Hard Knocks

McKenna turned paler still. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Craddock raise his eyebrows at me.

“Are you trying to make the boy faint, Charlie?” he said in that mild voice of his.

It made me pause, blinking. Then I turned and walked away.

I walked out of the dining hall and slowly upstairs, almost blindly. What was I trying to do? Take out my anger at the wilful waste of a life on the nearest person who wasn’t going to hit back?

I needed to talk to someone. More than that, I needed to talk to Sean.

I picked up the pace and hurried along the faded corridors to the dormitory. It was empty when I walked in. I went straight to my locker and switched on the mobile phone, but before I could dial a number, it rang.

A generated voice at the other end told me I had one new message and I obligingly pressed the right buttons to retrieve it.

“Hi Charlie, it’s Madeleine.” On the recording she sounded hesitant and almost breathless. “Look, I’ve got some information you asked for, some things you ought to know about McKenna and that fight he had with Blakemore. It’ll probably explain a few things. I should have told you this morning but, well, other things got in the way. Call me as soon as you can, OK?”

I sighed, suppressing my irritation. She seemed to have plenty of time to interrogate me about my relationship with Sean, so why had something like this taken a back seat?

I dialled in the number she’d left and she picked it up almost right away, as though she’d been waiting for my call.

“Charlie! Thanks for getting back to me so quick. It’s about McKenna and Blakemore—”

“He’s dead,” I interrupted.

“Oh,” she said, coming to an abrupt halt. “What do you mean? Which one?”

“Blakemore.”

“My God. How?”

“He crashed his bike,” I said, “and before you ask, no, it wasn’t entirely an accident.”

Of course, she wasn’t going to let things go at that. I explained, as briefly as possible, what we’d found by the ravine, my suspicions about the men in the Peugeot, and about the conversation I’d had with Blakemore just before he died.

“That doesn’t mean he was killed deliberately,” she said when I’d finished. I could hear the frown in her voice. “It just means somebody else was involved.”

“So why didn’t they stop?”

“People often don’t,” she said, almost gently. “That’s why it’s called hit and run.”

“OK,” I allowed, trying not to take offence at her moderate tone. “But it seems a hell of a coincidence that the guy admits to involvement in the kidnapping, tells me he can get me answers about who shot Kirk, goes off and then just happens to get himself accidentally knocked off his bike and killed by a complete stranger. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” she agreed slowly. “It does seem a bit unlikely, I’ll grant you that.”

There was a pause while we both considered the implications.

“Anyway,” I said, “what was this news about Blakemore and McKenna’s argument the other night?”

“Well, it hardly seems relevant now, but actually young McKenna had a very good reason for taking against Blakemore.”

I went very still. “Which was?”

“Well, McKenna had an uncle who was in the Paras. He was only about six years older than McKenna, as it happens. When he came out earlier this year he decided to train to be a bodyguard. So, he signed up for a course at Einsbaden Manor and managed to get himself killed in a car crash during the first week of the course.”

Memory arrived like a camera zoom, hitting me flat in the face out of nowhere. Sean’s words back in that pub came back to me, hard and fast. “They had a pupil killed in a driving accident six months ago, and there were rumours that it wasn’t quite as accidental as it could have been.”

Suddenly, all McKenna’s edgy behaviour fell into place. His almost unhinged reaction when we were all buzzed by the men in the Peugeot that first time and his attack on Blakemore in the Einsbaden bar.

“Of course,” I murmured. “That’s how McKenna knew Blakemore used to be in charge of the driving, not Figgis.”

“What?” Madeleine said. “Oh, yes, according to the reports, Blakemore was supposed to be responsible for the class at the time. He claimed that McKenna’s uncle was using one of the school cars on his own time, without permission. It all got very messy, but the Major managed to slide out of any suit for negligence. Looking at the financials for the time, it probably would have been enough to finish him.”

“So why does McKenna now want to be a bodyguard? And why has he come to the same place that might have been responsible for the death of his uncle?” I wondered aloud, although as I said it, I realised there were two possible answers.

Justice. Or revenge.

“Well, he certainly doesn’t seem interested in this as a long-term career,” Madeleine said. “He’s actually a driving instructor back at home, and before he left for the course he put in an order for a new car, which he’s having modified to dual controls for when he gets back. Hardly the action of the man looking to chuck it all in and become a full-time bodyguard, is it?”

“A driving instructor?” I queried. He’d never shown any particular spark during the driving lessons. In fact he’d been awful. But then, I’d tried not to show any in the unarmed combat, either. If he was hiding his abilities, he had to have a reason.

I don’t know what Madeleine said next, I wasn’t paying enough attention. Instead I was remembering those skid marks at the crash site. There was something precise about them. Something measured. A driving instructor.

I wonder.

“McKenna was in the village today,” I said. “I bumped into him after I left the cafe but, when we got back, he was here waiting for us.”

“I thought you said he had concussion and he’d stayed at the Manor?”

“That’s where he was supposed to be, yes,” I said.

“So how did he get there – and back, for that matter?”

I didn’t answer straight away. None of the students had brought a vehicle of their own to Einsbaden Manor, but that didn’t mean there weren’t plenty available at the school. The Audis we used every day, for example, always had the keys left hanging in the ignitions. Anyone could take one, if they wanted to.

But if they had . . .

“Listen Madeleine, I’ve got to go,” I said hurriedly. “I need to check on something.”

Madeleine did her best not to appear offended at my sudden departure. She just told me to keep in touch and let her know if I needed anything.

I tried not to run back downstairs, but I didn’t have to field any awkward questions in any event. I moved quickly across the tiled hallway out of the front door, skirting round the edge of the house to the parking area at the rear.

The school Audis were lined up along the far side, as always, and I took a casual turn along the backs of them. Spotting broken glass wouldn’t have been difficult, but only if there’d been any.

I made a return pass along the fronts, but there were no new dents or scratches anywhere. I felt my shoulders slump a little. So I’d been wrong. I started back across the car park for the Manor again, when a flutter of bright blue plastic caught my eye.

Over in the corner, half hidden behind the trucks, were the remains of the three cars we’d wrecked in the forest. They’d been dragged back and covered over with a tarpaulin sheet. I’d assumed they were all written off.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the house, but nobody was visible at the windows or on the terrace. I moved quickly behind the trucks, out of sight, and lifted the nearest corner of the cover.

The car I’d been in – the one Hofmann had been driving – was a mess, completely undrivable. All the glass was gone and the body had deformed sufficiently from the roll that the doors were no longer capable of closing, even if all of them had been still attached.