Murder In School (Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates Book 2), page 17
‘How do you mean, Guv?’
‘What if she’s spirited him away to give us an excuse to turn the place upside down?’
DS Leyton acts a little shocked at this suggestion. ‘Surely not, Guv? I spoke to her myself – she was on the verge of tears.’
‘I’d say that was impossible, Leyton – but I’ll take your word for it.’
‘But you can’t be serious?’
Skelgill casually shakes his head. ‘It’s not a theory I’ll be suggesting to her, Leyton. But perhaps now we know why she sent us into Oakthwaite in the first place. Remember Jacobson told us Cholmondeley was sixth generation.’
‘So the kid’s father would have been a pupil there.’
‘And the rest of them.’
‘They would have known Querrell, Guv.’
Skelgill nods thoughtfully. ‘They would, Leyton.’
DS Leyton leans back in his seat and exhales heavily. But before he can expound his thoughts Skelgill says, ‘Anyway, park that for now – we’ve still got to find the kid. Give me the lowdown on your interviews.’
Two handed, Skelgill determinedly tucks into his bacon roll. DS Leyton pulls his notebook from his inside jacket pocket. He flips through several heavily annotated pages and settles upon one headed ‘Saturday’.
‘What happened was, Guv – because of the weather they abandoned having the finishing line outside the front of the school...’
Skelgill cuts in, ‘Yeah – I got that from Greig – they only recorded the first ten. Cholmondeley was near the back of the field.’
‘That’s right, Guv. So the rest of the runners went straight to the changing room in the first-form block. They were trailing in for the best part of an hour according to Mrs Tickle.’ He breaks off to glance at Skelgill. ‘It really is her name, Guv.’
Skelgill forms a silent expression of surprised acceptance.
DS Leyton continues, ‘The boys have free association on Saturday afternoons, so they could go to the junior common room, or to their dorms, or off to do activities or whatever. There was a film being shown in one of the other houses that they could watch.’
‘And what mention of Cholmondeley?’
DS Leyton shakes his head. ‘Nothing, Guv.’
‘Nothing at all?’ Skelgill sounds disbelieving.
DS Leyton winces as if he’s being accused of laxness. ‘Straight up, Guv. They’ve questioned the boys – but because they arrived in dribs and drabs – they weren’t looking out for anyone in particular. Then they assumed he’d been picked up.’
‘Picked up by one of his parents, you mean?’
‘That’s it, Guv. It was optional weekend leave for any boarders whose families live near enough to get them home. Apparently there’s up to a dozen that do this – couple of times a term – Cholmondeley being one of them. They can go at one p.m. on a Saturday and have to be back in for Headmaster’s assembly on the Monday morning, followed by registration – that’s when he was missed.’
‘What made the school believe he went home?’
‘Natural conclusion, I suppose, Guv.’
‘You’d think they’d have a notification system.’
DS Leyton taps his notepad on the steering wheel. ‘They’ve got a signing-out book at the entrance to the first-form house. It’s self-administered by the boys. Part of the idea is to teach them to be responsible. I got Mrs Tickle to show me – there were eight other kids who definitely did go home – and three of them forgot to sign themselves out.’
Skelgill raises his eyebrows, as if to acknowledge he would have been one such boy, had he benefited from a similar scholastic opportunity as Oakthwaite. ‘They’ll have to tighten that up in future.’
‘They know, Guv. I just think what with Querrell and then Hodgson and it being exams and this fell-running event and whatnot – things have got a bit on top of them right now. Even Snyder admitted that.’
Skelgill pouts, as if disinclined to believe this declaration. ‘So what did he have to say?’
DS Leyton turns a couple of pages of his notebook. ‘Between you and me, Guv – I know he’s a miserable sod – but he’s been pretty efficient. He’d already gathered all the details of Saturday, so I got the same version of events from him as Mrs Tickle. And he’s had the place searched.’
Now Skelgill’s expression is one of reluctant approval. ‘To what extent?’
‘He knows they can’t look in the likes of attics and cellars – and that the grounds are too big – but he organised for the staff and prefects to simultaneously search their own areas – cupboards and under beds – the obvious places a kid could hide.’
‘And nothing?’
DS Leyton nods. ‘No trace, Guv.’
‘What about his gear?’
‘Doesn’t appear to be anything missing, Guv. Clothes-wise Mrs Tickle thinks all his uniforms are there. But they don't have an inventory of casuals to check against.
‘How about sports kit?’
DS Leyton shakes his head, his loose jowls giving him a despondent hangdog look. ‘Sounds a bit chaotic, Guv. Everything goes into a communal laundry, and they rely on it all being labelled at the start of term. Trouble is, kids lose stuff, labels fall off, and she says by the end of the year they’re all wearing one another’s kit, cobbling together whatever they can.’
Skelgill looks displeased. ‘Are his trainers gone?’
‘Same thing, Guv – I don’t reckon it’s going to be possible to establish if he’s wearing casual clothes or his PE kit – unless we find a witness.’
‘Bloody brilliant.’
‘Sorry, Guv.’ DS Leyton apologises, as though in establishing this ambiguity the cause of it is his fault, which is the suggestion carried in Skelgill’s impatient undertone.
‘Did you ask Snyder – is this a common occurrence?’
‘For a boy to go AWOL, Guv?’
Skelgill nods.
‘Not common, but not unknown – first time this academic year. He said the most usual thing is for a new boy to get cold feet or be homesick in first term. Then they might do a bunk. Unless they’re Chinese, I suppose.’
‘Can’t be easy to keep tabs on everyone.’ Skelgill sounds a little more conciliatory.
‘They have a strict rule – up until sixth form they’re not allowed to leave the school boundaries. Except on official trips and accompanied walking and running events like this Skiddaw Challenge. But he did say kids sometimes go off the radar in the grounds, especially at weekends when they’ve got free time. Or they might be doing project work and forget to come back to assembly or chapel service and whatnot.’
Skelgill peers up at the fells to their left. The drizzle has thinned to the faintest of opaque hues and there’s a semblance of brightness in the cloud. He blinks slowly a few times as if he’s trying to accustom his eyes to the improving light. ‘Sounds a bit like an open prison, don’t you think, Leyton?’
DS Leyton ponders, tilting his head from side to side. ‘I reckon prison’s a softer option, Guv – no fell-running and no exams.’
‘Maybe there’s a lesson there, Leyton.’
‘I reckon a fair few of the kids at my school learned it pretty quick, Guv.’
Skelgill swallows the last of his tea and crushes the polystyrene cup, which he absently hands to DS Leyton rather like a child would to its parent.
‘So what’s Snyder’s view?’
‘He reckons the boy’s not on the site, Guv.’
‘Which matches Goodman’s opinion.’
‘Suppose they’ve discussed it, Guv.’
‘Goodman was more concerned with PR as usual.’
DS Leyton nods. ‘He looked a bit shocked when you mentioned that Marina place, Guv – where did you pull that one from?’
Skelgill winks. ‘Did you notice his Rolex?’
‘I did, Guv.’
‘I don’t recall him wearing it last week.’
‘Think it’s a fake he picked up in Singapore?’
‘I think it’s from Singapore.’
DS Leyton purses his lips and nods thoughtfully.
‘How was Snyder – did he seem concerned?’
‘I wouldn’t say concerned, Guv – but he’s obviously taking it seriously. I’d say he considers the ball’s now in our court.’
Skelgill drums a rat-a-tat-tat with his fingernails on the dashboard. ‘That would be fine if we knew Cholmondeley left the school like the other boys. At the moment it seems like the last sighting we’ve got is by Greig at Skiddaw High Man just before noon. You’d better speak to the teacher who was marshalling the lane – get his details from Greig.’
‘Sure, Guv.’
‘And make arrangements for a proper search – maybe later this afternoon if nothing comes in on the family and friends front. You’ll need plans of the school – loft access, roof ladders, outbuildings, old wells – they’ll have them for contractors and maintenance.’
‘Probably Snyder, Guv.’
‘And we’ll need to get top-line statements from all the staff – and any of the boys that might have seen him on the route – especially on the way down.’
‘Right, Guv – I’ll draft in a couple of DCs from the farm thefts case.’
Skelgill slaps his waterproof-clad thighs and unlatches the car door.
‘What are you going to do, Guv?’
‘Climb Skiddaw.’
DS Leyton shakes his head. ‘The Chief’s going to be frantic, Guv – thinking he’s been out on the hills for two days. Could he survive?’
Skelgill compresses his lips. ‘Depends. But no reason why not. It’s been mild. Cold wouldn’t be too much of a problem if you kept out of the wind. Drinking water might be an issue.’
‘Could he just be lost, Guv?’
Skelgill shakes his head. ‘You can’t really get lost in the Lakes – not in summer. Sooner or later in you come across a farm or a walker with a mobile. Someone missing is more likely to be injured and trapped out of sight.’
Skelgill boots open the door with his chunky Vibram soles and slides out of the seat. He turns and bends back into the car.
‘Better put the underwater search unit on alert.’
DS Leyton is silent for a moment. Then he puffs out his cheeks and says, ‘I meant to say, Guv – they don’t think he can swim.’
26. SKIDDAW
Skiddaw and its non-identical twin sentinel Blencathra squat ominously like a pair of great muscle-bound bouncers, guarding the northern gateway proper of the Lake District. The former is one of only four mountains in England that rise above three thousand feet, on a clear day it is visible from the Devil’s Beef Tub north of Moffat, a good seventy miles as the crow flies. However, from an aesthetic perspective Skiddaw would be low on most hill-baggers’ lists of favourite peaks. Though impressive for its sheer bulk, critical examination reveals it to be somewhat nondescript, an undistinguished massif marked in ascending bands of grass, bracken, heather and mudstone scree. Its redeeming feature is the view it commands of almost every other summit in Lakeland, and a good part of Scotland, to boot.
Had young Cholmondeley gone missing on neighbouring Blencathra, Skelgill might have harboured altogether different fears about his fate. Blencathra may not be in the ‘three thousand club’ (standing one hundred and fifty-three feet short), but from an adventurer’s viewpoint it is blessed with shattered escarpments and razor-like arêtes, such as the infamous Sharp Edge, site of many a scrambling mishap down the years, and deaths in double figures. While Blencathra is not a mountain to be taken lightly, to fall off Skiddaw takes a particular talent.
Skiddaw’s approachability extends to a car park at the end of Gale Road, just beneath the more modest Latrigg, where the ill-equipped tourist may alight at an altitude of one thousand feet. This means the summit can be gained in little more than a gentle amble along a wide and well-worn path over mildly ascending and undemanding terrain, which, as Wainwright noted, has been ‘derided as a route for grandmothers and babies’.
Despite Mike Greig’s account of Cholmondeley having made it through the checkpoint at the summit, Skelgill eschews the easy ascent, and instead opts to follow the course of the entire Skiddaw Challenge. He parks at the school and, leaving the grounds by a rather unconventional route of his own making, joins the footpath that forms the upward leg, striding out at a pace that would leave most schoolboy runners trailing in his wake.
From a seasoned walker’s angle the weather is steadily improving. The occlusion is giving way to the remnants of its cold front: the cloud is breaking and a stiff south-westerly breeze is picking up. The air might have a bite to it, but between abrupt showers of sleet the visibility is sharpening, bringing the wider surroundings into focus. By the time Skelgill reaches the triangulation pillar at Skiddaw High Man, the cloud base has lifted from the tops.
A raven knifes into the headwind, barking brok-brok to an unseen companion, while a plucky meadow pipit attempts an aerial display with limited success. A couple of distant bent walkers are poling slowly from the direction of Skiddaw Little Man, perhaps having heeded Wainwright’s advice about its viewpoint. In the immediate vicinity there is no human trace, no remnant of Saturday’s checkpoint – not that Skelgill would have expected anything. Nonetheless he carefully inspects the ground for any clue, before widening his search with a thorough 360-degree scan of the broad grey pebble-beach-like summit area.
After a minute he returns to the pillar and places both hands on the brass plate, closing his eyes as if he’s trying to divine some otherwise intangible vibe, to tap into the mountain’s memory of footsteps felt and voices heard two days earlier. His own contemporaneous hill experience, albeit at a kinder altitude, was of light but persistently driving rain, corroborating Mike Greig’s estimation that it was a time for putting one’s head down into the wind. The restricted visibility at three thousand feet – perhaps as little as ten yards – might have been irrelevant when the runners were simply following the path beneath their dripping noses.
This tactic would have served the boys fine provided they held to their course – and clearly most of them did just that. Greig had sent them off on the correct bearing – directly into the westerly – along a heavily worn pathway that quickly descends into a smooth-sided gully, before emerging on the obvious track that runs down to Little Knott. It is a route, as Skelgill already knows without re-tracing it, which is simple to follow, regardless of the visibility. In any event, well before Little Knott the mist would have thinned sufficiently to afford a wider view and enable the runners to keep their bearings. Moreover, as Skelgill noted and Greig confirmed, Mr Querrell had cleverly designed the challenge to make redundant the notion of taking short cuts. Quite simply, the best way home was to stick to the official course.
Naturally, had a boy had gone off in the wrong direction on the summit plateau, there would be considerable scope to get lost. To the north and east of Skiddaw lies a great moorland wilderness, largely disregarded by hillwalkers, a good fifty square miles of undulating territory strewn with lesser-known peaks whose names seem to invite the hapless orienteer: Meal Fell, Longlands Fell and Great Cockup. As Skelgill is wont to put it after a few pints, only ‘sniffing dogs or seeker helicopters’ could effectively locate a missing person in these heathery wastes.
Having apparently satisfied himself that there is no more to be learned at the summit, Skelgill begins to pick his way down the return stretch, albeit at a more measured pace than he came up. He has extended his walking poles to their maximum limit, and – thus not needing any longer to watch his step – continuously scans the landscape on the downhill side of his course (presumably on the principle that people rarely stray against the influence of gravity). If he were descending Grey Knotts over at Honister there would be plumbago adits to worry about – horizontal shafts from which graphite was mined as far back as the sixteenth century. Nearby Blencathra bears similar scars, chiselled out by zealous Victorians in search of lead and other precious ores. Such mines might tempt the curious schoolboy, unmindful of their perilous part-collapsed tunnels and pitch-dark passageways that open into unguarded vertical pits. Elsewhere, many of the region’s popular prominences are marred by man’s longstanding demand for its world-renowned slate.
But this is Skiddaw, one of the oldest mountains in the Lakes, a great pile of Ordovician mudstone that flakes and crumbles when exposed, and which is consequently of no commercial value. While much of Skelgill’s training – and indeed live action – in his voluntary capacity as a member of the local mountain rescue team has seen him hauling dummies from dank pits and dangling in water-filled shafts throughout the district, Skiddaw has not featured in such endeavours. Thus unblemished as regards intrusive human excavations, and in combination with its relatively benign topography, Skiddaw must be one of the safest mountains on which to get lost.
As such, Skelgill spends precious little time off the beaten track. And, while the mountain rescue team remains a resource upon which he could swiftly call – their familiarity with the terrain giving them an advantage over a police unit mobilised for the same purpose – for the present he has evidently decided to conduct the preliminary assessment solo. Perhaps he is not convinced that the boy is missing on the hill, and is merely retracing his steps to satisfy himself that this hunch is correct: a frustrating but necessary use of time, though minimised through this strategy.
Indeed, on only three occasions does he divert to inspect a passing feature – a small bluff, a rocky beck, a boulder patch – where perhaps a person might lie concealed. In general the terrain offers little to suggest someone might have strayed from their true course: no trace of stones dislodged, no path thrashed into the springy green bracken.
And so, uneventfully, Skelgill reaches a stile beyond which is the lane. The thump of his boots upon the tarmac disturbs a foraging woodpigeon; it departs with a battering of wings flashing white. He stands facing in the direction of the school, which lies out of sight about a mile distant. Then he surveys the immediate environs: dry-stone walls border the narrow roadway, backed by gnarled hawthorns and the odd spindly ash. There is no place for a car to park, nor even a suitable sheltered spot for a marshal to station himself – perhaps small wonder the teacher in question was keen to call it a day at the earliest opportunity.
