The Teacher: A shocking and compelling new crime thriller – NOT for the faint-hearted! (23 page)

The Daughter

Laughter. She could ‘cope’ with laughter. Imogen slipped the key into the lock and pushed the door open. She stepped over the bundles of old newspapers and wine bottles, making sure she didn’t accidentally step on one of her mother’s many cats. The laughter seemed to be coming from the living room. Part of her wanted to walk out and leave, like she did every time she visited her mother, which was most days.

‘Immie! Immie, is that you?’ an excited voice came from inside. Imogen’s palm rested on the door for a moment while she composed herself, she put on her best carefree smile and pushed the door.

Imogen’s mother, Irene, was sitting on the sofa next to another lady around the same age as her. The lady had her arms full of Irene’s belongings, the good stuff, what little was left of it anyway.

‘Hi, Mum, who is your friend here?’ Imogen looked straight at the lady who was desperately trying to avoid eye contact.

‘This is Wendy-Julia, we met in the library.’

‘Let me show you out, Wendy-Julia.’ Imogen held the door open and Wendy-Julia walked out carrying her plunder. At the front door Imogen stood in her way. ‘You can leave the stuff on the sideboard there.’

‘She offered, said I would be helping her out.’

‘Well, you will be helping me out if you leave it behind.’ Imogen pulled her badge out and showed it to the lady who huffed and put the stuff down. Same old story, Imogen thought as she shut the door behind the woman. Her mother would pick up waifs and strays and give them all of her things. One day Imogen came home from school to find her mother had allowed a homeless man to move into her bedroom. Imogen often saw women in the neighbourhood wearing scarves or jewellery that she had bought her mother for Christmas. This was the reason why she stopped buying her anything worth anything. Her mother was ill, but not the kind of ill you can see, not the kind of ill you can put a plaster on or diagnose definitively. Every few years the diagnosis would change. This was also the reason why Imogen hated labels, she knew they only meant something until the terms of your illness were redefined and then you got a whole new crazy badge altogether.

‘You staying for dinner, Immie?’ Her mother’s face was alight with fondness as she walked back into the room. It was nice to see her smile, in the brief moments when it occurred Imogen treasured it, never knowing what the next moment would bring.

‘No, I can’t tonight, Mum, I have to work.’

‘Well, that’s just fucking typical, isn’t it? You don’t give a shit about me! I know you wish I was dead.’

‘Why would I want that, Mum?’

‘Because I’m a fucking boulder round your neck, you don’t even want to spend time with me.’ She began to sob.

‘Of course I do, Mum,’ she half lied, sitting next to her and smoothing her hair. Irene blinked a few times, obviously trying her hardest to be normal. ‘How long have you known Wendy-Julia?’

‘We just met today. She’s such a sweetie, offered to come round and clean for me once a week. Apparently when she was in the womb she ate her twin, can you believe that? That’s why she’s got that funny name. Her mum gave her both names!’ Irene said excitedly, forgetting about her recent outburst.

‘Sorry to do this, Mum, but I really have to get back to work after lunch.’

‘I wish you’d get married and give up that silly job.’

‘Even if I did get married, I wouldn’t give up my job.’

‘It’s not decent, a woman in that profession.’

‘I’m not a prostitute, Mum, I’m a police officer.’

‘Same difference,’ she huffed.

‘Come on, I’ll make you some dinner before I go.’

Two hours later, Imogen followed Denise into her flat. She was struck by the whiteness of everything. It was so clean and uncluttered. A stark contrast to her mother’s place. She couldn’t imagine living like this.

‘Do you want short or long?’ Denise called from the bedroom as Imogen loitered in the hall, unsure what to do with herself. ‘Come in here, Grey.’

‘You can call me Imogen, if you want.’ Imogen walked into the bedroom and saw Denise scooping handfuls of dresses off the rack in her wardrobe and throwing them on the bed. The room was lined from wall to wall with a built-in set-up. Imogen felt a little sad for her modest chest of drawers at home.

‘What size shoes do you wear?’

‘I’m a six.’

‘Perfect!’ Denise slung open a door to reveal an obscene amount of shoes. ‘Who knew we had so much in common.’

‘Not me, that’s for sure.’ Imogen concentrated really hard on not rolling her eyes. This was very sweet of Denise, even if Imogen didn’t ‘get it’.

‘Well, if it’s black tie you should probably go with a long dress. Who are you going with?’ she asked. Imogen noticed a slight inflection in her voice, as though she were trying not to sound interested.

‘Detective Miles.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s a work thing, there’s nothing going on between us.’

‘I’ve heard that one before, that’s like … his shtick, isn’t it?’

‘Is it? I mean seriously nothing. I’m totally not his type. Why? Have you got a thing with him?’ Imogen wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer to the question, it felt like a betrayal of Miles’ trust to ask any questions about him when he wasn’t present.

‘It’s funny that you think he has a type. And anyway “thing” is a strong word for what we have.’ Denise picked up a navy blue satin dress and held it up against Imogen before screwing her face up in disapproval. It obviously wasn’t right. She looked up at Imogen. ‘We fuck five times a year.’

Next she held up a white evening gown and smiled excitedly.

‘I’m not wearing a white dress, a little too bridal for my taste. Besides, Miley might freak out.’

‘Oh, I have the perfect dress, here.’ She pulled out a deep emerald-green corseted mermaid dress. ‘Trust me, it will look amazing. Take your stuff off and I’ll help you get into it.’

What the hell, Imogen thought as she pulled her sweatshirt over her head and stepped out of her jeans, glad that she had shaved her armpits and worn a vaguely matching under set for a change. She knew that Denise’s underwear would match. Why was she even worried about this? She could see Denise’s fleeting look of curiosity at her scar, but she ignored it as she stepped into the gown. Denise laced her up and spun her around.

‘Oh, you’re his type, honey, underneath those big ugly clothes of yours.’ Denise beamed and thrust Imogen in the direction of the mirror.

‘Wow, thank you,’ she managed to say after realising it was her own reflection in the mirror. Imogen looked good, she had to admit it.

‘Now for the hair, sit on the bed.’

‘I’m not sure if I can sit, it’s pretty tight.’ She waddled to the bed and perched on the edge. Denise rifled through one of the drawers and pulled out a strange hair contraption. In one scoop, twist and click Imogen’s hair was in a French roll, wispy tendrils hanging down at the front.

‘To be honest, Grey, I think you will get away with just a little lipstick, you look so lovely.’

Imogen didn’t have female friends; she had been friends with her male colleagues at her old precinct and they had all shown her exactly how much she meant to them when the shit came down. So there it was, she didn’t really have any friends, so this was weird. She felt the urge to hug Denise, which was out of character for her, but she stood up and did it anyway.

‘Thanks, Denise, I really appreciate this. I mean that.’

‘Here try these on.’ Denise handed her a pair of six-inch black suede heels.

Imogen parked her car round the back of the museum, it was still light out and she didn’t like the idea of walking through the city centre in this dress, she didn’t like people looking at her at the best of times. But here, in this dress, she felt like even more of a spectacle. She took a deep breath and held the sides of the car door frame, hoisting herself forward with momentum. This dress was not built for comfort. She left the black suede shoes on the passenger seat; no one would be able to see her black leather boots under the dress. She told herself that she needed to be able to run if the situation called for it, she was on the job after all. Of course, that was a lie. She had been a nervous wreck since she left Plymouth and even this, dressing like this, made her feel vulnerable, exposed. They had no idea what they were walking in to, she needed to know she could escape without getting a stiletto stuck in one of the fancy iron grates in the museum floor. She needed to know she could get away.

The Warrior

Then

Abbey lay on the floor looking up at Christian. His face was white with fury, or maybe it was fear. Whatever it was it made a change to see some emotion in him, part of her wondered if he was faking it to get her to react. There was no one else in the museum. It had been stupid of her to think that she would be safe here. The security cameras were just for show, Mr Lowestoft had told her that it was enough of a deterrent them just being there. She had convinced herself the past was behind her but now here it was, literally staring her in the face.

‘I saw him … I saw your dad that day. I saw him a couple of other times, too. I figured he was going to make a scene or something, embarrass himself. I didn’t think he would do something like that!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She crawled backwards on her hands, eyes fixed on him.

‘I’m not here to hurt you, Abbey.’ He held his hand out to help her up. ‘I just want you to talk to your dad, get him to admit what he did.’

She ignored his hand and stood up of her own volition, still backing away from him. He kept moving forwards, slowly, hands outstretched with a beseeching look on his face. If she hadn’t known him the way she had, she might even think he was sincere. For a moment she wished her father had succeeded in his plan to get rid of Christian, he wouldn’t be standing here now; she would be walking home for the first time in months without looking over her shoulder. She wouldn’t search the faces of every person on the street in case he was approaching her, or standing somewhere in among the crowds. But he had failed and now she had to deal with him. Again she found herself frozen in fear, unsure of what to do next.

‘They arrested me, questioned me like a criminal … They think I killed Jamie … they think I killed Dani …’

‘You are a criminal.’

‘Oh come on, that was just a misunderstanding.’

‘Misunderstanding, that’s one way of putting it.’ She looked either side and behind her, frantic, searching for something she could use as a weapon. ‘I can think of another way to put it too.’

‘We didn’t hurt you though, did we? You were up for it, Abbey, you were so wasted and you were all over me. I don’t want to hurt you now either, I want you to talk to your dad for me.’ Christian kept walking forwards, she knew she couldn’t outrun him, but she had an advantage, she knew the museum. She made a break for it, bolted, running up the mahogany staircase towards her little makeshift workshop, there was a lock on the door, and she could keep him out of there.

She got halfway up the stairs and looked behind her to see he was gaining ground, if she even slowed a little he would be able to grab her. She wasn’t built for this. She ran to the far corridor, his smell was getting stronger but she didn’t want to check how close he was this time, she felt a tug on her cardigan and she shook it from her, he could have it.

‘Abbey just wait, I don’t want to hurt you!’

She made it past the threshold of her work room, she grabbed the door to push it shut but he was already there. He grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the wall.

‘Let go of me! Let go of me!’ she shrieked and thrashed. He looked genuinely upset that she would not indulge him; as though it never occurred to him before that anyone might refuse him anything, that anyone might dislike him.

‘Please, I can’t go to prison for this! You know it’s wrong!’

‘I don’t know what you want from me! Even if what you were saying was true, why the hell would I help you?’ She felt his grip loosening, he moved his hands away and rubbed them through his hair in frustration.

‘You’re a good person, you know it’s not right!’

‘I’m not putting my dad in prison for you, Christian. You took everything from us! My dad’s been going crazy because of what you did, he lost his job!’

‘You’re the one who told him!’ He pulled at his hair some more.

She sidestepped across the room. He was too preoccupied to see what she was doing. She reached her fingers across to the desk, making sure not to make any sudden movements. She could see he was on the edge and she already knew what he was capable of. She managed to get her fingers on the handle of her scalpel. She pulled it gently towards her and slipped it off the table and behind her back. She was still finding it hard to breathe around him. Why didn’t she go for her phone instead? She knew the answer of course, she couldn’t call the police, he would tell on her father, something he hadn’t done until now. Why hadn’t he?

‘Why haven’t you told the police about my dad?’

‘The lawyer told me not to say anything about any of it. I don’t want to come off as crazy or desperate, apparently. I wouldn’t have made bail if I was considered a flight risk.’

‘Are you a flight risk?’

‘My dad wants me to leave the country, said he doesn’t care about bail money as long as I am safe. He’s made arrangements with a private company to smuggle me out.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I think he thinks I did it!’

‘So you get to be all squeaky clean someplace else?’

‘You don’t know the kind of pressure my dad puts me under, he has all these expectations and sometimes I just need to blow off a little steam.’

‘By assaulting people?’ She gulped as she said the words, unable to be any more specific about what exactly he had done.

‘That’s not what happened and you know it. You wanted it, Abbey! You wanted me!’ he shouted, he was so loud, the words echoed and rattled around inside her skull. He was right, she had wanted him. She almost found herself seeing the reason in his argument but then she remembered Jamie. She remembered the hands over her mouth, she remembered the smell of their alcohol-ridden breath as they took it in turns to violate her. She remembered the sound of their laughter and she remembered the photos she had seen posted on social media, the things people had called her. No, she hadn’t wanted any of that.

Before she even had time to think she saw the blood, pumping rhythmically from Christian’s neck. She wasn’t even sure if he had noticed yet, he looked confused and pale, so pale. She looked down at the bloody blade in her hand, she dropped it instantly. She could see his eyes losing focus, his pupils getting bigger and smaller, even his body was confused. He swayed a little and looked down, his hands were red, his shirt was red, so bright, so utterly single minded in its redness. One hand reached for his neck, he had finally realised what had happened. His other hand reached for her, she couldn’t move back, there was nowhere to go, but he wasn’t moving forwards, he was gradually falling away from her, an incredulous look on his face. He fell on to his back and she stepped forwards, standing over him, still staring at his eyes. Blood was seeping from the corner of his mouth, he was still looking at her but the brightness of his eyes was fading, his hand fell away from his neck and for a fraction of a second she saw him pleading with her, but then there was nothing. He was gone.

There was no panic, no crying, and no thought to calling her father or the police. The system wasn’t fair; she knew his father would go after her. There would be no calling it self-defence. The law had proved already that regardless of the truth it was not always on the side of justice. The pumping had stopped and now just a steady stream of blood oozed from his neck. His skin was already beginning to lose its human appearance, becoming translucent. The blackened red circle beneath him grew steadily, she had to do something.

She grabbed some dust sheets and placed them around him, hopeful that they would absorb the majority of the blood, she knew she needed to let him bleed out. She grabbed the scalpel and made nicks in his wrists and ankles, so he could bleed more. The blood was slowing, the heart had stopped so there was nothing to force it out of his body.

She was going to embalm him and then she was going to hide him; she had known it from the second she had stuck the blade into his neck. It was instinct. He could never be found. She looked across her modest work space and saw the samurai warrior’s armour lying polished and ready, as though the universe was giving her an out, reimbursing her for all it had taken; restoring the balance. She began the process by gathering as much formaldehyde as she could, there were large plastic bottles of it in her store cupboard, she didn’t have enough and so she looked for something to mix it with. She saw the large sacks of plaster sitting in the corner, she used them to make casts of the animals where the carcass needed to be replaced and re-skinned. She mixed the plaster and the formaldehyde in a bucket and then attached the pumping mechanism that the museum kept in case of flooding. She grabbed the rubber tubes and connected them to the body, putting them in the major veins for the noxious liquid to be pushed around the body, replacing whatever blood was left and pushing it out of the arteries. The smell of the formaldehyde was making her giddy, she had to go and find more dust sheets. The ones she had laid down already were saturated.

When the liquid coming out of Christian’s corpse finally ran pale pink she turned off the pump. It was approaching ten o’clock at night; she would have to phone home and lie to her father. She had learned the importance of lying since the attack, she knew the truth was not always what people wanted to hear; sometimes it was better to keep the burden of truth to yourself.

She worked determinedly. She had put the large sodden red canvas sheets into bags, the smell of them was sweet and sticky, the unmistakable stench of death. She wrapped the body in wire to help her pose him and then tied ropes around his wrists, placing him on a clean sheet. It had been three hours since he had died, and she knew that rigor mortis would start to be an issue soon, between two and six hours. She hoped the embalming process would interfere with it long enough for her to finish. She dragged him across the hall and into the Asia Room as though she were a horse and he were the carriage, the rope cutting across her stomach. The glass cabinet was ready for the samurai warrior. She could do this. She ignored the aching in her bones as she tried to lift Christian. With the plaster and formaldehyde running through his body he was even heavier than before, he must have weighed more than twice what she did. But she persisted, there was a way, there had to be. She threw the rope over the beam and pulled it so that Christian was upright. His eyes were still open, part of her wanted him to see everything that was happening, just like they had made her watch. She had to work fast to pose him before the glutinous concoction set inside him. With the help of some props she managed to get him to stay in place, she had used a nail gun to secure him to the large wooden brace inside the space that would now be his resting place. She used bandages soaked in plaster to encase his skin so he would just look like a plaster cast of a man under the armour, not that this box would be opened again for a long time. She started to dress him, she had her needle and thread and sewed him into the position she wanted. She sewed his eyelids shut and wrapped a black gauze blindfold over them, so there was no chance of him being seen through the bronze mask that would eventually cover his face. Finally the leather plates were positioned correctly and laced together. The sun was fully up. It was only a matter of a few hours before the museum staff would show up.

She was exhausted but there was no evidence that the samurai was not just her finest piece of work to date, there was also no evidence that he was real. She dragged the bags full of stiff and bloodied sheets down into the basement where the furnace that heated the museum was kept. She turned the heat up and started to throw in anything that could connect Christian to the museum. She found a day-rider bus ticket in his pocket and was relieved that she didn’t have to move his car. She scrubbed the floors and locked the office when she was done, she didn’t want to look at it again for a while. She would call in sick today. She could barely move her arms or legs through fatigue. She could not wait to get home, to lie in her bed, to sleep, to dream. She closed the door to the museum and locked it, sneaking away before any of the other staff arrived.

She slept like she had been awake for a thousand years, a sweet blissful sleep. Her father was right, the world was a better place now that Christian and Jamie were no longer in it. This was her chance, she had a place in the world and this time no one was going to take it from her.