by Sofia Daniel
“I didn’t push Bianca if that’s what you’re implying.”
“They hated each other,” Geraldine said to the crowd. One of the paramedics who crouched at Bianca’s side glanced up from his patient. “You ask Mr. Byrd. He’s the managing partner of the law firm, Byrd and Byrd. Willow hated him as well.”
My mouth gaped open. Why on earth was she trying to derail the investigation with her lies and theatrics? Did she have something to hide?
“That’s ridiculous,” said Prakash. “She was with me all night.”
“Your name?” asked the officer.
Prakash paused. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and I cringed. As much as I appreciated his defense, I couldn’t trust Geraldine not to start turning accusations, and I couldn’t trust the police not to dismiss her for a pathetic attention seeker. Leopold’s arm tightened around my shoulder, giving me silent support.
“Prakash Kashaayah,” he said.
The officer’s brows rose. “That Indian boy who was arrested for sexual assault and GBH this year and last year?”
Shocked gasps sounded from around us. Since everyone seemed to know about Prakash’s arrests, I could only guess that some of the onlookers were making appropriate sounds to add drama to the situation.
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
Hatred burned in Prakash’s eyes. I wanted to reach out and comfort him, but the policeman might remember Geraldine’s accusation and think we had conspired to kill Bianca.
“Sarge?” the policeman turned to an even larger officer who had crouched by the paramedics. “Another one for questioning.”
The sergeant stood, edged around the crowd toward us, and fixed his stern gaze on Prakash.
I spluttered. “But—”
The policeman turned to me and swept his arm toward the exit, where even more students streamed out to gape. “Let’s go inside.”
Leopold’s arm tightened around me. “You can’t just take her away on the word of a school rival.”
I dug my heels into the gravel. If this was a cartoon, steam would have blown out of my ears. If we were standing on the ledge of a roof, I would have kicked Geraldine off the edge. All the police needed to do was check my name in their database. Then they would find all the complaints I had made about Bianca. Based on the severity of her crimes against me, I would probably have enough of a motive to shove her to her death.
Geraldine continued her barrage of accusations and threatened the police with legal action from Mr. Byrd if they didn’t arrest me right now.
Tremors quaked through my insides, and my throat turned dry. This was getting out of control.
More police officers emerged from around the building with staff members, but there was no sign of Sebastian or Mrs. Benazir. I couldn’t dwell on this with the sergeant advancing on Prakash, and the officer threatening to arrest Leopold for perverting the course of justice if he didn’t let go of me and allow me to leave with him for questioning.
I placed my hand on Leopold’s chest. His frantic heartbeats vibrated against my palm. “It’s alright, Leo. I have nothing to hide.”
He drew back. “I’m coming with you.”
A female officer walked over. “Calm down, everyone. It’s just a routine inquiry, and we need only five minutes to eliminate you from our investigation.”
I exhaled a long breath. “Thanks.”
Leopold and I accompanied the male and female officer the building, while Prakash walked alongside the sergeant, who had beckoned over another officer. I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder at Geraldine. From her lack of ranting, she was probably giving us a triumphant smirk.
We found an empty classroom, and the policeman sat behind the teacher’s desk and took my statement, while the female officer sat at my side. There was absolutely nothing to implicate Prakash or me. I’d slept in his room until Leopold knocked, walked down the hallway with the two kings, and then out to the back of the building. They asked about my relationship with Geraldine, and I explained that I had made a few complaints about her, as that information was already in the police database.
The male officer rested his elbows on the table. “Do you know who else might have wanted her dead?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Oh, right?” He glanced at the policewoman who turned to look me full in the face.
The words stuck in my throat, and I clutched the edge of the table, urging myself to speak. I’d stayed silent after seeing him slap and grope Bianca in Mrs. Benazir’s office. Stayed silent when his erection had brushed against me last term and stayed silent when I knew for sure that he’d been responsible for her black eye.
It was time to say something.
I forced out the words, “Her father.”
The policeman’s brows rose. “Is he local?”
“According to the girl from earlier, Mr. Byrd is a solicitor from London,” said the policewoman.
“Go on, then,” he said in the weary tone of voice people use when they’re about to hear a rambling, tedious pack of lies. “Explain why you think this legal professional from London would travel three-hundred miles to kill the daughter he paid through the nose to educate.”
I bristled at the way he had framed the question but told my story.
When I got to the part where Mr. Byrd had grabbed me for the first time, the policeman raised his massive palm. “Did you lodge a complaint?”
“No, I—”
“Why not?” he placed both hand on the teacher’s desk and leaned forward.
“He didn’t hurt me.” I leaned back into my seat, trying to widen the distance between us.
“But you said he rubbed his erection against you.”
“I only felt it for a second, and—”
“You thought it should last longer?” His brows rose.
My mouth fell open. What kind of police interrogation was this? The man sounded more like a pervert than someone interested in stopping crimes. I turned to the policewoman and flashed my eyes, trying to invoke some sense of sisterhood.
The woman visibly cringed. “What my colleague meant to ask was whether you felt the duration of contact was enough to warrant a police complaint.” Through clenched teeth, she asked, “Isn’t that right?”
“That’s what I said.” He leaned back and drummed his fingers on the desk.
Her face stilled. If I wasn’t under suspicion for killing Bianca, I might have given her a sympathetic smile. But they could have been playing good-cop, bad-cop.
I turned to the policewoman and said, “He didn’t stick it into me or make any lingering contact. I think it brushed against me by accident. Not enough to go running about it to the police, but given the circumstances, isn’t it enough that he was aroused while manhandling a seventeen-year-old girl?”
The policeman sat back, seeming to let his colleague take over.
“Do you have the money or the contract?” she asked.
“I think my sister took it from my room. Her name is Ashley Evergreen. She was expelled from here then spent several weeks working here as a cleaner and causing mayhem.”
The policeman scribbled down notes.
“Any examples?” asked the woman.
“On the night Bianca left the money on my pillow, she took my laptop, and a few other items then set the rest of my things on fire in the lawn.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“She confronted me about them later, and I found those items in her room when I went home.”
“Any other incidents with the Byrd family?”
I told them about my last encounter with Bianca’s father before the Board of Governors’ meeting and how I had explained the missing money to him. The policewoman winced as though she knew what would happen next.
When I recounted seeing her the next day with a black eye and the contract in her blazer, the policeman interrupted. “Would we find this document if we searched her room?”
“I don’t know,” the words s
lid from my lips like a sigh.
My gaze wandered around the empty classroom. Like most in Brittas Academy, its walls were bare, and two-person tables stretched down the room’s length in rows of three.
The way the police phrased their questions, they expected me to be omnipotent and do all the thinking for them. Why didn’t they just check her room and see for themselves? Right. Because they didn’t quite believe what I was saying.
Focussing back on the conversation, I added, “Her father might have taken it with him when he left.”
“We’re going to need a formal statement. Is that alright?”
I nodded, and the policewoman pulled out a notepad I’d seen too many times. She made me go over my story a lot slower and in a lot more detail. This time, I had no qualms about describing what I had seen Mr. Byrd do to his daughter in Mrs. Benazir’s room and no qualms about implicating him in attacking Bianca.
A chill seeped into my bones. What was I talking about? From her unmoving state and the blood freezing onto the frost, Bianca was probably dead.
Part-way through my statement, she asked, “Weren’t you concerned about the plight of Bianca’s sister?”
“I didn’t know she had one until someone brought her up.”
“Who?”
“Leopold Brunswick. The boy you made to wait outside in the hallway.”
“Has he met Bianca’s sister?” asked the policeman. “What is her name?”
My body deflated. This wasn’t good cop-bad cop. It was drive-you-down-with-incessant-and-tedious-questions cop. “As I said, I only heard that she had a sister, and the comment wasn’t even addressed to me.”
“Who was it addressed—”
“Ask Leopold,” I snapped.
“Let’s get on with the statement,” said the policewoman.
By the time I had finished telling them everything, my teeth, and nerves had worn down to what felt like bloody stumps. Either the policeman was an asshole or finely trained in extracting the truth with the art of dick-headedness. I no longer cared.
“Thank you, Willow,” he gave me a bright smile. “That was very helpful.”
I hoped the smile I returned reflected exactly what I would do to him if I ever caught him in front of an open window.
Someone knocked on the door. “WPC Phelps, can you accompany Bianca to the Royal Infirmary? We’ll need to take her statement if she wakes.”
“She’s alive?” I blurted.
The policeman narrowed his eyes. “You sound disappointed.”
I hurried out of the room, and he didn’t say anything to stop me. Leopold wasn’t outside in the hallway, and I assumed one of the police officers had told him to leave.
Further down, a pair of police officers led a bowed figure out in handcuffs. From his glossy, black hair, dark olive skin, and broad shoulders, it could only be one person.
“Prakash?”
He turned around, face tinged with sorrow.
“What are you doing?” I jogged up to the officers. “He was with me all night long.”
“Oh yeah?” The man’s gaze flickered up and down my body. “How old are you, then?”
My nostrils flared. If he thought he could add underage sex to the list of accusations against Prakash, he could stick his truncheon up his ass. “Nearly eighteen.”
“Good for you.”
“Where are you taking him?” I asked. “He’s got an alibi.”
“Please call Mr. Pinkerton.” Prakash’s voice was hoarse. “They’re arresting me for the murder of Corrine Gibbons.”
Chapter 13
I didn’t have Mr. Pinkerton’s number, and seeing the police use what happened to Bianca as an excuse to arrest Prakash made fury simmer in my blood. My heart pounded the steady beat of a war drum, and I marched after the police, clenching and unclenching my fists.
“Leave him alone!” I shouted. “This has nothing to do with Corrine Gibbons.”
The officers ignored me and walked Prakash out of the double doors, and down the entrance steps, where a squad car waited in the courtyard. Morning sunlight seeped through the clouds, casting its light on the vehicle’s blue-and-fluorescent-yellow-striped exterior.
One of them opened the door, lowered Prakash’s head to help him scoot into the back seat, and then secured a seatbelt around him.
Tremors shook my insides. I don’t know whether these officers had explicitly come to arrest Prakash, or they had just taken advantage of the opportunity to grab him. Still, I stared through the squad car’s tinted window into his terror-stricken eyes and gave him a sharp nod. It was time to call the lawyer.
I spun on my heel to find Sebastian. He was the only one of us who could instruct Mr. Pinkerton. The doors blurred as I whizzed through the hallway, and I sprinted up the stairs three at a time. I checked Sebastian’s room. Checked Leopold’s room. Checked the sixth-form common room, but he wasn’t there.
The phone in my pocket buzzed. I slapped myself upside the head, pulled it out, and sent a text, telling Sebastian that Prakash had been arrested for murdering Corrine.
There was no reply.
On the off-chance that he hadn’t heard any of the commotion, I rushed down to the dining room, cast my gaze over the sparsely occupied tables, but he wasn’t in his usual place. A quick dash around the campus told me he also wasn’t in the lecture theater where most of our year sat through an English lesson, or in the gym block.
A jeep sped down the driveway and turned into Sebastian’s usual spot.
Relief surged through my heart. I ran across the courtyard, crunching gravel underfoot. Sebastian fiddled with the dials of his car stereo, seemingly oblivious to the disasters that had struck Brittas Academy. I knocked on the driver’s side window until he lowered it.
“Where have you been?” my voice was shrill.
Sebastian smirked. “Did you miss—” His face dropped. “What happened?”
The story came out in a rush, and Sebastian stepped out of the car, wrapped me in his arms, and murmured into my hair. “I went to the hideout last night and drank too much whiskey to drive home, so I stayed over.”
Resting my head on his broad shoulder, I slid my arms under his jacket and wrapped them around his muscled torso. Sebastian smelled of cigars and whiskey. “You were there on your own?”
“Leo wanted an early night. Something about needing to do some Economics prep for the afternoon class.”
I drew back and stared into his concerned, green eyes. “Can you tell Mr. Pinkerton?”
He nodded and pulled out his phone. I leaned on the side of his jeep, pinching the bridge of my nose. What was with the police victimizing Prakash? They seemed to hold him responsible for nearly every act of malice committed against a female student, even though he was clearly innocent.
Heavy footsteps crunched on the gravel, and I raised my gaze to find Leopold jogging toward us. “Thank fuck you’re here. Did Wills—”
“Yes,” Sebastian muttered. “They’re just putting me through to Pinkerton, now.”
I turned to Leopold, my chest so tight, I could barely breathe.
He enveloped me with his strong arms—one at my back and the other around my waist—and murmured, “The police are just clutching at straws. If they had evidence against Kash, they would have charged him while he was in custody for what happened to Ashley. Nothing’s going to stick because he’s innocent.”
I inhaled his masculine scent of green apples and sunshine and thought back toward the last week of last term. Cormac had explained that new evidence had caused the police to reopen Corrine’s case.
A lump formed in my throat. “What if the police dredge up something incriminating?”
In the background, Sebastian continued his conversation with Mr. Pinkerton.
Leopold drew back and fixed his aquamarine gaze on mine. “I think Ashley was bluffing about the amount of incriminating information in her possession.”
“Did you read the contents of her manilla folder?”
&n
bsp; He raised a shoulder. “It contained meaningless crap she took from Kash and Gibbons’ room, which I burned at the hideout.”
“And Miss Claymore’s diary?”
Leopold’s gaze darted to Sebastian, and he said in a hushed voice. “We went through it, mostly to see what she had written about you.”
My heart thudded. I supposed it would make sense that I would feature in her diary, given the number of times she had tried to kill me. “W-what did she say?”
“Nothing much. A bit of a rant about you finagling a place for your unworthy sister, more about Ashley being a drain on the academy, and a few innocent-sounding and confusing entries about each attack you suffered.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. A little sliver of my mind wondered if Miss Claymore had attacked Ashley at the end of last term, but I remembered Barrett Riley’s confession. “Do you think she falsified her diary entries?”
Leopold shrugged. “If I was going to murder someone, it would be a great way to prove my innocence.”
“Why didn’t you show me?”
He grimaced. “She wrote about her obsession with Seb. You didn’t need to read that.”
I wrinkled my nose and gave him an approving nod.
For the rest of the morning, everyone, including the teachers, wouldn’t stop talking about what had happened to Bianca. Mrs. Benazir gave a stuttering, emotion-filled speech at lunchtime, eulogizing her as though she was already dead. Geraldine sobbed loudly throughout the speech and even louder when the headmistress said her door was open to any student who needed help.
“She’s losing it,” said Leopold.
Mrs. Benazir swayed on her feet before Dr. Forrester placed a hand on her shoulder, urging her to sit. It was hard to feel sorry for the woman when I still fretted about Prakash’s fate and when security was so lax that someone could sneak in and throw a girl out of the window.
I turned to Sebastian. “Any word from Mr. Pinkerton?”
“He’s driving down after work.”
Stomach plummeting, I turned my gaze to Geraldine. Cormac sat at her side with his arm around her shoulders, while the two blonde girls from this morning sat her other side. Barrett Gibbons turned around and glowered in our direction.