Jess took the package and passed it to Annie who unwrapped a crepe bandage and a packet of painkillers. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you bandaged up properly.’
Tom leaned forward and allowed her to ease his shirt up so she could wrap the bandage round his torso. She removed the sanitary towel, replaced it with a fresh one and wound the cloth around him three times before fixing it firmly in place with a safety pin.
‘Better?’
He nodded. It did feel better. The pressure of the bandage was reassuring, and he could still feel where Annie had touched his bare skin – little sparks of electricity dancing through his follicles, making each hair stand to attention.
A raised voice drew his attention back to the men.
‘But she can’t stay!’
‘Well, how the hell was I supposed to know? You just told me to wait for her and to get the bandages. She didn’t seem to want to put them down and I wasn’t going to stand out there where anybody could see me, so I brought her in.’
‘Fucking idiot!’ Larry yelled. ‘Get rid of her.’
The man took a step back and shook his head. ‘No. No way. I didn’t agree to that.’
‘Send her back, you twat! What? Did you think I wanted you to kill her?’
Tom noticed that Miss Frith was watching the exchange as if it were a tennis match, her head moving from side to side as she watched each speaker. She seemed oddly fixated on the one getting the telling off, almost as though she recognised him. Was he an ex-pupil? He sounded older than that, though, possibly older than Miss Frith.
Larry gave Mrs Warnesford a shove towards the door that nearly knocked her off her feet. She stumbled and caught herself on the back of Harley’s chair, desperately trying to remain upright. For the first time in nearly half an hour, Tom saw Harley lift his head and engage with what was going on around him. He looked at Mrs Warnesford and scowled, then, just as suddenly, he put his head down and his expression went blank. Tom was convinced that nobody else in the room had witnessed this, everybody had been focused on the argument between their captors. He watched as his dad’s PA was escorted from the room by two of the men, Larry locking the door behind them. Then he turned his attention back to Harley. He’d thought that his attacker had been in shock, that Harley’s demeanour was subdued and withdrawn but what he’d just witnessed was something different. Harley wasn’t staring down at his desk and he wasn’t disengaged. Tom’s worry was that Harley might have something to do with what was happening, that he might have a connection with one of the men or a role in the events of the morning.
Tom had seen what Harley Morton was hiding from everybody else in the room. He’d seen it as the boy had sat up straighter when Mrs Warnesford had grabbed his chair and he’d almost recognised it earlier, but Annie had distracted him. Harley wasn’t uncommunicative, he was just communicating in an unexpected way.
Harley Morton had a phone.
19
‘She’s coming back,’ Cam said, relief coursing through every cell in his body. ‘They’ve let her go.’ He watched as Ruth Warnesford negotiated the steps down from the main entrance to the humanities block and then jogged awkwardly across the playground to where he was waiting with Pearson.
‘How’s Tom?’ he asked as soon as the door closed behind his PA.
Ruth pushed past him towards a row of chairs that lined the far wall of the main hall and collapsed into the nearest one.
‘Christ!’ Pearson snapped. ‘Let her get her breath back.’
‘I just–’
‘She’s your responsibility just as much as your son is,’ the DI said. ‘She’s your employee and she’s just had a shock. I need to know what she saw in there because any small piece of information about these men might help my colleagues to free those kids, but I need her to be able to tell me calmly.’
Cam followed Pearson across the hall to where Ruth was sitting with her head in her hands breathing heavily. The jog across the playground had taken her less than thirty seconds – it wasn’t the exercise that was affecting her respiration, it was fear. What the hell had she seen over there?
‘Can I get you anything?’ Cam asked, hoping that if he reminded the woman that he was there she’d tell him something about his son. Ruth shook her head, still struggling to get her breathing under control. ‘Glass of water?’
This time she raised her head and glared at him. ‘Oh, fuck off, Cam! I’m sick of you and your fake concern for everybody else. I only went over there because I let you convince me that it would be all right. I can’t believe I let you talk me into it. You’re so good at getting your own way, aren’t you? And if somebody tries to stand up to you, you just bulldozer them or get rid of them.’
Cam stepped back, shocked by the bitterness in Ruth’s tone.
‘I’ll tell him what happened – you can listen if you want.’
Pearson sat next to her and took out his notebook. ‘It looked from here like somebody grabbed you and dragged you into the building. Is that what happened?’
Ruth nodded. ‘It was terrifying – I had no idea what he was going to do to me.’
‘And what did he do?’ Pearson asked, gently.
Cam listened to the woman’s account of being hustled along the corridor and into the classroom, desperately trying to contain his impatience as she described the three armed and masked men in the room and how calm the students appeared to be. Why wasn’t she talking about Tom? Was he badly hurt? Or worse?
‘Explain where the men were in relation to doors and windows,’ Pearson said and made notes as Ruth described the position of each man.
‘And the students?’
‘Behind desks, last three rows.
