Home Office forensic pathologist Dr David Delahaye was at the scene shortly after six, by which time there was a sizeable public and press presence at the end of the street. Uniformed police had blockaded both ends of Highgrove Crescent, allowing access only for residents and police. PC Zoe Butterfield had spent the last hour and a half answering the ever-ringing Heath landline. Word had clearly got out, and teachers, parents and of course the press were doing all they could to find out more.
While Delahaye examined the corpse, Gillard went around to visit Mrs Priscilla Squires. The deputy head of St John’s Academy lived just a few streets away in a semi-detached house behind a gnome-infested garden. The woman who came to the door had clearly been expecting him, as she was formally dressed in blouse, jacket, court shoes and pearls. Mrs Squires was in her late fifties and matronly, with a firm jaw and a steady gaze under a helmet of dyed dark hair. Her husband made coffee and brought out slices of cake, while Mrs Squires professed her shock and horror at what had happened. Gillard knew this venting process would be a necessary precursor to almost every witness interview before any useful information could be obtained. It was ten minutes later when they finally sat down across the dining table from each other, and he was able to ask her some questions.
Mrs Squires said she had worked with Heath for nine years, from his arrival at the school.
‘Was he well-liked?’ Gillard asked.
‘By staff, reasonably. Some found him a little bit overbearing. But then there are only two types of head: the overbearing but effective and the consensual wet fish, who pupils take for a ride.’
‘What about pupils?’
‘They respected him, which is rarer than you might imagine. Adam could be quite terrifying, which is good for discipline, although unfortunately those that we would most hope would be intimidated by him always had bigger shadows looming at home.’
‘Did you like him?’ Gillard asked.
‘He was good at his job, and I like to work with people who are good at their jobs. Look, you will discover that I applied for the headship at the same time as he did, and considered I was much better qualified and more experienced than he. For quite some time I resented the fact that he leapfrogged me, but he eventually earned my grudging respect.’
Gillard’s eyes widened at such disarming truthfulness. ‘Thank you for your honesty.’
‘There’s no point wasting your time, you’ve got enough to do as it is. We should get everything out in the open.’
‘On that subject, were there any controversies that he was involved with at the school?’
An almost imperceptible eyebrow lift did not escape Gillard’s notice. ‘A large school is inevitably a microcosm of the society in which it is embedded. So everything that troubles society as a whole will be expressed in some measure within the school. Political or linguistic fissures, inequalities of wealth or opportunity. Even, you may be surprised to find in a Church of England school, religious differences.’
‘How so?’
‘We average twenty per cent of our intake from non-religious or other religious backgrounds, obviously so long as they understand that Anglican teaching will constitute most of the religious input. In fact, because of our Ofsted performance, we could easily double that percentage. We are always oversubscribed. We already have a thriving South Asian ethnic intake of Hindu and Muslim students. At St John’s Academy we think of this as a very good thing. All pupils take part in making food for Eid and Diwali as well as Christmas and Easter. We build bridges, not walls.’
Gillard realised that this was a long-prepared speech, presumably aimed at parents. ‘I’m really thinking about any disputes with pupils or parents, particularly with the Muslim community.’
‘We haven’t been showing any Charlie Hebdo cartoons, if that’s what you mean. It’s worth noting that the most devout Muslim or Hindu parents would obviously not choose a C of E school for their child. We tend to get those who value superlative education above faith. I’m absolutely certain that this tragic event was unconnected to anything that was taught at the school.’ Her expression dared Gillard to disagree.
‘Were you aware of any arguments involving the principal in recent days?’
She smiled. ‘Acrimonious debates are par for the course, but there was nothing unusual in any of the recent meetings that I attended with him, and I didn’t hear about any other particular problems.’
‘I understand that Heath was assaulted on at least two occasions by pupils?’
Mrs Squires rolled her eyes. ‘Well, technically. A year ten boy pushed him in a corridor, in an argument about uniform. That was two or three years ago. And a sixth former, on his final day at school, ran past and flicked his ear, presumably for a dare. If you’re looking for potential assailants amongst the pupils, I have some better candidates. We had a budding arsonist who was excluded in the summer term two years ago after setting fire to the changing rooms. He is almost certain to have a criminal record. There is also a disturbed young lady who had been rather stalking him. She now attends a different school.’
‘Thank you, I’ll need the details of those individuals.’ Gillard was considering asking Mrs Squires about whether there were any rumours or speculation about the headmaster, but decided that this lady would probably be the last to receive the confidences of more junior staff. He settled for a more open question: ‘Is there anything else about the principal that you would like to tell me?’
‘Only that he will be greatly missed.’ It was at this point that her chin finally trembled, and tears filled her eyes.
Gillard thanked her and returned to his vehicle. As he drove back the short distance to the crime scene, he took in the tidy, well-cared-for homes, the high-end vehicles and the whole suburban edifice of this well-to-do area. What had happened to one of their neighbours was utterly alien. Not something you would expect outside Middle Eastern battlefields. It just did not fit in at all.
Back inside the CSI tent, Gillard saw DS Vikram Singh, who told him the forensic pathologist had departed and the corpse had been moved carefully into a body bag before being taken to the local hospital’s mortuary.
‘Anything fresh emerge?’
‘Not so far, sir. It’s pretty dark out there now. I’ve noted down who has been spoken to.’
The golden hour was long gone, and from the clipboard that Singh showed him, the hurried door-to-door enquiries seemed to have produced little useful information. Plenty of uniformed schoolchildren had been seen on the normal post-school routes through the alleyway leading between Badgers Walk and Highgrove Crescent. The only CCTV cameras were at the off-licence on the main road and some recently installed on the pedestrian crossings, but these didn’t capture vehicles turning into the crescent. The nearest ANPR camera was two miles away. Uniforms were currently trying to catalogue whether any domestic CCTV footage was available, although expectations were not high. Privacy rules stipulated that home cameras that covered public thoroughfares were liable to the onerous GPRD data requirements. A proper search of gardens and alleyways would have to wait for first light the next morning.
In the meantime, there was no sign of the missing head, nor of the murder weapon.
Gillard was back at Surrey Police headquarters at Mount Browne by nine p.m. Hopes for an early breakthrough had been dashed. There were now fifty uniformed officers on the case, of whom twenty had been dispatched to take witness statements from key members of staff at St John’s Academy. He didn’t expect that to throw up anything, but these were evidential boxes that needed to be ticked. From the information that had trickled in, Adam Heath had left school at his normal time for that day, well after most of the staff had departed, though no one saw him get into his car.
Electronic proof of that journey was going to be difficult. There was no satnav in the car, and there were no ANPR cameras covering the short route between school and home. There was a CCTV camera at St John’s Academy which covered the staff car park. However, it was mounted on the roof of the changing block for the swimming pool and the cabling to the camera had been damaged in the arson attack two years ago. It was on the extensive list of equipment to be renewed. If someone had managed to get into the headmaster’s car, there were no witnesses to it. Research intelligence officer Rob Townsend had put the headmaster’s mobile phone through the Aceso Kiosk, a portable investigatory timesaver which quickly stripped out all of the electronic data. Previously, it could take many hours or sometimes days to retrieve the same data with the help of the service provider. The Aceso showed that the phone had been switched off at roughly the time the principal had left the school and was not turned on again during the journey.
Gillard was less surprised that the door-to-door inquiry had thrown up nothing. It sometimes took weeks for people to review in their heads what they had seen and come forward with crucial information. He was now hoping for some results from the fingertip search which would take place in Highgrove Crescent and Badgers Walk at first light tomorrow.
He had set the first incident room meeting for nine a.m. He was really hoping for some kind of forensic discovery by then, not least the discovery of the missing head.
Gillard got home just after Sam. He had picked up a takeaway pizza, and after quickly embracing his wife, they wordlessly devoured it from the cardboard box while sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table. These were the kind of meals that they had been used to having in their early years living together. They grinned at each other and fought over the little cheesy scabs stuck on the inside of the packaging. It was one of the little games they enjoyed. Sam was particularly pleased to find a hidden chunk of pineapple, and doubly so when her husband pouted at her for eating it all.
‘So, greedy, how was your first day back?’ he asked.
‘Busy,’ she said, hooking a hank of dark wavy hair behind one ear. ‘I forget how hectic it gets, and how you don’t have a moment to yourself.’
‘It helps to be busy.’ He knew that his wife was still struggling with flashbacks. She was tough, but the trauma of being buried in a garage inspection pit, locked inside a freezing steel box, was not one easily forgotten. He’d known her only six years, but the last one had been the most testing of their young marriage. She wasn’t yet forty, more than a decade his junior, and still had the girlish figure which he’d always found attractive. The ordeal of the last year had deepened their connection, even as it had infused it with moments of melancholy.
‘And of course quite a day for you,’ she said, reaching across to stroke his hair, now a greying fuzz which had once been fair. ‘Dead headmaster and all that. The media are all over it.’
‘They are, but it’s a shocking crime and that keeps everyone buzzing. The school is closed tomorrow, so at least I’ll be able to take a closer look without getting under everybody’s feet. I’m convinced there was a stowaway in the car, who must’ve got in when it was parked at the school.’
‘Did he stop anywhere on the way home?’
‘We don’t know. It’s not far, and if he did stop at the shops, for example, the assailant must have known he would do so. The chances are that whoever killed him knew him well.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s just a question of knowing his habits. The attack happened on a Thursday, the one day of the week his wife wouldn’t already be there when he drove home. Whoever it was, was either invited into the car, or he was able to break in without difficulty and hide until the principal got there. If there was an escape car parked near the house, nobody appears to have seen it. Someone running away on foot with a bloody head in their arms would stand out a bit.’
‘That all makes sense,’ Sam said.
‘Our murderer must have known the crucial details of Heath’s life, or undertaken some meticulous research. I think we will find the answer to this in his personal life.’