Deity

Wilson’s chest, keeping him at bay with ease. ‘You’ve had your say. Sit down or fuck off.’ He flexed his neck. Jake was not just sporty but also a fitness fanatic and built like a middleweight. And as the object of lust for female students, he was naturally well respected by the male students.

Wilson looked him in the eye. A second later the pressure on Jake’s hand eased. Wilson smiled and put his hands peacefully in the air. ‘Sure, Jakey. Whatever you say,’ he said softly. He turned back towards Kyle. ‘We’ll talk later, Faggot,’ he added menacingly.

‘No, you won’t,’ said Jake. ‘You won’t go near him.’

‘Why are you defending the little bumder?’ Wilson leered towards Jake, a further insult bubbling to the surface. ‘Are you his boyfriend, Jake? You potting the brown with that little-’

Jake threw a hand to Wilson’s throat and gripped it hard. ‘What did you say to me, Fatso?’ Wilson was choking and pawing at Jake’s hand as he was pushed back over his chair. ‘What did you say?’

‘Get him off me,’ gasped Wilson, trying to loosen Jake’s grip but to no avail. Rifkind, Kyle, Becky and a few others grabbed Jake’s shoulders and tried to pull him away.

‘He’s not worth it, Jake,’ shouted Kyle, forcing himself into eye-contact. ‘Jake, he’s not worth it.’

Jake glared at Kyle then relaxed his grip on Wilson. He turned away to confirm his pacification and Wilson got to his feet, rubbing his throat.

‘That’s assault, that is!’ Wilson screamed at Rifkind. ‘And you let it happen.’

‘You provoked that situation, Mr Woodrow, despite my asking you repeatedly to avoid confrontation. Now sit down.’

Presented with a direct instruction, Wilson said the only thing he could to regain face. ‘No.’

Rifkind tried not to smile. The teenage God of No. He knew the script from here and Wilson was too stupid to resist.

‘Wilson, I order you to sit down because there’s no way you’re leaving.’

Wilson looked back triumphantly, seeing his path to victory. ‘You wanna bet? Just watch me.’ He turned to leave, throwing an angry look at Kyle, whose eyes were now glued to the floor.

‘You can’t leave and you’d better attend next week or else,’ shouted Rifkind, at the retreating Wilson, laying down his final ace.

‘Or else what? You won’t see me for shit.’

Rifkind faked a look of annoyance but broke into a big grin as Wilson turned and snatched up his Saw DVD, storming towards the doors.

Wilson looked over at Kyle. ‘Oi, Faggot.’ He stuck his tongue out and pulled a finger across his throat.

Kyle looked up from the floor, gathering his courage. His look of terror gave way to a mocking smile and he blew Wilson a big kiss. The assembled students laughed and jeered as the fuming Wilson kicked open the double doors and stalked away, a couple of sympathetic friends trailing in his wake.

‘Respeck, Kylie,’ said Becky, holding her hand up for Kyle to high five. ‘That asshole butt-munch got well and truly parred and merked.’

Kyle basked in a couple of backslaps until the worry reinfected his face. I shouldn’t have done that. He looked gratefully up at his saviour but Jake looked away at once.

‘Why do those with the fewest brain cells always have the loudest voices?’ said Adele Watson to no one in particular.

Becky turned and poured her body back into her chair, looking over at Russell who had his camcorder in front of his face. ‘Look at Steven Spielberg here. I hope that’s going on YouTube, Geek Boy,’ she said, striking a pose for him.

‘Maybe.’ Thomson pointed his camcorder in her direction. He lowered the camera and smiled at her briefly but her stony expression killed his pleasure and he blushed.

‘Just start the film, Geek,’ ordered Becky.

Nearly two hours later, the credits rolled in the darkness. Rifkind and most of the other students had gone to lunch an hour ago but Adele, Becky, Fern, Kyle and Russell had continued watching through the bulk of the lunchbreak and even sat in silence as the cast of characters scrolled down the screen.

‘Wow,’ said Kyle, standing and stretching his slender frame in the gloom. ‘Sick film.’

‘Hard to believe a film about a girls’ school could be that good,’ agreed Becky.

When the inert screen ensured total blackness, Becky edged towards the large curtain and pulled it aside. Bright sunshine streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Media Suite and she and Fern immediately bent to check their phones. Adele remained seated, unable to move. She stared straight ahead. There were tears on her cheeks.

Back in his office at St Mary’s Wharf, Brook got his mouth around his second cup of tea and closed his eyes to savour its soothing heat while his computer loaded. He logged on then registered his dismay at the volume of internal emails in his inbox.

‘Thirty-six emails — in one day,’ he sighed. ‘The tyranny of faceless communication.’ Brook scrolled down the list checking for his personal buzzwords. Any email containing the words Committee, Budget, Target or Liaison in the subject line was deleted without being opened. Happily this was most of them and Brook was left with five relevant messages about open cases and upcoming trials.

After dealing with them, he rifled through the drawers of his desk for an A-Z he knew he had somewhere. He was both pleased and appalled to find his desk bereft of cigarettes. He remembered wistfully the pack in his locker given to Noble earlier that morning, as a demonstration of his willpower.

Brook flicked through the pages of the A-Z and stared at the sparse countryside to the south and east of Borrowash, taking in the minor roads accessing Elvaston Castle and Thulston. He didn’t know the area well but it seemed very flat and he knew from his trips along the A50 to the M1 or East Midlands Airport, that the land on either side of the carriageway was prone to flooding. Indeed, even without flooding there was sufficient water around the confluence of the Rivers Trent and Derwent to merit a marina at Shardlow for the nautically minded.

Brook pulled the Yellow Pages from another drawer. His eye glimpsed a mangled, half-smoked cigarette butt behind some old papers, covered in dust and fluff. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked it out of the drawer and brushed it clean like an old soldier polishing his campaign medals. He stared lovingly at the butt for longer than necessary then threw it resolutely in the bin, chuckling noiselessly at the absurd sense of achievement that followed.

Noble walked in, holding papers. ‘We’ve got more uniform searching up and down the river, just to be thorough. Nothing yet. On the plus side, DS Gadd’s organised a door-to-door on Station Road and, apparently, someone leaving early for London on Tuesday did see the road was closed. Every other resident says the road was open later that morning so it looks like you were right. Our perpetrator faked the closure while he dumped the body.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two days ago.’ Noble consulted a scribbled note. ‘A Mr Hargreaves left his house at three thirty in the morning to drive to London. He couldn’t cross the bridges and had to take the A52 instead.’

‘Three thirty,’ Brook said thoughtfully. ‘So we’re unlikely to get witnesses walking the dog.’

‘What about anglers? They get up at all hours to bag the best spots.’

‘Get uniform to speak to every angler on that stretch. And maybe run off some notices to post near the bridges. Any chance of decent forensics?’ ventured Brook, though he already knew the answer.

Noble shook his head. ‘SOCO weren’t confident, not at the scene anyway.’

Brook nodded. ‘Water washes away many sins, John — though I prefer malt.’

‘They did find a large piece of cloth in the river nearby. They’ve bagged it for tests but we don’t even know if it connects with our John Doe.’

‘What about the bridge?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Let’s hope the body gives us an ID. What’s that?’ asked Brook, looking at the sheaf of papers.

‘Statement taken from the lads who spotted the victim in the river.’ Noble handed the report to Brook, who