The Art Teacher

by Paul Read

  ‘I’m from Jenna’s school…’ Patrick introduced.

  The stranger looked him up and down. ‘And …?’

  Patrick couldn’t quell his dislike of the man. He was more attractive than Patrick, certainly, and his stubble, though it had barely been allowed to grow, was dark and expansive. Everything about him made Patrick feel inadequate. The bulge in the trousers seemed substantial. The muscular forearms were swept with a pelt of primordial hair.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Jenna’s father said, and it rang with the crashing timbre of a conversation closer.

  ‘Right,’ Patrick said, taking a further step back. ‘Good.’

  When Sarah appeared, Jenna’s father looked him over one last time before retreating back inside the flat.

  ‘Sarah? Everything alri…?’

  She joined him on the balcony walkway, briefly folded herself into his embrace. Her voice, when she spoke, was quietly hysterical. ‘I got back from work about an hour ago. I’d heard, on the news, about the shooting but when I found out who it was… Jenna was nowhere to be seen until just recently. When she came in, she wouldn’t tell me where she’d been.’

  ‘Don’t take it personally. Maybe she’s upset.’

  ‘About that… boy?’ The venom was directed, in a sweeping hand movement, at the ground below, as though the street itself were shorthand for Denis Roberts. ‘I’m her mother. Why isn’t she talking to me about this?’

  ‘Has anyone spoken to you about it? The police?’

  ‘Why would they?’

  ‘The connection between your daughter and Denis is substantial enough to warrant police interest. They’ve spoken to me.’

  She visibly paled.

  Patrick, though he knew Meadows had already discovered the link between Jenna and Denis, couldn’t help but feel he’d led the inquiry to Sarah’s door himself. ‘Look, I wonder, if they do want to speak to you, whether you should mention… You know how we found…’ In the fierce cold, sweat dripped off him.

  ‘That’s what I keep thinking about. We can’t keep quiet about that now a boy’s died, can we? Could it have been the gun that killed him? Perhaps Jenna knows something.’

  ‘She’d have mentioned it already, wouldn’t she? To the police?’

  ‘Would she? It’s not cool to snitch – snake – is it? If there’s a connection… I have to tell the police, Patrick.’

  ‘I really don’t think you should. Why drag her into this? It might be dangerous.’

  ‘It’s already dangerous. I mean…’ She lowered her voice. ‘I read that his brains had been completely blown out.’

  Patrick drew his collar up against the needles of ice in the exhaust fume wind and attempted a look of sympathy. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him; it was he who’d led her to the gun in the first place, trying to build up honesty points by showing her the cannabis. When he looked down he saw he was holding both of her tight, cold hands in his. Shame wept through his veins.

  ‘Sarah, have you seen those posters for Operation Trident? You can go down for keeping someone else’s piece. And anyway it was just the once, she said so. The stuff’s gone now.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Patrick hesitated. ‘She promised you, didn’t she?’

  The phone rang inside. A male voice answered then called for Sarah.

  ‘What’s he doing here anyway?’ Patrick nodded his head towards the unseen ex.

  Sarah pecked a kiss in Patrick’s direction and disconnected her hands from his before disappearing back into her flat. As she did so, it was as though an electrical source turned itself off.

  Patrick smashed his watch into the wall. It was a pointless act and he regretted it instantly. Worse, he drew the attention of the token pair of policemen now patrolling the estate, clicking through the fast-forming frost.

  It had dropped ten degrees in an hour.

  Inside the police cordon, he could make out forensic experts hunting in crackling boiler suits as the squat white tent concealed the murder scene from the last of the day’s sunlight.

  He cursed Jenna’s name, the perfect blackmail she’d laid down. If he’d helped to exonerate her, it wasn’t because he’d been moved by her tears; philanthropy didn’t justify a life on the hoof from the law and inner peace. Nor were his deeds a selfless fulfilment of a promise to Sarah – ‘Keep an eye on her for me,’ she’d said. ‘She’s all I have.’ No, he was saving his own skin, at the behest of a teenager’s cunning.

  Patrick knew that Jenna, even if the police failed to extract the full facts from her, even if they never found out about her concealment of Denis’ gun, could still wake up one morning and turn herself in. In any case, as Patrick had flicked the torch over the dead body he’d felt the image sear into his brain, bedding itself down forever. Jenna’s mindset wasn’t his only concern: one day, he knew, that image would give him away. It was a matter of who would crack first.

  Life was supposed to crawl onwards now, in a rebuttal of the unlikely, macabre events of his day, but he breathed culpability, reeked of it, and knew his appearance at Sarah’s flat had only been to promote the pretence of innocence while revisiting, just once, the scene of his crime.

  Tired and light-headed, his spine torn with pain, he stepped with flat feet to avoid the reeling floor, the shrieking in his ears seemingly exacerbated by Union City’s silence. Normally there were bikers, or workers returning, but tonight the residents stayed away; like villagers during the time of the plague, they saw the reaper in the alleyways.

  As he passed the end of Moore block, his eyes were drawn to an art form he’d never much cared for. At least one other had been out tonight; the graffiti was still wet.

  He stared in horror at the image on the wall as his phone buzzed a foreign number.

  ‘Ana. Thank God. I’ve been…’

  ‘Is Adana. She still no here Patrick. Have you heard of her? I very worried. Is not like her.’

  Ana’s mother didn’t, as a rule, do flustered. This was serious.

  He didn’t, couldn’t, take his eyes off the graffiti. ‘Slow down. When was the last time you spoke to her?’

  ‘She call me Monday and tell me they no come home. Like I tell you. She still in England.’

  ‘Adana, it’s great that we’re on the same page finally. I mean, now we’re both worried. What did Ana say she was doing over here? Why did she stay on? Why didn’t she tell me?’

  ‘I not know. Did you telephone her hotel like I suggest?’

  ‘What hotel?’ Even before he asked, he knew which one.

  Union City’s very bricks mocked him. Before him, in amateur but passable fashion, was the stencil of a face with the bannered surtitle: ‘D-Man. RIP Union Soulja.’

  Patrick studied the image. There were the eyes he’d hated, crudely daubed. The slack jaw. The proud lips and their tiny scar.

  The boy, conceited, violent and lacking basic manners, was already a martyr.

  ‘Patrick, you still there? Patrick?’

  Patrick, aware no secondary school Art teacher could ever be the subject of such a tribute, moved on without a backward glance into the night. The piece got full marks for impact but scored poorly for execution.

  The Lionswater Hotel wouldn’t give out the name of anyone staying within its walls, so Patrick headed over on foot. Thawing out with a questionable whisky, he propped up the bar until the receptionist left her chair at the desk, then bolted with no attempt at subtlety up the thickly carpeted, eggshell stairs.

  Room four was halfway down the hall, sentried by two potted rubber plants which had been dusted so hard he thought he could still hear them squeaking. A ‘Do not disturb’ message hung from the door handle.

  He knocked.

  There was the sound of rustling, then light, padding footsteps. ‘Who is it?’ a female voice called back. Through the wood of the door, it could have been anyone.

  ‘It’s me. Patrick.’

  The door opened a crack to reveal a bronzed complexion
. She wore a towel, her hair in dripping ringlets. ‘Who?’

  Patrick took a step back, immediately realising not only the mistake but his larger, very genuine lapse from reality. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I think I’ve got the wrong room.’

  ‘I should think you have,’ the stranger growled with undisguised irritation, snapping the door closed in his face.

  TWO

  On his way to work Friday morning, Patrick picked up a popular but unchallenging tabloid. ‘Another Young Victim of Broken Britain,’ the headline screamed.

  The traditional picture of the victim stared out of the front page. His Year Nine photo, all teeth and choppily waxed hair; he could have been anyone’s son. Even Patrick, who’d had cause to dislike the boy more than most, thought he looked sensible and confident – Denis’ smug arrogance didn’t translate through the dot matrix of the printing presses.

  Inside the paper, Patrick read how ‘feral groups of angry young people roam Union City’ and, in place of ‘parental role models’, a ‘tribal loyalty is firmly established and a gang culture based on violence and drugs is a way of life’. The paper was sympathetic towards the victim but scathing about London’s population for its inability to prevent the killing. Indeed, the incident seemed to be sold as a microcosm of the country’s problems. ‘How did we let this happen to one of our children?’ The witch-hunt of society continued apace on the editorial page. ‘Another innocent lies in a mortuary tonight as we look the other way.’

  The last line on the matter read: ‘Police are investigating a possible link between the murder and a flat fire in the area, in which a large quantity of cannabis was destroyed.’

  Patrick wheeled the page over, then jabbed off his iPod in disbelief. A photo of him lumbering out of the school the evening before, face cuffed red by the cold, complemented the story’s headline – ‘School Mourns Gun Crime Star Pupil’. A second photo was of the crime scene, police-taped and low-lit, a few shifty coppers squeaking black gloves together in the cold.

  Patrick hadn’t been aware of any photographers outside the school the day before, but then he’d hardly been aware of a great deal lately. Probably they’d telephotoed several teachers leaving Highfields in the aftermath of the murder’s revelation and Mr Owen’s visage was deemed the most tragic, the most burdened by the death. Funny that.

  He was still flicking through the paper as he passed through the school gates into the playground. Inspector Meadows was in a long brown coat, speaking with Mr Llendl, one of the more officious idiots from the Maths department. Patrick, off-guard, rang out a hello in breezier terms than tradition dictated.

  ‘Oh, morning,’ Mr Llendl offered, his words as gaunt and discourteous as his general disposition.

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ Meadows closed, now turning his attention to Patrick, as though he’d been waiting for him all along.

  Mr Llendl limped away as the inspector approached Patrick with his head raised, affecting a height and authority he’d no need to, such was the innate gravitas honed over his years of intruding into other people’s homes and histories. He nodded at the paper in Patrick’s hands. ‘Have you noticed how innocent the dead become? All this “we have failed him” and “society’s shame”. Apparently we’re all culpable for the sins of our killers.’

  Patrick wiggled a finger in his ear. ‘Kids need guidance. In many ways, adults are the worst kind of role models.’

  ‘You agree with what you’ve been reading, Mr Owen?’

  ‘I never believe what I read in the papers.’

  Quick, confident feet resounded across the playground, the gait of senior management, and a ponytailed policewoman of comparable age to Patrick arrived by Meadows’ side, the skin around her eyes heavily pouched, as though replete with tears. A strand of dark hair tumbled from beneath her hat and a smooth blueberry of a mole sat, ostentatious and supermodelesque, above her mouth. Meadows refused to introduce the policewoman, which Patrick interpreted as an act of pulling rank.

  ‘So what’s all this about Matthew’s brother then?’ Patrick asked, waving the newspaper.

  Meadows jacketed his notebook and took the paper off him, his eyes slitting. ‘I don’t follow.’ He pulled out a pair of reading glasses.

  ‘The house that burnt down… The drugs…’

  The Inspector cast heavy, distrustful eyes over Patrick before finally acknowledging his partner. ‘This is Mary Haynes from the Murder Investigation Team. She’s assisting me on the case.’

  ‘Actually, officially, you’re assisting me on the case,’ she said.

  Meadows didn’t return her smile. ‘Let’s not split hairs.’

  The radio at her collarbone crackled. ‘Have you told Mr Owen about…?’

  ‘There’s going to be a press conference this weekend,’ he snapped, ‘calling upon the public for information regarding the killing. Can you make it?’

  Patrick looked between the two of them. ‘Well… yeah, I guess.’

  Mary gave Meadows a sidelong glance. Her attractiveness must have made her job difficult at times and maybe it was this that the older man objected to, the aesthetic impediment to professionalism. Conversely, a latent misogyny might have been stoked by the fact that it didn’t seem to affect her professionalism one bit.

  ‘You’re a familiar face, Patrick,’ the Inspector explained. ‘In more ways than one.’ He shook the paper. ‘I hear you used to be in the public eye…’

  ‘I was in a band, a long time ago.’

  ‘We need someone to say a few words about Denis. You’re local and… I think it could really help.’

  ‘You want me to speak at this press conference?’

  ‘If possible. How’s the hearing?’

  ‘Um… Better. Thanks.’

  ‘My brother used to be a banker,’ Meadows confided. ‘He had a stressful job – like you, I guess – and at one point he developed a hearing problem. It was caused by anxiety, though he was embarrassed to admit as much.’ He left a knowing silence hang between them. ‘A bit like the sore back you keep massaging.’ Patrick expected the Inspector to go on: the red holes that used to be his eyes; the dry tracings of eczema around the brows. ‘If you don’t want to help, if you think it would be too much for you, that’s fine. I understand. But Denis’ killer is still walking around and any assistance you can give might aid us in putting this nasty matter to bed…’ It was all sung to the tune of emotional blackmail.

  ‘When do you need an answer?’ Patrick asked, looking from Meadows to Mary and finding no comfort in either pair of tired eyes.

  Meadows’ tone relaxed, secure of his gambit. ‘Anytime. Anytime between now and the end of this conversation.’

  Patrick’s Elevens were noiseless as they waited outside his classroom, stunned back to their scared-shitless, Year Seven selves by the violent realism of a world previously only glimpsed on illegal downloads. After thirty minutes of first period had elapsed, Edward – far from the shiniest soldier in the toy box – announced, ‘I saw you in the paper, sir,’ cajoling one or two to join in with their own testimonies. Another duly produced the paper.

  The newspaper was stuffed back into a bag when Jenna entered with all the appearance of a sacrificial victim. Short steps. Head bowed. She’d developed strange hand mannerisms, a fragile chewing of one fist into another, a repeated washing of imperceptible bloodstains. It was her first public appearance after killing Denis and she too wanted to keep up a normal facade. She wasn’t managing it.

  Patrick thought it doubtful she’d speak to him, or indeed anyone, and no one else engaged in conversation either. He’d never known such silence in a classroom.

  The group were still sculpting their clay heads. None of them had mastered an exact reproduction but most had obtained vaguely accurate facial proportions and only three pupils had included spliffs poking from their mouths. Jenna seemed absorbed in her work until Patrick closed a window and summoned from the snapping latch the approximate sound of a gunshot. He could do nothing but
smile weakly at her as the girl fled the room, drawing a sigh of relief and a torrent of ‘fucking hells’ from her classmates.

  Christophe’s email, flagged high priority, pinged up on his laptop.

  Seven o’clock. O’Sullivan’s Snooker Club.

  He stared at it for a while, then concealed his phone beneath the desk, switched it on and counted seven pings, the sound of messages from varying news agencies and well-meaning old friends racking up like debtor’s demands. Nothing from Ana. Nothing from Ana’s mother. Nothing from Sarah.

  Through the wall, he heard the kiln cease whirring. It had entered its cooling phase and would be safe to open within a matter of hours. Lost, he stood and wandered the room as the pupils worked steadily if not skilfully. He was attempting to aggressively rub a smear of green chalk dust from his groin when a man of mixed race with a three-day-old goatee, an ill-fitting suit and a black leather folder slid into the classroom.

  Patrick sidled up to the stranger. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘My name’s Jack,’ the man replied, in accentless English. He offered his hand, which Patrick only looked at. ‘This your classroom?’

  It was the way the man looked around, his tiny dead eyes soaking up information like the shutters of a camera, which led Patrick to suspect Jack was a Hack.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ He could picture the news story follow-up: a school which bred thugs and gang members had security scanners anyone could walk past and an Art teacher who permitted GCSE students to throw erasers at visitors.

  ‘Pick that up, Daniel,’ Patrick snapped.

  The journalist smiled. ‘Mr Hutchinson said I could look around. Please, pretend I’m not here.’ He indicated, with a theatrical casting of his hands, that he wished the teacher to perform for him.

  ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m sure I’d have heard if the head was allowing you lot in.’

  At this, the journalist merely smiled and paced to the corner of the room. Having picked up on their teacher’s fractious body language, the children, seldom fans of outsiders stalking them round their classroom, of which they naturally felt ownership, viewed the journalist with interest and suspicion. Patrick decided this wasn’t the class he wanted the Fourth Estate watching.