The Good Teacher: A gripping thriller from the Kindle top ten bestselling author of ‘The Perfect Neighbours’. Rachel Sargeant
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can’t blame the dormer roof for much longer.
As he replaces his brush in the paint can, some of the white undercoat slops onto the patio. He scoops it back in with his palette knife and removes the rest of the stain with white spirit. He sprinkles more spirit on his hands and wipes them down with the rag from the pocket of his shorts.
His fingers aren’t clean, but pale like a white man’s. He needs a wash down with soap and water. But he doesn’t want to go into the house as the customer’s wife is at home. She might ask him why he’s stopped again.
He sits on the edge of the patio. The step down to the lawn is low and his paint-flecked knees come up high in front of him. The grass is yellow, even though he’s seen the owners using a sprinkler every evening. He’s heard them talking of having it re-turfed – as soon as the decorating’s finished. He sighs. Perhaps he should tell them that God will replenish their lawn long before Hedges House Painting Services retouches their eaves.
He’s surprised they gave him the contract at all. He knows the man didn’t want to and he can’t blame him. As far as he was concerned Bartholomew had already proved himself unreliable. In February he’d been due to start on their dining room – a big job to take off the Anaglypta wall covering, cross line it and paint over in mushroom gold. Bartholomew had to cancel at two weeks’ notice when he couldn’t find his steam stripper. It would have taken a month of God’s sacred Sundays to scrape off Anaglypta without a steamer.
The machine disappeared from the back of his van one night, but there’d been no sign of a break-in. Had he forgotten to lock the van? Convincing himself that it was his own foolish mistake, he hadn’t gone to the police or contacted his insurance company. Back then, the possibility that someone else could get hold of the van key hadn’t crossed his mind. Bartholomew wipes his chin with his forearm and wonders whether that suspicion had been in his head all along but he’d chosen to ignore it. February? Were the signs already there?
He shuffles along the patio edge to his toolbox. Underneath his Thermos flask of Cherry Tango is his Bible, wrapped in a plastic bag. He longs to take it out, ask it the questions, and seek solace. But he can’t touch it until he’s washed his hands.
The same passage comes into his mind. It’s been there almost constantly for three weeks now. Proverbs 10: 1: “A wise son makes his father proud of him; a foolish one brings his mother grief.” The words have been pressing against his brain ever since he saw his own son, Saul, being … doing …
He shivers. The fear comes back and he thinks of Job 20: 16: “What the evil man swallows is like poison.” Is Saul evil? Every day he prays for a sign, for the Lord to reassure him. Bartholomew needs to know that the evil lies elsewhere, not in a boy like Saul. Again and again he’s asked Saul why he did it. Saul says it’s like falling into cotton wool. It lets him find a warm and happy place that he wants to keep going back to. Where did Bartholomew go wrong? He’s found comfort from a life of faith. Why hasn’t Saul found it there, too?
A scenes of crime officer dusts a bedside locker while another hunts through drawers. I look at the unmade double bed that the Brocks must have been dragged from in the night. The room’s simply furnished – a large pine wardrobe and matching dressing table – again tidy, no lipsticks or perfume bottles in sight.
The second bedroom looks like an advert for an office suppliers. A black swivel chair slots underneath a desk as if it’s never been used. Even the few sheets of printed papers on top lie in a perfect pile. A plastic dust sheet covers the computer. The blotting pad looks fresh and a single ballpoint pokes out of a pen-tidy. The only incongruous item is a birdcage, complete with a bell and a seed hopper, under the desk. Two forensic officers come in behind me, so I leave them to begin a detailed search.
Whereas the rest of the upstairs appears sterile, the third bedroom is a surprise. Three walls are bright yellow and the fourth displays a magnificent hand-painted circus scene. Trapeze artists fly across the red and white striped backdrop of the big top. Clowns juggle silver hoops and two white horses rear up at each other. It must have taken someone days to complete. In the middle of the room is a large cot with a clown motif mattress, but no bedding. The drawers of the nappy changing unit next to it are empty.
I go downstairs, psyching myself up for the next round with Matthews.
He’s on his mobile, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “No, ma’am, nothing of interest so far. They’ve bagged up a few bits and pieces.”
I wander into the kitchen. Dave, the forensic scientist, kneels at the opened back door, scraping at a broken pane of glass. I look beyond him into the garden. Typical new-estate small, the paved patio is surrounded on three sides by conifers.
Two familiar figures come round the side of the house and I smile in relief. “Anything interesting?” I call.
“Hi, Pippa, good to see you. Nothing out here,” PC John Whitton says, coming towards the doorstep. “But Forensics pulled some clothes out of the washing machine. They want to check whether anyone’s tried to wash away evidence.”
“Unlikely though,” PC Kieran Clarke says. “It’s a towel and a few men’s shirts and trousers, probably the husband’s. We won’t find any bloodstains. All his blood is spread across Martle Top.” He gives a half-hearted chuckle.
“The relief’s missing you already,” John says. “So how are you getting on in CID?”
The thought of my day so far makes my insides clench but I manage a breezy “Fine”. Trying not to sound desperate, I say how glad I am to see them again and go back through the kitchen.
The lounge curtains, closed when the police broke in, are now pushed back to let maximum daylight onto the crime scene. With the light comes the fire of a midsummer day. My hand goes to undo my jacket but the protective suit is in the way. Apart from the pungent smell of forensic chemicals sprinkled into the carpet, the room is orderly. Matching cushions on the sofa and paperbacks on the small bookcase. Red roses on the coffee table and a cheap carriage clock on the mantelpiece, but otherwise no ornaments or photos.
My own small lounge has every available space crammed with photos: old ones of Mum and Dad in the same frame; one of Dad’s wedding to Joanne and several of their son, Jamie, from newborn to the current cheeky eight-year-old. But no photos in this house, no clues to the occupants.
I kneel over the kitchen chair in the middle of the room and get a whiff of the oily scent left by the fingerprint experts. Hard to know what colour the chair is under its dosing of white powder. A pale wood, perhaps, and there are several paint spots, evidence that the chair has been a makeshift decorating ladder before its latest incarnation as a prison for Gaby Brock. Some of the spots are summer yellow and partly obscured by splodges of blue. The circus room with its yellow walls probably wasn’t the most recent project.
On the bookcase, two shelves of light romances mingle with classic horror, and another shelf of paperback textbooks. Understanding Shakespeare; Yoga Postures; Towards the National Curriculum; Modern Grammar; Advanced Yoga. Which books belonged to the husband and what will the wife do with them now?
Dave, the forensics officer, puts his head around the door. “Tell Mike Matthews I’m off. I’ll have my initial report ready this afternoon.”
“Ok, I’ll tell him. It was nice meeting you,” I say.
Dave grins. “You too, Agatha”. Then he’s gone.
My cheeks burn. Matthews must have told him about my failed Agatha Christie joke. It wasn’t that funny, was it?
PC Kieran Clarke appears at the door. “Mike Matthews wants us to make a start on the house-to-house enquiries. Find out if anyone saw Brock’s Mondeo leaving in the middle of the night.” He pauses to give his face time to break into a smirk. “So you’d better hurry up, Agatha.”
There’s more danger that her Jimmy Choo heels will pierce the forensic overshoes and sink into the melting tarmac of the Martle Top road than they will bury themselves in the dried-out grass verge, but force of habit makes DI Liz Bagley tiptoe to the