‘There was an allegation against Mr Keech, wasn’t there?’ she asked the headteacher. ‘That he groped a former pupil.’
‘You are aware of the allegation, but are you also aware of the accuser?’
‘You didn’t take it seriously?’
‘I took it very seriously indeed. I involved the police at the earliest juncture, but this was clearly a malicious allegation.’
‘You didn’t believe it from the outset?’
‘The girl in question has a long history of lying and deceitfulness. There had been multiple instances of truancy, she showed little academic ability or any sustained interest in lessons, aside from a repeated desire to disrupt them, and she has been arrested on more than one occasion for shoplifting. She did have some natural but quite basic writing ability, which Mr Keech attempted to encourage, to his credit. There is a feeling that her home life is troubled and, confidentially, some suspicion from social services that she may have been abused by a male member of her family, possibly by her father or her brother.’
‘Mr Keech gave her tuition? Was this in class or on an extra-curricular basis?’
Beth’s tone made it clear she was suspicious, and the headteacher picked up on it. ‘He then took her, along with other members of his class, on theatre trips and allowed her to continue her writing in class when the school day was over, though I did caution him against that.’
‘Why did you caution him?’ she asked, ‘if his motives were pure?’
‘They were, I believe, but I questioned whether she might take advantage in some way.’
‘You actually thought she might make a false accusation against him?’
He was cautious with his next words. ‘My concerns were not as specific as that. I simply doubted whether she could be trusted. With hindsight, I was correct.’
‘Why are you so certain that Mr Keech is blameless in this? Is it not possible that he might have actually done what he has been accused of doing?’
‘It’s not impossible but, having weighed up the evidence, I decided it was insufficient to take any further action.’
‘You couldn’t have weighed it up for long,’ Beth reminded him. ‘You dismissed it and immediately called the police on the girl. Is that really the way to encourage anyone with concerns about teachers at your school to come forward?’
‘I’m sorry, but if you knew this girl you might feel differently about it. She was interviewed by the police, who came to the same conclusions regarding her reliability and likely motive.’
‘Which was?’
‘Money,’ he said. ‘In the form of compensation.’
‘What did the police say to her?’ asked Black.
‘I wasn’t in the room. I didn’t want to influence them in any way.’
‘But you must have,’ he said, ‘when you called them to say you had a malicious time-waster on your hands.’
He looked rattled then. ‘I told them that that was my opinion on the matter but that they would obviously have to decide for themselves.’
‘Based on her word versus that of a respectable headteacher,’ Black said, almost to himself, ‘what was the outcome?’
‘She withdrew her allegation and admitted it never happened.’
‘Did they interview the teacher?’
‘They did, and they believed him.’
‘Formally, under caution?’ asked Black.
‘That wasn’t necessary.’
‘Wasn’t it? I don’t know, I’m struggling here,’ he said. ‘A girl makes an allegation of sexual assault against one of your teachers and, because of her perceived character, it is instantly dismissed by her headteacher, who calls the police. They make it clear she probably won’t be believed, so she retracts her story, which of course she would, under the circumstances.’
‘I might not be Mr Keech’s biggest fan – far from it – but this is the only allegation of that nature that has ever been levelled against him. I won’t apologize for failing to think the worst of any members of my team. Now, I think we’ve probably finished here.’
‘I’ll tell you when we’re finished,’ said Black, ‘if you don’t mind.’
The head looked suitably chastened. Perhaps he was too used to being in charge; in any case, Black’s tone soon changed his mind.
‘I want to talk to this Mr Keech,’ continued Black, ‘and anyone else who had regular contact with Alice Teale.’
The headmaster nodded his head slightly to acknowledge his acceptance of this, but his face told Beth how uncomfortable he was to yield power in his domain.
‘By all means, you can talk to Mr Keech,’ said the headteacher. ‘He has a free period now, so he’s probably marking in his form room, but don’t expect him to open up to you.’
‘Why not?’
The headteacher sighed, as if Keech were an ongoing cause of stress. ‘He is not … how can I put this? … the most cooperative person you will ever meet. It would not be unreasonable to suggest he has issues with authority.’
‘A thorn in your side, in other words?’ asked Beth.
‘When I try to implement something new, you can be sure he’ll be in the vanguard of the resistance. Personally, I think he enjoys a good argument.’
‘You don’t like him much, then?’ asked Black.
‘Whether I like the man or not, I have to manage him.’
30
‘Hates him, doesn’t he?’ said Beth when she was alone again with Black and walking down the corridor towards Keech’s room.
‘The head? Yes, he does.’ Then he mimicked the headteacher: ‘“I might not be Mr Keech’s biggest fan.” He really meant that Mr Keech is an arsehole.’
Beth had a scrap of paper with Keech’s form-room number on it. ‘These corridors go on for ever,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s a big school.’ Black’s tone suggested that he was wondering what she had been expecting. ‘They do bus people in from the surrounding area, not just the town.’
He said that as if she had forgotten it, and she was tempted to ask, How am I supposed to know that?, but thought better of it. Keep your cool, Beth. ‘What did you make of the head?’ She kept her voice low so that no one in any of the classrooms would overhear them.
‘Apart from his arrogance and defensiveness, he was fine.’
Look who’s talking.
They belatedly realized they were on the wrong floor and climbed to the next one, moving along it till they reached a block containing classrooms for the English and drama departments, the school library and, tucked away in the far corner, a room with the letters ‘RLC’ on its door.
‘What does that stand for?’ asked Beth.
‘Resource Learning Centre.’
‘How do you know that?’
Black drew her attention to a sign on the wall right by them directing students to various departments, the library and the resource learning centre with an arrow pointing towards the door in question.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘And you’re a detective?’
Beth almost had to bite her lip but managed to ignore him. ‘That’s the room where all the detentions and exclusions happen,’ she said. ‘Kirstie reckoned everyone calls it the punishment block.’
Keech was in his form room. They could see him through the thin vertical glass panel in the centre of the door. There were exercise books on his desk, but he wasn’t busy marking. Instead, he was leaning back in his chair, his feet up on his desk. He was dressed in a grey tracksuit, which seemed strange for an English teacher, and he was screwing up a piece of paper into a ball, which he then threw over his own shoulder in an exaggerated action so that it went up into the air in an arc behind him then bounced against the wall like a basketball and dropped into the waste-paper bin in the corner. Beth noticed that there were a number of scrunched-up bits of paper on the floor next to the bin where he had tried and failed to land his shots. He started to crumple up another piece as Beth knocked on his door.
Keech didn’t se
em remotely bothered to have been caught in the act. ‘My new filing system,’ he said, then waited for Black and Beth to explain their presence. Keech was no longer a young man, but he was far from old. He had a full head of dark hair with just a touch of grey that failed to dampen a slightly boyish look, despite the occasional line on his face. He peered at Beth with undisguised interest while she spoke, as if he were weighing up his chances with her. She immediately saw Keech as an ageing bad boy. An earlier generation might have described him as rakish, and she could easily see why impressionable young girls might find his self-confidence attractive.
‘Run that by me again?’ the teacher demanded when Beth told him why they were here. ‘Am I a … what do you call it? … a “person of interest”, or something?’
‘At this stage in our inquiries we’re talking to as many people as possible so we can build a picture of Alice’s life and ascertain her final movements.’
‘Well, no one knows her final movements after she left this building, since no one saw her after that. As for her life, I’m her English teacher, not her dad, so …’ He made a gesture indicating helplessness, but it merely conveyed a lack of cooperation. The headteacher’s words of warning had been no exaggeration.
‘But you must have had some interaction with her,’ Beth said, ‘during lesson times and’ – she locked eyes with him – ‘perhaps on an extra-curricular basis?’
Keech immediately became defensive. ‘I don’t think I like your tone,’ he told her, ‘and I don’t actually have to answer any of your questions at all, so I think I won’t.’
Before Beth could answer him, Black intervened. ‘That’s correct. You don’t have to answer our questions and I can assure you we walked in here without holding you under any kind of suspicion.’
‘Good, then.’ He seemed to think the matter was closed.
‘Of course, if we walk out of the room now, I will have formed a very different view.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, let’s see, you have been hostile, evasive and have expressed no concern whatsoever about the well-being of a missing girl you’ve taught for several years. That’s not normal.’
‘I just don’t like insinuations,’ he countered.
‘You’ve had experience of those?’ asked Black, surveying the teacher coldly. ‘Regarding the appropriateness of your relationships with pupils?’
‘Former pupils,’ Keech corrected him.
‘There was the girl you used to live with,’ said Beth. ‘And the girl you live with now.’ She turned to Black and said brightly, ‘Funnily enough, they were former classmates, so he must have met them both at the same time.’ This was more priceless information from Kirstie.
If he was wondering how Beth knew about his tangled private life, he didn’t ask. ‘Those relationships started long after they were pupils here. It’s called serendipity.’
‘We call it grooming,’ said Lucas, ‘and perhaps we should look into it more closely, once we’ve found Alice Teale.’
‘What exactly do you want from me?’ Keech demanded. ‘I barely knew the girl. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘No one is saying you are the cause of her disappearance,’ said Beth, ‘but we’re trying to put all the pieces together and you may know something that helps us to do that, even if you don’t realize it. If you were in the building on the night she disappeared, you might have seen something.’
‘I was, and I didn’t,’ he said. ‘And if you don’t mind, I’m a bit busy.’ He gestured to the pile of exercise books on his desk for marking. ‘Even if you do mind, actually.’
Beth opened her mouth to continue the argument, but Black said, ‘It’s okay, Beth, we may as well go. It’s entirely your call whether you talk to us today or not, Mr Keech.’
‘It is,’ he agreed.
‘I’m sure my DCI won’t mind speaking to you instead.’ The teacher didn’t look pleased at the idea of that. ‘He likes to do everything by the book, though, so he’ll more than likely interview you under caution. The detective chief inspector is very thorough, has been involved in several high-profile murder cases, tracked down paedophiles and rapists. They’re talking of him as a future chief constable. He’s that sharp.’ Black smiled disarmingly. ‘I think you’d like him.’
‘Well, if he’s that much of a high-flyer, he won’t want to be wasting his time on me.’ Black stayed silent and let Keech reel himself in. ‘So what I’m saying is, if it will save him the trouble, you can go ahead and ask your questions now.’
‘Thanks for your cooperation.’
31
‘What exactly do you teach here, Mr Keech?’ asked Black.
‘I’m sure you know what I teach,’ he said. ‘English.’
‘But you’re wearing a tracksuit.’
‘I help out with the sports teams. There are only three PE teachers. There should be four, but one of them is on long-term sick leave with stress.’
‘That’s very good of you,’ said Black, who was surprised, because the headteacher had told them how uncooperative Keech was.
‘I do my bit.’
‘I understand you also teach ethics? How do you do that?’
‘That’s a module for some of the kids approaching the age where they have to make choices.’
‘How old?’
‘Fourteen, fifteen,’ he said lightly.
‘Could you explain to us what you meant by your lesson, “Morality is a construct”.’ This was another little gem Kirstie had provided.
‘Why? Don’t you understand the meaning of the word “construct”?’
‘I understand it. I just want to know the point you were making to those impressionable, mostly female pupils.’
‘They are not mostly female.’
‘It’s nearly seventy per cent girls, thirty per cent boys.’ At least it was according to Kirstie, and he didn’t challenge that.
‘Well, that’s their choice, not a deliberate bias on my part. It clashes with a film course. Some of the boys want to be the next Spielberg or Scorsese.’
‘Why do you think the girls do it, then?’ asked Black. ‘Instead of the film course, I mean.’
‘Girls that age sometimes lack confidence, even behind a camera, and they are at a time in their life when they are making decisions that affect their future. I think some of them struggle with the advice they get from parents, relations or their friends. I try to open it up, so we discuss things, for example an ethical dilemma, then form our own conclusions. I’ll ask them to tell me what they would do if it happened to them, for instance.’
‘But you don’t believe in a set morality?’
‘How can I, when morality is such a moveable feast? Go back fifty years or so and you could be jailed for homosexuality, spurned by society if you had sex outside of wedlock, ostracized by your parents if you fell pregnant without a husband. Times have changed,’ he went on, ‘and morals have, thankfully, moved with them. Society is more tolerant, on the whole.’
It could have been an extract right out of Alice Teale’s journal. Clearly, her view on the world had been influenced, at least in part, by his, but was this more than influence? Could it be evidence of grooming young girls to think the way he did?
‘Society does still tend to frown on teachers who have sexual relationships with their pupils.’
‘As I already explained,’ he snapped, ‘I am in a consensual, committed, adult relationship with a woman who is over the age of eighteen, let alone the age of consent, and she lives with me. The fact that I used to teach her is irrelevant.’
‘How is it irrelevant? You expect us to believe you never noticed her all the while she was going to your school? She may have even attended one of your “Morality is a Construct” lessons, you may have moulded her until the day you can blithely announce that, because she is over eighteen, it’s all okay and there’s nothing anyone can do about it?’
‘You can think what you like, but none of this has anything whatsoever to
do with Alice Teale.’
‘But you taught her, too?’ said Beth.
‘I’ve taught hundreds of pupils. I’m not involved with …’ He hesitated.
‘All of them?’ she asked.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘We are starting to suspect that she may have been involved with someone.’
‘She had a boyfriend, or so I heard.’
‘Someone else,’ said Beth. ‘Someone older, perhaps?’
‘Well, it wasn’t me.’
‘Who was it, then?’
‘I have no idea,’ he snapped. ‘Now are you finished, or are you going to continue your character assassination?’
‘No one has any doubts about your character,’ said Black.
Keech then brought an abrupt halt to the conversation and began to usher them from his classroom. Beth tried to raise the historic allegation against him, but he cut her off: ‘That was a malicious accusation made by a disturbed young woman and it was thrown out. If you don’t believe me, then ask your mates in the police.’
‘We’ll leave you to your marking, then,’ Black told him. ‘For now.’
Beth and Black waited for some of Alice’s other teachers to have free periods or break times and interviewed them. One barely seemed to recall Alice at all, despite teaching her geography for more than a year. Beth got the impression he was one of those teachers who simply transmitted his learning, with little interaction between himself and the kids. Alice had a second English teacher, but he hadn’t been around on the night she disappeared and kept confusing her with her friend Kirstie. Two more fruitless interviews followed, with teachers who expressed concern for Alice but claimed to have had no dealings with her outside of normal lessons and knew nothing about her home or private life.
‘How many more have we got on the list?’
‘There’s Miss Pearce, who saw Alice walk away from the school,’ said Beth. ‘And of course Mr Nash, the drama teacher who directed the school plays she appeared in.’
‘They are both key, so let’s do one each to make sure we have enough time with them. Which one do you want?’
Alice Teale is Missing Page 18