The Teacher: A shocking and compelling new crime thriller – NOT for the faint-hearted! (24 page)

The Chair

Adrian waited on the steps to the museum looking at his watch. It was ten past eight, Grey was late. Various faces from the community had already arrived but there was no sign of DCI Morris.

‘You look good in a tux, Miley. Even with a black eye.’

If it weren’t for the familiar turn of phrase Adrian would not have placed the woman, but it was Grey, she was the only person who called him that. He posed his lips to give Grey a compliment but the look in her eyes made him think better of it.

‘You’re late,’ he finally said, unable to verbalise or even form a thought about the way she looked. Of course she looked good, but he wasn’t going there, not with her.

‘Took me about twenty minutes to get out of the car! This dress was not made for driving!’

‘Certainly not in a Mini.’ He smiled.
Keep your eyes on her face
, he repeated to himself over and over.

‘What happened to you?’ She pointed at her own eye.

‘I walked into a door,’ he said indifferently before turning and walking up the steps.

‘Where do we start?’ She shuffled after him, accepting the blatant lie.

‘I say we split up and have a look around, I’ll see if I can get into the old guy’s office again, you try and keep him out of there.’ He paused at the top and leaned in. ‘If you see the boss, come and find me, don’t talk to him on your own, not until we know what’s what. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.’

‘Don’t worry about me, Miley, I can look after myself.’ She smiled uneasily and he thought about the last time she had said those words to him, he thought about the scar that ran the length of her torso and he patted her on the shoulder. He knew she was nervous.

They walked in and showed their invitations. They didn’t even bother to check the names, just invited them inside.

There was no sign of Lowestoft or in fact anyone else that would fit the bill of the other murder victims. So far the victims had all been a similar age, but everyone at this party was somewhat younger. Miles managed to slip past the security guard who was fawning all over the receptionist, getting angry if she even spoke to any of the well-turned-out men who had come alone. Adrian recognised that type of anger, jealous anger. His father had been a similar type when he was alive. If Adrian had had time he would have stopped to pay her some attention, just because men like that wound him up. But there were more important things to be getting on with.

Adrian walked the length of the corridor that led to the director’s office, it was dark in that part of the museum, eerie. He put his hand on the door knob and suddenly a flash of the doctor’s conservatory came into his mind, the blood, the cat. The horror of that scene had stayed with him, what if something like that was behind this door?
Brace yourself.
He turned the knob slowly and waited for the click, he pushed the door open a slither and peered inside. The room was dark and empty, the cold twilight pouring through the window and casting its greyish glow across the desk. He crept inside, closing the door quietly behind him. He walked around to the desk, it was tidy and when he tried the drawers they were locked. He pulled out a pocket torch and shone it on the back wall. He could see certificates of excellence and various awards from professional bodies that Adrian had never heard of. There was nothing of any use to be found here without leaving a mess, and without a search warrant that kind of stuff got tricky to explain. He walked back out and straight into a girl. He fumbled with his mind to think of an excuse as to why he would be in the room.

‘Are you a police officer?’ she said. The question was unexpected.

‘Yes, I was just looking for Mr Lowestoft. Do you know where he is? I’m Detective Miles.’ He held out his hand but she ignored it.

‘What do you know about Mr Lowestoft?’ He could hear tremors in her voice, she was nervous. What did she know?

‘Do you work here?’

‘I do. My name is Abbey Lucas.’

‘Why wasn’t your name on the staff manifest?’

‘This place is full of liars, Detective. There are a lot of things that aren’t what they seem.’ She tried to smile but all that came out was a twisted imitation. Adrian wondered what her part in this story was.

‘What things?’ He stopped and looked at her.

‘There’s something I want to show you, would you come with me?’ She turned and started walking away.

‘OK.’ He shrugged and followed. There was something ghostly about her, she was a strange girl with her soft-spoken voice and her dark eyes, not dark as in brown but dark as in haunted. He kept to her side as she walked through the crowds of people, he saw Grey looking at him and he shrugged but continued to follow the girl through to one of the exhibition rooms on the other side of the museum. She stopped in a room full of dead birds, resting her fingers on the glass cabinet that housed the ravens; she stared inside and Adrian could see tears in the corners of her eyes.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked. Stupid question, this girl was clearly not OK.

‘I want you to promise me something.’ She turned to him, her eyes imploring. It was like looking at an orphaned puppy or something equally as helpless. She put her hands on his and stared up at him. ‘Promise me!’

‘What is it?’ He wanted to be able to promise but he knew better than to make a promise to this girl, not when he knew he couldn’t control what was to come next.

‘I’m showing you this so that you understand, so that you know what he went through. What they did to him. Why he became who he is now.’

‘What they did to who?’

‘He was just a child, they made him like this, but if you knew him like I know him then you would understand that this was the only way it could end. I know that better than anyone.’

‘What did you want to show me?’ He pulled his hands away. She knew, she knew who the murderer was.

She pulled at the display case after clicking a switch and it moved right away from the wall to reveal a secret space behind. It was dark inside, he could see the full moon behind the stained-glass window but it offered no illumination. Adrian didn’t want to step inside, seeing the image of the pathologist yet again – it came to him in fleeting visions when he felt threatened. Right now he certainly felt threatened. What was he walking into?

‘Do you have a torch?’ She smiled and stepped in before him.

Adrian flicked on his torch and shone it in front of him. He remembered what Gary Tunney had said about satanic cults as he looked around the room. There was something very evil about the arrangement, chairs facing a central point, almost like a stage. The floor was stained and Adrian didn’t need to use his imagination to figure out what transpired inside this room. The girl walked over to the corner and seemed to disappear into the blackness, but he could still hear her. Something clanked and he heard the sound of iron scraping against more iron. Was she going to kill him?

‘Hello?’ he whispered.

She returned with a book and handed it to him, he pulled some latex gloves from his pocket and put them on before taking the book.

‘This is what they did, those men that died, this is what they did to him. They cut him and burned him; they broke every part of him. They made him hurt others.’

He opened the book and glanced at the pictures, he saw images that were reminiscent of the crime scenes except the same person was in every single one. He could see the faces of some of the perpetrators. He saw the pathologist, the director and he also saw the familiar face of his boss, a much younger DCI Harold Morris. His stomach lurched at each image. These people were respected members of the community, these people were in positions of trust. He saw his son’s former headmaster, Jeff Stone, wielding a brand and pushing it into the flesh of the boy, the smoke in the picture demonstrating the heat of the instrument, the damage it was inflicting.

‘Why did they do this?’

‘Is there any reason that would be good enough? They did it because they were sick inside; they did it because they wanted to do it. Because some people believe that they have a God-given right to subjugate others, to reign supreme over us and we are nothing but their playthings.’ The tears lingered on her eyelashes, threatening to fall at any given second, but he could see she would not let them.

‘Where is he now? Your friend …’

‘I don’t know. I swear I don’t. I was with him earlier but when I woke up he was gone. That’s why I am showing you this. I saw you here earlier and wanted to make sure you had all the pieces to put together before he got hurt. I know you’re going to catch him, I think he wants to be caught. He wants to be punished for this.’

‘You asked me to promise you something?’

‘Yes, I just wanted to make sure you heard him out. Promise me you will do that one thing. He’s not a bad person.’

Under normal circumstances there was no question what Adrian would do next. He would arrest the girl and take her back for questioning. Somehow that felt like the wrong play here. He felt sick that he didn’t know who to trust back at the station, that he couldn’t guarantee this woman’s safety. She had come to him, she had shown herself where she could have stayed off his radar; he made the only decision he felt he could under this unique set of conditions.

‘I’m going to need to talk to you later, will you be here?’

He glanced around once more before leaving, chills coursing through his body. This room had been here for centuries, he was sure it could wait a little longer, at least until they knew who else within their department was involved. Tipping them off now, before they had questioned Morris, could be a huge mistake. Adrian was running purely on gut instinct at the moment. When he came out of the room the girl was gone, he pushed the door shut and then went back to find Grey.

Imogen chose the orange juice from the trays that were being handed around, wishing she could choose the champagne instead. She grabbed a handful of vol au vents from the accompanying tray, the server trying to keep the look of disgust from his face as she took every single one from the platter and nestled them against her breasts in a napkin one handed while she tried to down her drink, in order to pick up another flute before he walked away. She was a nervous eater and she hadn’t eaten anything today. She was aware that when she took this dress off she would have imprints where the seams had been pressed into her skin; it had been a while since she had worn anything so tight. Immediately she could feel the orange juice had made its way to her bladder, this should be interesting.

She walked down to the ladies’ toilet, she noticed an air of impending doom when she was alone in these corridors, something wasn’t right. As she walked through she became increasingly aware of the shadows from the corner of her eye. She thought there was movement but when she turned her head to check, everything was still. The low tone of the continual monotonous narration in the Roman Exhibit Room sounded like sinister instructions here in the dark.

In the bathroom it took all of her skills as an aficionado of yoga to negotiate her way to her underwear without undoing the dress. She was well aware that if she unbuttoned it she would never get it back on again and would be forced to either spend the rest of her life in the museum toilets or she would have to walk out in just her knickers, because in her wisdom, Denise had made her take off her beige T-shirt bra. Moving around in a tightly fitted evening gown was remarkably more difficult when the space you had to move around in was less than two feet square. Eventually she had to break out of the stall just to get the dress back on right without also pulling her pants down again at the same time. One of the impossibly elegant patrons watched as Imogen wrestled with the dress.

‘Can I help you?’ Imogen snapped at the woman and she went back to reapplying her lipstick.

As she was walking back towards the party the security guard walked up to her with a glass of champagne in his hand.

‘Having a good time?’ he asked. He had a sleazy smile on his face. She may not have shown it but on the inside she was rolling her eyes.

‘Should you be drinking that? Aren’t you on duty or something?’

‘It’s free. There aren’t many perks to this job, as you can imagine. Although right now this definitely feels like one.’ His eyes moved down and up her body. She suppressed the urge to groan. He swallowed the contents of his champagne flute in one gulp.

‘I need to get back to the party now,’ she said impatiently, she didn’t have time for this.

‘How about a private party? Just you and me?’ He moved in a little closer, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them around to her backside. That was not the first drink he had had today, she could see he was drunk, he might have even been high too, his eyes were practically swirling.

‘Wow, as enticing as that offer is,’ – one-handed she reached into her bag and pulled out her wallet, flipping it open and holding the badge in front of his face – ‘I think I’ll pass.’

He held his hands up, a broad smile on his face, staggering backwards a little and chuckling.

‘I wouldn’t mind some of your police brutality, gorgeous.’

‘Fair enough.’ She smiled and looked around to check no one else was there. She slid her dress up her thighs a little to give herself some mobility before thrusting her knee into his groin. Still smiling he crumpled on the floor and whimpered. She straightened herself up and walked back to the party.

‘If I could have everyone’s attention, please!’ the blonde receptionist called out. ‘Could you follow me to the ballroom, we are going to formally announce the reopening of the museum, as well as some exciting news about upcoming events and exhibitions.’

The people followed the girl and waited outside the double doors. A thick purple ribbon stretched across the door and the receptionist held the scissors. Imogen guessed there was a little over a hundred people there, she recognised a few of the faces as people she had seen in the newspapers at one time or another. She also recognised the designer labels, dresses that probably cost more than a month’s rent. Not to mention the shoes, generally too tight and restrictive but so elegant, she watched some of the women slip their feet out when they thought no one was looking, flexing and stretching before cramming them back in again. She smiled to herself as she thought about her boots under her dress. She checked her watch. The blonde nodded to a man in a bespoke suit amongst the affluent crowd, he walked over with a smile on his face, taking the scissors from her. She whispered something in his ear and he continued to smile although Imogen noticed it was a little more strained.