Don’t imagine I enjoyed it; in fact I find any kind of violence repulsive and would much have preferred to let Knight fall to his death from a high place, or choke on a peanut—anything but this primitive and messy solution. Still, there’s no denying that it was a solution, and a good one too. Once Knight had declared himself he couldn’t be allowed to live; and besides, I need Knight for the next stage.
Bait, if you like.
I borrowed his phone for a moment or two, wiping it clean on the damp grass. After that I switched it off and put it in my pocket. Then I covered Knight’s face in a black plastic sack (I always carry a few in the car, just in case), secured in place with an elastic band. I did the same with Knight’s hands. I sat him in a broken armchair near the base of the pile and anchored him in place with a block of magazines held together with string. By the time I had finished he looked just like the other guys waiting on the unlit pyre, though perhaps less realistic than some.
An old man walking a dog came along as I was working. He greeted me; the dog barked, and they both passed by. Neither of them noticed the blood on the grass, and as for the body itself—I’ve discovered that as long as you don’t behave like a murderer, no one will assume you are a murderer, whatever evidence exists to the contrary. If ever I decide to turn to robbery (and one day I might; I’d like to think I have more than one string to my bow), I will wear a mask and a striped jersey, and carry a bag marked SWAG. If anyone sees me, they will simply assume that I am on my way to a fancy-dress party and think nothing of it. People, I find, are for the most part very unobservant, especially of the things that are going on right beneath their noses.
I celebrated with fire. It is traditional, after all.
I found the gatehouse burned rather well, given the old damp problem. My only regret was that the new Porter—Shuttleworth, I think his name is—had not yet moved in. Still, with the house empty and Jimmy suspended, I couldn’t have chosen a more convenient time.
There is a certain amount of video security at St. Oswald’s, though most of it is destined for the front gate and its imposing entrance. I was willing to take the risk that the Porter’s house would not. All the same, I wore a hooded top, just baggy enough for camouflage. Any camera would simply show a hooded figure, carrying two unlabeled cans and with a school satchel slung over one shoulder, running along the side of the perimeter fence in the direction of the house.
Breaking in was easy. Less easy were the memories that seemed to seep out of the walls: the smell of my father; that sourness; the phantom reek of Cinnabar. Most of the furniture had belonged to St. Oswald’s. It was still there: the dresser; the clock; the heavy dining table and chairs that we never used. A pale rectangle on the living room wallpaper where my father had hung a picture (a sentimental print of a little girl with a puppy) unexpectedly tore at my heart.
I was suddenly, absurdly reminded of Roy Straitley’s house, with its rows of school photographs, smiling boys in faded uniforms, the fixed, expectant faces of the brash young dead. It was terrible. Worse, it was banal. I had expected to take my time, to splash petrol across the old carpets, the old furniture, with a joyful step. Instead I did what had to be done in furtive haste and ran, feeling like a sneak, like a trespasser, for the first time I could remember since that day at St. Oswald’s, when I first saw the lovely building, its windows shining in the sun, and wanted it for my own.
That was something Leon never understood. He never really saw St. Oswald’s; its grace, its history, its arrogant rightness. To him it was just a school; desks to be carved upon, walls to be graffitied, teachers to be mocked and defied. So wrong, Leon. So childishly, fatally wrong.
And so I burned the gatehouse; and instead of the elation I had anticipated, I felt nothing but a slinking remorse, that weakest and most useless of emotions, as the gleeful flames pranced and roared.
By the time the police arrived, I had recovered. Having changed my baggy sweatshirt for something more appropriate, I stayed for just long enough to tell them what they wanted to hear (a youth, hooded, fleeing the scene) and to allow them to find the cans and discarded satchel. By which time the fire engines had arrived too, and I stepped aside to let them do their job. Not that there was much for them to do by then; the gatehouse was mostly ash before they even pulled into the drive.
A student prank, the Examiner will say on Monday morning: a Hallowe’en stunt taken criminally far. My champagne tasted a little flat; but I drank it anyway while making a couple of routine calls with Knight’s borrowed phone and listening to the sounds of fireworks and the voices of young revelers—witches, ghouls, and vampires—as they ran down the alleys below me.
If I sit in exactly the right position at my window, I can just see Dog Lane. I wonder if Straitley is sitting at his window tonight, lights dimmed, curtain drawn. He expects trouble, that’s for sure. From Knight, or someone else—Sunnybankers or shadowy spirits. Straitley believes in ghosts—as well he might—and tonight, they are out in force, like memories set loose to prey upon the living.
Let them prey. The dead don’t have much to amuse them. I’ve done my bit; stuck my little spanner in the school’s old works. Call it a sacrifice, if you like. A payment in blood. If that doesn’t satisfy them, nothing will.
3
St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys
Monday, 1st November
What a shambles. What an almighty shambles. I saw the fire last night, of course; but thought it was the annual Guy Fawkes bonfire, a few days early and a few degrees from its usual spot. Then I heard the fire engines, and all at once I had to be there. It was so like that other time, you see; the sound of sirens in the darkness, the mother screaming, Pat Bishop like a crazed cinema director with his damned megaphone—
It was freezing cold as I stepped outside. I was glad of my coat, and of the checked scarf—a Christmas present from some boy, in the days when pupils still did such things—wound firmly round my neck. The air smelled good of smoke and fog and gunpowder, and although it was late, a gang of trick-or-treaters was pelting down the alley with a carrier bag of sweets. One of them—a little ghost—dropped a wrapper as he passed—a mini Snickers wrapper, I think it was—and I stooped automatically to pick it up.
“Hey, you!” I said in my Bell Tower voice.
The little ghost—a boy of eight or nine—stopped short.
“You dropped something,” I said, handing him the wrapper.
“You what?” The ghost looked at me as if I might be mad.
“You dropped something,” I said patiently. “There’s a litter bin over there.” I pointed to a dustbin only a dozen yards away. “Just walk over and put it in.”
“You what?” Behind him, there was grinning, nudging. Someone sniggered beneath a cheap plastic mask. Sunnybankers, I thought with a sigh, or juvenile thugs-in-waiting from the Abbey Road Estate. Who else would let their eight-or nine-year-old children roam the streets at half past eleven, without an adult in sight?
“In the bin, please,” I said again. “I’m sure you were brought up better than to drop litter.” I smiled; for a moment half a dozen little faces looked up wonderingly at mine. There was a wolf; three sheeted ghosts; a grubby vampire with a leaky nose; and an unidentifiable person who might have been a ghoul or a gremlin or some X-rated Hollywood creature without a name.