And off down the corridor, she could hear voices. Footsteps.
‘Police! If there’s anyone in here, show yourself!’
And then he’d called the cops.
It was like an out-of-body experience. Maggie got a baby wipe from her pocket and wiped the handle of the knife. Then she was up on the filing cabinet and out that window.
Keeping low, she ran from the building to the trees and clambered over a wall, onto a path that ran behind the back gardens of a row of houses. Lucky they all had high fences. She could hear sounds of people, a kid laughing, the smell of a barbeque.
She took a second to calm down. Then she put up the hood of her jacket and made her way back to the coffee shop, where Pam and Liam were now in the kitchen checking the stock.
Pam stared at her. ‘Maggie, what’s up?’
Catching her breath, she told them what had happened. What Nick must have done.
‘Oh my God,’ said Pam.
‘The wee prick,’ said Liam, with his usual talent for understatement.
‘Someone could have seen me,’ Maggie got out. Her heart was hammering, adrenaline still pumping. Was it really possible? Nick had actually killed someone to get rid of her? So she’d be arrested and charged and convicted and sent to prison? Bye-bye, Mags? He’d gone that far?
‘Aye, well, if they did, it’s our word against theirs,’ went Liam. ‘We’ll give you an alibi.’
‘You don’t have to,’ said Maggie at once. ‘You don’t have to lie for me.’ And as the thought hit her: ‘For all you know, I could have killed the lad.’
Liam just snorted.
‘Why on earth would you do that?’ Pam shook her head. ‘Of course I’ll give you an alibi. They might not believe Liam, but I’m a law-abiding citizen without as much as a conviction for speeding. We’ll say you were here the whole time.’
‘You have to go on home, Maggie,’ said Liam, ‘like nothing happened. Pick Nick up at the school, acting like everything’s hunky-dory, and drive home.’
Maggie nodded.
Blindly, she stumbled to the toilet and threw up.
As Maggie arrived at the car park at the school, twenty minutes early, she had to make her clawed hands release the steering wheel. She clocked Carol Jardine sitting in her car, presumably waiting for Andy, and slouched down in her seat. She couldn’t be doing with chirpy Carol right now. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and went through again in her head what she’d say to Nick.
She kept thinking of that boy lying in his own blood, the knife sticking out of him.
Would Pam and Liam really lie for her, once the police got at them? Would Liam risk it, now that he was turning his life around and determined to stay on the straight and narrow? And what about Pam? Pam came from a nice middle-class family. How was she going to cope under questioning?
Now gaggles of kids were streaming out of the school. Nick wasn’t in one of the groups. He walked alone across the tarmac to the car.
If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t let on. He ducked into the passenger seat and flashed her one of his charming smiles. ‘Have a nice catch-up?’
‘Really good, thanks. How was rehearsal?’
She couldn’t stop staring at his right hand as it pushed the catch of the seat belt. She imagined that same hand, less than an hour ago, pushing the kitchen knife into Dean Reid’s chest.
Really?
Could this boy really have done that?
But what other explanation was there for the Sunnyside kitchen knife, the one Nick had made her touch, being used as a murder weapon on Dean Reid? Could Dean and some of the other kids have gone to Sunnyside, maybe to see Duncan, and Dean stole the knife? And then they went to The Phoenix Centre, and there was a fight between them?
Nick dropped the left side of his mouth and went, in a dull monotone: ‘How now spirit whither wander you.’ He chuckled. ‘Whoever cast Meebs as Puck has a great sense of humour.’
Maggie eased out of the car park.
‘But yours is the lead role, aye?’ she made herself ask.
‘Yeah, King of the Fairies. Gives all those Neanderthals something to pin on me. I’m not gay, by the way, in case you’re wondering.’
It was the last thing on her mind. But now the thought of Nick with a partner flashed into her head. Jesus.
They waited in the queue of cars at the exit and then Maggie turned right. Soon they’d left the outskirts of Langholm behind and were into the trees.
What the hell was she going to say to Duncan?
She had to tell him she’d been there in The Phoenix Centre, tell him the truth about what had happened. She had no choice. But as Nick blethered on about the funny things that had happened during the rehearsal, her heart plummeted. Would Duncan believe her version of events, her accusation that Nick had set her up, over Nick’s? He must have left the rehearsal, somehow arranged to meet Dean at The Phoenix Centre, killed him, rushed back . . .