The Red Road (43 page)

“Which service do you require?”
the operator asked.

I slipped down inside the wooden
booth.

“Which service do you require?”
the operator repeated when I didn’t answer.

“Police,” I said, forcing myself
to focus.

“What is the nature of the
emergency?”

“There’s a man trying to kill
the boys at my school.” I was slurring my words. I needed to
concentrate. “I’m at St Christopher’s school, in Wessex. Near
to ... to ... Hallmouth.”

“And you say there is a man trying
to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Is he armed?”

“I ... don’t know. I don’t ...
think so. He’s the one that’s killed us before. The ... police
know.”

“Do you need an ambulance?”

“When are the police coming?”

“They’re are on their way now.
Do you need an ambulance?”

“I think so ... Send some. I think
he’s drugged me. I feel really funny.”

“Can I have you name, please?”

“What?”

“What is your name?”

“My name’s ... er ...”

“You don’t have to give it if
you don’t want to.”

“Okay. I’m going to go ... going
to help Father Thomas,” I told the operator. “He’s trying to
... trying to stop the man killing us.”

I hung up, not hearing anything
else, and started off back down the corridor to the exit. I heard the
phone start to ring behind me as I went. Some of the lights were on
in the dormitories I passed.

“What’s happening?” a voice
asked.

I carried on going.

“Joe?”

“Killer, outside,” I said.

The remark led to a flurry of
questions, all of which I ignored. I made it to the exit,
successfully learning against the door to open it. I saw as I started
up the hill that Father Thomas had managed to pin Adrian, who was now
making quite a lot of noise. Many lights were on all about the
school. I thought that I could hear sirens.

“Did you call them?” Father
Thomas called to me as I staggered up the hill towards them.

“I think so,” I said.

The tall monk might have said
something else, but I didn’t hear, the ground rising up to meet me.

~ ~ ~

I woke up, finding myself in an
unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar place. It took me a while to realise
that I was in the school infirmary. I hadn’t been here in many
years. It smelt vaguely of iodine, bleach and other cleaning fluids.

I stirred, sitting up and becoming
aware of a throbbing on my face. I put my hand there, feeling
bandages and a sudden rush of pain as I brushed my nose.

“Ow!” I exclaimed. How had that
happened? Someone walked in from the room next door. A
police officer. I recoiled at the sight.

“Ah, finally awake,” the man
said. “They were thinking of taking you to the hospital if you
stayed asleep any longer.”

“Huh?” was all I could respond.

“Let me get the sister,” the
police officer said. “She will want to know that you’re up. Stay
there.” I did as requested, sure that the policeman had been here
before. The sister arrived, bright and breezy.

“How are you feeling?” she
asked.

“Tired,” I said.

“You haven’t slept
properly, that’s why.”

“What happened?” I asked. An
instance of the night before then rushed through my mind, the brief
imagery enough for me to recall and piece together the rest. “Oh,
shit! Adrian!” I said, starting out of bed.

“Stay there, stay there,” the
sister said, pushing me back down. “The police have him.”

“What about the boy he had?” I
asked frantically.

“He’s in there,” the sister
said, nodding to the portion of the infirmary that was reserved for
the junior school. “He’s okay, but he’s being sick a lot. You
can probably expect some of that later, yourself.”

I followed her eyes as they flicked
to the yellow bucket that sat by my bedside. I felt myself relax a
little. Everything was out of my hands. “What happened?” I asked.

“Father Thomas saw you being
attacked by the suspect and came to help,” the policeman started.
“You called 999 and then collapsed. You had been chloroformed.”

“Really? Chloroform?” Despite
the seriousness of the event, it actually sounded quite cool. To my
mind, only people such as James Bond were ever chloroformed. Now I
knew how it felt to be a secret agent.

The policeman nodded. “We arrived
to find Father Thomas restraining the suspect, and with you and Adam
Richardson passed out. We placed the suspect under arrest and then
the paramedics checked out both you and Adam.”

Though the police officer hadn’t
named Adrian Willis, referring to him only as ‘the suspect’, I was obvious it was him. They had got him.
Excellent. I still couldn’t believe it had been him. The man had
been friendly and open when I had met him, not harbouring any
negative sentiments at all.

“I imagine he’ll confess
everything in a few days,” the policeman said. “We have the right
to hold him for another seventy-two hours.”

I nodded, feeling a sharp pain as I
did so. “Is my nose broken?” I asked.

“It is, yes,” the sister said.

“Shouldn’t I go to hospital?”
I asked, somewhat incredulously. Were they not concerned about me
having a crooked nose for the rest of my life?

“It’s not broken badly, and we
can manage it here. You just have to be careful not to bang it
against anything, otherwise you may have to go to hospital.”

“And then they’ll have to break
it again, which isn’t fun,” the policeman smiled. “Believe me,
I know,” he added, tapping his own nose.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Almost nine in the morning,” the sister
said. “I’ll go and bring you some breakfast.”

“I guess you have some questions
for me?” I asked of the police officer, as the sister left.

“If you can spare just twenty or
thirty minutes.”

“Not like I have anywhere else to
go,” I grinned, stopping when it caused immediate discomfort.

The police officer introduced
himself as Sergeant Paul Newman, reminding me that he had actually
been at the school before, when I had come to the headmaster’s
office after Scott Parker’s body had been discovered. He asked me
to tell him everything that I could about Adrian Willis, where I had
met him, what contact I may have had with him outside of school, and
what he had said to me, especially if it was something that might
hint at a motive. I told him about the first time we had met, that
day in church, then of the next time when he had come to give the
career talk, and of the discussion in the White Horse after that.

“Did he say anything that might
have implied a dislike of any of the teachers, students, or the
itself school in particular?” Sergeant Newman wanted to know.

“Yes,” I realised. “Yes, quite
a lot.” Now I thought about it, there had been a bright neon sign
buzzing above the man’s head the entire time. Adrian wasn’t fond
of St Christopher’s, hadn’t been for years. In fact, he
hated
the place. But what was his ultimate goal? I couldn’t think.

“Thank you,” Newman said. “If
we need to talk to you again, we’ll get in touch via the school.”

“Just so you know, I won’t be
coming back next term,” I told him.

“Enough adventure for one
lifetime, eh?” Newman grinned.

“Just time for a new one,” I
smiled back. “I’m going to a different school. A sixth form
college back home.”

Newman nodded. “I’ll get your
home address from the headmaster in that case.”

The sister returned a short time
later with some tea and toast. I took one look at the food, felt my
stomach flip and then vomited instantly into the bucket by the side
of the bed. That would be the poison leaving my body, she explained.
I rinsed my mouth in the bathroom, finding that someone had brought
my wash bag down from Butcher. I brushed my teeth, somewhat less
vigorously than I would normally do to avoid the pain in my nose,
before returning to my bed and attempting to drink the tea and eat
the toast.

It didn’t stay down, and with
sister having now removed the bucket, I was forced to sprint to the
toilet in the bathroom. I very nearly made it, too.

Epilogue

I
received a witness summons a week after leaving St Christopher’s,
requiring me to travel twice up to London, to provide evidence in the
case against Adrian Willis. He had already confessed to the murders
as I was questioned in court, Adrian’s defence attempting a plea of
insanity, hoping to get him a more lenient sentence. There were a
handful of teachers in attendance there, Father Thomas, having
tackled Willis, giving the most evidence. The jury were apparently
taken to the two places where Scott Parker, Ted Osmond and Craig
Priest had been found – along the Red Road and also in the bushes
by the school’s main drive.

I discovered Adrian Willis’
motivations as I had testified. Adrian had been expelled from St
Christopher’s after he had been discovered to have a quantity of
cannabis in his possession. This, the school believed him to be
dealing. He had denied it, but a urine and blood test had said
otherwise. He had admitted to smoking the drug himself, on weekends,
something he was sure some of the other boys in the school had known.
Adrian had never, however, kept any drugs on the grounds himself.
Though never proven, he believed the cannabis had been planted on him
by someone else, to draw attention away from their own smoking of the
drug. The school had subsequently turned a blind eye to the positive
urine samples of the head boy and two of the other heads of house,
who were preparing for their Oxbridge entrance, labelling Adrian
Willis as a scapegoat, instead.

After his expulsion, Adrian had
tried to get back into college, but his drug allegations on his
permanent records had tarnished his reputation. No college would take
him, and so his chances of becoming a surgeon had been completely
destroyed. He had held a grudge against St Christopher’s ever
since, blaming every failure in his life on them. Upon the collapse
of his marriage (I had always assumed he was single), he had chosen
to find a way to have the school closed down and decided that the
best way to do this was to have it deemed unsafe.

Having been at the school for close
to nine years, Adrian knew of many back doors and hidden entrances
that existed, including one that led into the junior school, coming
in through an attic window and down through a trapdoor in the
library. He had then waited in the younger boys’ toilets until one
got up to use them in the middle of the night. It had taken months of
waiting, one or two times a week. The man’s patience had been
incredible. And on the rare occasion he had been spotted, the boys’
reports had been dismissed by their peers, who simply teased them as
having seen the ghost of the Headless Highwayman that was said to
stalk the corridors.

Finally getting his victim, Adrian
had chloroformed them, carried them out of the school to his car,
driven them to an appropriate spot, strangled and then dump them
where they might be found. Both the snow and the monks patrolling the
ground had made the task of getting his second victim more difficult,
and so he had chosen to dump the body in the main grounds of the
school itself. He had been caught in the act by Craig Priest, who had
been out for a cigarette at the time. Priest had called for help
before Willis had caught up with him, slitting his throat when he
proved a little more resilient to the chloroform than had been
expected. The parents of Adrian’s victims all wept as he had
confessed. That he hadn’t sexually abused any of the boys was of
little comfort.

Adrian Willis was sentenced to life
in prison for the murders of Scott Parker on the 11th of September,
1991, and Ted Osmond and Craig Priest on the 21st of February, 1992.
He showed little remorse as he was sent down. I felt a twinge of
guilt and sadness for the man as he was led from the courtroom. He
had been set up, his life ruined by other people, and he had been
made to suffer every day because of it. His response had been
unnecessary, however. I wondered what I might do if I had been in his
shoes.

~ ~ ~

I left St Christopher’s on the
14th of June, 1992 and spent long summer days anxiously awaiting my
GCSE results. The grades I needed for BSFC were:

English Literature (A)

English Language (A)

Biology (B)

Physics (B)

Chemistry (B)

Maths (B)

History (B)

Geography (A)

French (B)

Religious Education (A)

General Studies (B)

My actual grades were,

English Literature (A-)

English Language (A)

Biology (A-)

Physics (B+)

Chemistry (C+)

Maths (A+)

History (A)

Geography (A-)

French (B+)

Religious Education (B+)

General Studies (A)

My parents mumbled and thumbed the C
grade, saying that I shouldn’t have received anything below a B. I
countered by pointing to the seven A grades I had received, after
being projected just four. I also reminded them that the college were
the ones who would ultimately decide whether or not I was good enough
to attend.
Which they did, accepting me the
very same morning that I applied.

I began attending BSFC in September,
1992, putting the events of the past year far behind me, and making
an effort to acclimatise to my newfound freedom, learning to enjoy
it, but ensuring that I stayed focused on my education, so I could
attend a good university and finally embark on my career in banking.
The allure of millions of pounds in salary and bonuses, and the
chance to retire at thirty-five was as strong as ever.

I learned to cook for myself when my
parents were absent, wash clothes, and keep a good eye on my own
personal finances. I took a job at the local supermarket, working on
the tills at weekends and sometimes after college, to earn extra
pocket money. I also made good on my promise to get my mother a new
cat, buying her a kitten for Christmas. We named her Pickles.