Crime in the School

by Catherine Moloney

  As Noakes foraged for tea and biscuits, Markham took stock.

  ‘Anything from the admin crew, Noakes?’

  ‘Pretty much singing from the same hymn sheet as the teachers. Mrs Thing from HR’ – there was a soft hiss from Burton – ‘gave the impression that some of the dolly birds in the office fancied their chances with Dean but got nowhere cos he was knocking off Palmer.’

  ‘Did she actually say that?’ Markham enquired heavily, observing that Burton was tight-lipped with disapproval.

  ‘Not in so many words, Guv,’ came the cheerful rejoinder. ‘But that’s what she was driving at. Hinting like mad she was. Very oo-er missus but genteel at the same time, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately I think I do, Sergeant. Mrs Roach practically fell in front of me when I was leaving yesterday so she could shred Ashley’s reputation.’ Markham paced their temporary cell with knitted brows. ‘It was decidedly unedifying.’

  The DI wheeled round upon Burton. ‘Did you get anything out of the English department, Kate?’

  ‘Well, they avoided innuendo, sir, but they were very closemouthed. Reading between the lines I’d say Ashley had been trying to get rid of Doctor Abernathy—’

  ‘What did I tell you, Guv?’ interjected Noakes through a mouthful of digestive.

  ‘—and the others obviously resented that,’ concluded Burton. She broke into a puckish smile which transformed her face. ‘I couldn’t get Doctor Abernathy to say a bad word about anybody.’

  ‘Could be an act.’ It was the voice of experience.

  ‘S’pose so, Sarge.’ She sounded reluctant. ‘But he wouldn’t even join in when they started bitching about Helen Kavanagh. Said being deputy head was a tough call and he thought there was a core of decency …’

  ‘Sad old duffer.’ Noakes shook his head.

  The DC returned to her notebook, bent on demonstrating her thoroughness.

  ‘The second in department didn’t say much.’

  I bet he didn’t, the poor sod, thought Markham, recalling scrawny Mike Synott sandwiched between those Beryl Cook lookalikes in the LRC.

  Burton rustled her notes. ‘There was some talk about Ashley interfering in the department. I haven’t quite got my head round all the details,’ her brow furrowed, ‘but I don’t think there’s anything which takes us forward in terms of motive.’

  Markham breathed a prayer of gratitude that it fell to Burton to decipher the highfalutin gobbledygook which Olivia had warned him was Hope’s stock in trade. Noakes had taken one look at the sheaves of Action Plans, Policies and Benchmarking Reviews that Kavanagh had delivered before shoving them unceremoniously into the office’s ancient filing cabinet.

  ‘Can’t understand a word of it, Guv,’ was the DS’s verdict. ‘This lot are so far up themselves, it’s a wonder they can be bothered with the kids at all.’

  Right on cue came the sound of scuffling and youthful voices outside the door.

  ‘You do it!’

  ‘No, you!’

  Clearly a few of Hope’s student body were about to descend upon them. Suddenly the door burst open, someone having resorted to a hefty shove to resolve the contretemps.

  Three teenagers lurched across the threshold. One was a thin, gangly lad whose ‘too-cool-for-school’ demeanour was undermined by a Stan Laurel hairdo and the fact that his tie appeared to be knotted somewhere under his left ear. The other two were buxom, blowsy young women – one blonde, one brunette (though their natural hair colour was anyone’s guess) – who were bursting out of their uniforms and bore a disconcerting resemblance to female wrestlers.

  ‘What can we do for you, guys?’ Markham did his best to sound welcoming, however the girls simply stood nudging each other and giggling while the spacey-looking lad stared at the ground.

  Burton stepped into the breach.

  ‘Did you want to talk to us about Mr Dean?’

  ‘Yeah,’ from the brunette.

  Introductions followed. ‘I’m Lauren,’ she said. ‘Me, Nicki and Jake’ – jerking a grubby thumb, with chipped peeling nail varnish, at her companions – ‘are Student Reps. Mr Uttley said we should be like pupil l … l … l …’

  ‘Liaison,’ suggested Burton.

  ‘That’s it,’ agreed Lauren, nodding gratefully.

  Noakes and Doyle stood up and gestured the girls towards their chairs. Spacey Jake remained propped up against the door looking longingly at the digestives. Markham silently handed him the packet and the lad promptly wolfed down four at a speed which had Noakes lost in admiration.

  Preliminary courtesies over, Markham prompted the threesome. ‘What can you tell us about Mr Dean?’

  Lauren was clearly the designated spokesperson.

  ‘Well, he was dead cool,’ she volunteered. ‘Not like a teacher.’ Which of course, he wasn’t.

  Markham nodded encouragingly.

  ‘And he was dead popular too. Always called us ‘ladies’ without being sarky.’

  Markham did his best not to display puzzlement at the non-sequitur. He had a feeling that logic was not Lauren’s strong suit, but found himself warming to the big untidy girl.

  ‘Didn’t half wind our boyfriends up.’ No doubt that was the point of the exercise. ‘He could be scary if you got on the wrong side of him, though. There was those lads—’

  ‘What about them, Lauren?’

  ‘Well, they got into a fight with Mr Dean innit.’

  ‘What was the fight about?’

  ‘Nobody knew ’zactly. But Mr Dean shouted at them to get out of his office.’

  ‘Mr Dean looked dead upset.’ Nicki’s voice was the merest whisper. Her pug-like face was distressed. With an almost imperceptible nod, Markham signalled to Noakes to take over the questioning. The DS’s coarse tones could become very low and gentle at the right moment.

  ‘D’you have any idea why he was so upset, Nicki?’ asked Noakes in a fatherly voice.

  The girl’s good-natured features turned an unbecoming mauve, leading Markham to suppose that she’d had a king-sized crush on Ashley Dean.

  ‘I heard one of them shouting that he was just a cocky little shit who used to clean the bogs and everyone knew he was Mr Palmer’s bumboy.’ Classy.

  Jake was shuffling his feet. Casually, Noakes drew him into the exchange.

  ‘What’s your take on it, Jake? Think we need a bloke’s view now.’

  No-one can do this quite like Noakesy, thought Markham. Doesn’t say much but somehow makes kids feel safe. That’s the first time Jake’s made eye contact with any of us.

  ‘Yeah, s’right, they was being dead abusive to sir just like Nick said.’ Jake’s voice gained in confidence. ‘And Declan Thompson flipped him the finger on the way out. Everyone saw. They was excluded after that.’

  ‘What did you think of Mr Dean?’ asked Noakes.

  ‘An OK guy, leastways to me.’

  ‘But not to everyone?’

  The boy hesitated and licked dry lips.

  ‘It’s all right, lad, anything you say in here is just between us,’ reassured Noakes.

  ‘Declan said Mr Dean was bullying his mate Pete Clarke. Said Pete was a ponce and stuff. That’s why Dec had a go …’

  Jake fell silent, clearly fearing he had said too much. Once more, his gaze was riveted to the floor.

  Markham figured they’d got as much as they were going to get.

  ‘You’ve been a great help. You can get back off to class now.’

  Lauren and Nicki wobbled out on their distinctly nonregulation winkle pickers with Jake bringing up the rear.

  ‘Poor little tykes,’ said Noakes as the door shut behind the ill-assorted trio. ‘Sounds like Ashley Dean was messing with kids’ heads.’

  ‘Maybe the homophobic bullying was an expression of self-disgust, sir,’ said Burton earnestly. ‘Maybe Ashley was deeply closeted.’

  ‘Eh?’ Noakes looked mystified, while Doyle’s hand was arrested in mid-air with a biscuit halfway to his mou
th.

  ‘Go on,’ Markham said.

  ‘It might be that there was some unresolved sexual tension between Ashley and JP which Ashley was exploiting.’ Burton was pink with pleasure at having the DI’s full attention. ‘Or he could’ve been involved in a full-on affair with JP.’

  ‘Where does the self-hatred come in?’ Markham’s deep, sonorous voice was interested.

  ‘Well, it’s possible Ashley was a straight acting homosexual or bisexual who was ashamed of his gay side. On the other hand, he might not have been homosexual at all – just stringing JP along to further his career. Either way, there might have been an identity crisis and a lot of self-loathing, which would explain his taunting that kid.’

  ‘Or maybe he was just a nasty piece of work who got his jollies winding folk up,’ harrumphed Noakes.

  Markham weighed the possibilities. ‘Ashley certainly played the role of Hope’s resident lothario, according to Tracey Roach. But maybe that’s all it was – an act – and we should be looking for some sort of infernal triangle.’ Noakes’s mouth being now so far agape that he resembled a stunned behemoth, Markham clarified, ‘A third wheel, Sergeant. Someone who was bitterly jealous of the relationship between Ashley and JP.’

  Noakes appeared far from convinced, while Doyle simply looked as though this was a long way too deep for him.

  The day wore on wearily as they ploughed through the statements of some seventy or so staff with no further interruptions from students. Helen Kavanagh had probably thrown a cordon sanitaire around their office, Markham reflected, with a view to controlling the flow of information. Well, he’d break through her defences eventually.

  Rubbing his eyes, he glanced at the ugly chrome wall clock. Five fifty-five. The students must be long gone, their stampede for the exit inaudible from this part of the building. He walked to the window. Twilight was falling. The landscape looked chill and colourless, with dun vapour slowly invading the school grounds and making the familiar strange.

  Night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

  God, he needed to get a grip. Time to roust the senior leadership from wherever they were lurking.

  At that moment, there was a soft knock at the door and Tracey Roach slid into the room. Markham wondered how long she had been out there.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Officers.’ The little girl whisper set the DI’s teeth on edge but his keen eyes detected unmistakable anxiety beneath the woman’s ingratiating demeanour.

  ‘What is it, Mrs Roach?’ He beat back his impatience and strove to sound reassuring.

  ‘It’s Audrey Burke, Inspector, I can’t seem to find her.’

  Markham waved the woman to a chair. ‘What do you mean, you can’t find her?’

  The HR manager anxiously twisted the sleeves of her cardigan. ‘I wasn’t really listening properly. I think she said she needed to do something … only she didn’t come back.’

  Despite the fustiness of the office, Markham suddenly felt icy cold. He recalled the desperate look of entreaty in the face of that pathetic rabbity little woman lurking outside the door of the Learning Resource Centre the previous day. In his mind’s eye, he saw her watchful posture, the shifty sidelong glances, the shrinking away from someone just outside his line of vision. Someone who must have been right there in the LRC.

  I may have signed that woman’s death warrant, the DI thought as the clutch of unease tightened its grip. Even though Noakes got nothing out of her initially, I knew something wasn’t right. I should’ve warned her she could be putting herself in mortal danger by keeping secrets. Please God let this be a false alarm.

  But something told him it wasn’t. From the serious looks on the faces of his team, they knew it too.

  He forced himself to address Tracey Roach calmly, his lean frame taut as though every molecule in his body had passed through an electric current.

  ‘Think carefully, Mrs Roach, this could be very important. What were her exact words? Did she say she needed to do something or see someone?’

  Flustered, the woman’s eyes darted from Markham to the others and back again.

  ‘I honestly can’t say for sure. She was a bit quiet this afternoon, but I didn’t think anything of it. Just assumed she was coming down with a cold or something.’

  Markham had heard enough. He felt a tingling at his finger ends.

  ‘Right, Noakes, you and Doyle go with Mrs Roach and start checking the building. Jim Snell should be around somewhere, so collect pass keys and whatever else you need from him. Kate, you’re with me.’

  Tracey Roach looked up at him imploringly. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, I should have realized Audrey was upset and paid more attention.’ She spoke without a trace of archness, and Markham liked her all the better for it.

  ‘You’re not to blame, Tracey.’ The woman blinked at his use of her first name and the gentleness of his voice. ‘We all took our eye off the ball. Now, let’s get that search started. For all we know, it’s nothing sinister and your colleague maybe just needed some time to herself.’

  Forty minutes later, Markham and Burton stood in the front courtyard looking up at Hope’s bunker-like façade.

  There’s something deadly about this place, thought Markham. Beneath the chirpy posters and jolly slogans, it’s squatting there like a toad. Something evil and misshapen. Something festering in dark corners away from the light. Next to him, Burton shivered as though she felt it too.

  The DI’s eyes raked the building. And paused.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to a section of pavement towards the side of the forecourt studded with glass portholes.

  Burton frowned then her expression cleared. ‘Oh, those are the new music studios. You remember that funny little flight of stairs by the side of the drama theatre, well, that takes you down to the soundproofed practice rooms. The corridor’s very narrow and the rooms are just carrels really, so those skylight thingies were the only way to get natural light down there.’

  Soundproofed.

  ‘Let’s look,’ rapped Markham, moving swiftly back towards the school.

  Burton panted as she tried to keep up with the DI’s long strides. ‘It’s all secure, sir. There was nobody timetabled to use any of those rooms this afternoon, so Jim Snell locked up around lunchtime.’

  ‘There are any number of duplicate keys in this place, Kate. I saw them all hanging on that rack in Snell’s office. He’s a lazy bugger, careless too I reckon, so it’d be easy for someone to help themselves. The same someone who was prowling around the night that Ashley Dean’s body was discovered.’ A note of desperation crept into his voice. ‘I hope to God we’re not too late.’

  Back at the drama theatre, the two detectives stood by the unobtrusive stairwell which led down to the practice rooms. Burton fumbled with her labelled keys under Markham’s impatient scrutiny.

  ‘Design and Technology, Expressive Arts, Resistant Materials, Humanities … Ah, here we are. Music Practice Rooms.’

  ‘Right, we’ll be needing your torch, Kate. It looks pretty gloomy down there.’

  Burton had her torch out before he had finished speaking and directed a powerful beam down the stairs. Moving almost as one, they descended to the basement where a narrow corridor was lined on one side by four doors with a fifth facing them at the far end. There was no sound save for the rhythmical chug of a generator and the soft hum of one light above the door at the end.

  And yet Markham suddenly knew a predator had been there before them. He could feel the menace in that submarine-like space with its little cubicles. He badly wanted to be away from it but, in a hoarse voice barely recognizable as his own, gave the instruction, ‘Let’s check each of these rooms.’

  His apprehension had infected Burton who dropped the keys. Time itself seemed to have slowed down, to have contracted to the beating of their hearts in the stuffy airless passage.

  Afterwards, Markham retained a vague impression of music stands, instrument cases, stacks of sheet music, and illi
cit sweet wrappers in the windowless cubby-holes.

  All as it should be.

  Then they were at the final room. The one at the far end.

  ‘That’s the last of them, sir,’ exhaled Burton with clear relief as they looked around the bare little studio. ‘All clear.’

  ‘No.’

  Burton looked at the DI in alarm. The skin seemed stretched over the high cheekbones, and his eyes had a peculiar intensity. Following his gaze, she saw that he was looking at a battered upright Hummel piano with its back next to the wall.

  The DC gave a nervous titter. ‘Looks like the budget ran out when they got to this one.’

  Markham wasn’t listening. As though in a trance, he moved across to the Hummel and set his shoulder to the instrument, straining to move it away from the wall. After a second’s hesitation, Burton joined him. Flushed and breathing hard, they manoeuvred it into the centre of the tiny room.

  Something attracted Burton’s attention.

  The back of the piano had warped and buckled so that it bulged outwards.

  The DC’s eyes met Markham’s, and a long wordless message passed between them.

  With shaking hands, she produced a pen knife from her pocket and inserted the hasp between two of the discoloured sagging panels.

  The slight body exploded from the back of the Hummel with a violent crash, the impact of which sounded almost blasphemous in the hieratic stillness of the studio.

  Burton’s hands went to her mouth as she contemplated the sagging jack-in-the-box that had once been a woman.

  Denuded of spectacles, Audrey Burke’s milky sightless eyes were rolled back in their sockets. Her lips were drawn back in a rictus of pain and terror. That she had been almost decapitated was evident from a gaping purplish neck wound. Twisted limbs hung at impossible angles, no doubt dislocated as the murderer crammed her pitiful corpse into its makeshift coffin.

  Beside him, Burton turned away in horror, but Markham stood motionless.

  Nothing could touch Audrey Burke further. All that he could do was call her killer to account. Drinking in every detail of the scene, he noticed an infinitesimally minute shred of paper between the thumb and index finger of the dead woman’s right hand. Banknote? A letter? Had she come here with blackmail in mind only to realize too late that she was staring death in the face?