Martha sat quietly. She had Alex’s home phone number as well as his mobile and her fingers itched to press the keys. She even picked up her handset at one point and studied it for a while. She had never used his landline, fearing that it would be his unbalanced, unstable wife who would pick up. She had also avoided calling his mobile when she thought he might be at home. She put her own mobile back in her bag with an empty feeling. She was swamped with unexpected sympathy for Erica Randall.
Friday, 14 April, 2.30 p.m.
She prepared to face the afternoon, cleared her desk ready for the teacher’s arrival and read through her notes trying to search for clues in Patrick Elson’s case as to who had been victimizing him. Almost certainly someone from school. Hopefully the teacher would have names. Neither Patrick’s mother nor his aunt had come up with anyone.
Freddie Trimble arrived at four thirty, looking flustered and a touch knackered, a rumpled figure in his early forties, wearing a corduroy jacket and grey trousers, scruffy, scuffed shoes, bags under his eyes, messy brown hair and a harassed expression. Very different from her lunch date, she reflected as she greeted him. Neither was he exactly the Dickensian character she had been imagining – much more contemporary. His expression was far too gentle and tired to ever wield a schoolmaster’s cane. He managed half a grin. ‘It’s been a hell of a day,’ he said frankly. ‘Bloody twelve-year-olds, think they know everything. Such smart-arses.’ Then his grin broadened. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘don’t mind me but teaching geography to year eight – they think they understand the world because they’ve been skiing in France and flopped on the beach in the Philippines, all inclusive. They think it’s all them and us, Muslims and the rest. See everything through holiday eyes. Swaggering around with dollars and euros in their pockets. It’s hard, you know, Mrs Gunn, getting them to recognize the world, its cultures and religions or lack of them, let alone respect it and put it all into perspective. Particularly when their parents read the Daily Mail.’ He grinned to rob the words of any real antipathy but there was an underlying frustration.
She was amused at his semi-rant but it felt authentic and heartfelt. So often when faced with a coroner people acted abnormally. Put on an act of fake sympathy, empathy or understanding. This, she felt, was the true Freddie Trimble – no holds barred. And she liked him. To the right children he would be a good teacher. But sometimes the measure of a really good teacher is to reach those children who were not initially the ‘right’ kind, the children who disengaged themselves from teachers, authority, education. Maybe with these children his knowledge, likeability and charm would transform them.
The teacher’s grey eyes twinkled as though he had read her judgement. ‘It must seem awful my having a moan when I’m here to talk about poor Patrick.’ His face clouded and he looked straight at Martha. ‘He was a nice kid. Bright too. Very bright.’ He was frowning. ‘I’ve had nightmares about it, you know. Seeing him fall, his friends peering over the bridge, watching him jump, seeing him land. Hearing him land.’
‘Which friends?’ she asked quickly. ‘The witnesses claimed that he was alone when he jumped. No one was there to peer over the bridge.’
Trimble looked confused. ‘You know dreams,’ he said noncommittally. ‘They fill in bits.’
Martha leaned in. It was exactly these ‘bits’ that she wanted. Not what had actually happened. She knew that only too well from the numerous witness statements. She wanted to know what Trimble, with his classroom knowledge, could colour in.
She repeated her question. ‘Which friends?’
Trimble met her eyes. ‘What exactly are you …?’ The words faded. His eyes had a shine in them and he half closed them as though to see the dream again. ‘Paul Jamieson, Saul Matthews. Nice kids,’ he said stiffly. ‘His mates. And a couple who definitely weren’t his friends, Warren and Sean.’
Martha picked up on it immediately. ‘Warren and Sean?’
‘Pair of junior thugs.’
Martha mentally tucked them away. She would return to the junior thugs later. For now she wanted to explore other dimensions. ‘But they weren’t really there, were they?’ Martha prompted gently. ‘The boys were all reported as being at school that day. Except Patrick.’
‘Yeah. I know.’ Trimble looked embarrassed. ‘Just a dream, Mrs Gunn. You know?’ There was something boyish, hopeful in his face, to which she responded with an encouraging smile.
He continued. ‘We’ve had counsellors in the school but I can’t say they’ve achieved much. His classmates have been quite affected.’ His face twisted.
‘Ah,’ Martha responded, picking up on it. ‘His classmates. He was a popular lad?’
Freddie Trimble frowned. ‘I wouldn’t say popular,’ he said tentatively. ‘He had his mates, a tight little circle, but he wasn’t one of those lads whom I’d describe as generally popular. He was too quiet for that. Contained.’ He lifted his eyebrows. ‘You know?’
She did.
‘And too intelligent,’ he added.
‘Tell me more about him, Mr Trimble,’ she prompted. What she really wanted to say was this: Make me see him through your eyes.
Freddie Trimble leaned back in his chair, patently more relaxed now. Martha offered him tea or coffee and he accepted decaffeinated tea. When Jericho had obliged, he took a sip, half closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose before fixing her with a very direct stare. ‘I don’t know how much you know about school life these days,’ he said.
‘My twins are almost twenty,’ she filled in. ‘Year eight was a long time ago for them – and for me. Start from scratch, Mr Trimble.’
He took a larger slurp of tea and set his cup down on the small table between them. ‘Kids these days,’ he said. ‘Well, kids have always been cruel to anyone who doesn’t quite fit in.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘In that way I don’t suppose things are any different from what they’ve always been.’ She nodded and he continued. ‘It’s just their tools that are different.’
‘Ah.’
He met her eyes. ‘Facebook, the internet, mobile phones, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat.’ He smiled. ‘In days gone by it might have been a sling, throwing stones, openly mocking someone. These days it’s so much more subtle and far reaching. More difficult to prove – less physical, more mental. If you’re an outsider it can be cruel and public. Patrick was quiet and self-contained, sensitive and intelligent. There’s a couple of kids in the school who probably belong in a young offenders’ centre.’
Ah, she thought, I knew we would return to them. Warren and Sean.
He gave a rueful snort. ‘But if they ended up there, their very vocal parents would accuse people of discrimination, of prejudice, of picking on them. That’s the way things are these days.’ He paused, still thoughtful. Martha guessed he was wondering how much to tell her. How much she needed to know. Whether he could trust her.
He made his decision, dived back in. ‘He was small for his age. I mean, at year eight some of the kids – well, they’re big and quite meaty if you know what I mean. Pat – he was skinny. He could run fast.’
Not fast enough.
‘He loved space and the planets and adored Professor Brian Cox. He’d bring his name or something about space into the conversation whenever he could. Cox and Tim Peake were his heroes. He was going to be an astro-physicist or a spaceman. But that meant …’ His speech slowed to a dawdle.
‘Ridicule?’
‘Other kids – I mean, some other kids; not all, to be fair – they took the piss out of him, called him a geek. It was the class bullies, Warren and Sean. They’re brothers – only ten months between them. They’re in the same school year. It makes them close. A bit united and very aggressive. It doesn’t help that their dad’s in prison. It makes them even more defensive. Labelled as trouble.’
Martha sat up. ‘Their surname?’
‘Silver,’ the teacher said, unaware that he had just dropped a brick. Martha breathed out slowly, as though in a yoga class. So there was the connection. Just a thin thread at the moment. Trouble was if Silver was in prison, on remand, he couldn’t have got at Gina. But … She forced herself back to the teacher’s words.
‘About three weeks ago they chucked his shoes over a telegraph wire.’ He looked almost apologetic. ‘It’s nothing really. That sort of thing happens all the time. You’ll never stamp it out but Patrick’s were Nike. They were expensive and probably cost his mum money she could ill afford. Amanda’s a nice woman. I really respect her. She’d done a good job bringing him up alone. Patrick was well behaved and polite but she couldn’t be everything to him. It doesn’t work like that.’
She inched closer. ‘After the shoe-throwing incident?’
‘He became very quiet. He’d never been pushy or noisy but he became almost withdrawn. Something happened round about then. Not the shoes. That was just the start of things. Something else. He became quieter, stopped talking about his ambition. Damn.’ He punched his left palm with his right fist. ‘I should have picked up on it.’
‘His mother didn’t,’ Martha put in gently.
Trimble seemed not to have heard her. ‘He was almost ashamed.’ Freddie was frowning now. He drank his tea abstractedly, looking into the distance. ‘Pat buried things very deep, you know. If he could have got to the right university to study the right subjects with the right friends to back him up and encourage him, he would have shone. He had a head full of knowledge and the sense to sift through it. He might well have realized his ambition, been an astro-physicist or a cosmologist or something. But …’
‘That last day,’ she prompted.
‘Well, he didn’t come to school.’ It was the first sign of anger. Of irritation – with her. Trimble could be sparky, she realized.
‘Was that the only day he didn’t attend school?’
The teacher shook his head. ‘No. He was away for two days in the previous week. I checked. I think his mum sent a note in saying he had a cold or something.’
Amanda Elson hadn’t mentioned this.
‘Tell me something. When you heard …’
The dark eyes flew up to her face. ‘I wasn’t surprised,’ he said. ‘It’s as though I knew something was brewing. But not that. Not that, or I would have stopped it.’
‘You think you could have stopped it?’
‘I’d tried to speak to him on the previous Thursday but he didn’t want to know, not really. But …’ His eyes met hers fearlessly. ‘I could never have anticipated anything like that. Not suicide. If I had I would have done absolutely anything to have stopped it.’ He paused. ‘With most suicides, surely it’s just a phase you have to get through and come out the other side.’
She nodded. That was one way of looking at it.
‘He was a nice boy. It shouldn’t have happened.’ He looked at her, pain clouding his eyes. ‘You know the worst thing about a suicide?’
She already knew what he was going to say. Because she’d heard it all before – the guilt, the feeling that you could, should, have prevented it.
He didn’t fail her. ‘We let him down,’ he said. ‘I let him down, but I could never have imagined …’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t. Patrick couldn’t live with himself.’ She was tempted to complete the question. Because …
Partly to divert him away from the river of sadness, she pursued another aspect.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘more about the two boys, Warren and Sean.’
Trimble looked alarmed. ‘We can’t do anything unless we’ve got proof. The parents would be down on us like a ton of bricks. Their mum has been down the school a couple of times with complaints that her sons weren’t being treated fairly, that they’ve been given grades that were too low or excluded from a trip just because of who they are, who their dad is.’
‘Their mother’s a tough nut?’
His face looked almost humorous. ‘You wouldn’t want to take her on, Mrs Gunn. She’s a lady with an interesting collection of tattoos and language that would make most men blush. The boys are big for their age.’
Martha simply nodded. She knew now in which direction she was headed. But Gina Marconi hadn’t committed suicide because a couple of schoolboys had intimidated her. It would have taken much more than that. She hadn’t found the bottom of the muckheap just yet. How this all connected, she didn’t know. But she had a feeling that these cases, murky and stinking like rotting fish, had another lesson for her. She might not have DI Alex Randall to walk her through but that didn’t mean she couldn’t run her own investigation. She was on her own now.
So be it.