Where Wolves Fear to Prey (Manor Park Thrillers Book 1)

by G H Mockford

  Had he done it? I wasn’t sure. He looked scared enough. I'd gone to Rollins partly to find out, but also to warn him. Maybe a small part of me still liked him or, more likely, I didn’t want him to go through what I did, and I wasn’t sure Paul would be so forgiving with him. Even more likely still, I was trying to save Paul from himself and the possible fallout that would consequently impact on Charlie and her baby. Most importantly, I was beginning to want to find out the truth for Paul, and maybe for myself.

  Twenty-Six

  After my confrontation with Rollins I wanted to go home, but of course I couldn’t, and the afternoon seemed to drag on. It was hard to focus on what I was supposed to be doing, so I gave both of my afternoon classes an impromptu piece of unaided writing for assessment purposes.

  As I sat at my desk and stared out of the window, the sounds of pens scribbling on paper just about pierced the fog that seemed to surround me. I thought about what Rollins had said and tried to remember if his face had given anything away. Why had I got so angry, too? Was it because of what he said about me, or what he said about Sarah?

  I jumped when the final bell went, and my top group of year nines looked at me expectantly. I nodded at them and waved my hand at the exit. They packed up and began to clear the room. They were all talking about me as they left. What’s up with Mr Freeman? Do you think he’s all right? I was lucky they were my best-behaved class or it might have been a different story.

  I checked my phone. I had a message from Paul. He’d got the diary, but Charlie already knew he had it. It was why he’d tried to ring last night. I didn’t reply this time either.

  ‘You okay?’

  I looked over my shoulder; it was Sarah. It was the first time I’d seen her all day, despite working in opposite classrooms.

  ‘Why are you sat in the dark?’ she asked as she put on the lights. The strip lights flickered to life, and I realized how dark it had got in the classroom. For the first time, I noticed the storm clouds that had swept across the sky blocking out the meagre late October sunlight. It was no wonder the kids were worried; I had obviously been out of it for the last couple of periods.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, as she sat on the corner of my desk and crossed her legs. My eyes followed them all the way up, swept over her body and finally locked onto her beautiful blue eyes. Sometimes they were grey, depending on the light, or her mood.

  ‘What are you saying sorry for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered with a laugh. She laughed too, and I felt my mood go up another notch or two.

  ‘What’s up?’ she said with that easy smile of hers. What would life with Sarah Alec be like? There was clearly an attraction between us, some chemistry too. I thought about our names and concluded that nothing could happen between us. I’d soon be referred to as Alec’s Alex.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, as I got up and began gathering up the pieces of paper the kids had been writing on.

  ‘Freeman?’ she asked expectantly. She used my last name, and I found myself wishing she'd called me Alex like she had the other day. She stopped and stared at me until finally I gave in and closed the door.

  ‘If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Ooooh, this sounds juicy,’ she said. A wicked smile crossed her face as she put her papers down and rubbed her hands together.

  ‘I’m not sure juicy is the right word, but I’m sure you’ll like the story.’

  ‘Damn, I thought you were going to tell me Rollins was coming out of the closet, or that Connor secretly made porn movies in the lawnmower shed.’ I looked at her and shook my head. Where did she get her vivid imagination? ‘Oh, come on. Don’t you ever wonder what everyone else gets up to behind closed doors? Are you saying you never make up little stories about them?’

  ‘Ermmm, that’ll be a "no",’ I said.

  ‘I don’t believe you, not a creative person like you,’ she said as she got all excited and wiggled a little closer to me. The same perfume she was wearing on Saturday filled my head, and her smoky eyes locked onto mine. I could feel her presence beginning to overwhelm me, and I was finding it difficult to concentrate.

  ‘I may be creative, but I’m not weird,’ I said.

  ‘Take Mr Elstree. I’ve heard him and the P.E. boys,’ she said, obliviously carrying on with her little ride down Twisted Lane, ‘discussing my underwear choices. I think he wants some tips. I bet he puts his wife’s undies on and dances around the bedroom, watching himself in the mirror.’

  I looked at her, giving her my most serious and disapproving look. I held it together for a few seconds and let out a giant snort that was originally meant to be a laugh. Sarah got up and started to dance, putting her hands behind her head and thrusting her breasts out at me. I swallowed as I watched her and tried not to imagine her dancing in her underwear, mostly because I was afraid she’d turn into Mr Elstree before my very eyes, and that might ruin anything that might happen in the future.

  ‘I’m Miss Elstree, and I’ve been very naughty,’ she said. She looked at me with those sexy, smoky eyes and put a finger in her mouth like a porn star pretending to be a mischievous schoolgirl.

  The door opened, and Mrs Forrest poked her head in. Sarah froze, stuck in her naughty pose.

  ‘Haven’t forgotten it’s staff meeting have you?’ Mrs Forrest said as her eyebrows slowly knitted together, and her face went red as she realized she might have just interrupted a moment that looked more intimate than it was. ‘Just a friendly reminder,’ she said and quickly closed the door.

  Sarah and I looked at each other for a moment and then started laughing. Mrs Forrest looked at us through the window and shook her head. I think I saw a smile on her face, but I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘We better go,’ I said as I collected my stuff up. ‘But I haven’t told you what I was going to say.’

  ‘Look,’ Sarah said, her tone suddenly serious, ‘we’d better get to this meeting. I popped in to see if you’d like to come over for a meal, say… Thursday night? Maybe you could tell me then?’

  ‘What, like a date?’ I asked with a cheeky smile. Clearly the adrenaline and testosterone from earlier hadn’t worn off as I’d never said anything that bold before. Maybe it was what Rollins had said, not that she was begging for it, but that I wasn’t man enough. She didn’t say anything. She smiled and looked at me with those damn smoky eyes again, leaned forward, kissed my cheek, turned on her heel and flounced out, her skirt swaying in time with her bottom.

  Twenty-Seven

  Paul had it all worked out, and he couldn’t see how his plan could fail. He'd spent the whole day preparing, and Freeman giving him the diary back, albeit not in person, couldn’t have been better timed. First, he'd raided the cupboards under the sink, finding a whole bunch of dust-covered cleaning products. Second, he’d tidied and cleaned the whole house, except for Charlie’s, or rather Char’s, room. And when he said cleaned, he meant cleaned. The house wasn’t just “Man Clean” as his wife used to call it; it was “Army Clean”. A Sergeant Major had once made him clean the toilets in the whole barrack block with cotton buds because he hadn’t done them properly the first time.

  The whole house sparkled like a tacky eighties advert and smelled a heady mixture of bleach and polish.

  Paul progressed to the next part of the plan. He had to take Bill to Tesco for his weekly shop. The old man next door helped him pick out all the ingredients he would need for Char’s favourite meal. She hadn’t eaten it since her mum had died unless it could be cooked in a microwave in a ready to eat portion for one. He bought one last thing, and an hour later he was back home with Bill sitting at the table with a cup of tea.

  ‘The secret to cooking is in preparation and timing,’ Bill shouted across the kitchen, ‘or at least, that’s what Suki always told me.’

  ‘Well, it’s three o’clock. The recipe says I’ll need…’ Paul scanned down the page and lifted up the faded piece of
notepaper that was sellotaped in so he could read what was beneath it. The paper was over sixteen years old. It was a list of secret ingredients that Charlotte could never remember no matter how many times her mother, Char’s grandmother, had told her. Paul stroked the paper, feeling the ink and wished he could hear his wife read the words out to him. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember her voice anymore. He knew Char tortured herself because she couldn’t either. To her, forgetting was a betrayal.

  ‘Eh?’ Bill said.

  ‘I’m just seeing how long it’ll take,’ Paul said, a little louder this time.

  ‘Have you knocked over a bottle of bleach?’ the old man said, giving no clue as to whether he had heard Paul the second time either.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘No reason,’ Bill said wrinkling his nose above his smile. He held out his shaking hands. ‘Give me the veg and I’ll get cracking for you.’

  ‘Just so long as you’re gone by three thirty. I don’t what Char to know you helped me,’ Paul said. He laid the vegetables on the table along with a peeler. It was important that this was all his own work.

  ‘Why are you calling her that?’

  ‘You know, teenage girls. She’s decided Charlie’s too young for her now,’ Paul answered. Bill laughed to himself and started peeling. When everything was ready, Bill left Paul to finish it all off and wished him luck.

  Char wasn’t home by five.

  Paul called her, but the phone went straight to voicemail. This wasn’t like her. Something must have happened.

  Six o’clock and Paul was still waiting in the living room, the diary in one hand and the last thing he’d bought grasped and rustling in the other. The oven was turned down low. He hoped and prayed the meal wasn’t ruined.

  Paul was worried now. Who was she with? What if something had happened to her?

  It got to nine o’clock and Char still wasn’t home. Paul sat in the armchair, an empty coffee cup and a hardly touched can of beer on the table before him. She was fine, he was certain of it. She was just punishing him. She had to be. He’d hurt her, and now she was hurting him back.

  She was probably staying at Jak’ as she did it a couple of nights a week, but always prearranged it or rang to ask, even though it was only a formality as he always said yes. She needed female company right now, after all, not her dad’s.

  Picking up the phone, he called her again. There was no answer. He thought about calling the police or Mrs Goodhand, Jackie’s mother, but he decided that he didn’t want to risk upsetting Char and pushing her away even further. Paul called Mr Freeman instead. That too went to answerphone, so he left a message.

  Putting the phone down he picked up the last thing he bought in the shop. He held the bunch of flowers close to him and twisted until their heads snapped off. His frustration spent; he fell into the chair and cried.

  Twenty-Eight

  Killing Doris had been easy, very easy. But, she was seventy-four. For his second training mission, it was time to up the ante a bit. And it was time to use the mask. He was pleased with what he’d created. It was something that he’d be proud to show off, but he knew he couldn’t. It would be foolish to become recognisable, a celebrity. He had women to punish, and he had to stay in the shadows to do it. Maybe the mask was a bad idea, but he’d spent so much time on it, it seemed a shame to waste it. It had started off as a fancy dress Hannibal Lector mask, but now due to his painting talents, it looked like a wolf.

  He had copied the design from the one he’d had engraved on his combat dagger. He’d found a website that would sell the weapon to him for a reasonable price and do the engraving too. A Blackhawk UK Special Forces knife. The site had claimed it was the ultimate combat dagger, designed for Britain's elite Special Forces. He’d had it a week, and he had grown to love all one hundred, and Fifty-eight millimetres of its brushed satin finished blade.

  He found an old backpack that had a drawstring top and cut it out. Then he fixed it to the mask. By pulling the plastic widget, he could quickly take the mask on and off. It was also long enough to hang around his neck where he could hide it under a coat or a baggy hoodie like the one he was wearing now. Leaving the mask hanging, he strapped the dagger to his right hip, making sure his jeans covered it but that he could still get to it quickly.

  Now he was ready. This lone wolf just had to decide which woman he was going to hunt next.

  Twenty-Nine

  Richard Rollins sat with his lighting and sound decks and munched on his salad, cheese and pickle French stick, before washing it all down with a bottle of coke. He burped and then wiped his mouth clean on the back of his arm.

  He was tired because he hadn’t slept well, he couldn’t stop thinking about Char Blackmore. She was going to ruin his career if he wasn’t careful. He’d been up all night trying to decide what to do. Should he hope the situation went away or talk to her? He’d even considered talking to Miss Arnold, but he was certain that he was on her “hit list”, so that would just give her more ammunition.

  Rollins got up, threw his rubbish into the bin and went downstairs. He was about to enter the English block’s staffroom when he saw her outside, sitting alone. He went through the doors and crept up behind her.

  ‘Don’t turn around and don’t say anything. Just listen,’ he said.

  Char Blackmore froze for a moment, and then began to turn round.

  ‘I said, “don’t turn around!” You keep this damn pregnancy to yourself. I can’t afford rumours being spread about me being the father. If I ’ear you’ve told anyone else, you’ll regret it. You can tell your friend that too.’

  Thirty

  As soon as it was lunch I sent the kids out and started to mark. I wasn’t taking any work home tonight. Then I headed to Sarah’s classroom. She was pacing backwards and forwards between her desks. ‘Sarah?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said as she continued pacing.

  ‘Believe what?’

  ‘Shut the door, Alex.’ My heart went a bit funny at the use of my name and my head went into panic knowing this was going to be bad news.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said as I closed the door and came back towards her.

  ‘I don’t believe what I just saw,’ she said, her head moving slowly from side to side.

  ‘What? What did you see?’ I asked. ‘Sarah, stand still!’ I gently took her shoulders in my hands. I looked into her eyes. They were exquisite. ‘Tell me, what did you see? What’s upset you so much?’

  ‘Richard,’ she said as if that explained everything.

  ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘I just saw him threaten a girl.’

  ‘Threaten a girl?’

  ‘Yes, threaten a girl. I think I recognized her. She’s in my class. I called out to her, but she just ran off; she didn’t even slow down or look back.’

  ‘Why do you think she ran off?’

  ‘Well, aside from what Rollins said, three girls were laughing at her.’

  ‘Hang on, go back,’ I said. ‘What did Rollins say to her?’

  ‘He said that she needed to keep the pregnancy a secret and that he was the father.’

  ‘Did he actually say that? Those exact words? Did he actually admit it?’

  ‘Yes, he said, “keep the pregnancy to yourself. I can’t afford rumours about me being the father.”’

  I sat down on the nearest desk. ‘Did anyone else see this?’

  ‘Well yes, the three girls who were laughing, I’ve seen them around, but they’re not in any of my classes.’

  ‘Does Rollins know you saw what happened?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I just stepped outside for a breath of fresh air and saw it all.’

  ‘What about the girls? Did they hear what was said or did they just see them talking?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sarah answered before looking at me carefully. Scrutinising me. ‘Why are you so interested? Why all the questions?’

  I looked at Sarah, trying to decide if I should f
inally tell her the truth about Friday night.

  Thirty-One

  I got Sarah to sit down and told her but left out some of the violence, the vacuum cleaner cord, and the police visit.

  ‘Alex, what should we do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and I didn’t. The cat was out of the bag now, and I knew who I felt sorry for. It wasn’t Richard Rollins.

  ‘We have to do something,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Tell Arnold what we know?’

  I knew she was right, but despite the risk to Charlie’s reputation I couldn’t bring myself to see Arnold. If anything, I should have already done it by now and could end up getting into trouble myself. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I think we should try and find Charlie. Make sure she’s all right.’

  ‘Ok, but she could be anywhere.’

  I glanced up at the clock. ‘We don’t have time anyway; lessons start in ten minutes.’

  ‘This is going to go all tits up,’ Sarah said.

  I reached into my jacket pocket and held the Blackberry Paul had bought me. Should I tell him?

  Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. It was Mrs Beresford, the head of drama. ‘Have you seen Mrs Forrest?’

  ‘No,’ I answered.

  ‘If you see her before I do, can you tell her to go to Miss Arnold’s office, we’ve got an issue.’

  Sarah and I looked at each other. ‘What kind of issue?’ Sarah asked even though we both knew already.

  ‘When the bell goes, I’m sure you’ll know soon enough. Bloody mobile phones, bloody Facebook. Should be banned,’ she said over her shoulder as she closed the door and hurried off.

  Whatever Sarah and I decided to do, it was already too late by the sounds of things. Mrs Beresford was right, with Android and Smartphones nothing stayed a secret for long these days.