Burning Secrets

by Clare Chambers

  Mrs Ivory was clearly mad and dangerous and had probably killed Helen while he dithered. Why else would she be stalking the corridors with a knife, and Helen nowhere to be seen?

  Daniel stepped out of the shadows, water lapping at the toes of his shoes, just as Mrs Ivory came out of the furthest lab. If she saw him she gave no sign of it, but hurried on her way, around the corner and up the stairs. A moment later he could hear running feet above him and classroom doors banging.

  He followed after her, and peered into the first lab, his heart quailing at what he might find. But instead of Helen, he discovered the source of the flooding. The water cooler in the corner had been slashed. Water pumped rhythmically from a three-inch slit in the clear plastic casing, spreading around the benches and under the door in a thin glassy layer.

  It was the same in every classroom, as Daniel tracked Mrs Ivory’s hectic progress around the school. All the water coolers had been sabotaged, their contents forming tributaries which merged in the corridors into thin streams and ran down the stairs. The siren had stopped and the building seemed to resound with the aftershock of sudden silence.

  Daniel caught up with Mrs Ivory in the pool block, in the same changing rooms, he now realised, where she must have followed him to retrieve the bag with the Narveng logo he’d found on the beach. She must have been astonished to see him carrying it around school.

  She was jabbing the knife into a water cooler as he came in. It made only a small puncture so that the water emerged in a fine jet that arced across the benches and hit the opposite wall. Irritably she plunged the blade in harder, yanking it back and forward. A curtain of water flopped out over her feet. Daniel could see that the hand holding the knife was covered with blood, and for a split-second his courage failed him. But at that moment she looked up and saw him. There were bright spots of colour on her cheeks, as though she had a fever.

  “Daniel,” she said, distractedly. “You shouldn’t be here. Didn’t you hear the alarm?”

  “Where’s Helen?” he said, without taking his eyes off the knife and the bloodstained hand that gripped it. “What have you done with her?”

  “Helen? You’re not in this with Helen?” She looked genuinely let down, hurt even. “I knew she must have had help, but you never crossed my mind.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I didn’t want to get involved in any of this.” That will be on my gravestone, he thought. “We came here to get away from trouble, but I always seem to find it.”

  “Well, I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed,” said Mrs Ivory, sounding for a moment as though she was an ordinary headteacher and he an ordinary pupil, in her office for a ticking off.

  “Where’s Helen?” he said again.

  “Oh, look what I’ve done,” Mrs Ivory said, ignoring the question as she examined the deep clean cut across her palm. “The plastic on these canisters is lethal. Only one more.” She strode out of the changing room towards the pool and up the stairs to the viewing gallery, her high heels echoing on the tiled floor in the vast cavernous room. The last water cooler was in the corner of the gallery. She slit it open and rinsed her injured hand in the outwash.

  Daniel, unnerved by her bizarre behaviour, followed at a cautious distance. She had left a trail of bright red splashes on the clean floor. At the fire-exit door she turned. “Give my love to your sister. I only wanted to help her. You must believe that.”

  “But you didn’t give her any choice,” said Daniel, with sudden indignation. “You’d no right.”

  “Can you honestly look me in the eye and say you prefer her the way she was?” said Mrs Ivory in her kindest voice.

  Daniel thought of the old Louie, with her mood swings and tantrums and days of deepest gloom. It was her personality, and without it she was nothing. He held her gaze firmly. “I want her back the way she was.”

  Mrs Ivory acknowledged this with a sideways dip of her head. “Don’t think too badly of me when I’m gone,” she said.

  Daniel felt a sudden chill at the finality of her words. She was standing very close to the balcony edge and for a moment he thought she was going to throw herself over on to the tiles below. But instead she produced her key ring from her pocket and began working away at the keys with shaking fingers, trying to detach one from the other. “I don’t think I’m going to be welcome around here any more,” she said, with a crooked smile. “And I’ve really no desire to spend any time in prison. So . . . ” she shrugged. “I think it’s best if I just . . . disappear.”

  “You can’t just disappear. Not on an island,” said Daniel. “And where’s Helen? What have you done with her?”

  “You want Helen; you find her,” she said. “Here’s the key – all you’ve got to do is find the lock.”

  She seemed to be holding it out to him, but as he took a step towards her she tossed it over the balcony, high into the air. He watched its inevitable trajectory, as it rose and then fell into the deep end of the pool, making a neat splash before sinking gracefully to the bottom. And when he looked up the fire-exit door was swinging open. She was gone.

  Chapter 39

  IT TOOK DANIEL no more than a second to decide what to do. Taking the stairs three at a time, he skittered to the poolside, struggling out of his jacket and scuffing off his trainers. He threw himself at the water in the clumsiest dive he’d ever done, feeling the drag of the trapped air in his jeans as he clawed his way downwards. His lungs felt ready to collapse when at last he burst back on to the bright surface with the key clutched in his hand.

  Water streamed from his hair and clothes as he ran out through the changing rooms and splashed along flooded corridors, towards the admin block. Mrs Ivory didn’t realise that he knew all too well where to find the crucial lock. He hoped this tiny grain of good fortune would save valuable time, though his mind veered away from just what he might be too late for.

  As he reached the corridor of offices and storerooms, he could hear a furious thumping noise of someone kicking at a door and he realised he was shaking with relief. “Helen,” he called, his voice emerging as a croak. “Are you all right?”

  “Daniel!” came the reply. “Yes. No. I’m locked in.”

  “It’s OK. I’ve got the key,” he said, snagging it in the lock and almost snapping it in half in his haste to let her out.

  The door flew open. Helen had a large swelling above one eyebrow and looked extremely dishevelled. There were wet patches on her jeans, as though she had been sitting or lying on the floor. Around her lay dismembered cardboard boxes, their contents scattered over the floor as though someone had turned the place over in a fury.

  “Thank God you came,” said Helen weakly. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I heard it all. I was in her office when you came in. I was hiding in the cupboard.” Helen looked at him with amazement and admiration. “What happened?” he said.

  “She decked me,” said Helen. “She bloody decked me. I can’t believe I fell for it. She said she’d show me how she got the drugs into the students, and for some insane reason I trusted her. Anyway, she brought me here and showed me where the drinking water refills were stored. Whenever they got a new consignment she’d come in at night and empty a syringe of Compound K into every canister. I was leaning over to see the puncture marks in the plastic and she hit me so hard it knocked me backwards. I smacked my head on one of the shelves.” She put her hand up to her hair, wincing as she found a cut, sticky with blood. “I think I must have blacked out for a second or two because when I opened my eyes there was water everywhere and I heard her locking the door then setting off the fire alarm. I swear she only did that to drown out the sound of my shouting.”

  “She wanted the school empty so she could go round slashing all the water coolers,” said Daniel.

  “Where is she now?” Helen demanded.

  “I don’t know. She said she was going to ‘disappear’.”

  “You spoke to her!”

  “I caught up with her by the pool.”r />
  “Then what? She got away?”

  “Well, yes. She had a knife and I thought she might have stabbed you. I decided rescuing you was more important than chasing her.”

  “Thank you,” said Helen humbly. “I am grateful, really. I couldn’t have done this without you.” Daniel gave a shrug of denial. “Anyway, where can she disappear to? She can’t get off the island. The only flight left two hours ago, and the next ferry isn’t till four. I’ll have the police out looking for her by then.”

  Helen was already striding towards the lobby, so he followed after her.

  Through the sliding doors, slightly fogged with condensation, Daniel could see a small knot of onlookers had gathered on the forecourt. A police car – the same one that Daniel had dodged at The Brow – was just pulling up. Before the officer inside could open the door he was besieged by islanders, eager for information.

  “That’s good service,” said Helen. “I haven’t even dialled 999.”

  Daniel hung back. “The problem is, it’s me they’re after. Someone set fire to the school pavilion. They think it was me, and I can’t prove it wasn’t.”

  “But I can.” A guilty blush bloomed on Helen’s cheeks. “Because it was me.”

  Daniel gaped like a fish on a slab. “You never . . . ” he spluttered.

  “It wasn’t deliberate!” she protested. “I knocked a candle over – how was I to know there’d be patches of spilt petrol on the floor? The whole thing went up. I was lucky to get out.”

  “But what were you doing in there in the first place?”

  “When I sneaked back on to the island I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I couldn’t very well go knocking on doors, saying ‘Hello, it’s me, the runaway music teacher everyone’s been talking about, can you put me up for a few days?’ So I hid in the groundsman’s store in the pavilion. But I had a little accident with the candle.”

  “So after the fire, let me guess – you spent that first night in the ruined chapel at Ingle?”

  “Correct. And that was fine, apart from the bats and the spiders and a whacking great hole in the roof.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “And the fact that it was already being used as a love nest . . . ”

  Daniel ignored this remark. He was thinking of what lay ahead, beyond the double doors – the unwelcome attention, the endless questions, the whole torrent of words – and wishing he could be anywhere else.

  As if sensing his discomfort, Helen gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Come on, mate,” she said, “deep breath. I’ve got a feeling this is going to take some explaining.”

  Chapter 40

  DANIEL SAT SHIVERING in the interview room in the tiny police station in Port Julian, a pool of water forming around his shoeless feet. Someone had been sent to fetch him some dry clothes, but the only thing they had been able to find was a spare police uniform, which he had turned down. Too weird, he decided, even by today’s standards. He’d answered all their questions, corroborating Helen’s account of everything that had passed between her and Mrs Ivory in the headteacher’s study, and describing the sabotaging of the water coolers. The only detail he omitted was sending the fake email, which he chose to keep to himself. Helen had admitted to accidentally setting fire to the groundsman’s hut, but this incident was so dwarfed by more recent drama that it was barely followed up.

  Daniel’s mum had been present for the entire interview, listening in astonishment as the story unfolded. Occasionally she murmured expressions of dismay, but he was glad to have her there. There was an awkward moment when Helen mentioned ‘borrowing’ Mrs Milman’s name in order to get back on to the island without being stopped. Under normal circumstances his mum would have been furious, but all her anxieties were focused on Louie and the possible effects of Compound K.

  “I brought you here because I thought it was safe,” her mum wailed. “And look what’s happened.”

  “Louie’s only just started taking it,” Daniel pointed out. “Some of the students at Stape have been on it for five years.” He was thinking of Ramsay.

  “I feel totally fine,” said Louie placidly.

  “What happens now? What are you going to tell the rest of the parents?” Daniel and Louie’s mum asked the police officer.

  “That’s something for the Chief Medical Officer and the school governors to decide,” he replied. “I expect they’ll want to call a public meeting. Our priority is to try and apprehend Mrs Ivory, so she can answer our questions.”

  The events of the morning had rocked his mum more than Daniel had anticipated. He’d imagined that any kind of bad news would send her deeper into her depression, but instead it had woken her up as if from a long sleep.

  As soon as they got back to The Brow she had run him a hot bath, and when he came down again, clean and warm, there was a welcoming fire burning and pizzas cooking in the oven. Mum had her arms around Louie, and as Daniel walked in, she beckoned him to join them, so that they were crushed in a tight three-way hug. Last time she’d held them like that, he thought, she’d been taller than him: now he towered over her. He could hear her sniffs and gulps, but then Chet came whisking in, and immediately tried to get in on the act, forcing his wet nose into the gaps between them. Somehow it broke the spell and they all laughed.

  When they were sitting down, eating, their mum suddenly laid down her knife and fork and said, “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Daniel and Louie looked up in surprise. “What for?” asked Louie, her mouth full of pizza.

  “For everything that’s gone wrong. I’ve let you down in every kind of way since Dad left. I feel so guilty.” Daniel made murmurings of denial, but she cut him off. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my own unhappiness I haven’t looked after you.”

  “We’ve caused you a lot of grief too,” said Louie. “So it’s partly our fault.”

  “No it isn’t,” she insisted. “I’m the parent. I’m supposed to deal with your problems, not the other way round. I thought coming here would make everything all right, but running away never solves anything. You just end up with all the same old problems you brought with you, plus a bunch of new ones.”

  “Do you mean you want us to go back to London early?” Daniel asked. There was a tightness in his chest – an iron band squeezing his ribs.

  “I think we should. I want to get Louie checked out by a specialist, to make sure her health hasn’t been damaged by this drug, and I want to get you both back into proper education before it’s too late. I haven’t exactly made a success of the home-schooling experiment, have I?”

  “It’s not too late to start,” said Daniel. “We’ve just been skiving.”

  His mum shook her head. “You need proper teachers. I’m not up to it.”

  “But I thought the London house was let for six months. Where would we live?” asked Louie.

  “The tenants were a bit shaken up by the burglary and they want to go back to the States early. The rent is all paid up, but they’re going home before Christmas.”

  Daniel sagged in his seat.

  “Do you like it here?” his mum asked gently.

  His shoulders twitched. “There’s a girl . . . ”

  “Ah. Well, distance is no barrier these days with email and stuff. And there’s an airport here. She can come and stay. Show her London.”

  “Her parents would never let her. They don’t even let me see her here. We have to meet in secret.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because her dad thinks I’m a dangerous criminal. He’s some kind of lawyer – he found out about my record.”

  Across the table Louie had gone very still.

  Mum put her head in her hands. “Oh, Daniel, I’m so sorry.”

  “Maybe he’ll think differently when he finds out what you’ve done here,” said Louie. “You’ll be a local hero. They’ll probably rename Port Julian after you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Look,” said their mum, “all I can say is I promise it won’t be like
it was. I won’t be like I was. I’ll be strong, and in charge, and when you have problems I’ll deal with them like parents are supposed to.”

  And she reached across the table and gripped Daniel’s hand.

  Chapter 41

  TRUE TO HER word, Mrs Ivory disappeared.

  Just after her encounter with Daniel at the poolside she’d been seen by the caretaker driving out of the school at some speed. Thanks to Helen, border officials put on alert by the local police reported that she had made no attempt to leave either from Darrow airfield or the ferry terminal at Port Julian. But they were looking out for her black Ford Focus. They wouldn’t have paid much attention to Kenny in his white van, making the crossing to Plymouth to pick up a new mower. Even if he did look a little more nervous and twitchy than usual.

  Then, on the afternoon of the following day, a woman walking her dog came across Mrs Ivory’s car, abandoned on Filey Point, a remote promontory on the north of the island, where the sea plucked greedily at the rocky cliffs below. The key was in the ignition and her handbag was on the seat. A lifeboat was launched from Port Julian to search offshore, more perhaps from a sense of duty than with any real hope of success. Those who knew about tides maintained that nothing lost off Filey Point would ever wash up on Wragge.

  This latest development added to the toxic mixture of rumour, speculation and half-truth that was rippling around the island. A notice had been pasted on the main doors of the school advising parents and pupils that it would remain closed for the rest of the week. In the meantime, the caretaker and Kenny aired the classrooms, ripped up the ruined carpet and tried to repair the water damage. But students and parents, bewildered by the loss of Mrs Ivory and troubled by rumours of drugs, continued to congregate around the building.