Death of a Teacher (26 page)

Molly shook her head. Suzy heard herself shouting in her anxiety. ‘But do you know anything about what’s going on? It’s Ro on the phone. Not the police. Are you scared of the police, Molly?’

Molly started to howl again, the noise filling the room.

A few minutes later, Suzy rang Ro back. ‘Molly’s in a terrible state. She’s told me that one of the boys, Jonty McFadden, has been bullying Becky about something, but I can’t get it out of Molly. Becky has been upset all day. Her phone was stolen, apparently.’

‘That’s odd. My sergeant’s just been on the mobile filling me in on the details. Apparently Judith Dixon had a text message from Becky saying the 
class finished at five thirty when it really finished at five. When Judith turned up, Becky wasn’t there and the school was deserted.’

‘But if Becky’s phone was stolen, then it couldn’t have been her who texted her grandma.’

‘Exactly.’

This was beginning to sound frighteningly like a planned event. Someone had deliberately given Judith the wrong information about the time the school class finished. And according to Sergeant Liddle, Phil Dixon had told his wife he was going to Carlisle for a meeting with the bishop about the chapel and he’d not been heard from since. It was a crazy possibility, but had Phil abducted his own granddaughter to save her from sitting the Dodsworth exam? Ro suspected that the Dixons’ marriage wasn’t all it seemed, but Phil would not have to go to such desperate lengths to defy Judith, would he? Ro shook her head vigorously, started the car again and continued driving towards St Mungo’s, hunched over the wheel. The rain was heavy now, smashing against the windscreen. It came in odd bursts, stormy and hard, then easing off between each assault.

As she drove, Ro went over the facts. It wasn’t just Phil who was out of contact. So was Jed. She hadn’t heard from him since his revelation about Richard Rudder. Where was he? There was another crazy possibility. Had Jed met Becky from school? Had he taken her off somewhere, with some mad idea of protecting her from the world, the flesh, and the Devil in one of his self righteous, sin-hating moments?

Ro reached St Mungo’s car park, sat in the car and racked her brains for the answer. She was under orders to stay at the school, and this time she was going to do as she was told. So she could do nothing but sit, think, and listen to the rain on the car roof.

The car, with Becky Dixon sitting white-faced, trussed, gagged and
blindfolded
in the front, bumped up the track which led from the shore road to St Trallen’s Chapel. It was unnaturally dark, with a strong wind blowing, and rain sweeping in bursts from the sea. The shore was deserted, and the car had passed an empty Briggs’ ice cream shop, with the plastic awning flapping hysterically in the wind.

The vehicle swayed and dipped over the humps in the path; it pulled up just beyond the chapel in a dip. It couldn’t be seen from the road or the track. The driver headed right into the gorse and bracken, until it was as high as the car.

Becky knew it was wrong to get into a car with a stranger, and yet with Jonty’s knife in her back it had been a reflex action to jump forward into the seat. She could still feel the chapel keys in her pocket. Jonty had told her to 
bring them to school, and that if she didn’t he was going to do something horrible to Molly. ‘She’s big now and she’s got tits. She might even enjoy it,’ he had said. But why did he want the chapel keys? Becky had thought that maybe Jonty wanted to vandalize the chapel, or use it to smoke in, or as a love shack, or a place to take Molly. All day long Becky had felt a sense of
something
awful impending. For hours, her mouth had been dry and her knees weak because something bad was going to happen. And now this was it. And it was worse.

‘Get out of the car,’ the driver said. The voice was odd, neither squeaky nor gruff. ‘Walk through the bracken. It might scratch you, but that’s the least of your worries. We’re walking to the chapel. Be quick. This is the only worrying bit. If they don’t see us now, once we’re inside we’re safe. The chapel’s a wonderful place, isn’t it? You think that, don’t you? You love it.’ There was a tinny little laugh which made bile come into Becky’s throat.

The wind was whipping at her hair, and was icy on the bit of her face that was still exposed. She stumbled; she was picked up and pushed forward. Her arm was twisted up her back, and they ploughed through the undergrowth towards St Trallen’s. At the door, Becky felt hands fumbling in her pockets, and the keys dragged out. The heavy hinges swung and she heard it creak open. She was pushed inside, and she fell face downwards.

‘Ouch!’ she said. She heard the laugh again.

‘Now,’ the voice whispered in her ear, ‘do you know what is going to happen to you? It’s what happens to an awful lot of neurotic little girls of your age. You’re going to commit suicide. You’re going to do it now, and quickly. You’re worried about the Dodsworth exam and you’re going to do it here because this is your special place. It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’ Becky didn’t realize for a moment. Then she
understood
. ‘You want me to kill myself? You can’t make me do that.’ It seemed so crazy that for a moment she thought it was some sort of joke.

‘Yes, I can. And then I’m going to look for what Miss Hodgy Pasty Podgy hid in here. We’re going to kill two birds with one stone.’

Becky heard the noise of rustling, as if through the pockets of a heavy waxed coat. Then she could smell the linseed and feel the roughness on her neck. It was a rope.

R
o sat in the car outside St Mungo’s. She had the edge of an intuitive feeling that she was on to something, but it wouldn’t come. She nagged at it. How often did people die mysteriously in Pelliter? Maybe once every decade? And now there were two in three weeks. Both teachers. Ricky Rudder had come to England to chase up some theory about Fraktur Art and to see his brother about ‘serious family business’. He had extreme night blindness. Ro suddenly realized that that was why the dead man’s eyes had been slashed.

‘So no one would know he had retinitis pigmentosa! Night blindness,’ she said to herself. ‘That was the only way he could be associated with John Rudder once he was dead.’

So the Rudders had to be involved in this somehow – but she couldn’t see why. And if she put the question to Liz Rudder again, she would be in more trouble than ever. But now there was this business of John Rudder’s will. She hadn’t managed to explain all that to Sergeant Liddle. From what the rector had said, Brenda Hodgson had been secretly helping the kindly Kevin to get his brother-in-law back on his feet. And John Rudder had made a will,
unbeknownst
to his wife, with Brenda’s help. He had given it to Brenda to hide, according to Peter Hodgson. But where could it be? The CID had gone over Brenda’s house with a fine-tooth comb and there had been no mention of any will being found. Jed would have known, and surely he would have told Ro. So the will had disappeared – and even if it
did
contain something to upset Liz Rudder, it wouldn’t matter now. Brenda was dead and she was the only one who knew where the will was.

Or was that
why
she was dead? Had Brenda been killed because she knew about John Rudder’s will? The idea came to Ro like a physical shock. She felt herself shaking inside her jacket. She ought to tell the sergeant. But he would be preoccupied looking for Becky. The issue of the missing will could wait: the missing child was much more important. 

But say they were linked in some way? Wasn’t it all too much of a
coincidence
– the Rudders, the Hodgsons, the Dixons? All local. All with personal tragedies. What else did they have in common? Could they be related? Ro had lived in Cumbria long enough to know that if you drilled down far enough most local families were connected. Did Richard Rudder look like John Rudder? Alison had seen him. Perhaps she would know. After all, she had said that the young man reminded her of someone.

On impulse, Ro fumbled with her phone and found Alison’s number.

‘Alison. It’s Ro Watson. Look, I know it might seem irrelevant, but listen to me. The man you saw at St Mungo’s that Friday afternoon … Rack your brains Alison. You said he reminded you of someone. Did you know Liz Rudder’s husband John? Was it him?’

‘I’ve never met John Rudder. But yes, the man did remind me of someone. I was thinking about Molly and Becky when I saw him. The man’s hair was black like Becky’s, blowing in the wind. I know it’s ridiculous, but that was the connection. He reminded me somehow of Becky….’

‘And now Becky’s missing …’

Alison cut in ‘Missing? I didn’t know….’

Ro cursed herself. She’d assumed that Alison had been told. But why would she have been? Ro herself had only heard twenty minutes ago, though it seemed like an age.

Alison was talking frantically. ‘She was so upset today at school. She really didn’t want to take the Dodsworth exam.’

So maybe that was it. Maybe it was much more straightforward. Maybe Becky had gone to ground by herself to avoid the exam. Ro interrupted. ‘You’re her teacher, Alison. If she was unhappy about the Dodsworth exam where might she go? Somewhere her grandma couldn’t find her perhaps?’

‘What about St Trallen’s? Her grandma wasn’t very keen on it, but Becky told me it was her favourite place.’

‘That’s sounds a distinct possibility. I’ll go there now. But I’m supposed to stay at the school. I need someone else to help and I can’t get hold of Jed.’

‘That’s because he’s here, with me. He’s listening. He says he’ll meet you there. He says sod Sergeant Liddle. You’re nearest. Get to the chapel  straight away.’

The rope was tied around her arms. Becky felt the whole proceeding with a sort of calm. If I’m going to die I’m going to die, she thought, and her mind seemed to float above her body. Suddenly she felt her head wrenched back.

‘Mustn’t do this too tight and leave marks,’ the funny light voice said. It was almost conversational now. ‘I want you to stand on the altar. There’s rather a convenient beam above.’ 

She heard the whishing sound as the rope flew heavily over the beam and plunked down the other side.

‘It’s going to be easy-peasy, Becky. I lift you on to the altar, prop you up with the noose round your neck then push you off. It’ll be just how you would have done it, if you’d thought of it yourself. I’d originally thought we could do something interesting with the bell rope. But that might have made a noise.’

Becky felt herself being lifted bodily and, though she kicked, it made no impression. She knew from the cold feeling that she had been laid on the altar table. She tried to pray. She had called on St Trallen before, and Jonty’s knife had fallen on to the path. But had her prayers really been answered? Or had Jonty just had a failure of nerve, or a pain in his wrist? Whatever had happened then, it wasn’t happening this time. But though Becky felt
apprehensive
she felt no abject terror. It all seemed ludicrous. And then, like a wave of sweat breaking out over her, she realized that she really was going to die. It was as if her mind came to the surface and told her it was going to hurt. To her horror, part of the wave seemed to be moist and warm. She had wet herself in fear. She screamed soundlessly and then felt herself drifting away again. The last thing she heard was the strange voice saying fussily, ‘Oh dear, I hadn’t bargained on that.’

She faded for a moment, and when she came round she drummed her feet on the altar table, but they hardly made a noise. I’m floating away, she thought. I’ve got to concentrate, to think of something to get help.

She heard the boom and crack of the storm hurling itself at the chapel door. It seemed to have stopped the person doing anything, as if the weather was a warning.

And then the bell at St Trallen’s began to ring for the first time in decades, the noise crashing out in the tiny chapel. The chiming went on and on, more and more frantically. It’s me. Becky thought. It’s the power. I have to keep concentrating, making the bell ring. But it is so exhausting. I really am going to faint now, she thought.

Then she heard her name being called from outside and the bell was more hectic than ever. The tinny little voice was some way away now, making a strange laughing sound. Becky waggled her head, banging it up and down on the altar, until the blindfold slipped.

She saw the hands holding the noose. They were small white hands, like a child’s.

Ro’s phone rang as she drove and she answered, holding the mobile to her ear and trying to see through the rain. It was Jed, also phoning as he drove. But he would be organized and legal, with a hands-free set, Ro thought. Jed, 
always right and proper until the moment his niece went missing and he was off-piste himself.

‘Why didn’t you answer the phone, Jed? Everyone else is on the case.’

‘So why didn’t anyone else think of St Trallen’s?’

‘Why should they? Phil Dixon has gone to Carlisle apparently and it isn’t Judith Dixon’s sort of place.’

‘I’ll see you there in five minutes.’

He must be driving like a lunatic, Ro thought. What had made him go to see Alison MacDonald and not answer a call from the sergeant? There must be a hell of an attraction there, Ro thought. That would explain Jed’s nervy rudeness to Alison from the start.

The clouds made the night unnaturally dark. Big splodges of rain were appearing on the windscreen. On the coast road it was even more uncanny. The wind seemed to buffet the car, and when Ro reached the bend before St Trallen’s Head the waves from the usually placid Solway were crashing over the road. At Briggs’, the shop owner was fighting to get the racks of goods and the awning inside. Once Briggs’ store was behind her, the road was dark and completely empty.

Ro swung the car up the bumpy track towards the chapel and parked outside. It was deserted. She walked round the building and checked the door: it was locked. She heard Jed’s car coming up the track, and screech into the dip in front of her, scattering sand and gravel. She called out over the wind, ‘I’ve been shouting her name. There’s no sign of her. It’s locked.’

Ro turned back towards her own car, and a blast of wind caught her on the side of the face, making her scar sting with pain. And that was when the bell started to ring. The noise was sudden, loud and powerful, a clanging, screaming sound that seemed much greater than any one tiny bell could make. It seemed to shake the ground under them.

‘It’s the wind!’ Jed yelled. ‘It’s a freaky wind.’

Ro shouted though he could hardly hear her. ‘No. It’s not blowy enough for that. It could be Becky ringing the bell in there. She could be trapped. The wind might have blown the door shut.’ It was a crazy idea but Ro felt that somehow she was right. The bell was telling her …

Jed shouted, ‘OK, there’s a little round window at the back. I’ll lift you. Break it and look in.’

The bell was clanging wildly now. Ro felt the full blast of the wind on her face as she turned around. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. They scrambled through the gorse to the back of the chapel. And for a moment there was calm.

‘Becky!’ Ro screamed. ‘Becky, are you there?’

Jed shouted too, ‘Becky! Becky can you hear us?’ 

Jed lifted Ro up to the little stained-glass window of the saint. She clenched her fist and punched it through, feeling the shards on her skin. Jed heaved her further and she could see inside.

‘Becky!’ she screamed. The girl lay on the altar. Then a figure leapt up beside her with a rope, placed the noose round its own neck and launched itself off the table.

Swinging there, his neck broken by the force of his leap, Liz Rudder’s brother Kevin stared back at Ro.

Jed forced his car through the gorse to the back of the chapel and stood on the roof to break in through the window and climb inside, while Ro phoned the Dixons and assured a sobbing Judith that Becky was safe. Then she called Sergeant Liddle. Most of the Norbridge Force was despatched to the chapel, along with scene of crime officers and paramedics.

Judith Dixon explained how Phil had been summoned to Carlisle for a meeting with the Bishop about the chapel. But when he had arrived at five o’clock, there was no meeting in the bishop’s diary. He was driving home now as fast as he could. The police came to take statements and Sergeant Liddle arrived in his own car.

Ro walked out into the garden, turning up her collar against the wind, which had dwindled to a mere whisper. She didn’t want to wait with Judith and Jed, who were family after all, however awkwardly they were talking to each other in the big farmhouse kitchen. Ro stood in the sheltered garden of the farmhouse, set in a dip in the rolling foothills of the fells. The wind was dropping now, as if its job was done, and the heavy clouds had started to lift, so that the evening sunshine was filtering softly through. There were still odd streaks of gold and ruby in the sky.

‘Well done,’ Sergeant Liddle said to Ro when he came outside to find her. ‘You’ve redeemed yourself all right. You’ll have to cope with the CID now. It’s a dog’s breakfast, isn’t it? But it’ll come clear in the end.’

‘I think I understand a lot of it. John Rudder is Becky’s father, isn’t he? I think he must have left his property to her in his will, the one I was trying to tell you about, Sergeant, when you told me Becky was missing. I think Kevin must have known she was going to inherit his brother’s property so he wanted to try and kill her, but when he heard us outside …’ Or when he heard the bell ring, Ro thought, and shuddered. That was the weirdest thing. She shook her head and said, ‘So was Richard Rudder from Canada John Rudder’s brother?’

‘If you say so. You seem to be the only person who knows what’s been going on. But what you don’t know is that John Rudder died this afternoon.’

‘That must have been the catalyst….’ 

Jed had strolled out after the sergeant. He looked at the two of them. ‘I don’t really understand any of this.’

‘No doubt she’ll explain everything to you,’ Sergeant Liddle said drily, nodding towards Ro.

Not everything, Ro though. No one could ever explain the bell, ringing like that just when they were about to go away from the chapel.

Then Phil Dixon’s car came rolling into the farmyard and Ro had this terrible urge to run up to him and tell him it was all right. But Judith got there first.

That night, Ro slept for six hours without waking. She had seen and heard horrible things which should have guaranteed her nightmares, but instead she slept as she hadn’t slept for years. When she woke, she had to pull herself out of a deeper world almost by willpower. Her waking dream was a strange mix of images – medieval artwork of glorious colours and her own Fraktur painting coming to life. It was a happy dream, which made her awakening odd and dislocated. Something terrible had happened, but she sensed it was all right now. Things were slipping into focus. She took in the calm world around her: the sunlight on the curtains, the warmth of the duvet.

She saw Ben off to school in a daze, but he had only been out of the house a few minutes when the phone rang. Not surprisingly it was Jed. He was already at work at the police station.

‘CID is going through Kevin Rudder’s office. They reckon they’ll have an idea of what was going on by the end of the day. Can I come over and see you later?’

‘Please do. Fill me in on it all,’ Ro said. ‘I’m not leaving Burnside today.’