“Peter?” said Amanda, softly, to the man who had now got down on his knees before Mary. “Did you attack a young boy? It would’ve been near the edge of town, not too far from here.”
Peter did not respond straight away. Instead, he just continued to look down at Mary, who was prostrate with shock and exhaustion. Amanda did not press Peter to answer but gave him the space to respond in his own time. Eventually, he turned to her with an expression of guilt and regret that told her what she wanted to know before he even said the words.
“Yes, it was me who attacked that poor boy.”
“Peter, no,” whimpered Mary.
“Was it also you who attacked another man, several years ago on a farm on Old East Lane?”
“Yes,” mumbled Peter, dropping his gaze, “it was me who killed Johann.”
Amanda surveyed the odd scene before her - the exhausted couple in the middle of torn and folded sheets on the floor - and could not believe that she had solved the case.
“I think…” started Amanda a little hesitantly, unsure how to broach the subject. “I think it would be best if we were to return to the school.”
Without a word of protest being spoken, Peter helped Mary to her feet. The man nodded to Amanda gently, suggesting that she should lead the way.
Chapter 6
A second, much louder knock was made on Brenden’s door, causing the boy – who found himself somewhere in the drowsy state between the waking day and sleep, with an inclination to move towards the latter - to turn over in his sheets and mumble something in response.
“Brenden?” came the voice of Amanda from the corridor, “are you getting ready?”
After slowly separating himself from half-formed dreams, Brenden’s memories of what had happened over the last few days began to crystallize in the boy’s mind. He remembered seeing him, the man who had haunted his existence ever since he had entered his second life, passing the deputy’s office. It had been Ms Halford who informed him that the man had been caught and that if he wanted, he could choose to watch as his attacker was brought into the school. He had fretted over whether to accept this offer, but in the end, he found that he had to go: he had to be sure that they had got the right man. When the man had passed the office, at first he believed that the school had made a mistake. The dejected figure that was passively guided down the corridor by Amanda could surely not have been the one who had killed him. But as he had focused in on the individual’s face, he came to see that his initial impression had been wrong; though there was nothing of the dread that haunted Brenden’s every night in the man’s eyes, the boy could see that they had the right person.
Then, he had just watched the man go by.
As he lay in his bed, he wondered why he had done absolutely nothing further on the following days to find out more about his attacker or what was to happen to the man. Though he would not admit it to himself, he knew the reason. For the most part, Brenden had just hidden himself away, keen to avoid having to face up to the unwanted looks and questions he expected waited for him outside his door. But now a day had come that even he felt he could not avoid: the sentencing of his attacker.
“Brenden!” called Amanda.
“I’m getting up,” responded the boy in a hoarse voice.
After quickly throwing on the shirt, trousers and shoes the school had provided him with, Brenden opened the door to reveal a slightly disgruntled Amanda, who was already tiring of her new task of having to take care of the boy. Quickly though, when she saw Brenden in his baggy shirt and overlong trousers, Amanda’s expression changed to one of concern. She was keenly aware of what it was like to feel the loneliness of being the new student at the school, separated from all those around through being the victim of an attack; but she could only imagine what it would be like for Brenden to have to relive the very thing that brought him to the school in front of all those he had come to know in his new life.
“Are you ready, Brenden?” she asked the boy. Brenden fumbled around with his belt and attempted to hide the excess fabric of the shirt by pushing as much of it as he could into his trousers. Amanda was tempted to try to help Brenden in his struggle, but as the boy finished in his effort, she could see that it was a losing battle as the fabric soon spilt out over the top of the trousers; if only the school had provided him with a belt with enough notches.
“I guess we can go,” mumbled the boy.
“Come on. I think they’ll already be waiting for us.”
“Amanda?” questioned Brenden, with hesitation in his voice. “Why did you decide to stay?”
“What, here at the school?”
“No, you know, out there.”
“Oh, I don’t know whether there’s time for that now,” replied Amanda with only half her mind on what Brenden was saying. “Ask me later, okay. Now, we’ve got to get going.”
Within only a few minutes, Amanda managed to get Brenden to the deputy’s
