by Paul Read
‘I’ll take it back an hour,’ the policeman stated, and stabbed at the buttons on the front of what looked like a sleek, black digibox. They watched the sped-up footage of the corridor, the counter in the top right corner spinning through the minutes until a jerkily-walking figure holding an umbrella approached the classroom door. A Chaplin version of Patrick, arriving for work.
‘This is after it happened,’ Patrick said, ‘but tick it on a bit. We’ll see who removed the mess.’
PC Thomas kept fast-forwarding. A few blurs passed the door. Cleaning staff. Colleagues. But no one entered.
Then, ten minutes later, someone flapped open the door and went inside.
‘Stop.’
PC Thomas reeled back and paused it on a female figure in school uniform. He zoomed into her with a deftness that gave away the fact he probably did such things quite often.
Patrick scratched his cheek. He hadn’t been intentionally growing a beard. ‘So that’s who cleaned it up. Let’s go back again and find who did it in the first place.’
PC Thomas clicked and scrolled. ‘You know her?’
Jenna and Patrick sat in Mr Hutchinson’s office. Ordinarily, it was a table dynamic reserved for servant and master – indeed, Patrick had previously always been the only other person in the room, sitting directly opposite his boss – so it was odd for Patrick to be squeezed in on the end, as though he was neither on the headteacher’s side, nor his pupil’s. The room was barely furnished, save for a desk laden with distracting executive playthings, including a six-inch pool table and a silver Newton’s cradle. Outside, the kids shrieked their way to registration. Patrick’s form were in morning assembly without him, so God only knows what they were getting up to.
‘You’re covering for Denis. Why?’ Mr Hutchinson asked, softly.
Jenna examined her shoes.
‘Come on, Jenna,’ the head persevered. ‘We know it was you who cleaned it up. And we saw you and Denis go in early this morning. So you can stop pretending.’
They’d have had Denis in there with them, except the boy had obviously decided it was too near the end of term to bother with such trifling matters as education. Jenna continued to sit in silence, but it was clear from her worming fingers and sideways anger that she wasn’t far from breaking.
It was Patrick’s turn. ‘Did he threaten you? You can tell us.’
She span and looked at him. He realised, now, that it was the first time she’d done so.
‘I did it,’ she said.
‘You did it?’ Patrick said it like a laugh.
‘Yes,’ she looked back down. Patrick and the head shared a look. The Art teacher was enjoying this, playing the part of PC Thomas. Clearly, he’d missed his detective calling.
Were Jenna and Denis romantically involved? Patrick doubted it, if her expression had been anything to go by when the boy had touched her leg. So what was this all about? Did he really scare her this much?
Patrick dropped his voice, moved slightly closer. ‘Why are you covering for him, Jenna? Tell me.’ It was easy, natural. The art of teaching was all an act anyway, and so too was this fawning patter he’d seen in a thousand fictional good-cop-bad-cop dynamics.
She rounded on him again. Just for a moment, he saw the same calculating eyes he’d seen in her mother. They drilled at the surface of him, then came to a decision. ‘I told you. I did it. You saw my mum last night, didn’t you? I know you did. You rang the house, and then the next minute she’s off out, comes back all smiley and singing those shit songs from, like, ages ago.’
Mr Hutchinson was looking at him with Child Protection Issue eyes. The room was silent as Patrick fell back in his seat and fumbled for something to say.
Finally, he spoke. ‘You know, some of those songs were actually…’
‘Right. Off you go, Jenna,’ Mr Hutchinson instructed.
She didn’t need to be told twice.
Mr Hutchinson’s face was something impenetrable and terrifying. ‘Well, there’s your answer,’ he said, pulling back one of the small orbs of the Newton’s cradle and clacking it against its neighbour. The opposite ball sprang out, and so it continued. Click. Click. Click.
Patrick looked towards his headteacher and tried a noncommittal smile.
To his great surprise, Mr Hutchinson reciprocated the expression. ‘You old dog, Mr Owen…’
The gang waited at the bus stop, Denis hovering at the vanguard, kicking stones and toking what was probably a transcendentally potent spliff. He wore his hoodie up, but Patrick was sure it was him from the rolling, simian bop of his aimless walk. What were they achieving there? If you were going to bunk school, why hang out just outside its gates?
He pulled back from the window in his empty classroom. A ghostly reflection behind his own caused him to jump.
‘Bloody hell, Charlotte. You startled me.’
‘Sorry. I just needed to use the kiln.’ She waded through with some atrocious African masks under her arms. ‘The meeting overran, as usual. Didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘I was just… you know, lost in thought.’
‘Actually, I’m glad you’re still here. I don’t like coming in your room on my own. And the school’s almost deserted now. The snow’s sending everyone packing.’
He didn’t need to say anything. If he just kept quiet she would prattle on by herself.
‘It’s a spooky room,’ she continued. ‘Don’t you think? There’s something… odd here. Maybe it’s because it’s the furthest from the front doors, I don’t know. The lights – they just can’t fix them, can they? And some of those pictures…’ She indicated the back wall, where charcoal portraits created by the Year Eights were pinned. ‘Their eyes seem to follow me.’
Pointlessly, as if her theory were remotely plausible, he turned to look at them.
‘I sometimes think that when I’m not looking, they change position, or swap places. Do I sound mad?’
‘You sound like a fucking idiot.’ He said it behind a laugh and the dislike washed straight over her.
‘Terrible about that Matthew boy…’ she said.
He looked back out the window. School was long over. What in hell’s name were the gang still doing here? Who were they waiting for? He looked at his desk, the streaks of emulsion clearly visible. He didn’t believe Jenna would have responded like that, but then again, how many of his pupils could he honestly say he truly knew? No, it was Denis’ caper. It was his death threat. Jenna had merely accompanied him. He stepped back when Denis looked up and a blade of ice pricked his spine.
‘I don’t suppose you were planning to leave soon, were you?’ he asked.
‘Soon as I’ve done this.’ She placed the clay pieces in the kiln and swung the heavy door closed.
‘Could I grab a lift?’
He watched her expression, but to his relief it darkened only a little. Patrick had always assumed she disliked him as much as he disliked her, but she’d probably never really acknowledged to herself that she didn’t like him; no doubt, if she stopped to think about it, it would have seemed obvious, but because she so rarely thought about him it had never occurred to her. The extension of a friendly normality – him asking jovially for a lift – was so unheard of it immediately exposed the issue.
‘Um. Yeah, if you like.’ She was confused, or annoyed, or pleased. It was hard to tell. An excuse hadn’t presented itself to her straight away and now it was too late. She didn’t dare ask him why he wanted a lift home from her, after all these years, and the obvious bewilderment etched into her nervous smile gave him a small sense of satisfaction.
The feeling left him when he dared look back out the window.
The snow was trying hard to settle, but the wisps dissolved harmlessly into the car park tarmac. Most of the staff had gone, perhaps expecting a proper deluge, and Mr Hutchinson’s office was dark. It had always irked Patrick that his office had a view of the car park, as though to keep an eye on the comings and goings of his staff.
Straightaway, it was obvious she had a flat rear tyre.
‘Shit.’ She ran to her Octavia as though it were a dying pet. The tyre was completely deflated, the wheel trim touching the ground.
‘Do you know how to change one?’ she asked him.
‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Do you have a jack?’
‘Check the boot.’
Patrick examined the tyre. There was a long slash in the sidewall and it had deflated almost to putty. ‘It’s been stabbed,’ Patrick stated.
‘The little fuckers.’
Jack in hand, Patrick got to work.
‘Where did you learn to do this?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Just picked it up,’ he said, slackening the wheel nuts. When The Forsaken had been on the road, their camper frequently required similar TLC.
More than a few times, staff members swung past on their way home, but he waved away their offers of help. The longer it took, the better. He lifted the damaged wheel off the hub and stowed it in the boot in place of the new one, which he hoisted up into position only to find the bolts didn’t align.
‘What the…? Where’s this wheel come from?’
‘It’s always been in the back,’ she explained helpfully.
‘It’s from an entirely different car.’
‘Why?’
‘You tell me.’
She removed her mobile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll call the AA. You don’t need to wait. They’ll get me home.’
‘I’ll take the bus.’ Patrick looked around him. There was another route home, which avoided going anywhere near the front of the school, but he’d have to go all the way round the estate and it would look odd if he set off in that direction. Still, an odd look was preferable to a prospective stabbing.
She seemed to sense his sudden discomfort. ‘Why did you want me to drive you home anyway? I mean, we live in entirely different parts of the borough. I don’t mind, I just wondered.’
‘Oh. My bus route was diverted.’
‘But you just said…’
‘A different bus. I’ll get a different bus.’
‘Patrick? Are you okay?’
She looked at him as though suddenly extremely suspicious. Did she think he’d started fancying her? He felt the grimace crack across his numbing face.
‘You know what?’ he said, breathing into cupped hands to warm them. ‘The AA’ll be here in no time. See you tomorrow.’
Patrick ambled through the canteen and out through reception. It was deserted. He knew there were probably staff members still dotted about the building, in classrooms and offices, but he saw what Charlotte meant – it was a foreboding, haunted old place, as only institutional buildings can be. He remembered Ana’s three-month neonatal scan at the hospital had been on a Saturday and the empty corridors and darkened exits seemed inherently unnerving.
He closed his mind to his previous life, and walked out through the scanners.
The playground was shadowed and empty, light pooling under the humming lamps. Patrick looked immediately to the empty bus stop outside, then trod slowly as the estate through which he’d have to walk lurked menacingly to his right.
The relief he felt, to be leaving work, the immediacy of the holiday, the empty bus stop, inspired a joy that manifested itself in a brief snatch of tune.
This happened from time to time, but less and less. It was in G, the soporific hum of his old tour bus engine, like most of his compositions. He began humming it as he turned out of the gate. The music chimed in his head, repeating. G to A. A to D. D to E minor. E minor to G. And repeat.
Lyrics came, almost unbidden:
I walked alone
The moon followed me
Home
Amongst the evergreens
He couldn’t shake the tune and replayed it, the same four bars, over and over. There were no evergreens round here of course, only the rotting high rises of Union City, but he liked the pristine lie of it, the antidote in his melody. He gave the song a name: ‘Danny’s Tune’. It wouldn’t find its way into any album, or even the ears of another, but he had just made it personal.
He’d been saving. He’d pay for Danny to come over after Christmas. Of course, he’d have to pay for Ana too. To hell with the lawyer’s fees.
He whistled his tune as he approached the corner shop. Its windows were shattered to confetti, the aisles strewn with produce, hoardings and overturned standees. A Pakistani woman in her forties was solemnly dabbing a broom at debris while her irate husband, his face slapped into one of abject defeat, attempted to right the destruction. The grammatically abstract adverts – ‘3 for an £1’, ‘are apple’s our 40p a Kg’ – appeared almost heartbreakingly childish.
Patrick heard the man talking to his wife, though he could understand nothing of the language except a token English word: ‘Gangs’.
Patrick traipsed on, faster now, the dual carriageway lurking behind the estate to his left, tiny orange suns of cigarettes burning in the dark amongst a shanty town of dogs and muggers. He fancied he could hear the stanchions creak as lorries strained their way overhead, yet ‘Danny’s Tune’ refused to be drowned out as he entered the alleyway which would lead him into the comparative safety of the main street.
Patrick stopped whistling.
The gang waited ahead. Though they looked like they could have been in their twenties, Patrick knew otherwise. He slowed, but they’d seen him.
One had a crutch, yet seemed perfectly capable of walking properly and all six wore hoods. Two pulled bandanas up over their faces to hide their identities, and it was this that told Patrick they knew who he was. But there was only one boy he definitely recognised.
‘Owen!’ Denis shouted, delighted, like the surname itself was a joke. Perhaps it was. ‘What you doing mincing around here this time of night?’
He swaggered towards him as Patrick stood motionless. Outside of the school corridors, he had no propulsion, no power. The gang behind the boy smirked, shadowed. Patrick took a look around him but saw only darkness.
Patrick knew his own cowardice had doomed him. Asking Charlotte for a lift home, changing her fucking tyre while potential saviours left around them, had only pushed his departure further back into the night. This fate was of his making.
‘Denis,’ he grunted with grim acceptance. ‘Good evening.’
There were titters. He didn’t have a particularly posh voice but it sure sounded educated right now.
Denis looked behind him, milked the humour from his crew, then came forward, sluggishly but with intent, as though lining up a pool shot.
‘Mr Owen,’ and then, facetiously, ‘Sir. I’ve got something for you.’ It was the most sinister sentence Patrick had ever heard in his life.
‘Have you?’ Patrick stood his ground. Let him come. Under the sodium dark, Denis’ face was like ceramic. Only his brow was knotted and sharp with a frown. Let him come.
‘Yeah,’ the boy said. ‘A Christmas present.’
He reached inside an inner pocket.
One step. One more step.
Slowly, the hand began to slide out again. He was laughing in that ghoulish, mirthless manner that had always put the hairs on the back of Patrick’s neck up.
‘Merry Christmas, sir,’ he sniggered, gums pulled back, fake night exposing yellow teeth. Last decade, Patrick considered, he still had his milk ones. ‘It’s time for you to learn the meaning of inappropriate.’
The hand came out. A flash of something shiny, reflecting a slice of streetlamp.
Patrick uncoiled his fear, and his fist swept up and round and crashed into the side of Denis’ head. As he did so, he saw that Denis had brought out of his jacket pocket nothing but an erect middle finger, flashing only an oversized sovereign ring.
Denis, much to everyone’s surprise, went down in a grunt of pain. And stayed there.
PART TWO
ONE
It had been snowing, on and off, since that day.
Despite the snow turning to slush on the pave
ment and a convergence of grey overhead, Patrick could tell Christophe’s tranquil cul-de-sac was as prime an example of the gentry’s hinterland as anywhere in London. The notion that Christophe, the self-proclaimed socialist, was every inch a member of the establishment came as something of a shock to Patrick on Boxing Day afternoon.
The Art teacher, clutching his bottle of Rioja, ambled down a short path bisecting a circle of frosted slate chips on a crispy white lawn. Fastened high upon the front wall were movement sensors and above the front door clung security lights and a flashing, wasp-striped alarm box. Notice me, it screamed. We won’t get caught napping this time.
The doorbell rang a deep, languid toll.
Christophe’s wife opened the door. She was striking but not quite beautiful, with greeny-brown eyes, elegant mid-length dark hair and porcelain-white English skin.
‘I’m Angela. Do come in. How nice to meet you, finally. Let me take your coat.’
He slipped off his overcoat and passed over the wine. She thanked him without looking at the label. ‘Chris is through there, with Tristan.’
Beyond two vast Persian rugs, an open hall door revealed Christophe on a playmat of roads and petrol stations, surrounded by toy trucks and action figures. Christophe welcomed his friend with a smile, invited him to crouch down and join them, but Patrick, despite being fully educated in the protocol of fathers and sons, felt slightly put out by the boy’s scampering disregard. He did his best to try and entertain the little fella, punting a car the youngster’s way, only for Tristan to look at him with the kind of suspicious, lingering expression that starts fights in pubs.
‘Find us ok?’ the Frenchman asked.
‘Sorry I’m late.’
A serving hatch was open on the wall above one of three sofas and Angela pushed her charming mannequin’s head through. ‘Drink?’ Behind her, he glimpsed a kitchen that stretched into the next borough.
Patrick fought back a festering jealousy. It was impossible that Christophe’s earnings alone paid for this house. Did his belief in state education, or the political principle behind it, actually get him out of bed when he wasn’t required, financially, to even bother?