The One That Got Away, page 21
part #1 of DI Heather Filson Series
Heather ground her teeth together. The man was an arsehole, she’d always known that. Sometimes, though, he went out of his way to remind her just how much of one he truly was.
“Sounds great, Detective Chief Inspector,” she replied, spitting out the title like it was something wet and unpleasant that she’d hoiked up out of her lungs.
“And you’ll stay out of it? You won’t go poking around?”
Heather pulled into a car park and slowed the car to a stop.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be on my best behaviour,” Heather replied.
She shut off the engine, and looked past the swishing wipers to where Kilmarnock Academy sat hunched against the icy rain.
“You can have my word on that.”
Mrs Hawkes stood at the front of the class, staring at the door like she’d just been visited by a particularly unwelcome ghost.
“Alright, Mrs H?” Heather asked, grinning as she stepped past her First Year escort and into the classroom. “Long time no see.”
The old maths teacher leaned a hand on the whiteboard, smudging a formula she’d been trying to drum into the pupils, who now sat in an intrigued sort of hush, watching to see how this was going to play out.
“Heather. Heather Filson, isn’t it?”
Heather’s grin widened. “Aw, you remember me!”
“Aye. Well, not for want of bloody trying,” the teacher muttered.
There were some giggles from a table of girls. Mrs Hawkes—Hawkeye—turned and pointed at them with a red marker pen.
“That’s enough! Shut up! Don’t start!” she warned. “Heads down and on with your work.”
Around half the heads in the class lowered, but almost all of them very quickly lifted again the moment the teacher turned back towards the door.
“You can go, um…”
“Devon,” the First Year said.
“Yes. Devon. You can go,” the teacher said, but the younger girl had already retreated out into the corridor, and pulled the door closed with a thunk.
Hawkeye turned to Heather then.
“Is this about Paula Harrison?” she asked, silently but emphatically mouthing the girl’s name like she was shouting at a deaf person.
“Aye. Sort of,” Heather confirmed. She scanned the class, until she settled on a girl sitting slightly apart from the other pupils, watching the detective with what might have been scrutiny, but might equally have been total lack of interest. “I’m here to talk to Ace.”
An excited murmur began to run laps of the classroom, getting louder and louder as each wave overlapped the last.
“Did she do it?” called a voice from one of the other tables. It was one of the girls Heather had interviewed, though she couldn’t quite remember which one. “Did she kill Paula?”
“I bet she did!” another of Paula’s friends added. She fired a look of disgust in Ace’s direction. “Freak! I bet she done it!”
“That’s enough!” Hawkeye barked. She threw her pen down on the desk so hard it made a loud crack, and then bounced off onto the floor. “Settle down, all of you!”
“Actually,” Heather said, eyeballing the two girls who had spoken out. “I’m here investigating an assault. A couple of witnesses saw a girl matching Ace’s description being beaten yesterday. I want to find out if that’s true. Then, I want to find out who did it.”
Heather had been winding her way between the clusters of desks, and now stopped looming over Paula’s friends. She leaned down and lowered her voice a little, knowing full well that Hawkeye’s hearing wasn’t what it used to be.
“And then, when I do, I’m going to fuck them up beyond all recognition.”
Heather gave that a moment to sink in, and enjoyed watching all three girls sinking down into their chairs.
She smiled at them, winked, then straightened so suddenly that all three of them jumped in fright.
“You,” Heather said, snapping her fingers and pointing at Ace. “With me. Now.”
Three minutes later, Heather was starting to think this was a bad idea. She and Ace stood in the corridor along from the classroom, tucked away into a corner to avoid passing foot traffic. Most teachers and pupils were in classes, but there were always a few wandering around for one reason or another, and this was a conversation she didn’t want anyone to overhear.
Assuming, of course, that she was ever able to have it.
“So, you do want my help now?” Ace asked. “Because, when I approached you with this information yesterday, you didn’t seem all that interested.”
“I was interested, I was just busy,” Heather countered.
“You told me to, ‘Do one.’”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I said, ‘Do one what?’ and you said, ‘Are you effing serious?’ except you didn’t say ‘effing,’ you said the unedited version.”
“No, I know, but—”
“And I said, ‘Yes, I’m serious. Do one what?’ and then you threatened to arrest me.”
“I mean—”
“And then I pointed out that you couldn’t arrest me because I hadn’t committed a crime,” Ace continued. “At which point, you called me a little weirdo and told me to piss off.” She put her hands on her hips and drew a big breath in through her nose. “Does any of that sound familiar, Officer?”
“Detective Inspector,” Heather corrected. “And, yes, OK. Some of that does, admittedly, ring a bell. I was having a bad day.”
“Is today a better one?” Ace asked her. She’d made a clumsy attempt to hide the worst of her bruising with makeup, but had only succeeded in making it more obvious.
“No. No, today’s worse, if anything,” Heather admitted. “I take it you heard about…?”
“Everyone’s heard,” the girl confirmed. “They’re doing an assembly. I’ve asked for permission to record it for my podcast.”
“Right.”
“They said, ‘Absolutely not under any circumstances,’ but I’m going to do it anyway,” Ace said. “There should be a record. There should be a record of what people say about her. It’s only right.”
Heather nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“Anyway. Apology accepted,” Ace announced.
Heather frowned. “I didn’t apologise.”
“Well, let’s pretend you were big enough to, and move on,” the girl said. “What was it you wanted my help with?”
“This graffiti you saw—”
“Graffito.”
Heather tutted. “Fine. This graffito.”
“‘Mr Pearse fingered—’”
The DI clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth to stop her saying any more.
“Maybe best not to say it out loud,” she suggested, looking both ways along the corridor to make her point clear. “So, how about you just show me, instead?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Toby Pearse was sitting in the same classroom Heather had seen him in on Friday, although this time around, there were no pupils gathered around the desks.
He was leaning back in his chair, gazing out of the window at the housing estate that Paula Harrison had called home. He had white Apple AirPods in his ears, and Heather could tell from the way he was bobbing his head that he was listening to music. Something upbeat, too.
She could also tell that he hadn’t yet heard her enter the room.
Holding a fist a few inches from her mouth, she coughed loudly. The teacher turned quickly in his chair, and a momentary look of confusion gave way to a thin-lipped smile of acknowledgement as he hurriedly plucked his AirPods from his ears.
Snapping them back in their case, he got to his feet and waved for Heather to shut the door behind her.
“Hello, Detective,” he said. “Sorry, was miles away. It’s a day of reflection, I suppose.”
“Looked like you at least had some good tunes to reflect to,” Heather said.
“Hm? Oh. Yeah. I got Paula’s friends to tell me some of her favourite songs. I’m just vetting them for suitability before we play them at the assembly.” His smile warmed up a little. “Wouldn’t want, ‘Fuck the Police,’ to start blasting out, or anything.”
“No, I don’t suppose that would be ideal,” Heather agreed.
“It seems inoffensive enough. A lot of Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi. Some lassie moaning about her boyfriend dumping her. That one was quite catchy. And, at least it’s not that K-Pop shite. Have you heard any of that?”
Heather shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing. My musical tastes sort of peaked in the nineties and got stuck there.”
He laughed politely, then stole a glance at his watch, and confirmed the time with a quick check of the clock above the door.
“Sorry, am I keeping you from something?” Heather asked.
“Just the assembly. It’s not for an hour or so yet, so it’s fine, but I’m supposed to be helping set up, and saying a few words. I still need to write those.”
“You knew Paula well, then?” Heather asked. When the teacher appeared confused by the question, she continued. “To be making a speech. You must’ve known her better than most.”
“Not really. But, I was her guidance teacher, so the head decided I should say something.”
“Right. Aye. Makes sense,” Heather said. She ran a hand down her face. “Look, there’s no easy way to ask this,” she began, then she shrugged. “I mean, no, I suppose there is an easy way of asking it. Did you finger Paula Harrison?”
Toby stared back at her, mute with shock. The only sound in the room was the angry shouting of another teacher a few doors down as they let rip on some wayward pupil.
“What the hell sort of question is that?” he hissed, his handsome features instantly becoming ugly with anger.
“One I’d like an answer to,” Heather replied. “Did you?”
“I mean…” Toby threw his arms into the air. “What are you even asking? What the hell even is this?”
“I’m asking if you fingered, or otherwise had any sexual contact, with Paula Harrison, Mr Pearse? I thought I was making myself pretty clear.”
“Well, of course I bloody didn’t! Jesus. She’s a pupil. She’s a pupil, and she’s fifteen!” Toby cried. He ran his hands through his hair, scraping it flat against his head. “Has someone said something? One of the kids? Because they’re lying. I haven’t… I didn’t… I’d never do anything like that. Never!”
“Someone took the time to write it on the wall around the back of the building,” Heather told him. She produced her phone and showed him a photo she’d taken of the amateurish daubings in question. “See? It’s right there in black and white. Well, blue and brownish.”
“Graffiti? That’s where you got this from?!” The teacher almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “It’s nonsense. It’s bollocks. It’s… it’s graffiti.”
“Just because someone wrote it on a wall doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” Heather said.
“Maybe, but it certainly doesn’t mean that it is!” Toby protested. “There’s graffiti in one of the toilets that says, ‘Celtic is a poof.’ Celtic—a football team—is, singular, a poof. Is that true? Is Celtic Football club a homosexual man? No! And that’s in the staff toilets, by the way, so imagine what the kids’ ones are like!”
Heather returned her phone to her pocket. “So, you’re saying you’ve never fingered Paula Harrison?”
“No! I mean yes! I mean… Yes, that’s what I’m saying! Of course I haven’t. She’s a child! Was. Is. Christ!”
He slumped down into the nearest available chair, his hands now fully gripping his head like it was in danger of detaching from his shoulders and flying around the room like a deflating balloon.
“Why do you think someone would write something like that?” Heather pressed.
“I don’t know.” The teacher sighed wearily. “Because they’re teenagers, and kids are arseholes.”
Heather couldn’t really argue with that. “They can be, right enough. What about Paula? Was she an arsehole?”
“What?” Toby straightened up slowly, clearly sensing some sort of trap. “No. I mean, maybe. Probably. But not that I ever saw. She seemed like a nice kid. A bit…”
Heather’s ears pricked up. “A bit what?”
“I don’t know. Lonely, maybe. I mean, she had friends, obviously, and she was popular, but… Sometimes you’d just catch sight of her and she seemed a bit… I don’t know. Not detached, that’s too strong.”
He took a second, trying to find the right words, then had another stab at it.
“Even in a group, even when everyone was getting along, chatting away, whatever, sometimes it was like she was miles away. I could never figure out if she was beneath it all or above it.”
Heather cocked her head. “Meaning?”
“Well, like… I’m sure you’ll remember, but being in high school is all about status. We pretend it isn’t, we try and make sure everyone gets along, and all that stuff, but it’s about status. Some people are high status—Paula and her friends were up there. Maybe not the top, but up there. And some people, for whatever reason, are low status.”
Heather thought of Ace sitting alone in Hawkeye’s class, but said nothing.
“Those are the ones who generally get bullied. They’re also quite often the ones who go on to excel when they leave.”
“You’re describing every school ever,” Heather pointed out. “This isn’t new.”
Toby got to his feet. “No, I know. But as well as the status people have, there’s the status they believe they have. Some high-status kids are deeply insecure. They’ve got no idea how they got to that position, and they’re terrified they’re going to drop back down just as inexplicably.
“But the opposite of that are kids who are so rock-confident in their own high status that they look down on even those at the same level as themselves. They see through them. They’re bored by them. They’ve got to tolerate them, because what’s the alternative? Being on their own? Nobody wants that.”
The teacher checked his watch and then the clock again. Heather saw anxiety darting like fish through the deep pools of his eyes.
“The point is, neither of those ever quite fit in. They’re on the margins of their groups, either hoping not to get found out, or too aloof to properly connect with their peers. Paula was one of those, I’m sure of it. I could just never figure out which.”
“Right. I see.” Heather tucked both hands into the pockets of her jacket, then shrugged. “What I take from that, Mr Pearse, is that you’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about a fifteen-year-old girl.”
He didn’t look shocked or start issuing denials like he’d done over the graffiti. Instead, he looked her straight in the eye and nodded.
“You’re not wrong. I think about all of them. All the time. I worry about them. Because for those parts of the timetable when I’m on guidance teacher duty, that’s my job, Detective Inspector. And because, let’s face it, you know as well as I do—with a lot of these kids, if I don’t worry about them, who the hell will?”
He looked at the clock again, and this time it was very clearly for Heather’s benefit.
“Now, I really need to go. Thanks for bringing that graffiti to my attention. I’ll ask the janny to paint over it. If you’ve got anything else you need to ask me, then…” He smiled. Sort of. “Well, you know where to find me.”
He stepped past her, checked the time yet again, then immediately picked up the pace.
Heather called to him, forcing him to stop just as he reached the door.
“Mr Pearse?”
Toby let out an audible groan as he turned back to her.
“Yes, Detective Inspector? Was there something else? I really need to move.”
“You said, ‘for those parts of the timetable when I’m on guidance teacher duty,’” Heather reminded him.
Toby glanced around, as if searching for the detective’s point. He pulled out his keys and jangled them, making his intention to lock the classroom behind him clear.
“Yes. And?”
“What are you the rest of the time?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry, I didn’t quite… Art,” Toby said. “For the rest of the time, I teach Art.”
Heather managed to keep her face from registering her surprise. “Art? Like… painting?”
The teacher pulled an exaggerated look of confusion, like he was trying to point out the absurdity of the question without getting his face panned in.
“Well, yes. Obviously like painting. Among other things.” He looked back into the corridor as if hearing someone calling his name, then turned back to Heather and rattled his keys again. “Will that be all?”
Heather looked around the classroom, then headed for the door, taking her time about it.
“For now,” she confirmed. She stopped and looked up at him as he made room for her to pass. “Like you say, Mr Pearse—I know exactly where to find you.”
Heather sat in her car, shivering slightly from the aftereffects of yet another icy rain shower. Her wipers were swooshing back and forth, valiantly battling the downpour, while the blowers worked to defog the windscreen.
The burring of a ringtone poured out of the speakers—a steady, regular rhythm that had already gone to voicemail twice.
She wasn’t giving up that easily, though. And, more importantly, the poor bastard she was calling would know that. He’d be scrambling around now, trying to find somewhere to safely take the call where prying ears wouldn’t overhear.
A moment before the voicemail message kicked in for a third time, the ringing cut off and was replaced by a low, breathy whisper.
“What do you want? I can’t talk. We’re in a meeting,” DS Brompton told her.
“About the case?”
She heard Marty agonising over his reply, and decided to put him out of his misery.
“Doesn’t matter. But I need you to do something for me,” Heather said, and she could’ve sworn she heard the detective sergeant physically cringe. “It’s nothing major. Nothing you’re going to get into trouble for. Do you have a pen?”
