Rachel’s office door swings open to reveal a man standing over her desk, his back turned to her.
‘Hello?’ Fear makes her voice loud and sharp. It slices through the quiet, startling both her and the intruder. She just has time to take in his mop of thin white hair and his stooped frame, before he spins to face her, his eyes widening at the sight of her in the doorway.
‘Malcolm!’ she gasps. ‘What the hell?’
Malcolm Crowe fumbles with an object in his hands. It slips from his grip and falls to the floor, smashing with a crash of broken glass at his feet. ‘Dammit!’ he says, taking a step back.
‘What are you doing in here?’
‘You reported a problem with your lamp?’ He nods at the broken glass. ‘I came to change the bulb. You made me jump,’ he adds, throwing her an irritated look, as if she were the intruder, not him.
She recalls reporting the faulty lamp to housekeeping last week, but something about Malcolm’s countenance makes her uneasy. The blood is rising in his cheeks, spreading across his dry, scaly face and, as if aware of his guilty flush, he reaches up and scratches at his flaking cheeks. Rachel tries not to visibly shudder at the thought of dead skin cells drifting down onto her desk. ‘Why come so late? Wouldn’t it be better to do this in the morning? Or leave it to the caretaker?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t sleep well. I have joint pain. It’s worse at night, so I like to help out around the place. Besides, it’s easier to get on with my odd jobs without people around. I saw you and Ellie driving back earlier and it jogged my memory.’ He folds his arms across his chest. ‘Thought it would be nice if it was sorted for you.’
Rachel glances at her desk. Something is different. It takes her a moment, but then she sees it. A vase of white roses on her desk – flowers that definitely hadn’t been there earlier in the day. ‘Oh,’ she says, startled. ‘Flowers.’
Malcolm’s eyes track to the vase, before he turns back to her with a strange, gummy smile. ‘There’s a card.’
The way he says it makes her stomach flip and for a horrible moment she thinks the flowers might be from Malcolm.
‘You have an admirer,’ he adds, with an odd twitch of his eyelid that she realises is a wink.
She crosses to the desk and snatches up the card propped against the vase.
I heard you’d been called away.
I hope everything is OK with Ellie.
Here if I can help.
Edward.
Not Malcolm, though Rachel’s relief is short-lived. From the way Malcolm is still gurning at her, she knows he’s read the card, which means that the gesture of Edward’s flowers will no doubt be relayed straight back to Margaret. Her relief dissipates further when she realises that if Edward is already privy to the fact she’d been called away to Ellie’s interview at the station, the police interest in Ellie must be common knowledge across the school.
Malcolm’s shoes crunch on the broken glass. ‘So how did Ellie get on today?’ he asks, confirming her fear.
‘Fine,’ she snaps.
‘Strange that they carted her off in a police car.’ He lets the insinuation hang.
‘Standard procedure.’ She keeps her retort breezy, but Malcolm doesn’t look convinced. He hovers, waiting, as if wanting to say more. ‘Will you get a dustpan and brush?’ she asks pointedly. ‘Or shall I clear this up in the morning?’
Malcolm shrugs and limps to the door, stopping to turn back, his face in shadow but for the glint of his eyes. ‘I’m sure you’re highly qualified, and I hear these days it’s all about pussyfooting around feelings and “mental health issues”, but in my day, naughty girls got what was coming to them. Naughty girls were punished for their bad deeds.’
Rachel is too startled to reply. She stares after him, watching him limp through the doorway, a sudden chill racing up her spine. What on earth did he mean, ‘naughty girls’? Was he talking about Ellie? She bristles. Was that who he meant? Or was he referring to poor Sarah?
Her mind spirals back to Maxwell’s awful photo and the words she’d seen daubed on the girl’s bloodless skin. The echo of one of them following Malcolm away down the corridor. Punish. She shudders. Whichever way you looked at it, it was a very odd thing to say.
As soon as his footsteps have receded, she seizes her papers, laptop and charging cable. Reaching for her diary, her gaze falls on a cardboard file lying on her desk. A file that should, for all intents and purposes, be under lock and key in her cabinet. The name on the tab stares back at her: SARAH LAWSON.
Rachel frowns, her gaze darting to the open door.
What the hell was Malcolm Crowe doing rifling through Sarah’s private student file? Was the lightbulb his cover story, so that he could invade her records and pick through the kids’ personal details? Why would he do that?
Thoroughly unnerved and unwilling to risk any further transgressions, Rachel shoves the folder back into the filing cabinet, locks the drawer and pockets the key. Gathering up her belongings, she races for the door. There’s no way she wants to be here when Malcolm gets back.