The Head is Dead

by Tanya Landman

  Later on, Mum bought fish and chips and we ate them in front of the B&B’s telly. We were watching a gardening programme about some big country estate and there was a shot of sheep being herded into a pen by a black-and-white dog. I suddenly said, “I know exactly how they feel.”

  “What?” Mum was baffled.

  But Graham put his plate down on the floor and turned to me. “I know what you mean,” he said seriously.

  “It’s like we’re a couple of sheep who’ve been herded by an invisible sheepdog, isn’t it? We’ve been steered every step of the way…”

  We looked back at the TV. As we watched, the farmer closed the gate with a clang. The sheep were trapped.

  “An invisible sheepdog…” Graham echoed.

  And then we both turned to each other and said, “I wonder who it is?”

  staff meeting

  Graham and I were both jumpy on the day of the spring fayre, because of that weird suspicion that our murder trail had been controlled by someone. So many different teachers had made so many different remarks and yet we had the feeling that one person had steered and directed everyone, including us. What we couldn’t work out was who and why. It was sinister enough to make us feel very uneasy.

  Mum stayed back at the B&B to put the finishing touches to her design. The school was only round the corner, so Graham and I walked there two hours before the fayre was due to open. We needed to lay out the clues and sort out a table with pens and paper for people taking part. We also wanted to get a stack of coins from Mrs Plumtree in case anyone needed change. But before we could do any of that, we had to go to a meeting in the hall with everyone else involved. All the teachers were there, along with various mums and dads.

  Mrs King had a megaphone and was clearly planning to use it. She dumped her handbag on a table at the back of the hall and then marched to the front to address her troops. Standing on the stage she looked like a character from an old war film – a general before the start of a Very Important Battle – and I mentioned it to Graham.

  “She does bear a striking resemblance to Winston Churchill,” he replied.

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t ask us to lay down our lives for our country,” I joked. Which wasn’t very funny really, given what happened later.

  All the staff had really entered into the spirit of the thing. Mr Stuart was wearing an old pair of jeans and a faded sweatshirt. He’d volunteered to have wet sponges thrown at him, so he was dressed for the job. Then there was Mr Piper, who was running the coconut shy, and Miss Maris, who was doing the lucky dip and the tombola. The chair of governors, Mr Edwards, had arranged a football event – Beat the Goalie. Quite honestly, he was so large that he’d only have to stand in the centre of the goal and nothing would get past him. One mum was doing Pin the Tail on the Donkey, a dad was organizing three-legged races and someone’s big sister was doing face painting. The Easter bunny was dressed, armed with a basket of eggs and ready to hop. Everyone was present and correct and poised for action. Everyone apart from Mrs Plumtree, who was supposed to be running the raffle. When Mrs King called her name and there was no answer, her brow furrowed into a dangerous series of creases.

  “She’s gone AWOL,” murmured Graham.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Absent Without Leave,” he hissed back, flashing me one of his blink-and-you-miss-it grins.

  “Oh, I see. I guess she’ll be first up for the firing squad, then,” I said.

  Mrs King began to hand out bags of small change to the stall holders. Graham and I joined the queue. When Mrs King handed Mr Piper his money, she said something to him about making himself useful and earning his keep. His face flickered with an emotion I couldn’t quite identify. I had the weirdest sensation. All of a sudden I could smell malice in the air. It was as strong as the scent of hot dogs at a fairground. Invisible, but very definitely there.

  “Did you hear what Mrs King said to Mr Piper?” I asked Graham quietly.

  “Yes. I think it was meant to be a joke.”

  Just then there was a commotion behind us and Mrs Plumtree burst into the hall. The reason for her lateness was obvious immediately. She had Ricky with her.

  “So sorry,” she said, red-faced and breathless. “Ricky’s carer was supposed to be looking after him, but she’s gone down with that horrible bug that’s been going round. I couldn’t leave him at home on his own.”

  “Of course not,” said Mrs King briskly. She glanced sympathetically at Ricky, but he didn’t meet her eyes. He looked as though he didn’t like making eye contact with anyone. Instead he wrapped his arms around himself and started to rock backwards and forwards, humming softly and staring dreamily into space.

  With Ricky there, Mrs Plumtree couldn’t do the raffle outside where the rest of us would be.

  “He doesn’t really like being out in unfamiliar places,” she said. “And big crowds sometimes upset him. Suppose I have him in the office with me? Everyone will have to walk past it to get to the field, so I’ll be in the perfect position. I can sell the raffle tickets from there.”

  Mrs King agreed immediately, so Mrs Plumtree gently led Ricky away to settle him down in her office. Just before we went out to set things up, Mrs Plumtree emerged and thoughtfully pressed a jug of orange squash into Graham’s hands.

  “You’ll be needing that, dears,” she said kindly. “Take it from me, it’ll be a long, thirsty afternoon.”

  At two o’clock the fayre opened. Graham and I had no idea what might be about to happen, but we felt strangely tense. All afternoon we both kept one eye on the clock and one eye on the grown-ups.

  Thrusting her bag at Mr Piper for safekeeping, Mrs King did her big welcoming speech, urging everyone to dig deep into their pockets for the sake of their health and that of the planet. Then we were off. Or at least everyone else was. Graham and I had been strictly forbidden to get our bit going before 3 p.m. so we wandered around throwing balls at coconuts, sticking our arms into barrels of sawdust to pull out plastic prizes and watching everyone very closely for signs of odd behaviour.

  At precisely 2.45, Mrs King – with a slightly irritated glance in our direction – went off to get changed into her nuclear scientist outfit.

  At 2.50 I was suddenly desperate for the toilet. The nearest one was the staff loo right next to Mrs King’s office. As helpers on the day, we’d been given special permission to use it, so I nipped in and had what my mum would have called a “nasty upset stomach” and I called a “bad case of the squits”. It was totally embarrassing, because when I came out Mrs King was standing at the sink and I realized she must have heard everything. I blushed scarlet.

  She was shoving some pills down her throat. “Headache,” she said, looking at me in the mirror. “These events always get to me. And I can’t say the prospect of being a corpse all afternoon has helped.” She sniffed the pongy air pointedly and remarked, “I see the tension’s getting to you too. Are you all set?”

  “Yes,” I said, fighting the urge to salute. “We’re just about to start.”

  “Good. See you later, then.”

  I was perplexed. “Mrs King still doesn’t seem pleased about being the body,” I told Graham when I got back. “She acted like we’d forced her into it.”

  “I thought that’s what she wanted,” said Graham, looking mystified. “That’s what Miss Maris said, wasn’t it?”

  We couldn’t talk about it any more, because at 2.57 the stress got to Graham too and he dashed off to the toilet, leaving me alone on our stall just as Mr Edwards announced over the loudspeaker that we were ready for business.

  I was anxious for a second, but fortunately there wasn’t exactly a rush for the first clue. For about five minutes nothing much happened. Graham eventually came back and we stood there shuffling awkwardly from one foot to the other. Then a couple of kids ambled over, paid their cash and took a piece of paper and a pencil. A few more followed, and then one or two parents took up the challenge. By 3.30, twenty-seven people were r
oaming about the field looking for clues.

  It was taking them a long time to go from one clue to the other. “Do you think we’ve made it too complicated?” I said, worried.

  “No,” said Graham. “It’s scientifically proven that the more you challenge your brain, the more you increase your capacity for logical thought. We’re doing them a favour.”

  At 3.55 Mr Piper ran out of coconuts and had to go to the supermarket to get some more. Mr Edwards decided he’d been hit in the stomach by a football once too often during Beat the Goalie and took a break. He ambled over to us and picked up the first clue.

  “I’ll have a shot at this,” he said. Handing Graham his money, he set off across the field.

  There was nothing much for me and Graham to do, so we finished the orange squash. We were both jiggling around uncomfortably with sore bottoms, cramping stomachs and a dreadful feeling of unease that neither of us could understand or explain away. At 4.05 Graham ran to the toilet again and Miss Maris went to fetch herself a cup of tea.

  It was then that I spotted Mr Walters – dad of the excluded Craig – standing on the far side of the field as if he was looking for someone. He suddenly reached inside his jacket to pull out his mobile phone. After that, he started pushing his way through the crowds, heading slowly towards the school. My vague sense of anxiety sharpened. There’s trouble, I thought fretfully. I wonder what he’s up to?

  Graham returned, looking slightly green.

  “Mr Walters is over there,” I told him. “Do you think he’s looking for Mrs King?”

  “Might be,” Graham replied. “She could probably do with a visitor. Mrs Plumtree just asked me to take her a cup of tea. She must be bored stiff – she was yawning her head off. She could hardly keep her eyes open. No one’s even close to finding her. I read some research recently that suggested boredom can be more difficult to endure than physical pain.”

  Mr Walters disappeared from view and our attention was taken up by a sudden yell that came from the direction of the office, making us both jump.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Ricky was getting upset when I went to the loo,” Graham said. “There’s too much noise or something. Mrs Plumtree said he doesn’t like crowds, didn’t she?”

  “I know how he feels,” I replied. “Something’s not right.”

  “Quite. I wish we knew what it was. Anyway… She was trying to calm him down.”

  But whatever Mrs Plumtree was doing to Ricky wasn’t working. We could hear the sounds of his distress quite clearly from our stall, and it added to the awful sensation of impending doom that was hanging over both of us.

  At 4.12 Mr Stuart, who was now soaked to the skin, decided to change into some dry clothes to avoid getting hypothermia and disappeared into the school. Mr Piper returned from the supermarket laden with coconuts and Miss Maris came back to the tombola with a steaming cup of tea. Everyone else seemed perfectly cheerful. A bit too cheerful, if anything. Were the teachers’ smiles a shade too bright? Were their jokes a fraction too loud and hearty? The sun was shining and it was a beautiful spring day. Everything appeared to be perfectly normal. And yet there was Graham, biting his nails and fidgeting, and me, unable to stand still for longer than a second – both of us acting like we expected disaster to strike at any moment.

  By 4.17 Mr Stuart was back on the stall in dry clothes ready to be drenched again, and it was my turn to sprint for the toilet for another round of Exploding Bottom. Ricky was still upset. I could hear him crying, and in between his sobs I could pick out Mrs Plumtree’s soothing voice. After I’d finished in the toilet, I went past the office again and Mrs Plumtree poked her head out through the door, looking flushed.

  “Are you OK?” I asked. “I mean, is Ricky all right?”

  “He’ll be fine,” she said, her voice a little wobbly. “Poor love! It’s the noise of the loudspeaker that’s getting to him. If I’d thought about it, I’d have kept him at home, but I didn’t want to let everyone down. Still, I’ve given him his medication now, so that will sort him out.” Sure enough, the heartbreaking sounds of Ricky’s distress were beginning to soften and fade, and for a second I felt my own tension ease slightly.

  But then Mrs Plumtree said, “Could you take these to Mrs King? I forgot to give them to Graham earlier.” She handed me a plate with a couple of chocolate biscuits on it.

  “Sure,” I said. I took it and went down the corridor, past the staff room, across the hall and through the kitchen, the sounds of the fayre echoing eerily in the empty building.

  I opened the door to the outside world and suddenly that vague feeling of unease became as solid as a brick wall. I could see in an instant that something was horribly, disastrously wrong.

  Mrs King was lying on the path exactly where she was supposed to be, flat on her back with a red silk cushion over her face. She was perfectly still; way too still for a living person.

  And she wasn’t alone.

  Mr Walters was kneeling beside her. And his hand was pressing down on the cushion he’d used to suffocate her.

  the head is dead

  Mr Walters stared at me for a second, his mouth hanging open. He looked as shocked as I felt.

  “She phoned me,” he said in a confused little whisper. “How could she phone me? She’s dead!”

  Then he looked at Mrs King again and seemed to realize he’d been Caught in the Act. Staggering to his feet, he ran off before I could even try to stop him. He was still clutching the cushion.

  Mrs King’s face was a horrible colour. Her lips were pale lilac; her cheeks a blotchy purple. It was a truly gruesome sight.

  I called her name. I even prodded her, although I knew it was too late. I’ve seen enough bodies to know when someone’s had it. She didn’t move a muscle.

  And then – before I’d had a chance to do anything – Mr Edwards came slithering down the slope between the bushes, shouting a triumphant “Aha! Found the corpse! Am I the first?”

  “She’s dead,” I told him.

  “I know,” he said eagerly, helping himself to a chocolate biscuit from the plate I was still holding. “Murdered with a combination of sleeping pills and suffocation. And I’ve worked out the culprit!”

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “I have!” he protested. “It was the gardener, wasn’t it? In a fit of jealous rage?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “There you are, then. Aren’t you going to congratulate me, Mrs King?”

  She didn’t stir.

  “Mrs King?” he repeated, a little uncertainly.

  “She’s really dead,” I explained. “Not acting. She’s been murdered.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grown-up’s face collapse as completely as Mr Edwards’ did then. It sort of sank like a badly made cake and he gasped, “No! It’s not possible! Not on school premises.” His hand went to his chest as if he was about to have a heart attack. And then he said, aghast, “Whatever will the papers say?”

  What they said was that it was an open-and-shut case. I mean, we’d heard Mr Walters complaining about Craig’s exclusion. It turned out that he already had a criminal record involving a fist fight in a pub on New Year’s Eve. And I’d seen him right there holding the cushion over Mrs King’s face. Evidence didn’t come clearer than that. They arrested him within the hour. He’d gone straight home and was making a cup of tea, the cushion still stuffed under one arm, when they picked him up.

  I was the key witness. Graham and I spent the rest of the day at the police station giving our statements. Mum had to come along too, to be the Responsible Adult present. It was just as well we’d paid so much attention to what was going on that afternoon, because we pretty much knew the sequence of events. But the interview kept being interrupted because we both had to dash to the toilet every few minutes. It was mortifying, and I didn’t understand why it was happening. Detective Chief Inspector Swan – the woman in charge of the investigation – thought it must be nerves. Mum put
it down to last night’s fish and chips, although she seemed OK.

  We tried to stick to the facts – we knew from experience that the police aren’t always keen to hear theories from kids – but we couldn’t help mentioning how we’d been steered into using ideas that weren’t our own. Yet the more we tried to explain, the lamer it sounded. DCI Swan said, “Do you have any proof of this?”

  “No,” we told her. “It’s just a feeling.”

  “A feeling?” she repeated, one eyebrow raised.

  “Yes,” we chorused firmly.

  By the end of the interview she was looking at us as though we were certifiably insane. “You’re going round and round in circles, kids,” she said. “But you’re not heading anywhere. Just like two hamsters in a wheel.”

  It wasn’t the kindest comment anyone’s ever made about me and Graham, but maybe she was right, because when I woke up in the middle of the night I started to question what I’d actually seen. I’d been dreaming about Mr Walters, frozen and motionless, next to Mrs King.

  OK, so he had a criminal record. But, I thought, taking a swing at someone in a pub on New Year’s Eve is a different thing altogether from a cold-blooded murder in broad daylight, isn’t it?

  He’d had his hand on the cushion, true enough. It looked like he’d been pressing it down, but I’d only seen him for a moment before he ran away. What if it had already been there on her face? Suppose he’d been about to lift it off her? Would I have spotted the difference? And why had his mouth been open like that? Why was he so shocked?

  According to DCI Swan, Mr Walters had sworn blind that Mrs King was dead when he got there. That he was bending down to see who the prostrate figure was.