Miss Take - Chapter 3 (3579)

Chapter 3 (3579)

Saturday morning. If she could have stayed indoors, she would have done. She’d had all morning to make up her mind to either go to work or call in sick. Eventually, after lunch, she had decided to go and had changed out of her pyjamas and dressed. She lived in a small flat. Small in more ways than one as all the furniture had been bought with her height in mind. The table and chairs were low, there were no high shelves and the mirror she was currently looking into was low down on the wall, at the perfect height for someone under five feet tall.

Kelly was dressed in a black blouse and skirt. She wore black tights and a pair of second-hand black court shoes that some child had grown out of and given to charity. Today she wore no glasses, but she still had her hair tied back in a tight ballerina's bun. Looking at herself in the mirror, I am a tiny wee black woman, she thought to herself. She was still tense after seeing the police yesterday, so lingered longer at the mirror than usual. If they ever make a film about my life, I would be impossible to cast, she thought. She turned her head to the left. People had told her she was pretty though, in an baby-faced sort of way. She'd do well on Tinder, she supposed, if all she put on there was head-shots. If she ever met someone, they'd have to be pretty short too, she hated people looming over her.

'Come on then,' she muttered to herself, reaching for her coat. Living alone as she did, she had a habit of narrating her life.  ‘Complications like that are the last thing you need.’

She put on her tight fitting Superdry jacket and zipped it up to her neck. Once it was on, she put her keys in her pocket and left the flat, pulling the door shut with a snick behind her. She never carried a bag.

The catering job she was going to was in the afternoon, two bus rides away. A party for a rich kid at a big redbrick mansion-house in the west end of town. The agency she worked for almost always had something for her to do at the weekends. She walked up the long drive, following a wave from one of the local staff and went around the side of a long wing of the building to the kitchen. She nodded at some familiar faces as they were gathering and chatting prior to the event starting. She really didn't want to be there, and she avoided talking to the others. They were mainly eastern Europeans and Asians, all of them talkative and friendly. It didn’t take long for the head-caterer to get things moving and once the party was underway Kelly started circulating with trays of party food for the children, occasionally helping herself to a sausage roll when no-one was looking. Later on, she started serving drinks to the adults. After that, as the kids started leaving, picked up by their parents or minders, crunching the gravel in the driveway under their expensive wheels, all that was left were a few adult drinkers, getting hammered in the marquee that was set up in the large walled garden behind the house.

'I just need three, the rest can go home now,' said the head caterer and Kelly elected to leave as she had just enough time to go the gym before it shut at nine. She'd kept her mind on the job and not spoken to a single soul the entire time.

At the gym she did her usual round of warm-up exercises and a bit of stress-busting on the treadmill she headed to the climbing wall. The gym she went to had the best one in Edinburgh. She knew their wall intimately now though and went up and down it a few times, taking the hardest route, the one which tested her strength the most. She could easily lift her small body up with one hand, a feat that had not gone unnoticed with some of the others.

After she’d been up and down a few times, at the bottom of the wall, a thin bearded man in his forties smiled at her as she came down.

'You should join our club,' he said. 'You'd get a lot out of it I think.'

This was not the first time this man had asked her to join the Edinburgh Climbing Club. She smiled and nodded, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound rude.

'Something to think about anyway,' he said a little awkwardly after her silence dragged out for a few seconds. He then turned and headed towards the changing rooms, wiping sweat from his forehead. She didn't want to seem unfriendly, but if this guy started getting any pushier, she'd have to find a new gym.

Showered and changed, she was back at her flat by ten. She flopped down onto the sofa and sat watching TV for all of three minutes before she stood up again and went to her bedroom. She then opened the fitted wardrobe and pulled out piles of shoe boxes to reveal the back wall. She found a small hidden clasp and pushed the wall aside. From this recess she pulled three large gym bags which she hauled up and dropped onto the room's single bed. She unzipped the largest of the bags and started to carefully unpack it.

***

This is crazy, thought Kelly. What I am doing right now is crazy. It was four in the morning and she was now skulking in the bushes, looking up at the windows of the house she had been catering the afternoon before. She never took chances like this. She always spent weeks casing a place she planned to burgle, carefully selecting her ingress and egress routes, working out the weight of everything she planned to take and practising any climbs involved until she could reach for every hand and foot hold in total darkness. All the break-ins she had ever done had been done like that, up until this one. Well, and the end of the one before this one, she admitted to herself. She always enjoyed the rush, from the first step into the property, all the way to sorting through the loot and selling it to Treacle, walking away with a bundle of notes in her pocket. Planning a job and doing it well, that too she took pride in. She revelled in the reputation she had earned in the newspapers and all the head-scratching she imagined went on amongst the police. This job, though, stank of desperation. She was getting no thrill from it at all, just fear and trepidation.

Why was she doing it at all? She’d asked herself that all the way here on the bus. Well, one of the reasons, she reassured herself as she watched the back door, was to try and get that scumbag Paul Bevy off the hook. He was either under arrest now, or being watched like a hawk.

Another cat-burglary in the same style as Orlando and Wraithston would surely help get him off? She had no idea, she wasn't interested in how the police did things, being of the opinion that the more she knew, the more she’d be scared of being caught and that this fear would put her off her game.

She couldn’t resist keeping copies of the local newspapers that ran any story on ‘The Squirrel’ though and she’d learned from reading them that the police had more or less worked out that it was the same person that had carried out all her break-ins. They had got that right at least.

The newspapers had assumed it was a man, of course, and even had an artist’s impression doing the rounds, dreamed up from god knows were, of a villain with a scar across his face and a crucifix tattoo on his neck.

The other reason, maybe, was that this house, and this night, was such a gift. It was old, hundreds of years old, and had no security system of any kind. The current owners had only bought the property a year ago and were still renovating it. From scouting the place out in the afternoon, she had learned that the alarm system was not wired to anything, it hadn’t worked in years and they owners had not got round to fixing it or replacing it. Perhaps they relied on the fact that there were always at least two or three people in residence and presumably they locked their windows and doors, but from her little secret tour of the house in the afternoon she knew one of the guest room windows was unlocked because it had been her that had unlocked it.

There were still people chatting and smoking weed down at the marquee and one or two of the lights inside were still on. There were people in the kitchen too, and she was waiting for them to shut the door so she could make a run to the wall and get up to the window she had left open.

All evening she had played a game with herself, betting on the outcome of random events to determine if she was really going to go through with this last-minute burglary. He's a little toe-rag, but he doesn't deserve to go to jail for murder, she had said to herself while unpacking her gear back at the flat. If the night bus to the west-end is late, then I'll not go, she'd told herself, but it had been bang on time. If the driver stops at the Haymarket and anyone in a red coat gets on, then I’ll get off and walk home. Only a drunk old man in a donkey jacket had got on.

The last thing she'd done before leaving the flat was kick off the 'alibi-app' on her phone that liked posts on Facebook and Twitter at random intervals until it shut down not long after three. She'd never have to rely on it, but the theory was that her phone records would prove that she'd not left the flat all evening. On the night bus she used a burner phone, not to do anything with, but just as a prop, reasoning that it kept away unwanted any attention and anyone without a smart-phone these days looked odd. On the bus she wore her black hoodie, just another teenager going home after a Saturday night out. She sat downstairs in the seat behind the driver, facing inwards, with her head down and hood up. If anyone speaks to me or clocks me, if I have to look up for any reason, I'll call it off, she had thought to herself, but no-one had. It seemed that Fate had decreed that she should rob this house tonight.

A drunken woman lurched out of the kitchen door and crouched down by the bins. She pulled down her jeans and began to urinate, at the same time as trying to light a cigarette. After a rather undignified conclusion she then staggered back in again and a man reached out and shut the door behind her.

Kelly was no more than a shadow, dressed all in black, with her hoodie up and a balaclava masking her face. She wore a black pair of climbing shoes and a pair of tight-fitting leather gloves. Even if someone was looking right at her, against the dark background of the garden they wouldn’t have seen her. She waited another minute, trying to find a reason not to go ahead with the break-in. Come on, Miss Take, she growled to herself. This is it, now or never.

Even so, she continued to hesitate. Things had really escalated. A murder. The police would be taking things much more seriously now. Was she just asking for it? Part of her enjoyed the feeling of the high-anxiety creeping over her. This was the same feeling she had felt on her very first break-in, a feeling of such snapping tension that it felt like every nerve in her body was standing on end. It was this sensation that finally drove her out of her hiding place and in a surge, she rushed towards the wall, and was straight up the drain pipe and onto the windowsill of the first-floor guest room in a matter of seconds.

She peered in the window to see that a couple were inside, sleeping on an old four-poster bed. She kissed her teeth and considered for a moment. The window was still unlocked and she could cross the room silently enough, but she doubted an old window that probably hadn’t been opened in a hundred years would do it soundlessly. With no further hesitation she kept climbing until she was on the roof.

Kelly knew the east wing of the house was uninhibited so she headed in that direction, walking sideways along the slanting tiles, with one hand on the roof and the other held away from her body for balance. There were three gable windows on the roof she was on, but all were locked and shuttered. She kept going, around the end of the house until she was on the other side of the building. Three gable windows graced this side too, and these were also locked. The next part of the roof was a large half-moon window that looked down over the entrance hall from the back of the central staircase. The sill under the window was narrow, but provided enough foot-hold. One of the small square windows set into the half-moon was slightly ajar and overlooked the stairs. She pushed it gently open then dropped down onto the oak banister. From there she hopped onto the landing as lightly as a cat.

She started her burglary downstairs, moving quietly into a sitting room just off the hall. There were plenty of interesting items here, so she switched her headlamp on and off as she picked up and examined figurines, ornaments, and any object d'art that was made from silver or gold. With having done no research beforehand though, she was flying blind, and ended up filling her bag quite quickly with things that she had no idea of the value of, but that had taken her fancy. She moved from room to room. When she found a discarded coat, lying tossed over a sofa by a dying fire, she checked its pockets and pulled out a wallet and a set of car keys. She put the wallet straight into her bag and mused a moment over the keys. She had never stolen a car before, but decided to hold onto them just in case.

Having explored the west wing, she circled back round to the main hall. All that remained down here was the east wing where the kitchens were and presumably contained some die-hards still boozing and chatting through the night. She decided to skip it entirely. Besides it was being renovated so probably didn’t contain anything valuable.

She crept upstairs, testing each step as she went for creaks, keeping close to the wall. Her bag had very little room left in it for anything else, but she was on the job now and always hated not getting a good look at everything if she could. Who knew what she would find upstairs? She cold always make room in her bag for something that caught her eye, and her trousers and hoodie had pockets.

As she walked past one of the rooms in a long corridor, she was startled by a cough, an angry exclamation and footsteps behind the door. She ducked into a side passage just as a man stumbled out of the room and wandered off down the corridor, trying door handles, looking for another place to spend the night.

The door he had left by was shut by an unseen hand and Kelly heard a female voice say something that she couldn't make out, but that sounded sharp and angry. Kelly took a few deep breaths. She had never been so close to people before, in any of her break-ins and after her initial euphoria of a full swag-bag she was beginning to feel once more like she was making a tremendous mistake. She was also starting to feel like a fool. She knew she was a dilettante, a visitor, only, to the world of crime. She was a tourist, underneath she knew that, and even sometimes admitted it to herself. She was small, light and agile, all things that naturally made her an excellent cat-burglar and normally she had nerves of steel, the result of a hard up-bringing she supposed. But, over the years, she’d become to complacent, to smug. She’d lost her edge. She loved, more than anything, making the police look like idiots, but she realised now, after a big dose of reality at Wraithston that she had entered into a world she was not prepared for. She was chancing jail, or worse.

Too much thinking and not enough looking, she told herself sharply. She knew she was naïve, a child playing at being a criminal, because even now, after so many jobs she still narrated her activities, just as she did in her own flat, usually in her head, but sometimes out loud. She was doing it now.

‘Talk to yourself, or don’t talk to yourself,’ she whispered. ‘It doesn’t matter. But enough with the thinking. Time for all the self-doubt later. Just get this job finished first.’

At the end of the passage was a door that hung slightly open and as she entered, party streamers fell over her head and into her eyes. She gave a little squeak, then muttered, 'the daring Miss Take entered the next room, not the least bit concerned by what she had thought was a massive spider’s web...’

She flashed her light around briefly. It was a play room, containing an odd mixture of old and new toys. There were some antique looking Victorian dolls, all jumbled up with Lego and action figures. She had heard that some of those old dolls could be valuable, but she had no idea what to look for. The Lego Millennium Falcon that sat on a dresser in the corner could be worth more than any of them for all she knew. Either way, they were all too big to fit in her bag.

Miss Take carefully moved through to the next room, her inner monologue ran on, the daring cat-burglar, spotting a hidden side door moved silently across... oh stop it! Even talking to myself isn’t helping calm my nerves any more. This was all fun until Wraithston. Now I'm just petrified. What a mess I've made.

She felt like slapping herself, as if she was slipping into a funk and needed to snap out of it. Even if she felt like she had been living nightmare the last couple of days, the door she was about to peer through was very real and inviting. She could never resit one more door, not just for the treasure that might lie behind it, but also to get a glimpse at other people’s lives and to live a little, however vicariously, through their belongings. People that seemed happy, she liked most. People that did not, perhaps, have dead mothers and absent fathers and that had full interesting lives. She had now entered a tiny bedroom, used by a nanny or au-pair most likely. It had a slanting roof, a narrow window and a single bed. There was a small wardrobe and a dresser with a backpack tucked underneath it. The dresser was covered in all sorts of things, mainly hair and make-up products, but also a mirror, a half-full six-pack of crisps, a chocolate bar, the size of the ones they always offer you at petrol stations, and three empty tea cups. Knowing instantly there was nothing of value in here she none-the-less opened the dresser drawers and rummaged around. Socks, tights, bras and pants in the top drawer. T-shirts and summer shorts in the lower one.

She dug around in the pack and finding nothing more than clothes and a dog-eared paperback, she sat down on the bed, then lay down on it and looked up at the ceiling. A little moonlight was coming in through the thin curtains and fell across her legs. What a mess, she thought again. What an idiot. She reached over and took the chocolate bar, unwrapped it, then lifted her mask just enough to be able to eat it.

Make this the last one, she said to herself as she ate. The last one for a while anyway. If Paul is off the hook after this, then that's the main thing. Miss Take, The Squirrel, or whatever, can retire for a while. God knows I've made enough money out of this while carry on already. I'm such a stupid person, just a stupid little girl. Whoever lives in this room is doing better in their life than me. I think I'm so clever, but I'm going to end up in jail. Just like my uncle. Just like my father.

She finished the chocolate and got up. 'Screw self-pity,' she cursed herself as she tossed the wrapper onto the floor. She checked the wardrobe and threw some of the blouses, coats and jeans that it contained onto the floor, just to make it clear the room had been burgled, then left.

She re-entered the play room just as a young blonde woman came in from the other side, switching on the light as she did so. She took one look at Miss Take, masked and all in black as she was, and screamed at the top of her lungs. Without being able to stop herself, Kelly screamed in reply.

Miss Take - Chapter 2 (4011)

Chapter 2 (4011)

Kelly Take, or Kelly Kane as she styled herself these days always ate her lunch at a coffee shop ten minutes walk from the school. She always ate alone and never invited any of the other teachers along. There were some that had suggested she was actively trying not to make friends, and this was precisely true. She sat away from the window, in one of the cubicles if she could get one, or at one of the small tables tucked away at the back, out of sight of the street. When she was working she dressed every inch the teacher. Her afro hair was done up in a large, tight bun and she wore glasses, although there was nothing wrong with her eyesight. The frames contained nothing more than clear glass and she wore them solely to look more the part. Today she had on a tight A-line skirt and matching suit jacket, one of four similar outfits that hung in her wardrobe at home. As always she had padded her bra to give herself more of a figure. At the weekend she mostly dressed in jeans and a hooded top and could easily be mistaken for a twelve year old boy. Dressing how children imagined a teacher should look, she found, helped her a lot in her job. With other teachers too, when it came to it. She was not old, and had been born in South London to parents that had come over the UK from Guyana in the sixties. She wore heals. While wearing them she could just about manage the walk back to the school from the cafe. There only purpose was to give her just enough height to edge over five feet. She was not a big woman, without them on she was four foot eight.

Kelly was a supply teacher, and had been teaching History at Jesmond Academy for six months. The woman she had replaced, Mrs McKinney, was off long term sick with a malady so mysterious Kelly had yet to learn what it was. She was not particularly interested in any regard, and did not gossip with the other teachers, generally having as little to do with them as possible. Avoiding the staff room, she went straight to her classroom and did some marking while waiting for the next troop of children to come in and take their seats for the lesson. She was diligent in her work, she kept strictly to the syllabus, but she was not overly concerned about how much the children picked up. They learned or they did not. No one so far had guessed at her indifference to the advancement of her pupils as she was a good teacher and perhaps even better than some of the teachers at the Academy that took the children’s improvement seriously or at least professed to. Kelly had a lot on her mind, it was Friday and usually she had a big weekend planned, but what with the way things had been going lately in her life she was starting to think she might lay low in her small Duddingston Mills flat and watch Friends re-runs until Monday morning.

The first year pupils all came into the room, rowdy and boisterous. She smiled as they entered, they were like a big litter of puppies, fresh from primary school, but already acting like seasoned veterans after having survived their first term. Kelly tapped her pen on the desk to get their attention and once they had more-or-less settled down, started them on the Highland Clearances. A subject that she thought must be dry and alien to these kids, who had mainly grown up on housing estates around the east-end of Edinburgh. Some of the children from the rougher areas had never left the city, let alone gone north into the mountains. She could command the attention of the class though, and put in just enough effort to keep them as interested as they were ever likely to get. They day wore on, the first year class left and then one of the fourth year classes entered in their place. This was a tougher crowd, and she had to put on a really convincing teacher act to stop them being disruptive. She had a reputation for quick wit and could hold her own when dealing with hecklers and trouble-makers.

After the first fifteen minutes, the deputy head, Mrs Hunter, quietly tapped on the door and put one foot over the threshold.

‘A quick word, Miss Kane?’ gasped the red-faced spinster.

Kelly followed her out of the class and shut the door behind them and they talked in the otherwise deserted corridor.

‘I’ll take your next class dear,’ fussed Mrs Hunter. ‘The polis have just arrived and the head wants you. It’s about Paul Bevy again.’

‘What’s happened now?’

‘Och, it’s an awfy business, just awfy, much worse than last time.’

There was a crash and a laugh from the other side of the door. ‘You’d better run along dear, they are already causing trouble in there.’

Kelly nodded and with clicking heals made her way down the corridor to the Academy administration wing. She hadn’t been expecting the police to turn up at the school today, no one had told her. She wondered why not.

The headmaster’s office was on the other side of the large wooden panelled entrance hall of the Academy. It was an old building and in various stages of disrepair, but the hall floor was kept well polished and smelled of disinfectant. The huge coat of arms, carved from oak, that hung over the rear of the hall was regularly dusted, but not painted, the lion and unicorn on either side of the blue shield were now rather formless and sinister in appearance.

Kelly opened one of the double doors across the hall and entered the administration corridor, an area that smelled ever more like a hospital as the cleaners mopped the floors more regularly.

She knocked on the headmaster’s door and after a curt “Enter” was called from the other side she quietly opened the it just enough to get inside, then shut it behind her.

The Headmaster’s study was large and gloomy, with tall windows that rarely had their curtains opened more than a few inches. The single light bulb, high on the tall ceiling provided scant illumination. The Headmaster, David Carrie was there, an unimposing man considering the size of the chamber he inhabited, short, bald and fat, but much friendlier than the stern expression on his face advertised. The others present were Paul’s social worker, a middle-aged woman wearing a bright scarf and with her red winter jacket still worn, but unzipped. The other two people in the room were plain clothes police officers, she could tell that straight away just by looking at them. Paul himself was not there and Kelly presumed he was in the care of one of the Guidance teachers. Of the police officers, one was a young man, tall, with rather longer hair than might be expected for CID, and the other was a black woman of medium height, slim, with short straightened hair. Kelly judged her to be African rather than West Indian.

They had all be talking, but stopped as she entered.

‘Ah yes, here is our Miss Kane,’ chirped Carrie. ‘One our finest supply teachers. Come ye, come ye, why don't ye, Miss Kane. Take a seat, take a seat.’

Kelly sat in one of the armchairs beside the headmaster’s desk.

‘This is a dreadful business, just dreadful,’ said Carrie in his plummy Morningside accent, nearly repeating word for word what Kelly had just heard Mrs Hunter say. ‘Another burglary and now murder too? I just can’t grasp that such a thing could be done by a Jesmond boy. Paul Bevy again, Miss Kane, and this time there is a dead body involved if you can believe it!’

Kelly remained perfectly still in her chair.

'Well,' continued Carrie, getting rather flustered. 'I dare say you'll get the whole story soon enough Kelly dear, but what we want you to do now, is just tell Detectives Lavius and er... well, about the argument you had with Paul a few weeks ago, before the first...'

Carrie came to a stammering stop, having been put off by failing to remember the female officer's name, and running out of steam. The female detective, who was sat across from Kelly, raised her hand in greeting and gave her a reassuring smile.

‘Hello Miss Kane, my name is Detective Constable Yoyuwevuto. You can call me Mable, though. I realise it is a bit of a mouthful. We just need you to tell us about your incident with Paul, Miss Kane. The headmaster told us that he threatened you?’

Kelly was slightly annoyed to be dragged into whatever was going on, but she was not surprised. There had only been once incident that they could be referring to, something that had happened over a month ago and that she had told Carrie that she could handle herself.

‘Oh well, it was nothing really,’ Kelly stuttered. ‘I had to talk to him about... well, bothering some of the girls. When I confronted him, he was rather nasty.’

'I see,' said Yoyuwevuto. 'It's just that we did not know about this incident. It happened a week before the Orlando break-in I understand.'

'Well, yes,' said Kelly calmly. 'It wasn't a secret or anything, it was just one of those things we teachers deal with every day. I had told Mr Carrie that I would deal with it.'

'So what happened exactly?'

Kelly took a moment to arrange her thoughts, then said, 'I learned of him being somewhat lewd with some of the girls. I talked to him after class and he became a little aggressive, that was all there was to it really. He said some things to me, that were meant to hurt me, just the usual juvenile stuff. Sometimes we take these things to the headmaster, but I decided to handle it myself.'

'And how did you handle it?' asked Yoyuwevuto.

'Well, then Orlando happened, and it seemed rather pointless to hand out a detention or two after he'd been arrested.'

'I see, of course,' said Yoyuwevuto. She looked over at Detective Lavius who was gazing up at some of the portraits hung up on the walls of headmasters gone by. He turned to her and shrugged.

‘Thank you, Miss Kane. That’s been very helpful, we'll be in touch through the school if we have any more questions.'

Kelly smiled and nodded, then got up from her chair and left the room. She couldn't help but notice that the male officer had never spoken. He’d almost looked bored.

Instead of going back to her class and letting Mrs Hunter get back to her snug office next door to the head’s, she went to the staff room to get a cup of coffee. She could barely hold it, her hands were shaking so badly. She loathed the police, they filled her with terror and had done since she was a child.

As she slowly calmed down, she went over what she had told them, checking her story for anything that might have given her away. The only people that knew what had gone on between her and Paul Bevy, were her and Paul themselves, and he, undoubtedly, had more important matters on his mind than an argument he'd had with his teacher over a month ago.

There had been certainly more to the incident than she had told them, or old Carrie come to that. Not even the girls that had been the cause of the encounter knew anything about it. It had all happened, really, due to her illicit habit of using the girls toilets in the afternoons. By the afternoon her feet were tired from the heals and the girls toilets were much closer than the nearest staff ones, which were up two flights of stairs. They were usually quiet at afternoon break time so she would often sneak in to relieve herself before the bell went. On that day though, three girls came in just as she was sitting down in the cubicle. One of them was crying.

‘He’s a wee bastard. We should get him, I can tell my brother,’ said a voice that Kelly judged to be Jennifer Knight, a solidly build third year girl.

‘No!’, screamed the crying girl between sobs.

‘Well what?’ said another voice that evidently didn't have time for this shit. ‘Are you just going to let him away with it?’

To Kelly's ears it had sounded like Hannah Paterson. Not normally a girl that hung about with Jenny.

‘Just!...’ said the tearful one. ‘Just no! I Dinnae...’

She was then cut off by her sobbing. Eventually Hannah spoke.

‘Well, what did he do to you?’ she said impatiently.

‘I saw it, he put his hand right up Helen's...’ Whatever Jenny was about to say was cut off by more sobs. 'Oh, don't Helen,' said Jenny plaintively, seeming to be enjoying her role as a consoler.

So it was Helen Clark, the pretty third year girl, Kelly had realised. Divorced parents, lived with her dad. Good looking and sweet natured, but not very bright.

‘I don’t want to tell anyone, I just want to forget it ever happened.’

‘Paul should pay for what he did,’ hissed Hannah.

There was a pregnant pause, then in a loud whisper Jenny said, 'Oh? Is there someone in that cubicle?’

Kelly in that moment didn’t know what to do. As a teacher she should be taking control of the situation, but on the other hand, her using the pupil's toilets would be quite a scandal and probably lead to a verbal warning as their were strict school guideline about that sort of thing.

She hesitated. And in that time the girls left silently, to most likely take their conversation elsewhere, much to Kelly's relief.

For the rest of the next class she had thought over what to do. Telling the headmaster would escalate it all much higher than Kelly suspected that a shy girl like Helen could take. In addition, Kelly would have to be circumspect about how she had found out, and if she initially lied about how she knew about Paul and then was found out in her lie she would be sacked on the spot.

Was she even sure who they had been speaking about? There were two Pauls in third year, but neither of them were capable of sexual assault. Paul Bevy in fourth year though. He was a nasty piece of work and no mistake. There had actually been a similar incident the year before, or so she had half-overheard in the staff room a few months back.

She was really working herself up into a state of high anxiety by the time her next class came in. Fourth years, and a class that contained none other than Paul Bevy himself. She had watched him all the way through the class. He was a smug, evil looking brat, who was liked by the popular kids because his parents were wealthy. Fifteen, but small for his age, and good looking in a sullen sort of way. Not the sort of boy that would have difficulty getting a girlfriend she thought, as he was considered a bad boy by anyone that knew him and almost certain to get a decent car when he was old enough to drive. Just the type, in short, that the idiotic teenage girls that attended Jesmond went for. She'd just about made up her mind to forget about it, but when the class was leaving, the last class of the day in fact, she blurted out, ‘stay behind a moment Paul.’

He turned to looked her in the eye. They were the same height.

‘What is it Miss?’ he asked insolently.

She remembered vividly the expression he had had in that moment, and how much she wanted to wipe it off his face.

'Paul. Have you been bothering the girls?'

Paul smirked, then said, 'what have you heard?'

'Never mind what I've heard. I'll just say this, you'd better put a stop to it. Behaviour like that can land boys like you in big trouble.'

Again the infuriating boy had smiled. ‘You should mind your own business, Miss.’

‘I could take this to the headmaster Paul,' hissed Kelly, feeling that she was about to lose her composure.

‘And what? What evidence do you have? You want to put Helen through all of that?’

Kelly had realised then, when he had said Helen's name, that there was no doubt at all that it had been him that had assaulted her. He already had his excuses lined up, he knew exactly what he was being accused of.

‘No. I don't. That’s why I’m talking to you about this privately.’

He remained silent, looking her directly in the eyes, trying to stare her out. She'd dealt with plenty of little horrors like Paul before, but all she could mange was a limp, ‘I know it was you.’

‘Well, knowing and proving are two different things, aren't they Miss?'

'You think you're so clever don't you Paul?' she growled, now very much loosing her cool. 'Well, let me tell you, you can't win this one. You don't feel the slightest bit of empathy or compassion for that poor girl do you? She's just thirteen. She's still a child. You should be ashamed of yourself.'

She could tell she was hitting the mark with trying to shame him, as he was flushing red with anger. But then he calmed down and smiled again.

‘You know what, Miss?' he said as he moved his face closer to hers. 'I think you’re mum deserved what she got.’

‘What do you know about my mother?’

‘The police shot her didn’t they? She must have deserved it.’

By now Kelly was digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands.

‘Get out,’ she hissed.

‘Bleed a lot did she? You saw it didn’t you? Must have left a mark, you just a wee bairn and all.’

Kelly wanted no more of this, knowing that any more talk was pointless, she walked out of the classroom.

‘Aye, yer maw should have walked away too!’ called out Paul after her. She left the door open and walked as fast as she could to the staff room to calm down, not caring what the wretched boy was doing behind her. The next morning Carrie had come to talk to her. Someone, probably Mrs Rogers in the classroom next door had told him about the incident.

‘It’s nothing I can’t handle David,’ she had said.

‘Bethany said she heard raised voices. You walked out of the classroom?’

Bethany Rogers was a terrible eavesdropper and tattle-tale. A woman that had no love for supply teachers and always went running to the headmaster with every rumour or piece of gossip she could lay her hands on.

‘It was just me and Paul. The others had gone.’

‘So what was it about?’

Kelly sighed, feeling rather put on the spot. ‘Well, he knows about my mother. It’s not a secret, but I don't go around advertising it.'

‘I’ll call him in.’

‘No, not yet David. I’ll handle him.’

The headmaster gave her a long concerned look, but then smiled sweetly. 'As long as you're sure then dear,' he said. He had put his hand out to pat her on the shoulder, but then thought better of it and put it back in his pocket before smiling once more and walking away.

Kelly remembered being fairly upset about the whole situation for the rest of the day, until she'd come up with a plan for dealing with Paul that in hindsight now appeared utterly stupid.

Once she had calmed down enough to take on a classroom of teenagers again, she washed out her cup and put it in the dishwasher, then went back to her class and let Mrs Hunter get back to whatever it was she did in that overheated office of hers. As she taught the class she kept an eye out of the window that overlooked the car park, watching for when the police left. The exited together, not speaking. The male officer got in at the drivers side, she had already forgotten both their names, and the female threw some papers in the back before getting in at the passenger side. They then drove away and that was that. Kelly let out the breath she had been holding and looked down at her desk. She could handle police being in the building, at a school like Jesmond's it was not so uncommon, but when they wanted to talk to her, that was a whole other matter.

***

Mable Yoyuwevuto had just settled down for the night to watch a film with her husband , there daughters having not long been put to bed, when her phone went.

'Oh my lord,' she exclaimed mildly. 'It's my boss.'

Her husband kissed his teeth, got up and went into the kitchen.

'Hey Yoyo,' said Lavius once she'd answered her mobile. 'Up to much? I've been thinking. Well reading reports and thinking. Paul Bevy? It doesn't add up. The first robbery, it was a skilful cat burglar. I mean, hat’s off to them. Edinburgh has got a proper Raffles going on, like Harvey says. Down at HBU they call this guy “the Squirrel” right? At least ten robberies with an MO that matches the Squirrels in the last four years.'

Lavius paused, she could hear papers rustling at the other end of the line.

'I am gratified to hear you have been reading my reports, Sergeant.'

'Loving it, Mable. So, he’s a climber, this squirrel, he gets in through blind spots in the security. Finds a top floor window usually and jimmies it open. He goes in with a shopping list and gets out again the same way. What he does not do, is fuck about with cameras, or alarms. He doesn’t cut phone lines or any of that James Bond shit. And most of all, he doesn’t kill big time drug dealers. There were two separate people there that night I think, besides Big Mack, and that kid is neither of them. He’s a wee bully, but that’s it. You still there?'

'I'm still here, Sergeant,' replied Yoyuwevuto without any hint of the slight weariness she was feeling.

'There is enough there to charge him I suppose, but what's the point, when we know he didn't do it right?' Lavius didn't wait for an answer and carried on. 'I mean, we can make a case, the same case that was made for Orlando, and we'd probably get him, even with him being a minor. If we don't get him, the Hamiltons will - that's Mack's family by the way.'

'Are you so sure Paul Bevy did not do it, Sergeant?'

'I was just looking at some of the private CCTV that came through tonight. There is another man on the scene. Unknown, but I'm putting him through the system now.'

'Are you still at work?'

'Aye, aye,' replied Lavius with a laugh. 'Oh here's another thing. Any idea at all about Paul's teacher Miss Kane?'

'Well, other than the fact that there was no love of the lost between her and Paul, no Sergeant.'

'Love of the lost? Oh, I get you. Aye, and I should imagine she has no love lost on us either.'

‘I don’t understand Sergeant.’

‘You know who she is right? She’s Kelly Take. Going by her mother’s maiden name now, though. Maybe to hide her past.’

‘Still not with you.'

‘Kelly Take, daughter of Veronica Take. Spelt T-A-K-E, but pronounced Tak-ay. The woman that was shot in the stomach by Metropolitan Armed CID back in the nineties.’

‘Oh, I see. I remember that, yes. A dark day for the CID.' Mable paused then said, 'Does it mean anything though?’

‘Probably not, but it’s interesting. I wonder how she ended up here? All I know is what I’ve just been reading in Wikipedia. Her mum was completely innocent. The Met had the wrong address, they were looking for her brother, our Miss Kane’s uncle. He, on the other hand was a real baddie. Guns, drugs, gangland murder. You name it.’

‘So you think... I give up Sergeant. What do you think?’

‘Nothing at all. Just a weird thing, I suppose. Well anyway, I'll let you get back to it. See you in the morning Yoyo.’

Yoyuwevuto said goodbye, but he had already hung up.

Miss Take - Chapter 1 (3356)

Chapter 1 (3356)

Wraithston Manse, an Edwardian three story house in the rich suburbs of Edinburgh, sat back from the main road, along about sixty yards of driveway behind a tall wall, a thick leylandi hedge and cultivated gardens. It was always quiet during the daytime, there was generally no one in evidence except the gardener that worked in the afternoons of the summer months and the cleaner that came in the mornings on an irregular schedule. The house was often empty at night, the owner's business taking him into the city where he had the choice of three flats to reside in. He would stay away for days at a time if need be, only returning once all his affairs in the capital had been concluded. The Manse was where he stored all his treasure, which accounted for the large amount of money that had been spent on its security and why, at three in the morning on a bleak January evening, it was being robbed.    

On this night, the owner was in residence, but asleep in his room. The alarms were on, but their security only covered the front and back doors, the main gate and the entrance to the walled garden at the rear of the house. None of the windows were alarmed as they were all barred with strong wrought iron grilles. Despite these protections, there was a small dark clad figure prowling around on the second floor, occasionally lighting their way with a headlamp attached to the balaclava they were wearing under their hood. The thief moved from room to room, calmly and quietly opening drawers and scanning shelves. They carried a backpack in their left hand, held low to the floor. The bag was unusually long and narrow, the type that a runner might use, designed to be worn close to the body and anything that the thief liked the look of went into it. In went a gold figurine of a horse, carefully picked up by a latex-gloved hand, then a silver letter opener with an emerald set in the handle, taken from a drawer. Next in was a framed cameo taken from a top shelf, evidently un-dusted for several years. Each item that was stolen was wrapped in a thick black cotton cloth taken from the thief’s figure-hugging jacket pocket, and then secured with an elastic band before being place gently in the pack.

The burglar seemed to know where to find what they were looking for. Most of the time they appeared to know which drawer to look in and which to ignore, as if having prior knowledge. Occasionally they came across something that they had perhaps not seen before and stopped to consider its value in terms of how much it could be sold for versus how much space it would take up in the pack. A large ivory pipe stand was considered, but ultimately passed over, while a set of diamond cuff-links, found almost as if they had been discarded on a dressing table were quickly wrapped and deposited in the pack.

The thief moved silently through a dining room, ignoring everything, and into the library. This room was rarely used, obviously designed with the vanity of the owner in mind. The owner was not a reader and the books had no other purpose than to impress the occasional visitor. As if know exactly what they were after, the thief pulled some first additions from the shelves and wrapping them too, put them in their pack. They stood by the desk and checked the weight of the bag. It was almost full now. The thief let out a little sigh and sat down at the desk. They twirled around a couple of times on the swivel chair. Then, almost idly, they started to check through the drawers.

The desk mainly contained papers, nothing much more exciting than utility bills and bank statements. The burglar switched on their headlamp to read a few, then tossed them on the floor. Next they pulled out a few of the drawers and laid them on top of the desk. Leaning down they looked in and with a cheerful little whistle took out a small, but thick, Manila envelope. It contained photos, holiday pictures, and the dark eyes of the thief seemed to smile as they flipped through them. They were of a young woman, in her early twenties at the most, happy as if on holiday. Somewhere that had canals and in the winter judging by her woollen hat and scarf. Here was one of her by the side of a canal, her hands up in a zany kind of pose. Here was one of her in a restaurant, offering a glass of wine to whoever was taking the photo. Next, a photo of her standing in profile, a thoughtful expression on her face as she gazed out of a window. The room she was in was not decorated and the walls were bare wood. The thief paused over one that showed how beautiful the woman was. She had short blonde hair, a pixie cut, a smooth complexion and a stunning smile. Her eyes were green and seemed to speak of a pure soul. The thief rubbed the girls face, as if lovingly, before moving on to the next photo, putting it at the back of pile as they shuffled through them.

More holiday snaps, but then the photos suddenly changed. Crime scene pictures. It was the same girl, but she was lying dead, in a cluttered and disturbed living room, in a pool of blood, her dead eyes gazing up at the ceiling. She was wearing blue pyjamas and only one pink sock. The thief flicked through more of the photos, it was the same scene but from different angles, and then threw them all down on the desk in revulsion. They stood up to go, but then seemed to reconsider. The thief then gently swept up the photos and returned them to their envelope. Without wrapping them, they then put them into a side pocket of the pack.

After checking how much space was left in their bag, the thief crept down to the ground floor and into the central hall. Soundlessly they opened a door that lead into the kitchen, and in the pale moonlight coming through the un-shuttered windows, walked around the large table too look up at a painting that was hanging on the wall above a glass-fronted cupboard full of fine china.

The thief put their bag down on the table then in a single bound leapt up onto the counter beside the cupboard landings as lightly as a cat. They then pulled themselves up onto the top of the double-door fridge. From there they walked to the cupboard, the thief was not tall and ceiling was high. When the picture was taken from the wall, the thief then returned they way they had came, just as lightly and just as silently.

By the light of the moon, the thief examined the picture. It was under glass so had to be angled just right to see. It was an unremarkable pastoral scene, but if the viewer cared to look it up, it was worth considerably more than might be expected for picture hung up in a kitchen. They undid the catches on the back of the frame and removed the painting. They then rolled it up and place it into a cardboard tube of just the right size taken from the pack. With the painting stowed away, they then opened up some of the drawers, almost idly, holding up any utensil of unusual shape that caught their interest to the light. None made it into the pack though and were left lying around on top of the counter.

The thief gently opened the fridge and looked inside. Just as they were reaching for a can of beer there was a sudden crash from upstairs, so loud it seemed to shake the whole house. The thief froze, not even daring to shut the refrigerator door. They waited, seeming to strain to hear any other sound, for a full minute, before slowly closing the door and returning the kitchen to darkness.

Silently they crept into a small gap between two worktops and eyes wide in the darkness pulled the bag in with them. They waited a while longer, but there were no more sounds, no lights went on, no footsteps or shouting. Nothing at all. The thief slowly uncurled from their bolt-hole and stood in the darkness, unmoving, as if doubting they had heard the sound at all. It had been so loud though, like a sack of cement hitting a wooden floor. Eventually they crept to the foot of the stairs and looked up. There was nothing but silence and darkness. Slowly, eyes wide in apprehension they sidled up to the landing and looked up at the next set of stairs. Light filtered in from a stained glass skylight. Moonlight, coloured red, green and blue fell across the thief’s masked face. Hesitating, full of doubt, the thief could not bring themselves to go up any further. The noise had come from the top floor and that was where they had come in, through a tiny window in the high sided west wall of the Manse.

There was no other way out for the thief, the doors were locked and the windows were barred. The small window in an unused attic room that looked out over the annex had a single bar across it and there was just enough space for a small-framed person to squeeze through if they dared to make the climb and had the means to open the narrow sash window. With no other option, the thief crept up to the third floor of the Manse.

They padded across the landing to the room they had entered the house from, but paused when they noticed that the door to the master bedroom was ajar. The thief edged closer to the door until they were near enough to peer around it. The curtains were open and the light of the full moon shone down through the tall windows illuminating the room faintly with a ghostly light. In a pool of light by the windows, lying on a thick rug was the body of man dressed in a unicorn-headed onesie. It was a ridiculous outfit for a grown man, complete with a pink main and fluffy tail, presumably worn ironically. Either way, the wearer was past caring, as he was lying in a thickening pool of blood that had departed his body via a deep cut in his throat.

The thief stood motionlessly for several moments, then sniffed and looked around the room. They rubbed their face through the mask then sighed deeply, whistling through their teeth at the end of the sigh. They made to leave, but the stopped and looked at the body again, as if drawn to the graveness of the occasion and seeking to think out all the ramifications of breaking into a house where the owner had been murdered.

Eventually they moved, leaving the bedroom and crossed the landing, then creeping down a long narrow passage to the room they had entered from. It was closed, but not locked. The room was disused, full of furniture and cardboard boxes left by the previous owners. The room's only narrow window was set into the gable roof on the opposite side from the door. The thief lowered the pack from their back as they walked through the maze of dusty furniture, then gently leant it against the wall when they got to it. Before opening the window they paused to look out, trying to take in as much as they could in the widest range of view the window afforded them. The thief was about to slide it open, when they saw movement down on the driveway. A dark figure had just left the annex and was now heading across the grass to the gates. A security light went on, but they ignored it. The thief got a good look at him, a man in his late forties with chiselled features and a sour expression, wearing a Barbour jacket and a flat cap, looking for all the world like an angry gamekeeper off to shout at some kids for trespassing on his master’s property. The man was not leaving by the gate though, he walked right through the flowerbeds and into the hedge where he was lost from view.

As soon as he was gone, the thief opened the window and lowered their pack down to the ground on a length of thin rope. Once the pack was down they dropped the rope after it. Next they squeezed out of the window, between the frame and the single bar and scaled the side of the house, from the third floor down to the flowerbeds, choosing their handholds carefully, but quickly. There was no hesitation as they went, they appeared to know where every hand and foot hold was. On the ground they wound up the rope and put it in the pack, then ran towards the hedge, following the killer, keeping to the shadows.

***

‘I told you the Cowgate would take ages,’ said Corum Lavius sternly and sighed. He was joking, he was in no hurry.

‘I am sorry, Sergeant,’ replied Mable Yoyuwevuto, choosing to take him seriously.

‘Doesn’t matter, we’ve time. As your punishment though, I’m going to smoke,’ he said as he pushed the button that wound down the window of the care they were in. He then lit a rolled-up cigarette with a Zippo lighter he grabbed from the dashboard and inhaled deeply before blowing it vaguely out of the window.

‘We’re just asking questions, just asking questions. Feels weird though, him being just a kid,’ said Lavius as he pulled a flake of tobacco from his teeth. ‘You arrested him the first time right, Yoyo?’

‘That is correct, Sergeant. Myself and Detective Constable Yang.’

‘What was that like?’

‘It is all in the report, Sergeant.’

‘Call me Sergeant one more time and I’ll thump you Mable, just tell me,’ said Lavius who was not famed for his love of reading reports.

‘He was upset as you might expect. There was a social worker and his form tutor present. It took a long time to calm him down and make him understand what was going on. His parents were called, it seemed best. They came to St Leonards with him.’

‘This kid then, he’s got all this treasure in his bag and in his locker. All from that house, the...’

‘Orlando House, Sergeant,’ said Yoyuwevuto trying to help.

Lavius, who was driving, gave her a light punch of the arm.

‘Right, and no one at HBU thought it might not be a fit up?’

‘A what, sorry, Serg... Um.’

Lavius flicked the ash of his cigarette out of the window, then manoeuvred the car a few more feet down the Cowgate towards Holyrood Palace. ‘You know - someone put it there to make it look like he did it.’

‘There was the CCTV as well, his lack of an alibi, and three of his fellow students made statements to the effect that he had been bragging about breaking into Orlando after the event. Usually we will arrest on a lot less evidence than that.’

‘Far be it from me to cast any doubt on the House Breaking Unit then,’ mused Lavius. ‘Is there a “but”? I sense a “but” in your tone.’

Mable gave a small musical laugh. ‘Yes, Sergeant. I must confess I am not entirely convinced of his guilt. We have a solid case and it goes to trial next month. But now this. I interviewed him for the Orlando break in. He is an arrogant and rather mean-spirited boy and quite capable of breaking and entering. However, the break-in in question matched the MO of a personage at the HBU we have come to know as the “Squirrel”, who in the words of my Inspector is a “genuine Raffles, who really takes pride in his work, a climber of some skill and a consummate professional of the old school”.’

‘Sounds like Harvey admires him.’

‘I think he does,’ continued Yoyuwevuto. ‘The Squirrel has been attributed to seventeen break-ins, spanning four years. This would mean that Paul Bevy would have started at eleven years old.’

Lavius snorted, then choked out a laugh as he blew out smoke. ‘Aye, fair enough. This isn’t Dundee after all. You don’t think he did it then? Killed the Mack?’

‘I cannot think it. And yet if he is guilty of Orlando, it follows that he is also guilty of Wraithston.’

‘Baws of steel then, that lad, to be out on bail for one job, to then commit a... Oh here we go.’

The lights changed and they joined the queue of traffic through a long set of roadworks down to the lights beside the Lifehouse where they then stopped.

‘Aye well, he’ll know you, Mable, and how lovely you are. You can do the talking. I’m just here because of Mack,' Lavius blew out a cloud of smoke then continued. 'Jesus, someone did-in Mack the Knife. Biggest drug dealer in Edinburgh and we’ve no idea who could have done it.’

‘I heard Romanians, Sergeant.’

‘Bollocks,’ sighed Lavius as they cruised down into the park. ‘What a bunch of gossips my squad are. I’m going to give up thumping you Mable, if Harvey sees bruises he’ll not let me play with you again.’

Mable laughed her musical laugh again out of politeness.

‘Me and Mable, the dream team,’ said Lavius. ‘HBU and Major Crime together in perfect harmony. No film footage from the Manse, right? You're not holding out on me?’

‘None, they have cameras, but they were not set to record.’

‘And poor old Mack? He was alone that night?’ interrupted Lavius

‘He wasn’t even meant to be in, from what I understand, Sergeant. He was due in Glasgow, there was a car waiting for him, but he changed his mind and went home. He was alone in the house.’

‘So, for now, despite everything, from the point of view of HBU, it looks like a robbery gone wrong? I’ll say it again, you’d need baws of steel to rob the Mack.’

‘And yet someone did. The place had been burgled, there is no question of that. We were at the Manse yesterday. Your Mr Mack kept a clean house, very spotless, much hygienic. I should say, Sergeant, in regards to CCTV, Paul was caught on a safety camera walking all the way down Skene Road. We are also waiting for some private stuff from the other houses.'

‘Show me what you've got.’

Mable dug around in the files she had on her lap and pulled out some black and white stills.

‘No facial ID,’ mumbled Lavius. ‘Just some wee bastard in a hoodie.’

‘Same build, same height. We measured the fence he walked along and estimated his height to be five feet. That is Paul Bevy’s height.’

‘You guys are real Sherlock Holmes’s aren’t you?’ said Lavius with a smile. ‘It wasn’t him though.’

‘Who then?’

‘Mr A. N. Other. Dunno. Mack was stabbed in the throat. And someone marked him. It was pure gangland. Anyway, we’re at the school now, better get our game faces on Yoyo old girl. Leg-breakers and drug dealers I can handle. Kids, I haven’t a clue, sorry.’

‘Do not worry, Sergeant,’ said Yoyuwevuto who had two young daughters of her own. ‘I know what to expect.’

They pulled into the school car park and Lavius pulled up in a disabled space. Just as they were walking up to the double doors their attention was drawn to a small figure dressed in black school-uniform running as fast as he could across the playing fields towards a distant housing estate.

Lavius sighed. ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’

‘I fear so, Sergeant.’

Lavius, who had a reputation as a chaser, ran off down the hill, after the fleeing figure.