“Huh?” was all I could respond.
“Let me get the sister,” the police officer said. “She will want to know that you’re up. Stay there.” I did as requested, sure that the policeman had been here before. The sister arrived, bright and breezy.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Tired,” I said.
“You haven’t slept properly, that’s why.”
“What happened?” I asked. An instance of the night before then rushed through my mind, the brief imagery enough for me to recall and piece together the rest. “Oh, shit! Adrian!” I said, starting out of bed.
“Stay there, stay there,” the sister said, pushing me back down. “The police have him.”
“What about the boy he had?” I asked frantically.
“He’s in there,” the sister said, nodding to the portion of the infirmary that was reserved for the junior school. “He’s okay, but he’s being sick a lot. You can probably expect some of that later, yourself.”
I followed her eyes as they flicked to the yellow bucket that sat by my bedside. I felt myself relax a little. Everything was out of my hands. “What happened?” I asked.
“Father Thomas saw you being attacked by the suspect and came to help,” the policeman started. “You called 999 and then collapsed. You had been chloroformed.”
“Really? Chloroform?” Despite the seriousness of the event, it actually sounded quite cool. To my mind, only people such as James Bond were ever chloroformed. Now I knew how it felt to be a secret agent.
The policeman nodded. “We arrived to find Father Thomas restraining the suspect, and with you and Adam Richardson passed out. We placed the suspect under arrest and then the paramedics checked out both you and Adam.”
Though the police officer hadn’t named Adrian Willis, referring to him only as ‘the suspect’, I was obvious it was him. They had got him. Excellent. I still couldn’t believe it had been him. The man had been friendly and open when I had met him, not harbouring any negative sentiments at all.
“I imagine he’ll confess everything in a few days,” the policeman said. “We have the right to hold him for another seventy-two hours.”
I nodded, feeling a sharp pain as I did so. “Is my nose broken?” I asked.
“It is, yes,” the sister said.
“Shouldn’t I go to hospital?” I asked, somewhat incredulously. Were they not concerned about me having a crooked nose for the rest of my life?
“It’s not broken badly, and we can manage it here. You just have to be careful not to bang it against anything, otherwise you may have to go to hospital.”
“And then they’ll have to break it again, which isn’t fun,” the policeman smiled. “Believe me, I know,” he added, tapping his own nose.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost nine in the morning,” the sister said. “I’ll go and bring you some breakfast.”
“I guess you have some questions for me?” I asked of the police officer, as the sister left.
“If you can spare just twenty or thirty minutes.”
“Not like I have anywhere else to go,” I grinned, stopping when it caused immediate discomfort.
The police officer introduced himself as Sergeant Paul Newman, reminding me that he had actually been at the school before, when I had come to the headmaster’s office after Scott Parker’s body had been discovered. He asked me to tell him everything that I could about Adrian Willis, where I had met him, what contact I may have had with him outside of school, and what he had said to me, especially if it was something that might hint at a motive. I told him about the first time we had met, that day in church, then of the next time when he had come to give the career talk, and of the discussion in the White Horse after that.
“Did he say anything that might have implied a dislike of any of the teachers, students, or the itself school in particular?” Sergeant Newman wanted to know.
“Yes,” I realised. “Yes, quite a lot.” Now I thought about it, there had been a bright neon sign buzzing above the man’s head the entire time. Adrian wasn’t fond of St Christopher’s, hadn’t been for years. In fact, he hated the place. But what was his ultimate goal? I couldn’t think.
“Thank you,” Newman said. “If we need to talk to you again, we’ll get in touch via the school.”
“Just so you know, I won’t be coming back next term,” I told him.
“Enough adventure for one lifetime, eh?” Newman grinned.
“Just time for a new one,” I smiled back. “I’m going to a different school. A sixth form college back home.”
Newman nodded. “I’ll get your home address from the headmaster in that case.”
The sister returned a short time later with some tea and toast. I took one look at the food, felt my stomach flip and then vomited instantly into the bucket by the side of the bed. That would be the poison leaving my body, she explained. I rinsed my mouth in the bathroom, finding that someone had brought my wash bag down from Butcher. I brushed my teeth, somewhat less vigorously than I would normally do to avoid the pain in my nose, before returning to my bed and attempting to drink the tea and eat the toast.
It didn’t stay down, and with sister having now removed the bucket, I was forced to sprint to the toilet in the bathroom. I very nearly made it, too.
Epilogue
I received a witness summons a week after leaving St Christopher’s, requiring me to travel twice up to London, to provide evidence in the case against Adrian Willis. He had already confessed to the murders as I was questioned in court, Adrian’s defence attempting a plea of insanity, hoping to get him a more lenient sentence. There were a handful of teachers in attendance there, Father Thomas, having tackled Willis, giving the most evidence. The jury were apparently taken to the two places where Scott Parker, Ted Osmond and Craig Priest had been found – along the Red Road and also in the bushes by the school’s main drive.
I discovered Adrian Willis’ motivations as I had testified. Adrian had been expelled from St Christopher’s after he had been discovered to have a quantity of cannabis in his possession. This, the school believed him to be dealing. He had denied it, but a urine and blood test had said otherwise. He had admitted to smoking the drug himself, on weekends, something he was sure some of the other boys in the school had known. Adrian had never, however, kept any drugs on the grounds himself. Though never proven, he believed the cannabis had been planted on him by someone else, to draw attention away from their own smoking of the drug. The school had subsequently turned a blind eye to the positive urine samples of the head boy and two of the other heads of house, who were preparing for their Oxbridge entrance, labelling Adrian Willis as a scapegoat, instead.
After his expulsion, Adrian had tried to get back into college, but his drug allegations on his permanent records had tarnished his reputation. No college would take him, and so his chances of becoming a surgeon had been completely destroyed. He had held a grudge against St Christopher’s ever since, blaming every failure in his life on them. Upon the collapse of his marriage (I had always assumed he was single), he had chosen to find a way to have the school closed down and decided that the best way to do this was to have it deemed unsafe.
Having been at the school for close to nine years, Adrian knew of many back doors and hidden entrances that existed, including one that led into the junior school, coming in through an attic window and down through a trapdoor in the library. He had then waited in the younger boys’ toilets until one got up to use them in the middle of the night. It had taken months of waiting, one or two times a week. The man’s patience had been incredible. And on the rare occasion he had been spotted, the boys’ reports had been dismissed by their peers, who simply teased them as having seen the ghost of the Headless Highwayman that was said to stalk the corridors.
Finally getting his victim, Adrian had chloroformed them, carried them out of the school to his car, driven them to an appropriate spot, strangled and then dump them where th
ey might be found. Both the snow and the monks patrolling the ground had made the task of getting his second victim more difficult, and so he had chosen to dump the body in the main grounds of the school itself. He had been caught in the act by Craig Priest, who had been out for a cigarette at the time. Priest had called for help before Willis had caught up with him, slitting his throat when he proved a little more resilient to the chloroform than had been expected. The parents of Adrian’s victims all wept as he had confessed. That he hadn’t sexually abused any of the boys was of little comfort.
Adrian Willis was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Scott Parker on the 11th of September, 1991, and Ted Osmond and Craig Priest on the 21st of February, 1992. He showed little remorse as he was sent down. I felt a twinge of guilt and sadness for the man as he was led from the courtroom. He had been set up, his life ruined by other people, and he had been made to suffer every day because of it. His response had been unnecessary, however. I wondered what I might do if I had been in his shoes.
~ ~ ~
I left St Christopher’s on the 14th of June, 1992 and spent long summer days anxiously awaiting my GCSE results. The grades I needed for BSFC were:
English Literature (A)
English Language (A)
Biology (B)
Physics (B)
Chemistry (B)
Maths (B)
History (B)
Geography (A)
French (B)
Religious Education (A)
General Studies (B)
My actual grades were,
English Literature (A-)
English Language (A)
Biology (A-)
Physics (B+)
Chemistry (C+)
Maths (A+)
History (A)
Geography (A-)
French (B+)
Religious Education (B+)
General Studies (A)
My parents mumbled and thumbed the C grade, saying that I shouldn’t have received anything below a B. I countered by pointing to the seven A grades I had received, after being projected just four. I also reminded them that the college were the ones who would ultimately decide whether or not I was good enough to attend. Which they did, accepting me the very same morning that I applied.
I began attending BSFC in September, 1992, putting the events of the past year far behind me, and making an effort to acclimatise to my newfound freedom, learning to enjoy it, but ensuring that I stayed focused on my education, so I could attend a good university and finally embark on my career in banking. The allure of millions of pounds in salary and bonuses, and the chance to retire at thirty-five was as strong as ever.
I learned to cook for myself when my parents were absent, wash clothes, and keep a good eye on my own personal finances. I took a job at the local supermarket, working on the tills at weekends and sometimes after college, to earn extra pocket money. I also made good on my promise to get my mother a new cat, buying her a kitten for Christmas. We named her Pickles.
THE END
About the Author
Stephen J Sweeney was born in Brighton, UK, in 1977. THE RED ROAD is his fourth full-length novel. He attended Worth School in West Sussex between the ages of ten and eighteen, after which he went on to study environmental biology at Oxford Brookes University. Somehow, he ended up working in IT in London (although he’s worse than useless if you ask him to help fix your computer). You can find him online in various different places -
Twitter - @stephenjsweeney
Website - www.stephenjsweeney.com
Email: [email protected]
If you enjoyed this book, why not try out some of his others -
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Table of Contents
Copyright
Other Books by the author
Author's Note
Michaelmas Term
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Lent Term
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Summer Term
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
About the Author
The Red Road Page 33