“You’re always serious; it’s one of your many flaws.”
“I mean it. If you repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone else, or dare to report it—”
“Okay, calm down, I’m listening.”
“Good, I hope you are. Both dead women were found with friendship bracelets, just like the one you were wearing, but inside their mouths. Tied around their tongues.”
She turns visibly pale, and I’m glad the information has caused some kind of emotional response. I would have been deeply troubled if it hadn’t. I don’t like feeling as though I didn’t really know the woman I was married to for all those years.
“So why do you have one?” I ask, hoping to get an answer this time.
“I don’t, I’ve lost it.” It sounds like a lie, but she looks like she is telling the truth. “You sent me a text in the middle of the night saying you wanted to talk, was that why—”
I’d forgotten I had drunk-texted her.
“It was early this morning, hardly the middle of the night, and this really doesn’t seem like the time or place. You haven’t answered my questions. Any of them—”
“Why did you text me, Jack?”
She looks toward the doors leading inside the school—still thinking about the story first, I see—and I steer her away.
“I really don’t have time for this right now, in case you can’t tell. I just wanted to say that I wouldn’t get too close to your colleague if I were you.”
She stares at me, her mouth forming a perfect little O.
“Just so I understand this, you’re dealing with a double murder, but what you’re really worried about is me sleeping with my cameraman?”
“I don’t care who you sleep with, but he has a criminal record and I thought you should know—”
“You had no right to look Richard up. It’s completely unethical. And if I were sleeping with him, which I’m not, then I really wouldn’t care if he had an unpaid speeding ticket, or whatever other trivial nonsense you’ve managed to dig up—”
“It wasn’t trivial. He was arrested and charged with GBH.”
“Grievous bodily harm? Richard assaulted someone?”
“Yes. Now, I have work to do, and you need to go back the way you came and remove yourself, and your team, from school property.”
Priya walks through the doors toward us then, blocking my escape route.
“The school is officially closed,” she says.
“Great, and you thought it would be a good idea to let a member of the press back here because?”
Priya looks from me to Anna then back again, confusion drawn all over her face in a series of lines that don’t belong there.
“Well, I thought you’d want to see her.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because Ms. Andrews was the one who found the body.”
Like most things in life, the more you do something, the easier it gets. The same rules apply to killing people, and the second murder was far less tricky than the first. All I had to do was be patient, and that’s something I’m rather good at.
Helen Wang loved power more than people, and that was her downfall. She was a smart cookie, but a lonely one too, often working late at the school when the rest of the teachers had long since departed for the day. I slipped into her office when she popped out, hid behind the curtains, and waited. My feet were sticking out underneath, but she didn’t notice. Some people use a filter on life as well as photos, which allows them to only see what they want to. When Helen walked back in, she sat down at her desk, and stared at her screen as though looking at a lover.
I presumed she was working on school matters, but was amused to see over her shoulder that she was trying to write a novel. After I slit her throat, I read the opening chapter while stroking her hair—sadly the words were less satisfying. Helen’s writing was disappointingly mediocre, so I deleted the whole thing and replaced it with some lines of my own: Helen should not tell lies.
Helen should not tell lies.
Helen should not tell lies.
I used an antibacterial wipe from her desk to clean the keyboard when I was done. Then I put the drugs up her nose as well as in her drawer, to be sure nobody would miss them. I wanted everyone to know that the good headmistress was really a bad role model for young girls. Addicted to power, illegal substances, and secrets.
Her tailored suit looked expensive, so it was a little disappointing to unwrap her, and find a cheap tatty supermarket bra hidden beneath her blouse. The stapler was not part of the plan, but I’d seen it on her desk, and it looked too tempting not to have a go. The letters made of staples on her skin were not as symmetrical as I might have liked, but it was easy enough to see that they spelled the word LIAR.