t next of kin or a partner meant I had to argue my way in to see him; waving his mobile phone and a bag of clothes seemed to be the clincher, which was fortunate, since the first of the night’s drunks were already arriving – soon no one would have a moment to do anything other than deal with crises.

  Somewhat less than more covered in a hospital gown, he greeted me with a wave. Something was being pumped into a mask that covered his face: his breathing sounded reassuringly normal, and his ribs heaved far less.

  ‘Got your wheels? Excellent – because I’m out of here.’

  My headmistress voice took over. ‘Are you sure you’re ready to be discharged?’ It seemed my opportunity for a martyred night-long wait for him was being denied. On the other hand, what was a bit of martyrdom compared to a safe recovery?

  ‘In my terms, yes. Listen to that lot.’ It sounded as if an entire nightclub had arrived. ‘And it’s not even a weekend boozing night. Makes me feel quite puritanical about the demon drink – though not enough to give it up,’ he added with a grin. ‘You brought some clothes? Excellent. Now,’ he continued as he dressed, ‘we walk out as if we own the place. No one’ll stop us that way.’

  For all his bravado, however, when we passed a harassed nurse en route, he did tell her he was checking out. ‘You need the bed space,’ he added kindly.

  She could not argue.

  I was afraid the bitter night air would make him bad again, but he refused to let me bring the car round for him. I suspect it was only the fact he didn’t know where I’d parked that stopped him striding out ahead of me to prove how well he was.

  ‘Back to the Cricketers,’ he said, checking his texts as I inched on to the main road. ‘Diane’s heard all about the fire, of course, and says we’re both expected there. So we’ve got a roof over our heads. What about your job, by the way? Have you been sacked or suspended or what?’

  I clapped my hand over my mouth. ‘You know what, I’ve not given it a thought since the fire! Dig in my bag, will you, and check my texts? And my voicemail?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. Now is that good or bad news?’

  ‘Maybe it’s just that they’ve got the old-fashioned courtesy to sack people by formal letter.’

  Diane had left a plate of cheese and biscuits in the kitchen for us, and bottles of whisky and brandy. As one we ignored them. But what we couldn’t quite ignore was the particularly large elephant in the room – Pat’s bedroom to be precise. I suspect that had we had the hottest of hots for each other we were both too exhausted to have done anything about it. I was. But I had all those scars to give me more than my share of prudery and he – maybe he had a wife and Sunday-swimming-lesson kids at home.

  I was ready to gabble a suggestion we might sleep head to toe.

  But Diane had pre-empted any discussion: she’d split what I presumed had been a king-sized bed into two chaste single ones. And, for good measure, had shoved a cabinet between them.

  I set the alarm on my mobile: with luck we might get four hours’ sleep.

  In fact, Pat got considerably more. Although he’d woken when I did, he rolled over and was snoring again within a minute, somewhat to my relief. Even the noise of the shower didn’t disturb him, but I drew the line at trying to use the hairdryer. As for my clothes, they were as filthy as when I’d stripped them off, and stank of smoke.

  Diane took one look – or one sniff – and found me a wrap-around skirt, t-shirt and heavy sweater. ‘Use my room to dry your hair, for goodness’ sake.’ She didn’t sound kind, just exasperated: she was already running downstairs.

  Five minutes later, I discovered that she was indeed fuming, but not at me. The mysterious travellers who’d booked her spare bedrooms had both failed to turn up without explanation. She fulminated as she produced strong coffee and a bacon sandwich. ‘Quicker than a full English,’ she observed tersely. ‘Clothes? You still look more like a bag lady than a head teacher, you know. And you still smell like a kipper.’

  ‘That’ll be my undies. But these are so much better—’

  ‘They’ll do till you get to the cottage and can change into your own clothes.’

  ‘You don’t suppose they won’t let me into the cottage? Hell, Diane, I really don’t know how much longer I can do all this.’

  ‘As long as it takes,’ she said, the hug she gave me at odds with the apparent heartlessness of her words. ‘Now, Jane, I know it’s not ideal, but if you need a roof over your head, then there’s always one of our rooms. Bugger the pre-existing bookings. If they can’t tu
rn up and they don’t let me know they can’t turn up, then they’ve forfeited their rights, as far as I’m concerned.’ She laughed as I gibbered, mixing gratitude and anxiety in one sentence. ‘Off you go: I’ll keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty up there.’

  Although it was before eight-thirty, when I arrived at Dove Cottage I found an insurance assessor already prowling round inside. I wished the borrowed clothes fitted better. If I’m fighting I like to look like a winner. He removed an elegant but smoke-damaged throw from a sofa and sat down uninvited.

  So did I, holding out my hand for his card. Julian Pardew. He wasn’t at all like the kindly insurance guy on the TV ads, making sure the child rendered homeless by burst pipes had her toy monkey. And he lacked the address of the Harvey Keitel hard man in another insurance ad.

  ‘Your first rental rendered uninhabitable by a flood, the second by fire: you are having an interesting time, aren’t you, Ms Cowan?’

  ‘I am indeed. But by your tone you think I’m less a victim than a criminal. Am I right?’ My tone in turn suggested more sorrow than anger, but in fact he enraged me. There was nothing personal in my dislike. In fact, had I, like him, been a representative of the insurance company responsible for all Brian Dawes’s properties, I would have been every bit as suspicious as he was. ‘But I certainly wasn’t responsible for the cold weather that froze an inadequately insulated set of pipes in a house already cold because someone had stolen one lot of heating oil and someone else had hijacked another delivery. As for the fire, I’d not been in the building since seven-thirty in the morning. How could I have started it?’

  ‘You could have left a tea towel on a toaster.’

  ‘Why on earth would I have done that?’

  I think my blank disbelief might have worked. He was shuffling the paperwork he’d spread out beside him.

  ‘People do all sorts of strange things absent-mindedly. You should see the way people with Alzheimer’s contrive to cause havoc.’

  ‘Should I, now? Since I only picked up my master’s degree last year, I think I can argue a tolerable amount of mental ability. What actually caused the fire, Mr Pardew?’

  ‘I really would like you to tell me that.’

  ‘Give me a clue,’ I suggested affably. ‘In the building or outside? Accelerant or electrical – and not a toaster, I suspect. Look, I spent half last night in William Harvey A&E with the friend of mine who was caught in the fire. The smoke has done his asthma no good at all, and this little charade is frankly wasting the time I should be spending with my children in the village hall.’

  ‘Ah, yes – another accident on your watch. Oh, more than one! One child with a broken limb, another on life support. Am I right?’

  ‘You are indeed. But you’ve missed one: an attack by a rat trapped inside a locked drawer.’

  ‘A rat?’ It might have been one squeaking.

  ‘Indeed. In a desk drawer. Oh, please sit down again, Mr Pardew. The incident took place at the school, and I promise not to open any drawers here without warning you first. I agree with you absolutely that few if any of these apparent accidents are in fact accidental. I am certainly one common factor in them all, but I suspect that there may be others.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You want me to voice my suspicions and risk being sued for libel? But you might want to accompany me to the school – once I’ve changed out of these borrowed clothes, that is. The police are due to interview me in half an hour about the terrible event yesterday, and you might find yourself sharing information with DCI Carpenter, the senior investigating officer.’ I stood.

  He mumbled: apparently he was accepting my invitation.

  We travelled in separate cars.

  Leaving him to Melanie’s ministrations, I started on the morning’s batch of texts, emails and phone calls. There was absolutely nothing from the governors: no enquiry about Emma’s health, or even about Pat’s. There was no mention of my job, and no recommendation about continuing to keep the school open in the village hall. It was of course my decision, and mine alone, but I was surprised no one had tried to influence me. The only thing of interest was a note in Melanie’s immaculate script: it was Brian Dawes who owned the former caretaker’s house. But there was nothing I could do with the information at the moment. The life of the school was more important than my own interests.

  When I phoned him, Mark Stephens sounded strangely reluctant to lead a special assembly to include prayers for Emma – and for the person or persons responsible for her injuries. What was wrong with the man? If Ian, with no formal qualifications, could hold the attention of a hundred youngsters, surely a clergyman, whose training must have included grief counselling, could draw on that and on his years of experience to respond to the crisis? After all, he knew not just the children but also their parents. If anyone could empathise, surely it was he. Finally I extracted a promise from him, not on the grounds of their needing spiritual guidance and comfort but simply because in the absence of proper lessons he would provide some diversion.

  At long last came an email from Brian Dawes instructing me not to speak to the media, alongside two from Julie Freeman begging me for information. I forwarded them to Dawes, not meekly, but nonetheless with a certain amount of relief that I could spend my time and energy on other matters.

  These included an interview with the police, who had without consultation hijacked the staffroom. What they would have done had the staff needed it I didn’t bother to ask – no doubt they would have ejected me from my office. At least DCI Carpenter did me the courtesy of letting me stay there for the time being – and even chose to interview me there, though I did have to instruct Melanie to block any calls.

  After brusquely dismissing my enquiry about poor little Emma – apparently she was now stable, whatever that meant – Carpenter homed in on my blank five minutes like a wasp spotting a beer can.

  ‘It doesn’t take long to kill someone, Ms Cowan. Or at least to attempt to.’

  I rolled up my sleeves to reveal my scars. ‘Don’t think I’m not aware of that. But there are differences in the circumstances. My former husband knew where I was, had a weapon and even, in his perverted mind, a motive. As far as I knew, Emma was with her classmates under the supervision of my highly professional staff. She certainly shouldn’t have been in the stockroom. I didn’t know she was in the stockroom. Incidentally, I still don’t know why she was in the stockroom.’ I paused before responding to her implicit question: ‘Are you suggesting that in between Wayne’s departure and Pat’s arrival I made a speculative dash to the far side of the building to see if I might by some chance find a potential victim?’

  ‘I’m asking the questions, thank you, Ms Cowan.’

  ‘That’s a great shame. Otherwise I could have asked you if you wanted to see what Pat and I found last night – before the fire.’

  ‘We’ll talk about your foraging later. It’s these missing minutes I’m interested in.’

  She was. She genuinely was.

  And I was at a loss. Until my phone chirruped to announce a text.

  ‘Leave that, please.’

  ‘Of course.’ But the silly sound flicked a switch in my brain. I almost felt a physical jolt. At last, I said slowly, unable to suppress a disbelieving smile, ‘My alibi … You know, I sent a lot of texts in those missing five minutes. Do you want to see the times involved?’ I turned the phone to face her.

  She might have been pleased. If she was, she went to a great deal of effort not to show it. And not to show any interest in the ice cream box of film cassettes, which I carried round with me like a plastic albatross. At least she was decidedly more interested in the information about the stockroom camera I’d uncovered.

  ‘What did you do when you found it?’ She frowned in concern.

  ‘I pretended I’d not noticed it. In fact, I shoved some boxes back in front of it. If I was anxious when we located the cameras in the loos, when there was a school full of police officers to protect me, how do you ima
gine I felt when all I had was Pat, in the throes of a really bad asthma attack?’ When she didn’t respond, I continued, ‘Incidentally, did you know that my new temporary home has been rendered unusable? A fire caused by an electrical fault, they say. Or, of course, according to the insurance assessor, in a moment of senile amnesia I could have stuffed a tea towel in the toaster. Mandy, the police have a wonderful reputation for supporting their own. If you can’t protect me, remember that Pat might easily have died last night. The assessor is rightly suspicious—’

  ‘Rightly?’

  ‘I would be in his situation. He’s waiting in the school secretary’s office to talk to you.’ I had a feeling he might be there some time. With Melanie’s coffee so good, he might well be so full of caffeine he’d be walking on the ceiling by the time Mandy got round to him. ‘But you and I know something else, don’t we? That my violent and sadistic ex-husband could be behind a lot of these attacks, just as easily as someone wanting me out of the school.’

  ‘He’s still in jail. Up in Durham, as far as I know.’ She’d done her homework, then. And she was thawing. ‘In fact, it doesn’t have to be either/or, does it? Unlikely, as it seems one person could be behind both.’ She gave a sudden, warm smile that took me completely aback. ‘You know what, Jane, one woman to another? I’m this close to calling in the Major Incident Team. But I really don’t want it to look as if I can’t handle it.’

  ‘You and me both. We both want the attacker found, and the rest of these kids safe and me in one piece. But neither of us wants to lose face. The trouble from your point of view, Mandy, is that the person who knows even more about my past than I do is another officer, and a man to boot. Pat. So if you didn’t mind working with someone from West Midlands Police as opposed to the Essex force you’re supposed to be co-operating with, he might share everything and save you a lot of time. There’s my ex’s huge range of contacts, for instance. We’re not talking about the criminal underworld, Mandy – Simon numbered QCs among his nice middle-class friends. People who sit in the best seat at the theatre or concerts. Who go to private views. Who have second homes all over the place.’