There was a visitor’s space free in an awkward corner, and once they were parked Fleet led the way inside the building. There’d been a few modernisations to the school over recent years, but the general layout didn’t appear to have changed since Fleet had been a pupil here himself. Harbour Park remained the only major secondary school in town. It wasn’t large by city standards, but if you lived within the parish, and unless your parents were rich enough to send you to one of the private schools in the surrounding countryside, this is where you were destined to serve your adolescence. Purely out of curiosity, Fleet had checked the school’s Ofsted rating, and hadn’t been surprised to discover that, according to the government’s inspectors, Harbour Park ‘required improvement’. It was tired, in other words, with the majority of investment flowing elsewhere – a fitting symbol of the town itself.
The head teacher met them in the entrance hall. Ms Andrews was a thin woman, tall and stooping. She had the look of a long-distance runner, Fleet thought, or perhaps of someone whose primary form of exercise was worrying. In many ways she reminded Fleet of Superintendent Burton, though the comparison did the head teacher a disservice. Rather than being a politician, Ms Andrews struck Fleet as a genuine crusader, albeit a battle-weary one, only just about clinging to the diminishing possibility that she might one day make a difference.
‘Detective Inspector,’ the head teacher offered by way of greeting. She nodded to Nicky as she took Fleet’s hand. They’d all met before, shortly after Sadie had gone missing, but this was the first time Fleet and Ms Andrews had spoken since events in the woods, and the first time since the school had been back in session. The new term had begun two days before. Sadie would have been entering the sixth form, beginning her A levels – taking her first steps towards a boundless future.
‘I’m sorry we’re not meeting again under better circumstances, Ms Andrews,’ Fleet said, ‘but thank you for arranging this at short notice. Are they ready for us?’
‘They are,’ the head teacher confirmed. ‘They’re in my office. And they’ve requested I sit in, if you don’t object?’
‘Not at all,’ said Fleet, with a glance at Nicky.
Ms Andrews led them along the corridor. The smell of the place was disconcertingly familiar to Fleet, as though whatever had been used to clean the floors over the years had seeped into the parquet, and the same food as had been served twenty years ago would shortly be on offer for the pupils’ lunch. The pupils themselves were currently between lessons, and they eyed Fleet and Nicky warily as the head teacher escorted them through the building, but parted as Ms Andrews forged a path. The children wore a version of the uniform Fleet had once worn himself, the grey jumpers and striped ties complemented now by a deep maroon blazer. The kids looked smarter than they had in Fleet’s day, there was no denying it. He tried to decide if they also appeared older, shrewder – or whether he was simply projecting what he’d come to believe after the time he’d spent in the company of Sadie’s friends.
‘After you,’ said Ms Andrews as they reached the door to her office. She held it open, and gestured Fleet and Nicky inside.
Lara Sweeney was sitting demurely in a plastic chair, one of four that had been positioned on the visitors’ side of the head teacher’s desk. Beside her sat a man who couldn’t have been anything but the teenager’s father. From Lara’s perspective, the resemblance was unfortunate: they had the same beady eyes – too small and close together for the shape of their faces – as well as the same upturned nose. The man’s hair was darker than Lara’s, but only because the teenager’s had obviously been bleached.
‘Detective Inspector Fleet?’ said Ms Andrews, making the introductions. ‘This is Lara. And this is her father, Trevor Sweeney.’
The man hadn’t risen when Fleet and Nicky had walked in. And when Fleet offered out his hand, he could tell Sweeney gave half a moment’s thought to not shaking it.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Sweeney,’ Fleet said, endeavouring not to show his distaste as Sweeney took his hand with just his fingers. ‘You too, Lara. This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Collins. Nicky, in fact. And you can call me Rob.’
The head teacher signalled Fleet and Nicky into the two empty chairs, and then quietly took her own on the window side of the desk. Beyond the fence that enclosed the playground, it was just possible from where Fleet was sitting to see the edge of the woods – and, snaking its way towards the harbour, the depthless grey of the river.
‘What’s this about?’ said Sweeney, getting straight to the point. ‘What do you want with my little girl?’
Fleet couldn’t help but be distracted for a moment by his surroundings. The last time he’d been in this office, he would have been fifteen years old. Him and Thomas Murphy, his best mate at the time, who’d died five years later from a heroin overdose. So Fleet had heard, anyway. Fleet himself had been long gone by then. But him and Tom, standing with downcast eyes before the headmaster’s desk, nodding along to Mr Sternway’s lecture about the dangers of failing to adhere to their teacher’s instructions when it came to mixing chemicals in the science lab, and trying – and failing – not to laugh. Sternway himself had retired the same year Fleet had left town, and though Fleet had never heard tell of the reason why, he’d often wondered if there hadn’t been a connection. Not with Fleet’s leaving per se, but with the reason he left. Perhaps Sternway blamed himself as much as Fleet did. Or perhaps
