Dead of Winter (6 page)

St Anne’s was popular with absentee parents who trusted the staff to care for and educate their children, and boarders accounted for most of the pupils. They lived in purpose-built houses named after previous headmistresses, each with its own small garden
or courtyard, communal sitting room and accommodation for a housemistress. It had taken Bazza’s team more than a day to search the premises thoroughly and they were still working through the grounds. He could hear their fog-muffled voices from points around him.

Fenwick shivered and regretted his lack of scarf and gloves as he pulled his long winter coat tighter around his neck. Behind him the yellow lights from the main house glowed anaemically in the mist. Ahead he could see the outline of a teaching block and he walked towards it, careful of his footing on the slippery lawn, hoping to find someone who could give him directions to the stables. He climbed the steps and pulled open a heavy front door decorated with a holly wreath. Heat engulfed him and his ears said thank you.

A cluster of girls looked up guiltily. They were cradling plastic cups of steaming hot drinks. Fenwick could smell chocolate, sour instant soup … and coffee.

‘I’m looking for the stables; I’m with the police,’ he explained, showing his warrant card, noting that they relaxed.

‘Go out of here and turn left, follow the brick path all the way round. Don’t go on the gravel and you can’t miss it,’ one of the girls explained. She was about his daughter Bess’s age and as confident. He smiled.

‘Thanks. Is there any way I can get coffee from that thing?’

‘Have you got a card?’

‘A what?’

‘One of these.’ She held up plastic ID. ‘You put cash on it and pay for things at school. We’re not allowed to have money in college, only when we go out.’

‘I haven’t got one. May I give you some money and borrow yours?’

‘Only if you don’t look at my picture – it’s gross.’

Her friends sniggered nervously and then laughed outright when he failed to operate the machine. In the end the girl, Emily he noted surreptitiously from her card, helped him and he took the too-hot
plastic cup of coffee with him as he followed their directions to the stables, sipping at it greedily and scalding his tongue.

It was almost lunchtime when he found the art block so he waited in the hall for the classes to finish rather than risk missing the teacher. He drained his coffee and within minutes a bell sounded. Around him doors slammed open, then feet pounded the stairs in a mad rush. He estimated there must have been four classes in progress. As the first teacher passed he asked if she was Miss Bullock and was told she used the main studio behind him.

As he turned, the studio door was opened by a girl who couldn’t have been older than eighteen but looked twenty. She was followed by three more, the last of whom glanced at him curiously and held the door for him. He stepped inside. The room had obviously been a barn and was enormous, double height for most of its length, with a mezzanine over the far end under which there appeared to be some sort of storage area. Easels were arranged around an empty central plinth. The north wall had been replaced with glass and there were Velux windows in the roof with electrically controlled blinds, which today were uncovered, showing snow and the close grey sky above.

Fenwick was momentarily distracted by the artwork on the walls and didn’t notice at first the two women deep in conversation by the far wall. He dragged his eyes away from the paintings and coughed to attract their attention.

‘Can I help you?’

The woman who spoke was older than he had expected, in her fifties perhaps, with long, silver-grey hair pulled back by a tortoiseshell slide. As their eyes met he felt an unmistakeable tug in his chest and a tingle of attraction that immediately put him on his guard.

‘I’m Superintendent Fenwick,’ he announced, his voice stilted even to his own ears.

‘Louise Bullock, how do you do?’

She walked towards him and the light fell onto her face for the first time. It was lined around the eyes and mouth but so finely he couldn’t bring himself to think of her as wrinkled. Her eyes
were almost violet, angled up at the corners, hinting at laughter. He almost recognised her and wondered if they had met before. He took her hand, ignoring the slight shock of her touch, and dropped it quickly.

‘You can go now, Octavia,’ she said to the young woman waiting curiously behind her. ‘Don’t forget, I need that piece by Friday at the very latest.’

‘Yes, Miss Bullock,’ the girl said.

Fenwick waited until she had gone before he spoke again.

‘I’d like to talk to you about Isabelle Mattias. You were the only person to think her absence worth worrying about and I need to understand why.’

‘Of course, but can we do it over lunch? I only have thirty minutes before my next class. It’s personal tuition for a gifted student that I’m trying to persuade of her talent. Any excuse such as my being late and she’ll scarper. Some days I could murder her supercilious parents. But,’ she looked at him again and raised her eyebrows, ‘I imagine I’m not meant to use words like that in front of you. Shall we go?’

Fenwick, who had never learnt the art of teasing or of being teased, followed her with growing unease.

Any expectation Fenwick might have had of Hogwarts-type splendour vanished as he walked into the airy, cream-walled dining room. For sure, there was a raised platform complete with high table but it was empty save for an arrangement of winter greenery. Below it ash wood tables ran in long parallel rows. Most were occupied. At the far end there was a partitioned area for staff and Miss Bullock headed towards it. Six seats remained vacant at the end of one table and she took the two furthest away.

‘We have waitress service. That’s the menu. I’m sure there won’t be a problem feeding you. I’ll be back in two ticks.’

She promptly disappeared to talk to a colleague at another table.

Fenwick looked around the room, breathing in the atmosphere. He had been at the school less than two hours but already he could feel the pull of its character: routines and cliques; obscure rules of conduct, even a secret language that linked everybody together to the exclusion of outsiders.

His initial briefing from Bernstein had been thorough if unenthusiastic but she had shared with him her misgivings about Isabelle’s favourite teacher, Louise Bullock. Something about the art teacher worried her and despite a second interview she remained
uneasy. He had the same gut instinct. There was an air of secrecy about her that he didn’t think was deliberate but it was there just the same, and he was beginning to resent the time she was consuming. Still, he had to eat and warm food would be better than sandwiches to keep him going. He ordered beef bourguignon over rice. Louise Bullock returned as their food arrived and talked without prompting.

‘Issie is a disturbed young woman but in all the years I’ve taught her she has never once missed an art class. So I knew something was wrong when she didn’t appear yesterday.’ She paused to eat some quiche. ‘I also have a strong feeling that she isn’t coming back. You’ve hardly touched your food; don’t you like it?’

‘I’m not that hungry.’ He pushed the plate to one side. ‘Look, this isn’t the right place for us to talk and I really do need you to answer some questions.’

‘Let’s go to the old staffroom in the main house; it’s hardly ever used.’

Five minutes later, Fenwick watched as she coaxed fresh coffee from a machine that looked older than she was.

‘Don’t worry; this makes the best coffee in the school. Sometimes the older things are, the better they get.’

He avoided her eyes.

The machine emitted embarrassing burping noises as the water heated but he had to admit that the coffee smelt good.

‘You’re really worried, aren’t you?’ she said, pre-empting his next question, ‘and I mean about Issie, not the coffee.’

‘Aren’t you? Isn’t that why you reported her missing?’

Miss Bullock studied the plate of fresh fruit she had taken for dessert.

‘Call me Lulu; everyone does. Yes, I’m concerned; I have been for months. Something’s not right about her. Despite Issie’s bravado I think she’s vulnerable.’

‘Go on.’

‘Her father’s death hit her badly. Before that she’d been confident, mature for her age. It happened just before Christmas in her second year. I was mother for her house.’

‘Mother?’

‘It’s a St Anne’s tradition for the first-years, to help them transition from a home environment. Issie didn’t really need me in year one; in fact she helped me with other girls, like a big sister. Then her father died and she went to pieces. He was the centre of her world; her best friend. They used to write to each other several times a week – email, or by post when there wasn’t a connection. Wherever he was in the world his letters would arrive without fail.

‘For a year after his death she couldn’t get through a day without crying, but then slowly she started to heal – on the outside, at least – but I didn’t think she was right inside. Not that she ever admitted it.’

‘Is that when her grades started to suffer?’

‘Yes; she lost her scholarship at the end of her second year. Then just before her mother remarried her behaviour completely deteriorated. Issie seems to loathe Saxby. To her he’s everything her father wasn’t: a bully, opinionated, mean … you name a character defect and she thinks he has it. She refused to go to their wedding. The invitation turned up here at school – it was a grotesque, ostentatious thing, I grant you. She sent a “regretfully decline” card as her RSVP.

‘It caused uproar at home. Issie weathered the storm for weeks. He cancelled her allowance so she simply stopped spending money; then he forced her mother to withdraw approval for Issie to go on any school trips.’

‘Saxby has that much power over the mother?’

‘Oh yes, she’s weak. Calls herself a “man’s woman”; doormat, more like.’

‘Did Issie give in and accept eventually?’

‘Not for a long time. She was amazingly strong-willed but the last straw came when he threatened to cut her art tuition. She came to see me with the letter, in floods of tears. She asked whether I could go on giving her tutorials even though her mother had withdrawn permission. Of course, I said yes …’

The coffee machine emitted a cough like a sixty-a-day veteran.
Fenwick looked at it with concern, afraid that it might be a death rattle and with it the passing of his only chance of decent coffee.

‘Don’t worry, it always does that.’ Miss Bullock stood up and turned it off. ‘Black no sugar would be my guess?’

‘Yes, thank you. Go on – you agreed to continue tuition.’

‘Right.
I
said yes but the college refused; said I was undermining parental authority. My arse! Oh, excuse me,’ she said and looked at him, genuinely embarrassed. ‘I forgot that this was an official police interview.’

He laughed.

‘It won’t be in my notes. So that broke her resistance and she went to the wedding after all? She must care about her art.’

‘It’s her passion and yes, you’re right, the poor kid gave in.’

‘Let’s come back to yesterday. What happened when Issie didn’t show up?’

‘I sent girls to check her room, the library … anywhere she might be. They couldn’t find her so I went to the deputy head and reported her missing. She checked with the other teachers and had members of staff search the obvious places. By eleven-thirty I was really worried but the deputy said we couldn’t be sure she was gone. I’m afraid I had to insist that we report her missing. I threatened to do it myself if the school refused.’

‘Not popular.’

‘No, but then they need me more than I need them.’

‘Why is that?’

Miss Bullock blushed, made a show of eating her fruit and avoided the question.

‘I asked why.’

‘Oh, this will sound arrogant; but I’m quite … known in the contemporary art world.’

He made a note to check up.

‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Issie that might help us find her?’

Bullock toyed with a piece of pineapple, pushing the segment around her plate.

‘No, that’s all.’

Fenwick felt she was holding back and asked again but she shook her head and merely drank her coffee so he rose to go. He had other interviews to complete before he saw Saxby.

‘If anything else occurs to you, no matter how trivial, please call me.’ He handed her his card. ‘I’m really worried about Issie.’ He hesitated, watching in vain for the involuntary flinch his words should have evoked. ‘There are four possibilities as to what might have happened to her.’

Louise Bullock regarded him for the first time with interest.

‘
Four?
’

‘Yes.’ He ticked each one off on his fingers. ‘One, she’s run away – though from everything I’m learning I think that’s unlikely.’

‘Why?’ Her question was almost accusatory, as if he were condemning Issie by his assumption.

‘Because she’s taken nothing with her; her passport, cash, chequebook, credit card, clothes, make-up are all here. What bright girl does that? She didn’t leave the school on impulse; she found out the pass code for the staff gate. That took planning.’

‘So that’s option one,’ Bullock said; her voice wavered but her eyes were steady.

‘Option two is that she only left for the night but hurt herself and is lying injured somewhere. That’s one of the reasons we have such a large search going on, not just here at the school but in the surrounding area as well. With temperatures this low she won’t have survived even one night unless she was lucky enough to fall in a sheltered place.’

Miss Bullock cupped her hands around her mug.

‘Well go on; what’s the third option?’

‘There is a chance that she’s been abducted – by a stranger or someone she knows – who is now holding her against her will. Of all the options – and remember I don’t think she’s a runaway – it’s the one that gives us hope. It means she could still be alive somewhere out of the weather and that we have time to find her.’

‘And the fourth?’ Her tone suggested that she had already guessed his answer.

‘Is that she’s been killed.’ He let his words sink in but all she did was study her fingernails. ‘So based on all that, Miss Bullock, are you certain you have nothing more to say?’

The teacher dropped her head and stared at her coffee. Seconds ticked away.

‘Miss Bullock?’

‘Nothing further, Mr Fenwick.’

‘Very well,’ his voice was clipped, ‘then at the least you can tell me which of her friends I should speak to.’

There was a tiny relaxation in her shoulders as she drained her mug.

‘That would be Puff and Octavia. Here,’ she scribbled on a piece of paper. ‘This is Octavia’s room number; they hang out there as it’s larger than Puff’s. You might catch them before their next lesson. Be careful how you handle Octavia. She’s the younger daughter of Sir Dominic Henry, a very influential man in the City and generous donor to the College Foundation. Miss Henry more than makes up in self-belief for what she lacks in modesty. Now, to get there, take the back door from the hall and follow the brick path – avoid the lawn and the gravel.’

He followed her instructions, found MacArthur House and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The sound of rock music flowed down the corridor from a room at the end. His knock went unanswered, probably because it couldn’t be heard, so he pushed open the door and stuck his head inside.

Two girls the same age, one blonde, the other brunette and extremely pretty, were lying on twin beds, their feet tapping to the beat, cigarettes in their fingers.

‘Hello,’ he said, realising suddenly that he was breaking all the rules: alone with girls, in their bedroom, no other adult present.

He needn’t have been concerned. They were too worried about him reporting their illicit smoking to think of making a complaint.

‘Octavia?’ The blonde nodded with affected indifference. ‘And Puff?’ The brunette gulped and whispered
yes
. ‘I’m Superintendent Andrew Fenwick. I’d like you to accompany me to the incident room so that I can interview you.’

Fenwick studied Octavia’s room. It was large enough for two single beds, an armchair and a desk under a bay window. Across from where he stood was a door to an en suite shower room. The bedroom walls were covered with posters and student works of art. Behind one bed were delicate watercolours interspersed with charcoal sketches of plants and trees. Above the other were violent collages and an oil painting he thought grotesque. Immediately on his left was an abstract study in acrylics, all primary colour insistence. Although he didn’t understand the picture he found himself staring, drawn into its passion.

‘We’ve already told somebody everything we know,’ Octavia said belligerently, recalling his attention.

‘You haven’t spoken to me and I want to hear your account first hand.’

‘Why?’ Octavia wasn’t prepared to give an inch. She stubbed out her cigarette and swivelled her legs to the floor, searching with her feet for her boots.

‘You’re Issie’s best friends; she has been missing for more than twenty-four hours and if you had a shred of real feeling for her you’d be willing to help me in any way you could.’

His bluntness shocked her into silence. Puff was already pulling on her outdoor jacket.

In the incident room Fenwick took Octavia to one of the cubicles at the far end and asked Puff to wait.

‘I’m meant to be in history.’

‘Please feel free to call administration to let them know where you are.’

He gestured to the phone. Octavia ignored it.

‘It’s a research set, they’ll think I’m in the library.’

‘You can have a teacher with you.’

The look she gave him could have scorched earth.

‘Quite unnecessary.’ Octavia glared at him, crossed her arms and sighed as a policewoman came to join them.

Fenwick leant forward, his tone more gentle.

‘I want to find Issie, Octavia. I know you think she’s run off but we don’t, not without money or her credit card.’

‘Issie has friends all over; she could be with any one of them.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

Octavia took a lock of blonde hair and started to play with it. She affected a bored, suffering look. Fenwick tried to think how he would coax his daughter Bess out of a similar mood, not that she had yet graduated to Octavia’s level of indifference, but then she was only twelve. He caught Janice looking at him and nodded for her to come over.

‘Janice, could you get me a black coffee please; and what would you like, Octavia?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing, thank you,’ Janice said automatically. Octavia looked affronted.

‘She has no right to talk to me like that; who does she think she is? I’ll tell my father and then she’ll be sorry.’

‘Oh, please!’ Fenwick raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re older and more independent than that. You don’t need to use your father’s name to be taken seriously.

‘Look, no matter what you say
I
think Issie’s in real trouble. Right now she could be on her own, scared, possibly hurt, freezing cold and hungry, hoping her friends won’t abandon her. If you know for certain that she isn’t any of those things, then great, I’ll be delighted, but if you can’t be sure, then you owe it to her to tell me what it is that you do know. If you don’t, and God forbid anything bad happens to Issie, it will be on your conscience for the rest of your life.’