A strange day turned into an even stranger evening for Beverly. It took fifteen minutes to get the blood from her hands, but how she’d got like that lingered in her mind. And now she was walking out of Conway’s spare bedroom wearing the clean shirt the older woman had given her. The aroma of eggs and bacon greeted her as she went into the kitchen. She resisted the temptation to peek into the living room to see if Kennedy’s body was still there. A shock of memory returned, of the frenzy which overtook her once she started on him, the mania which possessed her the more he screamed, and the joy she discovered on seeing the euphoria in Conway’s face. She was exhausted by the end of it. When Conway insisted she stay the night, she didn’t object.
‘Leave the cleaning to me,’ Conway had said as she guided Beverly upstairs. The glint she saw in the principal’s eyes then was still there now.
‘Are you hungry?’
Beverly sat at the table and took in the smell of scrambled eggs. ‘I’m famished.’
She dived into the food. Most of the plate had gone before she noticed the clock on the wall stood at ten-thirty in the morning. ‘We’re late for work.’ She reached for the coffee at her side and drank half of it.
Conway buttered a slice of toast. ‘Don’t worry about that. We’ve got more important things to consider. I called and said you were working out of school with me today.’
The cup warmed Beverly’s hands. ‘Do they think I’m at the conference with you?’
‘There was no conference, Beverly. I was somewhere else yesterday. I’ll tell you all about it in the garage.’
Conway chewed on the toast as she left the kitchen. Beverly followed her like a little dog. The principal went into the living room. Beverly was two steps behind, holding her breath in the expectation of a waft of dried blood swamping her senses, but all she got was a bouquet of lemon and strawberry. The room was cleaner than yesterday, with no sign of Kennedy or the gruesome chaos Beverly had created.
She stared at Conway. ‘Did you get any sleep last night?’
‘At my age, you don’t get much rest. Would you like to see what I did with our friend Jack after you finished with him?’
Before Beverly could reply, Conway stepped into the corridor, standing in front of a large carpet hanging on the wall. Beverly hadn’t noticed the cloth before, but she watched as Conway pulled it to one side to reveal what was behind it.
‘That’s an inside door to your garage?’
She pushed it open. ‘Robert had it installed once he started bringing home souvenirs from his trips abroad.’
‘How long was your husband in the military?’
Beverly followed her into the garage. Conway flicked on the light.
‘All his adult life, and long enough for him to collect this.’
She held out her hands at the contents: a stack of army uniforms and clothing piled on the far side, three rows of boxes stamped with the words PROPERTY OF THE US ARMY, canisters of unlabelled liquid, a table full of electrical components, half a dozen firearms hanging from the wall, a large number of rectangular blocks covered in brown paper, a broken-down motorbike, and four plastic bags leaning against the back of the garage door.
‘Is it legal to have any of this here?’
Conway grinned at her. ‘Of course not. Especially what’s in those.’
She pointed at the plastic bags. Beverly suddenly realised what had happened to Jack Kennedy’s body.
‘You cut him up?’
‘It had to be done. Luckily I have an excellent electric saw. I hope the noise didn’t keep you awake?’
‘I heard nothing.’ Beverly resisted the temptation to peer into the plastic bags. Instead, she returned to something from earlier. ‘So there was no conference yesterday?’
Conway’s smile disappeared. ‘I had my final appointment with my oncologist.’
Beverly didn’t know what to say to this woman she now had mixed feelings about. ‘Oh.’
‘It’s time for me to go out with a bang. And I think you and I can build on the fun we had last night and help each other get what we want.’
She moved to the table, picked up a brown block, and turned it upside down. Stamped on the bottom was a letter and one number: C4.
Beverly gasped. ‘You have explosives?’
Conway ran her finger across the top of the block. ‘We have explosives, Beverly.’
Beverly lifted one block, imagining the power in her hand. ‘What will we use this for?’
Conway put her free arm on Beverly’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you remember what’s happening at the school on Saturday?’
Beverly glanced at the plastic bags and wondered which one of them contained Jack’s head.
‘It’s the reunion for my year group.’
‘And you’re not going.’
‘No. I never liked any of them.’
‘Isn’t it more than that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I remember your time at school, Beverly, and I kept a keen eye on you. Some of those girls, and a few of the boys, were horrible to you. Don’t you need your revenge?’
A shiver ran down Beverly’s spine as she wriggled out of her grip. She’d wanted a grand farewell before leaving the town, but this was too much.
Wasn’t it?
Her eyes returned to the plastic bags, and then back to Conway.
This could be glorious.
‘Why do you want to do this?’
Conway walked over to the firearms hanging on the wall. Below them was a photo Beverly hadn’t noticed before. Conway picked it up and showed it to her. In it was a younger version of the principal and a handsome man in a uniform.
‘I have about a week or so left. This will be my legacy to this town and all the people I’ve hated and never been able to lay my hands on. And you’ll enjoy it immensely.’
‘How will it work?’
‘The reunion is taking place in the school hall. Underneath it, there’s the boiler room. Three or four blocks of C4 pressed between these bags will dispose of poor Jack and take out most of the people above it.’
‘And where will you and I be?’
Conway lifted a rucksack from the floor. It had a faded sticker on it advertising the Kennedy bookshop.
‘I’ll be placing the bags in the boiler room. You’ll be upstairs with this.’
‘Where did you get that?’
‘Jack left it with me ages ago. When I detonate the C4 below the hall, it will scatter his DNA all over the place. When you blow up this one upstairs, bits of the bag will be left behind for the experts to find. They’ll spend years trying to work out why a failed bookshop owner killed all those people.’
She placed four blocks of the explosive in the bag and zipped it up before offering it to Beverly. Her hands trembled as she took it.
‘I don’t have a death wish. How will I set this off and get out safely? I don’t want to drop it on the floor and blow myself up.’
She gripped on to the bag, her fingers wanting to toss it to the side while her brain told her to nurture it like a newborn baby.
Conway picked up a block. She smiled at Beverly before throwing the block into the air. Beverly’s heart thumped against her ribs, sweat dripping from her head. Her legs quivered as the principal caught the explosive and slammed it on to the table.
‘Don’t worry; you won’t kill yourself by accident.’ She grabbed a knife from the side and sliced the brown packet open. Inside was a thick white substance which she broke in half with ease. ‘You can mould this like putty. This, in itself, is not dangerous. You can drop it, punch it, even shoot a bullet through it, and it won’t go off. Unless the shell has a tracer round, nothing will happen. There are bullets like that stored behind you if you want some.’
Beverly clutched the bag to her chest to hide her throbbing heart. ‘No, thanks. So how do we make this stuff explode?’
‘It takes a combination of shock, impact, and temperature for that. It needs a detonator inserted into it, and then fired. And there are plenty of those in here.’
Beverly’s arms relaxed as she placed the bag on the ground. ‘I’m assuming somebody can fire these detonators remotely?’
Conway patted her on the shoulder. ‘Of course, they can. It’s not like we’ll have wires stretching everywhere so everyone will see. All we have to do is make sure we’re at a safe distance, coordinate our timings, and then flick a switch. Far stupider people than us do this all the time in the less civilised parts of the world.’
Beverly picked up Kennedy’s bag and resisted the temptation to throw it across the garage. ‘Don’t you think the investigators, the FBI or whoever, will wonder why Jack would do such a thing? I know we need a scapegoat, and we have his bits bagged up, but why him?’
Conway moved behind her and opened a drawer. She removed two detonators and handed one to her.
‘Don’t worry; it’s not set up yet. We’ll do that tomorrow. As for dear old Jack, well, the police are already searching for him anyway, so I assume they’ll settle into their usual lazy ways and say the bomber died because of his incompetence.’
‘Why are they after him?’
‘Apparently, his bookshop went up in flames last night, and no one has seen anything of him since. He told me about his business operation and he had thousands in debts he couldn’t pay off. It won’t be long before someone wonders if the fire was for the insurance. And when that went wrong, he turned full postal and blew up the school. And all those poor people inside it.’
Beverly placed the detonator in the bag. ‘You seem to have thought of everything.’
Conway moved across and put her arm around her again. ‘None of this would be possible, Beverly, without you. Now let’s get you and your carrier of goodies home so you can prepare. We have a big day ahead of us at the weekend.’
She let Conway lead her out of the garage and back into the house, her emotions a swirling cocktail of nerves and excitement. The principal continued to talk to her, but she hardly heard any of it. It was confusing to feel, in equal measure, both love and hate.
She hoped the next few days would blow all her confusion away.