One Last Prayer for the Rays

by Wes Markin

  He had his pad ready to take down notes as they spoke.

  ‘It was period three,’ Baines said. ‘Simon was teaching a Year Seven Maths class.’

  ‘Year Seven?’

  ‘Eleven and twelve-year-olds.’

  Yorke nodded and Baines continued, ‘One of the students, Paul Ray, asked to go to the toilet just after break at eleven. Usually, a teacher would refuse such an early request, but Paul said he was sick. He wasn’t back after fifteen minutes, so Simon went to the toilet to find him. Inside, he discovered the huge pool of blood on the floor. When he knelt down to look under the cubicle doors for Paul, he slipped and got it all over his hands.’

  Slipped in the blood? Yorke thought, making notes. Really?

  ‘As you can imagine, when he got back to the classroom he looked a mess―’

  ‘Back to the classroom?’ Yorke said, stopping. She halted too.

  ‘Yes. He ran all the way there to see if Paul had gone back by a different route.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Gave the students a horrible fright.’

  ‘How would you describe Simon Rushton?’

  ‘He’s in a bad way, very shaken up.’

  ‘No, sorry, how would you describe him generally?’

  ‘Overly firm sometimes with the children, but he’s a good teacher. He’s an ex-army officer.’

  An army officer, Yorke noted. Wouldn’t that mean a higher tolerance to blood than civilians?

  ‘How many children are in his class?’

  ‘I would have to check, but we average a class size of twenty-five.’

  They continued walking. There were no reminders of his personal school life here. This was a posh private school, not the hospital-styled state one he’d gone to. He grimaced as he recalled the decay of his own school: the decade old posters and the shit work by disinterested children hanging off the walls.

  He looked down at his notes. ‘Paula Moorhouse phoned the police?’

  ‘Yes. She’s our librarian. Simon instructed her to, on the way back to the classroom.’

  ‘Do you think Paul could be truanting?’

  ‘I doubt it. We don’t really have any problems with truanting here. Paul Ray is a good student with a comfortable home life.’

  Yorke nodded, the cost of coming to this school was high. He doubted parents would suffer truanting, but it was an angle he’d have to consider, especially before this whole situation hit the news.

  ‘Have you contacted the parents?’ Yorke said.

  ‘No. I didn’t want to start a panic.’

  ‘Sure, but we need to find out if he’s gone home.’

  They entered a corridor where one side was made completely of glass. Yorke felt like he was in a walk-in aquarium; it was murky outside and the snow resembled swirling plankton.

  ‘Sir,’ Jake Pettman said in his usual booming voice, emerging through another set of doors further down the corridor. Yorke approached the six-foot four Detective Sergeant, whose toned muscular frame made him look overweight in his baggy, disposable white suit. He turned to the head teacher. ‘Could you give us a moment alone, please?’

  She took a step back. Yorke turned to Jake. ‘Are you okay?’

  Jake had a face that could have been chiselled out of a slab of Stonehenge rock. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes, still getting over the shock of your phone call. I’ve been wondering recently if you were still alive.’

  Yorke smiled. They were good friends, despite the twelve year age difference. ‘I know. Too long and all that. Poor excuse, I admit, but I’ve been very busy.’

  ‘You’re right, poor excuse.’

  Out of earshot behind the next set of double doors were two PCs Yorke didn’t recognise. Jake must have brought them along with him.

  Jake said, ‘I was nearer than I thought when you phoned me. Unbelievable, isn’t it? A Ray. Not sure how this is going to be received at the station. Some of them still go green at the gills at the sound of the name.’

  ‘Well, they’re going to have to get over it, and fast. We’re talking about a twelve year old boy here. Has Sean filled you in on what he found in the boys’ toilets?’

  ‘He says it’s disgusting in there. Pints of blood all over the floor and it smells rank. He didn’t tell me much else.’

  ‘From what he told me on the phone that’s all he found. I’m going to take a look before I talk to Simon Rushton.’

  ‘Well, I brought you the over suit; Hanna has it through there.’ He gestured towards the officers behind the doors.

  ‘Thanks. Could you get one of your officers to go and see if Paul Ray has returned home and, if not, collect his parents for interview? Also, we need some more officers outside for when word breaks and the other parents start arriving.’ He turned back to the head teacher, Baines. ‘How many children have you got on roll?’

  ‘Over a thousand.’

  He turned back to Jake. ‘That’s a lot of parents, we don’t want them in the school until we’ve established some facts, processed the crime scene and found out which students have witnessed anything.’

  ‘I’ll send Hanna to pick up Paul Ray’s parents, and I’ll have Neil call more officers to establish a perimeter around the school, so we can keep parents outside and calm.’

  Yorke looked back at the head teacher again. ‘Could you wait here please, Ms Baines? I need you to take me to Mr Rushton shortly.’

  ‘Yes, Detective.’

  Yorke approached the uniformed officers. Hanna’s vest was riding too high; from her duty belt hung a baton, handcuffs and CS spray - a lively addition since the days he’d patrolled. Noticing his eyes, she nervously tugged her vest down with one hand, whilst handing him a sealed bag with the other. Neil, whose voice seemed high-pitched for someone with so much facial hair, said, ‘Here you are, sir,’ and gave him some bagged up overshoes.

  Jake led him down the corridor to the taped line where Sean Tyler, a young and lanky PC, waited. Tyler scribbled Yorke’s name into a logbook.

  Yorke could see Tyler’s uniform underneath his white over suit.

  ‘Thanks Sean, I’ll be taking over the scene now, but I’d like you to keep vigil while I take a quick look and then head over to see Simon Rushton. Anything else I need to know about what’s in there?’

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb the scene too much, so I couldn’t look in the cubicles properly, but I knelt down on the floor to check the boy wasn’t in them.’

  Yorke tore open the sealed bag that the officer had handed him and slipped the over suit on. After ripping open the second bag, he buried his worn-out brogues into the overshoes.

  ‘Here,’ Jake said, lifting the police line, and ushering Yorke under. Tyler took a step back.

  Beginning at the toilet door, a trail of gluey red footprints came ten metres or so down the corridor before eventually fading to red smudges. Tyler had allowed a further couple of metres before stringing up his line.

  The footprints would have to be matched to Simon Rushton’s shoes.

  Yorke looked at his watch again. Five minutes past twelve. He slipped on some latex gloves and manoeuvred down the corridor, dodging the bloody footprints, until he was at the door to the boys’ toilets.

  He checked the over suit was completely covering his neck. At scenes like this, it always felt cold.

  He put his palm on the door. You’re just a child, he thought, and had nothing to do with what happened to Harry’s wife.

  The door made no sound as it was opened. A movement sensor was triggered and the bathroom light flickered on. As he stepped in, he was assaulted by the smell of metal tinged with citrus – it was almost as bad as the mortuary.

  The school toilets were impressive and a far cry from what his had been like. He recalled sinks yellowed by smoke and phlegm, and walls blistered by graffiti and urine.

  He glanced down at the pool of blood. Like a sleeping red monster, it stretched its body far underneath the three cubicles alongside the left wall, whilst resting its long
claws beneath most of the opposite sinks and the urinals at the far side.

  ‘Pints of blood,’ Tyler had said to Jake. He’d not been wrong.

  A couple of crimson handprints glowed on the white sinks.

  Supposing Rushton is not lying about slipping and accidentally putting his hands in the blood, could it be him that leaned over the sink? Maybe, he threw up, or thought he would do?

  Or if Rushton is not our man, could we get lucky? Could the person who set up this whole scene have been stupid enough to have left their gloves at home?

  Salisbury Cathedral’s spire peered through the tiny window above the urinals.

  Too small for someone to get through.

  He pondered the three white cubicle doors lining the left side of the boys’ toilets. The first door was slightly ajar, whilst the middle door was shut and the third was wide open. He looked into the mirror at the reflection of the third cubicle interior. Nothing of interest.

  Yorke did what Tyler had done, and what Simon Rushton had claimed to have done prior to his accident, he knelt down to look under the cubicles; the blood had curled around the base of the three toilets and, as Tyler had said, there was no sign of the boy.

  Yorke’s mind wandered back to an old case file he’d read. One in which the victim was chopped up and stuffed down a toilet.

  Yorke manoeuvred around the teacher’s footprints and positioned himself at the beginning of the line of sinks. He then managed to wiggle himself into a tiny gap between the blood blister and the furthest basin. From there, he was able to stretch onto his toes, and crane his head to look into the cubicle. Despite his thirty-nine years, regular running and stretching kept him more agile than most of the fresh-faced twenty year olds he encountered at the station.

  The toilet seat was up. He stretched a little further ...

  No body parts. But a message in blood, hand-written in big, sloping letters on the wall above the toilet.

  In the Blood.

  Back outside the toilets, Yorke strode back up the corridor, avoiding the footprints, until he reached Jake and Tyler. ‘There’s a message. Words are written in blood on the wall.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ Tyler said.

  ‘The second cubicle, above the toilet. The words are “In the Blood.”’

  ‘How did you see into that cubicle without disturbing that mess on the floor?’

  ‘A tiny space next to the sink, and a stretching regime that I won’t bore you with.’

  ‘Can’t believe I missed it,’ Tyler said, looking down at the floor.

  ‘There’s something else too,’ Yorke said. ‘There’s mud all over the toilet seat; maybe from the person who stood on it to write the message.’

  ‘We are surrounded by the cathedral grounds, it may just have been carried in from there,’ Jake said.

  ‘The ground here is frozen solid,’ Yorke said.

  Jake nodded. ‘I would have known that if I’d taken you up on those running invitations.’

  ‘The toilets here will be cleaned regularly. The mud is important.’

  He went to the window, and lifted his phone to his ear to update HQ. Very soon, the empty car park before him would be thriving, and the major incident van would be sitting at its centre like a beating black heart.

  He turned back to Tyler. ‘Sean can you keep the scene secure, whilst I go and talk to Simon Rushton? The SOCOs are minutes away.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking the worst,’ Jake said.

  ‘Be positive. He could be alive.’

  ‘There’s so much blood in there,’ Tyler said.

  ‘You’re assuming it’s his blood because he’s missing. If he’d been killed here, wouldn’t someone have noticed the murderer walking off with a dead boy under one arm? And you can forget about that small window above the urinals; there’s no way anyone is going through that.’

  ‘Chopped up?’ Tyler said.

  Yorke frowned. ‘Come on Sean, too many late night movies. He was gone fifteen minutes. You’d need a big axe! And do you not think someone would have heard?’

  ‘I’ve just eaten,’ Jake said.

  Yorke turned back to survey the footprints. He hoped he was right, but he couldn’t help being niggled by doubt ... there’d been an awful lot of blood.

  He turned back and said, ‘Jake, while the SOCOs are here, could you get the camera footage from the school organised, and get another officer onto the local CCTV. You never know, the boy could have just walked out of here.’

  ‘And we could just be running around after a practical joke?’

  ‘It’s happened before.’

  ‘I’ll handle the school camera footage after I phone in for some officers for the local CCTV.’

  ‘Thanks, Jake.’

  He found the head teacher, Laura Baines, back in the corridor. She was standing with her hands clasped behind her back, looking out over the snow.

  ‘Could you take me to Simon Rushton now, please?’ Yorke said as he approached.

  ‘Of course - it’s quicker to take the fire exit and go outside.’

  Outside, the snow immediately went to work on his paper suit and he started to shiver. Walking in these temperatures was foreign to him, unless his legs were moving quickly and his heart was racing; it was suffering, pure and simple.

  He stared up at the cathedral. He then looked over the grounds; despite the snow worsening, the place was still drawing visitors.

  They entered another building and a burst of excessive central heating brought quick relief. Baines led him down a corridor lined with framed statistics about education. She then pointed through a window into a classroom at a round oak table, at which a robust-looking middle aged man with cropped hair was sitting wearing a white shirt streaked with blood. Beside him, was a fair, petit woman wearing a floral dress. She looked in her early thirties.

  ‘Is that the support assistant with him?’

  ‘Yes, Jessica Hart.’

  DC Collette Willows was stationed at the door. She had recently cut her hair short, and it took Yorke a moment to recognise her.

  ‘Hi, Collette, I like your hair.’

  ‘Thanks, sir,’ she said and smiled, exposing a new set of braces on her teeth.

  He turned to Baines. ‘It would be better if you headed back to reception, it’s going to get very busy over the next half hour.’ He then turned past Willows into the room. ‘Mr Rushton?’

  Rushton looked up.

  ‘DCI Michael Yorke, I’m the Senior Investigating Officer in the disappearance of Paul Ray. I’ve been to the bathroom and I’ve seen the blood. I need to ask you a few questions.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Ms Hart, if you could head back to reception with Ms Baines please.’

  Jessica Hart put her hand on Rushton’s shoulder. She let it linger there whilst he looked up at her and smiled; then, she exited the room.

  Yorke dragged out a plastic chair and sat down beside Rushton. He noticed the smell of blood coming from his shirt. ‘You’ve had a massive shock, Mr Rushton, but you’re the first person who entered our crime scene. That makes you the most important person here right now. Try and understand that as you run me through everything that has happened.’

  Rushton ran a hand over his head; it wasn’t particularly warm in here but Yorke noticed yellow sweat marks under his arm. ‘I’d only just got them all through the door and working on an activity when Paul asked to go to the toilet. I refused immediately. It’s school policy that they are not allowed to go for thirty minutes after break. He started to well up, so I asked him what was wrong. He said his stomach was bad and he had diarrhoea. I believed him and I let him go.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘A couple of minutes past eleven.’

  Yorke made some notes. Rushton pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his wrinkled forehead.

  ‘How long does it take to reach the toilets from your classroom?’

  ‘Hmmm ... half a minute,
maybe. Depends on the student, some like to walk slowly, as you can imagine.’

  Yorke could imagine; he’d not been the most enthusiastic student himself.

  ‘Do you think Paul Ray is the type of student who would walk slowly?’

  ‘He’s a good boy, works hard. He has a tendency to daydream and not always listen, but I doubt he would waste too much time meandering outside the classroom.’

  ‘What time did you leave your room to go and look for him?’

  ‘About quarter past eleven, maybe a bit later.’

  Yorke made a note. Everything would have to be checked and verified with witnesses. ‘Did you see anyone on the way?’

  ‘Paula Moorhouse, the librarian. We have an open-plan library. She asked where I was going, I told her I was looking for Paul Ray. I saw a few students I teach in the library.’

  ‘I need the names of all the students.’ He turned the notebook to Rushton who wrote them down. As he wrote, his forehead started to glisten with sweat.

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Not that I can remember. I went into the bathroom ...’ He stopped to dab his forehead. ‘I saw some stuff in the army, but I never imagined I would see something like that in a school. There was blood everywhere.’ The colour left his face.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I feel quite sick.’

  Yorke reached into his pocket for his chewing gum. ‘Will this help?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Rushton said, taking one. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Please continue.’

  ‘The smell was disgusting. I didn’t want to get too close, so I knelt down to look underneath the cubicle doors. That was when my hand touched the blood and I slipped. I had to use my other hand too, otherwise I would have gone in face first.’

  ‘Your hands are clean now?’

  ‘Yes, I washed them just before you got here.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wash your hands straight away?’

  ‘I panicked. I wanted to find Paul. It was all I could think of.’

  ‘There were bloody handprints on one of the sinks, were they yours?’