V
Back at the school, just a few minutes after the children had finished assembly and returned to their classrooms, a battered white van pulled up at the school gates, ladders secured to its roof, a scraped and battered sign painted on its side that read:
Colin GREENWOOD,
exterior and interior painter and decorator.
Three men jumped enthusiastically from its cab and made their way through the entrance, visibly eager to get on with a job with a set fee, and not one to be charged by the hour. The boss, Colin Greenwood had high hopes of this one, and hoped they could knock it off in good time to make a decent profit. It might even lead to further work in the same vein. You never knew.
Five minutes later, they exited the building again with instructions not to start work before four o’clock today. If they started opening paint and white spirit this early in the morning, there was no telling what the children would get up to during playtimes and lunchtime. Audrey Finch-Matthews had told the vicar to make it perfectly clear that work could not commence before that hour. She had worked in schools all her working life, and there weren’t many tricks she wasn’t au fait with. Paint during school hours was a ‘no-no’.
The van backed out of the school premises, turned left on to Sheep Pen Lane, and straight into the car park of The Temporary Sign. Robbie Greenslade had taken advantage of the legislation that relaxed the hours of pub opening, and was ready and eager for their order.
As the smoke from the van’s exhaust pipe dispersed, Anne Hammond from the village shop trotted energetically into the playground with a biscuit tin in her hands. Her daughter Isabelle was twelve now, and had left the village school last September, but, like others who no longer had a direct connection with it, Anne liked to contribute what she could, and a tin full of vanilla butterfly cakes was the least she could do. The place had given Isabelle a sound grounding for her senior years at school, and after all, a great deal of her custom came from the schoolchildren and their parents.
A number of figures had approached and left the school at intervals during the morning, taking note of the sign in the foyer asking them to leave their offerings on the table provided, and they would be collected later in the day for pricing and display.
Charlotte Chadwick was one of the stragglers, and returned home to bake. She was a classroom assistant at the school and would have to be there just before lunchtime to help out voluntarily. Her official paid duties did not commence until after the lunch break, but she liked to give a little free time to such a good little school.
She had delivered her six-year-old daughter, Imogen, to the school, and strolled back to Laurel Lodge opposite Blacksmith’s Terrace, to fill her kitchen with the smell of individual treacle tarts, and lots of them. These were now cooled and stacked in the tin that she carried carefully towards its destination.
Approaching the school gates for the second time that morning, she was surprised to see Lorcan LeClerc, one of the older infants from the lower class, out in the playground and walking towards her uncertainly, not a supervising adult in sight. Not quite sure what to do, she smiled at him as he approached, and asked, ‘Is Mummy coming to collect you for something?’
‘No,’ he replied, in a tiny voice. ‘I was on my way to get Mummy.’
‘Why, whatever for, Lorcan?’
‘It’s Mrs Finch-Matthews. I … we … don’t think she’s very well.’ The last five words came out in a rush, and his face had a strange sort of hurt look to it.
‘And what makes you think that, Lorcan, dear?’
‘Well, she’s lying on the floor, instead of reading a story to us, like she always does at this time of day. And she’s got something in … in … in … her … eye.’ He gabbled the last word, as if there were something about his head-mistress’ eye that he didn’t want to think about. Ever again.
‘And what is everybody else doing while they’re not being told a story?’ Charlotte Chadwick asked, taking him by the hand and leading him gently back towards the school building. ‘Angus MacPherson covered her eye with her scarf, Dove Lockwood said a little prayer for her to get better, and then we told everyone to do some silent reading until somebody came to help us, and tell us what to do. It was my idea to go and get Mummy.’
‘Why didn’t you just go and tell Miss Findlater, Lorcan?’
‘Don’t know,’ he murmured, grimacing as he remembered. ‘Didn’t want to upset her,’ he explained, and began to resist her urging towards the school library, where story-time always took place. ‘I’m not going in there again!’ he said, quite forcefully, and dug his heels into the tough corded carpet of the corridor. ‘You can go in, but I’m not going to. I’m going to go and read silently at my desk,’ he stated emphatically, unattached his hand from hers, and went back into his classroom, walking like an automaton, his face an unhealthy putty-colour.
Placing her tin of cakes tidily on the table indicated by a cardboard sign, Charlotte walked tentatively into the school library.
Chapter Two
Thursday 31st March – later that morning
I
In what passed for Detective Inspector Harry Falconer’s office in the Force’s temporary accommodation, two things happened simultaneously. His telephone rang, and the door to the office slammed open, to admit a figure that made the inspector utter a little scream, as he reached for the telephone receiver.
It had been decided by ‘the powers that be’ ( or ‘lack of will’ on the author’s part for a long-winded explanation of who was involved) that Carsfold Police Station would become an ‘office hours only’ service, with the paper records still not digitised to be stored on the premises, and that there should be a transferral of staff to the Market Darley building, which needed extensive modifications to be suitable for a sizeable influx of staff.
All personnel, therefore, had been moved out while alterations took place, and were now housed in premises in the High Street that used to be the seat of business for ‘Mr Bankrupt’. The ‘mister’ had been metaphorically removed from the name, as the business had gone under like so many others, and the floor space available had been deemed sufficient to house those officers currently without an official work station while the station was being altered and enlarged.
Two of these personnel happened to be the afore-mentioned Harry Falconer, DI, ex-army, forty years old, single, and surrogate father to three pampered pussy-cats. He was of average height, with a nice olive tone to his skin, dark-haired and dark-eyed, said eyes currently almost popping out of his head as he stared at what had just entered his office.
Detective Sergeant ‘Davey’ Carmichael was six-feet-five-and-a-half inches in his enormous cotton socks, had recently married a young widow with two sons, and was the unquestionable master of the unexpected.
‘Good morning. Detective Inspector Falconer speaking,’ the older man intoned into the phone, while his eyes were still fixed hypnotically on his recently-arrived partner who revolved his lower jaw slowly as he hung up his coat. He had had a dental appointment first thing this morning, and was suffering from a new filling, or rather the effects of the pain-killer that had stopped him screaming his head off as the dentist had drilled merrily away at a lower left molar.
Five minutes later, as the phone connection was severed, it finally came. The explosion was loud, but mercifully short. ‘Carmichael! What the bloody blue blazes are you doing coming in here with blonde hair?’ shouted the inspector, hardly able to believe his eyes, and wondering if he ought to pinch himself to see if he were dreaming.
‘I fanthied a change, thir. For thpring, like. Tho Kerry got me some thtuff when sche went schopping. Sche done it for me last night. What do you think?’ The anaesthetic had obviously not yet worn off, and his speech was somewhat slurpy, and damp for anyone standing too close to him.
‘?!’ Falconer found himself speechless, and not for the first time, in Carmichael’s presence.
‘What wath that, thir? I didn’t quite catch it.’
‘?!’
‘I thought that’th what you didn’t thay,’ replied Carmichael, fully comprehending his inspector’s unspoken sentiments.
On the way out of the building they had to endure the usual jeers of the un- or under-employed who hung around the town centre, smoking roll-ups and swilling cheap lager or cider, not quite daring to light up a spliff in such proximity to so many police officers.
‘Didn’t know yer could ’ave a pig farm in the middle of town, did you, Pinky?’
‘’As the Force gone financially as well as morally bankrupt, then?’
‘Place used ter be run by scum. Now the filth’s in charge. Not much change there then, is there? Except the tone’s gone down a bit.’
‘Taken any good bribes lately, Occifer?’
But such remarks had become commonplace in a very short space of time, and the two detectives just tuned the voices out, as they exited the building. They headed for Carmichael’s car, as Falconer’s gaze was so hypnotically drawn to his sergeant’s new hair colour that he reckoned he would not notice the usually abhorrent state of the young man’s Czechoslovakian dustbin on four wheels – and, in any case, his own car was in need of fuel.
‘Why, Carmichael?’ was all that he could muster, as they paced across to the vintage Skoda, which only seemed to be kept in one piece by rust, dollops of old chewing gum, and elastic bands.
‘It’th nithe to have a change now and again, thir. Don’t you think tho? You’d feel really different if you had thome low lighth in that dark hair of yourth.’
‘Urrrrrr!’
‘Not for you, then, thir! By the way, where are we headed, and why?’
‘A place called Shepford Stacey – the school. Headmistress seems to have got something in her eye.’
‘You’re joking, thir.’
‘No I’m not. It’s a skewer. But at least she won’t have to worry about a headache. She’s dead.’
‘It wathn’t one of the kiddieth, schurely?’
‘You never know, these days, but I sincerely hope not.’ (Pause.) ‘No. Don’t be daft, Carmichael. I know society has broken down considerably since I was that age, but these kids are aged between five and seven. Most of them probably couldn’t even reach that high. And don’t distract me with ridiculous ideas. Low lights! The very idea! That’s women’s stuff!’
A few minutes later:
‘Do you want to hear the current word on the beat, thir?’
‘On the street, surely.’
‘No, thir. On the beat. I got thith shtraight from PThee Green.’
‘Go on.’
‘Apparently Thuperintendent Chiverth hath been having a chinwag with the Chief Conthtable, and the Chief Conthtable thayth that your arrival here hath turned the area under hith jurithdiction into the murder capital of Europe, if not the world, and would you kindly schtop attracting all thethe murderth.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re making that up!’
‘Am not, thir. I heard it thtraight from Merv Green’th mouth.’
‘Then he was pulling your leg.’
‘Actually, I think it wath more your leg he wath trying to pull, thir. And it worked, didn’t it?’
‘No comment, Sergeant, and wipe that smug grin off your face this instant. And if you speak to me again before that dratted anaesthetic wears off, I shall need the use of an umbrella. So shut up! Now!
‘Yeth, thir.’
II
It was the last day of March, so they should be seeing the end of the March winds and the beginning of the April showers, by weather tradition. This year, though, the two months seemed to have made a pact to see the change of month pass with no change in the weather. During their drive over, the wind had risen and was now gusting strongly, driving a bank of battleship-grey clouds over from the south-west, and the first spots of rain began to fall as they pulled into the school car park.
By the time Carmichael had finished shunting his petrol-powered wheelie-bin back and forth to a position he approved of for parking, bright coins of rain were spinning off the tarmac as the last rays of sunlight were quenched by the clouds. They left the car with as much haste as they could muster, and headed for the school entrance doors at a run, pulling their collars over their heads to gain a little shelter from the sudden cataract of water.
It had been a good ten miles’ drive along windy narrow roads past Upper Shepford and through Shepford St Bernard to reach their destination, and as they ran, rain now glittering soaking through their clothes, Falconer calculated that it would have been quicker for someone from the Carsfold station to have attended initially, Carsfold being only half that distance from the village – except that Carsfold station now only functioned during office hours, and with a skeleton staff who were only empowered to deal with minor matters and petty offences.
And that’s exactly why the Force in Market Darley was now situated where it was, while builders altered and extended their previous building, so that it would accommodate the over-staffing left from the reorganisation at Carsfold, and a few other rural stations like it. The case would have landed in his lap eventually though; and he dived through the doors, standing open in readiness for their precipitous entrance, in search of shelter from the precipitation that necessitated it.
Charlotte Chadwick stood at the open doors to welcome them, her face grave and distressed. ‘Thank God you’ve arrived!’ she exclaimed, somewhat suitably for a Church school. I’m Charlotte Chadwick, by the way. My six-year-old Imogen’s in the lower class. I called the vicar when I found out what had happened – after I’d done the 999 business and fetched Miss Findlater to gather all the children into the hall. He’s here with his wife, and everybody’s in there now, including Stevie, that’s Miss Baldwin, the dinner lady, who arrived in a very timely manner, when I was trying to get Miss Findlater calmed down, and before the vicar arrived.’
‘I think we’ll just remove our wet things before we go …’ Falconer attempted to stem the flow, which was as merciless as the rain outside, but was unsuccessful, as Mrs Chadwick, once more, took up her tale with relentless determination.
‘I found little Lorcan – that’s Lorcan LeClerc, he’s only five years old – all on his own in the playground, looking around for help, so I took him back inside; I was just delivering a tin of cakes for the sale this afternoon.’ She paused to draw breath, but as Falconer inhaled in readiness for speech, she held up her right hand, like a traffic policeman, to halt him, and continued,
‘It was dead quiet in the school – oh, I’m so sorry, I should never have used that word! Anyway, all the ‘uppers’ – that’s the eight- to eleven-year-olds, were in their classroom with Miss Findlater; she doesn’t cope very well with very young children’s behaviour. There wasn’t a sound, and I asked Lorcan to take me to Mrs Finch-Matthews, asking him where the rest of the ‘lowers’ were – that’s the five- to seven-year-olds, and he led me straight to the room outside Mrs Finch-Matthews’ office where the little library is located.
‘And what a sight met my eyes when I looked round the door. You simply wouldn’t believe it!’ Falconer would have welcomed the chance. Carmichael was in his element, however, his notebook in one hand, enthusiastically-licked pencil in his other, leaning against the wall, scribbling notes as if he would set the paper on fire.
‘There she was, lying on the floor in front of her chair – it’s story-time, you see, just before lunch. It gives the other staff a chance to set the hall out with the tables and chairs and other stuff for the school lunch, which must have just been delivered, because I noticed the metal containers stacked at the back of the hall when I took a little peek in there a while ago.’
She must have been breathing through her ears by now, for she hadn’t made a noticeable pause for breath for quite some time, and Falconer was now building up a head of steam. ‘Now, don’t let me get distracted. Where was I? Oh, yes; Mrs Finch-Matthews lying on the ground. There was a silk scarf with scenes from Paris lying over her
face, and the rest of the children from the class were all sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her, with their ‘silent reading’ books, and when I asked why they were doing that, Lorcan told me that Angus MacPherson had told them to do it, while Dove Lockwood – the vicar’s daughter, and a very sensible girl – had ‘shushed’ them all into silence.
‘I’m sure they all just did as they were told because they were so shocked and frightened, and if they were looking at the pages of their books, they weren’t looking at that awful figure on the floor. They just waited for a grown-up to show up, I guess.’
At last the flow was stemmed, and Falconer was furious to discover that he had forgotten what he was going to ask her originally.
‘Is the vicar around?’ Carmichael asked, for him, having already decided from their loquacious lecture, that Miss Findlater would probably prove a bit of a washout. It appeared that he could now speak again without hindrance of dental injection, and this cheered him somewhat.
‘That’s exactly what I was going to ask,’ cut in Falconer, not wishing to relinquish his seniority in front of a member of the public. And I shall need to know if there is somewhere suitable for setting up an incident room. We can’t work out of Market Darley – it’s far too time-consuming at this distance. It’s all right, Mrs Chadwick, we can sort something out with the vicar when we know exactly what the situation is here,’ this last to forestall his new playmate, who had drawn in a breath to interrupt.
‘Now, quick as you can: where is everybody? I’m sure you’ve already told us, but it’s slipped my mind.’
‘In the hall, like I said, but they can’t stay in there, because there’s all the tables and chairs to set out, like I mentioned, and the food will, be getting cold, and they’ll all be very hungry by now …’
Pascal Passion (The Falconer Files Book 4) Page 3