My Name Is Not Jacob Ramsay (25 page)

"Yes. If you do happen to come across anyone in the future who you feel is a potential threat or cause of concern, then please give us a call." Detective Stevens slid her card to Michael. It had her name and the familiar Metropolitan Police logo on it, a couple of telephone numbers, as well as an email address.

Michael pocketed the card and nodded his head. He stood up and tucked his chair back under the table. He looked at them and lingered, wondering whether they would say anything else to him.

They didn't. Their heads were lowered over a diary of some sort and Jordan was leaning in closer. His face was hidden by his bulky frame and Stevens' shoulder.

Michael waited for a couple of seconds. He waited two more for any sense of a head movement or body shift. Nothing. He raised an eyebrow and turned. He opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

Paul Jones, Michael's colleague, was in the doorway to his classroom and gestured to him, silently with his head, to step inside. He followed it with an empathetic smile. Warm, kind, like his father. The door closed to Paul's classroom and he sat himself down on a comfortable soft chair.

"Take a seat. There's a cup of tea underneath the chair for yer," said Paul, watching Michael slump himself down on a similar chair next to him. He sighed deeply.

"Man, how long was I in there for?" relaxed Michael, reaching underneath his chair to retrieve a mug of tea.

"Nearly two hours. How'd it go? Did they water-board you?" Paul asked, sipping his tea with a smirk.

"Ha, no, but I felt it was coming when I first sat down and they started to quiz me. They said 'We're here to ask you what you know about the suspect known as Abdul Rah-Maan and the leak to the Daily Express newspaper."

"The Daily Express?" Paul echoed, with a frown.

"Yeah. I'm like 'what?' and going straight in with calling him a suspect. Poor, poor boy." Michael drank some tea.

"Indeed, sir. Indeed. Are they going to pursue this nonsense or not?" asked Paul, with a tightened, pained expression, watching Michael closely reclining into his chair, tired.

He shook his head. "No. As soon as they learnt that Patricia and Norman were in a relationship, they pretty much realised that the whole thing was a waste of their time, or at least that's the impression I got."

"Did they ask about them then?" Paul wanted to know.

"It kind of steered that way. They had to know how the whole thing evolved into this stupid mess."

Outside, in the corridor, Detectives Stevens and Jordan stepped out of the room they had been in. Josephine Golding trotted down the corridor to talk to them just as Sinatra Umbundo stepped out of the boys' toilets.

He lingered in the corridor, outside the door, but within earshot, as he buckled his belt.

Josephine didn't pay any attention to him. She was too wrapped up in her own ego and fixed her eyes on the officers before her. "Detectives. I hope your time spent here was of value and you managed to unearth the hard-line facts that we do indeed have a possible terror threat here in our school, not to mention a serious action of gross misconduct from a staff member," gushed Josephine in her usual harsh, self-righteous tone.

Sinatra tilted his head, listening. He shuffled back towards the wall, into a darkened part of the corridor.

Detective Stevens formed a hundred-mile-an-hour smile. It was more of a mouth twitch really. She sneered as she looked at Josephine. She towered above her, in a more powerful manner.

Josephine frowned, awaiting an answer. Jordan coughed and looked into the shadows to fix his attention on Sinatra, who noticed that he'd been clocked.

Sinatra entered a classroom.

Jordan turned his head to Josephine. "We've come to our conclusion and we won't be pursuing this matter any further," he announced, stepping past Josephine to a set of double doors just as PC Norman and Patricia exited another door together, smiling.

Their smiles instantly disappeared when they cast their eyes on Josephine, who looked angry and embarrassed. 

"What about the boy? What about the staff?" Josephine blurted.

"The boy is fine."

"And the staff?" Josephine asked.

"Well, you have loyal staff, some of who have powerful connections. I'll leave it there."

Detective Stevens walked away from her, making after her colleague. She snorted as she looked Patricia and Norman up and down.

Patricia frowned and glanced at Norman, then at Josephine as Stevens exited via the double doors.

"I wanna talk to you two. Now. In the office, now," commanded Josephine.

She turned on her high-heeled shoes and clip-clopped up the corridor, toward the small office.

Sinatra adjusted his belt and lowered his jeans below his backside, exposing a pair of black boxer shorts. He stood bow-legged by the classroom door.

"Sinatra, sit down please and pull your trousers up. I don't want to see your backside," scolded Catherine Riverdale, sitting at the desk.

"Why are there police detectives here, Miss? Have they come for the Afghan students?" asked Sinatra, trying to come across as innocent as he possibly could, but was clearly fishing.

"What do you mean by that? There aren't police here and why would they be after Abdul? That's quite a racist thing to say?" responded Catherine sharply.

"Why is it racist? Did I say Abdul? No. You must be thinking the same as what I was, otherwise you wouldn't be calling me racist, init, so you is as racist as well, but anyway, we'll leave it, yeah, so just tell me: why are the police here?"

Catherine frowned, jutting her chin out as she looked around the class, fixing on Abdul who had already honed in on the conversation.

"Police? Police are here? For me? Why for me?" Abdul cried, becoming tense and fearful and very defensive.

"Nobody is here for you, Abdul. Continue with your work please," Catherine insisted.

"It's time to go home. I'm going home, yeah," Sinatra said. He straightened and gripped the door handle.

"Yes, home time now, Miss. Home time, but tell me why police are here. Why they here for me. I am good boy."

"Sshh, no police are here," Catherine repeated.

"What you lying for? I saw them. Dat other teacher even said 'detectives' to them and asked if they'd found the threat in the school. Who's da threat?" Sinatra said, forcefully.

Catherine was confused, unaware that the detectives had questioned Michael, let alone for nearly two hours.

"Have you seen Michael at all?" she asked Sinatra, who had already opened the classroom door and set foot outside.

"Why would I see him? Have you not? Where's he been anyway? Has that snake been wiv da Feds? I bet he has, you know. That snake. I betchoo he has, man," Sinatra said angrily, bouncing out of the room and into the corridor.

"Michael is with police? Why he talk with them? He tell things about me? Is he jasoos? You speak my name, Miss. Why police here? They come to my house and now they come to my school. What's happening? You tell me what's going on," pleaded Abdul.

"I don't know, Abdul. Calm down."

"I am calm. You be calm. I am calm! I go home now," he said, following Sinatra out of the room and into the corridor.

"I wouldn't trust that fucking snake, Abdul man. Seriously yeah, he's a snake," Sinatra said, bopping alongside Abdul as they made through the set of double doors and down some concrete stairs.

"What you mean by snake? Why he snake? What is this?"

"A snake, man. You can't trust him," explained Sinatra.

"No trust Michael?"

"No."

"Michael no trust because he snake?" Abdul asked.

"Yeah."

"Shit man fuck. Michael snake. Fucking snake man," Abdul muttered in his thick accent as he rounded the corner of the short set of concrete steps

"I will not be made to look a fool, Patricia. At the end of the day, I'm the one who will end up looking stupid and getting my knuckles rapped for this mistake that you and Norman decided to cook up," spouted Josephine Golding, the Head Teacher, spinning round on her chair in the small office at the end of the corridor.

"But, I-" stuttered Patricia. She felt ashamed, like a naughty schoolgirl. She was sitting on a softer, much lower chair than Josephine, which made her feel even more insecure and a lesser important human being.

"We'll stick to the original story. He was a threat. Staff and pupils felt uncomfortable and what Michael heard was wrong," Josephine said, pointing her forefinger at Patricia, whose eyes had started to well up fast and wasn't handling the telling off well at all.

"What... what will happen to Michael?" she asked, quivering, with her left leg and knee jittering.

Josephine noticed this and Patricia placed her hand upon her knee to settle herself, but this just caused her hands to shake instead.

"I'll be moving him next week. He can go downstairs to the basement floor and deal with the nutters there. Bit of luck he'll give up and hand in his notice in a couple of weeks," she said in her monotonous voice, just as the telephone sounded out. She sighed and took the call.

"I have a call from a journalist saying they're from the Daily Express. They're asking for the Head Teacher who sanctioned Special Branch to quiz a pupil who said the word 'Taliban' in class. What shall I say to her?" came the concerned secretarial voice on the other end of the line.

"You bloody tell them no comment and hang up the bloody phone!" shouted Josephine, slamming the receiver down hard and panting. Her eyes were wide and expressed extreme anger.

"What was that?" Patricia calmly asked, like she was asking "Mummy, is everything all right?"

Josephine turned slowly to Patricia, looking wild and untamed. "I will not be brought down by your fucking mistake, do you hear me?" hissed Josephine through gritted teeth to Patricia, who started to cry, nodding her head.

"Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"He did this. He did all of this. Michael has connections. He brought the press to our door." Josephine's mind raced. She breathed heavily.

"But he wouldn't have known about any of this," Patricia trembled.

"Quiet!" ordered Josephine.

"I want everything to come through me. Is that understood?" Edward said into his phone whilst he sat inside his car on the driveway of his home. "The Head Teacher who gave this the go-ahead. She'll be checked out too, am I right? I want reports of all the monitoring activity. What her husband does for a living. Is he in debt. Where her kids go to university and all the pubs they go to. I want pictures and video. Is that understood?" his voice was highly authoritative. A man concerned, yet in control.

"You poor boy," said Catherine Riverdale.

She looked at Michael as she and Paul sat with him around her classroom table, clutching another cup of tea.

"This place has gone to pot," Paul sighed, as Helen entered the room. Her face said it all. Her eyes were glassy as she just stood there, looking at Michael, who got to his feet and the two embraced one another.

Helen hugged him tight, like a work mother. She adored him. She once expressed to another colleague a few years back that Michael would be the ideal son in-law for her. Helen held his arms and stepped back to look at him.

"I've just found out. I'm sorry. This would never have occurred if-"

"I know. You don't have to say," interrupted Michael.

She leaned close to hug him again, disguising that she was in fact whispering into his ear. "Work-related stress. Get signed off for two weeks."

The two of them locked eyes.

He nodded his head, understanding what she had told him, taking it in. "Thank you."

Michael entered an empty classroom elsewhere within the school. He dialed his father's mobile phone number.

"It's disgraceful, Michael. This woman, this head, should be reported. She can't go around sanctioning things like this. The bad thing is, Mikey, is that the boy, the Afghan lad, he'll have a link to terrorism whenever he's asked his name by police and they do a check on him."

"You're joking? No way! That's awful," Michael exclaimed.

"Yeah. His name will flag up and the officer who checks him will have to call his superior and then they'll inform him or her on what's what. Bad eh?" stated his father.

"Really bad. Listen, I've got to go now. I'll call you later on," Michael said, hanging up the call.

Sinatra and Abdul walked upon the pavement, outside the school.

Sinatra offered a bag of Haribo jelly snake sweets to Abdul, forming some kind of bond with him in doing so.

Abdul delved his hand into the bag and pulled a green and yellow snake, holding it up to his face.

"A snake! Mike the snake. Look, sir. Look," he said, suddenly widening his eyes and biting the head off the jelly snake. He chewed it ferociously, showing his yellowing teeth to Sinatra as he did so.

Sinatra laughed, but it was put on. However, the fake chuckle was soon masked by Sinatra's attention being pulled elsewhere, beyond the chain-link fencing to the school car park.