Don't Breathe

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Who is he?’ Cam managed to croak.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Stacey admitted. ‘I only saw them together twice. I followed her rather than him, as you instructed.’

  Was she smiling? Was this woman glad that his wife had been cheating on him?

  ‘So, find him now. I’ll pay you.’

  Stacey stood up. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  ‘I need to find him.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Cam. What good will it do?’

  ‘I need to find him,’ Cam said again. ‘Because I’m going to kill him.’

  18

  Jess stood up to make room for Annie as she rushed over to Tom. He wanted to hug her, to stand up and put his arms round her and never let go, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get to his feet. He was feeling much better – the pain had subsided to a dull ache and the dizziness seemed to be passing, but he knew that he was still suffering from shock and he didn’t trust his legs to hold him up.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ Annie asked Jess as though Tom couldn’t speak for himself. He wasn’t sure whether this was a deliberate ploy to make him seem more incapacitated than he was, so he kept quiet, intending to follow Annie’s lead.

  ‘Not great,’ Jess said, loudly enough for the boss man – Larry – to hear her. ‘He’s still losing blood and he’s not talking. Thank God you’re back.’

  Tom wasn’t glad. He’d hoped that Annie’s plan would have worked; that she’d have escaped and brought help, or at least got herself to safety. He’d been devastated when the door had opened and a masked man had brought her back – in his imagination she was already in the school reception, wrapped in a blanket, drinking hot tea and telling her story to a sympathetic police officer. Now, though, she was still here with the rest of them.

  ‘How’re you really doing?’ Annie whispered, crouching next to him, close enough for Tom to smell her shampoo. God, she smelt good. She even looked good – the pale winter light catching the lighter highlights in her dark red hair and the fear adding a brightness to her eyes that reminded him of the first night they’d spent together. In the few minutes that she’d been gone, Tom realised that he loved her – not silly schoolboy love, or even an intense crush – this was real.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said, shifting his position slightly so she could see that the bleeding had stopped. She nodded and gave him a weak smile.

  ‘Hey!’ she snapped, turning to the man at the door. ‘I need some of those sanitary towels.’ Curly stalked over to where she was crouched and Tom could feel a wave of anger preceding him. He understood why – Annie had made him look foolish in front of his colleagues; now he was dangerous. Tom was about to put a restraining hand on Annie’s arm. He knew how she could be when she’d got an idea or a fixation – single-minded and ruthless. That wouldn’t work here. She couldn’t browbeat these men into submission; she couldn’t bend them to her will.

  The man stood over her and Tom could see the fury in his eyes. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out the wrapped towels.

  ‘Put them down there,’ Annie said, pointing to a chair that had been pulled out from behind one of the desks. ‘I need to check his wound first.’

  Tom inhaled, expecting an explosion from the man but instead he followed Annie’s instruction and placed the sanitary towels carefully on the chair. As he backed away Tom heard him mutter something that sounded like ‘…don’t care who you are… little bitch.’ Annie just smiled sweetly. What the hell was going on?

  ‘What was that about? What happened while you were out of the room? What did he do to you – did he hurt you?’

  ‘Christ, Tom. One question at a time.’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ Tom repeated.

  Annie looked over her shoulder to make sure that nobody was listening. The room was oddly still and a sense of anticipation had replaced some of the tension. The man who’d been guarding the main door had been sent out to wait for more medical supplies and Miss Frith was looking stunned. She’d been really strong – demanding that something was done to help him but the arrival of the fourth man seemed to have unsettled her and Tom couldn’t work out why.

  The students were silent, but they were year thirteens – they’d had years of practice at communicating in ways that were undetectable to their teachers. Every so often he saw an eyebrow raised in a question and a slight nod in answer. They were frightened but they had each other. Apart from Harley. He was still staring at the desk or his lap, refusing to look up, to communicate. He reminded Tom of how students pretended to look bored when really they were looking down at their phones. A small movement caught his attention. Harley had dropped his hand to his lap and then raised it again almost instantly. What was he up to? Did he even know he was moving?

  ‘I’m fine,’ Annie whispered. ‘Nobody laid a finger on me. I hid in a cupboard but the one who’s just gone out found me. I thought he was going to… well… you know. He grabbed me and put his hand over my mouth, but he was just trying to keep me quiet. He was nice. I don’t think he wants to be here – I’m not sure he’s really part of whatever’s going on.’ She looked over her shoulder again and seemed to be about to say something else.

  ‘Get him looked after,’ Larry barked. ‘And stop staring.’

  Annie grabbed the packet of sanitary towels and made a show of examining Tom’s wound before placing one carefully on the injury.

  ‘That okay?’ she asked. Tom nodded.

  ‘What were you going to say before he snapped at you?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You looked like you were going to say something else about when you tried to escape.’

  ‘Did I? I can’t remember. It can’t have been important.’ She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. Tom had no idea why, but Annie was lying to him.

  ‘When you were gone the boss got a phone call and he wanted to know which of the girls was you. He knows who you are. Annie, why do they know who you are? Has this got something to do with your mum? She’s deputy head – do they want something from her?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know,’ Annie said. ‘This is nothing to do with me or Mum.’

  Tom was about to ask her how she could be so certain when there was a knock at the door and Curly rushed to open it.

  ‘What the fuck…?’ he spluttered as Mrs Warnesford was propelled into the room followed by the man who’d brought Annie back. ‘Where did she come from?’

  Mrs Warnesford was obviously terrified as she looked at each of the three men in turn before fixing an imploring gaze on Miss Frith.

  ‘She’s brought the first aid,’ the man said, nodding towards the bundle that Mrs Warnesford was clutching to her chest as though her life depended on it. ‘Bandages and sh… stuff. I thought you needed it for him.’ He pointed at Tom and Mrs Warnesford’s eyes followed the finger until they settled on Tom. The look of horror was briefly replaced with one of concern as she took in his bloody shirt.

  ‘W-what happened?’ she managed to stutter.

  The three men who’d been holding the class captive all looked at each other. Finally, Larry said, ‘He got stabbed. That one did it.’ He nodded at Harley who still seemed oblivious to what was going on in the room.

  Mrs Warnesford looked at Harley, an expression of complete disbelief and then turned back to Larry. ‘No. I don’t believe that. One of you must’ve done it.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Jess said. ‘Harley stabbed Tom. That’s why we need that lot.’ Keeping her eyes on Larry she stood up slowly and crossed the room to the receptionist. ‘Give it to me, Mrs Warnesford, so we can help Tom.’

  Jess took the package and passed it to Annie who unwrapped a crepe bandage and a packet of painkillers. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you bandaged up properly.’

  Tom leaned forward and allowed her to ease his shirt up so she could wrap the bandage round his torso. She removed the sanitary towel, replaced it with a fresh one and wound the cloth around him three times before fixing it firm
ly in place with a safety pin.

  ‘Better?’

  He nodded. It did feel better. The pressure of the bandage was reassuring, and he could still feel where Annie had touched his bare skin – little sparks of electricity dancing through his follicles, making each hair stand to attention.

  A raised voice drew his attention back to the men.

  ‘But she can’t stay!’

  ‘Well, how the hell was I supposed to know? You just told me to wait for her and to get the bandages. She didn’t seem to want to put them down and I wasn’t going to stand out there where anybody could see me, so I brought her in.’

  ‘Fucking idiot!’ Larry yelled. ‘Get rid of her.’

  The man took a step back and shook his head. ‘No. No way. I didn’t agree to that.’

  ‘Send her back, you twat! What? Did you think I wanted you to kill her?’

  Tom noticed that Miss Frith was watching the exchange as if it were a tennis match, her head moving from side to side as she watched each speaker. She seemed oddly fixated on the one getting the telling off, almost as though she recognised him. Was he an ex-pupil? He sounded older than that, though, possibly older than Miss Frith.

  Larry gave Mrs Warnesford a shove towards the door that nearly knocked her off her feet. She stumbled and caught herself on the back of Harley’s chair, desperately trying to remain upright. For the first time in nearly half an hour, Tom saw Harley lift his head and engage with what was going on around him. He looked at Mrs Warnesford and scowled, then, just as suddenly, he put his head down and his expression went blank. Tom was convinced that nobody else in the room had witnessed this, everybody had been focused on the argument between their captors. He watched as his dad’s PA was escorted from the room by two of the men, Larry locking the door behind them. Then he turned his attention back to Harley. He’d thought that his attacker had been in shock, that Harley’s demeanour was subdued and withdrawn but what he’d just witnessed was something different. Harley wasn’t staring down at his desk and he wasn’t disengaged. Tom’s worry was that Harley might have something to do with what was happening, that he might have a connection with one of the men or a role in the events of the morning.

  Tom had seen what Harley Morton was hiding from everybody else in the room. He’d seen it as the boy had sat up straighter when Mrs Warnesford had grabbed his chair and he’d almost recognised it earlier, but Annie had distracted him. Harley wasn’t uncommunicative, he was just communicating in an unexpected way.

  Harley Morton had a phone.

  19

  ‘She’s coming back,’ Cam said, relief coursing through every cell in his body. ‘They’ve let her go.’ He watched as Ruth Warnesford negotiated the steps down from the main entrance to the humanities block and then jogged awkwardly across the playground to where he was waiting with Pearson.

  ‘How’s Tom?’ he asked as soon as the door closed behind his PA.

  Ruth pushed past him towards a row of chairs that lined the far wall of the main hall and collapsed into the nearest one.

  ‘Christ!’ Pearson snapped. ‘Let her get her breath back.’

  ‘I just–’

  ‘She’s your responsibility just as much as your son is,’ the DI said. ‘She’s your employee and she’s just had a shock. I need to know what she saw in there because any small piece of information about these men might help my colleagues to free those kids, but I need her to be able to tell me calmly.’

  Cam followed Pearson across the hall to where Ruth was sitting with her head in her hands breathing heavily. The jog across the playground had taken her less than thirty seconds – it wasn’t the exercise that was affecting her respiration, it was fear. What the hell had she seen over there?

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ Cam asked, hoping that if he reminded the woman that he was there she’d tell him something about his son. Ruth shook her head, still struggling to get her breathing under control. ‘Glass of water?’

  This time she raised her head and glared at him. ‘Oh, fuck off, Cam! I’m sick of you and your fake concern for everybody else. I only went over there because I let you convince me that it would be all right. I can’t believe I let you talk me into it. You’re so good at getting your own way, aren’t you? And if somebody tries to stand up to you, you just bulldozer them or get rid of them.’

  Cam stepped back, shocked by the bitterness in Ruth’s tone.

  ‘I’ll tell him what happened – you can listen if you want.’

  Pearson sat next to her and took out his notebook. ‘It looked from here like somebody grabbed you and dragged you into the building. Is that what happened?’

  Ruth nodded. ‘It was terrifying – I had no idea what he was going to do to me.’

  ‘And what did he do?’ Pearson asked, gently.

  Cam listened to the woman’s account of being hustled along the corridor and into the classroom, desperately trying to contain his impatience as she described the three armed and masked men in the room and how calm the students appeared to be. Why wasn’t she talking about Tom? Was he badly hurt? Or worse?

  ‘Explain where the men were in relation to doors and windows,’ Pearson said and made notes as Ruth described the position of each man.

  ‘And the students?’

  ‘Behind desks, last three rows. Donna Frith was sitting at her desk.’

  ‘And what about Tom Cleaver? What had happened to him? Where was he?’

  ‘He was on the floor, leaning against the back wall of the classroom. When I got there Annie Bainbridge was squatting down next to him. I got the feeling that she’d been looking after him. She took the first aid kit and seemed to be bandaging him up.’

  ‘Bandaging what?’ Cam demanded. ‘How badly is he hurt?’

  Pearson held up a hand urging Cam to be quiet, but Cam ignored him, pressing on. ‘Has he been shot? Beaten? What? I need to know, Ruth. Please, tell me about my son.’

  Ruth looked at Cam and then back at the DI. ‘Tom Cleaver had been stabbed,’ she said.

  Cam felt light-headed. Stabbed. That could mean anything – and everything.

  ‘Where?’ Pearson asked.

  Ruth pointed to her left side, just above her waist. ‘In his side.’

  ‘Did it look serious? Could you see the injury or any blood?’

  ‘There were a couple of bloody sanitary towels next to Annie. I think she must have been using them to stop the bleeding.’

  Cam was listening but he only seemed to hear certain words, the rest was just noise. Bloody. Bleeding. Injury.

  ‘You’re doing really well,’ Pearson said, placing a hand on Ruth’s knee. ‘Do you have any idea how the stabbing happened? Did any of the men have a knife?’

  Ruth shook her head and glanced up at Cam. ‘It wasn’t one of the intruders,’ she said. ‘It was one of the students. I don’t know any details but one of the men said that Harley Morton stabbed Tom.’

  ‘Harley Morton?’ Cam collapsed into one of the chairs. This wasn’t making any sense at all.

  ‘That’s what he said,’ Ruth confirmed. ‘And Harley looked really out of it. Like he was in a daze.’

  ‘What did he stab him with? We have a zero-tolerance policy on knives in school.’

  Pearson snorted. ‘As if that does any good. Do you know how many school stabbings there are in this country every year? And most of those are in schools with exactly the same policy. The kids just don’t expect to get caught. If we’re going to keep knives out of schools, we need to do what they do in the States and install metal detectors.’

  ‘Jesus, this is Cumbria not the fucking Bronx,’ Cam said. ‘Our kids generally follow the rules. Harley must’ve got the knife from one of those men. Who says he isn’t part of whatever’s going on?’ Cam could hear himself spinning out of control, throwing out wild theories about his son’s attacker, but he seemed unable to stop. To stop talking would be to start thinking and he could barely dance around the edge of his feelings about his son’s situation.

&nbs
p; ‘This isn’t helping,’ Pearson said, nodding towards Ruth. ‘We need to focus. She’s holding on by a thread.’

  Cam folded his arms in a desperate attempt to contain his emotions and hunched lower in his chair. Pearson was right and Cam needed to let him do his job.

  ‘Ruth,’ the DI said, gently. ‘Can you tell us anything about the men in the room? Anything at all? Height, accent, eye colour?’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘They were all dressed in black and wearing balaclavas or ski masks or whatever you call them. One of them seemed to be in charge, I got the feeling that the others were deferring to him. He had a low, deep voice. The others didn’t really say much.’

  ‘What about the one who dragged you into the building? What was he like?’

  Ruth closed her eyes as though trying to remember. ‘Tall. About a foot taller than me – I had to look up when he spoke to me. He had blue-grey eyes. He might have been local – Cumbrian at least – but he sounded like he might have lived away or was trying to hide his accent.’

  Pearson made a note. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He was the most frightened. The others seemed on edge, but he was genuinely scared. The boss told him to get rid of me and he seemed to think it meant he had to kill me. He said that wasn’t part of the plan, or the deal or whatever. I think he was glad when they let me go. He walked me back to the door and, as he opened it, I’m sure I heard him say he was sorry. He said it really quietly and I wasn’t going to hang around and get him to repeat it but I’m almost certain it was an apology.’

  ‘You’ve done really well,’ Pearson said, closing his notebook. ‘Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable and see if we can find a cup of tea. I’m sure Cam’s grateful for everything you did to help Tom.’

  Cam nodded automatically. The woman hadn’t been much help apart from giving him more to worry about. Where the hell were the rest of the police? He checked his watch – nearly fifty minutes since Keely had raised the alarm.