By Midnight

by Mia James

  ‘April, it’s raining,’ he had said firmly. ‘I’m giving you a lift. Besides, I don’t like you walking about around here until we know a bit more about what’s going on.’

  For the first few minutes they sat in silence, listening to the swoosh-swoosh of the windscreen wipers, neither keen to discuss or acknowledge the cloud slowly descending on their family. April dearly wanted to grill her dad about the vampire thing, but she could hardly say, ‘Hey, Dad, so I was going through all your things last night, and I was wondering …’ She still couldn’t get her head around why he had lied to her about the book. Why wouldn’t he tell her the truth? After all, he’d written stuff about crop circles and Bigfoot. What was so different about this? She gazed through the window at the grey houses and dark road. So drab, so depressing, she’d almost welcome a bit of supernatural excitement. And the atmosphere in the house was becoming unbearable.

  ‘Listen, April, we need to talk,’ said William finally.

  She looked at him with alarm. Was he reading her thoughts?

  ‘I know you don’t want to hear this, love—’

  Oh God, no, thought April, fixing her gaze on the car in front, it’s the divorce, it’s the divorce! He’s going to tell me Silvia’s having an affair with her tennis coach and that I’ve got to choose between Dad and Roger Federer.

  ‘—But there was another murder last night.’

  April looked up sharply, curiously disappointed that her father wasn’t announcing a domestic upheaval.

  ‘Where? Here?’ she asked. ‘In Highgate?’

  William Dunne looked at his daughter warily, then nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. One of the lads on the news desk called early this morning to talk over the new edition. Your mother wasn’t too pleased to be disturbed, as you can imagine.’

  Ah, so that explained the frosty atmosphere. Silvia wouldn’t have been impressed that Dad’s ‘silly little rag’ had needed to rewrite its front page, plus her mother had some loopy idea that the morning light was bad for her skin and she was always furious if anyone dared to interfere with her beauty sleep.

  ‘But I thought the Alix Graves thing was just some shady business deal gone wrong or something,’ said April, a strange sinking feeling in her stomach.

  Her father glanced over at her again. ‘That was the theory. But it’s possible the two murders may be linked.’

  ‘You’re kidding …’ April could feel her sinking feeling going Titanic. ‘So who was the second victim? Not another celebrity?’

  William shrugged. ‘No, no. A young woman. We don’t have all the facts yet, but it seems there are a few similarities. And, well, it was a little closer to home than Alix Graves’ house.’

  April shifted in her seat. ‘Closer? How close?’

  William Dunne hesitated for a moment. ‘She was found in Highgate Cemetery, just by Swain’s Lane. The police received a tip-off phone call last night.’

  April felt as if someone had shoved her sideways. She grabbed the armrest and squeezed her eyes shut. It can’t have been! she thought. It can’t have been a murder, it was just a fox, wasn’t it? Then another thought hit her and her eyes flew open. The blood! She stared down at her hands. Could it have been that girl’s blood she had touched? Oh please God no …

  ‘April?’

  It was only then that April noticed her father had stopped the car.

  ‘Dad …’

  Soundlessly, William pulled April into a tight hug. She began to shake as she realised that if she had taken another step into the cemetery, if she had arrived there a moment sooner, she might have been able to help that poor woman, she might have … she might have been dead, too.

  ‘Honey, what is it?’ he was saying softly, stroking her hair. He was concerned, but still calm, still reassuring. ‘What’s upset you?’

  ‘Oh God, Dad, I think I saw it,’ she whispered, her damp eyes searching his.

  ‘Saw what, honey?’

  ‘The blood,’ she said. ‘I think I was there when that girl was killed.’

  The headmaster’s office was surprisingly untidy. Considering that the rest of the school was state-of-the-art, all polished wood and steel, the head’s lair was reassuringly chaotic. The furniture was still grand and expensive, but the drawers of the filing cabinets were so overflowing with papers they barely closed. In fact, Mr Sheldon’s desk itself was the only surface not completely covered with books, files and toppling towers of A4 paper, and that was mainly due to the huge bulk of the headmaster’s ancient desktop computer. Where did he get that? wondered April. The Antiques Roadshow? She had been expecting gleaming chrome and glass, leather chairs, possibly a wall of TVs all tuned to satellite news stations. She could barely believe that this was the office of the head of a top private school, let alone of the Bond-villain genius behind a massive global conspiracy. Caro was going to be so disappointed. Her new friend would, however, love the fact that April had been summoned to the headmaster’s office on her second day at the school. Okay, so it was through no fault of her own - if you ignored the fact that she had defied her parents’ orders to stay indoors, of course - but it certainly looked edgy and rebellious, especially with the police on their way. It was just the sort of intrigue Caro would approve of. She glanced about, hoping to spot some scandalous titbit or piece of evidence to support Caro’s mad theories, but the walls were lined with glass-fronted bookshelves holding dusty books with Latin titles; nothing to suggest international intrigue. She glanced up at the clock. She’d been sitting there for ten minutes already. When April had told her father what she had seen the previous evening, he had immediately insisted that she speak to the police. ‘It sounds important, April,’ he had said gravely. ‘And even if it’s not, the police need to know everything they can about last night in order to stand a chance of catching this monster.’

  He had called a contact on the force who had told him they would interview April at the school - understandably, they didn’t want to wait until April got home in case she had vital information. ‘Plus it’s less traumatic than dragging her down the nick,’ he’d said.

  Policemen may know all about catching murderers, but they don’t know much about schools, thought April ruefully. A summons to the headmaster’s office was bad enough, but when Mrs Bagly, the headmaster’s secretary, had come to collect April from Chemistry, stage-whispering the words ‘the police need to see her’ to Mr Fitzpatrick, the teacher, it had prompted a hiss of gleeful muttering around the classroom. April was sure the school grapevine would have her down as a global drug trafficker by now.

  ‘Sorry to keep you, April,’ said Mr Sheldon as he strode in, his sharp eyes scanning her. He sat down behind his desk and steepled his fingers. ‘Now then, I hear you’ve been in a spot of—uh—unpleasantness. Can you tell me what you saw, exactly?’

  April shifted in her seat. She didn’t like the way Mr Sheldon was looking at her - sort of a mixture of distaste and curiosity - and she wasn’t sure if she should be telling the headmaster things that only the police should hear.

  ‘I’m not sure I actually saw anything.’

  Mr Sheldon frowned so deeply his grey eyebrows knitted together over his nose.

  ‘But I was led to believe that you had seen this poor unfortunate girl lying in the cemetery?’

  April froze. She hadn’t told anyone except her dad about it yet and the press hadn’t released the story either.

  ‘How did you know I was in the cemetery?’

  Sheldon’s face softened. ‘Extrapolating the facts, Miss Dunne,’ he said. ‘Plus, I do have a few contacts within the police. You have to with a job like mine, although I might add, we experience very, very little trouble here at Ravenwood.’

  She wasn’t sure if he was making a sly dig at her or not, but fortunately he was distracted by the ringing phone.

  He snatched it up, barking, ‘Yes?’ into the receiver and listening briefly. ‘It appears the police are here. Early,’ he said to April with some disapproval.

  The tea
cher stood up and walked around his desk just as the office door opened and a serious-looking man with grey hair and a younger, slightly plump woman walked in. The woman was scowling and wearing a badly fitting dark green trouser suit, while April thought the man looked like a marine sergeant from a Bruce Willis movie - the sort who gets killed in the first half-hour.

  ‘Mr Sheldon,’ said the man, offering his hand, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Ian Reece and this is Detective Sergeant Amy Carling. Thank you for letting us use your office. Would you mind if we talk to Miss Dunne on our own?’

  ‘Well, as April’s parents aren’t here,’ said the headmaster smoothly, ‘I think it would be best if I stayed—’

  ‘No, that’s okay, Mr Sheldon,’ said April. ‘I think I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir, she’ll be safe with us.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Mr Sheldon, backing towards the door. ‘Let me know if you need anything.’ He glanced at April meaningfully and lowered his voice. ‘School files, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir,’ said the inspector, shutting the door firmly and turning to April. ‘Now then, Miss Dunne, thank you for contacting us. Would you like to tell us exactly what you saw yesterday evening?’

  ‘Everyone’s looking at me.’

  Caro bit into her crisp and Marmite sandwich, dropping crumbs all over the refectory table. ‘Well of course they’re looking at you,’ she said between munches. ‘You’re the prime suspect in a shocking murder investigation. They’re all looking to see if you’ve still got blood on you.’

  The Ravenwood students were not the sort to openly gawp, but whenever she looked up April could feel eyes flicking away from her and hear comments being whispered from the sides of mouths.

  ‘Don’t listen to her, sweetie, it’s her overripe imagination,’ said Simon kindly. ‘They’re probably just looking at Caro’s latest dye-job.’

  Caro gave him a withering look and April smiled. Simon Oliver was the closest thing Caro had to a best friend at Ravenwood; they had gone to junior school together and spent their early years playing Barbie and dressing up, but with the onset of puberty their relationship had become more spiky. ‘He’s such a diva,’ Caro had complained over lunch the previous day. ‘You never know what he’s thinking.’ Reading between the lines, April suspected there was an element of unrequited love on Caro’s part at least, not helped by the fact that Simon Oliver was exactly Caro’s type with his pale skin, dangling emo-fringe and collection of Belarus tour T-shirts. There seemed to be an assumption he was gay, but Caro wouldn’t hear of it. ‘He’s just Simon,’ she said defensively. Either way, he was an expert at bursting Caro’s bubble. Without his balancing influence, April might well have believed every one of Caro’s wild theories.

  ‘But I’m not a suspect - am I?’ She turned to Caro for reassurance, but her friend only grinned.

  ‘Everyone’s a suspect,’ she said with relish. ‘Especially someone who—’ she held up her fingers to form quotation marks ‘—“stumbles across” the body.’

  ‘I didn’t stumble across anything,’ said April desperately. ‘I didn’t even see her body.’

  ‘No use telling the coppers that,’ said Caro, starting on a Penguin biscuit. ‘Statistics speak for themselves. Top suspect in any murder is always the husband, second is whoever found the body. And you have to admit you did have blood all over you.’

  ‘Fox blood,’ corrected Simon. ‘And if you’d listened, April said she didn’t find the body. Someone else called the police, remember?’

  Caro held up her hands innocently. ‘Hey, it’s not me she has to convince. I believe your story, especially the bit about the shadow with the dark eyes.’

  April bit her lip. She knew it sounded ludicrous, but that was what she had seen. Or was it? She wasn’t even sure herself any more. One thing was certain: she needed to talk to Gabriel Swift as soon as she could - she had to know what he had seen. Did he see the body? Did he see the murderer? How was he wrapped up in all this? She couldn’t keep on with this ‘strange shadow’ story - she had seen the look of dismay on the police officers’ faces when she had come to that part of the story. She could sympathise; it wasn’t as if you could translate her description into a Crimewatch photofit.

  ‘Listen, Caro,’ said April, casting her eyes about and lowering her voice. ‘What you said yesterday about the school, who’s behind it? Well, my dad—’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ said Caro quickly, glancing at Simon with an embarrassed look on her face. ‘I was speaking figuratively or metaphorically or something - and anyway, it’s just an idea. I’ve got a million of ’em. Maybe don’t tell your dad that one, I’ll look like a loony.’

  And then again, maybe he’d agree with you, thought April. She still wanted to tell her new friends what she had read in her dad’s notes, but Caro was right - in the cold light of day, the idea that some sort of underground disease or, even worse, a vampire, might be responsible for all the violence in London did sound a little loony. ‘A little loony’ was something April was used to with her father, of course, but it wasn’t necessarily something she wanted to share with the world.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Simon, seeing April’s troubled expression. ‘It’s not like you actually killed that girl, is it? You were only trying to help and you told the police everything you know.’

  April felt a wave of guilt and looked across the room to where the Faces were sitting. She didn’t really know why, but she hadn’t quite told the police everything. She had left out the part about seeing Gabriel there, about him pulling her out of the cemetery, about him telling her to run home. She had meant to tell them, she honestly had, but when it came to it, something had stopped her. Fear? No, somehow she didn’t sense any evil in him. Loyalty? Hardly - she barely knew him. Across the room, Gabriel was talking intently to that bitchy girl Layla; he didn’t seem to have noticed April at all. The truth was she didn’t have a very clear picture of what had happened the previous evening and that bothered her. Why was Gabriel there? Had he called the police? April just didn’t know what to think. Maybe it was her father’s genes, maybe it was just morbid curiosity, maybe it was pure guilt that she hadn’t done more to help that poor girl—whatever it was, April knew she couldn’t relax until she had found out what had happened that night. If she had given the police Gabriel Swift’s name, the chances were she never would.

  ‘Do you really think I’m being treated as a suspect?’ said April seriously. ‘Okay, so I was in the area, but why on earth would I want to murder anyone?’

  Caro shrugged. ‘Drug deal gone wrong? Crime of passion? Hey,’ she said, waving a stick of celery at April, ‘perhaps you were lesbian lovers.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see someone’s enjoying all this,’ said Simon sarcastically. ‘I mean, it’s not like anyone’s been killed or anything, is it?’

  Caro giggled and threw her celery at him. ‘Can I help it if I love being at the centre of a murder investigation?’ She smiled playfully. ‘Besides, look at all the attention April’s getting. Yesterday she was just the new girl, today she’s one half of Bonnie and Clyde.’

  April smiled despite herself. It would have been so easy to give in to paranoia and fear, but her new friend’s irreverent take on events put the whole episode into perspective. Especially the slightly silly part about those dark eyes.

  ‘Hello, here comes trouble,’ said Caro, nodding towards the far side of the room. April looked up to see Davina Osbourne making a beeline for their table.

  ‘Hi, April,’ she sang, giving them all the full sixty-watt smile. ‘I heard about last night, honey,’ she said, pouting sympathetically. ‘It sounds so horrible. I just wanted to come over and check that you’re okay?’

  ‘Your concern is so touching, “honey”,’ mimicked Caro.

  ‘Thanks, Davina,’ said April quickly, ‘but I’m fine. I just heard some noises in Swain’s Lane last night and—’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Davina, drama
tically covering her mouth. ‘Did you hear Isabelle getting killed? Actually getting killed? Screams and stuff?’

  ‘No, I just heard a few noises, the police aren’t even sure if I was in the same place—’

  ‘Who’s Isabelle?’ interrupted Caro.

  Davina glared at Caro and then turned her attention back to April.