Child's Play Read online

  McKenna remembered the lush-looking teenager Dewi had pointed out. Then he recalled the flaxen-haired American and Daisy’s thin, dark friend. ‘Dewi was supposed to supervise evening stables,’ he said.

  Janet nodded. ‘He did. He said nothing unusual happened, except that Torrance told all the horses that Sukie was dead and that they must look after her mare. She’s called Purdey, apparently,’ she added. ‘After that character in The Avengers.’

  A shiver ran up his spine. ‘“Purdey” is also the name of a very expensive make of shotgun.’ After that, he said nothing more for several moments, then asked, ‘What did the girls have to say about Sukie?’

  ‘Not many outside the sixth form actually seemed to know her,’ Janet replied. ‘Those who did admit acquaintance said she was “lovely”, “warm”, “sweet”, “pretty”, “a super rider”, and various other positive and complimentary things. In short, no one had a useful word to say.’

  He pushed himself off the wall and began to walk away.

  ‘Before you go in there, sir,’ Janet said, ‘I should warn you that I’ve just seen Dr Scott. She’s most unhappy about what she calls our “unseemly occupation of the school” and intends to call in the chairman of the governors, who, according to the Who’s Who which naturally has pride of place in her study and which she insisted on showing me, has got pots of money and lots of connections, and is not, therefore, someone our chief constable would want us to upset.’ She grinned again. ‘I think she’s hoping you’ll shoot the messenger. I’d gone to ask her why the alarms on the top-floor fire exits had been disconnected and if she knew about Sean O’Connor’s conviction for criminal damage,’ she went on. ‘The top floor gets very hot because it’s right under the roof, so she allows the fire doors to stand open to air the place, and she of course knows about Sean. He’s constantly supervised and has yet to put a foot wrong, so she wants to know why we’re creating such a fuss when Sukie clearly committed suicide, which is distressing enough in itself. Needless to say,’ she finished, ‘the suicide theory’s gaining ground by the minute.’

  10

  Inside the school the corridor was awash with staff and girls moving like a tide from the refectory. Then, above the sea-like murmur of their voices, someone wailed stridently, ‘I’m scared!’ Other girls started whimpering and crying, and within seconds the murmur became a storm of sobs, over which the teachers shrieked like gulls.

  Hands raised, her palms facing outwards, Freya materialised in the lobby. ‘Girls! Girls!’ she said, her voice low but carrying. ‘Please, just go quietly to your common rooms for supper. Matron and I will talk to each of you before lights out.’

  From his vantage point just inside the door McKenna watched, wondering sourly if the unease Matron had revealed would be mollified by her time in the spotlight with the headmistress. As the girls passed her, Freya touched a cheek here and there or patted a shoulder and, for all his cynicism, he could only admire the way she handled them.

  She waited until they dispersed, then walked towards him with long, graceful, hip-swinging strides. ‘I’m afraid there’ll be many more tears before the night’s out,’ she commented.

  ‘And some copycat hysteria,’ he replied. ‘My officers tell me few of the juniors knew Sukie, no doubt because there’s a natural divide between upper and lower schools.’

  ‘Actually,’ Freya said, ‘it’s rather that she wasn’t a prefect or house captain and therefore had little to do with them. Nonetheless she had her following, especially among those who like horses.’

  ‘And I’m sure they found her glamorous.’ He watched her covertly, thinking about the experiences and forces that had shaped her, wondering if Jack’s assessment of her was no more than a measure of his own prejudice, or if she were truly as insensitive and self-centred as she appeared. ‘Do you foster hero worship, or discourage it?’

  ‘Neither. It’s an inevitability, which will run its course, as you must have found in your own profession.’

  ‘Indeed. It’s a way of conforming, isn’t it? The rookies copy the old hands who know better than to rock the boat, while anyone who doesn’t subscribe religiously to the prevailing philosophy gets pushed on to a very lonely limb.’

  ‘I’ll disregard your unfortunate mix of metaphor,’ she said wryly. ‘I’ll also try to disregard the implied antagonism.’

  ‘Call it a healthy scepticism.’ When he began walking away from the lobby she was forced to follow. ‘For all its trappings of money and privilege, the Hermitage is just another school; therefore the girls’ behaviour will cover the spectrum from complete compliance, through defiance, to serious delinquency. Your job is to design coping strategies and I’m sure you do it with the utmost grace, but,’ he added, turning to face her, ‘don’t try to faze me with the tactics you use on the parents, the girls and your staff. In other words for the present you defer to me, Dr Scott.’ He smiled fleetingly. ‘Imagine I’m your colonel.’

  ‘That could be rather difficult. My last colonel was a silly old duffer.’ Her own smile held more than a hint of seductiveness and he was suddenly both conscious of her sexuality, and intensely and disturbingly curious about the life it led. She touched his arm. ‘Come to my study and I’ll buy you a quick drink, as they say, before I do the rounds with Matron.’

  She strode down the corridor, then stopped. The door to Matron’s room stood open and she was fussing over an ashen-faced Alice.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Freya asked.

  ‘Alice needed her inhaler,’ Matron reported anxiously. ‘She’s very wheezy. It must be the dust off the horses.’

  ‘It isn’t!’ Alice said sharply. ‘It’s shock and you’re not to tell Mummy horses give me asthma. She won’t let me have one if you do.’

  ‘Have you got another headache?’

  ‘No, Dr Scott.’

  ‘When’s your appointment at the optician’s?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ Alice panted. With one hand on her breastbone, she took a deep breath and McKenna heard the air struggling into her lungs. ‘Can I keep my inhaler in the dorm for tonight?’

  Matron frowned. ‘Well—’ she began.

  Freya cut her short. ‘Of course you can, as long as you hand it back to Matron first thing in the morning.’ Inclining her head rather imperiously, she moved on to her study, where the lights already glowed and the windows were open to the balmy night.

  Draping her jacket over a coat-hanger behind the door, she asked, ‘What can I offer you, Superintendent?’ The question was riddled with ambiguity.

  ‘Nothing, thank you.’

  ‘No?’ Her eyebrows arched attractively. ‘Well, then smoke, if you wish. It’s not one of my own vices, but I don’t object.’ As she pushed an ashtray within his reach, the moist red lips parted in another provocative smile.

  Matron had condemned Torrance for so rapidly recovering her composure, he reflected, yet here was the school’s role model displaying not only a remarkable self-control, but exhibiting behaviour that was, in the current context, bordering on the bizarre. But it was all very simple, he told himself: authority compromised, she was resorting to the most primitive and compelling power of all.

  ‘I noticed the sixth formers have a smokers’ den,’ he said.

  She put her elbows on the desk and folded her arms. ‘They do, despite enormous criticism from those staff with a fashionably hostile stance towards smoking.’ The bright-red nails splayed against her pale sleeves looked lethal. ‘As you so correctly discerned, I have to manage a broad spectrum of behaviour and, as some of the girls are nicotine addicts, a total ban would only force them underground and create a serious fire hazard.’

  Yielding to one temptation, McKenna lit a cigarette and waited for her to make the next move.

  Freya watched him, her face expressionless. ‘Matron,’ she began, ‘tells me Sukie did drown.’

  He nodded. ‘As to whether she drowned herself,’ he told her, ‘we can’t yet say.’

  ‘But I’m sure y
ou have an opinion.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Please, Superintendent, don’t play cat and mouse with me. I need to know.’

  ‘You know as much as we do,’ he said. ‘The available evidence is very sparse and still open to several interpretations. However, as in all such cases, we proceed on the assumption of possible homicide.’

  ‘That,’ she commented irritably, ‘has already been made abundantly clear.’

  ‘Therefore,’ he went on, ignoring her remark, ‘identifying the possible killer takes priority.’ Shifting in his seat, he put the cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Most homicides are committed by someone close to the victim, often a member of the family. While Sukie had blood relatives, we would regard that “family” as being here.’ He paused. ‘An act of homicide is always preceded by detectable antecedents. There would be warning signals, in her relationship with the killer but, more pertinently, in the killer’s own conduct. That’s something we shall begin to investigate tomorrow.’

  With a small frown she stopped him. ‘Have you abandoned the idea that the killer, if such exists, could be a total stranger? An intruder, perhaps? Even a kidnapper?’

  ‘Indeed not.’ He retrieved the cigarette, watching her. ‘All the signs indicate that she left the building voluntarily, so there might also be a boyfriend in the picture. On the other hand she could have been deliberately lured out to her death.’

  Freya clenched her hands. When she spoke, her voice was tremulous. ‘I cannot believe one of my girls could be a murderess.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Nor one of my staff.’ She stared at him. ‘But I’ll have to put aside my own feelings, won’t I?’

  ‘It would be wiser, and certainly safer, to keep an open mind for the time being,’ he agreed. Stubbing out another half-smoked cigarette, he added, ‘And to accept that the present disruption is unavoidable. What you described to Constable Evans as our “unseemly occupation” is necessary to protect the school.’

  She had the grace to blush. ‘I wasn’t quite in command of myself,’ she admitted. ‘I owe her an apology.’

  ‘Have you spoken to the chairman of governors yet?’

  She shook her head. ‘He telephoned earlier, while I was still at the police station, and spoke to Miss Knight, my deputy. She tells me your deputy chief constable is keeping him informed of developments.’

  ‘The deputy chief is also handling the media, so please tell your staff not to make any comment.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Before I leave tonight I’d like a brief meeting with the sixth formers.’

  ‘Could we do that now?’ she asked. ‘I know the girls are still being interviewed, but I want to do the rounds with Matron before too long.’ She picked up the telephone, told the person who answered to assemble the sixth form in their common room, then rose, making a point of smoothing her well-tailored skirt over hips and thighs as she crossed the room to take her jacket from its hanger. At the door she turned to face him. ‘What’s happening with Sukie’s parents?’

  ‘They’ve been told to report to the police station.’ One hand on the door knob she asked, ‘And then?’

  ‘We’ll escort them to the mortuary.’

  *

  When Freya entered the sixth-form common room the girls rose as one. Once they had seated themselves she began to speak, talking of the tragedy of Sukie’s death, stressing the necessity of the police investigation and pleading with them to assist in any way they could. They hung on to every word she uttered and many gazed at her with undisguised admiration, if not blatant adoration. Watching her bestow a lingering glance here, a special smile there, McKenna was forced to wonder if this power she wielded had driven someone to kill, perhaps for love of her, perhaps out of loathing. Her voice carried well, her words seemed unambiguous and sincere, and he knew she would rarely be misunderstood unless it was intentional, but he was dogged by the feeling that it was all an act, and as calculated and transitory as any performance.

  ‘It would help Superintendent McKenna if you introduced yourselves,’ she was saying. Nodding to the girl at the end of the first row of seats, she took a step back.

  One by one, they bobbed up and down, and he was struck by the number of foreigners among them: Francoise Dizi, a chic, intense-looking French girl; Justine Salomon, a tall, pretty girl with a faint, attractive accent; Giulia Giucciardi, a fluffy, fair-haired Italian; two of Torrance Fuseli’s compatriots, so alike he imagined they had chosen the same face from a cosmetic surgeon’s catalogue; the perfectly Aryan Elisabeth von Carolsfeld, with eyes the colour of bluebells, and Therese Obermeyer, also Teutonic, but mousy-haired and as solid as a well-fed carthorse. Before she resumed her seat Therese added, without a flicker of humour, ‘And also, I am known as “Lump”!’ There was an outbreak of laughter and a few cat-calls, then Ainsley Chapman rose like a new spear of grass shooting from the earth.

  Torrance, he thought, watching her closely, had an elusive quality that set her apart from her peers and, despite Matron’s doubts, she seemed moved by events, for although her lips curved into a sociable smile when she gave her name, her eyes remained sombre. The girl beside her, Vivienne Wade, carried her own distinction, and her emaciated body inclined towards Torrance’s in a way that put a telling distance between herself and the carrot-haired girl to her left, who languidly identified herself as ‘Nancy Holmes’. Three black-haired, round-faced, almond-eyed Oriental girls, sitting together, rose together to announce themselves in sing-song voices and, despite their perfect diction, he had to ask them to repeat their names, for a refrain from The Mikado was running round and round in his head. Ainsley and Nancy found his confusion immensely amusing.

  Ignoring them, he let his gaze return to Vivienne. She was, he thought, exceptional: hair as dark as a raven’s wing fell below her shoulders, her skin was semi-transparent, her bone structure exquisite, her eyes the colour of black pearls and she looked like a corpse. The way her eyes slid away from his own was the only sign of life about her.

  At first sight these gilded young women had appeared to be different and special, but acquaintance was tarnishing their lustre, and he was beginning to discern in their faces the same meanness, stupidity, humourlessness, weakness and cupidity that plagued the rest of the world. Reminding himself that faults are necessary for the spirit of the individual, he turned his attention to the last row of girls, but was again distracted. He tried to read the looks passing to and fro, the unguarded expressions and unconscious body language, wondering who were the powerful and who the hangers-on, while sensing alliances, hostilities, indifferences. When the last few girls came to identify themselves, he had long lost the ability to match name to face but still smiled broadly at Yelena and Daria because their sculpted cheekbones, pointed chins and wide eyes reminded him of the Madonna in a Russian icon. Charlotte Swann, until then elegantly disporting herself on the window ledge, reminded him of the late Princess of Wales, and he was not the only one so impressed, for at least ten girls turned to look as if she had tweaked their strings. Apparently unmoved by her own effect, she subsided back on to the ledge, and the girl at her side informed him in a toneless voice that she was ‘Imogen Oliver, Lower Sixth’. She remained half seated and he could barely see her face above the rows of heads.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you long this evening. When Sukie’s parents arrive, I have to escort them to the mortuary for formal identification of her body, which was washed up in Caernarfon early this afternoon. She was last seen at about eleven o’clock on Tuesday night, coming from the showers, and we know she died within the next few hours. However, we don’t know how or why she died. Did some secret fear or unhappiness drive her to suicide? Or did someone kill her? If she was murdered, everyone in this school is at risk until we find her killer. Most at risk,’ he went on, ‘is anyone who might be able to point us towards that person. Tomorrow morning we shall begin questioning all of you in depth and I urge you to be as frank as possible. Whatever you tell us will be treated in the strictest confide
nce and you may have a solicitor present if you wish.’ He glanced at the headmistress. ‘Dr Scott has promised the full co-operation of herself and her staff, and there will be police officers in the building throughout the night. They’ll be happy to see you at any time, no matter how late.’

  As soon as he closed his mouth the exodus began and, without once reminding them of their manners, Freya calmly watched her elite sixth formers push and shove their way out. Nancy passed by in a cloud of expensive perfume, face quite contemptuous, eyes spiteful. Reaching the door, she made a disparaging comment, glancing round to make sure he had heard. Charlotte, making her exit by degrees, undulated rather than walked, her yellow hair glittering when it caught the light, her presence so dazzling she all but obscured the smaller figure limping in her wake. Pale, small-boned Imogen, now in full view, walked with a stick, each step laboured, her left leg dragging heavily.

  On the way upstairs Freya had briefly shown him the dormitories, allowing a glimpse of meagre furnishings, ancient linoleum floor coverings and ranks of uncurtained windows, and as this room emptied, he saw more evidence of parsimony. The windows were covered, albeit with cheap cane roller blinds and the floor carpeted in thin hair cord, but the untidy basket chairs looked almost derelict. A television and video recorder stood beneath one window, and on a glass-topped wicker table in need of a thorough scrub were an electric kettle, jars of coffee and powdered milk, an opened bag of sugar and a tray of dirty mugs and spoons.

  ‘In reality,’ Freya commented, following his gaze, ‘women are no more natural housekeepers than men.’