A Room Full of Killers, Michael Wood [best books for students to read txt] 📗

left into the staff car park and parked in the bay for visitors. After a short while, the driver’s door opened and an elderly man struggled to climb out. The low autumnal sun bounced off his bald head. He took a tweed fedora from the passenger seat and placed it carefully on his head. From the boot he took a heavy-looking briefcase, then locked the car. He took long strides to the main entrance. Matilda hoped the uniformed officers would stop him entering.

Matilda reached the foyer just as the smart looking man with the bushy moustache was talking to the uniformed officers.

‘Can I help you, at all?’ Matilda asked.

‘Ma’am, this man says he works here,’ one of the officers said.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I’m Dr Henrik Klein. I’m a therapist. Has something happened?’

Matilda baulked at the word therapist, remembering an appointment was due with her own in a few days’ time. It seemed she couldn’t get away from them at work or in her private life.

‘There has been an incident. Would it be possible to have a word—?’

An alarm sounded, interrupting the conversation between Matilda and Dr Klein. A troop of officers came out of different doors and flew down the corridor behind the stairs. Kate Moloney stepped out of her office.

‘Matilda, Henrik, come in here. Now,’ she shouted abruptly.

‘What’s going on?’ Matilda asked, following Kate inside.

‘A fight has broken out in the library. The alarm is just a precaution until it’s under control,’ Kate said as she closed the door and locked it behind her.

‘Is that necessary?’

‘A fight can lead to other things.’

Matilda pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket and dialled Sian’s number.

‘What’s going on?’ Sian shouted down the phone. An alarm speaker in the boardroom was drowning out what she was saying.

‘There’s been a fight in the library. Get everyone into the boardroom and lock yourselves in until you hear from me.’

‘What? I can’t hear what you’re saying.’

Matilda repeated her warning, screaming down the phone.

‘Shouldn’t we help?’

‘Not until we’re asked to do so. It could be a storm in a teacup, in which case our presence would only escalate the situation. Just lock the doors.’

‘Oh, right. OK. Will do.’

Matilda hung up. ‘How often do these kinds of things happen?’

‘Surprisingly, not as often as you’d think,’ Kate said, returning to her desk. ‘However, you get a bunch of boys together, tempers can flare up over the slightest of things. And remember, these are not ordinary boys, are they? So, I see you’ve met Dr Klein. Henrik, this is DCI Matilda Darke. She’s investigating the murder of Ryan Asher.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ Henrik said, holding out a hand for Matilda to shake.

‘Likewise,’ she shook his hand, a firm grip for someone on the wrong side of seventy.

‘I’m sorry … murder?’ he asked, as if only just hearing Kate.

‘Yes, Dr Klein. Ryan was found stabbed to death in the recreation room on Tuesday morning.’

‘But he only arrived on Sunday. What happened? Was there a fight?’

‘No. No, there wasn’t a fight,’ Kate said quietly. ‘Nobody seems to know what happened,’ she added, giving Matilda an icy look.

‘How’s the investigation going?’ Henrik asked, fighting against the noise of the alarm.

‘We’re making progress.’ The standard reply. ‘I’ve got officers down in Norwich talking to Ryan’s family. Don’t you think we should help out?’ Matilda asked, pointing at the door.

‘Trust me, we’re in the safest place.’ Kate said.

‘I don’t like this,’ Rory said, pacing the boardroom. ‘I mean, what if there’s a fire or something? We could be trapped up here.’

‘Rory, come and sit down.’

There were five detectives in the room. While the alarm was sounding there was obviously nothing they could concentrate on, so they downed tools and waited for the situation to end. Rory was the only one fretting.

‘What if they’re rioting?’

‘I think we’d have heard,’ Sian smiled.

‘You can’t hear anything over that bloody thing,’ he pointed to the alarm. ‘They could have set fire to the furniture; they could have made weapons; taken hostages, anything.’

‘Rory, calm down for crying out loud. Nothing like that is happening.’

He loosened the collar on his shirt. ‘I don’t like being locked in.’

Sian went over to him and guided him to the window. She opened it wide and allowed in the stiff breeze. Despite it being cold there was a sheen of sweat on Rory’s forehead.

‘Now, take deep breaths and try to relax.’

The fresh air took a while to calm Rory down. The screaming of the alarm did nothing to help him at all. Eventually, he felt relaxed enough to pull himself back into the room. He slumped down into a seat.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t usually panic like that.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘I don’t like not being able to get out. It frightens me. The first time I went into a prison was a nightmare. I was supposed to be interviewing this guy who’d admitted more crimes once he’d been sentenced. I was useless. It’s lucky I recorded the interview as I had no idea what he said. I just kept thinking about what would happen if there was a fire or an explosion or something. I couldn’t get out of the place quick enough.’

‘You need to think rationally, Rory. Take lifts, for example. A lift in a busy hospital goes up and down several hundred times a day, thousands of times a week. If the cable snapped and it plunged to the ground don’t you think something like that would be on the news? Now when was the last time you heard of that happening?’

‘Never,’ he replied.

‘Exactly. Your thinking is irrational.’

‘But, in this job, situations like this are heightened.’

‘Yes, they are but none of us in this room have ever been caught up in a riot. Despite what the films tell us, being a copper is incredibly boring.’

‘You can say that again,’ said one of the DCs whose primary job seemed to be inputting data into the HOLMES system.

Rory looked up at Sian. ‘I miss your snack drawer,’ he said.

This triggered a laugh from around the room.

‘So do I,’