Fatlands (10 page)

The head had the best room in the house, dappled with light and full of wood and history, an obvious exhortation to students to go forward into successful adulthood. She was younger than I expected. She was also tougher.

‘I'm sorry. It's out of the question. She's very upset.

They all are. I don't think it would help her at all to meet you.'

'It's only for a few minutes. Mattie bought her something. I'd like to give it to her.

‘You can give it to me. I'll see she gets it.'

It would have been almost worth it just to see her face. ‘No,' I said. ‘That's not possible.'

She paused for a second. Then stood up. ‘I'm very sorry, but that's all I can offer. I know how far you've come, and I can understand your concern, but, well, I
have to think of their well-being.' And how much their parents are paying not to have them disturbed, I thought uncharitably, but it helped.

We shook hands and she showed me to the front door. She stood at the steps to see me off. Just like the time before.

I got into my car and turned to Mattie, to make sure she had put on her seatbelt. The empty air grinned back at me. Once again it seemed intolerable that she wasn't there. When no one close to you has ever died it takes a while to penetrate the layers and meanings of loss. Maybe I should ring my parents, I thought, and tell them how much I loved them. Just in case.

I drove out and parked in the high street. Then walked the half-mile back into the school grounds. I stationed myself round the side, between the main house and one of the dormitories. There was, of course, more than one way to skin a cat. I saw Ben Maringo's face crease up in distaste. Sorry, Ben.

I waited till I saw a girl that looked around the same age as Mattie, then approached her and told her I was looking for Helen. She told me she was in Recreation and if I wanted she'd go and get her. All in all it didn't seem a big deal. I stood waiting, and I could feel my heartbeat getting louder.

When she came, she wasn't at all what I had expected. She was mousy, covered in freckles and bigger than Mattie, considerably bigger. It struck me she might have trouble squeezing into the cute little garments sitting at the bottom of my bag.

I told her who I was, and that I was here unofficially. Her face clouded over as I talked and she kept looking down at her feet. I began to see things from the headmistress's point of view. But it was too late to stop now.

‘I could have sent it, but I think she'd have preferred it this way.'

I handed her the Harrods bag. She took it gingerly.

‘You don't have to open it now,' I said. And as I did so, suddenly, wham, it hit me like a freight train. The whole damn thing. God, sometimes I wonder why Frank bothers with me. Good old Mattie Shepherd. She had style right up until the end.

The girl had opened the bag and was staring down at the contents.

‘It's all right,' I said. ‘You see, she told me you were having an affair with the school gardener. But you're not, are you?'She shook her head, and her cheeks were pink under the freckles. I nodded. ‘How long had she been seeing him, Helen?'

At first she wasn't going to say. But I'm afraid I pushed her a bit. After all, that was her role in life, or obviously had been with Mattie. It came out in a great whoosh. But then some secrets are better in the open.

'They'd all been after him, the older girls especially. Well, he was really good-looking. But as soon as he saw Mattie that was it. I told her she'd better be careful. But she didn't care. She used to go out at night and meet him in the grounds. She said they were really in love and that as soon as she could leave school they were going to start living together.

‘And what did he say?'

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Tony? He kept himself to himself. Apart from Mattie. I suppose he wanted to keep it as secret as she did. I didn't really like him that much, actually. I thought he was …'

‘Yes?'

‘I don't know. Weird. A bit snooty.'

‘And you say it had been going on for four months?'

‘Since November. She made me take her place at carol rehearsals so she could meet him.' Poor Helen. I only hope it had given her a little vicarious pleasure.

‘So where is he now?'

She went into communion with her feet again. ‘I haven't seen him. Not since—'

‘OK. Listen, thanks for your help. You were a good friend. She talked about you a lot.'

And her face lit up. ‘Did she?'

‘Yes. In fact I think maybe you should keep them after all. I'm sure that's what she would have wanted and, well, you never know when they might come in handy.'

And she went even pinker as her hand clasped the bag. In the background someone was calling her name. ‘You'd better go,' I said.

She nodded and left without looking at me again. I turned my attention to the ground. Of course after what I'd heard I didn't really expect to find him. But I had to try.

Behind the tennis courts and the hockey field the garden became quite dense: an overhang of big trees with shrubbery that had been allowed to go to seed. Creative gardening, maybe. To be honest I didn't feel good about being there. Nothing specific, just a touch of the ‘city girl in the country' blues. So when he came up behind me I experienced what I think was a mild version of a cardiac arrest.

He wasn't the one I was looking for. That was plain immediately. On the other hand the man in front of me certainly resembled a gardener. He had a head of hair that looked like bees had made honey in it, and a face worn away by wind and sunshine. Not a trace of the Jason Donovans about him.

I told him I was looking for Tony. He told me so was he. I also got the impression he wasn't surprised it was a
woman doing the looking. In fact when I pursued it, grizzle-head admitted that employing Tony had been something of a mistake; that despite impeccable references and a nice line in rose pruning he just hadn't shown the right kind of commitment to the job. In fact, when—or rather, if—he turned up again, it would be to find he didn't have a job any more.

When I asked if he had an address, he told me the boy had been staying in digs in town, but that according to the landlady he hadn't been around since Friday night, and his room looked like he'd left for longer than the weekend. Well, what a surprise. I thanked him for his trouble and left him to his hedge clippers.

As I slipped out of the main gates Helen was waiting for me. She was dawdling by the trees, trying to look as if she wasn't there, which in her case wasn't that easy. I thought of all those photos of myself at fourteen, crammed into little shift dresses for all the world like an overstuffed saveloy, and I wondered if I shouldn't offer her some hope for the future. But if someone had brought it to my attention then, I probably would have died of shame. She didn't say much, just handed me a large brown envelope. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach from the moment I saw it in her hand.

‘What is it?'

‘Something Mattie kept in my locker. We always swapped private things. Sometimes other girls do raids …'

Ah yes, I had forgotten just how nasty young girls could be to one another. I wondered what Helen had swapped. Not a lot, I suspect. As it was, you could see she wasn't at all sure she was doing the right thing by keeping it, let alone by giving it to me.

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘What would you like me to do with it?'

She frowned. ‘I don't know …'

Too much responsibility, that was her trouble. To the living and the dead. ‘I tell you what. If I think it's important, I'll make sure the right people see it. And I won't involve you. OK?'

‘Yes. Thanks.'

She turned. But there was one more question. A case of mopping up, really. ‘Oh, Helen, one thing. That night … the night she died. Did you by any chance call Mattie at her father's house? It would have been about 6.30.'

She frowned, then shook her head. ‘No.'

Girls'secrets? We all have them. Worth checking. ‘You're sure about that?'

‘Yes … I mean, how could I? We're not allowed to use the phone until after seven.'

‘Fine. Thanks a lot.'

And she disappeared. I walked back to the car, the envelope stuck to my hand. But I had decided to wait. To open it somewhere where she had been with me, so if necessary she could look over my shoulder. Once back in the driving seat I carefully slit the top and shook out the contents. A set of roughly printed leafl ets fell into my lap. I recognized the picture on the front of one: a rabbit with half its fur ripped away and a mark like an acid burn covering the exposed flesh. I didn't need to read the copy to find out how my last suntan had helped to incinerate a thousand animals. The other leafl ets told more horror stories, the kind of thing to revolt a young girl's sensibilities and make her think badly of her father. I was looking so hard at them I almost missed the last billet-doux. It was stuck at the bottom of the envelope and I had to tease it out with my fingers. It was worth the work.

I was staring at a blurred black-and-white photograph of a young man in half-profile, hair quiffed back, cigarette in his mouth, a moody look in his eyes. Behind him were
what looked like the gardens of Debringham College. It had the feel of a photo taken without his knowing, either that or a fashion editor had spent a number of hours making it seem like that. I looked at the curl of the cigarette smoke and thought briefl y of the irony of lung cancer, Tom Shepherd's research and cruelty to animals. But mostly I thought of the boy himself. Twenty? twenty five? Maybe older, it was hard to tell. But one thing was easy. Even from the semi-profile you could see what all the fuss was about. Yes, indeed. Mattie had got herself quite a catch. Shame about his politics.

‘
H
e's trying to look like James Dean.'

‘Matt Dillon, more like.'

‘Who's Matt Dillon?'

‘James Dean forty years on. God, Frank, this is youth culture. You've got to make an effort.'

‘I don't see why. My parents never did.' He threw the photo back down on the desk and took a swig of tea. ‘Still, whoever he looks like, he's not a man eager to have his picture taken.'

‘Well, it is a little incriminating, isn't it?'

‘Maybe.' He picked up the leafl ets and flicked through them, making faces. Then he looked at me. ‘So, what do you think you've got?'

I took a breath. ‘I think Mattie Shepherd was having an affair with an animal rights activist, posing as the assistant school gardener. And I think it was through her that the ALF got whatever stuff they had on her father.'

‘Woooh! And I think you've got an overactive imagination.'

‘Oh, come on, Frank. I know you don't approve of me doing this, but don't treat me like a moron.'

‘Hannah, if I thought you were a moron, I would have given you your own personal copy of the telephone answering-machine messages from Sunday night. Ben
Maringo, remember? Yes, thank you. I like a girl who has the decency to look embarrassed. Was he a help?'

‘He was. Thanks,' I said somewhat belligerently, and repeated what Maringo had told me about the ALF cells, their level of autonomy and secrecy. And their possible extremism.

‘And you think this guy's one of them?'

‘The timing fits. Shepherd first received threats in early December, a month after Mattie started visiting the potting shed. And if the gardener really had nothing to do with it, then he'd still be at work. Anyway, who else would have given her the leaflets?'

‘It could have been a school project.'

‘Frank, have you looked at this stuff?'

He humphed in a Frank kind of way. ‘You really think she would have shopped her father?'

‘Well, she was pretty mad at him. The whole point was his work had become more important than his family. I think she might have wanted to get even with him somehow. Yes?'

‘But not to have him killed.'

‘Of course not.'

‘And that's what you think she was doing that night in his study. Going through his papers looking for stuff.'

‘Well, she certainly wasn't looking for theatre tickets.'

‘Except if her boyfriend was animal rights then he would have known about the bomb. Which made it a bit late for her to be looking for more evidence.'

‘Maybe they didn't tell him.'

‘Come on, Hannah, no one plays it that close to their chest.'

I thought again. ‘OK. Maybe she wasn't meant to be there in the first place.'Step by step. Like learning to walk: first the basics, then the fancy work. ‘I mean the
police have no way of knowing when the bomb was put there, right?'

‘Right.'

‘But since it's not something you'd do in broad daylight, it must have been done the night before. And what was Shepherd meant to be doing next morning? Getting up at the crack of dawn and driving down to Somerset to pick up his daughter. And who would know about that? Mattie and, therefore, loverboy. But then, at the last minute, Shepherd cancels. What time?'

‘6.15, 6.25. I was walking out the door.'

‘And you're the only one he tells.'

‘No, he rang the school.'

‘Yes. But the school didn't tell
Mattie
till the next morning because they knew she'd be pissed off. Patricia Parkin said that herself. And by then the boy's long gone. Nobody at Debringham had seen him since Friday afternoon. So as far as he—and presumably, they—are concerned everything's still on course for Shepherd's early-morning appointment in hell.'

‘OK. So when did they find out?' And you could see he was enjoying it. Maybe it reminded him of the old days, smoke-filled rooms, men with their ties off bonding over matters of life and death. Truth be told, it was one of my favourite bits too, being a surrogate male colleague.