Head Wound

by Judith Cutler

  ‘All was well that ended well. He left his car on my drive – it was an unmarked one, maybe even his own – and took a taxi home. End of flirtation. But he did come with me to check out a site where one of my pupils heard a woman scream. No, we found nothing wrong. But curiously he popped up at the same place when our school secretary had an accident in the same woods: did she fall or was she pushed? One of your PCSOs, Ian Cooper, was concerned enough to check hospital records to see if there were any signs of violence. I think there was a problem with her records, or maybe my head’s too fuzzy to remember.’

  ‘I can check, anyway. Go on.’

  ‘Two more odd things. I didn’t know that traffic police responded to 999 calls, but when I heard what I thought was screaming – though Joy and my neighbour assured me it was probably foxes – I called it in, only to have Eoin turn up, again in an unmarked car.’

  Tom’s face was increasingly grave.

  ‘Then Joy said something weird, when we were in the spa – was it really only yesterday? She said Eoin had pulled Ken over on a motorway the other day and breathalysed him. She expected Ken to fail, but Eoin waved him on his way with a friendly handshake. Tom: I’m not making accusations. But it should have dawned on me earlier that Eoin and Ken were … acquainted.’

  ‘No reason why it should.’

  ‘The only other thing is that when … No, this is really tenuous.’

  ‘Go on.’ His voice, his face, showed that he was used to deploying this calm, compelling authority.

  ‘I wish I knew her name! The girl Rufus and I rescued and stowed in the school loft. She was absolutely emphatic that she wanted nothing to do with male officers. Any at all.’

  ‘That’s right: I got sent away with a flea in my ear.’

  ‘So you did. Does this suggest she’d had a bad experience with a male officer?’

  His face was stern. ‘And one in particular? Is this what you’re implying?’

  ‘I told you you might not want to hear it. And I’m not implying anything, just stating facts that may or not be connected.’

  He eased himself out of his invalid chair and came to sit on the edge of the bed, taking my hand gently. ‘Do you still like him, Jane?’

  ‘I think that was only for one evening, and I had had red wine on an empty stomach.’

  ‘Good. And thank you for spelling all this out. Because I’m sorry to say it confirms what your school CCTV suggests. And, to be honest, what the team are beginning to find evidence of – that at least one officer connived in the apparent escape of some of these trafficked women. They thought they were running for their lives to escape their slave master – in fact, they ended up as prostitutes in Wrayford and Poole and Wellington and other places. Betrayed, in other words. And after a week or so would be moved on. You can almost trace their movements via social media – their adverts, if that’s what you can call them. Poor things.’

  ‘Criminals or victims?’

  ‘Victims, Jane – always victims. Now, I think we should push off now. Let you rest.’

  ‘If you give me your house keys I’ll go and get you some clothes and stuff. And your bears. No?’ Caffy looked at Tom and frowned.

  And she didn’t argue when he said baldly, ‘I think you should leave that to my team.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I refused to leave hospital without speaking to Aaron, who told me with a grin he felt much better than I looked. ‘They say they’ll get rid of me tomorrow or the day after. Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling,’ he added, patting his head.

  ‘How will you manage?’

  ‘Well, I was worried about that. I’ve got the van to finish paying for, and a queue of people who need jobs doing like yesterday. But that weird woman who’s repairing your house came to see me yesterday and only goes and tells me I have an armed guard outside my room.’ I nodded. He grimaced. ‘Anyway, she says she and her team will pick up my jobs while I’m off. And give me a percentage, so I can keep up my van payments. And if necessary, if it all takes longer than it should, they’ll put me on a contract for PACT or whatever they call themselves, those women, doing estimates and such. Do you think she’s having me on?’

  ‘If Caffy says she’ll do something, she’ll do it. I’d trust her with my life, Aaron – in fact I’m going to. She’s found me somewhere to stay – until all this blows over.’

  ‘You won’t be going back, then – not to the school? I tell you, I wouldn’t want to – except to see what’s under them floorboards. Come on, I’m dead nosy, me. Bet you are too. Aren’t you?’ I didn’t tell him what one of my bears was called. ‘Fuck, I hope someone put my hammer and chisel in a safe place – don’t want to lose them.’

  ‘I owe you, Aaron – I’ll buy you replacements if necessary.’

  ‘No need. Caffy – is that really her name? – says if you’re beaten up by a criminal trying to save someone you eventually get compensation. So you and me both, eh? Except if the school sacks you, you may be in deeper shit than me.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘All that social media stuff, miss. Stupid cow. I don’t know why me and her ever got together.’

  ‘Stuff happens. Tell you what, I’ll send you some pics of what we find in the school loft.’

  ‘Shit! No! You won’t fucking do it without me!’

  Nor would I.

  I also looked in on Will, as immobile and unresponsive as ever. As always, I held his hand and talked to him, explaining I was in a bit of a crime-related pickle and might not be around for a few days. As I kissed him goodbye, Martin, his designated nurse, popped his head round the door and mouthed that he’d like a word. Interestingly, he led me well out of earshot when I joined him, as if he too accepted the remote possibility that Will could hear and process information.

  Putting his hand on my shoulder, he said gently, ‘There’s going to be an approach to the High Court for permission to withdraw all the support systems that are keeping him going. You know there are a couple of Will’s exes at loggerheads about his – possible – future. This is the only way to sort it out. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine there’ll be a speedy decision, of course. They’ll probably take months, and there’ll be an appeal, probably. You know how the law takes for ever. The thing is, Jane, if life support were to be withdrawn, would you want to be present? No need to tell us now. Just something to ponder …’

  Something amongst a whole lot of other things to ponder.

  Caffy’s apartment was very quiet, as she had warned it might be, and it was all too easy to dwell on what Martin had said. But the garden that her living room opened on to, and the grounds that surrounded the house, were very noisy – with birdsong, every note of which was promising spring and new life. I discovered gloves and tools in a shed and tried to dig and weed myself back to some sort of normality.

  The main worry was about the two schools, and my place in them, especially after Aaron’s comment. Using my new pay-as-you-go mobile, I had phoned Hazel on Monday morning to tell her I needed a couple of days’ sick leave. Her response had been more guarded than usual – none of the unequivocal support I’d hoped for.

  ‘The thing is, Jane, that I’m already getting phone calls from parents who don’t want their children ever to have to pass that kitchen door – and I can’t say I blame them.’

  ‘Me neither. And I can see the children can’t use the Wrayford village hall for ever. But the problem isn’t insuperable: Grenfell Tower showed how quickly a substitute school can be put together, using upmarket Portakabins, and there’s enough room in the Wrayford playground. I bet it could be organised and set up within the week. I have every faith in Tom Mason and Jess being able to come to an arrangement about sharing facilities.’

  ‘Your deputies? Not you?’ She sounded horribly relieved.

  ‘As I said, I need a couple of days at least … If the parents don’t want their kids to pass that door, Hazel, you can imagine how I must feel about seeing it. And recalling what—I’m sorry.’ I swallowed hard. �
��If you need to parachute in a head to cover my absence, I shall understand.’ My voice must have sounded as forced to her as it felt to me. ‘Can I ask who’s talking of withdrawing their children?’

  ‘I have to tell you some have already, I rather think as a result of that tweet. But Mr Petrie, whom I thought was rather an ally of yours, has emailed Donna. He says he’s sure you’ll understand.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She listed a couple of others – I’d miss them, but they wouldn’t leave a hole in my heart like Lules’ leaving.

  It was only as I made myself a coffee that I realised that Rufus couldn’t have contacted me in person: he didn’t have my phone number. But it still hurt. What did Lules think about it? Possibly I’d never know.

  ‘Come on, miss – I’m bored out of my skull and I really want to see,’ Aaron insisted, his voice tinny down the phone.

  To be honest I was getting cabin fever too. I might have more books at my disposal than I’d ever had in my life, there might be a wonderful music library, I could even use the Daweses’ home cinema if I wanted – but I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes, even assuming I could make the effort to choose and then open a book.

  ‘If the police will let us,’ I said, ‘and you’re sure you can manage the loft stairs—’

  ‘You make me sound like my granddad. They only stood on the one hand, didn’t they?’

  My therapist thought it might be a good idea to see the school again. ‘If you don’t now, you won’t ever manage it,’ she’d said. ‘Always get back on a horse the moment you’ve been thrown.’

  No doubt Lulabelle would have agreed.

  So on the Friday afternoon, Elaine, who was taking a proprietary interest in Aaron, on the grounds, she claimed, that you always needed to be on the right side of an odd-job man, picked up first me and then Aaron himself, and drove us both there. She parked outside the main entrance, only moving when a cough from me drew her attention to the yellow zigzag lines.

  We couldn’t have seen the kitchen door even if we’d wanted to – it was still hidden under a police tent. I let us in via the front door: the school smell was familiar, but the silence deeper than I’d ever known it, even though I’d worked there alone many a time. It was as if the school was already dead.

  Even one-handed, Aaron was up the loft stairs like a monkey, his hammer and chisel tucked into his jeans’ pockets. ‘Come on. Got to see.’ Then he added, almost in tears. ‘Can’t do it, Jane. You’ll have to.’

  Obeying his instruction to the letter – he didn’t need to know I’d met such tools before – I inserted the chisel just where he pointed and hit it. And moved along and hit it again. Soon we could ease the floorboard out.

  ‘Fucking hell!’

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  ‘What’s all that lot, then?’ He pointed to decaying heaps of newspapers, tied with brown string. Twine. Elaine produced a camera, snapping from every angle. ‘Go on, get one out.’

  In response, though she left the parcel in place, Elaine eased away some of the paper, stroking away layer from layer till she stopped. ‘Wood. Or something like it. No, look – it’s paint. Oil paint.’

  ‘Lady Preston’s pictures,’ I gasped. ‘No: leave them as they are. We need art specialists to deal with them now.’

  She snorted. ‘Oh, they’ll be Victorian crap!’

  ‘Look at the dates on the papers: just at the end of the last war. They’ve been hidden from sight ever since. Elaine, I know I’ve got a suspicious mind, but I wonder if these got here legally?’

  ‘You mean we’re not going to see anything? Come on, miss!’

  Elaine was worrying away all the paper from one, meanwhile. Colour shouted from the oil below. She froze. ‘Does that say Vincent? Looks like you’ve found the school a Van Gogh, Jane!’

  And we had. Assuming they were originals, we’d found one Van Gogh, at least, and a Seurat. I stopped them opening anything else. In those two alone there was enough money to build a new school – to build new schools in every village in Kent. A new hospital or two. To change lives. Since there were at last half a dozen more waiting to be unwrapped, miracles were possible.

  Or not.

  ‘There’s a body called the Commission for Looted Art,’ I said, my mouth almost numb. ‘They’ll know what to do with them. They’ll know who owns them. But then, the owners might have died – might have been killed in the war.’

  ‘So that means you get to keep them?’ Aaron yelped.

  ‘It means someone will trace their families and return them.’ I managed a grim smile. ‘No wonder Lady Preston wants to get her paws on them. The only consolation is that if we don’t get them she doesn’t either.’

  It wasn’t much consolation, actually. Theoretically it was good knowing justice would be done, even if it was over seventy years later. In fact, I was, as Aaron elegantly put it, gutted. Museums had managed without them quite well; they had other pictures. At least, however, the public would get to see them, I told myself. But some, eventually, would go back to private owners and never see the light of day again. That was the worst scenario.

  ‘They might give us a reward,’ Aaron said hopefully.

  ‘They might. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

  My therapist had been concerned by what I freely admitted were still negative feelings about the school, but more about my anger that our amazing discovery would do no one any good. All that the media had been told was that an anonymous workman had found the pictures during routine maintenance. The village was awash with cameras for a couple of days. I didn’t find it hard to stay away. Elaine reported that she’d spirited Aaron off to his granny’s in Dartford, under the strictest instructions to keep his lip buttoned, because if he said anything the villains who’d hurt us would know where to find us and might return to finish the job. I backed her, wholeheartedly.

  Late the following Sunday afternoon, Tom, finding me in Caffy’s garden leaning idly on a hoe, once again floated the idea of the thing I really dreaded, witness protection. ‘We’ve mopped up as many people as we could,’ he said, throwing a worm towards an impatient robin, ‘but gangs like these have long tentacles. You live a very public life – well, you’re a biggish fish in a very small pond, what with your work and your umpiring – so it’s very hard for you to hide. If only you had a great aunt in Australia who’s longing to see you … No? Well, I promise you we’ll do all we can to protect you – yes, both me officially and me as a friend – but you know that we’re under as much financial pressure in the police as you are in education. If you mess up, kids fail exams. If we mess up …’ His shrug said everything. ‘Anyway, Caffy’s roast lamb requires mint from the greenhouse. I’d best get it.’

  ‘I didn’t know mint had to be kept in a greenhouse,’ I objected, as much to prolong the conversation – any conversation – as long as possible.

  ‘Apparently if you dig some up in the autumn, pot it up and keep it warmish, it flourishes while the stuff left in the garden is still lying dormant. There – you learn something new every day. By the way, Caffy says the pool is lovely and warm and if you have a swim now you won’t be so stiff tomorrow.’

  On the grounds that Caffy was usually right, I cleaned and put away the tools. I’d managed thirty lengths yesterday, so I’d try forty today. After all, the pool wasn’t full-size and normally I was a strong swimmer – these days I was unaccountably weak. But I wanted to swim further and further because if I thought about anything except breathing and co-ordinating my limbs, I sank, ignominiously. And it was good not to think.

  I was so intent on reaching forty it came as a shock to realise I wasn’t alone. Someone had taken a seat at the far end of the pool and was nursing what looked like a G & T. He flapped a hand. I swam painfully back, and heaved myself up the steps. He got up, yanked me upright and passed me one of the giant fluffy hooded robes.

  ‘Todd Dawes,’ he said, with a smile to die for, now shaking m
y still dripping hand as if it was some social occasion. He must have been in his sixties. His face was well lived in, but it radiated intelligence and kindness in equal measure. ‘I’m the reprobate many-times-removed cousin of your respectable friend Brian.’

  ‘And Caffy’s adoptive father. Married to … Jan?’

  ‘Well done – you’ve been doing your homework. So have I. Come over here and sit down for a bit. Brian tells me you run two schools admirably, with fewer resources by the day.’

  ‘That’s what every head in the state sector does.’

  ‘But it’s tough?’ He moved his chair slightly so he could see my face.

  Surprising me probably more than him, the words poured out: ‘It’s tough having to sack your colleagues, manage without textbooks, rely on people’s generosity for things like music and drama you know are essential, but can’t fund without cutting other vital things.’

  ‘And you feel you should go back and carry on fighting?’

  ‘Of course. But my GP won’t sign me off – says I’m not ready yet.’

  ‘And are you?’

  I dropped my gaze. ‘I could be. Should be.’

  He shook his head. ‘Tom says you should never send in an injured cop to stop a fight. I’d have thought that applied to you. You need to get well, surely?’

  Again words came out of their own accord. ‘That could take a long time. To get over this properly. In fact, despite what I just said, I’ve tried to tell the governors they need someone who’s on top of their game. I’ve told Brian and Hazel, his opposite number, told them straight. And they won’t accept my resignation.’

  ‘I don’t know about this Hazel, but Brian’s a stubborn bugger when he wants to be. He’s feeling a lot better after his bypass, he says to tell you, better than he’s felt for months, although he’s still recuperating. He says you saved his life.’

  ‘I didn’t, but as you say, if he gets an idea in his head it stays there.’