Simon Lelic: A Thousand Cuts

In the afternoon, Samuel and I shared a free period. I knew we did but I checked the timetable just to be sure. So I went looking for him again. I would talk to him properly this time, I told myself. I would find out what was troubling him. I would ask him again about the gun. I would insist, if it came to it, that he hand it over to me, museum piece or not. But I couldn’t find him. I looked in every classroom, in the staffroom, in the playground, in the girls’ changing rooms for heaven’s sake. I ended up in the secretary’s office – you know, the room next to the headmaster’s office, where Janet has her desk and where we keep all the registers and the staff rotas and that sort of thing – even though I knew he wouldn’t be there. It was the last place I looked and when I didn’t find him there I lingered. For no particular reason other than I didn’t know where else to go. I leant against one of the filing cabinets and started to click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. It’s a habit I have. Most annoying to those around me, I would imagine.

Everything okay, George? You look as stressed as I feel. This from Janet. She’s seated at her desk.

I don’t reply. I give a grunt maybe.

George? she says again. I look at her and she’s smiling. She’s waiting.

Yes, Janet. Thanks. Everything’s fine. I push myself away from the filing cabinet and I’m about to leave. Then I say, you haven’t seen Samuel have you, Janet?

Samuel? she says.

Samuel. Samuel Szajkowski.

No, she says. Then, yes. That is, he’s gone home, she says. The headmaster sent him home. I… um… don’t think he was feeling very well.

Oh, I say. Oh. And I’m pondering this as I make to leave.

With one word, though, Janet stops me. She asks me why. And I don’t really notice at the time but it’s a suspicious why. A defensive why. Like you’d say to a friend who’s just asked you how much money you have in your wallet.

No reason, I say. It’s not important. And this time I do leave. And do you know what, Inspector? I wish now that I hadn’t. Given what has happened. The benefit of hindsight and all that. Because there was something more to it. I know there was and I realise now that Janet knew there was. And it doesn’t take much to get Janet talking. That’s why I left, in fact. She can trap you, just with her eyes and her tongue, from the opposite corner of a room. She would have told me what she knew if only I had asked. I wouldn’t even have had to ask, come to that. All I would have needed to do was provide her with an opening.

Instead I spent the rest of my free period trying to concentrate on marking papers. After that I had classes. The next day, the Tuesday, Samuel didn’t come to school at all. He was still ill, that was all I could find out. Then, on Wednesday morning, I saw him. I was in the staffroom and I must admit I had almost forgotten why I was so desperate to find him. Not forgotten exactly. My unease, rather, had become more like idle curiosity. Only when he walked through the door, just as everyone else was filing out, did that sense of urgency reassert itself.

He’s still wearing the same suit, the same shirt, the same tie. This time there’s no doubting that his clothes are unwashed, stained, crumpled. Also, he smells. I can tell he smells even from the distance I am away from him because the teachers he passes wince, they wrinkle their noses, they pull back so as not to brush against him. It’s time for assembly – it’s time for the assembly – but I hang back anyway to try and talk to him. Vicky Long, though – she grabs my arm. She starts walking and talking and dragging me towards the door. I try to extricate myself but before I know it I’m in the corridor and Samuel’s left alone in the staffroom. Vicky’s talking to me about the musical she’s directing. An end-of-term performance of Oklahoma! She’s short a cowboy and she’s hoping I’ll agree to step in. There are only a few lines, she tells me, and practically no singing. There’s a dance or two but nothing complicated. A jig. A two-step. I’d have them down in fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes maybe – fifteen minutes a dance. So what do I say? Will I do it? It will be such fun, she promises me. Will I do it then? What do I say?

I don’t say anything. I’m in the assembly hall now, climbing the steps to the stage. I’m taking my seat and something or someone catches Vicky’s attention and she drifts towards the seats on the other side of the lectern. I look down at the rows in front of me. The children are already seated. Some are whispering, one or two are laughing, giggling really, but most are sombre. They’ve caught on to the mood that the headmaster’s summons sought to convey. They know that there has been trouble. They know that the headmaster is about to put on a show.

I’m still looking for Samuel when Mr Travis walks in. He closes the rear set of doors behind him, with a click that is more ominous somehow than if he had slammed them shut. Silence. The children stare ahead, at their hands in their laps, at their feet. A few affect nonchalance, bravado. There are two empty seats on the stage: one behind the lectern, the other at the lectern end of Vicky’s row. None of the other teachers seem to notice, however. They are watching the headmaster as he strides the length of the hall. He’s wearing a grey suit and a black tie. His shoes are polished to a military sheen. His footsteps are not loud but they resonate. They are as relentless and as purposeful as a countdown.

The rest, Inspector, I believe you know. I did not get a chance to talk to Samuel. I did not make that chance. Whether I would have been able to change anything anyway, I’ll never know. Possibly I would have. Probably what happened next would still have found a way to happen.

It’s not much of a consolation, is it? It’s not much of a consolation at all.

At the gate, Lucia paused.David had already stepped through and was several paces closer to the door. He turned when he realised Lucia was no longer at his shoulder.

‘What is it?’ he said.

Lucia looked up at the house. It seemed empty. Abandoned almost. There was no movement at any of the windows. All the upstairs curtains were drawn, in fact, including those in Elliot’s room. Through the bay window downstairs Lucia could see an empty sofa, a coffee table bearing a stack of coasters and nothing else, a carpet devoid of toys, magazines, rogue shoes or slippers: anything that would suggest the house was still inhabited. The television in the corner was switched off.

She stepped through the gate and refastened the latch. She sensed David watching her as she passed him. ‘Second thoughts?’ he said but she ignored him.

A freesheet protruded from the letterbox. From its pages, a clutch of flyers had fallen on to the doormat. Lucia looked for a doorbell but could not find one. She glanced at David, then turned back to the door and twice tapped her knuckles against one of the frosted-glass panels.

‘No one’s going to hear that,’ David said.

But a moment later they registered footsteps. Someone was coming down the stairs, in a hurry it seemed. The steps ended with a thump and for a second or two there was silence. Then a chain rattled and a lock clicked and the door unstuck itself from its frame as whoever was inside tugged it inwards. A girl’s face appeared, level with Lucia’s midriff.

She did not look like Elliot. Her hair was so blonde it might almost have been bleached. If she had freckles, they would have been the kind that only came out in the sun. And her eyes were blue, whereas Elliot’s had been a muddy grey. Her nose, slightly squashed, may have resembled her brother’s; the worry lines on her forehead too. It was the girl’s expression, though, that most reminded Lucia of Elliot. In the set of her features she seemed apprehensive, almost fearful.