PP: You’re sure Rowena White was with you?
AJ: Yeah. I was telling her about a friend of mine’s problems when the alarm went off. Christ, it made a din.
Like Sarah earlier, Penny was presumably crossing suspects off a list.
PP: You said that as part of your job, you keep the registers. Can you explain how that works?
AJ: Well, yeah, at eight forty and again after lunch the teachers tick off all the kids in their class against the class register. Any kid who isn’t there is marked as absent. The register is brought to me in the office – a kid usually does it, like a treat. Anyways, if a kid arrives after the register’s taken they have to sign in a different register that I keep on a shelf in my office. Anyone leaving before the end of the school day has to sign themselves out in that too.
PP: Anyone being who?
AJ: Kids, mainly, leaving early because they’ve got to get to the dentist’s or whatever. But adults too, sometimes, like parent readers.
PP: And teachers?
AJ: Yeah, but hardly ever. I mean, they get in before me and leave later. Mrs Healey makes them work like dogs. But teaching assistants, well, they’re different. I mean, it’s like me. An eight-thirty-to-five deal and any excuse to leave early. So they sign themselves out.
PP: What did you do after the fire alarm went off?
AJ: I went outside.
She hasn’t told Penny that she waited for five minutes before going outside. Nor what she was doing in that time. Presumably Penny didn’t know to ask her.
AJ: I gave Tilly Rogers, that’s the reception teacher, the register for her class, but there wasn’t any need. I mean, she knew all the kids were there. Then I saw a boy getting hysterical. By that statue. Rowena was trying to calm him down, but he was just getting more wound up.
PP: Do you know the child’s name?
AJ: Now I know, I mean, I realise now why he was like that. Anyways, Rowena asked me if I’d seen Jenny. I said not to worry, that I knew she wasn’t inside. I knew, OK. Everyone gives me that look, but I knew.
PP: How did you know?
AJ: Because she’d signed herself out. In the register I was telling you about. The one in my office. Look at it yourself if you don’t believe me.
PP: You think a paper register survived the fire?
It doesn’t give a tone of voice but I imagine Penny’s was contemptuous. Wooden window frames and plaster and carpets didn’t survive the fire, so how the hell would paper?
AJ: She signed herself out, right? In the register. I remember her doing it.
PP: What time was that?
AJ: Around three, I suppose. I didn’t check the time.
PP: Didn’t she write the time in the register?
AJ: I watched her sign out but I didn’t go and check what she’d written. Why should I?
PP: Why didn’t you bring the register out?
AJ: I didn’t think it mattered. I just thought the reception-class one mattered.
PP: Surely the whole point of that register is to know who’s in the building in case of fire?
AJ: Look, I’m new, OK? Only been here a term. They had a fire practice a few weeks back but I was off sick. Even if I had brought the register out it wouldn’t have made no difference, right? It would have said Jenny was out of the building. Shown her bloody signature. Proved what I am telling you now. That she signed herself out.
I glance at Jen, enough to know that she still can’t remember and that it’s tearing her up.
‘Perhaps she just doesn’t want everyone to think it was her fault,’ I say.
Because why on earth would Jenny go in again?
PP: When did you realise that Jennifer Covey was still in the building?
AJ: I saw her mother running in, yelling for her. And then that daft cow went in too.
PP: Do you mean Rowena White?
AJ: Yeah. There were fire engines coming up the road by then. She should have left it up to them, not made their job even harder for them. They ended up having to rescue her too. Not sure what she was trying to prove. She must have wanted the attention.
I hear Annette Jenks’s jealousy without needing to listen to her voice. Because when it came down to it, the drama queen failed to do anything remotely deserving of attention. I can almost taste the bitterness of her words. She’ll be seething now about Rowena’s small mention in the
[Detective Sergeant Baker asks PP out of the room. After three minutes PP returns.]
PP: Do you know Silas Hyman?
I remember Sarah telling you that the head teacher or a governor would have given the police information on anyone who could have a grudge against the school, ‘
Perfect recall and logic and they think I’m a cabbage.
AJ: I’ve no idea who Silas Hyman is. What kind of a name is Silas anyways?
PP: He was a teacher at the school, who left in April.
AJ: I wouldn’t know him then, would I? Only started working there in May.
PP: You’ve never heard of him?
AJ: As I said, only started at the place in May.
PP: Nobody gossiped about him?
AJ: No.
PP: A teacher who’d been fired only a few weeks before and there was no gossip?
[AJ shakes head.]
PP: I must say that I find it hard to believe.
My respect for the harsh-faced PP goes up a notch.
‘You see,’ Jenny says. ‘Silas and Annette didn’t even know each other. Let alone have an affair.’
Sarah gets another crumpled statement out of her bag.
Her mobile rings and she starts, as if someone has seen her. I go closer and hear Mohsin’s voice at the other end.
‘Prescoes, that printing company, they printed three hundred copies of the Sidley House calendar. Does that help at all?’
‘Three hundred people knew that it was Adam’s birthday on Wednesday. And also that it was sports day so the school would be virtually empty. What about the witness?’
‘Sorry, honey, Penny won’t budge on that, and no one else is talking to me either. They probably don’t trust me. Fuck knows why.’
She thanks him and hangs up. Then she smooths out the next crumpled statement.
The key this time is SH for Sally Healey. The interviewer is AB – Detective Inspector Baker. The time it started was 5.55 p.m. The interviews were almost concurrent.
22
I remember Sally Healey on telly the evening of the fire – her pink linen shirt and cream trousers and assembly voice and immaculate make-up. And how the carefully assembled frontage had started to fall apart.
AB: Can you tell me who you knew to be in the building at the time of the fire?
SH: Yes. There was one reception class. Our other reception class was at the zoo. All their names are in the register I gave you. There was also Annette Jenks, the school secretary; Tilly Rogers, a reception teacher; and, of course, Jennifer Covey, who’s a temporary classroom assistant.
AB: Was every other member of staff out of the building?
SH: Yes, at sports day. We needed all of them. We are ambitious in the number of activities and it would be
