The Red Road

by Stephen Sweeney

  “Can’t they just use DNA testing?” Baz wanted to know. “They could get it from his clothes and find out who did it that way, easily.”

  “It’s not something you can just do overnight, you pleb,” Simmons once again took a jab at Baz’s cockney background. “It’s not like on TV where they put it in that spinning thing ...”

  “Centrifuge,” Silverman supplied.

  “... whatever, and get the results,” Simmons finished.

  “And even if they could, they would need everyone’s DNA on record, and that would take ages to go through,” Darren Smith said.

  “Yeah. And besides, he wasn’t wearing any clothes. The pervert had stripped him naked, probably to fiddle with him before he killed him.”

  “Maybe even after,” Charlie Smith said.

  “After?”

  “Some people are into that sort of thing.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with some people?” Simmons asked angrily.

  “So, your mum and dad wanted you to stay in America?” I looked back to Sam.

  “I think they were just saying that,” Sam said. “Cody is going back out to Iraq soon, to help with the no-fly zone stuff that’s happening over there. It’s still really dangerous, though.”

  I understood what Sam meant without him having to explain further. Sam’s parents already had one son who was of great concern to them, putting his life on the line in a foreign country and fighting a war. They didn’t want their other son to be in danger of losing his life, too, should another murder take place. Should the murderer strike again, would they pick a larger target this time? I briefly recalled the sight of Scott Parker, lying face up in the bushes. He had been a small boy, quite thin, even for his age. Had that been why he had been picked, because he had been easy to grab and carry? Sam was hardly thin or small, but still ...

  The dormitory door then opened and in walked Brian Donald and Terry Lindsey, of Tudor House, another two members of the Clique. They looked briefly around the dorm, glancing over to Sam, Baz and I, before focusing on Simmons.

  “Alright? What you doing?” Donald asked.

  “Not a lot,” Simmons said.

  “Want to come to our dorm, instead? Or we can chat in the Tudor common room.” I could hear the forced disgust in his voice that Simmons might be sharing a dorm with people such as Baz, Sam and I, those Donald considered beneath him.

  “Sure,” Simmons said, picking up his wallet and keys and starting out immediately.

  “Wait for us,” Darren Smith said, he and Charlie Smith following quickly after them.

  “You two dweebs aren’t allowed; you have to stay here with Crotty’s gang,” Lindsey joked, to laughter from the group as they departed, the dormitory door slamming behind them.

  “Nice people at this school,” Baz commented. “Did you get anything good for Christmas?” he asked me.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, lifting a CD case off my shelf and handing it to him.

  “Red Blood?” Baz looked confused.

  “Red Hot Chili Peppers,” I said. “Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the name of the album.”

  Sam looked over Baz’s shoulder, the pair screwing their faces up as they looked over the cover and track listing. “Never heard of them,” Baz said. “Is it any good?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, grinning. “You’re going to love this.”

  Baz and Sam both did, and so I made them copies on tape, something to listen to as the term commenced and we continued to revise for our mock GCSEs.

  Chapter Eleven

  Being a Catholic school, we were expected to attend Mass every Sunday, at ten. Most went along with this without fuss, although others attempted to get out of it by hiding in various parts of the school – their dormitories, their rooms, in little known places around the campus, and sometimes even the classrooms themselves.

  Though Mass lasted only an hour, we were required to arrive at the church at least fifteen to twenty minutes before, and be on our best behaviour while there. The teachers and monks would watch us like hawks, knowing that here, in full view of the churchgoing public, we were representative of the attitudes of the pupils at St Christopher’s. The church, St Christopher’s Catholic Church, was also our church, and so we were expected to show the utmost respect for it and everyone who graced its doors.

  The abbey itself was enormous. Being one of the few places of worship for Catholics for many miles around (others were apparently just small chapels, considered satellite buildings to the main abbey), it attracted a great number of parishioners. Because of this, the church would often recruit a handful of school pupils to help perform various duties – handing out newsletters, helping the old to their seats, making sure people had hymnbooks and sheets, preparing the tea afterwards, performing altar service, and handing out communion. The latter two were fairly uncommon, usually being handled by parishioners themselves or laymen.

  I was never bothered about having to attend church, quite indifferent to it, but I would prefer to avoid it where possible. Even so, hiding out in the school during the service carried a number of risks. Staff (and sometime even monks!) would regularly patrol the grounds to ensure that stragglers made it in on time, and to also catch those who had decided not to attend. The punishment for being caught could involve anything from a Sunday detention to being put on the Murga List. Neither of those were at all appealing. Therefore, the best thing to do was often to volunteer for the duty of handing out the hymnbooks and newsletters to parishioners as they arrived. Owing to its size, the church featured a number of different entrance hallways, meaning it was easy to perform the job of handing out the various books and sheets of paper, before then fading away either to the very back of the church (and then making a sneaky exit in the latter half of Mass) or not going in at all.

  On this particular Sunday, Sam, Rob, and I had decided to slip away from church during communion. Not as early as we would have liked, but we had seen too many teachers and monks patrolling the grounds today for us to risk disappearing any sooner.

  “Are you going to go to church when you’re at university?” Rob asked in a whispered voice. I could tell he was being extremely sarcastic.

  “No, I think I’ve had enough church to serve me for one lifetime,” I replied, just as quietly.

  I watched the parishioners a few rows in front of me, to see if their ears were twitching as they picked up on our conversation. I had found the best time to talk was either during hymns, readings, the Gospel, or any other time someone was speaking over the microphone, the sound effectively preventing my voice from carrying too far. It could also help to hold a hymn sheet in front of your face to prevent anyone from seeing your lips moving during the non-singing periods, too.

  “I get the whole religion thing, anyway,” I carried on. “It’s just about love and respect and not doing harm to others. That’s all that God wants us to do. It’s not hard. I’ve learned the lessons.”

  Rob turned to me with a look of disdain. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “I only come here because we’re made to. It’s all nonsense really.”

  Nonsense? I made to say something.

  “Oh, stand,” Sam interrupted.

  We did so, looking to the Order of Mass we had been handing out and putting in an effort to make it look as though we were singing the next hymn.

  “What do you mean nonsense, Rob?” I asked. “You think this is all a waste of time?”

  Rob didn’t answer me. Either he didn’t hear me or he was choosing not to respond to the question right now.

  I cast an eye over the others in the church. We were typically seated in our houses when we were here, dozens of black suits sporting a variety of coloured, patterned ties to distinguish ourselves. Butcher’s was red, Tudor green, Enfield purple, Cookson grey, and Martin a sky blue. The heads of houses’ ties added gold trims to various parts of the patterns, while the head boy’s tie was pure black and gold, regardless of the house to which they belonged. The order of seating was also determined by
year. Older boys (that is to say the sixth formers) would sit towards the back, the younger years seated progressively closer to the front. Never right at the front, however, as those seats were reserved for the regular parishioners. A smattering of different clothes would break up the black blazers, the parents of some of the boys who would be heading home for the Sunday, or perhaps just being taken for a day out if their parents lived too far away to make the journey worthwhile.

  I saw a few heads turning in our direction, other boys who would either be wondering why we were sitting so far back, so close to the doors, or would have worked out that we were planning to end our Sunday attendance prematurely.

  At the same moment, I sensed the doors behind where I was standing open soundlessly, and I glanced around to see a man, dressed in his Sunday best, enter, who then, after a momentary scan of the seating, came to stand alongside us. Sam, Rob and I exchanged some bemused glances as he did so. There was plenty of other seating available in the church, so there was no need to join our solitary row. We said nothing, but just nodded to him as he made eye contact. I automatically passed him one of the Order of Mass sheets. The hymn soon ended, and we sat back down.

  “Hiding at the back, eh, boys?” the man said after a time, speaking only so loudly that the three of us could hear him.

  We started. Who was this man? Was this one of the sixth form tutors that we didn’t know about, one that only came to the school a couple of times a week to teach? Perhaps one of the laymen that worked and lived on the grounds? Or maybe even one of the regular parishioners, who was wise to our game of dodging out of going to church and had moved back here to ensure we remained for the duration.

  “Just making sure that any latecomers can get seats and know what the hymns are,” Sam supplied. His voice lacked conviction.

  The man stifled a chuckle, smiling without showing any teeth. “Don’t worry, lads, I used to do the same myself. I’m an old boy.”

  “Oh?” I asked, still keeping my voice low. “You used to come here?”

  Everyone else was focused on the communion preparations that were going on by the altar. One of the sixth formers was performing altar service duties for the first time, and a number of the boys were keen to see if he dropped anything or made a mess of the proceedings as his nerves got to him.

  “In the seventies,” our companion said. “I was in Churchill House. What houses are you in?” he wanted to know, glancing to our ties.

  “Butcher and Martin,” I said.

  “Ah, Martin was still being built when I was here. My name’s Adrian Willis, by the way. Nice to meet you,” the man introduced himself.

  I had never heard of him. I wondered whether he had once been head of school or head of house. They tended to make more regular return visits to the school than most others, mainly to meet with the teachers they had once known and sometimes to give talks on post-school life, careers, and that sort of thing.

  “Were you head of Churchill?” Sam asked, thinking along the same lines as myself.

  “No,” Adrian said. “I never made it that far.”

  “Decided to get out while you could?” I joked.

  “No,” Adrian said, still maintaining the smile. “I was expelled.”

  “Really? What happened?” I asked, a little louder and more excitedly than I meant to. Expulsions were rare at St Christopher’s and only happened under very exceptional circumstances. Mostly, boys were rusticated for a few weeks as a warning that their behaviour was not acceptable. From what I understood, expulsions were avoided to save face and maintain the school’s reputation. St Christopher’s would rather avoid the school gaining a reputation that it was full of bullies, and rebellious and uncontrollable students. Although I was sure that recent events would give any such reports a good run for their money.

  “Some messy business to do with drugs,” Adrian said. “A false accusation I should add, but due to some mitigating circumstances, I was never able to fully prove otherwise.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  Adrian didn’t answer that, paying attention to the service. “Is that Father Benedict leading the Mass?”

  “Yes,” I said, watching as Father Benedict raised the communion host. “He’s headmaster, but might be retiring soon to become the Abbot, instead.”

  Adrian nodded but said nothing else.

  “When did you leave? What year?” Rob then asked.

  “Lower sixth, just as I was preparing for my A-Levels,” Adrian said. “Made my life more than a little complicated, I can tell you.”

  He was still smiling, but I couldn’t quite understand why. Being expelled due to drugs wasn’t something that I would be happy about. But maybe it had been that long ago that he was now able to look back on it and laugh.

  “So, why are you back here?” I asked. I would never return to a school that I had been expelled from. I assumed that I would probably never return to a job that I had been fired from, either.

  “I heard about the problems the school has been having recently, and it reminded me that I’ve not been here for a while. I thought I’d pop in for a visit and see how everything was going, and see what had changed.”

  He, of course, meant the murder. I remembered the newspaper article Carson had shown me, that let all the details out of the bag. Adrian had clearly read it himself.

  “Did any of you know the victim?” Adrian asked.

  We admitted that we didn’t.

  “Shame for it to happen to someone so young, in their very first term. His parents must have been devastated. That sort of thing never went on when I was here. We had it a lot tougher then, I can tell you, but never anything as grotty as this. I read about it in the Evening Post. It was the only paper that seemed to actually know the full details of what happened, rather than just speculating on it.”

  I knew that the school hadn’t publicly admitted to the murder, only the parents of those attending the school needing those sorts of details. The public had likely been told a different story, something about Scott Parker having a heart condition that had caused him to collapse during a run down the Red Road. Even so, I wondered just how many Q&A sessions the headmaster had had to field with the parishioners here over the exact details of the event. I glanced to the parishioners close by, wondering just how many of them might actually know the real story and were staying mum for the school’s sake.

  “So, what are you going to do today?” I wanted to know, deciding to move on to another topic.

  “Take a walk around the grounds, talk to any of the staff that I still recognise, perhaps get some lunch down at the White Horse. They do a fantastic roast down there. Or at least they did the last time I was here.”

  “No, they still do,” Rob said. “Better than the slop they give us here at any rate.”

  “Wafer thin beef, watery gravy, and undercooked potatoes?” Adrian asked, with the same irrepressible smile.

  “Spot on,” I said.

  “A lot of things have changed at this school over the years, yet the one thing that always stays consistent is the awful quality of the food,” Adrian said, chuckling.

  Communion was starting, the bowls of hosts and chalices being handed out to the servers. Sam, Rob, and I would be making our exit soon, amongst the long lines of parishioners and boys queuing to receive the offering. With so many people moving about all over the place it was the perfect cover.

  “Shall we go?” I asked Sam and Rob.

  “I’m not bothering,” Rob said. “It’s just bread and wine.”

  I was going to remind Rob of the importance of the symbolism, but I bit back my words. “Sam?” I asked. “We’ll get out when we’re done. Best we go now, before the line gets too long and people see us leaving.”

  “Sure,” Sam said, getting to his feet.

  “Are you coming, Adrian?” I asked.

  “No,” Adrian said, nodding in Rob’s direction. “I’m in agreement with your friend here.”

  I started up with Sam, when I
became aware of a shape looming close to us. Ah, hell. It was Mr Hancock, otherwise known as Handjob, the housemaster of Tudor. He always looked to me that he should be working the door at some exclusive nightclub, picking the riffraff up by the scruff of their necks with one hand and tossing them away. Even more so today, dressed in one of his best suits for church. He crouched down behind the chairs, clearly wanting to make sure that none of the parishioners watching could tell that we were in trouble.

  “Boys, as you’re obviously not participating in the Mass, could you all make your way to the tearoom and help to set up after you’ve had communion?” he rumbled, the light glancing off his totally bald head.

  “Yes, sir,” we all said.

  Damn, I thought. Now I was going to be stuck here for longer. Providing the post-Mass tea did give us the chance to get stuck into the tea, coffee, biscuits and occasional chocolate rolls, but it could also mean that we didn’t get to enjoy our Sunday freedom until almost midday, especially if we got collared into having to clean up.

  “Good,” Mr Hancock said, nodding towards the ever-lengthening line of those queuing for communion. “Off you go.”

  “I’m not going,” Rob said.

  “Go, Robert,” Mr Hancock ordered, his tone not inviting argument.

  We started up, queuing up to receive communion, before we all headed for the tearoom. I saw Mr Hancock meet the eyes of our short-term companion as we did so.

  “Morning, Dean,” Adrian said with a smile and a nod.

  “Morning, Adrian,” Mr Hancock replied. There was no warmth in his voice.

  ~ ~ ~

  The hot water urns were huge great containers that had to be filled from a hose in the kitchens of the church. The resulting contents were then so heavy that it took two of us to hoist them onto the tables, only a little over three feet high.

  We commenced setting out the cups with the help of some of the regular parishioners that liked to involve themselves with such things. Mr Hancock put in an appearance just as Mass was ending, to ensure that we hadn’t skived off halfway through the task, and soon enough the boys and churchgoers were filling the back hall, asking us to prepare them a cup of either tea or coffee. I obliged without a grumble. I had hoped that perhaps there wouldn’t be too many staying for tea and biscuits, meaning that I could escape at a more reasonable time. Sadly, we were still in the grip of winter, and so there were perhaps more than usual, everyone keen for a hot drink before venturing back outside. The snows would be coming soon, I was sure.