‘Are you a psychologist?’
‘Don’t I look like one?’
‘I don’t know any. I heard you were an Oxford don.’
‘I have worked at Oxford, I’ve been a teacher, I ran a school, but I’ve also been a fisherman. Which do you think is most important?’
April didn’t like him. She hated the way he threw her question back at her, trying to unsettle her.
‘I didn’t think this interview was about me. Don’t you want to ask about Layla?’
‘Is there something you want to tell me about her?’ said the doctor.
‘No, I just thought that was why you were here. Inspector Reece said—’
‘You’re quite close to DI Reece, aren’t you?’ interrupted Tame. ‘Quite … pally?’
‘No, not really. He’s just the officer investigating my dad’s death.’
‘Yes, yes, a tragic affair,’ said the doctor, gazing up towards the ceiling. ‘Raises a lot of questions.’
‘Questions? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, such as who killed him,’ said Tame, meeting her gaze. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted to know.’
‘Of course I do,’ said April.
‘Is that why you wanted to kill Layla?’
April felt all the air push out of her lungs. For a moment she couldn’t speak.
‘Kill her?’ she finally spluttered.
Tame reached for a file on the desk and flipped it open. ‘Yes, kill her. Those were your words weren’t they? “I’ll kill you”?’
She felt a huge rush of anxiety. They couldn’t take that seriously, could they? People said things like that all the time. She hadn’t meant she was actually going to kill Layla.
‘Yes, I said it. We were having a fight, she had just said something bad about my father and I was angry. But I didn’t mean I was actually going to kill her.’
‘Powerful emotion, anger,’ said the doctor. ‘Can make ordinary people do things they wouldn’t usually do. Like Layla, for example.’
April frowned.
‘You think she was angry?’
The doctor sighed and pushed himself up. He seemed weary.
‘Who can say? Her boyfriend died in tragic circumstances. The normal response to such tragedies is to become angry, to want to blame someone. Perhaps someone he was cheating on her with, perhaps?’
‘Who? With me? No!’
‘But that’s what Layla thought, wasn’t it? That’s why you were fighting that day. Her friends have all told me. She said, “Stay away from my man.” But you didn’t, did you?’
Tame walked around the desk, perching on the front, right before April.
‘Did you kiss him, April?’ he asked, leaning in close.
‘No!’ she said, pulling away, her chair scraping on the floor. ‘I didn’t. Layla was paranoid.’
‘Really?’ asked Tame, that half-smile on his face. ‘Are you telling me the truth?’
‘Yes I am,’ said April, pushing herself back in the chair as far as she could go. Having the man so close to her was giving her the creeps.
‘Mmm … I wonder,’ said Tame, standing up and walking back around the desk. He sat down and began writing. April watched him for a moment, before he glanced up. ‘Oh, you can go,’ said Tame, waving his pale hand. Confused and upset, April quickly walked to the door.
‘Just one last thing,’ said Tame as she turned the handle. ‘Who did Layla think was going to kill her?’
‘Pardon?’ stuttered April.
‘Oh come now, don’t look so shocked. Your chum Mr Reece wrote it up in his report.’ Tame bent forward to read another paper in front of him. ‘She said “they were after her”. Who are “they”?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you do, Miss Dunne. I really think you do.’
Then he waved his had again, as if he was shooing a fly from the room.
‘We’ll speak again.’
Mr Sheldon was waiting for her outside his office.
‘How was your little chat?’
April glared at him.
‘Can I go back to class?’ She’d had enough questioning for now.
‘No, April, you cannot,’ said Mr Sheldon, taking her by the arm and steering her towards an empty classroom. ‘I need to speak to you too.’
Once inside, April sat on a chair and crossed her arms.
‘Look, April, I know it’s difficult but we must get to the bottom of this. There has been enough unpleasantness already.’
‘Unpleasantness? Is that what you call it?’
Mr Sheldon looked as if he was about to shout at her, then seemed to think better of it.
‘I’m sorry, April,’ he said. ‘It really must be hard for you. You’ve had to deal with so much since you came to Ravenwood and I can sympathise, I really can. But you need to understand that my responsibility is to all the students here.’
He glanced towards the office and lowered his voice.
‘I’ll be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure the police are on top of this and that’s a worry when you are in charge of hundreds of young people.’
April nodded. It made sense, although she suspected he was more worried about his own neck than he was about the kids at Ravenwood.
‘So is it all right if I ask you a few questions now?’ said the headmaster with a slight smile.
‘Only if you’ll answer one first. What are you doing with my mother?’
Sheldon barked out a laugh.
‘Is that what you’re worried about? Heavens, April, your mother is still grieving over your father’s death.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘People deal with loss in their own way, April. Your mother is a good woman and she only wants the best for you.’
Just then, there was a light knock at the door and Mrs Bagly put her head into the room.
‘Sorry, Headmaster,’ she said, holding up a mobile phone. ‘Important call.’
‘I’m in the middle of something, Mrs Bagly,’ he replied.
She pulled a face. ‘It’s the
chairman
,’ she said, widening her eyes for emphasis.
Mr Sheldon looked at April, then back at the phone. ‘Very well. We’ll continue this later April, all right?’
He took the phone and walked into a corner of the classroom. As Mrs Bagly ushered April out, she could hear him talking.
‘Yes, I’m sorry … I know it’s a school, of course, and Ravenwood’s reputation is uppermost in my … yes, yes, I’ll get it sorted as soon as possible, you have my word.’
‘Is he in trouble?’ asked April as the secretary escorted her back to her class.
‘I don’t think the governors are too happy that the police are using school facilities for their investigation. It wouldn’t look good in the papers, would it?’
‘No, no I suppose not,’ she said.
‘I don’t know why you’re so disappointed Hawk’s not the Regent,’ said Caro. ‘Is it because he’s after your mum and you wanted an excuse to kill him?’
‘No! I don’t want to kill anyone.’
‘Well you could have fooled me. You look like you’d strangle the next person to ask you the time.’
They were sitting in the refectory eating lunch or, in April’s case, pushing some rice salad around her plate. She was still unsettled by her encounter with Dr Tame and the way her mother and Mr Sheldon seemed to be playing some sort of elaborate game with each other.
‘So if Hawk isn’t the Regent, who is?’ said Caro. ‘I mean, he’s in charge of the school, which makes him a suspect, but he’s clearly answering to someone else. So we need to find whoever’s behind the school. This plot to recruit the best kids in the country must be their idea.’
‘Yes, but what are they planning on doing after that?’
‘Take over the world, presumably. It’s not as if they’re breeding these kids to be kind and considerate, to build a better society, is it?’
‘Miss Holden said something similar. They used to be experts in hiding from the world, now it’s as if they’re daring someone to see them, like they want to be discovered.’
‘Well when we track down the Regent, we can ask him about his dastardly plan, just before you give him the kiss of death.’
‘I wish you’d stop treating this like some sort of joke! Someone’s
dead
.’
‘I know, April!’ said Caro, suddenly fierce. Startled, she looked at Caro and saw that she had tears in her eyes. ‘Layla
was my friend,’ she whispered, angrily swiping at her tears with the back of her hand. ‘Okay, so she had turned into a horrible bitch, but before that we were best friends. We grew up together.’
Her shoulders shook and April put her arm around her and led her to a corner where they wouldn’t be overheard.
‘I’m sorry, Caro, I didn’t think,’ she said, handing her some tissue from her bag.
‘S’okay, I just want to find these scumbags and bring them down. So they can’t recruit any more nice people and turn them into their bloody slaves. Layla was great before they got their claws into her. Before … well, you know.’
April narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean “before me”, don’t you? You think if I wasn’t here Layla would be fine?’
‘Well if you hadn’t come here with all your magical powers, then maybe … oh, I don’t know!’
‘Yes you do! You think if I wasn’t here stirring the Suckers up, Layla might be alive. I know you’re upset, Caro, but do you really think they’d be playing nicey-nicey if I hadn’t arrived? They were killing people before I got here, remember?’
‘But they thought she was you, April! They thought she was a’ – she glanced around – ‘a Fury. That’s why they hung her like that, so they wouldn’t get any of her blood on them!’
‘Do you think I don’t know that? Don’t you think that’s sitting on my chest like a five-tonne weight? But I didn’t kill her, Caro. And Layla chose to play dress-up with the Suckers.’
‘But she didn’t know what she was getting into, did she?’
‘I think she did. I think they all do, deep down. I don’t mean it’s their fault. They’re being manipulated. But someone else killed her, Caro. Not me.’
Caro turned to April, her eyes pleading.
‘We’ve got to stop them, A. We can’t let this evil spread any more.’
‘We’ll stop them, honey,’ said April. ‘We will. We have to.’
Caro rubbed her face and tried to smile.
‘Okay then, here’s our chance …’
Davina swept into the room on Benjamin’s arm, dressed entirely in black and wearing over-sized sunglasses.
People crowded around her, cooing.
‘Come on,’ said April, ‘we’re going in.’
‘How are you, Davina?’ asked April.
‘I’ll be okay,’ she said, sniffing, dabbing at her eyes under the sunglasses. ‘I just wish it would all stop. All these deaths. It’s horrible. Layla …’ she broke off to give a loud sob. ‘Sorry, it’s just … I can’t bear to think of her being all alone like that.’
April glanced at Caro and saw a momentary flicker of hurt and anger in her eyes, then it was gone. April knew that her friend was screaming inside, that she wanted to grab Davina by the throat and shake her, but instead she gave Davina a hug. ‘We know,’ said Caro. ‘It must be awful for you.’
‘It is!’ said Davina, looking at Caro as if she was the only person on earth who understood her. ‘She was right there in my house, and then … then she was gone. I keep thinking: what if I had kept her there, what if I’d insisted on a sleepover or something?’
‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ said Caro. ‘We all know you did everything you could for Layla.’
‘God, you’re so right Caro, thank you,’ said Davina with another appreciative look. ‘No one else seems to get it; I tried my best to help Layla. I mean, when I first came to Ravenwood she was just this geeky girl. I turned her into a woman.’
‘Sometimes you can’t help people,’ said Caro. ‘You can only do your best.’
‘That’s what I told the police.’
‘Did they interrogate you, too?’ asked April.
‘Oh honey, you found her, didn’t you?’ said Davina, her hand to her mouth. ‘That must have been so horrid. Were the police asking you hundreds of questions? They must have been. I had them round the house last night for hours. All these horrible little sweaty men asking the same questions over and over again. And then today that strange man, Dr Tame. At least he didn’t keep asking what time Layla left the house.’
‘I saw him this morning. He was creepy.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘What did he ask you?
‘Oh, how long we’d been friends, what had been troubling her. I told them, she had everything to live for – the Spring Ball’s coming up next weekend. We were talking about our dresses. She had this amazing McQueen outfit. Why would anyone pass up the chance to wear that?’
‘You’re so right,’ said Caro.
Davina tilted her head and squeezed Caro’s arm. ‘I wish everyone was as perceptive as you, Caro,’ she said and walked off. April whistled quietly.
‘… And the Oscar for Best Actress goes to Miss Caro Jackson.’
‘It’s not me who should get the Oscar, it’s her,’ said Caro, her suppressed fury making her voice shake. ‘Look at her, flouncing around like she doesn’t know a thing about it.’
‘Do you think it was Davina? You think she put Layla in the noose?’