Head Start

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Bloody hell, Jane. You’re joking.’

  Mandy stared in open disbelief. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘There’s an easy way to find out,’ I said, getting to my feet.

  The outside of the loo was festooned in police Do Not Cross tape, but everyone was simply going about their business and took no notice when we went in.

  ‘You take this cubicle, and I’ll take that,’ Mandy said. Within seconds she emerged, not amused. ‘Nothing. For God’s sake, Jane—’

  Pat, however, was on his knees as I’d been. ‘Fucking hell. She’s right, Mandy!’

  ‘Just one thing,’ I said, trying not to let my voice betray me, ‘now he’s seen two adults looking at him, what’s whoever is at the other end going to do? Three adults – if you’ve located the other one, Mandy?’

  Her voice came from the other side of the partition. ‘Too right I have. But I’m more interested in responding to your question, Jane. The answer is I don’t know, but I don’t think I’m going to like it. Or rather, you’re not going to like it because you can bet your white overall that he’ll identify you as his target for a spot of revenge.’

  ‘Or he’ll scarper,’ Pat said, more hopefully. ‘After all, he’s made enough effort to make you shift, but you seem to be superglued in place. Or, of course, as Mandy says, he may try even harder. Sorry. Has to be said.’

  ‘All this time I’ve been wondering whether it was the school or me they were after …’

  Pat shrugged. ‘Could be both.’

  ‘This isn’t the best place to talk, is it? And there are policy decisions the police need to be involved in. And the governors, too.’

  She motioned – I was to lead the way from the tiny room. I relocked it and returned the tape to something like its original position. The corridor was full of retreating white-clad men and women: it looked as though they’d finished with the stockroom, though the doorway was swathed in tape.

  ‘May I see inside? Apart from Emma, I was probably the last in there. Officially at least,’ I added grimly.’

  Carpenter shrugged. ‘From the threshold, please, and keep your hands in your pockets. Remember they were only looking for the possible cause of the incident at that time. They weren’t searching for—’

  ‘For more camera lenses perhaps?’ I surveyed the chaos of hurriedly stacked boxes, cheek by jowl with those I’d been afraid would fall on me. I was an adult, with a stronger frame. Even if a box or two had slipped, I surely wouldn’t have suffered as badly as the little girl. ‘Hell, why didn’t I clear this out earlier? I could have done! Should have done!’

  ‘You work, if not 24/7, at least 18/7,’ Pat said. ‘So which activity would you have cut out? Breathing? Come on, you wanted me to help you last weekend only we got sidetracked.’

  And on Sunday afternoon he’d cut and run. ‘Not your job anyway,’ I said quickly. ‘Can we go back to my office?’ Behind my desk I’d feel less like a scared little girl. So long as there weren’t any rats waiting to jump onto my lap, of course. But even as I set us in motion I realised that there might be worse things than rats there. You could trap them or poison them. But you couldn’t do that with hidden cameras.

  ‘OK. I’ll get our techies to do a thorough sweep of the whole place,’ Mandy said, in response to my stumblingly expressed fears.

  ‘And the cottage she’s renting,’ Pat added swiftly. ‘And actually, why not the caretaker’s house – the one that got flooded by burst pipes?’

  ‘What’s the point? It’s the school that’s got the problem.’

  ‘But I may have somehow transferred the problem with me when I started emptying those stockrooms. After all, if the governors can sack me out of hand, it shelves the problem until you have a plan to get rid of the hidden cameras – or you might feel you could risk leaving them in place. The techies will do the stockrooms as well as the loos, won’t they?’

  ‘Cameras to watch people nicking paper clips! Come on.’

  I shook my head. ‘They’ve only become stockrooms fairly recently. They used to be changing rooms, boys’ and girls’. It was my predecessor who turned them into stockrooms.’

  ‘So now you’re expecting Kent Police to take over a job you were too busy to do? Come on, Jane – we’re cut to the bone. An electronic scan is all you’ll get – we’re not shifting all those boxes. No way.’

  ‘Even if what they contain may be of interest? Real interest to you?’ I shot back.

  ‘A load of dirty mags? Poof!’ She leant forward. ‘Do you have any idea how we deal with burglaries these days? By computer. We investigate historic crimes because we can look things up on computer and improve our clear-up rates. We give nice little cautions where ten years ago we’d have made arrests and seen the criminals get five years in jail. So while we’re happy to offer specialist resources, we’re not dustmen. Sorry,’ she added perfunctorily.

  I took a deep breath, quite ostentatiously. Then I asked, in my most reasonable tone, ‘Do you want us to keep the school building closed while this goes on? I can pen the children into the village hall tomorrow, but they ought to be back here doing proper lessons on Monday.’

  ‘Overtime! Jesus! OK,’ she conceded, as Pat, looking as mutinous as I felt, caught her eye. ‘The school – it’s a priority, I suppose. But your cottage and – what was the other building? The caretaker’s house? – will have to wait. Sorry. But feel free to give it an ocular check.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll pass your permission on to the letting agent.’ My tone couldn’t have been drier. ‘I’ll call you if I see anything. Meanwhile, I’m assuming that our discovery here will remain confidential? I suspect that having a serious accident on premises will be upsetting enough for some families, but spy cameras would be even worse. And there is another reason. Someone – staff, parent or governor – almost certainly installed them. Maybe they view footage every day. Maybe they got bored when the kids gave up using the loos we’ve checked. Maybe we’ll work out who’s guilty before they have another look.’

  ‘I don’t see too many airborne pigs,’ Pat said. ‘By the way, don’t forget the school hall will be in use on Sunday morning. You won’t want the church congregation and the techies in an unholy mix.’

  Looking exasperated, she made a note.

  I found myself getting angry. Angrier. ‘I take it you’ll be focusing your efforts on finding whoever it was who put the cameras there—’

  Whatever Mandy had been going to say was cut short by her phone. Her expression told us immediately that the news wasn’t good.

  ‘Emma’s still in surgery and they say they’ll keep her in an induced coma for as long as necessary, but the organ transplant team are talking to her parents. I’d say we’re looking down the barrel of an unexplained death enquiry.’

  ‘Murder or manslaughter to you or me,’ Pat said helpfully. ‘So I don’t see it as business as usual tomorrow. There’ll be endless formal interviews for you and the staff, for me as I found the poor kid, and, most serious of all, for the kids who were skiving when they should have been in class.’

  If I felt pale before, now I could actually feel blood draining from my face. ‘They’re kids – how can they …?’

  ‘We have specialist officers – though I think we might be using Essex’s at the moment. They’ll do the interviews with parents or responsible adults present in soft interview rooms …’

  She didn’t explain the last term. She didn’t need to. I’d been in rooms with soft furnishings and soft toys often enough.

  ‘For the adults, it’s the sort of thing you see on TV. So I wouldn’t advise either of you to leave the district. And you might want to make sure you’ve got your alibis in order. With reliable witnesses.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When I phoned Brian Dawes to pass on the dreadful news about Emma, I told him that the police hadn’t finished and that I wanted to confine the children to the village hall the next day. ‘And this time even the playground will be out of bounds,’ I
said firmly.

  I hadn’t expected him to argue or bluster, but I’d never known him sound so subdued.

  ‘We also have to face up to the fact that the police want to talk to us—’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Staff; the rodent team; me; you, since you were in the area …’ Perhaps I waited a beat for an apoplectic response. I didn’t get one, so I continued as smoothly as I could, ‘And of course some of the children, in connection with Emma’s … injuries.’

  ‘My God. Children!’

  ‘We’ve never had a satisfactory explanation for their preoccupation with the stockroom – I think the police will want one.’ And if Mandy didn’t, I did. ‘This is not looking good, Brian. And however much we make it clear that the children were disobeying strict instructions – no one wanted any of them messing around when rats were being killed or poison laid down – someone will try and blame us. We did everything we could: even you came down to help. But the media will want someone’s scalp.’

  ‘I’ll call an emergency meeting of the governors for this evening. A closed meeting. And we will be dealing with the media.’ He cut the call.

  ‘He’s keeping you out?’ Pat slapped the top of my desk. ‘The shit!’

  ‘Quite. Something else that worries me more than losing my job, which is clearly on the cards, is that when this reaches the media my cover’s going to be blown. No, I know Simon’s not going to get me. But he’s got friends, Pat, hasn’t he? Friends who probably think he’s a reasonable guy with a psychotic ex-wife who needs teaching a bit of a lesson.’ I took the sort of breath my therapist would have advised. ‘Sometimes – those three o’clock in the morning moments – I wonder if Simon has been hounding me from whichever prison he’s in. If he has a friend or two who’d enjoy making my life hell for his sake, but also because tormenting helpless people – bullying – is supposed to be quite enjoyable per se.’

  ‘I’d like to tell you you’re crazy. But I can’t. Give me a complete list of the governors and I’ll run a few checks – a lot more willingly than Madam Mandy Carpenter,’ he added, with a resentful curl of the lip. ‘What is it with that woman? I can’t get her at all. Can you?’

  I shook my head. At last I managed, ‘She doesn’t seem very … consistent.’

  ‘Consistent? She’s bouncing around all over the place. Mind you, she was telling the truth about solving crimes these days. Targets, redundancies, one person doing the job of five.’

  ‘Which is why your boss needs you back?’ Hell, my voice cracked. I just hoped he wouldn’t be kind to me.

  No. He was bracing: ‘I know things are bad, Avo, but that doesn’t mean you have to give in.’

  ‘I don’t do giving in. Do I?’ And I wouldn’t now. My hand might be trembling so badly it was almost impossible to use the mouse, but at last I found the file I wanted, and printed it off. ‘There you are. All the governors’ details. Addresses. Phone numbers. Work phone numbers. DBS reference numbers. I’ll leave you here, Pat, because I’ve got to have an emergency meeting of my own – with the staff.’

  I slipped through the crowd of parents, most of whom were milling round the school gates, although they knew the kids were elsewhere, as unobtrusively as I could. Watching through a window in the village hall doors, I saw the team working so beautifully with the unsettled kids that had I had it in my power to commend them for awards, I’d have done so on the spot. As it was, all I could do was sail in as if life was a ball and tell everyone that they’d got to come straight back here tomorrow.

  ‘Sorry – it’s the rats. I’m just like Cinderella,’ I declared, ‘waiting for my fairy godmother to turn a few uninvited animals into beautiful horses to pull my coach. She’s promised me a ball gown too, and a handsome prince!’ Fat chance. ‘Will those staying for choir wait here just a few moments, please?’

  The others all went off laughing and chatting.

  ‘Let’s go to the room Melanie was using,’ I said quietly.

  She was still there, of course, but in any case she was an integral part of the team, and deserved to share my thanks and gratitude. None of them basked: they all wanted the news about Emma. Helen openly wept. I thought Liz was going to faint; we could see the willpower it took her to say, ‘I must pretend there’s hope, for the choir’s sake. We have to go on, don’t we?’

  Tom said quietly, ‘It’s best to say as little as we can. And keeping them occupied will stop them speculating.’ He paused as we all nodded agreement. ‘Jane, is it right that you found her?’

  ‘No. A policeman friend of mine did. He used to be my liaison officer.’ I wouldn’t share all the circumstances yet – just in case. ‘We keep in touch. He was planning to help me tidy that dratted stockroom.’

  He stood stock-still. ‘The one I was supposed to draw up a rota to empty and never did. So if she dies, it’s my fault.’

  ‘No. It’s the fault of whoever pushed the boxes that crushed her. And someone’s fault for leaving the room unlocked. And of course we all know – though this stays inside the room for a moment – she should never have been in that room in the first place. Not even in the corridor. So bear that in mind all of you when you want to beat yourselves up.’

  ‘Even so …’ He was weeping too now.

  ‘Be as kind to each other as you will to the kids. And be kind to yourselves. Tomorrow we’ll be here again – there’s still the rodent problem to bear in mind. Any child – and any of us! – will be offered counselling if … if it becomes necessary.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just close the school? I’m sure everyone will understand.’

  ‘There’s a governors’ meeting this evening – I think they will be making the decision.’

  ‘What will you tell them?’ Fearn asked.

  ‘It’s a closed meeting.’

  I couldn’t have asked for a better reaction. ‘They’re planning to hang you out to dry? Get the union in. Lawyer – you need a lawyer.’ All the comments merged. Tom spoke the loudest: ‘He wants you as the scapegoat, doesn’t he? Get on to your union now – NAHT is it, for heads? You’re going to need some legal support, that’s obvious.’

  ‘As well as ours,’ Liz said firmly. ‘We’ve seen you in action. You can count on us.’

  Melanie, calm unflappable Melanie, whose self-control had been iron throughout, tried to speak. ‘On all of us,’ she said, her voice finally breaking.

  How Liz managed to teach her after-school group I would never know. But teachers are a stoic race, often in front of a class when anyone else would have been in bed with a teddy bear and a Lemsip. One woman in my last school had a knife pulled on her but was back teaching the very next day. We were all drifting off when Tom stopped us – heavens, he’d make a good head teacher.

  ‘Jane, I want us teachers to stay behind – OK, we’ll need to organise some childcare cover – and put a report together. All the things that have happened recently: the playground “incident”, the outbreak of disobedience, Robert’s changed behaviour, Prudence dropping me in it. Everything. And also our responses and the action you’ve taken to prevent accidents, etcetera. Everything. And I’m volunteering to take it to the governors and their secret meeting.’

  Helen gave him an odd look. ‘We’ll take it together, Tom. You and me, or better still all of us, including you, Melanie.’ She may have meant to sound positive, but I for one got the feeling that she didn’t trust him. ‘We’ll thrash it out here and now. OK?’

  ‘You must sort that out between you,’ I said firmly. ‘But I will be grateful for anything you can do to show we’re a tough and united staff with the children’s well-being always at the front of our minds. Golly, that sounds like an Ofsted report, doesn’t it?’

  The last person I expected to see waiting outside the school gate was Meg Webster. She had walking poles, but also sported – why wasn’t I surprised? – some spiked device on her shoes. Not permanent spikes: some attached by a sort of rubber harness. The only fault I could find was that they clearly weren’t
electronic.

  ‘My dear girl, you need some support,’ she said, ‘and I’m here to offer you mine, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Did I sound as nonplussed as I felt?

  ‘Can we go inside or is the place crawling with rats – furry and otherwise?’

  ‘I think it’s deserted now, except for my friend Pat. He was on a flying visit when all this kicked off.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him, haven’t I?’ she said, slipping off her spikes as I ushered her through the front door. ‘He’s the young man with the glorious voice. Mark Stephens, poor man, was saying he wanted to kidnap him. But I gather he’s not from round here.’

  If that was bait I wasn’t rising to it. ‘No. He’s from near Birmingham. I’m back, Pat,’ I called helpfully.

  He might have been engrossed in something on the screen in front of him but, reaching for the mouse, he killed it and was on his feet shaking hands and wooing the old lady with his wonderful smile. His courtesy was so old-fashioned I almost expected him to kiss her hand. Then – I suppose it’s a police skill – although he stayed in the same place he seemed to make himself disappear.

  Taking a seat she looked me straight in the eye. ‘I run a craft group in the village hall on Monday afternoons. Tuesdays it’s gardening club, though that’s on its last legs because of lack of support; Wednesday sees me doing Pilates. With the church most weekends, I spend a lot of time with both older and younger villagers, natives and incomers.’ I suppressed a gasp at the term. Then I realised she was using it ironically. ‘And – forgive the pun – a lot of incomers have a lot of income. Behind the scenes there’s some sort of power struggle even I’ve not worked out yet. But the native faction is led by Brian Dawes and the young bloods by Toby Wells.’