by Rashad Salim
“I bet they will,” Tom said.
“I can see you don’t believe me,” Mobeen said. “But it’s okay. I know we didn’t get on and I don’t deny it was all my fault. I made a lot of mistakes in my life. But that’s the past.”
Tom found all of this hard to believe. The tone Mobeen had taken seemed contrived. His words seemed rehearsed. Tom thought it was amusing how the seventeen year old boy talked of his life’s mistakes as if he were more like seventy than seventeen.
“I’ve turned over a new leaf, Mr Smith. I am devoted to serving Allah now and only ask for his forgiveness. None of this would’ve been possible without Defenders of Islam putting me on the right path.”
Tom extended his right arm outwards and leaned against the wall beside him. He recalled what Atif had told him about DOI – how they were an Islamic fundamentalist group, separatists from the established local mosques due to their vastly differing ideologies. He still thought it was possible these thugs could’ve been responsible for Chris’ murder.
“I’m gonna call the police now,” the barman said quietly. He looked at Tom with pity.
“That’s not necessary,” Mobeen said and looked at Tom. “I think he’s had a bad enough day as it is.”
“Do you expect me to just take your word for it?” Tom asked Mobeen. “All this born again Muslim stuff?”
“I can hope you do,” Mobeen said. “And I ask you to forgive me for my past sins and let you go free.”
Tom considered it. He was about to walk off when he thought of something.
“You know I can’t just accept these people as your alibi,” he said.
“You won’t have to,” Mobeen said. “I was seen going in and out of the bar downstairs a few times before and after that time you mentioned. So there’s customers as witnesses too.”
“Your customers,” Tom said and shook his head. “Of course.”
“There’s also the CCTV tapes too, if you like,” Mobeen said.
“Do you want a look at those?” the barman asked Tom.
Tom looked at him and sensed the man was being sincere. He still looked at Tom with pity and disappointment, which only added to the wave of humiliation Tom was beginning to feel.
He had embarrassed himself. Made a fool of himself by pulling this stunt. The only thing he could do now was take his shame home with him.
Tom waved the barman off. “It’s not necessary but the police will need to see them.”
The barman nodded.
Tom looked at Mobeen. “Sorry about all this.”
Ejaz had been standing aside quietly, with his muscular arms folded across his chest. He stepped in front of Tom. “Okay, fuck off now,” he said. “You come back again, you won’t walk out.”
He staggered away from the wall and placed a hand on his lower back where there was still severe pain. He didn’t know if he had broken any bones and was glad he could still walk on his own. No doubt there would be bruises all over his body by the morning time but that didn’t matter.
He walked towards the alley opening and once he was back on the main road he felt the eyes of passersby staring at his rough condition. He limped back to where he had parked his car and took over a minute to get into the driver’s seat due to his injuries. He groaned as he adjusted himself in the seat and shut the car door.
He looked into the rear view mirror to check his reflection and saw his mashed up face. He had cuts on his nose, his lip and his cheeks. There was blood on his clothes too but he was more concerned with his injuries.
He stared at himself in the mirror and wondered if being able to eliminate Mobeen as a potential suspect was worth the injuries he had sustained in getting there and realised there was no question about it.
What were these injuries compared to the death blow Chris had taken for him?
23
The next day Tom woke up in the afternoon, after tossing and turning all night, unable to sleep easily due to his injuries. He had taken painkillers and they had helped but when he woke he felt woozy.
He checked his phone for messages and other alerts and saw a few miscalls from Kate. She hadn’t bothered to leave a text message or voicemail this time. He knew she wanted him to call her but had to wait. He had more pressing things to do first.
Like trying to find Marcus Wright.
Marcus was the last person left on Tom’s list of suspects who was unaccounted for. All the others had been eliminated as suspects, no matter how weak the basis for the eliminations had been.
Tom wondered what it would mean if Marcus was also eliminated. The obvious conclusion was that none of the people he had suspected were responsible for the ambush and that the true culprits were either people he had totally overlooked or people he had been oblivious about.
It crossed his mind that it could’ve been a random attack by a gang – that he was the unfortunate teacher selected at random by the attackers and it was all down to bad luck.
He decided to call DS Barker and reached for his phone. He had to tell the detective about Mobeen but be careful to leave out the circumstances in which he found his answers.
Barker’s phone was switched off. Tom cursed and decided to send him a text message instead:
‘Hi. Heard from a student of mine Mobeen frequents a local shisha bar (The Escape Lounge) on Binford Lane. Popped in and found him. Seems to have turned over a new leaf. Even claimed to have CCTV proof he was at the bar. I believe him. Talk to him yourself if you want.’
It took Tom a few drafts before he was satisfied with the message and sent it.
After he had sent the message it dawned on him that he could’ve mentioned Cool Pool too. All he had to do was send another message right then letting the detective know what Dwayne had told him but he thought against it.
He wasn’t keen on the idea of getting roughed up again while digging around for former students, particularly one like Marcus who had threatened to kill him. But checking out Cool Pool was something he felt he had to do himself. Besides, he told himself, what were the chances he’d walk in to find Marcus wielding a knife at him in front of other patrons?
He got up, got dressed and grabbed something to eat.
He was scoffing down his breakfast while reading the news on his mobile phone. He had searched the Internet for news on Chris’s murder and didn’t find anything he hadn’t already read the previous day.
He was about to leave his flat when his phone rang. He thought it was DS Barker or Kate again. He looked at the caller ID and saw it was his mother.
He stared at his phone and let it ring a few more times. He wondered what she wanted. Probably just to check in on him, he thought. He took a deep breath and answered the call.
“Hello, mum.”
“You stupid boy!”
The insult caught him by surprise and left him confused. “What’s wrong, mum?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong! You never told me you were with the teacher who got stabbed to death and almost got stabbed yourself.”
Tom palmed his face and groaned.
She had found out eventually. It was the outcome he had dreaded and had now finally happened.
“You lied to me! Your own mother!” His mother sounded hysterical.
“Calm down, mum. It’s not like that.”
“You got some explaining to do, young man!”
“Alright, alright!”
His mother went silent and he took that as his cue to explain himself.
“I didn’t want you to worry, mum.”
“You’re doing a good job of that.”
“What did you expect me to say, mum? That my friend got stabbed to death in front of me?”
“My goodness! Is that what happened?”
“No, mum. He got hit once. That’s all it took.”
“Did he suffer?”
“...I think he died instantly.”
“My god...Tom?”
“Yes?”
“I knew you never should’ve gone to London.”
He groaned inward. “Oh, mum, don’t start that up again!”
“What do you expect me to do? Tell you that you haven’t made a big mistake.”
“Mum, what did you want me to do?” he asked. “Stay in Nottingham and work for chump change? I wanted to move on.”
“Onto what? This school for troublemakers? What kind of future is that?”
He thought about telling her about his promotion and wondered what she’d make of him becoming a Head of Year.
“This is just a temporary position, mum. I’m gonna see about moving to a posh part of London in a year or two.”
“A year or two? What chance have you got of surviving that long?”
“Mum!”
“And the posh part of London? Does that even exist? From what I’ve heard, it’s all the same down there and you know it!”
“I can’t go back to what I was doing before, mum.”
“You could get a higher paid job now.”
“Fat chance of that happening. Besides...”
“...What?”
“I’ve got a promotion.”
“...What kind?” she seemed suspicious.
“I’m gonna be the Head of Year for the new Year 7’s in September.”
“That’s a long way off.”
“It ain’t that long, mum.... aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
He had become annoyed with her typical negativity and pessimistic attitude towards his career choices and if she wasn’t going to admit he had achieved something that had made his move to London worth it then he didn’t want to hear from her until she was more supportive.
“...I suppose that’s good news.”
That was as celebratory as she was going to get and he had to settle for it.
“What was it, compensation for what nearly happened to you?”
He grimaced and looked in the mirror on the wall. His face wasn’t as puffy as the night before but he still looked like he had a nasty fall down some stairs – something he figured he’d say if anyone asked, since it was partially the cause of his injuries.
“No, mum. The offer had been made before the attack.”
“Right. Well, you better take care of yourself if you’re gonna stay in that hellhole.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Alright, I’ll let you go now. Just make sure I don’t get anymore nasty surprises, okay? Or the trouble you get into will be the least of your worries when I find out!”
“Okay, mum.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too, mum.”
They said bye and hung up.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. He studied his reflection. He had placed two thin pink plasters on his facial cuts. Over the bridge of his nose and on his cheekbone, which was bruised.
There had been other cuts and scrapes on his body from the fall down the staircase. And he had applied plasters and bandages on the wounds. He hoped the marks on his face recovered within the next ten days and was glad he still had over a week left of the leave he had been given by Woolrich. He’d need every day of it now.
24
Tom walked outside and was halfway to the front gate when he heard his neighbour John Thompson call out. “Bloody hell, what the fuck happened to you?”
Tom glared at him.
John smirked like he had taken enjoyment in Tom’s condition.
Tom ignored him and got into his car.
He checked Cool Pool’s post code on his phone again just to make sure he knew where he was going. It wasn’t far off. He guessed it wouldn’t be longer than a five minute drive and started the car up.
He drove out to Cool Pool and reached it within a few minutes. He slowed the car as he neared the pool hall and surveyed it. It had a shabby exterior that didn’t surprise him.
He drove on and passed a coffee shop that caught his attention. He thought he had plenty of time before the pool hall filled up with people who might know of Marcus’ whereabouts. It was still early, around three o’ clock. He planned on waiting around for an hour or two before he entered Cool Pool.
He parked up around the corner and walked to the coffee shop.
He took his time once he was inside. He bought two newspapers: The Guardian and a local paper, the Binford Post.
He read the local paper first and recalled the female reporter who he encountered the other day. He wondered how they had ended up covering the story and if it was any different to the online news articles. Apparently, the Binford Post had interviewed Woolrich and the Chief Superintendent of Binford Police station.
Both men had given vague statements.
Woolrich had delivered what seemed like a very rehearsed and scripted comment, something someone with the police or local education authority had prepared for him.
The Chief informed the paper that the police were prioritising Chris’ murder and made an appeal for the public to come forward if they knew anything related to the crime. It sounded like they knew nothing as usual.
Tom flicked through the rest of the paper and nothing else caught his interest. It was the usual glum stuff – more reportage of the town’s decaying nature. That was something that hadn’t changed in the six months he had been living there.
He switched to the broadsheet paper and began with the supplements, spending an hour going through them all. He was on his second cup of coffee when he eventually came to the main section of the newspaper. He read through the paper with no concern for any of the major news headlines regarding the world’s events – it all seemed trivial and about a world far away from Binford.
It wasn’t until he came upon a columnist’s piece about Binford School that he was suddenly gripped by what he was reading. What struck was him the topic of the column – the school’s long and troubled history. Tom narrowed his eyes as he read the disturbing article.
The columnist wrote about how the school had experienced many controversial problems over the decades and most it had been news to Tom. Some of these problems included teachers attacking students and students trying to kill each other.
There was also talk of a serial killer from two decades earlier who had preyed on schoolboys in Binford, which had led to the press dubbing him ‘The Binford Snatcher’. The killer’s victims included Binford School’s students. Tom couldn’t believe he had managed to miss this. Nobody had said a word about it as if it was long forgotten. He sat there stunned and made a mental note to dig into the school’s entire history later.
No matter how curious he was about finding out the full extent of Binford School’s controversies, it would have to wait until he had exhausted himself in solving Chris’ murder.
He checked the time and decided it was time he went to explore Cool Pool. He left the coffee shop and returned to the car. He wanted to drive past the pool hall a few times to get a better look at it and see who was around there now. He drove past the pool hall and saw a free parking space directly opposite it. He parked the car and remained inside.
He wanted to give it a few more minutes before he entered the pool hall. He spent roughly ten minutes watching the pool hall entrance before he got out of the car, noting who was entering and exiting.
So far none of the patrons who had left the pool hall caught his attention. They were mostly black and Asian boys in their late teens and early twenties. He did not recognise any of them.
Eventually, he got out of the car and walked over to the pool hall. He stood outside and tried to peek inside. The windows were blacked out and the door was the only way to see inside if held open. Tom thought he had waited long enough and braced himself for what potentially awaited him inside. He realised in that moment, he had been stalling going inside the pool hall purely out of fear than anything else and tried to shake the feeling away.
He tried to ignore the niggling feeling deep inside that he was making another mistake by having come here – that he was in for more trouble than he had gotten into the night before at The Escape Lounge.
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He told himself it didn’t matter as he opened the front door and finally entered.
He was becoming used to getting bitten by the dangers of Binford.
25
The inside of the pool hall was just as Tom had expected it to be.
It was a rundown venue with no real attraction to it other than its availability.
It was darkly lit and had urban music blasting out of the sound system. There were four pool tables in the hall and a bunch of arcade game consoles that were surrounded by small clusters of patrons.
Tom scanned the hall, taking in all the other patrons and determining if he recognised any of the boys at the hall – and it was mostly boys that made up the customers of the pool hall. He couldn’t make out more than three girls present among the roughly twelve to fifteen customers there.
There was a bar at the other end of the hall and Tom approached it.
A few of the boys around him looked in his direction but looked away just as quickly as he passed. He wondered if his messed up appearance made him look dangerous. The cuts and bruises on his face probably gave him a different look. More edgy, he hoped. Maybe it would discourage any trouble that might otherwise come his way.
He reached the bar and perched on a stool.
The barman, a black man in his thirties approached Tom with a smile. “Yes?”
Tom ordered Bacardi and the barman got him the drink. Tom took a sip of the drink and studied his surroundings. He wondered if Marcus had been at the venue recently, as Dwayne had claimed.
“Ain’t seen you around here before,” the barman said. “You new here?”
Tom smiled. “You could say that.” This was just like the barman at The Escape Lounge. Their openers must all come from the manual, Tom thought.
“Mr Smith?”
Tom turned around and saw a black boy standing there.
Donnell, one of his sixth form students – always swaying between class clown and class geek.
The boy looked stunned at Tom’s appearance.
“Donnell.”
