“...I nearly ran over. Yes, I remember. Nice to meet you again, Jocelyn.”
The girl said nothing but gave Parva a tiny nod.
“She makes you seem positively loquacious,” Parva whispered to Emily. “And you still haven’t told me what she’s doing here.”
“She wanted to come,” Emily whispered back. “She used to live in this block and she wants to know what really happened. She even thinks she might have seen something.”
“So there were other people on campus that night?”
“Of course.” In the light from the fluorescent strips set into the ceiling of the Twelvetrees Hall entryway, Parva could see Emily rolling her eyes. “Not everyone goes away for half term. Jocelyn’s parents live in Hong Kong so when there’s a break of just a week she stays here.”
“Doesn’t she have any friends she could stay with?” Parva bit her lip. It was obvious from the Jocelyn’s reaction to her question that she didn’t. “And you think you saw something, do you?”
Jocelyn nodded again but still kept silent.
“She hasn’t said much since it all happened,” Emily explained.
“Why didn’t you tell the people who came to investigate?” Parva asked.
Jocelyn shook her head and tried to shrink further back into the shadows.
“She didn’t trust them,” Emily said, “and to be honest I don’t blame her. They weren’t exactly polite.”
Parva nodded. She could guess exactly what they were like. Then she remembered that one of them could well have stayed behind to keep an eye on the place.
“We should get inside,” she said, pointing at the electronic keypad next to the door. “Do either of you know the code?”
“Jocelyn does,” Emily said. “Let’s hope they’ve not changed it since she was here.”
The code was the same. With a buzz and a click the door opened and the three of them piled in. Emily located the foyer light and switched it off.
“What did you do that for?” Parva said into the darkness next to her.
“You never know who’s watching,” Emily replied. “We don’t want to give anyone a reason for coming over here.”
“Turning the light off might be a reason,” said a tiny strangled voice that had to be Jocelyn’s.
Parva agreed with her. “Never mind that now,” she said. “If you turn it back on again it’ll be as good as a flashing beacon if anyone is on the lookout for anything strange. Let’s get to the stairs. Where are they?”
“Go to the right and they’re straight ahead of you.” Jocelyn sounded a little bit more confident now that she was indoors.
As Parva’s eyes began to adjust to the blackness she could see the staircase, lit dully from the glow of a light saving bulb somewhere up on the next floor.
“There’s a lift as well,” Jocelyn added.
“I think we’ll stick with stairs.” Parva laid a reassuring hand on Jocelyn’s shoulder and the girl shrieked. Parva made a mental note not to try and reassure anyone else this evening. “The lift might make too much noise. I want to attract as little attention as possible.”
With Parva in the lead, the three of them climbed the stairs, keeping tight to the right hand wall. When they were halfway up Parva glanced back. Was it her imagination or had something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye?
“Are you ok?” Emily had sensed she’d stopped.
“Yes, fine. Just my imagination.” Parva started moving again, reminding herself that she was the grown up here, and that it would be very foolish indeed to start putting ideas in these girls’ heads when they were scared enough already.
As Parva has guessed, a single, dim, energy-saving bulb that was at the opposite end to the staircase lighted the first floor corridor. Her mind was doing its best to make her see weird shapes moving in the gloom down there, so to shut it up she said to Emily, “Is the room down here?”
“No, silly,” came the reply. “It’s room 312, remember? Next floor up.”
Of course. How silly.
“Two more flights then,” Parva said, more to herself that to the others.
They were approaching the next floor up when there was the sound of a door opening. They all crouched at the same time and waited, collective breaths held, until the sound of a toilet flushing almost caused Parva to laugh with relief.
“There are people living here, after all,” she whispered to the others.
Room 312’s floor was in darkness.
Parva waved her hands before her and came into contact with something stretched across the exit to the staircase. She took out her pen torch and in the thin pencil-beam of light read the warning on the crime scene tape that must have been left by the police. Or whoever it was who had helicoptered the girls’ bodies out of here in double quick time. So much of the tape had been used that it was impossible to crawl around it.
“Let’s take it down from the right hand side,” she whispered to the others. “And then put it back when we leave.”
The girl followed her lead but, even with the three of them, it still took the better part of ten minutes for them to clear enough of a space for them to be able to squeeze through. Whoever had put this stuff here had done a very thorough job of it, Parva thought.
She shone the light beam down the corridor. Emily saw the light switch, and went to flick it on.
“Don’t!” Parva whispered hoarsely, but it was too late.
Nothing happened.
“Looks like the lights have blown,” Emily said.
“Or they’ve been switched off deliberately.” That was Jocelyn, and Parva had to admit she agreed with her.
“I wonder why anyone would want to do that?” she murmured, before asking the way to room 312 more loudly.
Emily looked at Jocelyn, who shrugged in the near total darkness. “I never came up this high,” she said. “Maybe we could follow the numbers?”
The nearest door was 307. Five shuffling, nervous paces down the corridor to their left they came to room 306.
“Back the other way,” said Emily.
Parva resisted the urge to add an ‘obviously’ as she led the way back they had come.
They got as far as Room 311 before they found their way blocked once again.
“Wow. They really don’t want anyone going in there,” Emily breathed as she beheld the mass of tape that had been plastered across the hallway.
“Do you have any idea how many rooms are on each floor?” Parva asked.
“Twelve on the ones below this,” Jocelyn said. “I lived on the floor below for a while.”
“So we’re almost at the end of the corridor,” said Parva, “and I’m betting if there’s a fire escape that’ll have been taped off too. Let’s just hope that’s all they’ve done.”
“Why?” asked Jocelyn.
“In case we need an escape route, silly!” Emily hissed. She took hold of the loose end of a piece of tape and pulled. It came away with a tearing sound that sent an echo down the corridor loud enough to attract the attention of anyone who might be following them.
“We may need that escape route sooner rather than later if you keep making that much noise.” Parva picked at a piece and tried to remove it more gently. If anything the tearing sound was even louder.
“Ok,” Parva gave the two girls a resigned grin. “Let’s do it Emily’s way and get this stuff off as quickly as possible.”
Jocelyn held the torch as Parva and Emily ripped off sufficient tape for them to be able to open the door. Which was locked.
“I should have thought of that,” said Parva. “Not that I would know how to get hold of the key.”
“There should be a copy in Arby’s office,” said Emily. “We could break in and steal it.”
“And then come back here and expect to be able to do all that in one night undetected?” Parva shook her head. “It’s too risky.”
But Jocelyn was already waving a key at them.
Emily’s eyes widened. “How di
d you get that?”
“It’s my old one.” Jocelyn shrugged. “We found out last year that most of the keys in this block are only one of three different patterns. It might not work but it’s worth a try.”
Parva took the key from Jocelyn. As she slid it into the lock she realised she was holding her breath.
The key refused to turn.
“You have to wiggle them about a bit sometimes,” Jocelyn whispered, “and move them in and out as well.”
Parva tried again, varying the depth to which the key was inserted in the lock, twisting it as she went. Finally she was rewarded with an uncomfortable-sounding grinding of tumblers.
“Thank god for that,” she murmured as she pushed down on the handle.
The door swung inwards to reveal blackness beyond.
Emily peered in. “I don’t think I want to go in there,” she said.
“You don’t have to,” said Parva, taking the pen torch from Jocelyn and shining it ahead of her. “I need to do this bit. You two stay here and stand guard in case anyone comes.”
From the look Emily and Jocelyn exchanged it was abundantly clear the concept of ‘someone coming’ had not properly sunk in until that moment.
“You’ll be fine,” said Parva. “No one’s going to come and besides, from the look of it I don’t think there’s going to be room for the three of us all stumbling around in the dark.”
The girls seemed to relax a little at that, and more when Parva promised that she would be as quick as possible.
The room was a mess.
Parva found herself having to tiptoe between piles of discarded clothes. The two drawers in the desk in the corner had been pulled out, their contents spilled on the floor. There were books everywhere, some with the covers torn off, the spines bent back, pages torn out. A diagonal tear ran the length of the denuded mattress from top right to bottom left.
The carpet was stained with something. Parva had to kick several broken glasses out of the way to see what it was.
Someone had drawn a five-pointed star in something that was red and still slightly sticky on the beige pile. Now she was closer to the window, Parva could see solid blobs of black candle grease on the sill.
Is that really what they were up to in here?
If she hadn’t know better she would have thought there had been a fight in here, a struggle so ferocious that everything within reach had ended up broken and torn.
Or...
That was what it was meant to look like.
Parva frowned. She had always learned to listen to her gut instinct, and right now it was telling her that something else had happened here. Not black magic rituals or angry struggles, not violence so extreme it smashed glasses and ripped a bed apart, and not just the suicide of four young girls.
Someone had been looking for something.
And, she guessed, just like in the Sherlock Holmes story where broken china was used to disguise the fact that it was busts of Napoleon that the villain was interested in, the room had been wrecked to disguise that fact.
Had the girls been killed for the same reason? Just to distract attention?
Parva shook her head and made sure she wasn’t mumbling to herself as she thought - it would only upset Jocelyn and Emily.
The girls must have known something about the mystery object, something so important that they had to die, which meant the object itself had to be worth killing for.
Or worth killing to keep secret.
And, of course, Parva reasoned, it could be that only one of the girls knew about it, or where it was.
But the killer didn’t know which one.
It also made sense that the object wasn’t here. Either the killer had found it when they had searched the room after murdering the girls, or their search had proved fruitless.
Which was why they had to burn down that charity shop for some reason.
It seemed ridiculous, and yet at the same time Parva’s instincts were telling her that the two events were definitely connected. Besides, why else would the authorities be so keen to keep everyone away from both places?
The revelation came to Parva so suddenly she felt as if she had been dealt a rabbit punch to the back of the neck.
The authorities wanted to keep everyone away because it concerned them. The deaths of these girls concerned them. It was so obvious, and so terrifying, that Parva hadn’t allowed herself to consider it before, but there it was. No wonder Jack Willoughby had had to send her in undercover, no questions asked, no help available should she need it.
She was way out of her depth and Parva knew it. Dizzy with her realisations, she stumbled back to the door. The first thing she had to do was stop involving Emily and Jocelyn. If they said a word to the wrong person they could end up dead too. Who knew how many people at St Miranda’s, both teachers and pupils, were actually here under false pretences, here to hush up whatever it was that one of the dead girls must have unwittingly revealed? If nothing else, the one thing Parva had to do before getting out of here was to warn Emily and Jocelyn to stay out of her investigations from now on.
And she would have done, but when she got to the door and peered out into the gloom of the corridor beyond, the two girls had vanished.
12
Parva resisted the urge to call out. Wherever the two girls had gone it couldn’t be far. She headed left in case they had decided to take the fire escape, only to be met by more tape and a firmly locked door. Parva looked back down the corridor.
Nobody.
Of course it was difficult to see because it was so dark. Parva frowned. They had to be close.
“Emily?” Even though her voice was no louder than a whisper, it cut through the silence like the crack from an air rifle.
No reply.
“Emily? Where are you?”
By now Parva was back at the stairs. The opposite end of the corridor was empty too, and so she descended, slowly, the pen torch held ahead of her like a weapon.
The second floor corridor was just as deserted.
Perhaps the girls had panicked? Perhaps even now they were running for their rooms, swearing never again to have anything to do with that mad biology teacher who had broken into a crime scene while they stood and watched.
No, that was ridiculous.
So where were they?
By the time she had got to the ground floor foyer, Parva was wondering if perhaps she had gone the wrong way. The two girls must have been scared by something and gone to the next floor up.
Then she saw the piece of paper stuck to the handle of the block’s door and realised, with a chill, that she hadn’t gone the wrong way at all.
Parva detached the note from the cellotape attaching it to the aluminium and unfolded it with trembling fingers.
Time to teach you a lesson, Dr Corcoran.
The words caused a chill to penetrate her soul. It wasn’t enough that she had placed herself in danger. Now two more lives were at risk because of her foolishness. She had no doubt that the writer of the note had somehow caused the disappearance of both Emily and Jocelyn. It was also highly likely that the girls were still with that person. The question now, thought Parva as she tucked the note away, is where might they all be?
She gazed out through the glass to behold a campus riddled with a thousand shadows, each capable of concealing three people. They could be anywhere.
Parva shook her head. That wasn’t the point though, was it? The writer of the note wanted her to come to them, wanted to ‘teach her a lesson’. Where would the most appropriate place for that be?
Parva almost groaned. It was obvious. Of course.
*
The science block was in darkness but Parva knew she was in the right place as soon as she pushed at the main entrance and found the door had been left unlocked. The battery in her pen torch was starting to run low and as the beam flickered along the hallway Parva was tempted to turn on the lights. On the other hand, she reasoned, there was no point in giving her opponent adv
ance warning of her arrival, and so instead she switched the torch off and put it away.
There was a dim light emanating from beneath her classroom door.
Someone had covered the glass, draping something like a coat over it to ensure privacy. Parva wished she had brought something with her she could use as a weapon. She took a deep breath and opened the door.
The long tables at which the students usually sat had been pushed aside to clear an area in the middle of the room. Now all that occupied the space were two high chairs to which had been tied to two terrified-looking young girls. The gags in their mouths prevented them from crying out, the ropes around their wrists and ankles held them fast.
“This is what you get for interfering with matters that don’t concern you,” said a voice from the shadows at the front of the room. If Parva squinted she could just make out a silhouette in front of the board, black standing before grey. She resisted the urge to shine her torch at it in case there were weapons trained on Jocelyn and Emily.
“No one told me I shouldn’t,” Parva replied, trying to keep the defiance out of her voice. “In fact I was sent here...”
“...you were sent here by someone who should have known better. Someone who does know better now.”
Had something happened to DCI Willoughby? “What do you mean?”
The figure emerged into the light. Parva wasn’t sure who she had been expecting - Miss Arbuthnot, one of the girls, perhaps even Sergeant Wilkins.
It was none of those, but it was someone she had already met.
Amanda Plumridge reached into the pocket of her tweed jacket, pulled something out, and tossed it to Parva.
“I must confess I’d forgotten that silly bloody woman would have confiscated your mobile,” she said.
Parva thumbed the ‘On’ button, noticing at the same time the gun Amanda was holding in her other hand.
“Take a look,” said the other woman. “You’re not going anywhere. Not right away, anyway.”
The screen lit up and Parva typed in her PIN. She scrolled through the list of missed calls and text messages from Jack Willoughby, all of them basically saying the same thing.
Mission over. You can come back. Wild goose chase. Nothing to investigate after all. Come home now.
The Pact Page 6