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

‘Yes, Scott, idiot. You should have thought of that,’ Rory again, smiling.

‘Scott has a point.’ Matilda had sat down on Kate’s comfortable chair and was resting her head on her hands. ‘All the boys were locked in the rooms on Monday night. Someone had to unlock Ryan’s room to get him out. They unlocked the recreation room and killed him in there. When Oliver Byron went the next morning, the recreation room was locked. Last night, Jacob’s room was unlocked from the outside for him to escape. Someone with a key is doing this. The only people who have keys are the staff.’

‘That we know of,’ Christian added.

‘We’re going round in circles here.’

‘So where do we go from here?’ Rory asked.

‘We get the inmates out of their rooms and into the dining room, and I want their rooms ripped apart. I don’t care if Jacob isn’t hiding under the bed, I want them searched. Christian, you and Scott lead the search and use some of the staff we know are sort of decent to give you a hand.’

‘Will do.’

‘What about me?’ Rory asked.

‘We’re going to talk to Kate again.’

‘She’s not going to like this.’

‘Not our problem, Rory. We’re hunting for a killer among killers here. It’s time to stop pissing about and get some answers.’

FORTY-FIVE

‘Good morning. I’m Detective Constable Faith Easter from South Yorkshire Police. I’d like to speak to someone who can tell me about Ryan Asher.’

The open plan CID seemed quiet without Matilda, Christian, Scott and Rory. Scott was always quiet, but the exuberant Rory Fleming more than made up for it with his puppy-like demeanour. Faith liked working with what used to be the Murder Squad again. She enjoyed Scott’s company; they seemed to have a similar work ethic. Rory, she could tolerate. Yes, he was handsome, but he knew it, and that overconfidence could sometimes get on her nerves. Unfortunately for her, he was funny, and she couldn’t help laughing at his jokes which seemed to encourage him. He was harmless enough, though. Sian, she loved. She respected Sian and looked up to her. Although their careers were going on different paths – Sian was a DS and was happy to stay that way until retirement – Faith had ambition. She would like a family, maybe, one day, but at the moment she was concentrating on her career. She liked the idea of having DCI in front of her name at some point.

It hadn’t taken Faith long to discover which school Ryan Asher went to in Norwich. Unfortunately, it took her longer to find a member of staff willing to talk to her. Hellesdon High School predominantly served pupils in the north-west area of Norwich and currently held around 1,300 students. While Faith was waiting for someone to answer her call, she perused the school’s website and found out more than she needed to know about the school and the extracurricular activities it offered. It seemed like a very impressive school. If she did ever marry and have a child, Norwich was a possibility as a place to raise a family.

‘DC Easter?’

Faith jumped as a loud booming voice came through the phone. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m Geoffrey Hillingdon. I’m the head teacher here. I believe you have some questions about Ryan Asher.’

‘That’s right. Thank you for taking my call. I was wondering if you could tell me something about him: what he was like as a student, his academic success, that sort of thing.’

‘I shall certainly try. I’m afraid that it’s a sad state of affairs that only the really disruptive students seem to register on my radar so I do recall Ryan Asher before, well, before what he did. Academically, he was an above average student. He wasn’t going to be a straight-A student but with a little hard work he would have passed all his GCSEs with excellent pass grades.’

‘Was he disruptive in his lessons?’

‘No, well, not in the beginning. Most of his incidents came during breaks and at lunch. I heard of a few moments, shall we say, out of school hours and at weekends, but they were not the responsibility of the school to sort out.’

‘What kinds of incidents?’

‘Fights and scrapes. The usual things that happen among teenage boys.’

‘So what led from him being a typical teenage boy to murdering his grandparents?’

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Faith knew they hadn’t lost connection as she could hear everyday life of a normal secondary school taking place in the background. She could also hear Mr Hillingdon’s strenuous breathing.

Sian placed a mug of tea on Faith’s desk and added a Tunnock’s Teacake from her snack drawer. Faith mouthed ‘thank you’.

‘I’m not a psychologist, detective. I’m just an ordinary head teacher. I have no idea what went through his mind to make him commit the crime he did.’

‘Were you surprised when you found out?’

‘Absolutely. I was devastated. To be perfectly honest with you, there are some pupils here who, if I heard they had killed someone, I would not be surprised. Ryan wasn’t one of them.’

Maybe Norwich wasn’t such a decent place to raise a child after all, Faith thought. A head teacher has admitted to there being potential killers in his school and he didn’t seem too bothered by it. And she thought being a detective was a difficult job – who’d be a teacher?

‘So what happened at the school for Ryan to appear on your radar?’

‘In the last few months of Ryan being here his behaviour was more disruptive than usual. The number of fights, and their severity, increased. I had two meetings with his parents, who expressed concern for Ryan. They had spoken with him on many occasions. They’d grounded him a few times, removed certain privileges, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.’

‘Was Ryan mixing with any different people around this time?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘But surely something must have switched in his life for his behaviour