Death of a Teacher (10 page)

‘All his support systems are in place now,’ Ro said. ‘He’s made huge strides, literally. When he was small we thought he wouldn’t walk at all. The Norbridge schools and Cumbria Scope society have been great. I like it here, though I would never have described myself as a country lover before.’

‘Oh, Cumbria gets to most people in the end.’

Ro thought, Jed has so little real experience of life, yet he sounds so self assured. ‘But what about you, Jed, have you never been tempted by the bright lights? Sex and drugs and rock and roll?’

‘Absolutely not.’

He sounded horrified. OK, I’ll shut up then, Ro thought.

Jed talked a little himself too, about his own background. His father was a manager at a local factory and his mother worked part-time for an insurance company. He was from an extended Pelliter clan, but there had been a rift in the family, and his immediate relations were his parents and a younger brother who was currently at college. Jed had been to Norbridge High, done a gap year in Belize and Guatemala, and then read theology at Durham University, not too far away. But he loved West Cumbria and was glad to be back. He’d had a few girlfriends, but nothing special for a while. Ro wondered if he would ever have talked much about his family if they hadn’t been stuck in the car together waiting for Alison MacDonald to come home.

Then her car drew up and she parked neatly outside the row of cottages. 
Alison emerged, her long copper hair loose unlike the neat pony-tail she wore at school. She grabbed an overnight case from the back seat.

‘That’s her,’ Ro said.

‘Let’s give her a minute to get her breath back and then we’ll knock on the door.’

When they strolled over and rang the doorbell, Alison’s mother answered and asked them to step into the front room. She offered them tea or coffee. Jed accepted a coffee, but Ro thought that if she had any more caffeine she would bounce off the walls.

Alison came to join them. The young teacher looked tired, and paler than Ro remembered from the day before. She had almost translucent white skin. She was wearing jeans and a drooping turquoise smock top which showed her bra straps, and her long red hair swung over her shoulders. At the school she had been wearing a black zipper jacket over a crisp cotton blouse. There were also three or four silver loops in her ears which had not been there the day before. And there was the faintest outline of a love-bite on her white neck. She’s younger than I thought, Ro realized.

‘You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a bit out of it,’ Alison said. ‘I’m so shocked about Miss Hodgson. And I’ve been away for the weekend with my boyfriend. We had a late night last night.’

‘Clubbing, were you?’ Jed asked sharply.

‘Yes. It’s not really my thing, but my boyfriend likes the club scene.’

‘Can you tell us more about this window business?’ Jed snapped. He sounded brisker and more abrasive than usual, Ro thought.

‘But I want to know about Miss Hodgson first,’ Alison said. ‘I’ve really been knocked sideways by this terrible news. I only heard about it an hour ago, on the radio, and I’ve literally just walked in. What exactly happened?’

‘We’re not here to discuss that,’ Jed said. ‘We made it clear we want to talk about the window breakage, in the context of community policing and vandalism. We need to know exactly what you think occurred.’

Alison suddenly blinked and withdrew into her armchair. She looked as if she was under interrogation, rather than having a helpful talk with fellow professionals. She said formally, ‘I see. We were painting a mural in the art room. I heard a noise; then a hammer came through the window. The glass was shattered, but no one was hurt.’

There was a long, tense silence. Alison felt Ro looking at her, and she stared down at the carpet.

‘Is that all you can remember?’ Jed asked loudly.

‘Pretty much.’

‘Oh come on! I thought you were supposed to teach art. You know – visual stuff. Didn’t you
see
anything?’ 

‘I’m not always looking for bad things,’ Alison said. ‘Unlike you. Anyway, shouldn’t you be thinking about poor Miss Hodgson at the moment? I’ve got to deal with my class on that too.’

Ro leant forward, embarrassed by Jed’s rudeness. ‘But we want you to know that the vandalism matters. I’m sure the children will ask about the window tomorrow, and you need to think about what you are going to say. The two things will seem mixed up to the children, and it will be as if their whole world is upside down.’

Alison looked at Ro, and nodded. ‘That’s true,’ she said slowly, as if she didn’t wish to admit that someone in a uniform could be sensitive. ‘That’s how the children think.’

‘Look,’ Ro said, ‘why don’t I try and help? I could come and do a
question-and
-answer session with your class? Perhaps on Tuesday when the shock over Miss Hodgson has calmed down a bit? Here’s my business card with my number and email address on.’

Alison nodded, relaxing slightly. ‘OK. That sounds like a good idea. I’ll ask Mr Findley. The children will be quite shaken up by everything and it could be good for them to speak to you, as you’re a police officer.’

‘She’s a Police Community Support Officer, not a police officer,’ Jed barked.

‘But I can explain what is happening,’ Ro added gently.

‘That would be useful.’ Alison nodded, suddenly more authoritative. ‘Thank you. I’ll go with that. In the meantime if you don’t mind, I need to get myself together, so perhaps I’ve said everything I can?’ She stood up.

Jed looked as if he was about to contradict her but Ro said, ‘OK, we’ll go. You must phone Mr Findley, Alison. I think you’ll find that he’s back on top, organizing things at school after this terrible incident. Thank you for seeing us.’

Ro stood up too, and Jed followed her out slowly. Alison walked them to the front door, but she closed it behind them the moment they were outside, without saying anything. Then she went back into the front room and stood at the window, watching as the tall young policeman and the older woman marched silently to the car.

As the door slammed and Jed reached angrily for his seat belt, Ro said, ‘What on earth were you thinking of in there?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were so aggressive with that young woman.’

‘She wasn’t telling us the truth.’

‘Of course she wasn’t. You stride in there in a uniform and act as if we’re bad cop, good cop. For goodness’ sake, Jed, we’re the community team, not something out of Lynda La Plante. The whole point was just for us to have a chat.’ 

‘I’m the police officer. You’re just support. I say what we’re supposed to do.’

‘Why? She was my contact. You wanted to come with me.’

Jed started the car and drove aggressively towards the main road. Ro put her hand on his arm.

‘Stop, Jed. Tell me why Alison MacDonald annoyed you so much?’

Jed ignored her and put his foot on the accelerator. Finally he said, ‘You think you’re so liberal and understanding, don’t you? But people like that disgust me, the sort that wear ironmongery in their ears. Who go out “
clubbing
”. She looked shattered didn’t she? She’s probably a recreational substance abuser and then turns up to teach people’s kids on a Monday.’

‘Jed! You have no idea whether or not that’s true.’

‘Oh come on! Don’t be naïve. She looked like a drowned cat, white as a sheet, hair all over the place, and neckline down to her navel.’

Ro turned and looked at him. ‘I think you behaved insensitively.’

‘Well, perhaps you’re too sensitive by half.’

‘Sorry? What do you mean?’

‘Well, being soft-hearted is all that matters these days, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why having a disabled child could be an advantage when it comes to getting a job as police support officer. You had no other qualifications, did you? I suppose you thought a bleeding heart would be enough. But don’t expect me to be soft on crime too.’

Ro clenched the door handle. Don’t react, she told herself. Jed drove in angry silence, but she was aware of the sharpness of his movements. He’s deeply upset about something, she thought; that’s why he’s been so appallingly rude to me. But that doesn’t make it excusable. No one should ever talk like that about my relationship with Ben.

Jed was still working himself up. He said, ‘And thanks to your softie approach, that interview didn’t tell us anything new.’

‘Really? Is that what you think? Alison MacDonald actually told us
something
quite crucial, but you were too full of your own self-righteousness to hear her.’

‘What?’

‘The hammer. That’s the first we’ve heard of a hammer being used to break the window. So much for your interrogation technique. If you hadn’t snapped at her we might have been able to ask the crucial question.’

‘Oh yeah? What’s that?’

‘Where’s the hammer now? You were the investigating officer at the school. You didn’t investigate very much, did you?’

Jed drove silently into the police station car park. Ro opened the car door, got out, and slammed it behind her.  

A
fter the brutal murder, Pelliter remained frozen in shock. But on the last Monday morning in April there was also the drip, drip, drip of a mental thaw. Gossip started to flow like spring water. Maybe Miss Hodgson had been on a secret assignation with an internet date, or was into drugs, or had confronted bad characters dumping the mattress?

One by one the suggestions evaporated. It soon became known that she didn’t even own a computer. The drug dealers in the town swore it was nothing to do with them, and the men who dumped the mattress came forward and were exposed as fly tippers, terrified of being implicated.

Everyone knew the details, which were reported in the papers. Inevitably more gossip had emerged via the hospital and police-station chat. Pelliter had never received so much media attention and all sorts of people thought
themselves
privy to special knowledge, which they immediately passed on. In offices and factories all over Norbridge, people huddled over the newspapers, initially to find out more, and increasingly to see if anyone they knew had been quoted. A teacher was public property.

But no one really remembered anything much about Miss Hodgson as a private person.

Ro Watson was off shift on Monday. She got up to see Ben off in his taxi as usual. Watching his lurching walk made her heart turn over with love and a painful, visceral sympathy. Whenever she thought about Jed Jackson and his horrible remarks – which was too often – she felt rigid with anger. Why had he suddenly turned on her like that? What was it about the young teacher that had infuriated him so much, to the extent that he’d lost his professionalism?

Later, Alison MacDonald left a voicemail message on Ro’s mobile asking her to come and talk to Year Six the following day, Tuesday. Although the young teacher sounded formal, there was no hint of hostility from the evening before. But Alison had made it quite clear the invitation was a 
personal one, to Ro. She said she would be delighted if Ro came into school, and that Mr Findley also thought it was a great idea; Year Six were even more unsettled now, and needed something to differentiate them as older and more grown up than the rest of the children. A session with a PCSO might help.

Ro went back to doing her usual day-off chores – washing, and thinking. Occasionally she put on the news to keep up with the coverage of what everyone was calling the Marsh Murder.

The same morning, Suzy Spencer dropped Molly off at St Mungo’s at 8.45. She was relieved that her daughter showed no sign of wanting to talk about the murder. Molly had chatted about her artwork all the way to school. When they got there, there were two film crews interviewing groups of parents outside the building. Judith Dixon came straight over to Suzy to say how good the girls’ sleepover had been, despite everything, and remarked what a relief it was that they were so preoccupied with their mural now there had been this terrible crime.

Then Mrs Rudder suddenly appeared at the school gates. The TV crews literally sprang into action.

‘Mrs Rudder, can you tell us something about your friend?’

‘Was Brenda Hodgson seeing anyone, Mrs Rudder?’

But the crowd parted silently and the white-faced but dignified deputy head came through, with Callie McFadden immediately behind her. The two women passed into the school and there was something like a sigh from the waiting mums. With a sense that the show was over, they melted from around the gates.

That morning, Ray Findley took a special assembly at St Mungo’s, and was clearly back in charge. Questions from the pupils included asking if Miss Hodgson’s throat was cut, and if the Dodsworth House exams would still go ahead. There was an undercurrent of panic, made worse by the sinister shade of the boarded-up window. As Ro had predicted, the children confused the two events. Before long, one theory was that Miss Hodgson had been dragged out through the window by the killer, who was coming back for the children.

Alison MacDonald found she was looking forward to the talk from the PCSO, which would help settle them down. And to her surprise Mark was suddenly interested in St Mungo’s, constantly texting her. She found his
fascination
with the lurid details in the tabloids slightly disturbing. But, he said laughing at her, men were like that.

That evening at The Briars, Robert could hardly hear himself speak for a row that was going on at the top of the stairs.

‘Mummy, I’ve told you, I’ve got a summer cold. I don’t want to go to school tomorrow. I want to take some Night Nurse and sleep it off.’ 

‘Molly, you’re just doing this to be difficult. I know it’s horrid at school because of Miss Hodgson, but you can’t stay off just because you feel like it.’

‘That’s not fair! I’m sick. It’s unethical of you to expect me to go to school when I’m not well.’

‘Unethical? Where do you get these words from? It’s more unethical to pretend you’re ill, hanging about in your pyjamas with no slippers and no dressing gown.’

Suzy came thumping downstairs and into the kitchen where she poured red wine into her glass and slumped at the table.

‘What’s up?’ Robert asked.

‘Molly doesn’t want to go to school tomorrow, but I can’t see anything wrong with her. She ought to go. They’re having a talk from the community police. Miss MacDonald thinks it will be a useful session. She’s sent a note round.’

‘Sounds like a good idea.’

‘And I want things to get back to normal. I’ve spent half of today ferrying Molly backwards and forwards because I was feeling protective. Tomorrow she should be back on the bus, murder or no murder.’

Robert agreed. The sooner Norbridge calmed down the better. He mused for a while on what Suzy had said.

‘And she really hasn’t got a summer cold?’ he asked thoughtfully.

‘It’s April, Robert. And no, she hasn’t got a cold.’ Suzy sat frowning, and then said, ‘Do you think she wants to avoid the talk with the police? It’s a bit like she’s in denial about this murder. She hasn’t mentioned it, although everyone else is talking about it.’

‘Maybe,’ Robert shrugged. ‘It could be her way of dealing with it. But it doesn’t seem very realistic. Better to cope with it now, I think.’

Suzy drank her wine, thought about what he’d said, and then pounded up the stairs. Molly was reading in bed, but the set of her face, ignoring her mother at the door, showed that she wasn’t really concentrating on the page.

‘Molly, is there anything you want to tell me?’ asked her mother, more gently. Molly put her book down and her face crumpled. Suzy sat on the mattress and put her arms around her. Molly’s sobs made the bed shake. Holding her daughter in her arms, Suzy felt for the first time the soft but firm bounciness of breasts. It was such a surprise, she almost let go. Molly was still a shapeless lump, but it seemed the puppy fat might be about to redistribute itself.

‘What’s wrong, Molly? Is this about what happened to Miss Hodgson?’ Molly was crying and snivelling now. There were no histrionics, just a runny nose and increasingly puffy eyes.

‘Yes,’ she snuffled. 

‘Molly, it’s a horrible thing but the police will find who did it. The Police Community Support Officer will tell you all about how they’ll be caught and punished.’ But her reassuring words made Molly sob louder.

‘Calm down, Molly. Look, I’ll take you to school in the car tomorrow so you can lie in bed a bit longer in the morning.’

Molly’s crying quietened. She snuggled down into bed, turned on her side and, while Suzy watched, she fell startlingly into an exhausted and deep sleep.

Suzy overslept the next morning. She and Robert had been talking for hours into the night.

‘Robert, I haven’t mentioned it before, but Nigel said on Friday that he wants to push on with a divorce.’ She stretched her feet down to the end of the bed, and tensed, wondering what Robert would say.

‘Then we can get married,’ Robert had said. ‘Let’s have Molly as a
bridesmaid
. And Becky. Stripy tights and pink shorts all round.’

Suzy laughed. ‘I know we’ve talked about getting married in the past, but it’s not that simple, is it? It’s not just you and me. It’s the children too. There was something Judith Dixon said that annoyed me …’

‘She can be quite blunt, can’t she? Not a sensitive woman.’

Suzy had taken a deep breath. ‘It was about the Dodsworth House
scholarships
. She suggested that Molly should enter. I said I couldn’t really commit to paying the fees. My job has always been a bit up and down. And she said I should ask you for the money.’

‘Well she’s right. If that’s what you want. I’ve got savings, you know that. And Molly is my stepdaughter now.’

It was a subject that had cropped up before, but Suzy had always asserted her family’s independence, financially and emotionally. If they married, it would be different.

‘Rob, a new family at your age is a big change.’

‘I’ve still got a year or two before I get my bus pass. Anyway Suzy, it’s hardly sudden. And I like having stepkids. Stepfathers get a bad press, but if you think about it, bringing up children who aren’t yours by birth is a massive tradition. It’s natural, in its way. I’ve been reading more stuff about medieval times lately. I’m thinking of writing about it.’

Suzy had laughed. ‘Not another project?’

‘When I’ve finished my definitive work on Canada? No, seriously, Suzy, bringing up children has always been done by people other than natural parents. Think of those squires sent away as little boys to be brought up in another noble family. Or apprentices sent off as teenagers to be indentured. Or the kids brought up by grandparents today, like Becky Dixon.’

‘And it’s often a horror story, isn’t it?’ 

‘But that’s why the horror stories are horrible! It’s hard to explain to the natural parents, but you can love them with real intensity even when they aren’t yours. What’s that old saying about babies, they bring their love with them? It’s true about all children, Suzy: when you live with them you love them. Molly’s my stepdaughter now and, if she wants to go to Dodsworth, I’ll do as much as you to find the money. There is one thing though …’

‘What?’ Suzy had asked anxiously.

‘Have you asked
her
if she wants to go?’

She hadn’t, of course. Somehow, this conversation left Suzy feeling more disturbed than reassured. Robert clearly loved the children; she had no doubt of that. But what about Nigel? He was Molly’s real father. How would he feel about Robert having a formal role in the children’s lives? And how would the children feel in turn? For a few years now, she and Robert had assumed they would get married. But when it came down to it, it wasn’t that easy. He seemed happy about marrying the whole family. But how did she feel about being part of a package?

It was all a can of worms. As soon as you got one issue sorted, another bubbled up. Suzy rolled over in bed and slept heavily when she eventually dropped off.

That was why she had found it hard to wake up on Tuesday morning. Molly was pale but quiet. She ate her breakfast, grabbed her school coat and bag, and waited patiently to be taken to Pelliter, while Suzy flew round eating toast and getting dressed at the same time.

In the car, Suzy grasped the nettle and said suddenly, ‘Molly, would you like to go to Dodsworth House?’

Molly turned and looked at her mother as if she was mad. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘’course not.’

‘What about if Becky goes?’

‘Becky doesn’t want to go either. She says she won’t do the exam.’

‘Even if her grandma insists?’

‘Becky says she won’t do it. She wants to go to Norbridge High, like me and Jake.’

Suzy said no more. She felt relieved, but the conversation with Robert had awakened other worries. She drove distractedly, and when they arrived at St Mungo’s the playground was empty and everyone was already inside.

‘I’m sorry, Molly. It’s my fault we’re late. I don’t want you to miss this talk from the PCSO. I’ll come with you into school and apologize. Come on, get out of the car.’

Her daughter ambled in an ungainly way across the yard, bag and coat flapping. Suzy followed her, but Molly ignored her mother and didn’t even stop to say goodbye. She plodded on down the corridor to her classroom. 

The Police Community Support Officer was waiting outside the head’s office. Suzy took in the shape of her back, the heavy jacket, dark trousers and flat shoes. Then the PCSO turned round.

Despite all the changes, Suzy recognized her at once.

‘Rosemary? Is it you?’

‘It can’t be … Susan Smith! Are you a parent here?’

‘Sure am. My daughter’s come to listen to your talk.’ Suzy grinned
excitedly
. ‘Look, I’ll hang on till you’ve finished. We must grab a coffee and catch up!’