The Pinocchio Brief

by Silver Abi

  Mr Bailey nodded thoughtfully, amused that Judith could flit so seamlessly from the commonplace to business. He sat down and took a gulp of steaming tea.

  “That’s fine. Mr Glover told me you’d be coming over. But I’ve already given a statement to the police.” Judith cupped her hands around her mug and appeared to inhale her tea and Constance wondered at this sudden informality and effusiveness. What on earth was Judith up to now?

  “Mm. Yes,” Judith said, this time eschewing her notebook. “A very clear statement, if I may say. But I wanted to understand a bit more of the detail. Mrs Taylor tells us that when she screamed, you came running. Is that right?”

  “Pretty much. I’d been under a lot of pressure to have the pitch perfect that day, so I’d been working on it, on and off, for about two weeks. The game began and I watched a bit but just before half time I suddenly remembered I’d left one of the rollers out. I didn’t want the boys playing on it, so I took it back over to the shed, behind Mr Davis’ rooms.”

  Judith, her hands still wrapped around her scalding beverage, drew her knees up childishly.

  “And what happened then?” she enquired with exaggerated interest. Mr Bailey leaned forward in response, turning his head conspiratorially from one avid listener to the other. He placed his tea down on the table top and raised his hands to gesture as he spoke.

  “I unlocked the shed, pushed the roller inside and I was just about to lock up again when I heard Mrs Taylor screaming. I turned around and she was running out of Mr Davis’ rooms and she was screaming, like I said, and waving her hands.”

  “Did she speak to you?”

  “She said I must go and get Mr Glover as Mr Davis was hurt.”

  “Are you sure she said ‘hurt’ and not ‘dead’?” Constance broke in. Mr Bailey drew his lips together in a sudden but savage snarl.

  “Do you think I’m stupid or something?” he retorted angrily. “I know I’m only the groundsman and I may not have a degree in English, but I know the difference between hurt and dead. Dead means not coming back.”

  Constance recoiled and stared down at the table. Judith reached out her hand and with uncharacteristic bonhomie patted Mr Bailey on the forearm.

  “Mr Bailey. I have worked with Constance for a long time and I can assure you she meant no disrespect to you. It is simply that not everyone has as good recall as you evidently do and we need to be certain of the key facts. You understand that, I’m sure.”

  Mr Bailey continued to pout and then picked up the plate of biscuits. In a gesture of reconciliation, he thrust it towards Constance, who accepted one meekly and nibbled on a corner. Judith grabbed a second from across the table and munched away.

  “Let’s continue, shall we?” Judith said. “We were at the point where Mrs Taylor came running out of Mr Davis’ rooms, waving her hands, telling you he had been hurt and requesting you to fetch Mr Glover. What did you do then?”

  “Well, I said he wouldn’t want to come because of the match. But she said it was serious and I must fetch Mr Glover now, so I said OK and I set off to find him.”

  “Did you not think to go inside and see how Mr Davis was first?”

  “No. I just did as she asked. I suppose I thought she would manage or call a doctor or ambulance if she needed. And I didn’t realise how bad it was. Like I said, she didn’t say he was dead or anything, or even stabbed.”

  “Where did you find Mr Glover?”

  “In his seat at the rugby, which was a couple of rows back from the pitch, with the head of the other school. He didn’t really want to leave; there were only 15 minutes or so to go and it was close, Richmond was in the lead, but I told him Mrs Taylor was screaming and said he had to come, so he did.”

  “How long do you think you were gone?”

  “It took me a good five minutes to walk each way, though I was hurrying, and finding Mr Glover; probably around 15 minutes or thereabouts to get there and back. And when we got back there was already a policeman inside. He had been passing in his car, Mrs Taylor told me later.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “Well, I went in, didn’t I? I wanted to see if I could help.”

  “And Mr Glover?”

  “Not him. He stayed outside and kept checking his watch. I think he was more interested in going back to the game.”

  “What did you see when you went inside?”

  “I saw your boy, sitting in a chair with blood on his hands and shirt. He was staring at his hands and sitting very still. Lorraine, Mrs Taylor, was standing by the door, sort of holding on to it. I had to push past her to get in and a policeman was in the kitchen standing over the body.”

  “Did you go into the kitchen?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to know what’d happened, what all the fuss was about, didn’t I?”

  “What precisely did you do?”

  Mr Bailey shoved his half empty mug to the centre of the table.

  “I got a big shock, that’s what I did.”

  Judith smiled with feigned politeness. She preferred witnesses who didn’t make jokes. Mr Bailey averted his eyes and instead examined Constance, her long, elegant fingers tapping away rhythmically; he coughed and moistened his lips.

  “I pushed the door of the kitchen, and the policeman was just staring at Mr Davis. And Mr Davis was lying on his back with a knife in his chest. He was obviously dead; his eyes were all cold and his skin was a bluey colour.”

  “Then what did you do?” Judith sat back and took another slurp of her tea.

  “Well, the policeman told me I must leave so as ‘not to contaminate the site’. Those were his exact words.” He paused, evidently pleased that he had been able to recall the words correctly. In fact, he had written them down on a piece of paper when he had returned to his house, after the police had gone and the furore had abated, so that he could make sure he was word-perfect when he told the story later in the local pub.

  “So I went back out into the living room and I helped Mrs Taylor out and then I told Mr Glover what’d happened.”

  “Thank you.” Judith paused and fired a glance at Constance, who raised her eyes obediently but remained quiet.

  “Is there anything you saw that day that would help us find the killer?” Judith asked quietly.

  “You don’t think it was your boy then, Maynard?” Mr Bailey retrieved his mug, his hand trembling slightly as he drew it across the table top.

  “No, we don’t, and that’s why we’re defending him. Anything you might have seen before, that might shed some...that might be relevant. Anything, however insignificant?”

  Mr Bailey shook his head.

  “I was really concentrating on the pitch, getting it ready. Mr Glover’d told me how important it was. I hardly noticed anything else for days. But I’ll think hard and let you know if there’s anything comes to me.”

  ***

  JUDITH AND Constance sat side by side on row B of the seating which had been installed for the inter-schools’ rugby final. It should have been removed by now, but Mr Davis’ murder had led to the postponement of most administrative tasks.

  The scoreboard still read “28–16” and a few of the trampled programmes containing the names of the players remained behind, mud-stained and soggy. Judith picked one up and flicked through the pages, abandoning it when it began to disintegrate in her hands.

  “Sorry,” Constance ventured after a few minutes of silence.

  “You weren’t to know he had such a chip on his shoulder about not being educated. He’s probably had so much lip from the boys that anything would have tipped him over. Don’t let it put you off.” Judith allowed her shoulder to bounce gently against Constance and the latter responded with a light shove back.

  “Thanks, Judith. Do you think he’s lonely without his wife?”

  “Maybe. Who knows? It does mean there’s no one watching him, though. He has free rein around the grounds and a temper, as we saw. And he has a
dmitted being outside Davis’ rooms at around the time he was killed.”

  “And I thought you liked him?”

  “Goodness, what makes you think that?”

  “All that ‘ooh what a lovely cup of tea’ business.”

  Judith laughed at Constance’s effort to mimic her. “I do that lots, you’ll see. And it was partly to watch him at work.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Making the tea. He’s left-handed. He held the pot in his left hand when he poured, and the biscuits too. Mrs Taylor and Mr Glover are right-handed. Not much to go on, but a start I suppose. And I wanted him to like me but I’m not convinced I succeeded. He’s very much his own man, is Mr Bailey.”

  Constance stared out across the pitch. At the far end, they could see Mr Bailey leaving his house and taking the path towards school, walking purposefully, his arms swinging pendulum-like as he went.

  “Should we go back and see him again, do you think? If you think he’s really a suspect?” she asked.

  “Gosh, you are brave after the kicking you received first time around!”

  Constance smiled for the first time since her telling off.

  “No, not at the moment,” Judith advised. “Let’s see what our last witness of the day has to say for himself first.”

  “And then there’s Raymond, of course,” Constance replied, more chirpily than before. “He might have something to tell us.”

  “Yes, I suppose he just might.”

  11

  I AM part way through level three. Eyes and mouth are both now my slaves. When I call, they have no option but to come running, well, not actually running – of course they can’t – but they have to do what I want.

  Now for the muscles of the rest of the face. I don’t really need to know all their names but it helps me to concentrate. And then I can call to them one by one inside my head.

  “Nasalis”, that’s an easy one. You can guess where those muscles are.

  “Risorius”. Maybe if you are a linguist you’ll get that one? No? Well it’s in the cheek and it helps you smile.

  “Corrugator supercilii”? You’ll never guess that one. You give in? It’s underneath the eyebrow.

  And “mentalis”? In the chin.

  I have no option but to get acquainted with all of these and more and train them to obey. It’s a shame I can’t use old-fashioned methods, like Pavlov’s dog. Then all I would need is a bell and I’d be there. Did you know that at the beginning all he, Pavlov, was trying to do was measure how much saliva dogs made when you gave them food? How useless is that? I mean, I know I’ve said that dogs smell a lot, like those ones at the orthoptist, but anyone with half a brain can see that if you keep giving them food they’ll start to anticipate it.

  Anyway, I can’t train myself like that. But a mirror would really help. I keep asking to go to the bathroom but it’s not enough, especially when one of them comes with me. I need a mirror or, after all my efforts, I may ultimately fail. That would be a disaster. “For want of a nail…”

  12

  “MR SIMPSON, you are head of sports?” Judith’s voice had lost some of the resonance and verve of the earlier interviews. She was tired from the last 24 hours. In the past, she would have spent a day preparing for each witness and seen them separately on different occasions. But Constance had warned her that a swathe of cost-cutting in the system had left the pre-trial process radically truncated. They might be in court within a matter of weeks and decisions on appropriate defence witnesses would need to be made over the next few days.

  They had caught Mr Simpson in the gym, having sent him a hurried missive 20 minutes earlier via Mrs Taylor. Her fretful expression and trembling lip, when she had been asked to inform Mr Simpson of their presence, had forewarned them of a potentially fiery disposition. In the intervening period both women had retired to the ladies’ –a damp, soulless and neglected cubicle situated under the stairs – and reapplied their makeup, neither articulating what they hoped to achieve by this.

  Mr Simpson was wearing a spotless white T-shirt and grey joggers and, as he turned his head towards her, Judith noted with distaste the width of his neck and the tightness of his clothing around his over-inflated upper body.

  “Yeah. But, if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have a lesson to organise so you’d better make it quick.”

  He spoke with a London twang and an air of indifference as he turned away and busied himself with a pile of gym mats, arranging them at intervals around the room. Judith waited for him to pause in his preparation but he simply continued until all the mats were distributed. She took a step towards him and raised one hand in his direction; he ignored the gesture, turned around and marched into a nearby walk-in cupboard, returning with a variety of knotted ropes, which he began to place slowly and deliberately on each mat.

  Judith and Constance exchanged exasperated glances.

  “On the day Mr Davis died, you were hosting the inter-schools’ rugby championship final against Hawtrees?” Judith decided to plough on, even though Mr Simpson’s inattentiveness was irritating in the extreme.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” This time he did not even turn his head in her direction as he spoke.

  “And Richmond won the game 28–16?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was a close game?”

  The gym teacher twisted around and, for the first time, Judith felt the iciness of his gaze. He flung the last remaining rope across the gym into the far corner, where it landed with a clatter, and strode towards her and Constance, a vein in his ample neck pulsing repeatedly.

  “Not really,” he replied.

  “But a better result than last year,” Judith replied, half questioning.

  Mr Simpson stopped, threw his head back and laughed out loud. Then he clapped his hands together slowly three times.

  “Well done, Miss...” He held up his index finger and rotated it in a clockwise direction.

  “Burton. It’s Burton,” Judith cooed coolly.

  “Well done Miss Burton.” He pirouetted through 360 degrees, landing heavily on two feet before Constance. Then, turning his back on both of them, he pointed straight ahead.

  “OK. You found my weak spot. I am proud of my track record. Let’s sit a few minutes in my luxurious ‘head of sports’ office and see if we can knock this on the head, shall we?”

  The two women followed him hurriedly into a small and dismal room with a tiny desk and one chair. Mr Simpson immediately sat down, leaning back heavily against the wall, leaving them both to stand. Judith began to formulate her question sequence in her head, but Mr Simpson, released temporarily from the rigours of preparing for the next session, and having been challenged over the margin of his latest triumph, was garrulous in the extreme.

  “Last year we lost. You’re right. We had some bad luck. We were the better side then, too. More disciplined, fitter, more creative. This year it all paid off. Sure, it was close at the end of the first half but that was tactics. I asked the boys to do things so we could draw the opposition out. So we knew where to attack and where to press. Result? We had a storming second half. We had two tries disallowed but there was no reason to complain, given we won.”

  “And the man of the match was one Andrew Partram?”

  “Yeah. He was on fire that day; I don’t know what happened to him. He’d been working out a lot I suppose, he’d bulked up a fair bit so I expected something good. And before the match there was a rumour that Saracens were sending some scouts, so maybe that’s what spurred him on. They never showed up though. He was a bit slow to start; first half so-so, but second half, transformed, totally focussed, never stood still.” Mr Simpson paused and crossed his legs before continuing. “And it wasn’t just him; it’s often the case that when one boy plays better it lifts the rest of the team. I got the best performances I’d ever seen from Evans and Drake too.”

  He shook his head from side to side in silent admiration.

  “Quite. So a wonderful testament t
o your coaching skills.”

  “Yeah. I like to think so.” Mr Simpson picked up a piece of paper and began to fold it in half and half again. Judith swallowed. Her flattery was having little impact on this man of action. She glanced up at the wall clock and pressed on.

  “Do you know Raymond Maynard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he any good at rugby?”

  “No.”

  “At any sport?”

  “Not any I’ve seen. Maybe tiddlywinks. Ha!”

  “Do you get on well with him?”

  “What kind of a question is that? I don’t hold tea parties, Miss Burton. I teach boys how to play competitive sport.”

  “Did you ever see other boys bullying him?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t recall an incident when he was floored in a hockey game by some other boys, when he was kicked in between his legs?”

  Mr Simpson coloured and he slumped onto the desk. He raised one enormous hand to his mouth and nibbled on his thumb nail.

  “If you’re trying to run some kind of argument that I’ve done something wrong here, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Sure, I saw what happened and it wasn’t nice. But if a teacher intervenes then the boy never gets to stick up for himself and, in my experience, it gets worse. That time, he fought back. And the other boys would’ve thought twice about repeating what they did.”

  “I see. I’m not sure the NSPCC would necessarily agree with your psychology but that’s of no importance. How did you get on with Mr Davis?”

  “Not great, now you’re asking. Davis and I saw the world through different glasses. He was only interested in his subjects and we had a disagreement when he fixed detention at the same time as rugby practice. I challenged him about it, told him to punish the boys in a different way, not take away their sport. Hey, you’re not suggesting I had anything to do with this? I mean, I was standing on the touchline for the entire match and there’s a video to prove it.”

  “Oh, gosh, a video. Would I be able to see it?” Judith’s eyes were suddenly alive with tiny, flickering beams of light, the corners of her lips drawn up in a wry smile.