This Page Is Blank - Part 2

He takes the exam paper from the pile and opens it.

Question 1: Do you know who killed Jennifer Pyke?

He shifts back, pushing the table away, almost toppling it.

"Answer." Her strangled voice comes from the back row of desks. "Answer." She repeats.

Halford does not want to comply, but the girl seems so angry. He takes the pen from his pocket and writes in the space.

"I don't know who killed Jennifer Pyke."

She screams, and soil pours from her mouth, covering the desk and the floor around her. "Tell the truth, sir! Tell the truth!"

Halford's heart is thumping, his hands clammy with sweat. Looking up from the paper, the girl is three rows closer. "Tell the truth, sir," she says again.

When he speaks, his voice is high-pitched, like a child, and he hates himself for being so afraid. "What do you want from me?"

"You've never told. That's why I have soil in my eyes."

Halford is about to plead with her, tell her he knows nothing about her disappearance, but he closes his mouth.

There was one thing, wasn’t there. On the night she disappeared, he came out of school late, past the bike shed and walked down the hill towards the school entrance. He did see something, but it was dusky and they were far away, in the car park.

A schoolgirl, one of the older girls getting into a car. He hadn’t known it was Jennifer Pyke at the time, but he often struggled to tell the children apart. She was getting into the passenger seat of a red car. A saloon.

Later, when everyone in town was losing their mind over the disappeared girl, even when the finger of suspicion was pointed at Halford himself, he never thought of mentioning the sighting to the police. That would have been the worst of all worlds, casting suspicion, accusing, when he had no concrete reason for doing so. And what would that have done for his career?

He looks down at the paper again, with its single, insistent question, then back to Jennifer. She is in the front row now and Halford fights the urge to stand and back away.

“Tell the truth.” She says, “Help them find me.”

He looks more closely at her, at the translucent browns and greens and whites which create her disgusting rotted form, and sees through her, past her. He squints and spies the line of desks behind.

Halford draws himself up in his chair and swallows. “What if I don’t?” he says.

She snarls and more soil falls from her mouth and eyes. “Then I will never leave you.”

A different part of his brain is taking the lead now, the same part which stared at his father with such fury and fascination, the piece of him which despises anyone who has tried to get close. Shock, fear and disgust, are still there, but Halford is pushing these aside for the sake of control.

“Tell me where you are buried.” he says, “Where did he put you?”

Jennifer tilts her head at this and it takes a while before she finally answers. “If I tell you where, will you tell the truth?”

“I promise,” Halford replies, the tiniest hint of a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. 

 

***

"Enter," Jonathan Lewis calls from the other side of the office door, and Halford goes in. The headmaster is seated behind a desk, framed by the window behind him. Beyond, a view of the playground is blocked by the branches of a sycamore tree.

Lewis gestures to the chair on the other side of the desk. "Sit down, Philip, sit. What can I do for you?"

Halford places his palms together and takes a deep breath. "Jonathan, it's the Pyke girl."

"Now, now. You know that's all blown over. Nobody suspects you anymore, Philip. Nobody who matters, anyway."

"It's not that. There's been a development, you see."

"A development?" Lewis juts out his chin, his expression a parody of confusion.

"Yes, you see, I know that you killed her."

Silence fills the room to bursting. Lewis does not take his eyes from Halford's.

Eventually, the headmaster replies, "You could not possibly know such a thing because it is obviously not the case that I would have murdered a young girl. Why would you come into my office and say such a thing? Have you taken leave of your senses?"

Halford chuckles. "You know the footpath that goes from the footpath on the Stratford Road into the fields around the Stour?"

Lewis says nothing but sits back in his chair.

"Take the path that runs parallel to the river," Halford says, "then climb the hill toward a copse of trees. Go into the wood from the western edge, and about twenty meters along, you will see a pile of dead grass, which looks slightly incongruous among the mud and the tree roots. It covers disturbed ground. A grave. You know the place, don't you, Jonathan?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Over his shoulder, beyond the window, a tree branch wilts, and a figure appears, sitting, watching, soil falling from her eyes and mouth.

"Oh, but you do," Halford continues, "You walk your dog out that way, don't you? You go there all the time."

Lewis's mouth falls open.

"Yes, I've seen you, standing by her grave. What is it, Jonathan? Gloating? Just the pleasure of knowing while everyone else is left to wonder?"

The figure on the branch in the window is nodding, pleased with the way this is going.

"You're talking nonsense," Lewis says, but the fight is going out of him, Halford can tell.

"I wonder what evidence they would find, Jonathan, if I were to tip the police off. Are there fragments of your skin still trapped under her fingernails?"

Lewis is breaking down. He rocks back and forth in his chair, twisting his hands together, his breathing uneven, panicked. "How could you know such a thing?" he says.

"A little birdie told me," Halford replies. He lets the headmaster squirm on the hook for a short while longer, pleased by the spectacle of this arrogant man disintegrating in front of him.

Finally, Halford interrupts his blubbing. "But it doesn't have to be a problem, does it?"

Lewis stops his rocking and looks up. "What do you mean?"

The figure on the tree goes stock still.

"I mean, I'm here, aren't I? I'm not at the police station making a statement."

"Okay."

"I'm ready to give you a choice."

On the tree, Jennifer is screaming, pulling at her loose skin, her eyes huge in their sunken cavities. But Halford tunes her out.

"What kind of a choice?" Lewis asks.

"You will make sure that I am confirmed as deputy head next week, won't you, Jonathan?"

Jennifer Pyke's screaming reaches a new level of intensity. Halford shakes his head, focusing on Lewis.

"Oh, yes, of course. You will be the deputy, that goes without saying."

"And a year from now, you will retire, ill-health or something like that."

"I see," Jonathan says, but he is shaking his head.

She is standing on the window ledge now, her decayed face pressed up against the glass.

Halford continues, "And you will make a very firm recommendation to the board of governors regarding your replacement as headmaster, yes."

"Yes," Lewis replies.

"Good."

Jennifer Pyke is wild now, disbelief etched across her face, a paroxysm of outrage.

It’s strange, Halford thinks, but the sound of her screaming and thrashing against the glass should be intolerably loud, but he doesn’t mind.

With the warm glow of triumph coursing through his veins, the noise doesn’t bother him one little bit.

 

THE END