Reunion: a gripping crime thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book Book 4)

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘It’s a strong possibility,’ Kate confirmed.

  Barratt nodded, the dipping of his head revealing the growing bald spot on his scalp. This combined with his hooked nose had inspired O’Connor to start calling him Monty after the Simpsons character Mr Burns. It wasn’t a nickname that Barratt appreciated and Kate had already made a mental note to have a word with O’Connor. Hollis was drawing a circle around something that he’d written on his notepad, his pen going round and round as though he was trying to use it to carve a hole through the rest of the pages.

  ‘Something to add, Dan?’

  Hollis looked up, his blue eyes brilliant in the morning sun cutting a blade of light across the room through the one small window. ‘If he’s DW then who’s MS?’

  ‘Margaret Simpkins,’ Cooper leapt in, eager as always to share the product of her data mining. ‘They married in 1966. The locket must be an anniversary present.’

  Cooper had shared this information with Kate before the briefing and Kate had been impressed with the DC’s ability to think laterally. She’d had no luck with the date on the locket, so she’d searched backwards in five-year blocks in case it was a gift marking a significant milestone in a relationship.

  ‘And are we assuming that the body is that of Margaret Simpkins?’ Barratt wanted to know.

  ‘We’re not assuming anything but that’s certainly a line of enquiry that I want you to follow up. So far Sam can’t find David Whitaker or his wife in any of the online registries. They disappear after 1985. Matt, I want you to go to their last known address and find out anything you can. They only lived there for a couple of years, but you never know – somebody might remember them. I’ll text you the details.

  ‘Sam, I want you to get on to the Department for Education and see if you can dig up anything about Whitaker’s employment history. Also try to find out about Margaret. It’s possible that she might have family somewhere local. She’d be in her seventies by now but that doesn’t mean that there’s not a brother or sister out there somewhere. If nothing else, we might be able to get a DNA comparison for the body. Steve?’

  O’Connor looked up at her expectantly.

  ‘Back to the storage place. There’s something dodgy going on there and dodgy’s your middle name.’

  The other three grinned. DS O’Connor was well known for his links with Doncaster’s seedier side. If a case involved drugs, prostitution or anything else unsavoury, O’Connor always had a contact or two who could steer him in the right direction.

  ‘Already put some feelers out,’ O’Connor said, stroking his dark red moustache in a way that reminded Kate of a cartoon villain.

  ‘Dan, I’m going to have a quick chat with the boss then we’re going to Sheffield Road Junior School. My sister remembers Whitaker as being ‘hunky’ and charismatic. He obviously made an impression. There might still be somebody at the school who remembers him.’

  Hollis nodded and stood up, shooting the cuffs of his suit jacket and checking the creases in his trousers. Kate smiled. Hollis might have been through a rough time, but he seemed more like his old self every day.

  The school was very much how Kate remembered it from her childhood except that the rickety prefabricated classrooms that had been perched on the upper playground to accommodate an excess of pupils had been replaced by a single-storey brick building. The other change was the name. Now part of a chain, the school was called The Thorpe Danum Academy and emblazoned with a logo depicting a Roman centurion.

  Kate and Hollis followed signage around the outside of the school to the main reception. The playgrounds and other entrances that, Kate remembered, led to the separate toilets and changing rooms for boys and girls were inaccessible to visitors, enclosed behind green mesh fencing.

  ‘Funny how times change,’ Kate mused aloud. ‘When I was at school here anybody could come and go. Both gates were propped open and there wasn’t an official reception – just a desk outside the head’s office.’

  ‘Stabbings, shootings and abductions,’ Hollis responded. ‘Too many nutters on the loose nowadays – schools have to protect their kids otherwise they fail the Ofsted.’

  ‘Cynical.’

  ‘True though.’

  Kate didn’t want Dan to be right, but she’d heard too much about schools whose staff hadn’t been able to respond quickly enough to attacks and invasions and then been blamed for students being harmed. Too often the culpability culture seemed to lead to the right measures for the wrong reasons.

  The security continued beyond the double doors which led into the school reception – a space which Kate vaguely remembered as being the stockroom and which she’d always loved whenever her teacher sent her to get a set of exercise books or a new tin of powder paint. Nick still sometimes commented on her stationery fetish and she had no doubt that it had begun here. Now though, walls had been demolished to create an airy space which had a welcoming feel until the visitor noticed the door next to the enclosed counter – a door that could only be opened by a swipe card. Nobody was getting through if they didn’t belong.

  The woman behind the desk greeted them with a wide smile, but her eyes were slightly suspicious and Kate pictured what a strange couple she and Dan must make. Him in his thirties, tall, blond, good looking and well-dressed; her a head shorter than Dan, fifty, greying roots because she’d missed her last hairdresser’s appointment due to work commitments, a navy trouser suit that she’d had for at least three years and sparse make-up that she had applied before she left her flat and hadn’t bothered to check since her morning meeting with Das.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the woman asked, and Kate immediately saw why she’d been given the job as gatekeeper. She was probably only a few years younger than Kate, her dyed dark hair and understated lipstick gave her a no-nonsense appearance and her white blouse and dark trousers almost amounted to a uniform. Everything about the woman said that she was prepared to be professional, but she wouldn’t be messed with.

  ‘DI Kate Fletcher and DC Dan Hollis,’ Kate introduced them, showing her ID and waiting while Dan did the same. ‘We’re investigating a complex case and we were wondering if there’s anybody here who might remember a member of staff from the nineteen eighties. I know it’s a long time ago, but it is very important.’

  The receptionist narrowed her eyes slightly as she stared at Kate and then glanced at Hollis. ‘That’s more than thirty years ago.’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘You’ll have to talk to the head.’

  ‘Might he have a list of former staff?’

  The woman smiled. ‘Better than that. He’s been here since the late eighties. He might be able to help you. Have a seat and I’ll see whether he’s available.’

  The woman watched until they’d both sat down on uncomfortable plastic chairs then she picked up the phone. She turned her back so that her conversation with the head teacher couldn’t be easily overheard then turned back and put the phone receiver down. ‘He’ll be a couple of minutes. He’s got a half-hour gap in his schedule. I’ll need you to sign in.’

  She pointed to a monitor and keyboard next to the reception desk. ‘Just type your name and your employer and I can print you out a visitors’ badge.’

  Kate allowed Dan to go first and by the time she’d signed in and been given a badge on a bright red lanyard, the mysterious door opened and a tall man stepped through. If Kate had spotted him on the street she’d have immediately decided that he was a head teacher. Tall and slim, he was dressed in a dark grey suit, the fabric cut through by a shimmering pinstripe. His lilac shirt was complemented with a dark purple tie, all of which highlighted his ruddy complexion and amused-looking green eyes. His greying hair was thick for a man in his fifties and whatever style he’d been hoping for had obviously rebelled into an unruly mop. Kate could imagine that he was popular with his staff and the beaming smile of the receptionist confirmed this opinion.

  ‘Detective Inspector Fletcher?’ he asked, looking from her to Dan and back
again.

  Kate took two steps towards him and held out her hand which he shook firmly as he introduced himself as Wayne Campbell. She introduced Dan and then followed Campbell through into the main part of the school.

  The familiarity caught Kate’s breath as they stepped into the main hall. Suddenly she was nine years old again and trying not to cry as her teacher told her how sorry she was to hear about the death of Kate’s mum. Except she’d not been Kate then, she’d been Cathy Siddons and she’d been swamped by her grief and confusion.

  ‘Weird being back, eh?’ Hollis said with a grin, but Kate couldn’t answer. Everything was the same and everything was different. Classrooms led off the hall, each one guarded by a red door with a window in the top half and, beyond the doors, Kate could picture the teacher in each room. Ms Shaw in the room opposite, Mr Dawson’s room in the corner, Mrs Dalston to her left and to her right the tiny staffroom that Kate had been allowed to enter when she’d been selected for extra maths tuition. She still pictured the dusty chairs and smelt the fog of cigarette smoke whenever she tried to work out a percentage.

  The hall was lit from above by a huge skylight made up of at least twenty panes of safety glass, most covered in bird droppings – Kate remembered them being replaced when she was in second year after one cracked after a storm. When she was seven, Kate had been puzzled to learn that the huge glass construction was called a skylark – it was three years before she learnt the real word.

  ‘… So, as you can see…’ Campbell was obviously saying something about the school but Kate hadn’t heard a word of it.

  She apologised with a smile. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t been listening. I haven’t set foot in here for over thirty years – it’s a bit overwhelming.’

  She saw that Hollis was looking at her oddly and knew that she’d be in for some serious teasing later.

  ‘You were a pupil here?’ Campbell turned to face her, his face a mix of puzzlement and interest.

  ‘Yep. When it was Sheffield Road Juniors. I left in 1979.’

  ‘And it hasn’t changed much?’

  Kate looked around again. The layout was exactly the same; even the wood panelling on the hall floor was the same faded beige. ‘Not really. Although I bet I’d see a lot of differences if I went into any of the classrooms.’

  Campbell seemed reassured by this, as though he thought he could claim responsibility for progress, and he gave her another broad smile as he led the way to his office. ‘And did you spend much time in here?’ he asked, opening the door and ushering the two detectives inside.

  ‘Thankfully not,’ Kate responded. She had been summoned to Mr Turner’s office twice during her time at the school – once for getting into a fight with a boy in the year above and once for the head teacher to offer his condolences after her mum died.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Campbell said, taking a seat behind the light wood desk that dominated the room and gesturing to two hard-backed chairs opposite.

  ‘Cheryl says you want information about somebody who used to work here? A former teacher?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Kate said, and noticed that Hollis had taken out his notebook. ‘David Whitaker. He taught here sometime in the seventies or eighties – maybe up to 1993 or so?’

  ‘Dave Whitaker,’ Campbell said softly. ‘Haven’t thought about him for a long while.’

  ‘You knew him?’ Kate prompted.

  ‘He worked here when I first started in 1987. He taught the fourth years. I think he left in the early nineties.’ The head teacher’s manner had changed subtly. The openness and welcoming smile had given way to wariness as suddenly as a door being closed, blocking out the sunlight.

  ‘What was he like?’ Hollis asked. ‘Was he a good teacher?’

  ‘I suppose so. I was young and idealistic at the time and had my own ideas about education. Whitaker had probably been teaching for a decade or so by then – practically a dinosaur.’ A shadow of his former smile appeared.

  ‘Did he get on well with the other staff and students?’

  Silence.

  ‘Mr Campbell? Was David Whitaker not well liked?’

  Campbell’s expression had completely closed down. ‘You know, don’t you? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘Know what?’ Kate suddenly felt sick. She could only think of one reason why her question had made Campbell uncomfortable.

  ‘Has he been arrested?’ Campbell’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Have you finally got some evidence?’

  He looked down and Kate followed his gaze to his hands which were trembling. He wrapped them together and took a deep breath. ‘A number of us thought that David Whitaker’s interest in his students was inappropriate. He was in charge of the end-of-year residential and there were rumours about his behaviour. I suppose I first heard them a couple of years after I started. Nothing specific and nothing was ever proven. Most of the staff were glad when he left – I think the head at the time had been trying to get rid of him for years.’

  ‘He was a paedophile?’ Hollis asked.

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know. As I said, there were rumours, but I don’t think there were ever any formal complaints or accusations. He was taken off the residential a couple of years before he left. I don’t know what excuse the head used but I remember Whitaker wasn’t happy about it.’

  ‘Did you know his wife?’ Kate asked.

  Campbell shook his head. ‘To be honest, I didn’t have much to do with him after the whispers started. I was young and new to teaching – I couldn’t afford to risk any of that rubbing off on me. Can I ask what this is about?’

  Hollis gave him the usual line about not being able to comment on an ongoing investigation, but Kate felt that she owed the man something after making him remember something so uncomfortable. ‘We’re involved in a possible murder inquiry,’ she admitted. ‘Some of the evidence may have a link with Whitaker or his wife. A person of interest gave Whitaker’s former address as their own and also a false name. It’s just one possible line of enquiry, though.’

  ‘Not a child?’ Campbell asked, his face ashen.

  ‘Not a child,’ Kate confirmed. ‘But I really can’t say anything else. Unless the name Martin Short means something to you?’

  Campbell gnawed on his thumbnail as he gave her question serious thought. ‘I don’t think so. Not a member of staff. Could be a student though – I can’t remember them all.’

  ‘Funny. Nobody seems to have heard of him,’ Hollis mused. ‘Apart from as one of Steve Martin’s sidekicks in The Three Amigos. Canadian actor apparently.’

  ‘Three Amigos?’ Campbell was suddenly animated again. ‘The film?’

  He stood up and turned to the window behind his desk. ‘I remember The Three Amigos.’

  ‘Pile of rubbish according to Netflix,’ Hollis said.

  Campbell turned back to them, his expression earnest. ‘Not the film. In my first year here, we had a trio of kids that called themselves The Three Amigos. They were inseparable. Did everything together. God, I haven’t thought about them in years. Two lads and a girl. Everybody wanted to join their little gang, but they kept themselves to themselves. Dusty, Lucky and Ned – they named themselves after the characters in the film. Except,’ he paused. ‘Except they fell out. I remember a big fight between the two boys. Just before the end of term, before they left. I expect they were scrapping over the girl. It was the first time I’d had to step in and break up a proper fight. I remember being really nervous.’

  Kate was only half listening. There was a link between the false name and David Whitaker. The Three Amigos. Three children who would have been on one of Whitaker’s residential trips at the end of their time at the school. Three children who may have had a reason to want to hurt their former teacher.

  ‘I’m going to need names,’ Kate said.

  July 1988

  Dusty had to admit it had been a really good few days, even though she’d spent part of the time wishing she could have shared a tent with
Lucky and Ned instead of dopey Angela Fox. She understood why it wasn’t allowed. They’d had the ‘sex talk’ last month; boys and girls in separate rooms with a teacher of the appropriate gender. When she’d met up with the boys at playtime they’d been giggling about something that their teacher had said, but she’d stayed silent. The female teacher had impressed upon the girls that the information she’d shared wasn’t to be discussed with the boys, but it wasn’t obedience that kept Dusty quiet. For once, she agreed with the teacher – she didn’t need to emphasise the ever-increasing difference between herself and her closest friends.

  She’d still spent all her time with them though. They’d been on hikes, kayaked on a reservoir and even tried abseiling from a disused railway bridge earlier that day. There had been some drama when Mrs Dalston had misjudged the rope and had fallen the last few feet, landing awkwardly on one ankle. An ambulance had been called and the teacher had been rushed off to hospital with one of the staff from the outdoor centre – the rumour mill was circulating the possibility that she wouldn’t be back until the following morning; if at all.

  Dusty gave the raft a quick inspection. It was the last challenge of the trip, one final task to perform in teams and Dusty thought she, Ned, Lucky and Angela had a decent chance of winning. The craft looked solid enough despite their lack of understanding of knots and the slightly dodgy-looking tilt to one side. They’d been given huge plastic containers which looked like a giant’s milk bottles and a range of wooden planks and sticks as well as various lengths of coloured nylon climbing rope and some thick, silver tape. They’d lashed planks across two of the barrels and done the same with another pair then joined the whole thing together with two further planks so that the plastic containers looked almost like wheels supporting a rickety platform. Two plank oars were to be their means of propulsion as they negotiated their way downstream. The site staff had hammered a wooden stake into the riverbank about five hundred yards from the clearing where the last-minute finishing touches were being added to the mongrel craft. The race was first past the post. The first team to get from the clearing to the marker post without capsizing were the winners. Dusty was determined that her team would take the crown and the promised extra helpings of pudding at teatime.