The The Name of the Star (14 page)

He turned and walked away. Jazza and I wasted no time in running into the building, right up the stairs, and into our room. I slammed the door behind us.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They just took me and . . . they asked me about what we did . . . and I told them about how we went out and went to the roof . . . and they didn't care about that, really . . . They wanted to know about the man . . . but I didn't see the man . . . I don't know how I didn't see him, but I didn't, and that's all they wanted to know about, and I couldn't tell them anything so . . . oh, God.”

She dropped onto her bed. I sat next to her.

“It's fine,” I said. “You did fine. They promised we wouldn't get in trouble.”

“I don't care about that! I don't understand how I didn't see him. And who was that? That policeman? He didn't look like a policeman. He looked our age. Can you be our age and be a policeman? I suppose you can, but . . . he doesn't look like one, does he? Though, I suppose . . . I suppose policemen don't look like any particular kind of person, but still. He doesn't look like one, does he?”

No. He didn't look like a policeman. Policemen were supposed to look . . . not like him. He did look young. More than that, he looked a little too well kept, with fancy designer glasses and smooth, pale skin.

Jazza took the card from my hand and examined it.

“This is a mobile number,” she said. “Shouldn't a police card have the number of a main switchboard or something? Shouldn't you just dial 999 if there's a problem? I'll bet you he's a reporter. He has to be a reporter. It's illegal to masquerade as a policeman.”

None of this was helping my queasy feeling. I began to pace.

“I think you should go back to the library and report what just happened,” she said.

“I don't really want to go back out there right now.”

We had a few moments of independent fretting, then Jazza got up with a determined look on her face.

“If Claudia suspects something, that we went out, she might tell Charlotte. Charlotte's her minion.”

“So? Charlotte doesn't know we went out.”

“But she knows about the window bars in the toilet. Come on.”

I followed Jazza back downstairs, where she proceeded to the bathroom in what I suspect was supposed to be a very stealthy way. It was a little more rabbitlike, with quick moves and nervous glances. She dashed into the bathroom and, once she checked to make sure it was empty, went right to the window, opened it, and gave the bars a shake. They were firmly bolted again.

Jazza gripped the bars until her knuckles went white and closed the window.

“I hate her,” she said.

Even I wasn't sure that it was fair to blame Charlotte for the fact that someone had become aware of the window bars. But Jazza needed to blame Charlotte. It was important for the balance of her mind. Someone had to be blamed if we went down for this, and I was glad it wasn't me.

“We're having tea,” she said calmly. “And we are not going to get upset. I am going to make the tea.”

With that, she strode back upstairs. She grabbed two mugs off the shelf above her desk and two tea bags from her jar of special tea bags. I left her to it, pulled my robe on over my clothes, and went to the window. Outside, the line of police was still marching down the green. They stretched from one side to the other, no more than two feet apart. The only area they avoided was the part with the white tent, which had its own staff searching the ground. They were quite literally looking at every single inch of the green.

Last night felt like it had happened years before.

And then I noticed that right below our building, down on the cobblestone street, was the young policeman. He was staring right at my window, right at me. Jazza was right. He couldn't be a policeman. He looked really young. Yet, there he was, standing around in the middle of half the police in London. You would think that they would notice if there was a fake policeman in their midst.

I made eye contact with him, making sure he knew I saw him. He quickly walked away.

15

T
HE WHITE TENT WAS THERE ALL DAY SUNDAY. It glowed at dusk, when it was illuminated by dozens of high-powered work lights. The press was there too, hovering on the edges of campus, watching. The school sent around an e-mail saying how really, really safe it all was, even though there was a homicide investigation going on on the green at that very second, and several psychologists were being called in to talk to anyone who felt like they needed support.

And people were freaked out, but they showed it in weird ways. Back at home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford, some people just aggressively pretended nothing was happening. Eloise, for example, sat in her room and smoked and read French novels. Charlotte patrolled the halls, poking her big red head into our rooms. Angela and Gaenor drank their way through a small crate of wine bottles they'd smuggled in, staggering into our room at points with mugs full of red wine. One of them hung a pink bra from our lighting fixture. I left it there. It was a nice bra.

At night, you could hear high-pitched nervous chatter through our halls. No one could sleep, so everyone talked. I think things were largely the same over at Aldshot. Most of the guys showed up at breakfast with red eyes with deep shadows under them, indicating either lots of reading or lots of booze.

My parents tried to put me on a train to Bristol, but I insisted that I had to stay, that we were perfectly safe. And we were, really. We were knee-deep in police and all of our movements were recorded. They eventually accepted this, but they also called every two hours or so. My entire family called. Uncle Bick and Cousin Diane called several times. Miss Gina called. And then there were the e-mails. Everyone from Bénouville wanted the story. I spent most of Sunday holding a phone in one hand and typing with the other.

I didn't mention to anyone that I had actually
seen
the killer. It was hard to keep this fact quiet. I had the best gossip on the planet, and yet I could say nothing. I was still the Only Witness in the Case, and at any moment, Scotland Yard was going to yank me in and quiz me for hours. Then everyone would know who I was. I'd be all over the news.

I waited for them to come and ask me more questions. But no one came. The news never mentioned a witness. And we never heard a word from Claudia about what we may or may not have been up to on the night of the murder. Wexford was true to its word. If they knew we'd gone to the roof, they were giving us a pass.

Classes were canceled on Monday morning, by which point there was a definite funk in the air in Hawthorne. I don't want to say the building stank, but there was a closeness. The heaters were on full blast, the air was thick with moisture and stress hormones. On Monday afternoon, they allowed us to go to class and to the library, but our movements were strictly controlled. We had to stick to the cobblestone path at all times. They put up nylon barriers on the edge of the green so that we couldn't see the tent as easily—but we still had a pretty clear view from any second-story window.

I had a free period, so I went over to the library, just to get out of the building. I thought I went quickly, but by the time I got there, all the carrels were taken, as were all the chairs around the room and all the spots on the floor next to the electrical outlets.

I decided to go upstairs, and I made my way back to the literature section. I peered down each one until I found Alistair. He was there—same magnificent hair, same big trench coat and Doc Martens boots. He had only changed positions. Now he was sitting in the windowsill, still mostly in the dark.

“Mind if I sit here?” I asked. “There's nowhere downstairs.”

“Do what you like,” he said, not looking up.

I hit the switch at the end of the aisle and took my place on the floor. The floor was cold, but at least it was somewhere to sit, and somewhere not totally on my own. After ten minutes, the light automatically clicked off. I looked over to see if Alistair was going to get up and turn it back on, but he just kept on reading. I peeled myself from the floor and flicked the switch.

“It's bad for your eyes,” I said. “Reading in the dark.”

Alistair smirked a little. I didn't know why. There was nothing funny about eyestrain. I hadn't been there very long when Jerome appeared at the end of the aisle, his computer under his arm.

“Jazza said you were over here,” he said. “Can I talk to you? I need to show you something.”

Jerome was so preoccupied that he didn't even acknowledge Alistair's presence.

Jerome led me to one of the tiny study rooms that lined the first floor. All the rooms were occupied, but he found one containing three year twelves who were all playing video games.

“Out,” he said, opening the door. “We need this room.”

There were cries of protest, but Jerome pushed the door open wider.

“Study use only,” he said. “Out.”

“Using your prefect powers for evil?” I asked as they shuffled past us. One of them was considerably taller than Jerome and looked down at him with palpable disdain, but Jerome didn't care. He was already setting up his computer.

“Shut the door,” he said. “Sit down.”

There were three chairs and a tiny table in the room. The room wasn't wide enough for a fourth chair. It wasn't really wide enough for the little table. I slipped in next to Jerome, who was logging on and pulling up a site.

“I have to warn you,” he said. “This is disturbing. But you should see it. Everyone's going to see it soon enough.”

He was on a site called Ripperfiles. In the middle of the front page was a video screen. He hit the Play symbol.

The footage was in night vision, which meant that it had a greenish-gray cast, with bright white highlights. The first frames were of a garden and a patio with a few empty tables. I realized immediately that this had to be the Flowers and Archers.

After thirty seconds or so of this, a gate opened. Someone walked into the garden, very straight-backed and stiff. It was a woman. She was wearing a skirt and a coat. She crossed from the left of the frame to the right, until she was positioned almost perfectly in the eye of the camera, then she turned slowly.

Her eyes said it all. They were huge points of white light. She stood there, utterly unmoving except for a light heaving of constrained cries. Her attention seemed focused on something in front of her, just out of view. Then she jerked to the side, toppling against the fence and bouncing to the ground. She began to fight, arms flailing. It was only then that I realized that she wasn't looking at someone outside of the camera's range. There was simply no
murderer
there. The victim was well in the center of the yard, so her assailant should have been fully visible. But there was no one. She flailed at the air. Then there was a flash, a little glint of something streaking across the screen, and she went still. Her legs suddenly jerked up, so that the knees were bent and the heels placed on the ground. Then the knees were knocked open. Then a glint again.

Jerome reached over and hit Pause.

“You don't want to see the rest,” he said. “I'm sorry I saw it.”

“I don't get it,” I said. “What was that?”

“That was the footage from the pub. It wasn't destroyed.”

“But it can't be.”

“It is. A member of this site got it straight from the backup server. This is it.”

“It's obviously just someone acting out the crime.”

“Honestly,” he said, “it's real. This site . . . These people are serious. Obviously, something's been done to the footage to remove the assailant, but no one can figure out what. This has been passed around to all kinds of technical experts, and no one can figure out what's been done to it. This video? It's going to be all over the place. Every conspiracy nut in the world is going to go crazy for this.”

The image was still frozen there—the woman on her back, the strange glint hanging in the air. Jerome closed the computer partway.

“The other night,” I said. “When we were sneaking back in. I saw someone.”

“You're a witness?” he asked.

“I was,” I said. “They made me do something called an E-fit.”

“You did an
E-fit
?”

I explained to Jerome about the man—how he had appeared from around the corner, how he had seen me climbing back into the window. Jerome was completely staggered by this. His jaw dropped open slightly. He was fairly loose-jawed to begin with—hence his power to declare Total War on his food, his easy smiles, his ability to talk for ages. We had probably been this close before, shoved together on the benches of the refectory, but I became acutely aware that we were alone in this little study room. Study closet, really. And we were closer now than I remembered. We must have been moving together while I was watching the video.

“It's been weird,” I said. “Jazza didn't see him. She was inside. I was still out on the sidewalk, so . . . they're only talking to me. But I think they think I'm crazy. Or lying. They haven't been in touch.”

“I'm sure they'll get in touch when they catch him,” he said. “Then they'll probably bring you in to identify him.”

That made sense. There was no point in contacting me until they had something to ask me.

We were so close now that I couldn't look directly at him, not at his eyes, anyway. This is when it finally dawned on me that he hadn't brought me in here for the sole purpose of watching a video of someone being murdered (though that was probably
part
of the reason).