The sweat beads increased as he realised he wasn’t wrong at all.
The stripes on his pillowcase were not perfectly in line with the stripes on his bed cover.
It was a checking mechanism he had devised after his roommates had poured a whole box of Coco Pops and a pint of milk into his bed.
He approached the bed with caution as his heart began to hammer in his chest. As ever, his anxiety was fuelled by the trepidation of whatever they’d done to him now. He had a vision of his mattress crawling with maggots or some kind of insect. Damn the fact that he’d been so eager to get down to breakfast. He should have known better than to leave the three of them alone.
He touched the corner of the quilt tentatively and began to peel it back, looking through squinted eyes. His breath seemed to stop in his chest as he saw the plain white cloth of his bedsheet. He almost collapsed with relief as he tore the quilt off completely.
And then he saw it.
Right in the middle of his bed lay a single playing card.
He stared down at the ace of spades.
Forty-Seven
‘Sorry, sir, do you want to run that by me again? I don’t think Bryant heard you right,’ Kim asked incredulously, looking first at Woody and then to her partner who appeared equally dumbstruck.
‘The school is not being closed down,’ he repeated as a muscle jumped in his cheek. She was unsure if that was linked to her attitude or what was actually coming out of his mouth.
She had called him the second they’d left the morgue and had been surprised at his instruction to come in as they were leaving the Coffee-Todd home. His revelation that the school was not closing down following a second murder would not land in any sensible, processing part of her brain.
One murder in one house and the whole street got closed down.
‘But surely Ofsted will be all over—’
‘Stone, you know as well as I do that independent schools don’t have a single umbrella organisation and—’
‘But they have to be registered with the government,’ she protested. ‘Surely someone can close them down?’
‘Stone, Heathcrest is registered with the Independent Schools Council and is assessed regularly by their inspectorate. They have to satisfy criteria across five main areas, which are moral and social development, premises and accommodation, complaints procedures, quality of education and safeguarding which—’
‘Well, there you are, then. Safeguarding covers health and safety, which Thorpe can’t contest and keep his face straight at the same time, surely?’
‘If you interrupt me one more time you will be removed from this case, do you understand?’
Kim seethed inwardly but nodded.
He continued. ‘Heathcrest’s infringement notices are in the single figures and notices of improvement aren’t much higher.’
Kim understood the difference. Infringements were normally recommendations and improvements were instructions.
‘Surely having no more kids murdered could be classed as a definite improvement?’ she asked, sourly.
‘There are schools ordered to close by Ofsted years ago that have simply ignored the instruction and are awaiting court action. So, even if Ofsted rolled up there this very minute there are protocols to be followed.’
‘Surely we can close the school down?’ she asked. They were the police, for God’s sake.
Woody took a deep breath. ‘We’re not closing it, Stone.’
‘Sir, we have two murdered kids, two,’ she repeated for clarity. ‘How the hell can we properly conduct an investigation in these conditions?’
Bryant coughed beside her. His way of telling her she was close to crossing the line. She didn’t need to be told that: she was standing right on top of it.
‘You’d do well to listen to your partner’s warning,’ Woody said, raising one eyebrow in Bryant’s direction. ‘The school is instructing a private security company to come in and patrol the grounds.’
‘Sir, the fact that I almost blew a raspberry at you there indicates my feelings of the level of effectiveness that will have. Whoever is doing this is not running on and off the premises. They’re right bloody there.’
‘I’m sure a uniformed presence will make the parents feel better.’
‘Surely being forced to take their kids home would help them a lot more?’
Woody’s expression was steely, and Kim ached to ask him for the origin of the directive for keeping the school open. Who the hell had made the compromise of a private security company?
She knew it wasn’t Woody. As detective chief inspector a decision of this magnitude would go much higher.
‘Sir, may I ask if Chief Superintendent Briggs is steering elements of this investigation?’
‘No, Stone. You may not.’
And there was her answer. From the moment Sadie Winters’s body had been discovered efforts had been made to divert and disrupt the investigation. She didn’t feel as though her hands were tied but more that they’d been cut off at the wrists. For the sake of her own deep respect for the man before her she would have liked to know whether he agreed with it.
‘Is there anything else, sir?’ she asked, conceding defeat.
‘No, that’s all, Stone. And I do understand that this is a difficult investigation but do feel free to make a nuisance of yourself,’ he said, giving her the answer.
Oh yes, she fully intended to.
Forty-Eight
‘Jesus,’ Kim said, as the external gates of Heathcrest came into view.
The image of the press pack reminded her of the old migrant jungle in Calais. Two police officers and four private security guards, all in high visibility coats, stood in front of cones that blocked the entrance.
Bryant was forced to slow and show his identification.
A familiar face appeared right next to her window.
Bloody Frost.
Kim wound down her window.
‘Care to comment on the double murder of—’
‘What do you think?’ Kim asked. ‘And nice trick you pulled the other day, Frost. You should be proud of yourself,’ she said, as the car crawled past.
Kim hadn’t forgotten the woman’s attempts to claim all the attention at Woody’s press conference, probably still hoping to be noticed by the national press.
The reporter’s initial surprise was quickly covered by a rueful look. ‘Even now, that’s what you think,’ she said, stepping back into the crowd.
‘Bloody woman,’ Bryant said. ‘Could be a decent reporter if she’d just stop trying to grab headlines.’
‘Yeah,’ Kim agreed, although the expression on Frost’s face stayed with her until Bryant parked the car at the front of the school.
Another two security guards flanked the entrance.
Again, Bryant showed his identification.
‘You might want to staple that to your forehead,’ Kim said, wondering if they were going to have to do this all day.
She entered the building and turned left.
‘Heading for the English teacher’s classroom again, guv?’ Bryant asked.
‘Spotted anyone else speaking to us quite so openly, Bryant?’ she snapped.
‘Nope, she seems very open to you, I mean us, guv.’
She cast him a look.
‘Amenable,’ he said. ‘That’s the word I was looking for.’
Kim knew Bryant was being deliberately smart to ease the tension that had been building since they’d left the morgue. Bad enough that Keats’s findings had marked indelibly on their brains a graphic picture of the young boy’s terrifying, horrific death but add in the obstacle of investigating two murders around a functioning school and their day so far had not been a positive one.
They arrived at Joanna’s classroom as the bell signalled the end of the second lesson.
The two of them stood aside as a stream of younger children filed out, chatting and laughing.
Joanna’s eyes lit up when she saw them.
‘Inspector, nice to see you again,’ she smiled.
Kim nodded her acknowledgment.
‘You taught Shaun Coffee-Todd?’
She nodded as a shadow fell across her face and her eyes instantly reddened. ‘Of course,’ she said, wiping away the words on a blackboard.