by SJI Holliday
So much for her fresh start.
She’s standing outside her office when she spots the bright red hair again. The girl who’d been distraught during the assembly. She needs to talk to her, needs to know her relationship with Katie Taylor. A friend, surely. But she seems younger. Doesn’t look like a sixth year. A dark thought swirls into her head. Maybe she’s not a friend. Maybe she knows what happened . . .
Don’t be ridiculous. This wasn’t something a child could’ve done, was it? She wasn’t even sure of the details of the death yet. She needed to speak to Jon. And the police.
The two police officers are at the other end of the corridor, chatting to Jon. Polly turns back to the crowd, which has thinned considerably. No sign of the redhead now.
Damn it.
She spots the teaching assistant, Lois Reibach, scuttling off along the corridor behind the last of the stragglers.
‘Lois . . . wait . . .’
The younger woman turns, and Polly can see now that her eyes are red-rimmed, her face pale. Jon had said that Lois was a confidante to many of the older students. The ones struggling with their exams, the ones being plunged into making life choices they weren’t ready for. Had she been friendly with Katie?
‘Sorry, Polly. I need to get back to class. Mrs Cohen is off and I’m looking after her third years.’
‘Sure, yeah. I just wanted to ask you a couple of things quickly. Can I walk with you?’
Lois nods. She looks away, stares straight ahead. Doesn’t want to meet Polly’s eye. Interesting.
‘Do you know the girl with the red hair? I mean, of course you do. I mean, is she a friend of Katie’s? Was she, I mean?’ Polly stammers over her words. This is not going to plan.
‘I, uh. Yes. Of course. That’s Diane McBride. She’s a fourth year, but her and Katie do some stuff together, they were creating a magazine or something. I think. I’m not really sure. But yes, they were friends.’
Polly frowns. Something in the younger woman’s voice is off. ‘Do you know where she is now? Where she’s meant to be? I lost her in the crowd . . .’
They walk past an open area where a few of the pupils are chatting in hushed tones. She almost misses her, hidden far in the corner, obscured by taller kids huddled in front.
‘Ah wait, there she is . . .’ Polly breaks away from Lois just as a tall older boy strides through the break-out area, the crowd parting in front of him like he’s Moses. People step back, staring. Whispering.
‘Who’s that?’ Polly asks Lois, but the woman has vanished around a corner.
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ Polly says, trying to push her way through the kids. They don’t know her yet. They just see authority and immediately their eyes are suspicious. By the time she makes it through, the redheaded girl and the tall boy have gone.
‘Damn it,’ she mutters. She turns and heads back to her office. She’s asked Catherine to let all the teachers know that she needs to speak to Katie’s friends.
All of them.
LucasCrispIsAPaedo
Secret Group
23 Members (21 new)
Luke Crust
18h
Right, well this page speaks for itself, eh? If you’ve no heard already, where huv you been? Katie Taylor is dead. Dusnae take too much ov a brain to work out who dun it . . .
Likes(23) Comments(6)
Al Samson RIP Katie, poor cow.
Big Jim Nailor I always kent that bloke was dodgy as fuck. Wi a name like that?
Al Samson Who set this page up?
Big Jim Nailor Who gies a fuck?
Sally Stephens Poor Katie. I don’t think this page is going to help, is it?
Big Jim Nailor Shut it, you.
9
Louise
Louise slips on the suit and shoe covers in silence. The eerie calmness to these proceedings always makes her feel a bit sick. She steps into the girl’s bedroom. Outside, a tall, stringy willow is swaying in the breeze. One of the branches is tapping gently against the window. She imagines Katie lying in her bed at night, in the darkness. Listening to the rhythmic tapping of the branch.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The girl is lying on the bed, covered with a white sheet. Next to her, a reed-thin woman she recognises as Mary Haynes, the pathologist, is writing notes into the black Moleskine notepad that she always carries in her coat pocket. She glances up as Louise enters, raises an eyebrow in greeting. She’s been for a drink with Mary a few times. Enjoys her dark humour. She’s quiet today though, like everyone else.
Two CSIs are busy dusting the dressing table and desk. One of them has a camera slung around his neck and Louise knows they will have photographed everything before moving it. She’d like to see the photos. It’s hard to see now that things have been shuffled around, but a girl’s desk and dressing table can tell you a lot about them. Her own dressing table in the flat is littered with half-empty tubes of make-up, dried-up lipsticks, nail varnishes she hasn’t opened for months. There is always a neat little pile of eyeliner pencil shavings, and Louise often wonders why she doesn’t sharpen straight into the bin, but there is something about the little curls of wood and the smell of the shaved wax that she likes.
Katie Taylor’s dressing table is in a similar state, at first glance. Various aerosol cans – body spray, deodorant. Bottles of perfume. Tubes, sticks, packets. On the mirror fixed to the back there are an array of long necklaces, leather, beaded, some with pendants hanging on the end. Her desk is small, and she’s made a neat stack of books and jotters on one side. A giant pencil sharpener-shaped container houses a variety of pens and pencils, a bobble-head pencil top wobbles gently over the side.
Malkie Reid is talking quietly to Davie in the corner of the room. There is another man with them, who Louise assumes is the GP who called it in. He looks pale. Sad. She imagines he was hoping for a different outcome, as were they all. But Mary Haynes’s efficient movements suggest that he’s got it right.
Louise is perusing the girl’s collection of prints and framed posters that hang on the wall above her desk when Mary appears at her side.
‘Bruising is new, all right. On her arms and legs. Finger shaped. Want to see?’
Something about one of the posters isn’t right. She’s not sure what it is.
‘Right. Of course,’ she says, following Mary over to the bed. She’s distracted. Thinking about the poster. She’ll go back to it in a minute.
Mary peels the sheet off carefully. Davie breaks away from the huddle in the corner and comes over to look. He stands close to Louise and she can feel his warmth radiating towards her. She feels her cheeks grow hot.
‘Warm in here, isn’t it?’ No one replies.
Mary frowns. ‘As I was saying. Finger-shaped bruises, here . . . and here.’ She points to places on Katie’s upper arms and just above her knees.
‘Have you established cause of death?’ Louise says.
‘I don’t know for sure yet, but the way her face is, it looks like asphyxiation. Also, I noticed that one of her pillows was under her head at an odd angle, not the way you’d put it yourself. Didn’t look comfortable. I think someone put it there after she died.’
Finger marks. Bruising. Not an accident then. Someone sat on top of this girl, pressed a pillow into her face. Suffocated her. Louise feels sick, imagining the fear. The terror. Such an intimate act though, in her bedroom. On her bed. Pressing down. They’d need force. Rage. It was someone she knew, Louise was sure of it. She stands back as another team arrives.
‘Ready to go, Doc?’ one of them says.
Mary Haynes nods.
The room is silent as they carefully lift Katie onto a stretcher and take her away.
10
Neil
He’d been about to sneak into the back of the assembly when it became obvious that everyone in the school had somehow managed to squeeze themselves in there. They never did that. Usually the assemblies were split into year groups, or juniors and seniors. The hall is big, but it
isn’t big enough for the entire school of eight hundred people. Not with the partition still in place.
No. This isn’t normal. And that means it isn’t good.
He refreshes his phone again, just as the flashing battery light gives its last weak burst of red, then it’s dead.
‘Fucking phone,’ he mutters. He’s in the corridor, looking in through the glass. He can see Mr Poole up on the stage. Talking his usual shite, no doubt. He can’t see who else is up there because the glass pane in the door is too small and he can’t get the angle. A woman, though. No one he recognises.
He’s still contemplating whether to go in or not when the sliding door of the partition opens fully and people start to come out. Sensing that this is not a good time to be found lurking outside the assembly hall, he turns and heads back into the main corridor.
Outside, Mr Hennessy, the janitor, is wheeling a wheelbarrow full of garden equipment towards the area near the front gate that they called ‘the Students’ Garden’, while Pete ambles behind him, carrying nothing. The garden’s a row of raised beds where various things are planted, according to registration class. The kids in years one to three plant cabbages and try to grow the biggest pumpkin. The kids in the later years are supposed to plant more exotic things, like herbs, and use them in home ec. Some of the girls plant flowers. At the moment, the whole row of beds is bare and frost-covered and he can’t imagine what the two of them are planning to do there. They’re not attempting to turn the soil in January, are they? Fools. He wonders, sometimes, if Hennessy just invents things for them both to do to keep themselves in jobs.
Just inside the main door of the school there is a small alcove with a couple of grey fabric chairs and a big bookcase full of stuff that looks too boring to even make it into the library. Neil slides into the space behind the edge of the bookcase and the wall, waiting for people to pass. He can still see Pete and Hennessy out in the playground. He presses himself back against the wall. Anyone outside could see him, if they looked. But on the inside he’s well hidden. He tries to catch snatches of conversation as people walk past. They all seem to be talking over each other, so he’s not picking out much of what they say. A few words here and there . . . ‘I cannae believe it’, ‘shocking’, ‘it’s no true’, ‘that family’. He could just walk out there, grab someone and ask them what’s going on. But he’s been on a long run of late attendances and absences, and despite his curiosity and the feeling low in his gut that something is very wrong he’s still not up for being yelled at by Poole or any of his sidekicks. The secretary, Ms Leeming, with her towering stilettos and Swedish porn-star looks, is more terrifying than the headmaster. MILF, though. Definitely. He definitely would. Although he’d be scared she might crush him to death between those well-sculpted thighs.
Christ, Neil, he thinks. What’re you going to do? Stay here all bloody day?
He’s fucked off that his phone is dead. Fucked off about Katie. Just completely fucked off, really. About everything.
He peeks his head out, just enough to see who’s about. The voices have faded to a trickle. The footsteps have lessened. They’ve all passed.
Now’s his chance.
If he can get to the senior year break-out area, he can pretend he’s been there all the time. Make out he was in the bogs when the call for the assembly came. He’ll manage to make something up. He always does.
He sneaks out, trying to walk on his toes so that his rubber soles don’t squeak on the lino. As he rounds the corner to the break-out area, he sees that quite a few people are there, all in their little huddled groups. He spots the woman from the stage. Recognises her, now that she’s up close. She’s the new guidance councillor. McCabe? McKay? McAllister. That’s it. She’s standing at the edge of the carpeted area, looking like she’s not sure who to pounce on first.
Then he spots her. Diane McBride. Cannae miss her with that hair. Some people take the piss out of her because of her English accent, but he loves it. Diane was born and bred in West London. Fuck knows what made her family want to relocate up here. Neil can’t wait to get away from the place. He really likes Diane, and loves asking her about London – a place he and Katie would be moving to as soon as they got their exams out of the way. Summer jobs, then uni. That was the plan.
Avoiding Ms McAllister, Neil skirts around a row of bookcases and makes his way towards the top of the room. Diane is standing on her own, with a semi-circle of kids firing questions at her. She looks like she’s been crying.
‘Oi,’ Neil says. ‘Leave her alone.’
He pushes through the crowd and hustles the girl off around the corner.
‘Neil, Neil . . . oh my God, are you OK?’ he hears someone say. Someone else tries to grab his arm. ‘Mate . . .’ He shrugs it off and drags Diane into the fourth-year girls’ toilets.
‘Diane, what the fuck? What’s going on?’ She bursts into tears, throws her hands up over her face. He steps forward to embrace her, just as the door flies open and Poole’s thunderous face appears.
‘You’re not supposed to be in here,’ he says. The expression on his face changes, softens. His eyes look wet. Lois Reibach is right behind him, and she steps in and leads Diane towards the sinks.
‘Splash your face with water, honey. It’ll help. I promise.’
Neil tunes out the voice. Tunes out everything.
Focuses on Poole’s face.
‘What is it? What the fuck’s happened?’
The headmaster doesn’t even flinch at his swearing.
‘Come on, son. I need to talk to you. Come on. Not here. We’ll pop out the side door and head back around to my office. You don’t need to walk past the others.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Neil says.
Confusion is soon replaced by fear as the headmaster continues. ‘I’m so sorry, Neil. This is going to be very hard.’
As the door swishes shut behind him, he can still make out the sound of Diane’s racking sobs, and the sounds of the old pipes whining as water judders and splashes out of the taps.
THREEWISEMONKEYSBLOG
Telling It Like It Is
Posted: 1st Sep 2016 by SpeakNoEvil
Status: Draft
Comments: 0
Oh no my playmate
I can’t come play with you
My dollies have the flu
Boo hoo boo hoo
Can’t holler down rain barrels
Or slide down a cellar door
But we’ll be jolly friends
Forever evermore.
I’m not sure what I think about the whole BFF thing – Best Friends Forever. Yeah, right. I used to be really jealous of those girls who were BFFs – and that’s before the phrase even existed. You know the ones – same hair, same clothes, matching lip-gloss. Those vacant, pretty girls with the rugby-playing boyfriends who beat them up at the weekends.
You must know who I mean? Far be it for me to name names here, but there are some stupid, stupid girls out there who should know better. No boy should ever be able to justify giving you a black eye. You know that, don’t you? Just because he’s popular, and you’re popular, and all your identikit mates are popular – doesn’t mean he can get away with doing what he likes.
I’ve seen those bruises, you know. That day you skived off PE and said you had your period.
Bull. Shit.
Did you see me looking? I wanted to say something to you then, but the thing is – no one ever wants to believe the bad stuff. No one ever wants to hear the truth. The only truth is that you’re popular and I’m not.
But I don’t have to hide my purple-tinged cheekbones under layers of pancake foundation. I’ve got more respect for myself than to stay with a thug just because he’s popular.
You do realise he’s playing around with half the girls in the school, don’t you?
It’s times like this I realise that I don’t need to be like you.
11
Polly
Polly storms back to her office and slams he
r door. She’s not used to being ignored quite so blatantly. She starts to wonder if any of them will ever open up. What is it with these kids? It’s like they have some sort of gangster code that forbids them from talking to an adult, even if that adult tries to treat them as equals and not as kids. That’s one of the main things that had worked in her last school and, Christ, that place had been in a much worse state than this.
It was tough to deal with kids who had no hopes. Not because they weren’t bright, or they weren’t capable, but because they came from the kind of family where generations of them had lived hand to mouth, on the dole, using petty crime to make do rather than step outside their pitiful stereotype and get a job. Polly wasn’t naive. She knew it wasn’t always a simple situation. Not just about being lazy and demotivated. It was about years of living in a place where the industries had shut down, where people had been uprooted and moved into new communities where no one could find a way to get along. Grandad did it, so dad did it too, so son does it as well and that’s that.
But it’s not like that in Banktoun. At least it hadn’t been when Polly was growing up. Were things really so different now? Of course there were always going to be the poorer families who had run out of choices in life. But all of these kids seemed to be acting the same. Were they always so hostile? Or was something else going on? What were they scared of? Or maybe it was a ‘who’ . . .