He picked up the pace, barging past a couple of protesting parents. It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t right, but suddenly he just had to know. They only had one child, she meant everything to them …
‘Jeannie?’
He bellowed her name as he approached the massed ranks of people who hung by the police cordon outside the school. The crowd was ten deep or more and seemed to be composed almost entirely of tearful students holding on to their parents, their friends and in some cases police officers and paramedics. It was a deeply distressing sight, which only served to alarm him further.
‘JEANNIE?’
His cry seemed to die on the wind, so, giving up, he grabbed a student who was hurrying away from the fray. Nick half recognized her, he thought she might be in Jeannie’s class.
‘Have you seen my daughter?’
The student looked at him blankly.
‘Have you seen Jeannie?’ he persisted, louder this time.
‘No, no,’ the student replied finally. ‘I haven’t seen anyone, I just ran …’
Abandoning her, Nick moved forward, running along the edge of the crowd.
‘Jeannie?’
He was screaming her name at the top of his voice, but it was so hard to be heard above the crying and moaning.
‘Jeann—’
‘Dad?’
He stopped in his tracks, spun round. It certainly sounded like her, but he couldn’t be sure.
‘Jeannie?’
Then suddenly there she was, bounding towards him, throwing herself in his arms. She was in floods of tears, as was he, but she appeared to be ok. She was clearly very shaken, however, and he let her cry for a good few minutes, holding her close, before he eventually eased her away from him. Wiping her tears, he kissed her several times and when at last she seemed calmer, he asked:
‘Have you seen Mum anywhere?’
72
14.56
Helen looked down at the woman’s body. The paramedics had worked tirelessly to save her life, but her injuries had been too severe. Daisy’s fourth victim had been shot at point-blank range – once in the chest, once in the lower part of the face. The blood that still clung to the wall in the far corner of the room revealed the precise location of the shooting – Daisy had backed Sarah Grant into a corner and then fired. The amount of blood was significant, as was the fact that part of her jaw and cheek had been cut clean off by the impact.
Amazingly the grievously injured woman had managed to propel herself across the room. Perhaps Daisy had left, believing that her job was done. Whatever the case, Sarah Grant had wanted to live and had dragged herself to the door. The long bloody smear on the floor showed she had made it all the way, as did the bloody fingerprints on the door handle. But the poor woman had only succeeded in shutting the door on herself, before presumably collapsing just inside. It sickened Helen to think that Sarah Grant’s body had been the blockage – the barricade – that they had struggled against as they laboured to gain entry to the classroom.
Sarah Grant was a wife and mother – Helen had managed to gauge that much already – but she had bled out on the cold wooden floor. Why? Because Helen had allowed herself to be conned, tricked into racing to the WestQuay, while Daisy Anderson was heading here. Heading to school with murder in mind.
Helen had failed Sarah, just as she’d failed the other victims. Hers was another death on Helen’s conscience, another ghost to parade before her tortured conscience. She knew she had to stay strong, if she was to catch this remorseless killer, but Helen felt that familiar darkness creeping over her now – and with it a burning anger that she was struggling to control.
73
15.02
‘Shit.’
Emilia had caught sight of the roadblock thirty seconds ago, but her companion had only just spotted it. She had been distracted, fiddling nervously with the buttons on her coat, lost in thought. But as the car ground to a halt behind a long line of traffic, she’d looked up. The flashing blue lights and the sheer number of uniformed bodies in the road ahead clearly alarmed her and she squinted towards the rear of the car. But they were boxed in from behind by queueing traffic – there was no way back now.
The cordon was fifty feet away. The officers manning it seemed to be taking their time, quizzing each driver at length. Emilia didn’t have a cover story – she and her captor had hardly said a word to each other since they climbed in the car – and she wondered what she would say. Where had she been? Who was her companion? Had she seen anything? It was probably best to stick as close to the truth as possible. She would present the police with her press pass and say that the woman was helping her with a story about graffiti artists. Emilia was by nature a good liar, but suddenly she felt nervous, as if the police would see right through her fiction.
There was always a chance they would make it through the cordon, but then what? Emilia suddenly felt a cold stab of fear. Was she doing the right thing? The car was moving forward and they were now only twenty yards from the cordon. Should she take her chances? Say something to the police? What if she just opened the door and made a break for it? It might result in a shootout, but she would be free …
Emilia felt a sharp jab in her thigh. Looking down she realized that the woman had pushed the barrels of her gun into her leg.
‘Just act natural. Answer their questions and no one gets hurt, right?’
Had she sensed what Emilia was thinking? There was steel in the woman’s voice which she hadn’t heard before and a coolness in her actions, as she slipped off her coat and laid it over her arm, concealing the gun from view. It was obvious to Emilia that she didn’t intend her adventure to end here. Unless Emilia wanted her head blown off, it would probably be wise to obey.
Calming her breathing and fixing a smile on her face, Emilia drove slowly towards the awaiting police officers.
74
15.16
‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure it’s her?’
Charlie was huddled with Nick and Jeannie Dean in a police support vehicle parked up by the school entrance, the now deserted buildings visible through the small, square windows. Sarah Grant had not taken her husband’s name when they got married, but once it had been established that she was Nick’s wife and Jeannie’s mother, Charlie had given them the terrible news. She had suggested that his teenage daughter might be better off with friends or relatives, but Nick Dean had insisted that she stay. He clearly didn’t want to let her out of his sight, even when it became clear that Charlie had some very bad news to impart.
‘I’m afraid we are. One of her colleagues has already identified her, though of course we will be asking you to formally –’
‘How did she die?’ Nick Dean said quickly. ‘Did they …’
He seemed to run out of words, so Charlie stepped in.
‘She died of a gunshot wound.’
‘Was anyone else hurt? Any of her students …?’
‘No, it was just her.’
Nick Dean looked utterly mystified by Charlie’s responses.
‘But why? Why would anyone do something like that?’
He was staring straight at her, while his daughter’s brimming eyes were fixed on the floor. In their different ways they both looked pole-axed by this sudden tragedy and Charlie sincerely wished she could tell them something that would ease their burden. But her head was still clouded by visions of Sarah’s brutal murder and it was hard to think of any consoling words.
‘We don’t know yet,’ Charlie conceded. ‘As you may know, there have been a number of shootings today and we think that it may be part of a pattern –’
‘You know who’s responsible then?’
‘We have an idea of who might be resp—’
‘So why haven’t you caught them? You know who’s doing this, they’ve already done it twice before, why haven’t you caught them?’
‘Believe me, we’re trying our best. We’re throwing everything we can at this –’
‘That’s what y
ou people always say,’ he responded bitterly.
He turned, pulling his daughter to him. She was weeping now, quietly but persistently, pushing her face into her father’s chest.
‘I just hope you can sleep at night,’ he continued, aiming his barbs at Charlie once more. ‘Because it’s people like us that have to deal with the consequences.’
He pulled his daughter closer to him, burying his face in her hair, whispering words of comfort. In spite of his anger and bitterness, he was showing admirable strength, refusing to break down in front of his daughter. His words stung, but Charlie hoped that his defiance, his resolve, would help Jeannie make it through this terrible ordeal. Father and daughter were cleaving to each other – propping each other up – and Charlie knew from experience that their fierce, defiant love was the only thing that would keep them going in the dark days ahead.
75
15.18
‘Tell me about Daisy Anderson.’
Helen’s time was limited, so she came straight to the point. An exhausted Simon Henshaw, the school’s headmaster, sat opposite her in the abandoned classroom, casting occasional glances at the crowds outside. He clearly wanted to be out there with his students, providing whatever support he could, but Helen needed information.
‘Daisy was … difficult,’ Henshaw replied hesitantly, clearly still struggling to believe that a former student could have been responsible for murdering a member of his staff. ‘I think she was basically a good kid who’d had a very rough time.’
‘In what way?’
Henshaw looked slightly surprised by Helen’s brusque tone.
‘Her mother isn’t on the scene,’ the headmaster resumed falteringly, ‘so she lives with her dad. He’s a loving parent, but erratic. He never turns up for parents’ evenings, has no interest in her school work. I think he likes to protect her from us, which obviously makes life difficult. He’s a drinker too.’
‘Did Daisy drink?’
Henshaw nodded.
‘We caught her with bottles in her locker on a couple of occasions.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Yes. She took them, but also used them as currency, I think.’
‘To impress people, make friends?’
‘Yup, not that it really worked.’
‘Because?’
‘Because she was different. Her dad … her dad offered her a kind of … benign neglect. Never bought her clothes or make-up. She always came to school with her books in a plastic bag. Staff members thought she didn’t wash much either, was often visibly dirty –’
‘And the other kids mocked her for it?’
‘We tried to police it, but you know what teenagers are like. She looked … she looked like a farmer’s daughter and a poor one at that.’
‘She was bullied?’
‘Yes,’ Henshaw confirmed, now looking a little shamefaced. ‘She gave as good as she got, believe me, but then her grades started going south. We tried to remedy this, but Daisy felt that her teachers were singling her out, trying to humiliate her, so she stopped attending school. We gave her a number of chances to re-engage, but if a child refuses to come we have to exclude them. We have a long waiting list and –’
‘And Sarah Grant was the one who expelled her?’
‘Excluded, yes. My role is more pastoral, Sarah is the disciplinarian, so she dealt with it. But she was only ever trying to help Daisy, she had gone out of her way to ensure that she made progress, that she had the support she needed –’
‘But Daisy felt Sarah Grant was picking on her?’
‘Possibly,’ Henshaw conceded, looking like a man who wished he could turn back the clock.
Helen stared out of the window at the students below. A picture was starting to emerge of a young woman who’d been dealt a bad set of cards and was now revenging herself on those whom she felt had rejected or humiliated her. All of her victims – Smalling, Sansom and now Sarah Grant – had tried to help her in different ways, but all had unwittingly enraged her.
‘Did she have any pals at school?’ Helen said, snapping out of it.
‘Friends?’
‘She only left school a few weeks ago, so is there anyone she might call on, lie low with? Someone perhaps who didn’t show up for school today?’
Henshaw thought long and hard, before replying:
‘We had pretty much full attendance today and, no, there’s no one who’d willingly go out on a limb for her. It shames me to say it, but the truth is …’
The headmaster paused, before concluding:
‘… Daisy didn’t have a friend in the world.’
76
15.23
‘What’s the nature of your business in Itchen today?’
The police officer was curt and to the point, as he ran his eye over the interior of the car, taking in the two women.
‘Working on a story,’ Emilia said brightly, offering him her credentials.
The police officer, a tall, terse character, looked at her press pass, then at her scarred face, before handing back her documents. Emilia thought she saw a flicker of recognition in his jaundiced expression.
‘What sort of a story?’ he said witheringly.
‘Teen graffiti. There’s been a spate of tagging recently and the good folk of Southampton are not happy about it …’
She was trying to sound jolly, but knew it was coming out forced.
‘Who are you?’ He turned his attention to Daisy.
‘Alice Baines,’ she replied sullenly. ‘I’m showing her the ropes.’
‘You’re a tagger?’
‘One of the best,’ she spat back defiantly.
In spite of herself, Emilia couldn’t help but be impressed. The young woman showed no sign of nerves and her cocky manner was a good front. The police officer studied her closely, taking in her eyes, her features, her hair colour. Emilia had worked out some time ago that her black bob was a wig, but it suited her and was pretty convincing.
The officer stared at her for a long time, then returned his gaze to Emilia.
‘Either of you seen anything? A young woman acting suspiciously? Aggressively even? She’s got blonde hair, is about five foot two –’
The two women shook their heads. The officer looked down the long line of cars backing up behind them, before continuing: ‘Has anyone asked you to assist them? Help them in some way?’
They shook their heads.
‘And would you be willing to submit to a vehicle search, if required to do so?’
Emilia hadn’t been expecting this question and was unsure how to respond, so Daisy stepped in.
‘Of course. We’ve got nothing to hide.’
It was said confidently, with a smile, and now the police officer relented, turning to shout to one of his colleagues, as he gestured them to move forward.
They had passed the test.
77
15.26
Helen had barely made it across the school atrium, when DC McAndrew came bustling towards her.
‘Boss, you need to see this …’
She was wearing latex gloves and holding a Nikon SLR camera. Helen pulled a fresh set of gloves out and, snapping them on, took the camera from her.
‘We were doing a sweep of the grounds and found this near the perimeter fence.’
Helen examined the back of the camera and pressed the ‘Play’ button. Immediately a photo sprang up – it was of a young woman wearing a long, khaki trench coat, walking across the playing fields. Her heart pounding, Helen skipped through the sequence of photos, which were obviously taken very recently.
‘I thought you’d want to see them straight away because –’
‘She’s got black hair,’ Helen interrupted.
‘Right, our guys are looking for a blonde and –’
Helen didn’t wait for her to finish, sprinting towards the exit instead.
78
15.27
Sanderson’s eyes were glued to the car. She was at the rear of the cordon, ru
nning a final rule over the vehicles as they passed by, and she had spotted Emilia Garanita immediately. Hers was a face that was hard to miss.
There were two things that struck Sanderson as odd, as the car moved slowly past. Firstly, Garanita was staring straight ahead of her, turning occasionally to speak to her passenger. Sanderson was only a few feet from them and normally Garanita wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to engage with her – a tart look, a few choice words. This time, however, she had pointedly ignored her, seemingly more interested in her dark-haired companion.
The second strange thing was that Emilia was deliberately driving away from a major story. The car was fifty yards away now, signalling to turn the corner, heading even further from Meadow Hall School. Emilia Garanita lived and breathed the news – there was no way she wouldn’t have heard about the latest shooting. Sanderson would have bet her house on the experienced crime reporter heading straight to Meadow Hall to pursue the students and harass the police officers – all in the interests of resurrecting her flagging career. But in fact she had chosen to drive in the opposite direction, her car now rounding the corner, heading away from the scene of Southampton’s first school shooting. This troubled Sanderson – the rest of the nation’s press corps were hurrying to Meadow Hall School, so why wasn’t she?
Love Me Not: DI Helen Grace 7 (formerly titled Follow My Leader) (Detective Inspector Helen Grace) Page 14