"Tell me about Corley." He corrected himself. "Tell me about Neville."
The question found an echo in her mind. Tell me about David.
She answered thoughtfully. "He's introverted. A worrier. He says he's fine when he isn't because he's scared he'll be told he's worse than he is." She paused wondering if that made sense and decided it did. She tried to clarify it more. "When I took his temperature once I caught him putting the thermometer in a glass of cold water before handing it to me."
"So what do we deduce from that? That he wouldn't go to anyone for help… not even to you?"
"I don't know if he needed help. If he did, he didn't come to me."
"Have you heard anything from any of the other boys about him?"
"No. He was a loner. He'd carry whatever it was by himself."
"I see." He sat back in his chair and looked at her. "And now tell me about Fleming – Fleming senior."
She looked away from him. "I don't know what you mean."
"Jenny – you're living in a small community within a small town. The wife of one of the housemasters told me she saw you in a blue car with John Fleming the night before last." He hoped she wouldn't guess that the wife of the housemaster was Alison. Alison had gone on about the undesirability of a member of staff associating with Fleming "as he's so damnably hostile". He had irritated her by answering lightly that these days collaborators didn't have their heads shorn.
Jenny, knowing full well that it was Alison, decided not to say so. Brannigan was suffering enough.
"Are you forbidding me to see John Fleming?"
He knew it wouldn't make any difference if he did. "No. You're free to do as you like – and to see your loyalties whichever way you want to see them."
"Loyalties aren't flags you carry, one in each hand. I'd do everything I could to help him. If the school is to blame for anything, you wouldn't hide it. If I thought differently I would have resigned long ago."
He took it for the compliment it was and was grateful.
She said, sensing that the time was right to ask it, "I should like to have time off to be at the inquest tomorrow afternoon."
He could see that she was stiffening into a defensive attitude expecting him to refuse.
"Of course you may go. Alison will be sitting on her own while I give evidence I can't persuade her not to attend. She's extremely nervous and worried. Your being with her will help."
To hold Alison's hand hadn't been her intention, but there was no way out of it.
He told her that Lessing was representing the school. "And I'm told there's to be a jury." Lessing had told him this. "Seven local tradesmen," Lessing had said, "all rooting for the Grange. They feed it, they plumb it, they paint it and they wash its windows They're not likely to pull the plug out." Brannigan had commented acidly on Lessing's code of ethics and Lessing had taken it for the joke it wasn't.
A couple of hours later, during lunchtime, Lessing arrived at the school house. He walked straight through into the dining room, meeting Alison in the doorway as she was on her way to the kitchen to fetch the coffee. She offered him some, but he declined. "I can't stay. I have an appointment with a client in twenty minutes."
After she was out of earshot he said aggnevedly to Brannigan, "You should have informed me, you know."
"I gather Goldthorpe did?"
"Yes – but after I'd heard it in the town first."
"Damn!" Brannigan made a fist of his right hand and then uncurled his fingers slowly Where gossip was concerned the school was like water running through a colander.
Lessing shrugged. "The place is crawling with police. What do you expect?… Any news of the lad yet?"
"No." He had been ringing the police station every hour on the hour and Corley's father had been ringing him at even more frequent intervals. The phone bell was like the rubbing away of insulating tape over an electric wire He wondered if the child would be found before his own personal flashpoint seared his control Lessing said, "Sit down I have something to say to you It isn't pleasant"
Brannigan's face seemed visibly to thin so that the bones were prominent "Go on "
"I think the child who's disappeared had good reason to disappear – if he's the child I saw here the other day "
"Describe him "
"About ten or eleven, small build, red hair. He had been frightened to the point of throwing up " He went on to tell Brannigan about the boy running from the direction of the hollow "I went to investigate, but I saw no-one. I have no doubt at all that there was someone there Does the description fit the boy who's gone?"
"Yes."
"Then you've a problem on your hands – a nasty one. I didn't tell you because you've worry enough with the Fleming case. I intended telling you after the inquest. That was a misjudgment on my part. I'm sorry."
Brannigan said heavily, "Obviously there was a reason for his going. It's not.pleasant having it confirmed. You say he vomited?"
"Yes – with fright. And his hands had been tied. He managed to loosen the knot" He didn't add that he had dropped the tie in the bushes – a temporary tidying away of a disturbing situation "It's more than normal bullying. I thought you were fussing too much over Fleming's accident Now I'm not at all sure that it was an accident. I won't say so at the inquest, of course, but I'm telling you. Praemomtus, praemumtus. Forewarned is forearmed. You see, I haven't forgotten my Latin." He smiled wetly, but with genuine sympathy. "Damned good school this."
Alison waited until he had gone before returning. "What did he want?"
He decided not to tell her. "He'd heard about Corley – through Goldthorpe."
"And by the look of you made you see how serious it is. The school's good name is being ruined by an irresponsible little brat… Where are you going?" He was walking over to the door.
He nearly said, To breathe – to get away from yon. "To my study. Durrant can make his phone call to his mother from there."
"Durrant? You're bothered about Durrant – now? At a time like this?"
Yes, lie thought, he was particularly bothered about Durrant at a time like this.
He sent for Hammond first. He had asked him to make the phone call as quickly as he could. "Or she'll keep hogging the line." He hadn't bothered asking him the result of it. He asked him now.
Hammond said mildly, "She's crazy. I told her the boy had started the term with eight pounds in his account – and that if any more money had come through he would have given it to me to bank for him. She wanted to know if I opened his letters. I said my duties here were to teach not to run a censorship department."
Unwise, Brannigan thought, but didn't blame him.
"She didn't take that kindly. She even had the gall to talk about a moral duty to open his letters. Moral duty! Mrs. Durrant!" It was the only funny thing that had happened to him for days.
"And then?"
"And then one of the new lads – Wilkinson – ran down the corridor in a pair of football boots, with one of the other lads after him. You know the rule about that. He dislodged a piece of parquet – the bit that's just been repaired where the damp was getting through."
"And you cut Mrs. Durrant off and attended to it."
"Quite."
"Do you think the lad's father sent him any money?"
"No, Headmaster. Do you?"
"No," Brannigan said, "I don't. But I intend asking him about it."
It took Hammond nearly half an hour to find Durrant and in that time Brannigan got through to the police again. There was still no news of Corley. Minutes afterwards Corley's father rang Brannigan. He had no news either and his tension was coming out as barely concealed aggression. Brannigan listened to his criticisms tiredly. On the whole, he thought, they were just. At that moment he would have gladly handed over the school to Corley's father and told him to run it -just to see how easy it was. He had a vision of a bothy in Scotland set miles from anywhere with not a single human being in sight.