Crime in the School

by Catherine Moloney

  CRIME IN

  THE SCHOOL

  (DETECTIVE MARKHAM MYSTERY 2)

  CATHERINE MOLONEY

  Revised edition 2019

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  © Catherine Moloney

  First published as “Blood Will Have Blood.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Catherine Moloney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  We hate typos too but sometimes they slip through. Please send any errors you find to corrections@joffebooks.com

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  14

  15

  The D.I. Gilbert Markham Series

  A Selection of Books You May Enjoy

  Glossary of English Slang for US readers

  Dedication

  To the Three Musketeers,

  T, J and P

  Prologue

  SCHOOLS COULD BE SPOOKY places at the fag end of the day, reflected Jim Snell grumpily as he trundled his caretaker’s trolley along the linoleum-covered ground floor corridor of Hope Academy, its squeaking wheels sounding unnaturally loud in the silence.

  On the other hand, it was a blessed relief to have the place to himself for a bit after hours of ‘yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.’ Those la-di-da teachers with their endless demands simply had no idea, he thought wrathfully. If they had to clean up after the little scrotes, it would be a different story, he muttered, skewering a recalcitrant crisp packet with unnecessary venom.

  Suddenly he froze mid-lunge, distracted by a hollow clang from somewhere deep within the building.

  Though not inclined to flights of imagination, Snell nonetheless experienced a thrill of apprehension.

  Seven p.m. on a Friday night. You never saw any of the teaching staff for dust come the start of the weekend, he mused sourly. And all the Facilities Management team should be long gone. The corridor’s eau de nil walls, illumined by the security lights outside, had an almost aqueous phosphorescence. Save for the steady thrum of a generator, everywhere was hushed and still.

  The caretaker felt an irrational urge to flick the switches and flood all the dark corners with light. Normally he disliked the cacophony of posters which adorned Hope’s corridors, clamouring for attention with their headache-inducing primary colours, but in that instant he craved their familiar over-bright assault on his senses.

  Could there be a prowler on site, he wondered. Or one of the Year 11 lads messing about for a dare? No, not possible. He would have noticed something amiss on his rounds, but there’d been nothing out of place. Uneasily, he recalled stray gossip about the school ‘ghost’. The HR manager had put the mockers on that sharpish, but the memory lingered. Was it possible the place was haunted? Was there some … thing stalking the building?

  The moment passed.

  Snell told himself to get a grip. This wasn’t Friday the thirteenth! Just a leaky, creaky wreck of a sixties building. Likely a mannequin had toppled over in one of the textiles classrooms. Not for the first time neither! Or it could be that wonky grille in the staff elevator – well past its sell-by-date, that was … Any road, he’d had more than enough for one night. A bottle of whisky awaited him in the caretaker’s office, safely hidden away under lock and key in the bottom drawer of his rickety filing cabinet. Time for some well-earned refreshment.

  Dry-mouthed with anticipation, Snell cast a desultory eye over the corridor. Nothing stirred. Yawning, he shambled towards the main foyer and his office beyond.

  But Jim Snell was not alone. Cat’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. A shadowy form glided stealthily from a pool of darkness and moved towards the stairs like a phantom come to take possession of its kingdom. Sighing deeply, as though sucking the essence of the building deep into its lungs, the figure disappeared into the upper regions and was gone.

  The nightmare was about to begin.

  1

  First Impressions

  OLIVIA MULLEN SAT DISCONSOLATELY on one of the hideous olive-green ‘easy chairs’ arranged in rows in Hope Academy’s common room on a dreary late October Thursday evening.

  Clutching a polystyrene cup of rapidly cooling coffee, Olivia watched her colleagues arrive for yet another interminable staff meeting. As the newest member of the English faculty, she had not yet been whole-heartedly welcomed into any of the departmental cliques which colonized the place on such occasions. The onlooker sees most of the game, she reassured herself, as noise levels rose and a buzz of expectation ran around the room.

  Here was dear old Doctor Abernathy, Hope’s moth-eaten head of English, bowing gravely to her with old world courtesy. Close on his heels came ginger-haired, cadaverous Mike Synott, the second in department whose whippet-like intensity offered an amusing contrast to his boss’s absentmindedness. Then followed Val Thorpe and Brenda Wray, two sensible middle-aged women, quietly competent with a Mary Poppins air about them. A trio of grungy looking newly qualified teachers, marked by angst and acne, slunk in behind them. Olivia brightened as her old friend Matthew Sullivan, lanky and beanpole-like as ever, sat down beside her wearing his usual expression of ironic detachment.

  ‘What will the dear leader have in store for us tonight, I wonder,’ murmured Sullivan mischievously.

  ‘Raising attainment in boys, isn’t it?’ Harry Mountfield, the rumpled head of religious studies, who had squeezed in next to them, mimed cutting his throat.

  ‘Bit of an oxymoron that,’ drawled Sullivan irreverently, eliciting reproachful frowns from Val and Brenda.

  Olivia smothered a grin, watching with amusement as Harry proceeded to make himself comfortable. With hayseed hair sticking up in all directions and footballer’s thighs akimbo in uninhibited ‘manspreader’ mode, he was the perfect foil to Sullivan’s saturnine elegance. The two men were good friends, generating an air of complicity for which the only word was ‘cahoots’. Harry winked at her, and Olivia felt a rush of pleasure at the intimacy, the more so as it elicited a flurry of harrumphing and eyebrow raising from Val and Brenda.

  A sudden commotion at the door heralded the arrival of Hope’s headmaster, James Palmer – ‘call me JP’. Short, balding and perma-tanned, with Eric Morecambe specs, he struck Olivia as curiously charisma-free, an impression reinforced by his squeaky voice and spermatozoon-like physique. ‘But don’t be fooled,’ Sullivan had warned her. ‘The man could give Machiavelli a run for his money. He’d stab you in the back as soon as look at you.’

  Bobbing obsequiously in JP’s wake came the human resources manager and headmaster’s PA: Tracey Roach, or ‘Cockroach’ as she was more commonly known, and Audrey Burke (to rhyme with Berk). Strange, mused Olivia, how a wispy little woman like the Cockroach could wield so much influence. Drearily clad in hues of oatmeal and beige, with an unthreatening grey bob, breathless voice and ingenuous limpid gaze, she was more li
ke a down-at-heel librarian than the power behind JP’s throne. Behind the apparently harmless exterior, however, there lurked an arch snoop and world-class sycophant. Certainly, to hear her greasing up to JP was enough to curdle the milk! As for Audrey Burke, her honest, short-sighted eyes shone adoringly at the headmaster from behind bifocals as big as gig-lamps. It was beyond Olivia’s comprehension that the woman could not discern what an awful phoney Palmer was. Love was blind and deaf in her case!

  JP took his place behind a lectern, the Cockroach and Audrey taking their seats in the front row after having conducted a beady-eyed inventory of the room which was now almost full. Any absentees were sure to be slated for a reprimand before the day was very much older.

  ‘Our focus this term is on kinaesthetic learning and peer feedback, with a view to helping boys take ownership of their own learning. The Change team will also be developing appropriate intervention strategies for our more vulnerable learners …’

  Same old, same old, Olivia thought glumly, tuning out and contemplating her fellow sufferers. Judging from what sounded like the occasional stifled groan, some of the audience shared her feeling about JP’s rhetoric. The poor swots on the front row had it worst of all – recoiling before the heady blast of Paco Rabane, Fisherman’s Friend and Capstan Full Strength!

  By ironic contrast with the apathy of its captive staff cohort, the common room sported an array of vibrant Day-Glo banners exhorting staff in quasi-religious inspirational terms, Our Best Always, Everywhere! being the most egregious example of the prevailing educational Esperanto. Survival of the fittest more like!

  God, it’s an ugly building! Olivia’s eyes wandered to the academy’s rear courtyard, visible through the floor to ceiling window at the far end of the common room. The modular cinder blocks which enclosed the courtyard on three sides looked even grimmer than usual in the failing light. Matthew and Harry called Hope ‘The Bunker’, an entirely apt designation for the three-storey cement building situated a little way outside Bromgrove’s town centre, next to one of the two municipal cemeteries. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

  For the thousandth time, she asked herself what she was doing back teaching English at Hope Academy. Gilbert (‘Gil’) Markham, her detective inspector boyfriend, had tried to dissuade her from returning to teaching after last year’s ordeal at St Mary’s Choir School, when she had become involved in a triple murder case. She wasn’t sure she fully understood her own motivation. One thing she knew for certain, though. The longer she postponed getting back in the saddle, the harder it would be to rebuild her teaching career. And she still got a buzz from communicating her passion for literature, so it felt too early to pack it all in.

  A sharp dig in the ribs from Matthew roused Olivia from her reverie. Uncomfortably, she became aware that Val was fixing her with a hard stare. She did her best to adopt an air of suitably alert interest. Judging from Val’s po-faced attitude, her attempt fell woefully short of the mark. It was so unfair, she reflected. Only ten minutes or so gone and Harry appeared to be falling into a gentle doze without attracting any similar opprobrium. He’d be snoring his head off in a minute!

  At that moment, there was a minor kerfuffle as JP’s two deputy heads arrived.

  ‘A thousand apologies, JP. A deputy’s work is never done!’ brayed Helen ‘Killer’ Kavanagh (Deputy Head, Curriculum) wearing the expression of abject hero-worship she always adopted on such occasions. Slab-faced and wall-eyed, sporting an unflattering pudding bowl haircut and boxy suit, she resembled nothing so much as a female Khrushchev. The only incongruous touch was her footwear – kittenish ankle-strap stilettos. Of course, it wasn’t her taste in shoes which had earned her the nickname ‘Killer’, though the blood-red stilettos were an apt metaphor for her ruthless ambition.

  She wants power so badly you can smell it, thought Olivia as she watched Kavanagh plonk herself down on the front row with all the grace of a hippo on safari.

  Dave Uttley (Deputy Head, Pastoral), embarrassed to be the focus of so many eyes, sat down next to Kavanagh with a mumbled apology and bashful duck of the head. How on earth had Uttley ever made it onto the Senior Leadership team, Olivia wondered. He might as well have had Kick Me tattooed across his forehead. The assertive Vinny Jones ‘high ’n’ tight’ haircut was fatally undermined by a timid goatee and his lips moved continuously, as though he was praying – a not unreasonable assumption given his total eclipse by Kavanagh. And OMG, could that possibly be scrambled egg on his tie? Emphatically not a look which proclaimed him to be a Master of the Pedagogic Universe!

  The common room felt stiflingly hot and stuffy. A wave of exhaustion washed over Olivia. At times like this, she felt that the entire education system, and Hope Academy in particular, was a sodding prophylactic against catching any genuine enthusiasm for literature, culture, or anything else for that matter. The NQTs were yawning and surreptitiously checking the hands of the large wall clock, trying to calculate when their ordeal would end.

  ‘Splendid to hear how colleagues in all faculties are building a climate of mutual respect, trust and co-operation.’

  Kavanagh was now on her feet, oozing unctuously. No cliché left unturned. Time to zone out once again.

  Olivia let her mind drift. Having only recently returned to the chalk face, it was unlikely that she would be put on the spot …

  Ah, here was another late arrival. But this one sauntered in unapologetically without a care in the world, lounging with languid grace against the wall next to the door.

  Ashley ‘Dreamboat’ Dean. Assistant Head.

  The sobriquet was fully justified, Olivia thought as she scrutinized Dean from beneath demurely lowered eyelids. He looked more like David Beckham than ever, bespoke pinstripe suit erotically enhancing rather than concealing a gloriously taut physique – broad shoulders, snake hips, muscular legs. Taken in conjunction with piercing blue eyes, chiselled cheekbones, pouty mouth and wavy blond mane (plus tasteful five o’clock shadow), it was little wonder that he had left a trail of broken hearts in his wake.

  The staff grapevine buzzed with speculation that Palmer ‘had a thing for him’. How else to account for Dean’s meteoric rise from groundsman to the dizzy heights of senior leadership? It was unprecedented and had given rise to much muttering in the ranks. Not so much as a GCSE to his name and yet responsible for everything from facilities management to staff appraisal! He had to have slept his way to the top!

  Little wonder that Jim Snell was glowering sullenly in the corner. Olivia couldn’t imagine that he had ever lit an erotic fuse. Contemplating the caretaker’s wizened figure, she felt as though all the light had been sucked out of him and transferred to his glowing former subordinate. If looks could kill, then she wouldn’t give much for the Dreamboat’s chances!

  Dean invariably appeared oblivious of the Year 10 and 11 Lolitas who lurked in the corridor outside his office in the hope of catching his eye, much to the scowling resentment of their pimply boyfriends. When conversing with the headmaster, he never yielded place to Dave Uttley, despite the weedy deputy head’s desperate hemming and hawing as he waited in line. No, Ashley Dean appeared to have eyes only for Palmer, whose physiognomy seemed lit from within, his features irradiated by a glow of pure delight. As though the two of them existed in a magic circle of intimacy from which interlopers were excluded. When Olivia observed them engrossed in their tête-à-tête, the sight made her scalp prickle with an odd sensation of danger. Averting her eyes, she left them to it.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t keep the rictus smile nailed to her face for a single moment longer, Olivia heard the magic words ‘And finally’. Providing some moron didn’t ruin things by responding to JP’s ‘Any questions?’ they were home and dry!

  For once she was in luck! Even the toadies appeared bludgeoned into silence.

  There was a desperate stampede for the door.

  ‘You joining us down the pub, Liv?’ This was Harry Mountfield, back in the land of the living and happil
y anticipating his aesthetic first pint.

  ‘Not tonight, I’m bushed,’ she answered truthfully.

  As she reached the exit, some impulse made Olivia turn around.

  JP and Ashley Dean stood side by side, their heads close together. The look of naked adoration on Palmer’s face made her uneasy.

  Trouble, she said to herself and slipped away.

  2

  Olivia

  HOME, SIGHED OLIVIA AS she staggered across the threshold of number 56, ‘The Sweepstakes’, a complex of upmarket apartments at the far end of Bromgrove Park, off Bromgrove Avenue.

  Architecturally, the block with its stark cubist lines was something of an anomaly in that part of town, otherwise dominated by down-at-heel Victorian terraces, but Olivia loved the corner flat she shared with Gilbert Markham on the third floor. However toxic her working day, she never failed to be soothed by its tranquil ambience. In an instant, she sloughed off all the small-mindedness, backbiting and petty treacheries of life at Hope Academy. Like a snake shedding its skin, she thought ruefully.

  ‘In here, Liv!’

  Dumping her bulging briefcase and nimbly side-stepping the islands of books which dotted the carpet and almost every visible surface, Olivia headed for her boyfriend’s study.

  Markham’s sanctum was almost monastic in its lack of clutter. She guessed that the clinical austerity was an antidote to the gruesome effluvia which were his constant companions. No case files, no crime scene photographs were visible, only a police-issue laptop. But Olivia knew that this room, with its view of Bromgrove North Municipal Cemetery, was where her gentle, sensitive lover communed with those whom he had been unable to save, keeping their memory evergreen long after the world had forgotten them and moved on. A striking mixture of hard-bitten worldliness and romantic idealism, it was only with Olivia that Markham ever fully let down his guard.