‘Does the school have records of pupils going back into the seventies and eighties?’ Harry asked.
‘Of course,’ the head teacher replied. ‘Goes back decades. What exactly is it that you need?’
‘I’ve the names of two pupils,’ Harry said. ‘I know they both attended here at the same time. It might be useful to learn more about the school at that time, other pupils who were there with them, if there was anything that happened during the years they attended, that kind of thing.’
‘Am I right to assume this is about, you know, the awful goings on we’ve all heard about?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes,’ Harry nodded. ‘People are talking, then?’
‘Yes,’ the headteacher said. ‘You could say that.’ She then fell quiet for a moment, resting her hands together on the desk in front of her. ‘Our records are confidential,’ she said eventually. ‘As I’m sure you would understand. But under the circumstances . . .’
Harry said, ‘This is entirely a police matter. Confidentiality is pretty much the order of the day.’
Rising then, the headteacher walked to a large metal cupboard and unlocked it. Opening the doors brought into view numerous, well ordered files.
‘These belong to the decades you mention,’ she said, gesturing at a row of files on a shelf in the cupboard. ‘Are you able to narrow it down a bit at all? We’ve photographs as well, you know. Not just the official class ones, but of activities, sports days, that kind of thing.’
Thinking about Capstick and Hutchison, Harry said, ‘Maybe seventy-eight onwards?’
If they had been at school together, then he figured seeing files and photos from when they had been there at least a few years made a little more sense than trying to look at everything. It was somewhere to start, anyway, even if it came to nothing.
‘Do you know what you’re looking for specifically?’ the headteacher asked, pulling some files out and placing them on her desk.
‘No, not really,’ Harry said.
‘I’ll leave you alone for a while, then,’ the head teacher said, then slipped out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Harry stared at the files. Having set the rest of the team off on finding out as much as they could about the two victims, he had then realised that if they had been at school together, then perhaps there was something useful there, too? He doubted it, but it was worth a look regardless. The two victims being childhood friends, if they were friends that is, he thought, was intriguing enough to have him at least go and have a look, which was why he’d wandered up to the school, leaving the rest of the team with everything else. But there was one other thing which had sent him to the school for a nosy, and that was what Little Nick had said, something about John not even being liked when they were at school, or something along those lines, anyway. For him to have brought that up at all had struck Harry as odd. To harbour that kind of resentment for so long took more than just getting your head flushed down the toilet a couple of times. He doubted there was anything to it, but it was worth a look, and anything which gave them a better understanding of the victims and their lives was never a bad thing.
With his little notebook open, ready to jot anything down of importance, Harry opened the files, which he discovered to be logbooks and diaries recording the daily goings on at the school, including absences, illnesses, visitors, holidays, and any accidents or incidents that happened at the school. There was even mention of a government information film, Harry noticed, which had been shown to the whole school each year. Seemed that at the time the then head teacher hadn’t entirely approved of it being shown at all, and there had been some resistance from a number of the parents, particularly by one who had voiced concerns about its impact on his daughter, but it had still gone ahead. Harry wondered for a moment what on earth could be so bad about a film designed to help kids stay safe for a head teacher to not want it shown. He jotted down the title, then further on found not just two, but three names he recognised: John Capstick, Richard Hutchison, and Nicholas Ellis. John was a year older than the other two, but due to the size of the school, they had all been in the same class; thirty-two children in total.
Harry tracked back through the files briefly, then followed the three names through the school. He cross-referenced these with a number of the other files, which contained within them the photographs that the headteacher had mentioned. And in those he found himself staring into the long-ago eyes of two men he only knew as corpses. Nick was there, too, and he seemed almost unchanged, thin and rat like as a child, it seemed, not just as an adult.
John, it was clear to see to Harry, was not a happy boy at school. And he didn’t just gather that from the photographs, which in their fading colours showed a boy whose clothes were threadbare, his hair unkempt, and on his face an expression of emptiness. He read it as well in the daily logs, written by the teachers, with John’s name coming up all too often. They spoke of a boy who didn’t so much struggle at school as fight against every part of it. He had behaviour problems, it seemed, he wouldn’t concentrate, he had run away from school too many times to count. Then, as he’d grown older, and hit age 10 and a growth spurt all at once it seemed, bullying had risen to the top of the reasons why he was in trouble, with John throwing his weight about rather too often and with far too much enthusiasm.
Harry shuffled through more logs, more reports, more photographs. He found some notes and
