The school reception was a sizeable open space with skylights and magnolia walls but no furniture. Tom occupied himself by taking in the gallery of photographs while he waited for the school secretary to return. It must have been a relatively recent addition, for he had never seen these pictures before. Generations of children were featured here in rows of framed group portraits. The headmaster must have reasoned the one thing the new school lacked was a sense of history, so he’d decided to import one, by fishing out these old pictures from the previous school building. The collection started at one end, with a handful of black-and-white images. Tom recognised Henry Collier in one of those earlier photographs, which, judging by the clothes he was wearing, dated from the early sixties. He had a serious but not unkind face and the children seemed relaxed in his presence, the boys in shorts and the girls in dresses, their hair tied in bows, an image of a more innocent, unknowing era. The one thing he did not look like was a murderer.
Tom worked his way along the wall, glancing at each photograph in turn, as the pictures slowly became more modern, the short trousers replaced by long ones, the black-and-white photographs by colour pictures as he finally reached the seventies, the decade that taste forgot. The male teachers had beards and long hair that covered their ears. They wore brown jackets in tweed or corduroy, while the women were decked out in shapeless dresses with coloured hoops or spots in green, brown and purple, or they wore pleated A-line skirts and white blouses with ruffled collars and beige jumpers. The kids wore chunky, hand-knitted sweaters with clumsy patterns, bright T shirts or coloured check shirts and there was a lot of gingham and even tartan, as if the brightly coloured clothes could make up for the drab days of power cuts and the three-day-week.
Tom wondered what these kids were all doing now and who they had grown up to be. Then he found what he was really looking for. It was an old, colour photograph, slightly faded from being in direct sunlight for a long time, but the figures in it were still recognisable. It was a group shot, around twenty years old, featuring two rows of children and a woman stood to one side of them. Mary Collier was dressed primly in a woollen dress, her hair tied back and pinned with a precision bordering on military. She could have been in one of those old war films that showed women in blue uniforms, moving toy planes around to chart the progress of the Battle of Britain. Mary Collier would have been ideal casting as a harsh, middle-aged NCO, disciplining the young WAAFs for lateness or wearing too much make-up on duty.
His eye left Mary and settled on the rows of children in her charge. They must have been aged about seven or eight.
‘Are you in that one?’ He had been so absorbed by the photograph that he hadn’t heard the receptionist return.
He pointed at a short, worried-looking kid at the end of the front row. ‘That’s me.’
‘Oh bless,’ she said it kindly, ‘you look like you’ve got the troubles of the world on you there,’ and she was right, he did.
‘He’ll be finished in a few minutes,’ she told him, ‘would you like a coffee while you’re waiting.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Then I’ll leave you with your memories.’
When she was gone, Tom continued to gaze at the photograph, trying to remember how it felt to be that age. He looked so serious. Of course this could have been an illusion. Perhaps the shutter clicked at the wrong moment and he had been smiling and happy a second earlier but he doubted that. Tom knew it would be years before he could shrug off abandonment by his mother as something of no real consequence. He wondered what thoughts were going through that troubled little mind of his.
As he progressed along the line of photos, the pictures became brighter. This was the modern age of the new school and the images hadn’t yet succumbed to the debilitating effect of the light. One photograph in particular caught Tom’s eye and he stopped and stared at it.
At first he couldn’t quite take in its significance, his interest was more instinctive than anything else, but he began to gaze closely at the faces of the little boys and girls and the teacher who was standing there with them until everything gradually came into view. A thought dropped into Tom’s head and exploded there like a bomb. The sudden shock was a physical sensation that he felt in his blood and all over his skin, which prickled at the realisation.
Moments later the headmaster finally emerged. Mr Nelson pushed open the swing doors hard so he could make his point. He was far too busy to waste any more of his precious time with journalists but as he came through the door and out into reception he stopped in his tracks and looked disbelievingly around the room, because there was nobody there. Tom had gone.
Tom rang the doorbell and waited until he heard footsteps coming down the stairs, then the door finally opened.
‘There’s something I want to ask you,’ he told Andrew Foster from his doorstep. ‘It’s important.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
‘Really?’ his friend seemed perplexed by his directness. ‘Everything all right, is it?’ and he made a show of looking beyond Tom to see if something was going on outside that he didn’t know about. Did the teacher seem nervous? ‘Okay, mate. Come in then.’
Tom followed Andrew into his front room, which was exactly as he remembered it from the night they had been drinking together, minus the vodka bottle but with the addition of sunlight through the windows.
‘Ask away.’
‘It’s about Michelle Summers,’ he said, ‘the missing girl.’
‘Right.’
‘That night when we first met in the Lion, you said you didn’t know her.’
There was a fraction of a second’s hesitation. ‘I don’t.’
‘You said you’d never known her, that she was before your time.’
‘Yeah,’ answered the teacher, ‘that’s right.’
‘But that’s not right is it, because you do know her, or at least you did.’
‘I don’t follow you, mate.’
‘You taught her, for a whole year. In 1988, the first year you were at the school in fact, she was in your class.’
Andrew was trying to force a bemused look onto his face but it wasn’t working. The only genuine emotion that Tom could see written there was fear. ‘I’ve seen the class photo on the school wall. It might be five years old but there’s no mistaking her.’
‘It can’t have been her, mate. One ten-year-old girl looks very like another, that’s all. You’ve seen another girl and thought it was Michelle what’s-her-name.’
‘Her name is Summers; Michelle Summers.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Say it then.’
‘What?’
‘Say her name.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want you to,’ insisted Tom, ‘say her name.’
‘Michelle Summers,’ Andrew gave Tom a look like he was humouring a drunk, ‘happy now?’
‘No. Christ, man, she’s standing next to you at the end of the row in the picture. It’s her. There she is in your first school photo as a teacher, part of your first form class, which had to be a big deal for you, and she’s standing next to you. Yet you told me you never even knew her.’
‘Hang on,’ Andrew held up a hand in an ‘I can explain’ sort of way.
‘No, you hang on. I want to know why you said you never knew her.’
‘Tom, relax will you. You’ve got the wrong girl, I’m telling you.
‘No, I haven’t. I know I have the right girl because I checked. That’s what journalists do, we check things, and I checked this. I’ve just been to see Michelle’s mother and I asked her. You definitely taught her.’
‘Okay, okay, I’ll take your word for it. So it was Michelle and I’m sorry for being such a forgetful tosser but I don’t get that attached to the kids, mate. It’s just a job,’ and he shrugged in an exaggerated manner, ‘I didn’t realise she’d been in my class. It was five years ago and I forgot about it, all right?’
‘No, not all right. I don’t believe you, Andrew, and
do you know why?’
‘What the hell is this, Tom?’
‘Do you know why?’ Tom shouted it at him.
‘No, I don’t. And I want to know just what this is actually, Tom. I want you to tell me.’
‘Because when I went round to see Michelle’s mother, do you know what she told me about you? Do you?’
‘How could I?’ Andrew Foster looked very rattled now.
‘Only good things.’
‘Right, well then,’ he seemed relieved.
‘Lots and lots of good things and all because Michelle thought you were the best thing since sliced bread. Apparently you were all she talked about for a while there. It was Mr Foster this and Mr Foster that.’
‘Well, that’s okay isn’t it?’
‘According to her mam, Michelle had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on you but she didn’t mind because you helped her daughter with her reading and handwriting, which was always so untidy before Mr Foster got involved, giving her extra help, a bit of one-to-one tuition. Fiona even made a point of thanking you at the parents’ night.’
‘That’s not my fault,’ he swallowed as if his mouth was suddenly dry, ‘if she had a bit of a crush. It can happen to any teacher; male or female.’
‘Yes and it’s not as if you were likely to reciprocate were you, not at her age? You’re not a paedo, after all.’
‘Of course not! How could you even say something like that? She was only ten.’
‘Yeah, only ten back then,’ said Tom quietly, ‘but she was fifteen when she disappeared.’
There was a long pause. The silence stretched out in front of them. Each waited for the other to speak. More than once Andrew opened his mouth to say something but no words came out. Eventually he settled on, ‘I don’t know what it is you think …’ then he shook his head as if he felt his friend had gone crazy.
‘It’s very simple. I think you are hiding something, Andrew. I was pretty sure of it when I came round here. I’m certain now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re scared. In fact you’re shitting it, which makes me wonder what you’ve done. You’ve lied about a missing girl. She thought you were the doggy’s little bollocks but you denied knowing her … and now she has disappeared,’ and he reached into his jacket pocket and took out the mobile phone. ‘So if you won’t tell me, it’ll have to be the police.’
‘Oh come on, don’t be stupid.’
Andrew’s house was on high ground so Tom managed to get a signal and he started to dial.
‘Don’t call the bloody police, mate,’ Tom finished dialling the number and they listened as the faint sound of a ringtone began. ‘What are you going to say? They won’t take you seriously!’
Tom knew he was right. All he had was a hunch that his friend had something to hide but there was not a shred of real evidence that Andrew had anything to answer for, except a poor memory. Tom was bluffing him. And it looked as if Andrew was going to call that bluff. The phone rang out for what seemed like an age. He had dialled the direct line for the station that he knew by heart and they were taking a bloody long time to answer it but that was just as well, because Tom had no idea what he was going to say when they did. Tom and Andrew watched each other as the phone continued to ring and ring.
‘This is just …’ and Andrew shook his head again, ‘… madness.’
Finally the ring tone stopped and a voice said ‘Police?’
‘Hello,’ said Tom and all he could think to add to this was, ‘Sorry, wrong number’ but before he could say it, Andrew took a step forward and spoke.
‘Wait, I’ll explain,’ he urged Tom, ‘I’ll explain it all. Please.’
Tom hung up without another word. ‘What have you done, Andrew?’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
‘Just give me a moment, wait there,’ Andrew Foster was an agitated man, ‘there’s something I have to show you. It will put your mind at rest, I promise. Just wait there.’ He was waving his arms in an effort to reassure Tom and keep him from moving then he disappeared and could be heard running up the stairs.
Tom was left on his own to attempt to put his thoughts in some sort of logical order. This was crazy, Andrew Foster wasn’t a murderer, surely; the man he had grown to know over pints in the Greyhound and the Lion couldn’t be a killer, could he? But what else could explain his bizarre behaviour? He had reacted like a man whose life depended on quickly coming up with answers he didn’t possess and he had been desperate to prevent Tom from talking to the police.
And now he had disappeared upstairs. To do what? Escape from a first-floor window or to get something? Tom looked at the living-room walls with their bayonets and the weapons suddenly took on a more sinister appearance. Tom had Andrew pegged as an immature loner with a liking for boys’ toys but what if he was a crazy man who’d become a teacher so he could get at little girls? Could Andrew be the Kiddy-Catcher and if he was, would he let Tom Carney back out into the world so he could tell everybody about it? What if he had used one of those bayonets on Michelle? What if he owned a gun? Christ, if Andrew was mad enough to try and shoot Tom to keep him quiet, would it be any consolation that the teacher would be arrested as soon as the shots were heard? Not if he lay bleeding to death on the living room carpet it wouldn’t.
It was too late to do anything about that now. He could hear Andrew’s footsteps on the stairs. The teacher was coming back down. Tom told himself that his new friend was unlikely to try and kill him in his own front room in broad daylight but, up until a few minutes ago, he would not have suspected the man of murdering a schoolgirl. Tom tensed in readiness so he could rush Andrew and disarm him if he had a weapon, but he didn’t fancy his chances.
The living-room door swung open and Tom’s gaze immediately went to Andrew’s hands, which were empty. Any gratitude Tom may have felt for that small mercy was instantly forgotten when his gaze travelled upwards and he took in the scene in front of him. Tom’s mouth fell open in astonishment and he felt his skin tingle. ‘You have got to be kidding me?’
‘No, Tom,’ admitted Andrew, ‘we are not kidding you.’
But Tom Carney ignored the words of his friend. He was too busy gazing at the figure standing behind the school teacher. She was a slight young girl with dark hair, a faint trace of lipstick on her mouth and a silver chain around her neck with a St Christopher medallion attached to it. Michelle Summers wasn’t dead or buried in a ditch, miles from Great Middleton. She wasn’t Girl-Number-Five, the latest victim of the Kiddy-Catcher, and she wasn’t a teenage runaway, sleeping rough in London or Manchester and getting mixed up in drugs or prostitution.
Michelle Summers was very much alive.
She looked well, with no signs of ill treatment, and she was standing in Andrew Foster’s living room, less than a mile from her mother’s house.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Tom, ‘she’s alive.’
The teacher nodded, ‘and completely unharmed,’ Andrew assured him with a benign look on his face, as if that would make it all okay somehow.
‘Oh my God,’ Tom was struggling to find the words, beyond a succession of callings to the Almighty, ‘what have you done, Andrew?’ he asked again.
Then Andrew did a strange thing. He turned back to the girl he had been holding captive in his home, while the police frantically searched for her all over the country, and said, ‘Tell him, darling. I think it should come from you.’
Tom was struggling to process the information he was receiving now. Did her abductor just call Michelle Summers, darling? What kind of brainwashing was this?
‘It’s very simple,’ the girl told Tom with a steely confidence that belied her years. ‘We knew this day would come sooner or later. We want you to listen to us, to hear us out, before you call the police, I mean. We’d like to explain everything, so everybody knows and understands why we did it,’ and if all of this wasn’t astonishing enough, the young girl then did something that sent Tom’s world rotating on its axis. She reached out an arm t
o one side and the schoolteacher took her hand in his, then they held on to each other like the star-crossed lovers they were convinced they’d become.
‘We are going to tell you everything, Tom,’ said Andrew calmly. ‘We want you to hear our story.’
‘He loves me,’ said the girl with conviction, ‘and I love him too.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Tom took some persuading. His first reaction was to reach for his phone again and call the police. ‘Please don’t do that!’ begged the girl. ‘Not yet. Everybody has to know the truth first. Otherwise there’s no hope for us, ever! Don’t you understand?’ she seemed frantic now.
‘No hope for you? Are you crazy?’ Tom asked Michelle. ‘Don’t you know what’s been going on while you’ve been hiding in here? A nationwide man hunt! Every police officer in the country has been looking for you. Have you any idea how much of their time and manpower you’ve wasted or the hurt you’ve caused?’ He then looked into the calm face of his friend. ‘Oh I just remembered, you don’t read the papers or watch the news,’ he told him, ‘but you must have bloody known!’
‘Yes Tom, we did know,’ Andrew continued to talk to him as if he was an entirely reasonable man who was trying to calm somebody down, ‘and that certainly wasn’t our intention. Things just spiralled out of control – but I know you will understand when you hear what we have to say.’
‘Understand?’ then he remembered something. ‘Was she here when I came back for that drink? Was Michelle hiding upstairs while we were downing your bloody vodka? She must have been!’ He was furious then.
‘Just give us a few more minutes, please, then you can call anyone you like.’ Tom hesitated. ‘Please,’ Andrew said again. ‘It’s a good story and that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? A really good story.’
No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Page 31
