Alice Teale is Missing

by H. A. Linskey

  Beth was surprised to be given the choice. She sensed that Black wasn’t as convinced as she was that the photo of Alice gazing at Nash was relevant, but since it had also been reported that he had given her lifts home, he still seemed a very plausible candidate to have been the shirtless man in Alice’s room. ‘I’ll take Simon Nash,’ she said.

  Kirstie had described Mr Nash in gushing terms but this was not entirely restricted to his looks. She also said the drama teacher was ‘young and kind of inspirational, unlike most of the teachers at Collemby Comp’. She also said he was ‘minted’. Apparently, the teacher didn’t really need to teach at all. He was engaged to the daughter of the heir to a bakery empire; a fortune founded on dozens of shops spread across the region, including the little branch in Collemby. If you bought a pasty for your lunch that day, there was a fifty per cent chance it was one of theirs. ‘I don’t know why he bothers to come in,’ Kirstie had told Beth. ‘I wouldn’t, if I were him.’

  Beth found him in the darkroom, which was attached to his own form room. She knew he ran the photography club, so it wasn’t a surprise to see him in there. The door was open, and she could see Nash moving around; he appeared agitated. She paused for a moment at the classroom door to watch him without being seen. His back was to her and he was picking up boxes, peering behind them, replacing them then taking down others, lifting the lids and looking inside. He was doing this at a pace that showed he was keen to find something.

  ‘Lost something?’ she asked, and he jumped. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘You startled me, that’s all.’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘And yes, I’m looking for a camera,’ he said. ‘An old one, but still.’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘It’s a Canon AE-1; black plastic grip with a silver body. A nice bit of kit.’

  Beth wondered why he hadn’t asked who she was, but she pressed on regardless. ‘Did someone take it?’

  ‘I don’t like to accuse anyone, but I can’t find it anywhere. I do lend cameras out, but the students have to sign for them and bring them back without a scratch. Those are the rules.’

  ‘Maybe someone borrowed it and forgot to put it in the book.’

  ‘Hope so. The head is going mad about it. He signed off the funds for the camera club and blames me for being careless with our equipment.’

  ‘Sounds like he isn’t very tolerant of mistakes.’

  ‘He’s a good head, he really is – a great one, in fact – but he does let you know if you have let him down, and I’m one of the youngest teachers here, so …’

  ‘You feel like a kid who’s been told off in the headteacher’s office?’

  He laughed. ‘Exactly. It’s silly, I know,’ he said, then gave her a disarming smile. ‘You’ll be fine, though.’

  He held out a hand to shake hers. That smile again. No wonder the girls liked him. He was about the same age as Beth and fully justified the description ‘hot’. She resolved not to focus too closely on his good looks and to stick to the matter in hand.

  ‘I’m Simon and you’re Jane, right?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m Beth.’

  ‘The new student teacher?’ There was doubt in his voice now.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I’m with the police and I’m here to talk to you about Alice Teale.’

  32

  For a teacher of physical education, Miss Pearce seemed quite slight, but she moved with the grace of a natural athlete. By the time Black had located her, she was walking away from the playing fields ahead of an exhausted-looking bunch of mud-caked teens she’d just been cajoling on the hockey pitch. Red faces were the norm among them, giving Black the impression that she drove her girls hard.

  She saw Black coming and must have anticipated that his presence here might be about the missing schoolgirl, because she turned back and almost shrieked at the girls, ‘Hit the showers! And that means all of you!’

  No one gave her any lip or even groaned; they just trudged towards the changing rooms, one or two of them limping heavily.

  ‘Miss Pearce, I’m Detective Sergeant Black and I’d like to talk to you about Alice Teale.’

  ‘My office.’ She nodded in the direction he should take. ‘And call me Jessica, for Christ’s sake. You’re not thirteen.’ It was a deliberate eschewing of formality but still said with a slightly bad grace, as if she shouldn’t need to explain this to him.

  Her office was little more than a cupboard with a desk and a shower built into a corner, the detritus of various sports littering the floor: a string bag full of netballs, a hockey stick, a stack of floats for the swimming pool.

  ‘You were in school the night Alice went missing – the last to see her, in fact.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I only saw her from a distance.’

  ‘But it was definitely her?’

  ‘It was definitely Alice. She had a green parka on, like Liam Gallagher’s, and a big floppy bag. It was her all right.’

  ‘Obviously you weren’t able to tell what kind of mood she was in. She didn’t look sad or angry – upset, maybe?’

  ‘I couldn’t see that from the staff-room window, but she seemed fine. She was just walking up the path away from the school. I was looking out for my fiancé, Rob, who was coming to pick me up. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen her at all.’

  ‘Was anyone else out there?’

  ‘Not with her. She was walking on her own. The only other person I saw was Simon Nash, our drama teacher, squeezing into his car.’ Black did not let on to Jessica Pearce that this was significant, but he made a mental note to let Beth know Simon Nash had left the school in his car just before Alice had walked away. ‘As he drove off, Rob turned up, so I waved to him then quickly washed up my tea cup. By the time I looked back, Alice was gone.’

  ‘Where do you think she went?’

  ‘I assume she walked down the path between the cottages. There isn’t really anywhere else to go from there.’

  ‘You said you were in a hurry to meet Rob.’

  ‘I didn’t want to keep him waiting.’

  ‘But you took the time to wash up a tea cup?’

  ‘To avoid a telling-off from the head. Dirty cups are one of his bugbears.’

  ‘What do you think about your headteacher?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In any way.’

  ‘He’s all right, I suppose.’

  ‘Only all right?’

  ‘He runs a tight ship.’

  ‘Is that code for “He’s a bit of a bastard”?’

  She smiled at that. ‘I couldn’t possibly …’ She left the sentence deliberately unfinished.

  ‘What about the culture here?’ When she frowned her lack of understanding, he added: ‘A number of teachers have had friendships or even relationships with students and former students.’

  ‘I strongly disapprove of it. If it was up to me, they’d all be fired.’

  ‘But it’s not up to you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the head hasn’t clamped down on it. I know he’s worried about the union and everything, but …’

  She snorted. ‘It’s not the union that keeps him from acting against the teachers involved.’

  ‘No? What is it, then?’

  ‘Our headteacher has been happily married for a number of years and has three children, but there’s something he would rather you didn’t know.’

  ‘He had an affair with a pupil?’ asked Lucas.

  ‘Well, sort of.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He had an affair with a pupil years ago,’ she said with a glint in her eye. ‘And then he married her.’

  ‘Mrs Morgan started out as a pupil in his school?’ asked Black. ‘No wonder he feels he can’t intervene when it happens here. Does everyone know about this? I mean, how, if it was such a long time ago?’

  ‘Teacher jungle drums.’ She shrugged. ‘Word gets around. There’s always somebody who worked with someone who knows somethin
g.’

  ‘The thing is, though I obviously don’t approve of grown men courting then marrying their pupils, at least they seem to have made a life together,’ said Black. ‘The behaviour I’m referring to is quite different.’

  ‘Mr Keech, you mean?’ she said. ‘He’s the worst offender. He left his wife and kids ages ago; now he’s a man in his forties, in a position of power, which makes any relationship unequal and wildly inappropriate. It makes me sick, quite frankly.’

  ‘It’s illegal, too.’

  ‘If it can be proven that he started seeing them when they were pupils, yes.’

  ‘What do you know about Alice?’ Black asked her then. ‘Any gossip in the staff room?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Nothing much. She has a boyfriend. There was friction when one of his friends started seeing her instead, but that was some time ago.’

  ‘When the wall was sprayed with her name?’

  ‘Yes, but there hasn’t been any problem since then.’

  ‘No rows, tantrums or odd behaviour from Alice or anyone around her?’ he asked.

  She opened her mouth to answer, then stopped, frowned and considered this for a moment. ‘Well, there was … It’s probably nothing.’ And she looked apologetic.

  ‘Probably,’ he told her, ‘but it might be something, so I’d rather hear it than not.’

  ‘Okay, well, I caught her up on the roof once.’

  ‘The school roof?’ So Chris wasn’t the only one who’d seen Alice Teale up there. ‘What was she doing?’

  ‘I have no idea. It was odd. I did ask, and she said something about liking the view, but I think she was just being lippy.’

  ‘And did you press her?’

  ‘Not really. I don’t know how used you are to dealing with teenagers. They all do strange things. I doubt she even knew the reason why she was up there herself. I just told her not to be so bloody stupid. I did say it was probably nothing.’

  Simon Nash was obviously shocked to find he had been indulging in careless conversation with a detective, but he recovered and mumbled Beth an apology. They sat in chairs normally occupied by his form class.

  ‘I understand you teach Alice Teale?’

  ‘I used to,’ he corrected her. ‘When she took drama.’

  ‘And she is involved in the school plays, which you direct.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that why she stayed behind on the evening she disappeared?’

  ‘No, she isn’t in the new play. It’s sixth-form club on a Friday evening. Most of them hang around for it. It’s very informal and a great deal cheaper than the pub. It’s also a …’ He stopped himself abruptly. ‘I was going to say safe environment, but that sounds ridiculous now.’

  ‘Did you spend any time with her that night?’

  ‘She’s in the camera club, and I run that.’

  ‘So you saw her that evening?’

  ‘There wasn’t a club meeting that night, but I don’t mind if the kids want to use the darkroom, particularly sixth-formers, who we can trust with the equipment and the chemicals. They’re less likely to burn the place down – or we hope so.’

  ‘And they can do that unsupervised?’

  ‘If they leave the place in a mess, they know I’ll withdraw the privilege.’

  ‘Why do you even have a darkroom?’ she asked. ‘Is it needed in a digital age?’

  ‘We started with old, donated cameras and couldn’t afford digital ones. My dad was into photography and I had his ancient SLR, which takes film, so I knew how to develop pictures and they let me set up the darkroom.’

  ‘They?’

  He corrected himself: ‘The headteacher.’

  ‘I’m surprised young people have the patience for it, when they all have cameras in their phones.’

  ‘I was surprised, too,’ he said, ‘but they love it. You should see how enthusiastic they get when they use the chemicals to bring an image to life.’

  Beth recalled Daniel telling her how Alice loved retro things. She began to understand the appeal of the darkroom to teenagers searching for authentic experiences.

  ‘Did you help Alice in the darkroom that night?’

  ‘I did for a while. She wanted to develop some photos of our rambling-club trip to Craster.’

  ‘What kind of photos?’

  ‘Trees, fields, a river, some shots of fellow ramblers.’

  ‘Were they any good?’

  ‘They were, actually. She has an eye for a picture. Not everyone does.’

  ‘How long were you in the darkroom with her?’

  ‘Difficult to say.’

  ‘Please try.’

  ‘Okay, well, maybe half an hour. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Was anyone else in there with you?’

  ‘Not that night, no.’

  ‘And did she seem normal to you that evening?’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘She didn’t talk about where she might be going afterwards, or who with?’

  ‘No, but then I don’t really pry into the lives of my pupils and they rarely volunteer the information. Teenagers are pretty secretive.’

  ‘So, what did you talk about, then?’

  ‘Photography,’ he said, as if that were obvious. ‘Techniques for framing an image. And Alice wanted to know the difference between a telephoto lens and a zoom.’

  To Beth this sounded like the kind of detailed explanation liars sometimes give, so she decided to test his knowledge. ‘Which is?’

  ‘Well, it’s to do with focal length, which is variable on a zoom and determines the angle of view.’

  ‘That’s all you talked about – photography – the whole time?’

  ‘I think there may have been some chat about the school play and how it was going.’

  ‘But you said she wasn’t in your latest play?’

  ‘She maintained an interest. Alice wasn’t in this one, but it was her choice, not mine.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The dreaded A levels. She didn’t really have the time any more and I agreed she should concentrate on revision.’

  ‘She has a very full life outside of school hours,’ Beth observed. ‘A part-time job, various clubs, a busy social life and, of course, relationships.’

  ‘I think she had a relationship,’ he said lightly. ‘There’s a boyfriend, isn’t there?’ He said this as if he were searching his memory, trying to recall something he was only vaguely aware of. Beth immediately felt he was lying, or at least trying not to admit that he knew all about it.

  ‘Christopher Mullery,’ he said finally. ‘Nice lad.’

  ‘The poor boy is worried sick.’

  ‘Well, he would be.’

  ‘She ever talk about her relationship with you at all?’

  ‘She may have mentioned she had a boyfriend, but other than that …’ He shook his head.

  ‘What about her home life – her father, mother, brother?’

  ‘Only vaguely.’ When Beth stayed silent, he added: ‘Occasional mentions of her father being cross with her if she got home late. I think he has a bit of a short fuse.’

  ‘And she lived way over the other side of town, so the chances of her being back late would have been higher.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Did you feel sorry for her?’

  ‘She’s hardly the first girl of her age to have a strict father, but I suppose I did a bit, yes.’

  ‘Is that why you gave her lifts home?’ asked Beth.

  The question was like a grenade dropped right into the middle of their conversation. She watched him closely while it went off. He looked as if he was trying to work out how she had heard about the lifts. ‘That was only a few … A couple of times.’

  ‘A couple?’ she asked. ‘Or a few? Just for the sake of clarity.’

  He frowned as if he were trying to remember. ‘I would say probably four times, in the course of an entire term. Look, I live in that direction. It’s not much of a diversion to swing by her st
reet on my way home. I didn’t make a habit of it but, once or twice, after rehearsals for the last play, and a couple of times when she was working late in the darkroom, then yes, I did offer her a lift, and she accepted. I have a duty of care, as we all do.’

  Beth nodded as if she understood and perhaps even agreed with his statement, then said, ‘She’s very pretty, Alice.’

  She wondered if he might deny this or claim to have never noticed her looks, but instead, he said easily, ‘She is.’

  ‘You’re a young man, Mr Nash, only a few years older than her. You probably have more in common with Alice than with some of the other teachers.’

  ‘I enjoy her company and she is a pretty girl, but then I’ve known a lot of very attractive women in my time. You’re not entirely unpresentable yourself, but I have managed to resist the temptation to make a pass at you, and you’re not even my pupil. Alice is and it wouldn’t be appropriate, even if I wasn’t taken, which I am.’

  ‘You have a partner?’ asked Beth. She knew the answer already but didn’t want to reveal how much she had learned from Kirstie.

  ‘Fiancée.’ He took out his wallet and opened it to show a picture of the two of them close up, laughing at someone else’s wedding, an informal selfie of a perfect couple, their faces close together, almost touching. ‘That’s Karen.’ Beth had to admit that his fiancée was stunning and easily on a par, looks-wise, with Alice Teale. She also looked several years older and more sophisticated than the missing girl.

  ‘I hope that allays your suspicions.’

  ‘Do you live with your fiancée?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you tell her when you gave lifts to Alice Teale?’

  There was a second’s hesitation. ‘I’m almost sure I will have done.’

  ‘If I called her now, she’d confirm that?’ asked Beth.

  ‘Presumably. I’m pretty certain I would have mentioned it, but she’s not the jealous type, so I imagine she barely took it in, and I can guarantee it won’t have bothered her.’

  ‘When’s the wedding?’

  ‘Next year. We’re in no rush. Like I said, we already live together, so …’

  ‘Congratulations.’