Alice Teale is Missing

by H. A. Linskey

He nodded slowly then Black said, ‘And we thought perhaps she might have turned up here.’

  ‘Like I said, this shelter is men only.’

  Black leaned forward in his chair and locked eyes with McGregor. ‘We thought she might have come here looking for you.’

  ‘Why ever would she do that?’ he asked, though Beth could tell he knew the answer to that question already.

  As soon as they were back in the car with the doors closed behind them, Beth let it out.

  ‘Oh my God. Did you notice?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Lucas, as if it were obvious. ‘There’s a resemblance.’

  ‘He looks like Alice Teale,’ she said. ‘Or I should say, she looks like him: same eye colour, nose, that bone structure, even down to the colour of his hair.’

  ‘And there’s the jewellery,’ said Black, almost to himself.

  ‘What jewellery?’

  ‘When she went missing DI Fraser put out a description of the clothes Alice was wearing. It included a ring, gold stud earrings and there was also a gold cross on a chain that she wore around her neck. Her mother gave it to her. Abigail Teale was religious, but …’

  ‘It has even more significance now,’ said Beth, completing his thoughts for him.

  ‘No wonder Ronnie hated her,’ said Lucas. ‘At least now we know the reason why Alice could never do anything right for Daddy.’ Then he added: ‘Because he suspects he isn’t really her father.’

  ‘You think he knows?’ asked Beth.

  ‘It would explain a lot. He was the one who walked out on Alice’s mum and had the affair, then he chose to come back, probably when he heard his wife was spending a bit more time than normal at the local church. Maybe he listened to some gossip, so he returned and staked his claim on his wife and their marriage. Then, months later, Alice was born, but she almost certainly wasn’t his. So, yeah, I think he knew. The question is whether he finally did something about it.’

  Beth said, ‘Actually, I wasn’t talking about Ronnie Teale.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lucas, and they both instinctively turned to look back at the shelter, where Alex McGregor now stood at the window, looking out at them. ‘You mean, did he know? That’s a very good question.’

  ‘I think he does now,’ said Beth.

  27

  When Beth’s phone rang late that evening, she expected it to be Black with another query about the case but, instead, she heard the reassuringly familiar tones of Peter Kennedy.

  ‘I did some asking around about DS Black.’

  ‘That was good of you.’ Familiarity with the man had made Beth a little calmer than she had been about working with Lucas Black, but she didn’t want Peter to feel as if his efforts had been wasted.

  ‘No problem and, don’t worry, I didn’t make it obvious. I just mentioned I had a friend who had joined his team. Believe me, that was enough.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘People weren’t shy about voicing their opinions on DS Black.’

  Beth sat up. ‘What did they say about him?’

  ‘That he was a loner and difficult, moody and uncooperative.’

  Was that all? ‘That does seem to sum him up, Peter, but I’m getting used to him.’

  ‘Lucas Black is not a popular man,’ Kennedy continued. ‘No one likes working with the guy, and they say he has a right temper. They don’t trust him, Beth.’ He paused, then.

  That was bad enough, but why did she get the impression Kennedy hadn’t finished yet? If there was something else, she wanted him to spit it out, but it was his story to tell.

  ‘And then there was the shooting.’

  Oh, yes, the shooting.

  ‘Did he tell you about that?’ asked Kennedy.

  ‘I haven’t asked,’ she admitted. ‘And it’s not something he’s likely to volunteer as a topic of conversation.’

  ‘You’ve read about it, though?’ He meant online. ‘How he claimed he thought the man was armed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The guy was carrying something that looked like a sawn-off shotgun. It was part of his statement,’ Kennedy told her, ‘but the victim was actually carrying a chair leg.’

  ‘A chair leg?’ she repeated. How could anyone mistake that for a weapon?

  ‘Black claimed he thought the man’s family was in danger so he shot the guy. I spoke to someone who was there that night. He said Black was like a robot. It was just bang. No hesitation. Right in the chest. He took that guy down so fast it was like an execution,’ said Kennedy, and hearing it described like that made it far more real somehow. ‘Then, afterwards, he never said a word about it. He was offered counselling but turned it down and just got on with his job like he didn’t give a damn about that bloke.’

  ‘Christ,’ she hissed. She was working with a man who felt nothing, even when he had killed someone.

  Perhaps Peter thought he had gone too far, because he seemed to backtrack. ‘Obviously, I wasn’t there. It’s just what they told me. Things like that must affect people in different ways, but it sounded pretty hardcore. He was in the army, though, wasn’t he? Maybe he had killed before.’

  Beth assumed Kennedy was saying this to explain Black’s nonchalant approach to ending someone else’s life. She didn’t find any comfort in the idea that Black might have killed someone else.

  Of all the people to end up working my first real case with, I end up with the cold-blooded killer.

  Beth did not sleep at all well that night and, this time, she woke long before it was light. Once she was awake, her mind went back to the call from Peter Kennedy. She had hoped talking to him might calm some of her worries, but instead his comments about Black seemed to confirm her worst fears.

  As Beth drove in that morning, she contemplated her options. She didn’t want to carry on working with Lucas Black, but what choice did she have? She could go and see DCI Everleigh, of course, and demand to be taken off the case – but based on what? Rumours? Black had been officially cleared of wrongdoing. Everleigh would take a dim view if she dropped him in it by leaving an already undermanned team, and her career would be irreparably damaged before it had even begun. It wasn’t even an option.

  She decided to stick with it. Beth wanted to work this case and find Alice so she would have to try and put thoughts of Black’s highly questionable past out of her mind until the case was concluded. Then she could review her situation. She told herself she would probably be moved to another squad after the case anyway. In the meantime, she would sit tight, keep her head down and try to just get on with the job.

  28

  The place couldn’t have looked more different. The first time Beth had seen the building from the outside it had been at night and there had been barely a soul around. Now, on a Monday morning, hundreds of pupils were spilling from coaches parked outside the school or sauntering up the road from Collemby town centre at a snail’s pace, as if trying to delay the inevitably dull day in full-time education for as long as humanly possible. Beth and Black watched them go in from their car. There wasn’t much point fighting their way through the crowds. Beth couldn’t bring herself to speak to Black, but he didn’t seem to notice and was his usual silent self. She knew she would have to switch into professional mode once they entered the school but, right now, she was struggling to file away the thought that she was sitting next to a killer.

  It was all over in five minutes. One moment, the last of the kids were pushing each other through the big double doors at the front of the school or filing into its numerous side exits; the next, there was absolute calm, with not a single person left outside the building, bar Beth and Lucas, who took the opportunity to walk unopposed into Collemby Comprehensive and request an audience with the headteacher.

  Thanks to DCI Everleigh, Mr Morgan was expecting Beth and Lucas and he permitted them entry to his office, though he did not offer them any refreshment. If Beth had to pick one word to describe the man in front of her, she would have chosen ‘serious’. The head was in his early f
ifties, wore the dark suit and tie of a middle manager, and his shoes looked as if they had been polished for an hour that morning. He wished them every success in their quest to find Alice but wasn’t sure how he could help them.

  ‘Were you in the building when Alice Teale disappeared?’ asked Beth.

  ‘I was, but I’m afraid I didn’t see her leave the school. That was Miss Pearce, our PE teacher, who was in the staff room.’

  ‘Do you often work that late?’ asked Black.

  ‘More than I’d like to. Friday is different, though. We encourage the sixth-formers to stay behind for A-level revision sessions, followed by sporting activities to help them unwind. I also have the DTs.’

  Black instantly thought of delirium tremens, the symptoms displayed by acute alcoholics, but he didn’t think those were the kind of DTs the head was talking about. ‘The what?’

  ‘Detention time,’ Morgan explained. ‘We deliberately schedule it on Friday evenings. We found that the kids who routinely misbehave don’t care about normal detentions. If you schedule them for a slot when they would rather be somewhere else, however, such as Friday evenings or even Saturday mornings, it dramatically cuts the rate of offending. It’s just one of my more radical ideas, which has helped to turn this school around.’

  ‘And you’ve done that,’ said Beth, ‘from what we’ve heard. Truancy down, attendance up, bad behaviour down, exam results up. They’re calling you a super-head. What’s your secret?’

  ‘Attention to detail in all things,’ he said proudly. ‘And we target the worst offenders remorselessly. I took the old New York City zero-tolerance approach to crime and adapted it to suit the needs of our school.’

  ‘The Broken Windows model?’ asked Black.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said the head. ‘It’s been proven that if you stamp down hard on small misdemeanours like vandalism, graffiti or the dropping of litter, then larger crimes are less likely.’

  ‘Crime rates fell in New York,’ agreed Black, ‘but how does that work in a school?’

  ‘In exactly the same way. We also have a zero-tolerance approach to antisocial behaviour of any kind. We realized that twenty per cent of the pupils were responsible for eighty per cent of the bad behaviour. We were dealing with the same offenders time and time again, so we come down on them hard. The Friday-evening detentions have been a particularly effective deterrent.’

  ‘So you were supervising the detentions when Alice left?’ asked Beth.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s pretty late, isn’t it? If school turns out around three o’clock, you don’t keep the kids back for six hours, surely?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We let them go home then bring them back in for an hour or two at a pre-arranged slot, which is intended to cause maximum irritation to the culprit. These are serial offenders, with a history of dishonesty.’

  ‘Ever have any reason to give Alice Teale a detention?’ asked Black.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Is Alice popular?’ asked Beth.

  ‘With teachers or classmates?’ asked the head.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘From a teacher’s perspective, I would say she is a good student who rarely, if ever, gives us any cause for concern, and she is deputy head girl,’ he added approvingly. ‘Among her fellow pupils, it’s always hard to tell when you are the head of a school, but she seems well liked, though we did have an incident months ago.’

  At that point there was a knock on the door and the school secretary walked in. ‘Sorry, Mr Morgan, I need to collect the registers.’ He nodded his assent.

  ‘What kind of incident?’ asked Beth.

  ‘An act of vandalism.’

  ‘Alice committed vandalism?’ asked Beth. ‘On school property?’

  The headteacher glanced at the secretary, who was opening and closing drawers while looking for the registers. Her presence seemed to faze him. ‘It’s probably easier if I just show you.’ He got out of his chair and gestured for them to follow.

  They walked down the corridor and out through the side exit door that led to the spot where the green Jaguar was parked.

  ‘This yours?’ asked Black.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice.’ He peered inside. ‘And it’s absolutely immaculate.’

  ‘I have it valeted,’ he said. ‘Regularly.’ Then he pointed. ‘It’s round here.’ He led them around a corner, to a wall on a small outbuilding. ‘It took the caretaker a devil of a time to scrub it off.’

  Black and Beth moved closer to the greying red-brick wall and the marks that were still partially visible there. Black squinted at what remained of the lettering. Someone had written something on that wall in white spray paint and, despite the best efforts of the school caretaker, you could still just make out the outline of each of those faded letters and discern their meaning.

  ALICE TEALE IS A SLAG

  29

  ‘You said this wasn’t recent,’ confirmed Beth as she surveyed the graffiti on the school wall.

  ‘No, it was quite early into the new school year, in fact.’

  ‘Why would someone do that?’ she asked.

  ‘Jealousy,’ he explained. ‘Teenage relationships are not always mature ones. From time to time, the school can be affected. This was one of those times.’

  ‘Was Alice affected?’

  ‘She was understandably upset, but we made a point of blocking off the area from the school body and the caretaker prioritized the removal of the graffiti.’

  ‘Ever find out who did it?’ Black was expecting that to be unlikely.

  ‘The offender was identified and asked to leave the sixth form.’

  ‘How did you find the culprit?’ asked Beth.

  ‘Alice had been involved with a classmate and, when the relationship ended, she began seeing a former boyfriend again. That was sufficient motive to put the boy who lost out under suspicion.’

  ‘Tony,’ said Black. ‘Did he admit it?’ In Tony’s version of events, he had voluntarily dropped out of the sixth form because he couldn’t stand to see Alice back with Chris. Had he instead been kicked out by the head for defacing the wall with this vengeful insult? If he’d lied about that, then what else was he keeping from Black?

  ‘He was very dismissive at first, even though I had threatened him with possible expulsion. Then he told me he wanted to leave the sixth form anyway, and I thought it was for the best. I considered that to be the end of the matter.’

  ‘Do you think he was definitely the one responsible?’

  ‘Like I said, he admitted it,’ said the head, as if that were proof enough. ‘I would have been hard pressed to think of anyone else with sufficient motive. Shall we go back in?’

  ‘It might be best to continue our discussion out here,’ said Beth. ‘I’d like to talk about an area of some sensitivity.’

  ‘Go on.’ The head made no further move to go back inside.

  ‘Teacher–pupil relationships,’ she said, and he looked uneasy.

  ‘What kind of relationships?’

  ‘The romantic kind,’ said Beth, then added: ‘The sexual kind.’

  Morgan crossed his arms, a defensive posture. ‘Who are you referring to?’

  ‘A number of teachers over the years, apparently.’

  ‘You’ve been listening to gossip, in other words.’

  ‘Isn’t it true that some male teachers have had relationships with female pupils?’

  The headteacher paused. Black wondered if he was weighing up whether he could lie to a detective or perhaps evade the question, then he sighed and it was as if a dam had burst. ‘Regrettably, there were some incidents in the past, long before I came here,’ he admitted.

  ‘And one or two currently.’

  ‘Well, you might say that, but they are rather hard to prove.’

  ‘And when they can be proven? Such as a former pupil living with her teacher?’

  ‘If the girl in question has left the school, is over the age of eighteen
and denies living with that teacher, then there isn’t a great deal we can do.’

  ‘Even when it is obvious the relationship must have begun when she was at the school, probably while still under the age of consent?’

  ‘And how do we prove that? Unless a teacher is caught in a passionate embrace, they’re going to deny everything and, in the majority of cases, so is the pupil.’

  ‘What if they were caught?’

  ‘That would be a different matter. It’s serious misconduct for someone in a position of trust to have a relationship like that, even more so if the girl is under the age of consent. A teacher would be suspended then dismissed and most likely permanently struck off. We would also be sure to involve the police.’

  ‘And yet there have been persistent rumours concerning particular teachers at Collemby having inappropriate relationships with pupils.’

  ‘Rumours are one thing. Proof is very much another.’

  ‘Has anyone ever been dismissed or struck off during your tenure as headteacher?’

  The head was clearly growing exasperated with this line of questioning. ‘No, but the burden of proof falls on the school and these situations are very hard to unravel. Do you know how many malicious allegations are made against teachers every year? They can ruin people’s lives.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I know who you are referring to. It’s Mr Keech, isn’t it?’

  ‘Or “Keech the leech”, as the pupils commonly refer to him,’ said Beth. She had been fully briefed on this incident and others by Kirstie.

  ‘I haven’t heard that one before, but if the cap fits. Look, I don’t like the situation any more than you do. It pains me far more, in fact, because this is my school, but I am tied by the law and the need for proof. I can promise you that all allegations of misconduct reported to me or any other member of staff are investigated thoroughly, but I can’t simply fire a teacher because there is a whiff of something about them. The union would never let it go. Often it’s little more than gossip.’

  Beth was only too aware of the dangers of gossip and couldn’t help but think of Alice and her brother.