‘So, who are we?’ Gemma asked as she freshened her make-up.
‘Mark and Gemma Heckenburg,’ Heck said as he steered her BMW up the five-mile drive to St Bardolph’s Academy. ‘We’re a professional couple from London. I’m an investment banker, very successful. I travel a lot, which means I haven’t got much time for family life. You’re in recruitment. You specialise in international banking.’
‘Also successfully, I hope?’ she said.
‘You’ll soon be opening an office in Dubai, so you must be pretty good at it. Our son, Thomas, is a gifted youngster who’s just turned eleven,’ Heck said. ‘We’re here to see if St Bardolph’s is right for him.’
‘Still think it’d be easier if I’d just got a warrant,’ she replied, putting her make-up away and wiggling her bottom to get comfortable in her smart, tight skirt.
He shrugged. ‘Up to you, but would you really want that? Raid a school during term-time? Turn it upside down? What if we’re wrong? We’ll have caused maximum disturbance to the school. Maximum distress to the kids. The brass’ll come down on us like an avalanche. My way, we get a chance to suss the place out at close-quarters. If it turns out to be nothing, well … no one’s been hurt. And if we’re still suspicious, we can get a warrant afterwards. On top of that, the whole point in me doing this is to smoke them out. If they recognise me and run … it’s as good as a confession.’
Gemma didn’t argue. They’d had this conversation already, and he’d persuaded her.
They met no other cars as they followed the lengthy approach road. It was early May, but the sun shone from a pearl-blue vault, shimmering on the verdant Staffordshire countryside. The extensive grounds were a riot of blossoms and new leaves. The school, when they eventually reached it, was a collection of old stone buildings, very elegant and covered in layers of ivy, surrounded by expansive lawns.
‘You’re telling me a bunch of psychotic killers live in a place like this?’ Gemma said when they parked on the gravel lot in front of the main building.
Heck was similarly fascinated. The place had an aura of the ancient and venerable; a quick assessment online had revealed its Elizabethan ancestry, and that among its various original features, it boasted ‘green man’ carvings, shadow clocks and even priest’s holes – yet somehow such arcana seemed to match the extraordinary nature of these crimes. He spied a Latin motto inscribed on the lintel over the main entrance door:
Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius
Heck thought it meant something like: ‘The Lord knows His own’. There was no particular reason why it should have chilled him, but it did.
When they climbed from the car, a woman came fussing out of the entrance to meet them. She was middle-aged, short and stocky, with a mass of orange hair which just had to be dyed. She wore sensible shoes, a tweed jacket and skirt, and a fluttering black cape. Her glasses hung over her voluminous bust on a lengthy chain.
‘Wanda Clayley,’ she said, beaming, offering a well-manicured hand. ‘Deputy Head. You must be Mr and Mrs Heckenburg?’
Heck shook hands with Mrs Clayley. ‘That’s right … how nice to meet you.’
‘Dr Harding, the Head, would have greeted you himself, but he has an important meeting today at the education authority.’
‘Not a problem,’ Heck replied, secretly pleased.
‘So?’ Mrs Clayley’s beam never faltered. ‘You’re thinking of bringing your son, Thomas, to us?’
‘Assuming everything’s satisfactory,’ Heck said.
‘Of course.’ Mrs Clayley peeked around. ‘He isn’t with you then?
‘Half-term’s finished, so he’s back at school.’
‘And whereabouts would that be?’
‘St Lucien’s, Bromley.’
‘I must say … you’re sending him a long way to come to middle school.’
‘Not just any middle school, Mrs Clayley,’ Gemma said.
‘No, of course …’ Mrs Clayley laughed as she led them inside. ‘What I mean is … what attracted you to Staffordshire?’
‘Well, St Bardolph’s consistently boasts some of the best exam results in the country,’ Heck replied, doing his best not to sound as though he’d memorised the school prospectus. ‘Your list of famous former students is extensive, and you seem to place an awful lot of people at Oxbridge.’
‘We do pride ourselves on that, I must admit,’ Mrs Clayley agreed.
It was perhaps understandable that she’d covertly questioned them. At fifteen grand a term, she wouldn’t want any time-wasters darkening St Bardolph’s doors.
The entrance hall reminded them of a set from one of those old Ealing comedies obsessed with class and tradition. It had a black and white tiled parquet floor, and was airy and spacious; its walls and the overarching ceiling were clad with neatly-fitted wooden panels. More Latin inscriptions were chiselled along the cornices, painted in gold. School photographs hung on every pillar, while trophy cabinets were filled with engraved cups and shields. The air was pungent with the scent of polish. On one side there was a large glass-covered board, on which photo portraits of the school staff were displayed. Heck recognised the same image of Dr Enwright that he’d lifted from the school website. Mrs Clayley explained who each and every person was, listing their credentials in detail.
‘Dr Enwright?’ Heck said. ‘That name sounds familiar.’
‘It will do if you’ve been looking us up,’ Mrs Clayley replied. ‘Leo Enwright is our pride and joy. He’s Head of History, but he’s not just an excellent teacher, he’s hugely active outside of school hours … he gives tirelessly, and never asks anything in return. To start with he has an official pastoral care role here, but he also runs the School History Society, which may not sound like much but it’s an organisation we’re very proud of at St Bardolph’s. The number of activities it pursues is breathtaking. It’s all non-syllabus stuff, of course, but it keeps our boarders very busy. Dr Enwright was the man behind it from the beginning, and he still runs it – almost single-handed.’
Only when they commenced ‘the Grand Tour’, to use Mrs Clayley’s words, did they start to spot the aforementioned children. Their uniform was conventional, the boys in navy-blue sweaters and maroon ties, the girls in blue pinafores. All were polite and well-behaved, moving in orderly fashion between classes. It was a far cry from the ‘Wild West’ atmosphere in the Lancashire comprehensive where Heck had been educated.
‘The Fifth Form and the Upper and Lower Sixth are in their dormitories and common rooms, on study-leave as they prepare for their exams,’ Mrs Clayley explained as they moved along cloistered corridors decked with photographs depicting innumerable aspects of school life: holidays, field-trips, sporting events, theatrical productions. Lessons were in progress, but there were one or two empty classrooms, which they were able to glance into. These were austere in atmosphere, tall and narrow, filled with rigid rows of all-in-one desks and chairs.
Mrs Clayley talked tirelessly, extolling every virtue of St Bardolph’s, but Heck wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. He was busy looking out for clues or oddities, something – anything! – that might strike a chord. Nothing initially came to light, but then Mrs Clayley took them into the school carpentry shops, which were currently between classes and where there was an enormous variety of wood-working tools and benches, plus piles of freshly sawn timber. Heck thought about the solidly made crosses on the slagheap off the M62.
After the carpentry shops, they entered the school’s theatre, where Mrs Clayley led them backstage to the dressing rooms and costume department.
‘All handmade here at the school,’ she said, as they gazed along rows of steel racks hung with fanciful period garb. Heck cast his mind back to the Father Christmas outfit and the May Queen gown, neither of which had been traced to any known manufacturer.
Next, Mrs Clayley led them towards the Sports Hall. This was currently being used for PE, so they prowled the corridors adjoining it, and saw yet more photographs: successful, trophy-bearing teams dating from many decades and many disciplines. St Bardolph’s, it seemed, did not just offer the usual rugby, football, cricket, netball and hockey, but also tennis, swimming, athletics – and archery.
Heck’s heart missed a beat when the Deputy Head casually mentioned that the school had its own archery range outside, just beyond the playing fields. She drew their attention to a row of images. In one of them, Heck found himself staring at a sturdy-framed, blond-haired youth with what looked like a hi-tech bow in his hands, and a quiver full of arrows on his back. The bow was of particular interest. According to the ballistics report on the weapon that slew the young couple on the West Pennine Moors, it had been far more powerful than the average target bow – possibly a modern hunting bow adapted for competition use. This one in the picture was what Heck thought was called a compound bow: double-curved and fitted with a levering system – cables and pulleys – to bend the limbs and store massive energy.
The lad wielding it was smiling at the camera, but the smile did not reach his eyes.
‘That’s Doug Latimer,’ Mrs Clayley said proudly. ‘He’s in our Sixth Form and will shortly be leaving, but he’s also the under eighteens inter-county archery champion for the North Midlands region.’
Heck tried not to look at Gemma as they were led away along more passages, seeing different arrays of photographs. In one, a group of eight older pupils in jeans and sweatshirts smiled at the camera as they sat around a campfire, in front of an old wooden building. It caught Heck’s eye because Dr Enwright was with them, as was archery champ, Doug Latimer. In addition, there was a girl with long, platinum-blonde hair. She was cherub-pretty, though there was something faintly aloof about her – as if, like Latimer, her distant smile was only a token gesture.
‘The School History Society,’ Mrs Clayley said. ‘The one I mentioned to you before. You must meet Dr Enwright while you’re here. If he can’t convince you to send your son to us, no one can.’
‘You clearly value his input,’ Gemma said.
‘It’s unquantifiable, if I’m honest. The History Society is completely self-contained and self-governing. But they contribute so much. Organising special day activities, festivals, the school pageant and so on.’
‘It’s not just an educational thing, then?’ Gemma asked.
‘Well no, but it serves that purpose. They indulge in all kinds of detailed research.’
‘The internet is a marvellous thing when you’re hunting something down,’ Heck said.
‘My goodness, yes,’ Mrs Clayley agreed. ‘But they use our libraries as well. They go on regular field-trips and weekends away. All under Dr Enwright’s guidance of course. When they’re putting a project together, they leave no stone unturned.’
Heck’s hair prickled at these words, and at the innocent faces in front of him. He noticed that the blonde girl was holding hands with a tall, sullen young man with spiky black hair. The caption beneath listed all their names: the blonde girl was Jasmine Sinclair; the boy holding her hand, Gareth Holker. He was handsome in a clean-cut ‘public school’ sort of way, but he wasn’t smiling and looked unusually stern for someone so young. In one of the other photographs he appeared in a muddied rugby kit in the middle of a trampled pitch, holding aloft a silver plate. He wasn’t smiling in that one either.
Heck pointed this out. Mrs Clayley nodded.
‘Gareth is our school sports captain and Head Boy. It’s a position of great responsibility here at St Bardolph’s, and he takes it very seriously. Gareth is one of our great success stories.’ She lowered her voice. ‘This kind of information is personal, but I don’t mind divulging it as it demonstrates the kind of hands-on services we offer here at St Bardolph’s. Gareth came to us shortly after his parents were killed in a plane crash. He was devastated, the poor child, totally withdrawn. He didn’t have a relative left in the world, aside from a wealthy uncle whom he rarely ever saw. But Dr Enwright took him under his wing. They didn’t just start the History Society together, which seemed to give Gareth a new lease of life, but in his role as pastoral care officer, Dr Enwright was like a replacement father – he slowly encouraged the boy to rediscover his strengths, both intellectually and on the sports field.’
‘He unleashed the beast maybe?’ Heck said.
Mrs Clayley frowned. ‘Not a phrase I’d have chosen, but it isn’t inaccurate.’
‘What’s the building?’ Gemma asked, indicating the wooden structure in the campfire photo.
‘That’s called the Old Pavilion. The school cricket pitches were moved about ten years ago, and a new pavilion was built, so the old one was left empty. Dr Enwright asked permission to use it for the History Society’s meetings, and the Head was happy to oblige. You really must meet Dr Enwright.’ She beckoned them down an adjoining passage. ‘If he’s in his office I’m sure he’ll spare a few minutes.’
Around the next corner, they passed two pupils whom Heck recognised from the campfire photo. The boy was short for his age, and thin, with a floppy mass of carroty-red locks. In contrast, the girl was of solid, athletic build; her raven-black hair was cut severely short. Both stopped dead at the sight of the two visitors.
Mrs Clayley nodded and smiled as she passed them by, leading her guests through an exit door onto a sunlit grassy quadrangle. Heck threw a casual glance backwards. The two pupils were openly staring after them.
There was clear recognition in their faces, which had to be good news.
Mrs Clayley was talking about the advantages of a rural environment and how, once the summer term was underway, it was permissible for the older students to come outside and study in the open air. Heck made a pretence of listening and approving, but glanced back again when they reached the far side of the quadrangle. The two pupils had also come outside. A third figure had joined them; Heck recognised the fair hair and powerful build of archery hero, Doug Latimer. Thus far, none of them appeared to be running.
As Mrs Clayley went chattering into the next building, Heck sneaked a peek at Gemma. She showed him the text she’d just covertly sent to Shawna:
Stand by. But summon extra bods from Div. NB: firearms support.