He struggled over onto his side, but she stayed on top of him. Yelling and punching with both fists now, bright-scarlet droplets sparkling like rubies in the harsh spotlights. The knife fell from his fingers and she snatched it up, slamming the hilt into his face over and over and over. Keeping going till there was nothing left but mush and blood and shattered bones, and Argyll McCaskill wasn’t moving any more.
She sat back on his chest, breath rasping in her throat. Arms aching.
Rain pattered down against her burning shoulders as she stood and stared at the small circle of pale quiet faces.
Lucy hauled in a deep, snarling breath. ‘COME ON! WHICH ONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS WANTS TO BE NEXT?’
A couple of the older kids looked as if they might have been thinking about it, but their gaze drifted to what was left of their assistant headmaster and then they wouldn’t meet her eyes any more.
Didn’t think so.
Lucy threw back her head and howled her rage and glory out into the dark sky. There was a small pause, then Allegra joined in, followed by Hugo, and one by one the other kids took up the cry, until all twelve of them were baying at the storm like a pack of wolves.
The King was dead, long live the Monster.
‘Here. You look like you could use this.’ The headmaster returned from his desk, holding out a tumbler with a very generous measure of whisky ambering the glass.
‘I don’t... You know what? Sod it.’ Took a bit of doing — what with her knuckles being all bloody and cracked and swollen and stinging like an utter bastard — but she accepted the tumbler and knocked back a good mouthful. Hissed out a fiery, smoky breath. Shuddered as all the hairs on her arms clambered to attention. Well, where they weren’t matted down with blood. Hopefully the whisky’s analgesic properties would kick in soon, and dull the stabbing, throbbing aches currently rampaging up and down her body.
Look on the bright side, though: the blistering headache she’d had for the last two months was finally gone.
Lucy winced her way into one of the two matching sofas. And if she left it covered in nasty dark-red stains, tough.
The headmaster’s office was warm and comfortable, pulling steam from her sodden clothes. He’d turned the lights down low, leaving most of the room in darkness, transforming it into a cave. A place to tell stories about the vicious beasts that roamed the world outside.
Even if it was obvious that the two most dangerous animals in the place were right here, having a drink together.
He placed a manila folder on the coffee table in front of her. ‘I believe this is what you were looking for: Benedict Strachan’s entrance exam. The real one.’
She grunted and fumbled out the ‘What I did over the summer holidays’ essay, trying not to get too much blood on the thing. It was nothing like the version Argyll had shown her in the records room. No creepy story about a dead dog, no peeping on screwing couples, no drunken mother, no father flying into a rage... Just a little boy proud of the experiments he was doing with the new chemistry set he’d got for his birthday, and fizzing with excitement about a trip to the Science and Natural History Museums in London.
Lucy flipped through to the aptitude test.
DESCRIBE A HORSE:
60 million years ago, Hyracotherium (more commonly known as Eohippus: the ‘Dawn Horse’) evolved in what is now North America. It was the size of a small Border collie and was primarily a forest browser, presumably to minimize its exposure to predators...
So much for the casual racism and eugenic tendencies that Argyll had been so worried about. Benedict had even dotted his ‘i’s with little bubbles.
Lucy put the essay back on the table and picked up the black-bordered envelope instead. ‘Doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of kid who’d stab a homeless man eighty-nine times.’
‘I don’t know why Argyll felt the need to mislead you, Lucy. If he’d come to me...’ A sigh. ‘Still, that’s all blood under the carpet now, isn’t it?’
‘He wanted us to think Benedict was always bad news. That him killing Liam Hay was inevitable and nothing to do with St Nick’s.’
The headmaster sank into the sofa opposite, holding a glass of his own. ‘I keep telling people: the cover-up gets you into trouble far more often than the crime.’ A sad smile. ‘But no one ever seems to listen.’
She slid the envelope’s contents out. One photo showed Benedict and his mystery friend attacking Liam Hay in the doorway of Hallelujah Bingo; the rest had been taken in the alleyway beside Angus MacBargain’s Family Store. At the bottom of the pile was the confession:
I, Benedict Samuel Strachan, do hereby and of my own free will take full and sole responsibility for the murder of Liam Hay, a homeless man (of no fixed abode), in Castle Hill, on Sunday the 18th of May...
He hadn’t dotted the ‘i’s with little bubbles this time, and the paper was crinkled, as if someone had spilled drops of water on it.
The first photo proved he was definitely involved, but the rest?
Lucy held two of the pictures up. ‘None of these show Benedict stabbing Liam Hay.’ In both, his unnamed accomplice was slamming a knife into Liam’s torso, face a mask of glee, while Benedict stood in the background, one hand over his mouth, eyes wide and shiny.
He probably hadn’t stopped crying till long after he wrote his ‘confession’.
‘To be honest, Benedict didn’t really fit the psychological profile necessary to succeed at St Nicholas College, but his father had power over the planning authority and the school had just been gifted a large parcel of land in Shortstaine ripe for development.’ The headmaster shook his head. ‘Our Board of Governors overruled my objections and insisted Benedict be entered for the final exam anyway. “Greed and hubris are oft the downfall of weak men.”’
She went back to the photo of that gleeful face, the blade hammering down. ‘It was his academic brother, wasn’t it? The other boy. You pair them up and send them out to kill people.’
‘It lets them know they can always trust their fellow students. Because they have to.’ A smile. ‘Friendships forged at St Nicholas College are for life, Lucy.’
‘Who was he: Benedict’s academic brother? Who really killed Liam Hay?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Lucy. It violates our data-protection policy.’
‘Of course it does.’ She knocked back the last of her whisky, a nice warm pressure growing behind her eyes, wrapping her aching flesh in a soft cosy blanket. ‘What happens now?’
‘That’s a very good question.’ The headmaster levered himself out of the sofa and carried his glass over to the front of his office, gazing down through the window at the quad. ‘I see Shauna’s people have arrived. I shall have to send her some flowers as a thank-you.’
Lucy groaned her way upright and limped over there.
Caught in the harsh-white glare of the quadrangle’s floodlights, two figures in the full white SOC get-up were zipping Argyll’s battered remains into a body bag, while two others treated the ground with backpack sprayers that were probably full of trichloroethylene. Getting rid of any nasty contaminants and signs of blood.
‘So Argyll just disappears.’
‘It’s disappointing, to be honest. I wanted to retire in a couple of years, and now I have to train up a new assistant head. And I genuinely liked Argyll. He was a good man.’
‘He tried to kill me!’
‘That’s... unfortunate. But he paid the price for underestimating you, didn’t he? And now, instead of a prime spot in the St Nicholas mausoleum, a brass plaque in the quad, and his painting in the Noble Hall, he’ll be dismembered and hidden away in a number of unmarked graves, never to be spoken of again.’ The headmaster placed a warm papery hand on her forearm. ‘And there’s no need for you to worry about repercussions, Lucy; Shauna’s people are very discreet and extremely thorough. There won’t be any forensic traces to link you with the remains.’