Not anger, not the usual fierce defiance you see when bad kids are up for their umpteenth punishment, not fear or hurt or anything. Just resignation. She was on her way to see the head, brought there by her teacher, and she just looked resigned, like this was the way it was meant to be. That wasn’t the proof, though.
The proof was even less obvious than the look on her face.
When I had passed her I turned back for a second and saw it. Chris didn’t, and the teacher didn’t realize I was looking at them. Neither did the girl.
All it took was one little thing.
His hand on her back.
He was steering her gently through the double doors. I’d have almost described his touch as tender, if it had been anyone else, but this wasn’t her boyfriend or a boy who liked her. This was her teacher, a man three times her age, and she was what – thirteen? Fourteen, at most. That hand on her back was desire, control, possession. It was all of that and more, and it triggered a memory of my own time in his class.
I had been lost in my work when the bell went and for once didn’t get straight up. I wanted to finish the last paragraph of my story because I knew what I was writing was good – for my age, at least. I was dimly aware of everyone else getting up and leaving, so I had to speed up and write the final words in a flurry. They just seemed to flow from me. The class was empty and I had nearly finished, then I sensed Keech come up behind me.
I was leaning over my exercise book with my head down when it happened.
His hand on the small of my back.
It was pressing down gently but firmly, then his fingers moved, tracing up and down my spine, and I froze. I couldn’t move.
‘Good girl, Alice,’ he said, and his voice sounded different from normal. He bent over me then, even closer, pretending to look at my work, and even at that age I knew what he wanted.
‘I’m finished,’ I managed, and suddenly I could move again. I got straight to my feet, grabbed my bag, closed my exercise book, then went to his desk and put it there on the pile with the rest of them. I left the classroom without looking back.
I was thirteen.
Black sighed, ‘Jesus.’
‘There’s another bit,’ she said, and Beth was about to hand this to him, too, but his phone started to ring. Black had to fish into his jacket pocket to retrieve his mobile. He listened to the caller with little comment then finally said, ‘Okay, we’re on our way back.’ Then he hung up, sighed and said, ‘DCI Everleigh would like a word.’
HEADTEACHER HELD BY POLICE IN MURDER PROBE
A headteacher with links to politicians and senior police officers has been arrested and charged with multiple sex offences against minors, and is currently being questioned about the murder of a teenage girl in his care.
Since we first reported the arrest of John Morgan, headteacher of Collemby Comprehensive School in Northumbria, more than a dozen former pupils have come forward alleging assault against a man regularly held up as a shining light in the education system. Morgan counted local MPs, councillors and even the chief constable of Northumbria Police among his many influential friends and contacts. Now speculation is mounting that he was able to escape arrest and carry on with his alleged crimes for years due to friends in high places, an allegation strenuously denied by local police.
The alleged offences came to light following the discovery of the body of Collemby sixth-former Alice Teale, seventeen, who was found strangled near Craster on the Northumbrian coast. Morgan has also been charged with illegally disposing of her body.
54
Despite Black’s default setting of extreme cynicism, Beth worried that he might have a point. They had both been called to the DCI’s office and Black couldn’t imagine any scenario where that joint summons could possibly end well. She needn’t have worried, though. It seemed the DCI was in a generous mood.
‘I have to say I’m impressed you managed to solve this,’ said Everleigh.
‘It was DS Black,’ explained Beth. ‘He remembered Alice saying something about admiring the view from the roof, he went up to see for himself and worked it all out.’
‘It was DC Winter, really,’ said Black. ‘She was the one who realized Alice needed proof and she remembered that a camera had gone missing.’
Everleigh smiled at their modesty. ‘Either way, you make such a good team I’ve decided to keep you together from now on.’
Beth seemed pleased at that, but Black was immediately suspicious because he had spotted something on the DCI’s desk: a copy of a tabloid newspaper he’d seen that morning with an unflattering story about the headteacher and his friends in high places. Everleigh’s eye seemed to move almost involuntarily to it now, a sore reminder of the embarrassment they had caused the force and their DCI by uncovering Morgan as the killer.
‘Well, you certainly seem to have cracked the case,’ he said, before adding: ‘Not before time. Made quite a big splash in the newspapers, too.’ He said this a little too brightly and Beth felt the need to intervene and defend themselves.
‘It was the only way to flush out the other victims, and there were a number of them.’
‘Indeed, there were.’ He beamed at her then, and she wasn’t sure how to react.
He clearly wasn’t happy about some of the press coverage, which had accused the police of allowing Morgan to hide in plain sight for so many years. There was also an embarrassing photograph of Morgan with the chief constable at an award ceremony which came back to haunt the head of Northumbria Police when it was reproduced in several tabloids days after the headteacher’s arrest.
‘Well done both of you.’ Was that through gritted teeth? ‘In recognition of your’ – he seemed to hesitate momentarily while he struggled to find the right words – ‘investigative prowess, I am transferring you both to a new team.’ And he turned his attention to Black. ‘Along with your DI, once he returns from sick leave.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ This was exciting news for Beth. A new team? Some innovative task force, perhaps? An elite squad, hopefully. She noticed that Black stayed silent.
‘Congratulations, both of you. Soon you’ll be joining the guys at DW5.’
They were out in the car park when she said brightly, ‘So it looks like you’re stuck with me, albeit in a new squad.’
He realized she seemed happy about that. ‘It’s DW5,’ he told her. ‘Have you not heard of it?’ She had heard about DW5, Everleigh’s miscellaneous serious-crime squad. ‘People often call it DWS by mistake, because Everleigh had a logo designed for the squad and the 5 looks like an S.’
Was she supposed to understand what was going on here? ‘And?’
‘Do you know what DWS stands for?’ he asked her. ‘At least, unofficially.’
‘No.’
‘Dead Wood Squad,’ he told her. ‘DW5 isn’t an elite team. It’s an excuse, a sham, an elephants’ graveyard, a place to send detectives to die. It’s where Everleigh puts everyone in CID he has no faith in. The men and women working there are unmotivated, incompetent, alcoholic – in some cases, all three,’ he explained. ‘And we are about to join them.’
Beth didn’t understand. ‘But he said they deal with serious cases.’
‘Oh, they do. We’ll get cases all right.’ He smiled grimly. ‘The ones no one else wants. All the cold cases that are completely frozen over – every poisoned chalice, each investigation that requires huge amounts of legwork and admin will come down to us.’
‘Then why don’t you sound angry?’
‘Because I guessed it would happen as soon as we involved the press and some of them investigated Morgan’s network of pals in high places. We embarrassed them all, Beth, and people like that are very unforgiving.’
‘Why not just fire us, then?’
‘That would be too obvious and the press would pick up on it. “Detectives fired for solving a case.”’ He quoted an imaginary headline. ‘No, this way they get to punish us while dressing it up as a reward.’
‘You me
an my career is over,’ she said, ‘before it’s even started?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She was bewildered. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Do?’ he asked. ‘Nothing.’
‘Why not?’
‘What can I do?’ he asked her. ‘If I go over his head to complain, no one will back me. He makes DW5 sound like an elite unit. I would have to slag off everyone in it to make my point and, by the way, some of them don’t even mind that they’re stuck there. Time-servers see out their time, idiots don’t even know they are being punished and the alkies are all in the pub that little bit sooner. It’s only people like you and I that actually care. Everleigh’s been very clever.’
‘You don’t sound as if you do care.’
‘I do,’ he snapped. ‘We did the right thing. We caught the people who put Alice in her grave, and what’s our reward? We’ve been shafted.’ He let out an exasperated sigh. ‘But since I can’t alter the decision or affect my punishment, I will do the only thing I can do. I’m going to the pub, and I’m going to get mortal. You can come, too, if you want.’ But she didn’t look impressed. ‘Or not.’
He turned his back on her and started to walk away. She called after him then, ‘You can’t alter the decision, okay? You want to get drunk tonight, then fine,’ she said. ‘I’m in, but when we wake up in the morning, we make each other a promise – an oath, if you like.’
‘What kind of promise?’
‘That we won’t let him win. We join DW5 and make it work, with or without anyone else. It might not be an elite squad yet, but it could be.’
‘How?’ He laughed at the notion.
Beth smiled. ‘Everleigh just added us to it,’ she reminded him, ‘and that’s a start.’
‘Well,’ he said, his face softening, and he smiled at her then. ‘I can’t argue with that.’
The Journal of Alice Teale
How did I work it out? It wasn’t just one thing. Not just the hand on a girl’s back. And it was more than just a look, a touch or a comment that might have been an invitation but could easily be brushed away as something else entirely if I kicked back against it.
You had to add it all together first, then all of a sudden, I knew what was going on.
I knew it, but how can I prove it?
I can’t tell Dad because he would never believe it from anyone, and certainly not from me.
My mam might think there’s a tiny grain of truth here, but she wouldn’t get it, not really. She’d say I have an overactive imagination, which is true, I do. I want to be a writer, so I need one, but I am not imagining this. I know I’m not. Maybe you have to have an overactive imagination to see what no one else can.
There’s no use telling Daniel. He’ll want to go up there and punch someone, and that will ruin everything.
Forget Chris. If I told him, he wouldn’t want to do anything about it at all. He’s too intimidated by the headteacher and his rules. He’d say, ‘What can you do, Alice?’ or ‘Call the police, Alice,’ as if the police would give a damn about girls like her. They have already given up on her. I know how it works. Girls like that get blamed for everything. If she was found dead in the woods, it would be her own fault. She shouldn’t have gone for a walk, shouldn’t have worn that skirt, had a drink, talked to that man, got in that car.
All her own fault.
Asking for it.
That’s what men think.
They only see it differently when the truth is right there in front of them, if they can see it with their own eyes, become the witness to the crime. If they could look through a window and actually watch what’s going on, it would make all the difference.
Well, I did look through that window and I saw what was going on.
Next time, I’ll get proof.
Then we’ll see.
Everybody else is just as blind as I used to be. They cannot see what is right in front of them, but I get it now and I am going to stop it.
No matter what it takes or costs.
Because doing nothing is never an option.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone at Penguin Random House for publishing Alice Teale is Missing. A huge thank you in particular goes to my brilliant editor, Joel Richardson, for all of his insightful ideas and unwavering support during the writing of this book. We got there in the end, Joel!
Thanks also to Maxine Hitchcock, Beth Cockeram, Olivia Thomas, Sarah Day and Beatrix McIntyre at Michael Joseph for your help at every stage of the writing process. It’s been a pleasure to work with you all.
My fantastic literary agent, Phil Patterson at Marjacq, has been a constant help to me and is always a great champion of my writing. Thanks for everything, Phil. Thanks also to Sandra Sawicka at Marjacq for dealing with the foreign rights to my books.
Every author needs help, encouragement and support, and I have been lucky enough to receive a lot along the way. I’d like to thank the following people for providing it: Adam Pope, Andy Davis, Nikki Selden, Gareth Chennells, Andrew Local, Stuart Britton, David Shapiro, Peter Day, Tony Frobisher, Eva Dolan, Katie Charlton, Gemma Sealey, Emad Akhtar, Keshini Naidoo and Ion Mills.
My lovely wife, Alison, deserves a special thank you for putting up with an author in her house. Her belief and encouragement keep me going when the end of a book seems a long way off.
My wonderful daughter, Erin, brightens all of my days and that’s why the writing always stops when she comes home. Thanks for inspiring me, Erin. Love you always.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published in Penguin Books 2019
Copyright © Howard Linskey, 2019
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ISBN: 978-1-405-93333-9
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