After Ridpath left, Sophia thought about going out for another coffee, but realised she’d already drunk two that day. If she went for a third, she would be up all night staring at the walls, trying to make sheep jump over stupid fences, or even worse, wasting her time on Twitter reading the latest gossip.
‘Time to do some work,’ she said out loud.
The office was quiet.
The coroner’s door was closed as she was preparing for her inquest. Helen Moore was somewhere in Derbyshire being a locum coroner, while Jenny was in the courtroom making sure the Covid protocols were being followed to the letter.
Ridpath’s absence only emphasised the emptiness. Somehow, he filled it whenever he was there. Sophia hadn’t seen him much recently. Yesterday at the Ryders was the longest she’d spent with him in the last week. He always seemed to be rushing here and there, never really spending long enough in any one place to get anything finished. She was beginning to worry about him. A diet of soggy sandwiches, pasties and coffee was not good for his health.
‘Not your job to worry about me,’ she said, mimicking his voice. ‘Just do the bloody work.’ She mock-saluted. ‘Yes, sir, Mr Ridpath.’
She wrote out a to-do list.
Ring school re Andrea Briggs
Check up on the teacher
Festivals. Which one did Jane Ryder go to?
Picking up the phone, she dialled the number for the school secretary.
‘Hi there, this is Sophia Rahman from the coroner’s office again. Sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you could tell me about one of the pupils who attended school at the same time as Jane Ryder. Her name was Andrea Briggs.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember anybody of that name. Hang on, here’s Mr Roscoe, perhaps he’ll know her.’
A male voice came on the line. ‘You’re asking about an Andrea Briggs?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I vaguely remember her. Tall for her age, left school when she was sixteen. Younger than Jane Ryder though.’
‘Younger? They were supposed to be friends.’
‘At least a couple of years younger. I can’t remember if they spent time together though. If I’m honest, I can’t remember much about Andrea Briggs, she was a quiet girl.’
Sophia glanced at the second item on her list. She decided to take the plunge and ask her question. ‘Do you get close to the pupils, Mr Roscoe?’
‘Some of them. It can’t be helped. It’s easier working with some rather than others.’
‘Do you find getting close to the female pupils can lead to problems?’
The voice changed. Sophia could detect a note of wariness. ‘What are you insinuating, Miss Rahman?’
She laughed to put him at ease. ‘Nothing at all, Mr Roscoe. I just remember when I was at school we always had crushes on the teachers.’
‘I don’t know what kind of school you went to, Miss Rahman, but I can assure you nothing of that sort ever happens in any establishment where I work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a class to teach.’
The line went dead.
‘Well, that went well. Defensive much?’ she said to the phone.
She wrote a quick note to herself to investigate further, but how do you find out about a teacher? She tried the ratemyteacher site, but there was nothing on it about Mr Roscoe. A google of the school’s name simply revealed it was well regarded in the community and it had a Good rating from Ofsted, with a particular commendation for the school’s management.
Perhaps another visit to the school might be necessary to get the info she needed direct from the horse’s mouth or, in this case, direct from the pupils. She’d check with Ridpath first though, just in case that wasn’t the right way to go about the job.
She glanced down at the last item on her list. Festivals. The obvious place to start was with the nearest event: Mad Ferret in Platt Fields. What a great name. She had once asked to go to Glastonbury for the weekend but her mum had been firm.
‘Good Muslim girls don’t go out on their own, and they certainly don’t go to music festivals with half-naked men and women dancing. What if you were seen? I’d never hold my head high in the community again.’
She had been tempted to say that if she were seen, it would mean somebody else had gone too. But she kept her mouth shut. Sometimes it was better to beat a strategic retreat rather than face the forces of Mum head-on.
Later, she had found ways to get around her mother’s rules. There were always ways.
She googled the Mad Ferret Festival. 2009 was one of the last years before it changed into Parklife, moved to Heaton Park and became massive, attracting over 160,000 people from all over the world. In 2009, though, it was still small and frequented mainly by students. A couple of laid-back days in Platt Fields rather than a crowded extravaganza.
Glancing down the responses, she noticed one interesting hit: a picture in the Evening News of a forest of heads and in the background a stage with a band playing. The photograph was taken by a man called Gary Trueman.
She googled his name and had twenty-seven major hits, mostly on photography websites. But one stood out. It was captioned ‘Mad Ferret 2009’, and was stored on the Wayback site. She clicked it, stared at the landing page for twenty seconds and whispered, ‘Shit.’