Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) (20 page)

Bearwood School was a huge day and boarding school set in magnificent grounds in the heart of the Surrey Hills, close to Wokingham.

Jessie couldn’t imagine Jacqui fitting in here, even before Scott’s affair, could see why she had died a social death when her husband had seduced the Reception class teaching assistant. The facade, the facilities, said bankers, lawyers, the odd self-made entrepreneur, middle- and upper-class English with their stiff upper lips, a few American oil billionaires and Russian oligarchs thrown in for good measure; the Army families who could afford to send their children here, even with the benefit of service educational allowances, only higher ranking officers.

It reminded her of Highclere Castle, the stately home used in the filming of
Downton
Abbey
, resplendent with turrets and gables, gargoyles grimacing down from corners, surrounded by sweeping parkland, woods and a lake. Above the front door was a stained glass window, depicting an old man sailing in a tiny boat on a rough sea, his white sail bearing the red George Cross, a sea serpent rising from the water underneath the boat. The experience at a school like this, Jessie imagined, would be entirely binary for both pupils and parents: love it or hate it, fit in or be a square peg in a gold-plated round hole.

After meeting Jacqui, she had gone back to Bradley Court and telephoned the school pretending to be an interested parent and booked herself an after-school appointment with the Reception class teacher, Miss Flora Appleby. Before she left the office, she had scoured the website for photographs and found a plump woman in her mid-thirties, with a mass of curly brown hair that did nothing to slim her face. But her expression was open and friendly, her body language, standing on the edge of a running track cheering on her pupils, encouraging and supportive. From the photograph, at least, she seemed the perfect type to teach a class of four-year-olds, who in most other countries would still be playing in sandpits and climbing trees. Underneath the photograph, a caption stated that Miss Appleby had taught the Reception class for the past nine years, which meant that she would have been here at the same time as Nooria.

Parking her Mini in the visitor’s car park at the back of the school, Jessie climbed out, straightening out the creases from her black Marks and Spencer’s trouser suit, regretting now that she had worn it. She was pretty sure, having seen the school, that most pupils’ mothers would spend their days lunching, shopping in designer boutiques and playing tennis, and that any suit they owned would be a pale blue Chanel number reserved purely for ladies day at Ascot.

She was buzzed in the great oak front door and met in the hallway by an efficient-looking grey-haired woman in a suit not unlike Jessie’s own.

‘Mrs Flynn, I presume?’

‘Yes.’ Jessie held out her hand.

‘And your husband …?’

‘Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get away from work in time. We looked around at open day,’ she lied, hoping the woman wouldn’t question her on exactly when that was, ‘and loved the school, but I wanted to meet the Reception teacher, to see who would be teaching, uh, Sarah, teaching Sarah if she came here.’ Her smile had a nervous tilt to it. ‘I really was just hoping for a very informal chat.’

Now, standing in the panelled reception, the great oak staircase winding three floors above her, light cutting through the huge stained glass window over the door, casting multi-coloured patterns on her drab, black suit, she doubted her sense at having come. What was she hoping to gain from the visit anyway? A window into Nooria’s mind from someone who had worked with her five years ago? Now she was here, it felt a ridiculous stretch, a flight of fantasy.

‘Mrs Flynn.’ The receptionist interrupted her thoughts. ‘Miss Appleby is waiting for you in the library. Please, come this way.’

Miss Appleby looked very similar to her photograph, though she had lost a little weight since it had been taken last summer. She was wearing a black dress, black cardigan and black woollen tights, and her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, which accentuated her English rose colouring and her huge blue eyes, and minimized the fact that she would still be medically termed obese.

She was sitting on one of two cream linen sofas set opposite each other by the window. A low frosted-glass coffee table between them was laid with a silver tray bearing a white china teapot, a milk jug, two matching teacups and a plate of biscuits. Next to the tray was a centimetre-thick, glossy, full-colour brochure with an aerial shot of Bearwood School on the front. Jessie’s heart sank even further when she saw the arrangement.

Miss Appleby stood and held out her hand. ‘Mrs Flynn, lovely to meet you. Please come and sit down.’

Jessie shook her hand and sat opposite.

‘Tea?’ Miss Appleby asked.

‘Please.’

‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘Milk, no sugar, thank you.’

She poured Jessie tea, and then reached for the brochure. ‘This is our updated brochure, new for 2016.’

Jessie held up her hands. ‘Miss Appleby. Before you begin, I have a confession to make.’

‘A confession?’ Her brow wrinkled. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Her language, her diction, would have been at home on a woman decades older – the product of working in such a rarefied atmosphere for an entire career, Jessie thought.

‘I wasn’t completely honest when I set up this meeting with you.’

Laying the brochure back on the table, she pursed her lips. ‘Oh, well … I, uh, I am very busy.’

‘Please give me a minute to explain.’ Jessie pulled out her Army identification and passed it across the table. ‘I’m a clinical psychologist.’

‘A psychologist?’

‘Yes, with the Army.’

Miss Appleby raised a hand to her mouth. ‘What on earth do you want with me?’

‘I’m counselling a child, a little boy called Sami Scott. His mother is Nooria Scott. His father is Major Nicholas Scott. You worked with Nooria for a few years.’

Miss Appleby’s pale blue eyes widened. ‘Nooria?’

Jessie gave a silent nod, letting her work through her surprise.

‘Yes, but she left four and a half years ago.’ Raising her gaze to the ceiling, her lips moved as she mentally calculated. ‘In the middle of the summer term – May 2011. She was seven months pregnant with Scott’s child when she left.’

‘I know.’

‘So … what …?’ Folding her hands into her lap, Miss Appleby let the words hang in the air.

‘Do you feel you know … knew her?’ Jessie asked.

‘Well I don’t keep in touch with Nooria much, just Christmas cards, but I know her … knew her … pretty well back then, I suppose.’ She paused, fingertips picking at a loose thread on her skirt. ‘Better than anyone else, at least. She doesn’t have any brothers or sisters, or a father, and she fell out with her mother when she was sixteen.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘She seemed so alone. I think that’s probably why she confided in me.’

‘What was she like when she worked here? Was she good at her job?’

Miss Appleby nodded. ‘She was clever and hardworking. She could have done much better than be a teaching assistant, could have been a teacher, but I think she never had the opportunity. She stayed at school until the end of her A-levels, working to support herself, but then I think she couldn’t do it any more, so she got the job here as teaching assistant. She had it tough before she came here.’

‘Was she good with the kids?’

‘They all loved her.’ She smiled as a memory rose. ‘Especially the boys. She was so beautiful, so nice and kind, the boys loved her. Even though they were only four and five, they were drawn to her. It made me laugh. Men, they’re born not made.’

Jessie used the mention of men to move on to the subject of Nooria’s boyfriend.

‘Did Nooria have a boyfriend when she was here?’

Miss Appleby frowned; she took a moment to reply. ‘On and off. Her boyfriend wasn’t around much. She said that he worked abroad.’

‘Was he English? British?’

Miss Appleby reached for her tea and a biscuit, dunked the biscuit and took a bite. ‘No,’ she said, her mouth half-full. ‘He was from the Middle East.’

‘The Middle East?’ Jessie tried to hide her surprise. It hadn’t occurred to her, for some reason, that Nooria’s boyfriend – the father of her first child – would be Middle Eastern. She had pictured some spotty-faced British teenager who had turned on his heels and run at the first sign of pregnancy. ‘Where was he from?’

Miss Appleby hesitated. ‘I know this sounds a bit ridiculous coming from a teacher, but all I remember is that it was a country that was in conflict, because Nooria kept talking about him changing sides.’

‘Iraq?’

‘Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I have a terrible memory for names, which is bit of a challenge in my job, to say the least.’ She wrinkled her nose, cast her gaze to the ceiling.

Tyres crunched on gravel outside the window. Jessie glanced sideways, saw a sleek black Bentley gliding past, a peaked-capped chauffeur in the driver’s seat. She looked back to Miss Appleby; her expression had changed, a light switched on. ‘No, no, I remember now,’ she said. ‘Of course, how stupid of me. Afghanistan, he was from Afghanistan.’

‘Afghanistan?’ Jessie asked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Quite sure now … now that I remember.’

‘Did you meet him?’ Jessie asked.

Miss Appleby nodded.

‘What was he like?’

‘I only saw him a couple of times from a distance, when he came to collect her from school. He was good looking, I suppose, if a bit serious, severe even. It’s hard to tell with darker-skinned people, but he looked a good few years older than Nooria. Mid-thirties maybe. She was only eighteen when she started here – she’d just finished school herself. She was already seeing him, had been for some time.’

‘Did she talk about him much?’

‘No. That was the funny thing. She never called him her boyfriend and she didn’t even see him that often. He lived in Afghanistan most of the time, so she only saw him when he was over here.’

‘So what was in it for her?’

Miss Appleby hunched her shoulders. ‘To be honest, I have no idea. But I think … I think that she was frightened of him, that she didn’t have the guts to break it off.’

‘Do you remember what he was called?’

‘Nightmare,’ Miss Appleby said, popping the rest of the damp biscuit into her mouth.

‘What?
’ Jessie waited, jiggling her foot impatiently, while Miss Appleby chewed and swallowed, washed the biscuit down with a sip of tea, patted her mouth with the white linen napkin.

‘I can’t remember how to pronounce his name, but Nooria said that it meant “nightmare” in Dari.’ Folding the napkin, she laid it carefully on the table. ‘She also said that he lived up to his name. I remember that she laughed when she said it, but it was hollow, you know, one of those laughs that don’t reach the eyes.’

‘What about her affair with Scott?’

‘Oh, God, that was a huge scandal. I still can’t believe that Nooria did that. I was so surprised.’

Jessie sat forward. ‘Why? Why were you so surprised?’

Miss Appleby’s brow wrinkled. ‘Because lots of the dads flirted with her, at sports day and parents evening, but she never showed any interest, always kept her distance, was respectful of their wives. She knew that they all fancied her – who wouldn’t – but she was always professional.’

‘And with Major Scott?’

‘It was completely different with him. It was as if she had decided that he was the one, virtually from the first time that she met him. She knew that he was married, but she didn’t seem to care. She wanted him.’

‘And she got him.’

She pulled a face. ‘For better or worse.’

‘You didn’t like him?’

‘Well, I … God, I don’t want to sound bitchy, but no, not really. He was incredibly handsome, but also just as incredibly arrogant. A real alpha male type.’ A man who would never look twice at Miss Appleby. ‘You’ve met him, I suppose?’ she continued.

Jessie nodded. She thought of the man in her office this morning, the fury in his one good eye, the wet burgundy cavity of the other, the skin of his face like boiled treacle. There was no point opening up that Pandora’s Box here.

‘Yes, he is very good looking.’

‘You must be surrounded by them in the Army, aren’t you? Hot alpha males.’

Jessie smiled, thought fleetingly, for some reason, of Callan, and then immediately after of the man she had … fucked – there was no other word for it – in the pub car park two nights ago, another in a long line of men whose faces and names she could no longer remember. Sex without commitment. Satisfaction without guilt.
You were with your boyfriend. It’s your fault that he died.

She dipped her head, blushing with the memories. ‘It’s one of the few perks of the job.’ Her gaze caught the face of her watch; she’d taken up enough of Miss Appleby’s time. ‘I just have one more question. Did Nooria ever talk to you about the death of her first baby, the little girl?’

Miss Appleby looked shocked. ‘Death?’

The door opened suddenly and a teenage girl, school skirt hitched up micro short, marched into the room clutching a stack of books. She stopped short when she saw them.

‘Sorry, Miss Appleby.’

‘Two minutes, Tilly, then you can have your library back.’ The door closed. Miss Appleby turned back to Jessie. ‘Tilly’s the Year 9 library monitor. Now, where were we? Oh yes.’ She tilted forward, lowering her voice. ‘No, the little girl didn’t die.’

‘But that’s what—’ Jessie broke off.

‘What Nooria told you?

‘No. Scott. It’s what he told me.’

Miss Appleby wrinkled her nose. ‘He probably doesn’t even know.’

‘So what happened to the baby?’

The clanging of a bell. Miss Appleby looked flustered. She gathered up the school brochure from the table, grabbed her handbag from the floor beside her. ‘That’s the boarders’ dinner bell. I’m a house mistress as well as the Reception class teacher. I’m sorry, I have to go.’

Jessie put a hand on her arm. ‘What happened to the baby, Miss Appleby?’