by Lucy Carver
I heard the wah-wah blare of a police siren, saw orange flashing lights arrive in the station precinct, but I knew they were too late.
‘It wasn’t my bag they were interested in,’ I groaned.
I’d been thrown to the ground, had stared over the edge of the platform at the oncoming train, seen the look in my muggers’ eyes as they tried to throw me under its gleaming wheels.
Again it meant I got my next talk with Inspector Cole sooner than planned so I plunged in with a name. ‘Chris Cooke.’
‘What about him?’
‘He rode the Toyota, he attacked Paige’s horse – I saw him in Ainslee Westgate.’
‘Good.’ Cole waited while his female sergeant made a note. We were in Interview Room 2, back at the main Ainslee police station where I’d been driven at high speed through evening streets still crowded with Christmas shoppers. ‘We’ll pay him a visit. Now, on to this evening’s incident, Alyssa. Did you recognize either of the muggers?’
I sat on a hard chair across the table from the inspector and his sergeant. The walls of the room were rodent-brown; a fluorescent light flickered overhead. ‘No, I’ve never seen them before.’
‘Can you describe them?’
‘One was over six feet tall – six-one or two. He was wearing a black jacket and jeans, a grey knitted hat.’
‘How old?’
‘Twenty, twenty-one. He had a small shell-shaped tattoo under his left ear – it was a Maori design or something like that. The other one was two or three inches shorter. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just a grey sweatshirt, jeans and trainers. They’d been drinking.’
‘How do you know that, Alyssa?’
‘I could smell it on their breath.’ When they’d been bending over me, trying to shove and kick me off the platform under the wheels of the train. ‘Did they get away?’
Cole nodded. ‘We’ll check out these descriptions. If the one with the tattoo is local, it shouldn’t be too hard to trace him. But I can see you haven’t finished yet. What else do you want to say?’
‘It wasn’t random – they didn’t just jump out of the taxi and mug the nearest person. They specifically targeted me.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘One hundred per cent.’
‘OK, but how did they know where to find you?’
‘They arrived in a taxi so maybe someone at the station saw me arrive.’ I thought back over events of the last hour and a half and remembered that I’d stopped to talk with the Kellys long enough for that person to make a phone call to the two muggers.
‘Has someone been following you?’ the inspector wanted to know.
‘Probably Chris Cooke again. He could have been hanging around Ainslee Westgate all day, ever since I caught the 10.05 to Paddington. But there’s more than one person involved.’ I shifted on my seat and risked a quick glance at the deadpan sergeant, conscious that at this point she might easily suspect paranoia. ‘An organized group,’ I said quietly.
‘An organized group?’ she repeated without changing her expression. ‘Is this group linked to Chris Cooke and the incident with the stolen Toyota then the attack on Paige Kelly’s horse? And, if so, please explain the connection.’
‘CRP – Campaign for Racial Purity,’ I told Hooper and Jack.
It was almost midnight by the time I’d been delivered back to St Jude’s in an unmarked police vehicle, sweeping past the hardcore knot of journalists at the gate. My Jack had seen the car drop me off in the quad and rushed straight across from the boys’ quarters, collecting Hooper on the way. Together they’d broken School Rule Number One and snuck up to my room without being seen.
‘Once I’d told Inspector Cole exactly what Adam Earle had said to me earlier in the day, he promised to check the membership of the local CRP branch, but I reckon we can do it faster. For a start we can take another look at their official website.’
Hooper agreed to begin there and then, and got to work on his iPad. ‘I’d never heard of the CRP until now,’ he admitted.
‘Are they even legal?’ Jack wanted to know.
‘Yeah, we’re living in a country that protects freedom of speech,’ Hooper reminded him. ‘You can march up and down streets carrying dumb-ass placards, and as long as you don’t actually do anything to incite racial hatred you’re OK.’
‘OK, Hooper, so thanks for that and thanks for today,’ Jack sighed.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ I echoed. Jack had already told me that Hooper had made sure he knew I was heading off with my overnight bag. Jack had immediately cut lessons and his regular tennis coaching session to chase after me into Ainslee, but too late to stop me getting on the train. The two of them had spent the rest of the day chewing their fingernails.
‘Thanks!’ Jack dropped him another heavy hint.
Hooper looked up from his iPad. ‘What? Oh yeah – right!’ He stood up and blushed awkwardly. ‘I’ll go back to my room and see what else I can find about the CRP. See you both in the morning.’
I waited until he’d closed the door behind him and the indrawn-breath moment where Jack and I would fall into each other’s arms and proclaim everlasting love, only that’s not what happened.
‘So how are we meant to get through this, Alyssa?’ Jack began, standing up from my bed where we’d both been sitting.
His question took me completely by surprise and I went on the defensive. ‘Why, what did I do?’
He strode towards the door then to the window. ‘You’re telling me you don’t know? You only go off the map and give me the worst day of my life, not knowing where you were or what you were doing. I have to find out through Hooper, for Christ’s sake!’
‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d understand.’
‘I don’t, so explain.’
‘I was upset about Paige and wasn’t thinking clearly – I needed some space – I don’t know!’
‘OK, you need space. I get it. But there’s needing space and there’s going to London without telling me, seeing Adam Earle –’
‘I meant to send you a text.’
‘You switched your phone off! Were you out of your mind?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I knew that Jack was right to be angry – after all, look what I’d walked into at the train station. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘That you won’t do it again – you won’t shut me out.’ He came back and sat next to me, spoke without looking. ‘Don’t you see what this does to us?’
‘What do you mean?’ Really, I had no idea what Jack would say next – anything from this is goodbye to I love you forever and everything else in between. I only knew I was plunged into fresh misery.
‘How complicated it makes things. Now I’m back to thinking you don’t trust me, the way you didn’t trust me at first over Lily.’
‘But I do.’
He shook his head. ‘Not enough. I don’t think you trust anyone enough to tell them what you’re feeling deep down. You never come out and tell me – I’ve always had to dig, right from the start.’
‘That’s not true, Jack. Look at what’s been happening – first to Lily and now Paige. You’re always the first person I turn to.’
‘But there’s still a barrier.’
‘What are you saying? I don’t know how else to act. It’s the way I am.’
‘That’s what I’m saying, Alyssa – it’s the way you are. You can’t change it.’
We came to a dead end and I felt my stomach twist in the silence that followed.
‘I’m sorry too,’ Jack sighed. He watched me stand up and drift to the window. ‘Maybe it’s me – I can’t find a way through.’
‘No, it’s me.’ Alone at the age of three after my mum and dad died, never fitting in, always on my guard. I stopped talking and stared at my own sad, fragmented reflection in the ancient, leaded panes.
I was in Bryony’s class next morning, not listening to her critique of T. S. Eliot’s poem, ‘The Waste Land’ – April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of
the dead land.
Instead I was secretly reading through the members of the Ainslee CRP committee, which Hooper had handed to me before the class began.
‘Wow, that was quick,’ I’d remarked. ‘I take it you had to do more than look at their website?’
He’d nodded. ‘Let’s just say a little light hacking was involved.’
‘Christ, Hooper, I’m impressed.’ But actually it had been no more than I’d expected of my rat-down-a-drainpipe friend.
‘I printed the list in alphabetical order,’ he’d said. ‘Read it, but try not to react – OK?’
• Audley, Charles – 204 Bristol Road, Ainslee (Chairman)
• Carter, Marion – The Old Mill, Chartsey Bottom (Meetings Secretary)
• Cooke, Matthew – 32 Main Street, Chartsey Bottom
• Morrison, Evelyn – Westgate Hotel, City Road, Ainslee (Treasurer)
• Morrison, Michael – Westgate Hotel, City Road, Ainslee (Membership Secretary)
• Simons, Guy – St Jude’s Academy, Ainslee Road, nr Chartsey
• Troughton, Catherine – 75 Helston Avenue, Ainslee
‘Today we’ll study the First Quartet,’ Bryony said. ‘“The Burial of the Dead”.’
‘It’s still not illegal.’ It was lunchtime and Hooper was trying to calm me down as we walked round the lake under a sky that was blue for once. ‘Guy can be a teacher here and join any political group he wants. There’s no law to stop him.’
‘But the CRP!’ I argued. ‘You’re not telling me Saint Sam would be happy about it if he knew.’
‘Maybe he does know. Or D’Arblay – one or the other, or both.’
‘If they don’t yet, they soon will.’
‘Alyssa, don’t . . .’
‘No, don’t worry – I’m not about to march into the principal’s office. But if Cole does his job and gets hold of this same list, he’ll be over here asking questions right away.’
We walked on a little way then my messy feelings spilt out of my aching heart and I told Hooper out of the blue, ‘Jack and I argued.’
‘When?’
‘Last night, after you left.’
He paused, glanced at me then kept on walking. ‘There’s no point me asking if you’re OK.’
‘No.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘No – thanks anyway.’ There was nothing anyone could do now that Jack and I had said how we both felt about my trip to see Adam Earle.
‘Talking of Cole . . .’ Hooper was the first to spot the police Range Rover at the gates. ‘I guess his computer guys already found the list.’
An hour later I stood across the desk from Saint Sam.
Inspector Cole had been and gone, and I was sitting in Justine’s European literature class when the call came via Luke.
‘Dr Webb’s office – now,’ he’d told me out in the corridor after he’d knocked on the door and Justine had given me permission to leave her class.
‘What’s wrong? Am I in trouble again?’
‘He didn’t say – sorry.’ Luke still hadn’t come out of the traumatized, post-Paige phase and he seemed detached from the events taking place around him.
‘How did he look?’
‘I didn’t see him. D’Arblay gave me the message.’
‘Thanks, Luke!’
‘Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,’ he’d muttered as he walked away, and I’d realized, too late, that I’d been too harsh.
Now I stood in the principal’s office feeling like a prisoner awaiting sentence.
‘These are my conditions for allowing you to stay at St Jude’s until the end of term,’ Saint Sam began in funereal tones. ‘First, you must stay inside school grounds at all times. If for any reason you need to go into the village, you must ask my permission. You will not under any circumstances go alone. There will always be a member of staff with you.’
So I was a prisoner and this was my sentence.
‘Let me be clear – this is because we can’t risk a repeat of yesterday’s events at Ainslee Westgate. And, before you speak, you need to know that Inspector Cole has given me a clear picture of the danger he feels you may be in from members of this right-wing splinter group – the Campaign for Racial Purity. Again, Alyssa, let me finish.’
‘No, Dr Webb, you have to listen.’ I was fired up enough to find my voice at last. ‘Did the inspector also tell you that Guy Simons is on the CRP committee?’
‘Stop there.’ He raised his pale, slim, scholarly hands as if to push me away. ‘I don’t wish to discuss members of staff with you.’
But I wasn’t finished. ‘And Matthew Cooke is on the list too. He’s Micky and Chris Cooke’s father, who works at the Queen Elizabeth morgue. Micky could have been the one who dumped Lily’s bag at Tom Walsingham’s house. Oh, and by the way his older brother, Chris, is definitely the guy in the grey hoodie who attacked Paige’s horse and stole the motorbike and tried to run me over! Inspector Cole knows all of this.’
‘We’ve been informed, Alyssa.’ This was D’Arblay speaking as he came through the door connecting Saint Sam’s office with his own. ‘Christopher Cooke was in fact the main reason behind Inspector Cole’s latest visit.’
‘Why? What did he say?’
The bursar stood at my side of the principal’s desk, his right hand resting lightly on the polished surface. He drummed his forefinger – once, twice, three times. I noticed for the first time that he wore a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. ‘The inspector informed us that they take your allegations seriously.’
‘Extremely seriously,’ Saint Sam echoed. He looked and sounded weary, unlike D’Arblay who was as smooth and dapper as ever.
‘So much so that early this morning they went to Cooke’s house with a warrant for his arrest,’ D’Arblay said. ‘They’ve taken him to Ainslee police station for questioning.’
chapter sixteen
Suddenly I was obsessed with hands.
Saint Sam in his wisdom had decided to move me from the room I’d shared with Lily and Paige to a smaller single room overlooking the quad, and I was staring out of the window down on a waterlogged winter lawn and paved walkways.
Hands – Saint Sam’s, which were pale and meticulously clean; D’Arblay’s stubbier and manicured.
Not so much hands as rings, in fact. I was remembering the one I’d seen on the third finger of D’Arblay’s right hand – two narrow, interlocked bands, one white gold, the other a deeper rose-gold colour – wondering where I’d seen one just like it before.
It wouldn’t be long before I remembered – my memory just needed the right trigger. Meanwhile I would arrange and rearrange my hairbrush and shampoos on my new bedside cabinet. I would re-hang my clothes in my wardrobe, arranging them by colour. I would get my possessions in perfect order.
At lunchtime Jack knocked on my door. ‘Are you coming to eat?’
My heart leaped to hear his voice and see his face, but I tried to act casual. ‘Thanks, but I’m not really hungry.’
‘Come anyway,’ he insisted.
We decided not to have lunch. Instead we walked in the grounds for a while then went for coffee in the sports centre.
‘This is better than the dining room,’ I sighed as we sat in a quiet corner of the mezzanine overlooking the tennis courts.
Jack didn’t say much, just waited for me to start communicating.
‘Thanks for not giving up on me,’ I said. A night and a morning had never felt so long. Every minute of it I’d dreaded that Jack would never speak to me again.
He nodded.
‘I honestly didn’t mean to block you out,’ I went on.
‘I know you didn’t.’
‘I’ll try not to do it again.’
‘Cool.’
‘And I do trust you.’
He smiled, reached across the table and took my hand.
Hands – pale and scholarly, manicured and stubby, or long-fingered, lithe and square-nailed like Jack’
s. Hands wearing rings, hands with nicotine-stained fingers clutching me by the throat, forcing me towards the edge of a train platform.
‘Oh shit!’ I gasped, standing up then sitting again in two jerky stages.
I reran yesterday’s attack.
Two guys – one over six feet tall in a knitted cap, with a shell-shaped tattoo on his neck. The shorter one snatched my bag, they ran with it over the bridge and into the toilets. The tattooed one burst out ahead of the short guy, his tattoo grabbing my attention as he hooked his arm round my neck and dragged me towards the edge of the platform. He was a drinker and a smoker – I could smell both on his breath as he choked me and forced me down. His hands were bony and strong. He wore a ring – two bands of interlocked gold. ‘Shit!’ I said again.
‘Hooper – it’s me, Alyssa.’
I called him from the sports centre while Jack absorbed the implications of what I was saying.
‘Hey, Alyssa.’
‘Listen, is there any chance of you finding out any more about the CRP?’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Like, do they get some kind of membership badge when they join?’
‘Jeez, Alyssa, they’re not the boy scouts!’
‘I know. Maybe not a badge – more a special type of ring. Can you find that out for me?’
‘I guess.’ Hooper sounded curious, as I’d hoped he would. ‘OK, yeah – I’ll try. Where are you now, by the way?’
‘With Jack in the sports centre.’
‘Are you two . . . ?’
‘Yeah, I think we’re good again, thanks.’ Maybe not as good as before – it was too early to tell. But at least Jack had knocked on my door and we were talking. He hadn’t given up on me, thank God.
‘Cool. Speak later.’
‘It would make sense,’ I told Jack as soon as I came off the phone.
He shook his head. ‘You’re saying D’Arblay belongs to the CRP as well as Guy Simons. I’m not sure, Alyssa.’
‘Think it through. We already said that D’Arblay would be one of the few people who knew the history of St Jude’s well enough to recognize the parallels between Lily’s death and Eleanor Bond’s in 1938. We asked why hadn’t he made the connection – especially when the info about the missing tooth emerged – remember!’