Kill Who You Want

Chapter Twelve

Plot reminder: In order to protect her, Nathan has broken up with Sophie, lying to her that he has found another girl. Meanwhile, WPC Hargreaves has paid a visit to Nathan's house. His mother, Karen, lied that he had been home in bed with the flu at the time the gutting knife was stolen from the fishing shop. Maureen Booth, who features in this chapter, is Nathan's English teacher. Marcus, who features in the penultimate segment, is his little brother. At the end of the previous chapter Nathan was seen lurking around suspiciously at the entrance to the school.

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Maureen hadn't realised at first. She'd just got in the car and started backing out of her space. There'd been a marked rightward slant, an unhealthy external rumble. It wasn't until after she'd unclicked the seatbelt and hobbled back out that she'd noticed it - the slashed, completely deflated front right tyre.

It wasn't so much the replacement costs that troubled her or the hassle of calling up her mechanic, waiting there for him to arrive with his tow truck. It wasn't the amused glances of the handful of late-exiting pupils drifting past, or the barely disguised smirks of one or two of her colleagues as they'd got into their own perfectly roadworthy vehicles. It wasn't even the prospect of the long, cold walk home. What hurt most was the sheer bloody-minded cruelty of it all. It went beyond her comprehension. Why would someone want to do something like that?

Oh, she was aware of course that she wasn't the most popular of teachers. That at times she found it hard to contain her frustations. But that was only because she had high standards of her pupils, wanted them to leave Ravensby Comprehensive with enough of a grasp of grammar and punctuation to confidently face the world of work which awaited them. Enough of an appreciation of the rich literary heritage their nationality had regaled them to attend a Shakespeare production once in a while, tune in the next time the BBC ran a mini-series of some Dickensian classic. She was strict because she wanted them to get as much out of life as they possibly could. Was that really so much of a crime?

By the time she finally reached home her feet were throbbing, her breath a little short from the rare sustained exercise. As she unlocked the front door, she glanced nervously back up the street; she'd had the distinct impression she was being followed. Maybe it was just the heightened tension in the air. Just her imagination.

It was decidedly unsettling though, the thought that the very same day as her tyre happened to get slashed, the police had phoned the school regarding the possible involvement of Nathan Edwardson in the shoplifting of a fishing knife...

*

The bitch lived in one of those dead-end streets off Beech Avenue. Right on the edge of town, nothing but the woods behind. A bungalow, what else? Lived alone of course. Who'd want to marry a woman like Miss Booth?

After covertly watching her close the front door behind her, Nathan entered the woods a little further down, backtracked towards the property's rear fence. In his nostrils was the smell of damp wood, in his ears the distant bark of a neighbourhood dog. It was dark now, cold as hell. There was more snow on the way it seemed.

The fence was wooden, a couple of metres high. A series of concrete pillars helped keep it upright. These were moist, covered in moss, but his basketball boots were just grippy enough for him to shimmy on up, take a peek over the top.

There was a lawn, the recent snowfall untouched, glittery in the dim light. He would have to wait until it had gone, he thought. Until the ground was dry again. Footprint-proof.

Beyond the lawn were two windows. A light was visible in the left hand one, the silhouette of a tap. He imagined her there somewhere inside, wondered what it was teachers did after they came home from school. Read books, most probably. Host elegant dinner parties with their other teacher friends, make jokes about how thick their pupils were.