Cass Green - The Killer Inside

It was probably thinking about all that childhood stuff earlier, but when I got to the school playground, my eyes seemed to fix on Tyler Bennett straight away.

Tyler was one of those kids it was very hard to like, even though I wasn’t meant to say that. He was a three-foot-high block of truculence, with a sulky face and the ability to be ever the wronged party in a dispute.

He was standing now just inside the school gates with a mutinous expression, clearly waiting for someone. The bell was just about to go so I wandered over to him. He greeted me with the sort of look dogs give when they suspect someone is about to take their bone away.

‘Alright, Tyler?’ I said. ‘What are you doing? Bell’s about to go.’

He ignored me and peered out of the gate, little brow so scrunched his eyes almost disappeared.

‘Are you waiting for something?’ The bell rang out clearly.

‘C’mon, mate, time to go in.’ I touched his shoulder and he reacted as though he had been hit, pulling his arm away violently.

‘Woah!’ I said, taking a step back. At that exact moment, as if conjured up from nowhere, a huge, bullet-headed man appeared at the gate, brandishing Tyler’s school bag and breathing heavily.

‘What are you doing?’ said the man, presumably young Tyler’s progenitor.

‘I’m not doing anything,’ I said reasonably, because I’d met plenty of parents like this one. ‘I was just telling Tyler the bell’s gone.’

‘Did you touch him just then?’

I stared at the man for a second. ‘I tapped him lightly on the shoulder in a friendly way,’ I said, my face entirely straight. ‘Because the bell had gone.’

‘That true, Ty?’

Tyler shrugged. After an agonizing moment’s pause he added, ‘S’pose,’ and I was ridiculously grateful to the little sod for not making this worse just for sport.

‘Right,’ said the man. ‘Well, he was waiting for me, wasn’t he?’ He moved closer to his son, as though making a point, before handing the bag to Tyler, whose gaze was flitting between us in wide-eyed fascination. The man’s eyes narrowed further and he said, ‘Wait, do I know you?’

‘I’m a teacher at your son’s school, so I imagine you may recognize me,’ I said, giving the man a broad smile. His type hated that. You can really wrong-foot aggressive people with a bit of sunshine. I should have stopped there, but my annoying weekend, a residual irritation with Anya for abandoning me, and the toxic swill of my thoughts earlier all conspired against me. Before I turned away, I found myself muttering, ‘You have an excellent day, now.’

The man’s cheeks darkened. It was unnerving to see aggression painted even more boldly on his face.

‘You’ve got a real attitude, do you know that?’ he said, his voice a low rumble that got me in the gut, just as it was intended to.

‘I can assure you I haven’t, Mr, uh …’ My brain flailed for Tyler’s surname before it came to me. ‘Mr Bennett. I’m just trying to do my job and get your son in for the start of the new term.’

The man was frowning now, staring hard at my face, and then a malicious grin broke out over his.

‘I know who you are,’ he said.

I formed my mouth into a pleasant smile. ‘Well, as I said, I work here.’

‘Nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not from here.’

Did he? I couldn’t think how. His accent was a little more London than the local one, but I still didn’t know him.

‘I don’t think so, Mr Bennett,’ I said. He made a snorting sound, then muttered something under his breath. All I caught was, ‘for you …’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

Bennett did a sort of ‘nya nya’ thing, then shook his head and walked off without saying anything else to his son. Tyler’s thumb had snuck into his mouth during this exchange, something I hadn’t noticed him do before. I attempted a friendly smile.

‘Come on, buddy,’ I said. ‘I’m no happier than you are that the holidays are over. Let’s go in.’

As I got to the building I turned, and my heart seemed to jolt out of its place. Bennett was standing across the road, staring right at me.

I felt on edge all morning after that encounter. I’d dealt with aggressive parents before, as I said, but there was something about him that had really chilled me. There had been the hint of a smile there, like he’d been contemplating actions further down the line that he would enjoy very much, and I wouldn’t. And why did he think he knew me?

At breaktime I looked out for Clare, Tyler’s class teacher. I wanted to know whether she had ever been on the other end of the Tyler paterfamilias’s displeasure.

She wasn’t about – maybe on playground duty. I went to make myself a coffee. There was a sink full of dirty mugs. With a sigh I cleaned one as best I could with hot water and something that had once been a dish scourer, then decided to be the bigger person and do the lot. I was up to my elbows in suds when Zoe appeared next to me.

‘You’re really good at that,’ she said in an earnest-sounding voice. ‘Would you like to be our Sink Monitor this week?’

I mouthed, ‘Piss off,’ at her and threw a bit of foam. She laughed and flicked it away.

‘So …’ I said after a moment. I grinned and waggled my eyebrows.

Her cheeks flushed.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Tell me all about Tabitha then,’ I said, nudging her in the side. She looked down, failing to hide the way her eyes instantly lit up.

‘What do you want to know exactly?’ she said, getting out one of the clean cups and reaching into her handbag for one of her horrible green teabags that tasted of garden mulch.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’ve kept so quiet about it, I don’t know anything. I feel like …’ I bit off the end of my sentence.

‘What?’ she said, serious now. It was my turn to blush.

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘It just seems weird not to tell me.’ I stopped, then said quietly, ‘That …’

‘That I’m a lesbian?’ she said at the top of her voice. Several heads shot up from the various battered chairs around the room. Mary Martinson, who had been a teaching assistant here for about a thousand years as far as I could tell, was staring with her mouth actually open from the sofa in the middle of the room, a plastic bowl of salad in her lap.

I didn’t really know what to do. I hadn’t intended to force Zoe to out herself like that in the middle of the staffroom. I made myself a cup of coffee I no longer wanted. I could hear her breathing heavily next to me as she reached for the packet of Value ginger nuts that some kindly soul had left for all to eat.

I must have looked as awkward as I felt. Zoe touched my arm. I looked at her and she said, ‘Why would I?’ in a quiet voice.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s none of my business. But I thought it might just have come up in conversation, like, I dunno, I talk about Anya.’

Zoe nodded and gestured for me to come over to a quieter bit of the room with her. There were only a couple of minutes left of break and I had things to do, but this felt important, so I followed, with my unwanted coffee.