delicious to total fucking crap.
Finished with the jams, you cast a glance at the back of the pantry where there are some bigger jars, huge Kilners, a few of them not far off the size of a small bucket. Usually they are for preserves, marmalades and the like. These jars don’t contain anything sweet though, oh no. These jars contain things which were once far more dangerous. No longer though, not now you have neutralised them.
You leave the pantry and make a shopping list in the margin of the front page of the newspaper. List done, your eyes shift to the main story. The article says the police have found some bodies. Your bodies. With the Special Day so close the news is worrying. What will you do with the next girl? It’s not right she can’t lie with the others. The location means everything. Especially after what happened to you.
Geography. You respect it but other people don’t. They attempt to transcend space with emails and text messages. Electricity moving down wires, electrons buzzing through the air. What’s so wrong with a fucking letter?
But back to the location issue. You’ll have to find somewhere else for her to go when you’ve finished. Not safe at the farm, not with all those police everywhere. Unless they’re gone by then, but you don’t think that’s likely. They’ll be watching. Expecting you to return because that’s what it says in the manual. On those television programmes too. The ones with policemen in them. You don’t watch that sort of thing. In fact you don’t watch anything because you don’t have a television. You guess that’s in the manual too: keep a lookout for people who don’t have a television. Likely as not they’ve committed a serious crime.
A serious crime.
Which brings your mind back to the girl.
Verdict: guilty.
Sentence: a trip to your place, a session with you and the Big Knife followed by some quality time with Mikey.
If she’s lucky she’ll be dead long before then.
Chapter Ten
Salcombe Primary School, Devon. Tuesday 17th June. 12.27 p.m.
Some sort of sports day was taking place at Salcombe Primary when Savage and Calter arrived. Children ran round the outside of a playing field practising for a relay race while teachers arranged chairs in a row at the edge. A voice croaked ‘one-two, one-two’ from a dodgy PA and a couple of parents arranged snacks on a trestle table. A handwritten sign gave prices: a cup of tea and a fairy cake for fifty pence.
In the school office the administrator seemed reluctant to give out any details about Mrs Glastone even after she had verified Savage’s credentials by calling Crownhill station.
‘Carol’s had a rough time of it,’ she said as she led them through to the next-door room. ‘I think you’d better speak to Mrs Cartwright. Mind you she’ll not have more than ten minutes. It’s our Olympics today.’
Savage was thinking of Jamie’s own sports day, coming up in a few weeks’ time. She hoped she’d be able to attend. Missing her children’s red letter days always pained her and, as she had told Pete many times when he’d been away from home, once they were gone they were gone.
Jenny Cartwright, a smart woman in her thirties who looked like she should be running a quoted company rather than a school, introduced herself as the Head of Teaching and Learning.
‘We’re an academy, see? A number of small schools in a federation. We pool resources and expertise. Share our experiences. There’s an executive head who runs everything across the federation.’
To Savage the set-up sounded like the sort of rubbish which could well find its way into the police force. But then again maybe it already had. The senior management were as removed from the day-to-day issues of policing as Jenny Cartwright’s boss was from dealing with a six-year-old who’d stumbled in the playground.
‘Carol Glastone,’ Savage said. ‘She’s a teaching assistant here, correct?’
‘Carol’s great. Really involved.
Finished with the jams, you cast a glance at the back of the pantry where there are some bigger jars, huge Kilners, a few of them not far off the size of a small bucket. Usually they are for preserves, marmalades and the like. These jars don’t contain anything sweet though, oh no. These jars contain things which were once far more dangerous. No longer though, not now you have neutralised them.
You leave the pantry and make a shopping list in the margin of the front page of the newspaper. List done, your eyes shift to the main story. The article says the police have found some bodies. Your bodies. With the Special Day so close the news is worrying. What will you do with the next girl? It’s not right she can’t lie with the others. The location means everything. Especially after what happened to you.
Geography. You respect it but other people don’t. They attempt to transcend space with emails and text messages. Electricity moving down wires, electrons buzzing through the air. What’s so wrong with a fucking letter?
But back to the location issue. You’ll have to find somewhere else for her to go when you’ve finished. Not safe at the farm, not with all those police everywhere. Unless they’re gone by then, but you don’t think that’s likely. They’ll be watching. Expecting you to return because that’s what it says in the manual. On those television programmes too. The ones with policemen in them. You don’t watch that sort of thing. In fact you don’t watch anything because you don’t have a television. You guess that’s in the manual too: keep a lookout for people who don’t have a television. Likely as not they’ve committed a serious crime.
A serious crime.
Which brings your mind back to the girl.
Verdict: guilty.
Sentence: a trip to your place, a session with you and the Big Knife followed by some quality time with Mikey.
If she’s lucky she’ll be dead long before then.
Chapter Ten
Salcombe Primary School, Devon. Tuesday 17th June. 12.27 p.m.
Some sort of sports day was taking place at Salcombe Primary when Savage and Calter arrived. Children ran round the outside of a playing field practising for a relay race while teachers arranged chairs in a row at the edge. A voice croaked ‘one-two, one-two’ from a dodgy PA and a couple of parents arranged snacks on a trestle table. A handwritten sign gave prices: a cup of tea and a fairy cake for fifty pence.
In the school office the administrator seemed reluctant to give out any details about Mrs Glastone even after she had verified Savage’s credentials by calling Crownhill station.
‘Carol’s had a rough time of it,’ she said as she led them through to the next-door room. ‘I think you’d better speak to Mrs Cartwright. Mind you she’ll not have more than ten minutes. It’s our Olympics today.’
Savage was thinking of Jamie’s own sports day, coming up in a few weeks’ time. She hoped she’d be able to attend. Missing her children’s red letter days always pained her and, as she had told Pete many times when he’d been away from home, once they were gone they were gone.
Jenny Cartwright, a smart woman in her thirties who looked like she should be running a quoted company rather than a school, introduced herself as the Head of Teaching and Learning.
‘We’re an academy, see? A number of small schools in a federation. We pool resources and expertise. Share our experiences. There’s an executive head who runs everything across the federation.’
To Savage the set-up sounded like the sort of rubbish which could well find its way into the police force. But then again maybe it already had. The senior management were as removed from the day-to-day issues of policing as Jenny Cartwright’s boss was from dealing with a six-year-old who’d stumbled in the playground.
‘Carol Glastone,’ Savage said. ‘She’s a teaching assistant here, correct?’
‘Carol’s great. Really involved.
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