Page 68 of Dying Truth

His three roommates had returned from social time and taken residency on the bed opposite his own. He’d heard them chuckling at something on one of their mobile phones. His own phone had dinged a notification. With his back to the three figures on the bed he had checked his Facebook page, to see he’d been tagged in a video by one of his roommates.

The video was a near-naked overweight woman dancing around a silver pole, her cellulite-covered skin wobbling and jiggling all over the place. Roddy had commented with: ‘Piggott’s future wife.’

He had placed the phone back on the desk and offered no response. He had learned years ago that any reaction at all fed their amusement.

He had continued to work on his essay but had been aware of their presence the whole time. In many ways he had hardened himself to the insults. Although the names still hurt him, they were not at the root of his fear. His anxieties came from the constant thought of what was to come. How would they torture him next? When the lights went out would something come flying across the room and land on his head?

Only when he heard the sound of their deep rhythmic breathing would he allow himself to fully relax.

His watch alarm was set for five thirty each morning so he could be awake before they were. Alert and ready.

He stopped to think – when he’d woken he’d been thinking about his lessons.

‘Aah,’ he said aloud as he reached across his bed to the small bookcase.

He opened his biology book, and the essay fell out.

Relieved that it had not been taken this time he reached for it and headed towards the door but paused before he got there. A sick feeling began to build in his stomach as his brain caught up with something his eyes had already noted. Maybe he was wrong, he thought, hopefully, as he turned back towards the bed.

The sweat beads increased as he realised he wasn’t wrong at all.

The stripes on his pillowcase were not perfectly in line with the stripes on his bed cover.

It was a checking mechanism he had devised after his roommates had poured a whole box of Coco Pops and a pint of milk into his bed.

He approached the bed with caution as his heart began to hammer in his chest. As ever, his anxiety was fuelled by the trepidation of whatever they’d done to him now. He had a vision of his mattress crawling with maggots or some kind of insect. Damn the fact that he’d been so eager to get down to breakfast. He should have known better than to leave the three of them alone.

He touched the corner of the quilt tentatively and began to peel it back, looking through squinted eyes. His breath seemed to stop in his chest as he saw the plain white cloth of his bedsheet. He almost collapsed with relief as he tore the quilt off completely.

And then he saw it.

Right in the middle of his bed lay a single playing card.

He stared down at the ace of spades.

Forty-Seven

‘Sorry, sir, do you want to run that by me again? I don’t think Bryant heard you right,’ Kim asked incredulously, looking first at Woody and then to her partner who appeared equally dumbstruck.

‘The school is not being closed down,’ he repeated as a muscle jumped in his cheek. She was unsure if that was linked to her attitude or what was actually coming out of his mouth.

She had called him the second they’d left the morgue and had been surprised at his instruction to come in as they were leaving the Coffee-Todd home. His revelation that the school was not closing down following a second murder would not land in any sensible, processing part of her brain.

One murder in one house and the whole street got closed down.

‘But surely Ofsted will be all over—’

‘Stone, you know as well as I do that independent schools don’t have a single umbrella organisation and—’

‘But they have to be registered with the government,’ she protested. ‘Surely someone can close them down?’

‘Stone, Heathcrest is registered with the Independent Schools Council and is assessed regularly by their inspectorate. They have to satisfy criteria across five main areas, which are moral and social development, premises and accommodation, complaints procedures, quality of education and safeguarding which—’

‘Well, there you are, then. Safeguarding covers health and safety, which Thorpe can’t contest and keep his face straight at the same time, surely?’

‘If you interrupt me one more time you will be removed from this case, do you understand?’

Kim seethed inwardly but nodded.