The Teacher: A shocking and compelling new crime thriller – NOT for the faint-hearted! (21 page)

The phone went dead. Ted sat at his computer and clicked open the control panel, he clicked the button to restore factory settings. They wouldn’t find anything on here without a fight. He looked up and caught a glimpse of something nailed to the back of the door. It was a pendant, an ankh symbol, the Christian sign for eternal life. It was the symbol that had been painted in gold on the back of Ted’s chair, not this chair – the chair in the room. The chair he had occupied in the covert meetings. They each had their own symbol; eternal life had been Ted’s. Ironic really as his body had other ideas. Inoperable is a word no one wants to hear, it carries the same weight as the words malignant and terminal; so completely final. His thoughts were interrupted by the familiar sound of his black Bakelite telephone. He didn’t want to answer it, didn’t want to talk to anyone, but he lifted the receiver.

‘Hello?’ Ted asked tentatively.

‘Come to the Aviary, Mr Lowestoft, it’s time,’ a deep, muffled voice came over the line, he had obviously covered the mouthpiece.

‘Very well.’ So this was it, the end he presumed.

He looked around the room before pulling the door closed. He would not give the boy the satisfaction of the chase, although he could hear in his voice that he wasn’t a boy any more. He would come to him and take his punishment like a man, whatever it may be.

The Aviary was far too generous a name for the mausoleum that contained all of the bird carcasses, killed unsuspectingly and without compassion. The birds had all been arranged as though they were in the wild, either nesting or in flight, with great care and attention to detail. Yes, this was his favourite room. It certainly was a beautiful sight to Ted, seeing the fantastic array of colour that seemed to have no place in nature.

Ted walked into the room and saw the back of the man. He had a black hood over his head.

‘Do you know what the collective noun for crows is?’ the voice asked.

‘A murder,’ Ted answered. ‘A murder of crows.’

‘Very good, Mr Lowestoft.’ The man turned around and Ted was confronted with the familiar sight of Parker, the PhD student who had been helping Abbey.

‘Parker, I thought you were someone else,’ he said, an unintentional sigh of relief escaping his lips. Had Parker scared his executioner away? Parker smiled a lopsided smile and shrugged. He was staring straight at Ted.

It took a few moments before the clouds of confusion dissipated and Ted finally understood what was going on. Ted realised he had never really paid much attention to Parker before. Then he saw it. The questions had finally been answered. What had happened to the boy? Would Ted even recognise him if he saw him again? In Ted’s mind Parker had been burned as an image of adolescence and youth, as if time would stand still just for that one person. He had forgotten that people grow, people change.

‘I was almost sure you would recognise me. But you didn’t. I was a little disappointed when you didn’t, I have to admit. But to be honest, that’s the only reason you’re still alive.’

‘I suppose it’s no use me telling you I’m sorry for what we did,’ Ted said as he stared at the cabinet and not Parker, he couldn’t look into his eyes and see the hate that he so much deserved. Parker walked across to the beautiful big glass case that stood in front of the secret entrance to their special room. Several black birds with a blue and green tinge to their leather-look plumage. It was as though they had been dipped in petroleum and the slick feathers looked wet to the touch.

‘An unkindness of ravens.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘That’s what you call a group of ravens, an unkindness. They were called that because they would push the young from the nest and leave them to die.’

Ted’s heartbeat was thumping in his ears, steady and regular, the anxiety medication keeping the rhythm for him because his body no longer could. His collar was getting tighter, it was getting harder to breathe. To live a life of pretence you have to ignore many things about yourself. They become harder to ignore when the product of them is standing in front of you, threatening to end it all. Parker looked at him.

‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘I took my pills, all of them, everything I could find,’ Ted admitted.

‘Good for you, Mr Lowestoft.’ Parker smiled and patted Ted on the shoulder. Ted would have flinched if he weren’t so numb from the medication. ‘Are you scared?’

‘Of you? Probably not as much as I deserve to be.’

‘I don’t believe you to be capable of remorse so don’t play that card with me.’

‘I’m surprised you believe in anything after everything you went through.’

‘Spare me your coffee-table psychology, there’s nothing you can tell me that will erase the memory of who I know you to be. Have you forgotten who you were?’

‘I know who I was, who I am.’

‘Then you know I have no choice. It was always going to end this way.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘I have grown fonder of you these last few months, there’s almost no trace of the monster I once knew. But then I come to this room and I see the ravens, I remember what’s behind them.’ He paused for a moment and looked at Ted, who was clutching at his collar, feeling weaker by the second. ‘Your chair was the closest to mine.’

‘Please.’ Ted felt his knees weaken. Parker rushed to him and held him up, he was gentle; it was almost as though he cared.

‘I remember in the beginning, when I was first brought to the room, I had hoped you would free me, you were the only one who brought me water. Not even my grandfather showed me that compassion.’

‘If I could take it back …’ Ted sputtered.

‘You can’t. We have to go now.’

‘Go?’ Ted’s vision was inconsistent, his gut swirling, words stuck to his tongue that felt too heavy to move. Ted leaned on Parker who led him through the museum, it was empty and Parker was cautiously looking around each corner before moving forward. Ted was struggling to focus on what Parker was saying.

‘It was worse, you know. With the others I expected it, but with you I had hope. You know the only thing left in Pandora’s Box was hope, some people believed that’s because hope is the most evil emotion of all. When hope fails all that follows is complete and utter despair. Without hope there is no despair.’

Through his blurred vision Ted could see they were approaching the ballroom. Parker opened the door and they both went through, closing the doors behind them.

The Rat

‘This all feels very surreptitious.’ Gary Tunney, the digital forensic analyst and general supernerd, shovelled spaghetti into his mouth. ‘Sorry, I’m starving. I’ve been stuck in a bloody seminar all morning, part of the new terror training stuff. Had to learn how to get shot well. As if you get a choice where to get shot.’

Adrian and Grey just watched him, they didn’t have any food.

‘You said you had something,’ Adrian said, just to stop the sound of Gary eating, it was not pleasant.

‘Oh boy do I have something!’ Gary said, polishing off the rest of his dinner, oblivious to the contorted grimace of disgust on Grey’s face. He shoved the bowl to one side and reached into his messenger bag, pulling out a wad of files. Gary was mid-twenties with auburn curly hair poking out from beneath his beanie. The hat was thick black wool, completely out of place in this weather, grey and shiny in the creases where the dead skin and sweat had settled; it didn’t look like he ever took it off.

‘What’s all that?’ Grey reached across the table to take the files. Gary pulled them back, a wicked smile on his face.

‘No way, you have to wait for the big reveal.’

‘You’re so lame.’ Grey smiled.

‘You look cute without the glasses, DS Grey,’ he said. She raised her eyebrows at him and he hurriedly turned his attention back to the files. ‘OK, so the knife they found at Ryan Hart’s place was not the knife that was used on either the pathologist or Kevin Hart, although it does seem likely that the same knife was used on both of those unfortunate fellas – it’s just not this one.’

‘We kind of guessed that,’ Adrian said.

‘Fair enough, but did you know that a similar knife was used in another high-profile murder-slash-suicide recently? Not only that but the knife was left at the scene.’ Gary Tunney’s eyebrows were raised; he was excited, waiting for a prompt.

‘Whose?’ Adrian moved forwards, leaning on the table.

‘David Caruthers, the news guy,’ he whispered like he was gossiping.

‘You mean that horrible scene up in London?’

‘That’s right. They didn’t find any DNA other than Caruthers’ on the knife, it was a kukri, the kind used originally by the Nepalese army, it’s pretty old school. Big and shiny.’

‘Do you have the notes on that crime scene?’

‘Oh yeah, it was majorly messed up. Ancient Chinese torture method, he had hundreds of lacerations on his body, or what was left of it. Be warned, dude, it’s one of the most gruesome things I have ever seen.’ Gary handed one of his files over to Adrian. Adrian looked through the photos. It was unreal, in the same way that Kevin Hart’s scene was unreal, not to mention the coroner’s.

‘You think it was done by the same person?’ Adrian asked, even though he knew the answer, there was no way this was done by anyone else.

‘No doubt about it; and it certainly wasn’t done by Ryan freakin’ Hart.’

‘And no one’s made the connection between the Caruthers murder and our ones down here?’ Adrian asked.

‘Not officially. You might want to kick that information upstairs though; probably get you some brownie points.’

‘OK, is that all?’ Grey asked.

‘Well, no, funny you should ask that, that is definitely not all. I had a look at the crime scene notes for Kevin Hart, and the autopsy report, and then I kind of managed to blag a look at the remains.’

‘And?’

‘None of it makes sense. I mean, it makes sense, but it doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Now you’re the one who isn’t making any sense.’ Grey smiled impatiently.

‘Well, this crime scene report does not fit with the autopsy report, and neither one of them fits with what I managed to deduce from looking at the remains.’

‘Go on.’

‘That pathologist was either suffering from some kind of illness that affected his ability to carry out his job to any kind of satisfactory degree. I could do better than he did and I don’t have anywhere near the kind of experience he had. I specialise in computers!’

‘Or?’

‘Or the more likely explanation is that he was well bent. He hid a bunch of stuff, or misreported it. It was so far out of whack there was no way it was unintentional. He was covering something up.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, isn’t that the golden question?’

‘You think the pathologist was in on it?’

‘I don’t know! You’re the detective. I would say that was a fair assumption though.’ Gary held up his hand to the waitress, she walked over. ‘Can I get a double espresso and a banana split, please?’

‘Right away, sir.’ She scuttled off again.

‘A banana split? What are you, five?’ Grey asked.

‘I like them, sue me!’ He still had tomato sauce from his Italian lunch on his chin, entangled in with his gingery beard.

‘Is there anything else?’ Adrian couldn’t watch Gary Tunney’s ham-fisted attempts at coming on to Grey so he diverted the conversation back to business.

‘Well, the lovely Detective Grey informed me that something was bugging you about the Hart crime scene, senior, not junior. Although I have a few things to say about junior’s as well. Anyway, I had a look at the pics and you’re right, there was definitely something familiar there. So I spent a while looking online for stuff.’

‘Online where?’

‘There are plenty of websites on serial killers, horrific murders, theories on things that have happened, unsolved cases and shit like that. People are fascinated with the macabre. Don’t ask me why.’

‘You found something then?’

‘About twenty years ago there was a body found right here in this city in a warehouse along the riverbank – well, parts of a body – inside a suitcase. Down past the old mill. Really horrible case, I mean really horrible murder, I don’t know what the suitcase was like.’ He half giggled.

‘It was a kid, wasn’t it?’ Adrian remembered.

‘They aged the body at around thirteen years old, there was no way to identify the body, although the marks indicated extreme neglect and malnutrition, torture, some really,
really
sick shit.’

‘You think all of this has something to do with that?’

‘Well, coming back to that pathologist. He was on that case; it was one of the first autopsies he was on. I had to find the original paperwork on it though because he’s not listed on any of the copies.’ The waitress placed a tower of ice cream, jelly and bananas in front of him, she glanced down at the pictures on the table, blood and guts everywhere. She looked at them in shock. Adrian opened his wallet and flashed his badge at her; in return she flashed him a smile. Grey groaned and shook her head. Adrian winked at Grey.

‘That’s some great work, Tunney.’ Grey smiled, grabbing the cherry from the top of his dessert.

‘You don’t have to steal my cherry, Grey, all you have to do is ask.’ He licked his spoon in what Adrian imagined was supposed to be a flirtatious way but Gary Tunney was clearly not used to flirting.

‘So what did this website say about the case of the boy in the suitcase?’ Grey asked.

‘Quite a few boys went missing around that time; it was not a good time to be a young man round here.’

‘Did they have a theory about it?’

‘These sites are all well and good but I wouldn’t look to them for actual insight, basically they talked about some evil satanic cult making human sacrifices, which is pretty much the go-to reason for things that have little or no reason behind them. They try to find a rational explanation for an irrational act. There’s very little evidence that satanic cults have ever actually existed. There was also some speculation that it might be a gay thing, I don’t know. It wasn’t long after Dennis Nilsen, the Muswell Hill murderer who killed a bunch of men and boys back in the seventies and eighties. He would meet guys in gay bars or lure homeless boys back to his place in north London. There was a real public interest in his case, like there is with most serial killers. After that point though, of course, every man or boy who went missing was assumed to have been taken by some deviant serial killer. Back then people weren’t very forthcoming in their reports. It wasn’t the same murderer though, the boy and the pathologist, it was a copycat, very similar MO but different strength, different angles, just different. Pretty good copy, though. Whoever did it knew some pretty specific details that were not in the press, either a copper or someone who was actually there. The organs were missing for a start, never found. His fingertips had been removed, sliced right off post-mortem, presumably to prevent identification. His teeth weren’t intact either, but that seemed more likely to be a part of the systematic torture he endured.’

‘That’s great, Tunney, thank you.’ Adrian slammed the folder shut, unable to look at any more pictures of Caruthers. He didn’t understand how Gary Tunney could sit and eat that banana split with its oozing strawberry sauce. Some people just have a stomach for that stuff.

‘There are a couple of other things you might be interested to know.’

‘Jesus, why don’t you do our job for us, Gary?’ Grey flashed him a winning smile, throwing the dog a bone.

‘You know me, Grey, I’m meticulous.’ He winked.

‘Nosy, you mean.’

‘Ryan Hart had some really shocking drug cocktail injected into him, there is no way a man with his contacts would be putting that crap in his body. He would be looking for a primo high. Do you remember those OD’s last year, the ones you worked on in Plymouth? It was a pretty close approximation of that mix, same chemist, I reckon. Each chemist has their own signature when you get down to the raw formula. It was crystal meth mixed in with a few low-grade narcotic substitutes, generic household cleaners. Anyway, he had like ten times the recommended dosage, at best it was suicide. But the scene looked staged to me. Also an experienced user like Hart wouldn’t take four goes to find the vein, whoever injected him hadn’t done it before. There’s more …’

‘OK, lay it on me, what else is there?’ Grey asked.

‘Three of the boys that went missing in the seventies were from the Churchill School for Boys. Ryan Hart’s old school, way before he got kicked out for dealing.’

Adrian’s face paled. That was Tom’s school. Then he remembered what Ryan had said about ‘that teacher’ and Jeffrey Stone’s suicide. Something else was going on here, something bigger and he needed to find out what.

‘Is there something else?’

‘Yeah, there’s one other name that keeps popping up wherever I look.’ His banana split was almost gone, Adrian could see Gary Tunney contemplating licking the banana boat.

‘Who?’

‘Your Detective Daniels.’

Grey looked at Adrian. She had some experience of working with scumbags, he saw her breathing become slightly more laboured, as though she were conscious of trying to control it, she pulled her eyes away and looked straight ahead. Last time she had a run-in with one of her colleagues she had ended up with a scar running the length of her torso. Adrian wanted to stop the train of thought he could see written all over her face.

‘So where is it, then?’ Adrian asked loudly, snapping Grey out of her own head.

‘Where’s what?’ Gary wiped his mouth.

‘The best place to get shot.’

‘Well, it’s complicated,’ Gary said excitedly, apparently unfazed by a question from left field. ‘Assuming you can’t actually point your backside at the shooter … the fattier the area the better apparently. But if it’s a torso shot then avoid bone and major organs. So either a very particular spot on the left side of your stomach about an inch under your ribs – you’ll bleed and it will hurt like hell but it’s not going to kill you – or the soft bit under your collarbone facing out away from your spine. Interesting fact: eighty-eight per cent of people who are shot recover fully.’

‘You’re a good man, Gary. Let me buy your lunch.’ Adrian reached into his pocked and pulled out a twenty pound note, putting it on the table. Grey stood up with him and patted Gary on the back.

‘Cheers, Gary, I owe you one.’

Outside the café Grey gave Adrian a foreboding look. This was a lot of information, a can of worms.

‘What do you think?’ he asked her.

‘I think Gary’s information is solid. He is a puzzle solver, he loves putting crap like this together until everything makes sense, he wouldn’t have told us if he wasn’t sure.’

‘Do we go to Morris?’

‘I don’t see how we can. I know Daniels is a creep but I just can’t see him being bent. He’s much younger than these other victims, too. A different generation. We need to get some solid evidence that we can use before we go to Morris.’

‘What Ryan told me about the men coming to his house when he was a kid, him recognising that teacher? He was my Tom’s headmaster. If this is about what it seems to be about then …’

‘Don’t think about that. Granted, they all seemed a little perverted but we need to be careful before we start throwing those kinds of accusations around,’ Grey said. ‘We just need to find out if any allegations have been made against the school before. It could be about something entirely different. Markham’s perversion was gambling with other people’s money, not messing with kids. There’s no evidence to say that’s what’s going on here.’

‘There haven’t been any allegations like that against the school, at least none on record. I looked into it before Tom went there. I just have a bad feeling, Grey. I feel like everyone is lying to me, to us. We need to find someone who can tell us what happened, someone who was there. Whoever is involved, they got rid of the paper trail. I can feel myself getting sucked into this one, in a bad way. It’s going to be one of those cases where there are no winners.’

‘That’s usually what happens with murders, Miley.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Adrian asked, knowing full well that he intended to call Andrea and tell her that Tom wasn’t going back to that school.

‘I think we need to go back to the station and sound Daniels out.’

Imogen pulled into the car park at the station, making sure to park as far away from her former colleagues, whose cars were all nestled together in a big metal lump, as possible. So insecure that they all had to park together, in their little clique. She walked past ‘his’ car, in her mind she didn’t even want to acknowledge his name. She cursed the fact that there were cameras facing the forecourt, she would love to let his tyres down, key his car, stab him in the eye.