“You might read too much into it, maybe something came up, and she changed her mind. You can’t see peoples’ expressions over the phone.”
I accepted that with a nod, but I wasn’t convinced. It made me tentatively hopeful that the teacher would have something to tell us when we went to see her later today. Still, I stopped myself from getting too carried away with ideas and theories before we’d even spoken to her.
The afternoon seemed to pass painfully slowly as we crept closer to the time when we were due to meet her. I tried chasing every lead I could think of to find Mickey but didn’t turn up anything. The kid seemed to have vanished, his phone staying off and no news from his worried mum.
At Anna Sheridan’s house, she offered us tea and biscuits, and Stephen accepted. Once the food was in front of me, I realised how hungry I was and took a couple of digestives before we launched into questions.
Sheridan herself was a young woman who looked anywhere from her late twenties to mid-thirties, with strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a loose bun and a smudged, pink birthmark on her left cheek. She was polite and welcoming, but there was an air of tension around her, and I didn’t know her well enough to tell whether the anxiety was simply from us being there or if it was something else.
“You wanted to know about Alistair?” she asked after she’d given us our cups of tea. I quickly set mine down and picked up my notebook.
“Aye, you’re the ICT teacher at his school, right? We heard you run an after-school club for the kids, and Alistair is one of the members.”
“Was,” she corrected. “He was one of the members.”
“Why did he leave?”
She grimaced, little more than a tightening of the lips and a slight frown, but it was definitely there.
“He was asked to leave, actually.”
“Really?” My eyebrows raised. “Why was that?”
“He, uh, there was some violent behaviour towards another child. That was the biggest thing.”
“The biggest thing? There were other incidents?” Stephen put in. Sheridan glanced over at him and gave a small nod.
“He was often abrupt or rude to me, which, you know, I didn’t really have a problem with. Some kids just aren’t the best at socialising,” she hurried to add.
“But?” I prompted.
“He was unkind to the other kids, too, you know. Especially when he first joined in year five. Later on, he seemed to stop, but there were other things.” She rubbed her hands over her jeans and left a slight smear on the fabric, her hands clammy.
“Such as?”
“I couldn’t prove it, but I was sure that he’d stolen one of the school’s laptops. He wears this huge rucksack, right, and he’d asked once previously about borrowing a laptop. I would’ve let him, but it was against school policy. And a month later, the number of laptops didn’t add up, but I couldn’t say for certain that it’d been him.”
She seemed keen to make sure we didn’t come down too hard on Alistair or take her word as gospel, and I wondered why that was. Did she feel guilty for asking the teenager to leave the club?
“Were there any other incidents before he was violent against the other child?” Stephen said after she’d been quiet for a moment.
“Not really. Well, there were little things. I’d find him in the computer suite when he wasn’t meant to be there. Or he’d turn off the screen when I walked past, so I couldn’t see it. He was dealing with some advanced stuff, and I was… concerned about what he might use it for, but he wouldn’t talk to me.” She pressed her lips together. “He made it very clear that he didn’t trust me.”
“And what did he do to hurt this other kid?” I asked.
She shifted in her seat and reached for her mug of tea, wrapping her hands around the china even though it was warm inside her house. She frowned down at the coffee table between us, and I wondered what she was thinking but stayed quiet. She’d tell us in her own time.
“It was after the club had ended one evening, and it was winter, so it was already dark by then. The kids headed out, and I packed up, but I heard this yelling when I was walking to my car.”
She swallowed and reached up to tuck a stray bit of hair away, her hand visibly shaking slightly.
“I saw this little light going on and off, way off on the playing field, near the trees. And it sounded like kids getting up to trouble, and like someone might get hurt, so I didn’t really think before I went over.”
She stopped, taking another sip of her tea, her forehead crinkled with discomfort.
“Take your time,” I said after a moment. “It’s hard to talk through memories like this, I know.”
She gave me a weak, appreciative smile and a small nod.
“Alistair was there, and a couple of bigger teenagers that I didn’t know. And he had a lighter- He was burning a child’s sleeve.”
My breath caught as I listened as I shared a loaded look with Stephen, who gave me a nod of acknowledgement.
“I was so horrified. I ran in there, got the flames out, and shouted at all of them. Alistair just stood there, looking at me, before he said that it was only a g-game.” She shook her head, giving a humourless laugh. “I tried to tell the head of the year, but the child swore it didn’t happen, and he hadn’t actually been burned, so I had no proof. Even if they believed me, they couldn’t do anything without the child saying that it happened.”
“But you still told Alistair not to come to ICT club anymore,” I concluded.
“Yes, there wasn’t anything I could do.” She gave a helpless shrug. “Alistair was otherwise a model student. None of the
