by M. J. Trow
‘Yes,’ he said, crouching down. ‘I didn’t know how many casualties, so I just said for them to send as many ambulances as they could muster.’
‘Good call,’ she said. She looked over her shoulder. ‘At first estimate, we’ve got ten down, some poisoned, some hurt. Helen has broken her leg. Tom has cracked his head open and I think may be concussed. Bernard and L …’ she stopped herself. ‘… I mean, James, have collapsed.’ It didn’t seem right to call him by his nickname when he was lying, barely breathing, with his head in her lap. ‘All the candidates seem to be down and in a pretty bad way. Anyone else?’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell said quietly. ‘Mel Forman from Business is dead.’
Sylvia looked at him, suddenly pale. ‘Dead?’ she repeated. ‘Are you sure?’
He nodded.
‘Max, this is serious. I know I said poison, but I was hoping it was just a dodgy prawn, all the same.’
‘I’m hoping that as well, Sylv, but I agree with your first gut reaction, if you’ll excuse the phrase. It’s too quick for food poisoning. This is chemical poisoning, though whether deliberate or accidental remains to be seen.’
‘You’ve called the police, I suppose?’
‘Yes. I tried Jacquie, but her phone isn’t responding. I left a message at the station for her, but it’s in the hands of the 999 people to get the police here.’
‘God, Max! Try her again. If she hears about this before she gets your message, she’ll be frantic.’
Maxwell looked at her and knew she was right. It wasn’t often he dropped the ball on this kind of thing, but how often had he been surrounded by the dead and dying in quite these numbers? He had turned to leave the room when, without warning, Bernard Ryan heaved himself up onto one elbow and, with what looked like the last of his strength, threw up all over Maxwell’s feet. The Deputy Head looked up at Maxwell, for whom he rarely had a civil word and whispered thickly, ‘Max, help me, please.’ And, always a gentleman, Maxwell did.
Chapter Five
Henry Hall was taking advantage of a miraculously quiet Thursday lunchtime to catch up with his paperwork. He had been on holiday in August, a very unusual occurrence about which he was in two minds. He loved his wife, no doubt about it, but over the years they had got used to not seeing each other much; in all the family holidays they had booked, he had probably managed to be present at about three. Work had always intervened, so he wasn’t much bothered where she booked, because he was unlikely to be sharing the cosy cottage/ farmhouse/family tent or whatever the case may be. This summer, though, fate had caught up with him and he had endured, while Margaret had enjoyed, a fortnight learning to do watercolours in a mountain retreat in the Algarve.
Never mind, he thought, that was all behind him and, apart from a line of recalcitrant cadmium red under the nail of his ring finger, it was all but forgotten. The paperwork was a pleasant change, but was getting boring, so he was pleased when his phone rang.
‘Hall.’
‘Guv, this is an odd one. We need you a.s.a.p. at Leighford High.’ It was Bob Davies, sounding rather more uncertain than his usual style.
‘Leighford High? Bob, can’t you deal with this one? You know how I hate to—’
‘Mix it with Maxwell? Yeah, guv. I can’t stand the bugger myself. Only, this sounds quite serious. People throwing up, poison, they say.’
‘People throwing up, Bob? Surely, that’s more a job for the School Nurse, isn’t it? Or the paramedics, at the outside.’
‘But, guv.’ Davies sounded like a wheedling child. ‘Poison, guv.’
‘Who says it’s poison? Who rang this in? It could be some kid.’
‘No, guv. It’s kosher. An adult rang it in.’
‘Who?’
‘Umm, hang on. I’ll have to put you down.’ There was a clunk as the phone went down on a desk and a distant sound of rustling paper. ‘Sorry, guv. Can’t find it. But I know they’ve sent four ambulances.’
Hall tapped his pen on the desk and came to a decision. ‘Right, this is what we’ll do. Send a car, because if it is a hoax, we’ll need to investigate. If, when they get there it is, as you so colourfully say, kosher, they can radio for help. Would that be OK with you?’
‘I’ll go, shall I, guv?’
Hall sighed. ‘Yes, if you like. Where’s Jacquie? Perhaps this is one for her?’
‘She’s on split shift today, guv. She’ll be back in about half an hour.’
‘That will be fine, Bob. I don’t feel that a bunch of kids throwing up their lunch is really one for us, but if you want to go, then wait for Jacquie and then you can both go.’
Silence on the other end of the phone.
‘Bob? Will that be OK? Wait for Jacquie?’
‘Oh, all right, guv. Only …’
‘Yes,’ Hall appeased. ‘Poison. I know. I look forward to being proved wrong.’ He put the phone down with a sigh and picked up his pen. Where was he? He hated it when someone interrupted his train of thought. Quotas. Community Policing. Peter Hitchens was asking awkward questions again. His phone rang.
‘Yes!’
‘Guv? This is a bad line, sorry. It’s Jacquie.’
‘I know who you are, Jacquie. What do you want?’
‘Bo … rang me and … now. Shall … or what?’
‘I’m sorry, Jacquie. I can only hear one word in ten. Can you ring me back when you have a better signal?’
‘… uv. I’m in … co’s. Really … nal here. Bob … want?’
‘Jacquie. I can’t hear you. I’m putting the phone down.’ And he did.
At the other end of the line, Jacquie looked at her phone in fury. First Maxwell had tried to ring her and, failing to get through, hadn’t left a message. She hated it when he did that. Then Bob Davies had rung her and, on a really bad line, seemed to be asking her to come in early. Then Henry Hall had hung up on her. Plus, she was in a ten million mile queue in Tesco’s, with a trolley full of extremely perishable food and half an hour to buy it, get it home and get back to the nick. It wasn’t going to happen, she told herself, and abandoned her trolley by the time-honoured system of quietly sidling away and then running like hell to the car. Her instinct was telling her that, although the odds on Maxwell’s call and Davies’s call being connected were astronomically long, she would be a fool to disregard the coincidence. She didn’t hear the Security Chappie ask her, ‘Is everything all right, madam?’
Once in the car park with a five-bar signal, she rang Leighford High. The irritating list of numbers she might want seemed to take longer than usual to roll out. No, she didn’t want Student Services, or the Site Manager or a chance to comment on the new interactive website. Post 16 she did want, because that’s where they kept Peter Maxwell, but it was lunchtime and the chances were he wouldn’t be there. Pressing zero for reception got her nowhere. The hairs on the back of her neck began to rise. The Thingees on the Front Desk ran a tight ship and there was always someone on the switchboard. Ringing off, she punched in Davies’s number. After two rings, it went to answerphone.
‘Hi. Bob Davies here. In line with police and government guidelines I have switched my phone off whilst driving. Please leave a message after the tone, and when I am safely parked I will get back to you. Beeeeeeeeeeep.’
‘Bob, it’s Jacquie. I’m on my way in. Don’t quite know what’s going on. See you in about five.’ She hung up and turned the ignition key in one movement and was soon heading for the police station. As she approached a junction, just before the town centre, she noticed traffic pulled in to the side. Then she heard the sirens and sat amazed as no fewer than four ambulances streaked past. She tried not to worry that they were heading in the direction of Leighford High. They were heading in the direction of lots of places, after all: the Sea Front, Littlehampton, Portsmouth. She sat helpless in the traffic jam they left in their wake, drumming her fingers on the wheel. When she got to the junction, her hesitation was fractional; she indicated left, not right into the centre of town, and was soo
n in hot pursuit of the ambulances. If they turned off before the school, she told herself, or if they went right past, she would turn round and only be a few minutes later at the nick. And, anyway, she reasoned with herself, she was still on her break between shifts. She could do what she liked for another twenty minutes.
As she got to the crest of the hill just before the school, she looked into the distance to see if she could catch a glimpse of the ambulances. There was no sign. They must really have been going flat out, she tried to reason with herself. Even so, while convincing herself they were halfway to Littlehampton by now, she still slowed down at the school gates. The flashing lights were slowing to a halt and the sirens were on their last drawn-out wail. The paramedics were jumping down from their cabs in blurs of green overalls and hurrying inside. Neat groups of children were scattered over the playing fields, each one shepherded and comforted by at least one adult, sobbing little girls and big, tough, hard men trying not to cry. She looked frantically for the one comforting adult she had come to find; there was no sign.
There was nowhere to park. The car park was a perennial complaint at Leighford High; too many indulged and affluent Sixth Formers with cars meant there were never any spaces and now, with four ambulances blocking her path, there was nowhere to go, so she just abandoned the Ka, jumping out and trying not to run. She hadn’t gone more than a few paces when she heard an engine behind her and, looking round, saw Bob Davies jumping out of his car, abandoned like hers, forming a motley queue.
‘Bob!’ she called. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said, as he drew level. ‘Someone rang in that someone had been poisoned at the school. I was going to wait for you; Henry said I should, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that if they were sending four ambulances it had to be genuine, so I just came along. But why are you here?’
‘Gut reaction,’ she muttered. ‘Come on,’ and she turned back to the school entrance and broke into a barely controlled trot.
He drew alongside her and they clattered up the steps together, arriving at the doors just as the first pair of paramedics came out, wheeling James Diamond trussed up on a gurney. Jacquie bent over him and turned to Bob Davies.
‘My God. It’s the Headmaster,’ she gasped, automatically calling him the polite version of the term Peter Maxwell habitually used. She looked up at the paramedic bringing up the rear. ‘Leighford CID,’ she snapped, making no real attempt to flash her ID. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Dunno,’ he shrugged. ‘About ten down, we reckon. A couple of injuries, but mostly some form of very serious poisoning. One dead.’ He tossed his head back. ‘Coming out next.’
She looked past him and, as her eyes focused, almost passed out. The body on the gurney was covered with a red blanket, pulled up over the head and tucked firmly in at the sides, as if, somehow, the body beneath it could still stage an escape attempt. It looked oddly small and pathetic, trussed up like that. Over the legs, folded tidily, as if its owner might still need it, was a tweed jacket. It had seen better days. Jacquie knew without looking that there were leather patches on the elbows. That there was a red pen and a black pen in the breast pocket. That there was a photo of her son in the battered wallet in the right-hand side pocket. And older photos, too, of a smiling mother and daughter, long dead. She knew that in the left-hand pocket there were two cycle clips. She knew that it was Maxwell’s jacket and she folded neatly to the ground, as her world tumbled around her in ruins.
‘Look out,’ cried the rear paramedic. ‘Looks like another one.’
‘No, no,’ Davies said, pushing round the feet of the body; the gurney was almost filling the doorway. ‘We’ve only just got here. She’s fainted.’ He bent down to Jacquie; she was already coming to. ‘Leighford CID,’ he said to the paramedic. ‘Her partner works here. She’s a bit overwrought.’ And he hissed under his breath, ‘For fuck’s sake. This is all we need.’
Jacquie was struggling to sit up. She grabbed Davies’s hand. ‘Bob,’ she whispered, through lips as dry as dust. ‘Bob, that’s Max’s jacket.’
He straightened up to see. He wouldn’t know Maxwell’s jacket if it bit him on the leg, but he could tell that she was serious and, fair enough, if he had to name anyone who would wear a worn-out tweed thing like that, Maxwell’s name would be top of the list. He put a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t get up,’ he said. ‘Take your time.’ Over her head, he gestured to the man at the rear of the gurney to pull back the blanket. He peered over and saw a woman’s face, chalk white and vomit smeared, turned away from him, as if sorry to be causing any trouble.
He bent back down to Jacquie. ‘It’s OK, Jacquie,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not Max.’
‘But … but, his jacket?’
‘His jacket, but not him. Come on, up you come. We’ll go and see what’s what through there, if you’re up to it.’ Women!
She scrambled to her feet, and swayed into his arms. ‘Ooh, feeling a bit woozy.’ She looked up into his eyes. ‘Is it really not him?’
‘Really. It’s not something I’m likely to lie about, is it?’ he asked her, quite reasonably. ‘It’s not as if you wouldn’t find out eventually.’ He smiled at her as convincingly as he could and patted her back. ‘Come on, let’s do this, Jacquie. Because it is someone’s loved one, even if it isn’t yours.’
Tears sprang into her eyes at the mild rebuke and she turned to go through the foyer into the school building proper. The red plastic chairs ranged along one wall of the foyer were filled with the walking wounded. A woman in kitchen uniform was saying, over and over, that she had eaten one. Paul Moss was trying to tell her that she was going to be all right, but she wasn’t listening. Some of the staff had just been unable to cope with the panic and were sitting with their heads between their knees. They were mostly men, but Jacquie wasn’t in the mood to joke about that, scoring off Davies as she normally would. She looked them over quickly and, although she knew almost all of them, none was Maxwell. Not that she would have expected to see him feeling sorry for himself like that. So, that must mean he was still with the others, the eight remaining ‘down’ in the words of the paramedic.
Another gurney was coming through. This one bore Helen Maitland, her leg strapped between two boards. ‘Oh, Jacquie,’ she called. ‘Thank goodness you’re here. It’s bedlam in there.’ She gestured behind her into the dining hall. ‘Someone poisoned the buffet.’
Jacquie was confused. ‘But …’ she pointed at the woman’s leg.
‘Oh, I know,’ Helen said. ‘One of the candidates fell over and pulled me down with her.’ She caught Jacquie’s look. ‘She’s a very big woman. I fell awkwardly and broke my leg. Tom from PE has gashed his head really badly, and a few others fainted. Diamond is in a really bad way. All the candidates are out of it. Bernard Ryan is ill as well, but not unconscious.’
Jacquie cleared her throat and tried to pitch her voice the low side of hysterical. ‘Max?’
‘In there, covered in sick, but don’t worry. It’s someone else’s. He and Sylvia are the heroes of the hour, Jacquie. But, why don’t you go through? He’ll be glad to see you.’ She twisted round as best she could and spoke to the gurney-pusher. ‘Off you go, my man, and don’t spare the horses. Aren’t you supposed to give people lots of brandy at times like these?’ The paramedic tried to look as if he had never heard that one before and bent his back to the task.
‘’Bye, Helen,’ Jacquie said. ‘We’ll be in to see you this evening, if that’s OK.’
‘Ooh, please. Don’t bring grapes, though. I prefer crisps.’ And then, a second thought, ‘Actually, don’t bring anything.’
‘OK. See you later.’ Davies was going through the swing doors ahead of her into the dining hall. All the kids had now been cleared out of the building and the detective’s shoes squeaked on the still-polished floor. Jacquie caught up with him as the doors began to swing closed. On the other side of them, calm was beginning to return. The param
edics from the third and fourth ambulances had spread out among the fallen and were assessing them where they lay. Although no more were dead, everyone who had eaten whatever it was was either unconscious or close to it. Sylvia and Maxwell were kneeling together over the prone form of Bernard Ryan. He was groaning and every now and again leaning over and trying to be sick. Sylvia was patting him consolingly. Jacquie walked over to them, putting on her professional demeanour, though her heart was hammering in her ribs. ‘Max, Sylvia, thank goodness you’re all right.’
Maxwell looked up at the sound of her voice and clambered to his feet. ‘I won’t hug you, heart. I seem to be covered in sick. Just like the Light Brigade at Varna. Of course, that was cholera. Christ knows what this is.’
‘Max,’ she said. ‘I was so worried.’
‘I left a message,’ he said. ‘With the desk sergeant.’
‘You might as well have told the cat. Not our cat, of course,’ she said. ‘He always passes things on. I mean the station cat.’ Her lip trembled. ‘I was just so worried, when I got here. Ambulances. Dead bodies with your jacket on them.’ Regardless of vomit traces she hugged him tight.
‘Sssh,’ he said, rocking her and stroking her hair. ‘Sssh, I’m all right. Thanks to your egg and cress.’
She pulled away and became professional again. ‘It was in the food, then, you think?’
Sylvia stood up. Bernard Ryan had drifted off again, but was about to be loaded up and taken away by a paramedic. She flexed her knees and leant against a table. ‘I’m getting a bit old for this lark,’ she said, smiling at Jacquie. ‘Yes, we’ve pinned it down to the prawn cocktail, we think.’
‘That explains that, then,’ Jacquie said. Too many loose ends at this stage could be a disaster.
‘Explains what?’
‘A woman in the foyer was saying she had eaten one. Oh, but that means it can’t be the prawn cocktail …’
Maxwell dismissed Freda with a wave. ‘She’s been eating council leftovers for years. She’s probably immune to any poison yet invented. Anyway, the buffet was a general free-for-all, but the cocktails were only for SLT and candidates. There were a few spare and Mel from Business took one for herself and one for her TA. However, the teaching assistant is allergic, so Mel polished them both off, rather than put the spare one back.’
