“Mrs. Townsend?” I said. “I’m DS Morgan. Erin.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yes.” She blushed, putting a hand to her neck. “Lost an earring,” she said.
“Both, by the looks of it,” I said.
She made an odd sort of huffing noise and indicated that I should sit. She tugged at the hem of her blouse and smoothed her grey trousers before sitting herself. If I’d been asked to picture the DI’s wife, I’d have imagined someone quite different. Attractive, well dressed, probably sporty—a marathon runner, a triathlete. Helen wore clothes more suited to a woman twenty years her senior. She was pale, and her limbs soft, like someone who rarely went out or saw the sun.
“You wanted to speak to me about Mark Henderson,” she said, frowning slightly at a pile of papers in front of her. No small talk, then, no preamble—straight down to business. Perhaps that’s what the DI likes about her.
“Yes,” I said. “You’ve heard the allegations made by Josh Whittaker and Lena Abbott, I take it?”
She nodded, her thin lips disappearing as she pressed them together. “My husband told me yesterday. It was, I can assure you, the first I’d heard of such a thing.” I opened my mouth to say something, but she continued. “I recruited Mark Henderson two years ago. He came with excellent references and his results so far have been encouraging.” She shuffled the pages in front of her. “I have specifics if you need them?” I shook my head, and again, she started speaking before I could ask the next question. “Katie Whittaker was conscientious and hardworking. I have her grades here. There was, admittedly, some slippage last spring, but it was short term, she’d improved again by the time . . . by the time she . . .”—she passed a hand over her eyes—“by the summer.” She sank a little into her chair.
“So you had no suspicions, there were no rumours?”
She cocked her head to one side. “Oh, I didn’t say anything about rumours. Detective . . . er . . . Morgan. The rumours that fly around the average secondary school would make your hair curl. I’m sure,” she said, a twitch around her mouth, “that if you put your mind to it, you might be able to imagine the sort of
things they say and write and tweet about me and Ms. Mitchell, the PE teacher.” She paused. “Have you met Mark Henderson?”
“I have.”
“So you understand, then. He’s young. Good-looking. The girls—it is always the girls—say all sorts of things about him. All sorts. But you have to learn to cut through the noise. And I believed I had done that. I still believe I’d done that.” Again I wanted to speak, and again she pressed ahead. “I have to tell you,” she said, raising her voice, “that I am deeply suspicious about these allegations. Deeply suspicious, because of their source and because of the timing.”
“I—”
“I understand that the allegation came first from Josh Whittaker, but I’d be surprised if Lena Abbott isn’t behind all this—Josh dotes on her. If Lena decided that she wanted to deflect attention away from her own wrongdoing—purchasing illegal drugs for her friend, for example—I’m sure she could have persuaded Josh to come up with this story.”
“Mrs. Townsend—”
“Another thing I should mention,” she continued, permitting no interruption, “is that there was some history between Lena Abbott and Mark Henderson.”
“History?”
“A couple of things. First, that her behaviour could at times be inappropriate.”
“In what way?”
“She flirts. Not just with Mark either. It seems she’s been taught that it’s the best way to get what she wants. Many of the girls do it, but in Lena’s case, Mark seemed to feel that it went too far. She made remarks, touched him . . .”
“Touched him?”
“On the arm—nothing outrageous. She stood too close, as the song goes. I had to speak to her about it.” She seemed to flinch slightly at the memory. “She was reprimanded, though of course she didn’t take it seriously. I think she said something along the lines of He wishes.” I laughed at that, and she frowned at me. “It really isn’t a laughing matter, Detective. These things can be terribly damaging.”
“Yes, of course. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Yes. Well.” She pursed her lips again, every inch the schoolmarm. “Her mother didn’t take it seriously, either. Which is hardly surprising.” She coloured, an angry flush of red appearing at her neck, her voice rising. “Hardly surprising at all. All that flirting, the endless batting of lashes and tossing of hair, that insistent, tiresome expression of sexual availability—where do you imagine Lena learned that?” She took a deep breath and exhaled, pushing her hair from her eyes. “The second thing,” she said, calmer now, more measured, “was an incident in the spring. Not flirting this time, but aggression. Mark had to send Lena out of his class because she was being aggressive and quite abusive, using foul language during a discussion about a text they were studying.” She glanced down at her notes. “Lolita, I believe it was.” She raised an eyebrow.
“Well, that’s . . . interesting,” I said.
“Quite. It might even suggest where she got the idea for these accusations,” Helen said, which wasn’t what I’d been thinking at all.
• • •
IN THE EVENING, I drove out to my temporary cottage. It looked much lonelier with dusk looming, the bright birches behind it now ghostly, the chuckle of the river not so much cheerful as menacing. The banks of the river and the hillside opposite were deserted. No one to hear you scream. When I’d come past on my run I’d seen a peaceful idyll. Now I was thinking more along the lines of the desolate cabin of a hundred horror films.
I unlocked the door and took a quick look around, trying, as I did, not to look for blood on the walls. But the place was tidy, with the astringent smell of some sort of citrusy cleaning product, the fireplace swept, a pile of chopped wood neatly arranged at its side. There wasn’t much to it; it was more of a cabin than a cottage, really: just two rooms—a living room with a galley kitchen leading off it, and a bedroom with a small double bed, a pile of clean sheets and a blanket folded on the mattress.
I opened the windows and the door to get rid of the artificial lemon smell, opened one of the beers I’d bought at the Co-op on the way down and sat on the front step, watching the bracken on the hill opposite turn bronze to gold with the sinking sun. As the shadows lengthened, I felt solitude morph into loneliness, and I reached for my phone, not certain who I was going to call. Then I realized—of course—no signal. I hauled myself to my feet and wandered about, waving the phone in the air—nothing, nothing, nothing, until I walked right down to the river’s edge, where a couple of bars appeared. I stood there a while, the water just about lapping my toes, watching the black river run past, quick and shallow. I kept thinking I could hear someone laughing, but it was just the water, sliding nimbly over the rocks.