Chapter Seven
April wasn’t having a
good morning. She had woken up with a pounding headache and the
worst case of Bed Head Hair in the history of sleep; she looked
like she’d spent the night in an eighties metal band. She also had
a vaguely unsettled feeling, as if she had been having nightmares
she couldn’t remember. Worse, at breakfast it was immediately clear
that her parents weren’t talking - if it wasn’t for the black
atmosphere they were generating, she might have been impressed that
they had managed to slot in a full-scale fight before their cereal.
Still, hearing them hissing at each other had given her time to
slip into her dad’s study and return his notebook. Strolling into
the kitchen, muttering something about an early start, April had
grabbed some toast and tried to make a run for it, but her dad
caught her at the door.
‘April, it’s
raining,’ he had said firmly. ‘I’m giving you a lift. Besides, I
don’t like you walking about around here until we know a bit more
about what’s going on.’
For the first few
minutes they sat in silence, listening to the swoosh-swoosh of the windscreen wipers, neither
keen to discuss or acknowledge the cloud slowly descending on their
family. April dearly wanted to grill her dad about the vampire
thing, but she could hardly say, ‘Hey, Dad, so I was going through
all your things last night, and I was wondering …’ She still
couldn’t get her head around why he had lied to her about the book.
Why wouldn’t he tell her the truth? After all, he’d written stuff
about crop circles and Bigfoot. What was so different about this?
She gazed through the window at the grey houses and dark road. So
drab, so depressing, she’d almost welcome a bit of supernatural
excitement. And the atmosphere in the house was becoming
unbearable.
‘Listen, April, we
need to talk,’ said William finally.
She looked at him
with alarm. Was he reading her thoughts?
‘I know you don’t
want to hear this, love—’
Oh God, no, thought April, fixing her gaze on the car in
front, it’s the divorce, it’s the divorce! He’s going to tell me
Silvia’s having an affair with her tennis coach and that I’ve got
to choose between Dad and Roger Federer.
‘—But there was
another murder last night.’
April looked up
sharply, curiously disappointed that her father wasn’t announcing a
domestic upheaval.
‘Where? Here?’ she
asked. ‘In Highgate?’
William Dunne looked
at his daughter warily, then nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. One of the
lads on the news desk called early this morning to talk over the
new edition. Your mother wasn’t too pleased to be disturbed, as you
can imagine.’
Ah, so that explained
the frosty atmosphere. Silvia wouldn’t have been impressed that
Dad’s ‘silly little rag’ had needed to rewrite its front page, plus
her mother had some loopy idea that the morning light was bad for
her skin and she was always furious if anyone dared to interfere
with her beauty sleep.
‘But I thought the
Alix Graves thing was just some shady business deal gone wrong or
something,’ said April, a strange sinking feeling in her
stomach.
Her father glanced
over at her again. ‘That was the theory. But it’s possible the two
murders may be linked.’
‘You’re kidding …’
April could feel her sinking feeling going Titanic. ‘So who was the second victim? Not another
celebrity?’
William shrugged.
‘No, no. A young woman. We don’t have all the facts yet, but it
seems there are a few similarities. And, well, it was a little
closer to home than Alix Graves’ house.’
April shifted in her
seat. ‘Closer? How close?’
William Dunne
hesitated for a moment. ‘She was found in Highgate Cemetery, just
by Swain’s Lane. The police received a tip-off phone call last
night.’
April felt as if
someone had shoved her sideways. She grabbed the armrest and
squeezed her eyes shut. It can’t have been! she thought. It can’t
have been a murder, it was just a fox, wasn’t it? Then
another thought hit her and her eyes flew open. The blood! She
stared down at her hands. Could it have been that girl’s blood she had touched? Oh please God no …
‘April?’
It was only then that
April noticed her father had stopped the car.
‘Dad …’
Soundlessly, William
pulled April into a tight hug. She began to shake as she realised
that if she had taken another step into the cemetery, if she had
arrived there a moment sooner, she might have been able to help
that poor woman, she might have … she might have been dead,
too.
‘Honey, what is it?’
he was saying softly, stroking her hair. He was concerned, but
still calm, still reassuring. ‘What’s upset you?’
‘Oh God, Dad, I think
I saw it,’ she whispered, her damp eyes searching his.
‘Saw what,
honey?’
‘The blood,’ she
said. ‘I think I was there when that girl was killed.’
The headmaster’s
office was surprisingly untidy. Considering that the rest of the
school was state-of-the-art, all polished wood and steel, the
head’s lair was reassuringly chaotic. The furniture was still grand
and expensive, but the drawers of the filing cabinets were so
overflowing with papers they barely closed. In fact, Mr Sheldon’s
desk itself was the only surface not completely covered with books,
files and toppling towers of A4 paper,
and that was mainly due to the huge bulk of the headmaster’s
ancient desktop computer. Where did he get
that? wondered April. The Antiques
Roadshow? She had been expecting gleaming chrome and glass,
leather chairs, possibly a wall of TVs all tuned to satellite news
stations. She could barely believe that this was the office of the
head of a top private school, let alone of the Bond-villain genius
behind a massive global conspiracy. Caro was going to be so
disappointed. Her new friend would, however, love the fact that
April had been summoned to the headmaster’s office on her second
day at the school. Okay, so it was through no fault of her own - if
you ignored the fact that she had defied her parents’ orders to
stay indoors, of course - but it certainly looked edgy and
rebellious, especially with the police on their way. It was just
the sort of intrigue Caro would approve of. She glanced about,
hoping to spot some scandalous titbit or piece of evidence to
support Caro’s mad theories, but the walls were lined with
glass-fronted bookshelves holding dusty books with Latin titles;
nothing to suggest international intrigue. She glanced up at the
clock. She’d been sitting there for ten minutes already. When April
had told her father what she had seen the previous evening, he had
immediately insisted that she speak to the police. ‘It sounds
important, April,’ he had said gravely. ‘And even if it’s not, the
police need to know everything they can about last night in order
to stand a chance of catching this monster.’
He had called a
contact on the force who had told him they would interview April at
the school - understandably, they didn’t want to wait until April
got home in case she had vital information. ‘Plus it’s less
traumatic than dragging her down the nick,’ he’d said.
Policemen may know all about catching murderers, but they
don’t know much about schools, thought April ruefully. A
summons to the headmaster’s office was bad enough, but when
Mrs Bagly, the headmaster’s secretary, had come to collect April
from Chemistry, stage-whispering the words ‘the police need to see
her’ to Mr Fitzpatrick, the teacher, it had prompted a hiss of
gleeful muttering around the classroom. April was sure the school
grapevine would have her down as a global drug trafficker by
now.
‘Sorry to keep you,
April,’ said Mr Sheldon as he strode in, his sharp eyes scanning
her. He sat down behind his desk and steepled his fingers. ‘Now
then, I hear you’ve been in a spot of—uh—unpleasantness. Can you
tell me what you saw, exactly?’
April shifted in her
seat. She didn’t like the way Mr Sheldon was looking at her - sort
of a mixture of distaste and curiosity - and she wasn’t sure if she
should be telling the headmaster things that only the police should
hear.
‘I’m not sure I
actually saw anything.’
Mr Sheldon frowned so
deeply his grey eyebrows knitted together over his
nose.
‘But I was led to
believe that you had seen this poor unfortunate girl lying in the
cemetery?’
April froze. She
hadn’t told anyone except her dad about it yet and the press hadn’t
released the story either.
‘How did you know I
was in the cemetery?’
Sheldon’s face
softened. ‘Extrapolating the facts, Miss Dunne,’ he said. ‘Plus, I
do have a few contacts within the police. You have to with a job
like mine, although I might add, we experience very, very little
trouble here at Ravenwood.’
She wasn’t sure if he
was making a sly dig at her or not, but fortunately he was
distracted by the ringing phone.
He snatched it up,
barking, ‘Yes?’ into the receiver and listening briefly. ‘It
appears the police are here. Early,’ he said to April with some
disapproval.
The teacher stood up
and walked around his desk just as the office door opened and a
serious-looking man with grey hair and a younger, slightly plump
woman walked in. The woman was scowling and wearing a badly fitting
dark green trouser suit, while April thought the man looked like a
marine sergeant from a Bruce Willis movie - the sort who gets
killed in the first half-hour.
‘Mr Sheldon,’ said
the man, offering his hand, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Ian Reece and
this is Detective Sergeant Amy Carling. Thank you for letting us
use your office. Would you mind if we talk to Miss Dunne on our
own?’
‘Well, as April’s
parents aren’t here,’ said the headmaster smoothly, ‘I think it
would be best if I stayed—’
‘No, that’s okay, Mr
Sheldon,’ said April. ‘I think I’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t worry, sir,
she’ll be safe with us.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Mr
Sheldon, backing towards the door. ‘Let me know if you need
anything.’ He glanced at April meaningfully and lowered his voice.
‘School files, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes, of course,
sir,’ said the inspector, shutting the door firmly and turning to
April. ‘Now then, Miss Dunne, thank you for contacting us. Would
you like to tell us exactly what you saw yesterday
evening?’
‘Everyone’s looking
at me.’
Caro bit into her
crisp and Marmite sandwich, dropping crumbs all over the refectory
table. ‘Well of course they’re looking
at you,’ she said between munches. ‘You’re the prime suspect in a
shocking murder investigation. They’re all looking to see if you’ve
still got blood on you.’
The Ravenwood
students were not the sort to openly gawp, but whenever she looked
up April could feel eyes flicking away from her and hear comments
being whispered from the sides of mouths.
‘Don’t listen to her,
sweetie, it’s her overripe imagination,’ said Simon kindly.
‘They’re probably just looking at Caro’s latest
dye-job.’
Caro gave him a
withering look and April smiled. Simon Oliver was the closest thing
Caro had to a best friend at Ravenwood; they had gone to junior
school together and spent their early years playing Barbie and
dressing up, but with the onset of puberty their relationship had
become more spiky. ‘He’s such a diva,’ Caro had complained over
lunch the previous day. ‘You never know what he’s thinking.’
Reading between the lines, April suspected there was an element of
unrequited love on Caro’s part at least, not helped by the fact
that Simon Oliver was exactly Caro’s type with his pale skin,
dangling emo-fringe and collection of Belarus tour T-shirts. There
seemed to be an assumption he was gay, but Caro wouldn’t hear of
it. ‘He’s just Simon,’ she said defensively. Either way, he was an
expert at bursting Caro’s bubble. Without his balancing influence,
April might well have believed every one of Caro’s wild
theories.
‘But I’m not a
suspect - am I?’ She turned to Caro for reassurance, but her friend
only grinned.
‘Everyone’s a
suspect,’ she said with relish. ‘Especially someone who—’ she held
up her fingers to form quotation marks ‘—“stumbles across” the
body.’
‘I didn’t stumble
across anything,’ said April desperately. ‘I didn’t even see her
body.’
‘No use telling the
coppers that,’ said Caro, starting on a Penguin biscuit.
‘Statistics speak for themselves. Top suspect in any murder is
always the husband, second is whoever found the body. And you have
to admit you did have blood all over you.’
‘Fox blood,’
corrected Simon. ‘And if you’d listened, April said she didn’t find
the body. Someone else called the police, remember?’
Caro held up her
hands innocently. ‘Hey, it’s not me she has to convince. I believe
your story, especially the bit about the shadow with the dark
eyes.’
April bit her lip.
She knew it sounded ludicrous, but that was what she had seen. Or
was it? She wasn’t even sure herself any more. One thing was
certain: she needed to talk to Gabriel Swift as soon as she could -
she had to know what he had seen. Did he see the body? Did he see
the murderer? How was he wrapped up in all this? She couldn’t keep
on with this ‘strange shadow’ story - she had seen the look of
dismay on the police officers’ faces when she had come to that part
of the story. She could sympathise; it wasn’t as if you could
translate her description into a Crimewatch photofit.
‘Listen, Caro,’ said
April, casting her eyes about and lowering her voice. ‘What you
said yesterday about the school, who’s behind it? Well, my
dad—’
‘Yeah, sorry about
that,’ said Caro quickly, glancing at Simon with an embarrassed
look on her face. ‘I was speaking figuratively or metaphorically or
something - and anyway, it’s just an idea. I’ve got a million of
’em. Maybe don’t tell your dad that one, I’ll look like a
loony.’
And then again, maybe he’d agree with you, thought
April. She still wanted to tell her new friends what she had read
in her dad’s notes, but Caro was right - in the cold light of day,
the idea that some sort of underground disease or, even worse, a
vampire, might be responsible for all the violence in London did
sound a little loony. ‘A little loony’ was something April was used
to with her father, of course, but it wasn’t necessarily something
she wanted to share with the world.
‘Don’t worry,’ said
Simon, seeing April’s troubled expression. ‘It’s not like you
actually killed that girl, is it? You were only trying to help and
you told the police everything you know.’
April felt a wave of
guilt and looked across the room to where the Faces were sitting.
She didn’t really know why, but she hadn’t quite told the police
everything. She had left out the part about seeing Gabriel there,
about him pulling her out of the cemetery, about him telling her to
run home. She had meant to tell them, she honestly had, but when it
came to it, something had stopped her. Fear? No, somehow she didn’t
sense any evil in him. Loyalty? Hardly - she barely knew him.
Across the room, Gabriel was talking intently to that bitchy girl
Layla; he didn’t seem to have noticed April at all. The truth was
she didn’t have a very clear picture of what had happened the
previous evening and that bothered her. Why was Gabriel there? Had
he called the police? April just didn’t know what to think. Maybe
it was her father’s genes, maybe it was just morbid curiosity,
maybe it was pure guilt that she hadn’t done more to help that poor
girl—whatever it was, April knew she couldn’t relax until she had
found out what had happened that night. If she had given the police
Gabriel Swift’s name, the chances were she never
would.
‘Do you really think
I’m being treated as a suspect?’ said April seriously. ‘Okay, so I
was in the area, but why on earth would I want to murder
anyone?’
Caro shrugged. ‘Drug
deal gone wrong? Crime of passion? Hey,’ she said, waving a stick
of celery at April, ‘perhaps you were lesbian lovers.’
‘Well, it’s nice to
see someone’s enjoying all this,’ said Simon sarcastically. ‘I
mean, it’s not like anyone’s been killed or anything, is
it?’
Caro giggled and
threw her celery at him. ‘Can I help it if I love being at the
centre of a murder investigation?’ She smiled playfully. ‘Besides,
look at all the attention April’s getting. Yesterday she was just
the new girl, today she’s one half of Bonnie and
Clyde.’
April smiled despite
herself. It would have been so easy to give in to paranoia and
fear, but her new friend’s irreverent take on events put the whole
episode into perspective. Especially the slightly silly part about
those dark eyes.
‘Hello, here comes
trouble,’ said Caro, nodding towards the far side of the room.
April looked up to see Davina Osbourne making a beeline for their
table.
‘Hi, April,’ she
sang, giving them all the full sixty-watt smile. ‘I heard about
last night, honey,’ she said, pouting sympathetically. ‘It sounds
so horrible. I just wanted to come over and check that you’re
okay?’
‘Your concern is so
touching, “honey”,’ mimicked Caro.
‘Thanks, Davina,’
said April quickly, ‘but I’m fine. I just heard some noises in
Swain’s Lane last night and—’
‘Oh my God,’ said
Davina, dramatically covering her mouth. ‘Did you hear Isabelle
getting killed? Actually getting killed? Screams and
stuff?’
‘No, I just heard a
few noises, the police aren’t even sure if I was in the same
place—’
‘Who’s Isabelle?’
interrupted Caro.
Davina glared at Caro
and then turned her attention back to April.
‘Didn’t you know? Her
name was Isabelle Davis, she was a student here a few years ago. A
friend of mine at the Royal Opera House knew her quite well, lovely
skin, great hair - such a waste, don’t you think?’
April couldn’t reply.
Somehow knowing the girl’s name made the whole thing seem all the
more real.
‘You okay, A?’ asked
Caro, touching her arm.
‘Oh no, I haven’t
made things worse, have I?’ said Davina. ‘Do you want some Evian?
Why don’t you come and sit with us while you calm down? I think
Chessy’s got some of her mum’s Valium.’
‘Why don’t you just
leave her alone?’ snapped Caro. ‘She was fine until you got
here.’
‘No, please, I’ll be
okay, I just need some air,’ said April, getting to her feet. Both
Caro and Davina moved to help her, but she brushed them off and
headed for the door. ‘Thanks, but I need to … I need to be alone
for a while,’ she said as she left.
April pushed through
the refectory’s double doors, aware that every eye in the room was
watching her, and burst out into the corridor. I will not cry, I will not cry, she said to herself
over and over again. She ran blindly down the halls, turning
corners at random, finally coming to a stop next to a mercifully
abandoned cloakroom where she sat down on a bench. ‘Breathe,’ she
whispered to herself, pulling in air through her nose and letting
it out through her mouth. She tried to remember what you were
supposed to think of to calm yourself down - cool wet grass, was
it? She was finding it hard to think of anything except those dark
eyes.
‘ash, Ravenwood’s
latest bad girl,’ said a voice. ‘I was wondering when our paths
would cross.’
April looked up.
Benjamin Osbourne looked down at her through his mop of blond hair
and gave her a sardonic smile.
‘Sorry, I have
terrible manners,’ he said, offering April a slight bow. ‘We
haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Benjamin. I believe you know
my sister, Davina?’
April could only nod.
Without taking his blue eyes from her, Benjamin tilted his head
slightly to the left. ‘And this is my friend Marcus Brent.’ April
saw another tall boy behind him, this one with dark brown hair and
pronounced eyebrows that gave his eyes a rather hooded look. She
had seen him staring at her earlier in the refectory - in fact
‘glaring’ would be a more accurate description. Clearly Marcus was
one of the students who thought the new girl was bringing Ravenwood
into disrepute.
‘Come on, Ben,’ said
Marcus impatiently. ‘We’re already late.’
‘Don’t mind him.’
Benjamin smiled. ‘Beautiful girls unnerve Marcus.’ He allowed
Marcus to pull him away, calling over his shoulder as they went,
‘See you soon.’
April sat there in
shock. Had the sexiest boy in school just called her beautiful? Or
was he like that with everyone? Probably. That sort of good-looking
wealthy boy thought they could charm the pants off any girl they
liked. Well, he wasn’t going to have that effect on her. No way.
She stood up, then sat down again with a thump, her knees having
turned to jelly.
‘Whoa …’ she said,
rubbing her temples. Maybe Benjamin’s charm had worked after all.
She walked into the Ladies and looked at herself in the mirror; her
cheeks were distinctly flushed. Nothing to do with Benjamin, she
assured herself, nothing at all. Although, he was really
good-looking. But she wasn’t about to go gooey over a boy, not
after Neil. No way.
That’ll teach me to go out on cold, damp nights, she
scolded herself as the bell rang and she walked to her next lesson.
I must be coming down with something.