by M. J. Trow
‘Jacquie,’ Sylvia eventually said. ‘I’m not used to this. I just can’t do it.’
‘What’s the problem?’ she said. ‘Do you want me to ask you questions, to prompt you or something? Or do you find it distressing?’
‘It was distressing, yes,’ she replied. ‘But it isn’t that. I found I went onto autopilot, really. The training just kicked in. I know I didn’t do anything wrong, because that would have broken the flow, but as to what order things happened in, or anything like that, I’m afraid I won’t be a help. And I don’t want to give you my version as I have reconstructed it. It is bound to be hopelessly inaccurate.’
Jacquie put down her pen and rubbed her eyes. This was all she needed. She looked up. ‘What can you remember?’
‘Eating a jelly with Max. You coming in. Between, just a lot of vomit and crying. Sorry. Ask any medical person and if they’re honest they’ll say the same.’
‘Sylv, there’s no need to shield anyone.’
‘I’m not. Please, Jacquie, it’s what I remember. Nothing.’
‘Well,’ the policewoman pushed herself back from the desk. ‘That’s it, then. Thanks for coming in.’ She moved towards the door, shepherding Sylvia Matthews ahead of her. ‘Are you off home now?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When I’ve checked the loos and things; I sometimes find the occasional lost soul in the girls’ changing room.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ offered Jacquie.
‘Really,’ smiled Sylvia. ‘There’s no need. I just do it to satisfy myself all is well.’
‘I like to do that too,’ said Jacquie, and fell into step alongside the nurse.
The first stop was the boys’ cloakroom, off the main foyer. At first, Jacquie thought that something horrendous had happened in there. The smell was a bizarre compound of the warm fudgey smell given off by socks worn too long on sweaty adolescent feet, armpit, cheap deodorant, baked beans after digestion, and ammonia. This was undercut by the rather unexpected smell of mock leather and wood, from the brand new, granny-bought school bags and newly scraped-down floors. It would be all of a week before the bags became Tesco bags or the anonymous grey holdalls sold in sports shops throughout the known universe. The whole was enough to make anyone’s eyes water and Jacquie wiped hers with her sleeve. She glanced at Sylvia who had not reacted.
As they backed into the foyer again, Jacquie still trying not to breathe, Sylvia remarked casually, ‘How they can still find cleaners with the olfactory functions of a gnat, I can’t imagine. I really only go in there in the first week of term. After that, the smell is too bad.’ Although Sylvia Matthews had been close to Maxwell for many years, Jacquie had still to learn her expressions. Did that face mean what the words did, or was it some ironic comment? Jacquie just couldn’t be sure.
‘Right,’ Sylvia said, ‘the girls’ cloakroom. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ Jacquie held her breath in readiness, but there was no need. It smelt of talcum powder and shampoo. But it was so untidy that it was totally impossible to see the floor. Lockers spewed their contents everywhere and for some reason a blouse was hanging from a light fitting.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ she hissed to Sylvia. ‘I’ll see if SOCO are still in the building.’
Sylvia looked at her in surprise. ‘Whatever for?’ she asked, mildly.
‘Well, look around you, Sylv,’ Jacquie said. ‘The place has clearly been ransacked.’
Sylvia laughed and patted Jacquie on the arm. ‘No, no, Jacquie,’ she smiled. ‘This is the girls’ cloakroom. It always looks like this. Except for about thirty seconds on the first day of term, and in the holidays when the little dears aren’t here.’
‘But, it’s … it’s disgusting.’ Jacquie was almost lost for words. ‘How can they leave it like this?’
Sylvia surprised Jacquie by giving her a hug. ‘Welcome to Leighford High,’ she smiled. ‘The skull beneath the skin, as Max calls it.’
‘Yes,’ said Jacquie. ‘I expect he does. But that’s because he doesn’t do the cleaning.’
‘He does occasionally offer to use a broom in a rather unconventional way,’ Sylvia said, ‘but I don’t expect he means it. Anyway, nothing to see here, as your American counterparts say. I’m for home, I think. Are you done here?’ She pulled open one half of the double doors leading out into the foyer and stepped through. Jacquie turned to take one last look at the chaos that lay behind, so she didn’t see in detail what happened next. Sylvia Matthews just crashed back into the cloakroom and sent them both flying. Jacquie’s head hit the floor and bounced. If it hadn’t been for a pile of discarded gym kit, she would have been knocked cold. As it was, she was merely winded and was on her feet almost as soon as she hit the ground. Sylvia, burdened with more years than Jacquie, clambered up in a rather less gainly fashion but was out in the foyer only seconds behind her, to see the doors to the outside still swinging behind a running figure.
Jacquie gave chase but hadn’t a hope of catching up. She settled for standing still on the top step and trying to commit to memory a detailed picture of the man, if man it was. The person was small, wiry and was wearing a hooded anorak in a dirty green. It appeared to be wearing trousers rather than jeans and shoes rather than trainers. Trying to avoid jumping to conclusions, Jacquie nonetheless concluded that this was not a youngster. But who else would behave that way? She decided to call the runner ‘he’ simply because that was the impression she got; the run was neat and methodical, but the strides weren’t very long. He wasn’t particularly fit, she thought, but didn’t seem to be running out of steam, so averagely active. He was carrying a bag which chinked as he ran. He turned out of the drive and was gone. Jacquie ran into the dining hall and grabbed a walkie-talkie from a startled SOCO and patched herself through to Henry Hall.
‘Guv,’ she said. ‘I think we need more bodies here. Mrs Matthews has just been attacked, although I think by accident. I think the man who did it has made away with some evidence.’
The SOCO men looked up as one. Then, one broke ranks and rushed to the serving counter. He looked round at the others. ‘Oh, bugger,’ he said. ‘She’s fucking right as well. Some wanker has stolen the cocktail dishes off of the side.’
Jacquie addressed the walkie-talkie. ‘Did you hear that, guv?’
Hall’s sigh echoed round the cavernous room. ‘Yes, Jacquie. I’m on my way – if only to remind my team of the need for modified language in a public place.’
She broke the connection and looked around the assembled white suits. They were uncharacteristically silent. The pounding hearts and dry throats thudded and scraped in the quietness. A devil took hold of Jacquie. ‘Now, sit down at the tables, boys,’ she said. ‘Backs straight. No talking. You’re all in detention.’ She turned on her heel and was almost through the door before the first expletive hurtled after her.
Sylvia was sitting on a bench outside, rubbing her elbow and ruefully examining a gash on her leg. She had not been as lucky as Jacquie, with her handy gym kit pillow to land on. She had landed half on a bench and was battered and bruised. Also, Jacquie’s knee had caught her in the small of the back and she could feel it stiffening up as she sat there.
‘Are you all right, Sylvia?’ Jacquie said, sitting beside her. ‘Do you want to go to the hospital?’
Sylvia shuddered. ‘God, no,’ she said and tried a small smile. ‘I hate those places. MRSA. C. difficile. E. coli. I’ll be all right. I just need a nice hot bath and a lie-down and I’ll be right as rain.’ She turned. ‘Are you all right? I landed on you, didn’t I?’
‘A bit,’ Jacquie said. ‘I think I must have hurt you with my knee. But I bounced on the piles of crap those girls had kindly left on the floor, so don’t worry. Henry Hall’s on his way.’
‘Why?’ Sylvia was wide-eyed. ‘Just because some bloody kid gave me a shove?’
‘That was no kid,’ Jacquie said. ‘That was a man, and not a youngster at that. He was wearing quite expensive clothes and didn’t run like a young pe
rson. He was over fifty, I’d say, or if not, then not used to running. He was carrying a bag.’
Sylvia waited for the punchline.
‘It had the prawn cocktail dishes in it. The SOCO guys had left them lined up on the counter. He must have crept in and just taken them.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Because, Nurse Matthews, you were just knocked over by our murderer, unless I seriously miss my guess.’
And, with no fuss or preamble, Sylvia Matthews, SRN, slid gracefully off the bench and onto the ground in her first faint in living memory. What would Miss Nightingale have said?
‘So I didn’t really know what to do,’ said Jacquie, snuggling up to Maxwell when the day was finally done. ‘The designated First Aider was lying at my feet in a heap. So I put her in the recovery position and yelled for help. Then one of the SOCOs came out in all his white stuff and leant over her. She woke up, saw him, passed out again. She’s not really cut out for crime.’
‘I think you’re right there,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘Blood, gore, various body bits, which I hope never to have more than a passing acquaintance with, being presented to her day in and day out. But a little brush with a murderer and she goes to pieces. Tcha.’
‘Tcha?’ Jacquie rose up on an elbow and looked at him. ‘Nobody says “Tcha”.’
‘I do and I’m proud of it. I’ll say it again. Tcha! It’s a sort of Wodehousian, Thirties thing, but I sense it’s making a comeback.’
She prodded him in the ribs and wriggled down into the pillows to prepare for sleep. ‘Sleep, now,’ she said, gave a huge sigh and went off, just like that. Maxwell lay there amazed, as he always did. Was it a police thing? A female thing? How on earth did she do that? He rolled over and tried to put the day’s events out of his mind. He counted, in his head, the squadrons in the Light Brigade at Balaclava. He listed their commanding officers. He began to list their …
Someone was pulling his hair. It really hurt, but not as much as the exploratory finger up his nose. A bright light was shining in his eyes.
‘God,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been abducted by aliens.’
He forced open one eye and found that he was face-to-face with Nolan. ‘Dada? Brekkie.’
Maxwell tried to ungum his mouth. To make time, he gently disentangled his son’s fingers from his hair and unplugged his finger from his right nostril. He planted a kiss on the boy’s nose and struggled upright. He glanced behind him. Jacquie’s side of the bed was empty. ‘Where’s Mummy?’ he asked the boy.
‘Mummy ha gone,’ Nolan said. He sounded so precise that Maxwell half expected him to produce a Post-it note with the details.
‘When?’ he asked and then stopped. This lovely boy, bright as a button and twice as cute, was pretty good on where the biscuits were, how far he could push Metternich before the animal moved out and which Hoob was which, if indeed anyone knew. But time was something that happened to other people. For some bizarre spatial reason, Maxwell had been twelve before he could tell the time and he quite understood. He picked the child up and they went into the kitchen to get breakfast. The cooker clock, a tad more forthcoming than his son, told Maxwell that it was seven-thirty. So Jacquie had gone out earlier than usual. He hadn’t heard the phone, but that was no guide; he often didn’t. He stepped deftly over a lurking Metternich and perched Nolan on the worktop. He raised an interrogative eyebrow at him.
‘Pops!’ the little one shouted.
‘Coco Pops it is,’ agreed Maxwell. He glanced down at Metternich. ‘Coco Pops?’ The cat’s disdain was palpable and he showed Maxwell a clean pair of heels as he sped off down the stairs. Maxwell looked at his son who shrugged his shoulders and spread his arms, palms uppermost; a facsimile in miniature of his mother that made his father laugh out loud. The boy’s lip quivered for a moment and then he laughed too. A chip off each block, and no mistake.
As they sat together in companionable silence, watching the apparent acid trip that was the Night Garden, Maxwell began to wonder, ever so slightly, if he should find out where his wife-to-be had gone. As if in answer, the phone began to ring.
‘Hello?’
‘Max? Is that you?’ Jacquie asked, puzzled.
‘Who were you expecting?’
‘Well, no “War Room”? No “Piccadilly Circus”? No “Bedlam”?’
‘All of the above, obviously. But I didn’t know who it might be.’
‘Max, it’s quarter to eight in the morning. Who else might it be?’
‘Your kidnapper?’
‘Hmm, all right, sorry. I should have left a note, but I had to dash. I’m at the hospital. Someone had another go at Mrs Bevell last night.’
‘My God!’ Maxwell nearly dropped his Coco Pops. ‘Is she … I mean, did they …?’
‘Succeed? No. But obviously, she is very scared and also she did take in a bit of the poison, so is back in intensive care big time. She is now planning to sue the paramedic and also Leighford General.’
‘I hope she makes a bundle.’
There was another silence. ‘Max, are you sure it’s you? First answering the phone like a sane person and then applauding the blame culture. I’m in shock.’
‘No, no. Blame culture be buggered. I just mean that if she wins, she won’t need the job, so we won’t have her at Leighford High.’
‘Thank goodness. You had me worried, there. Anyway, the reason I rang was to check you were up, firstly.’
‘No trouble. The time bomb that is your son was primed and ready to go at seven-thirty.’
‘Good. Also, I managed to get one of the mums from nursery to pick him up at around eight-fifteen. Are you all right with that? Will you be ready?’
Maxwell looked down at his son. If there was a category in the Guinness Book of Records for how many Coco Pops could be embedded in one child’s hair, then Nolan was a contender. ‘Ready? Aye, ready. We’ll be fine. We’re all ready and dressed as a matter of fact.’
‘My word,’ Jacquie said, with scarcely a trace of irony showing through. ‘In that case, my work is done. I’ll either see you tonight or let you know what’s going on. Oh, and Max, just one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘The only way to get Coco Pops out of his hair is to rinse them out. If you try combing, they just squash further in. Bye.’ And she was gone.
Slowly replacing the phone, Maxwell asked Nolan, ‘Did you see when she put the cameras in place? Do you know where they are, eh, little man?’ And he scooped him up, all chocolately, and took him off for a bit of a rinse, careful all the time to keep him at arm’s length.
Leighford High School didn’t look any different on that Friday morning. The dining hall was cordoned off with stripey police tape and the kids were a little subdued, but most staff agreed that that was a definite plus. Maxwell, Acting Headteacher, decided against a special assembly. He opted for a staff meeting instead. He stood at the front of the room, and waited patiently for the staff to settle down. He cleared his throat quietly and the room was still. So this was what power felt like from the front. He took a deep breath and waited for the comments from the old geezer sitting at the front. Oh, but hang on, he was that old geezer, so no point in waiting.
He consciously copied Herr Hitler at the Berlin Sportpalast at his first big rally as Chancellor. He glowered left and right, but mostly right, and slicked down his hair, which sprang back immediately. Then he folded his arms until all the shuffling had stopped.
All eyes were on him now – aged shits like Ben Holton, the Head of Science who was at school with Isaac Newton. Crawling toadies like Philippa Parses, distraught that poor Mr Diamond was no longer at the helm. And a goodly smattering of his old gang – Sally Greenhow of Special Needs, Paul Moss of the History Department, both Thingees from reception – rubbed shoulders with bright young things newly appointed by Legs Diamond; NQTs as green as grass who would be mown down by the withering fire of Year Eleven.
‘As of this morning,’ he said, no longer thinking in
German, ‘our Lords and Masters at County Hall have decreed that, as a temporary measure, I shall be Acting Headteacher of Leighford High School.’
Whoops and cheers all round, followed by laughter. Some were genuinely delighted. Some were hysterical. Some would not know what hit them.
‘This has been ratified by the Chair of Governors – and it’s nice to have the furniture on our side, isn’t it, boys?’
Philippa Parses could not sit there and take all this. ‘Is this flippancy going to continue?’ she snapped.
There was a silence. All eyes were on Maxwell.
‘I will attribute that remark to the fact that you are still in shock after the events of yesterday, Pippa,’ he said quietly. ‘If you wish to apply for compassionate leave …’ he peered at her more closely, ‘or early retirement, I shall be only too happy to consider it. In the meantime, I have a school to run. Can I or can I not count on your support?’
Philippa wanted the floor to swallow her, but it wasn’t going to oblige. She lost eye contact and muttered a rather feeble, ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ said Maxwell, ‘Now, people, to business …’
Jacquie sat at the bedside of Mrs Bevell and listlessly flicked one more time through a very old copy of Hello. The corners had worn off with use, so it was not possible to tell exactly how old the issue was, but Jacquie gave a wild guess at 1990 as there was coverage of Ulrika Johnson’s first marriage and Jacquie felt for her as she stood there next to Mr Right.
Mrs Bevell was mercifully unconscious, as were all the Leighford staff, current and potential, who surrounded her, swathed in white sheets and punctuated by tubing. It was an eerie feeling, a little like being on the set of a real, honest-to-God sci-fi movie or that one with Genevieve Bujold where Richard Widmark is up to no good in cryogenic skullduggery. Even the world of Hello was a welcome link with reality.
She had interviewed the night nurses as they went off, standing in a smoke-wreathed group at the cigarette-end-carpeted spot just outside the hospital gates where they were no longer thanked for not smoking. They all agreed that they had seen nothing unusual that night, no furtive figures, no syringes left on bedside tables, no cries or screams to break the rhythm of assisted breathing. No, the Senior Night Sister had said, taking one last desperate drag and throwing aside the filter, the only odd thing had been Mrs Bevell’s relapse into unconsciousness.
