Death of a Teacher by Lis Howell Page A

were no kids around.
    ‘Hey, Mam, look, Pelliter’s on the telly.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said the boyfriend, taking a swig from his can. ‘There’s been a murder. In the Marshes. Frigging unbelievable. We’re on the map now.’
    ‘There’s a TV crew at the bottom of the road, Mam. Jonty’s down there now. You must have heard it on the radio.’
    ‘No. I haven’t heard it on the radio.’
    ‘Has no one rung or texted you, Mam?’
    ‘No, no one has rung or texted me neither.’ Callie sat down heavily, pushing some dirty washing and Heat magazines off the only armchair in the room.
    Her daughter’s head jerked towards the screen. A snap of Brenda Hodgson on a school trip, with the faces of the children marbled out, stared at them. Brenda looked at them with the sort of forced smile she used on school occasions .
    ‘Miss Hodgson. It’s just been confirmed. Relatives have been informed.’ Callie’s daughter loved TV cop shows and knew all the jargon. ‘Awful, innit? She was your mate, wasn’t she? Fat Miss Hodgson. Brenda Hodgson. I didn’t know her name was Brenda.’
    ‘We’ll get the details from the net,’ said the boyfriend with relish. ‘The reporter talked about a knife though. My mate texted me about it. He said it were a cat skinner.’
    ‘Where’s Jonty?’ Callie suddenly jumped up. ‘Where’s he gone?’
    ‘I told you, Mam: he’s down at the Marshes.’
    ‘So get off your fat bottom, and go and bring him back here. I don’t want him hanging around down there. It’s not nice. Go on, pronto. Get Jonty.’
     
    Ro’s session with the Findleys had been exhausting, but Jed Jackson had briefed her well. He remembered Miss Hodgson as a teacher and he certainly knew her as one of Pelliter’s fixtures. He’d kept up with the school gossip and knew all about the Findleys and Sheila’s breakdown.
    What he didn’t know was that Sheila Findley had lost a baby and that had catapulted her into depression. While her husband was phoning his staff, Sheila Findley had walked Ro around the garden and told her all about it. ‘It started with a miscarriage. I’m on medication for depression. And astonishingly it’s working.’
    ‘Well, it does, you know!’
    Mrs Findley had smiled. ‘Until recently I thought I would never come out of it. There was nothing to live for. I thought that expression was a stock phrase until I felt it myself. But now, I hope to be teaching again in September. I haven’t told Ray yet. He’s very protective of me. He’s really a very nice man.’
    Her eyes met Ro’s. ‘OK, maybe he’s too nice. He’ll tell everyone what a wonderful teacher Brenda Hodgson was. But she was never very good.’ Sheila Findley laughed at Ro’s raised eyebrows. ‘What’s the point of lying? The only good thing about depression is that you don’t give a toss what you say. Poor Brenda was all right – she never caused any trouble. That was the best you could say for her. Liz Rudder is far more subversive. Liz would use Brenda from time to time to make trouble. They were so-called best friends, but Liz has dropped Brenda like a stone lately, or so I hear. Poor Brenda. She idolized Liz. Tell me what really happened to her. I can take it.’
    Ro had told her. Already an exaggerated version was going round the pubs and social clubs of Norbridge to whet the appetite for Sunday lunch, dwelling on the knife wounds to the teacher. Why did people enjoy all this so much? Ro wondered. Was it the change to routine and the excitement of it all? Or the joy at still being alive? Or some sort of voyeurism? But there was also a glee which she found hard to understand. It made millions of people relish the gruesome details in books about serial killers. Did big, macho, scary evil take your mind off the real thing in its nasty, petty, most insidious and frequent form?
    ‘We all need to sing from the same hymn sheet at school,’ Ray Findley said, coming out to join them, suddenly decisive after his phone