END OF TERM - CHAPTER ONE
By Edward Reilly
Adelaide: July 2059
Schoolmasters usually have quiet lives. Some will stand out from the crowd, gain a degree of local fame, or notoriety, some making the transition to technical college or even the ivory towers, but most go unnoticed. But the dead teacher propped up against the side gates as ground staff began to arrive just before first bells did not go unnoticed. No apparent blood, no rips to his tweed jacket with leatherite elbow patches, college tie neatly knotted, though the left shoe had fallen off and lay upside down in the middle of a puddle. Nicholls, the groundsman, had come past and noted that Cairncross seemed to be sitting with his back to the kitchen garden’s gate, and had walked over. Only as he came closer had he realised that the man was slumped, quite awkwardly, and that he was damp.
- His hair, and shirt, lower parts of his trousers, all sodden.
- The water didn’t come from the groundsheet?
- No, I ran back to the green shed and found a dry tarp. Must keep those dry, you know, for the wicket. It was raining last night.
The lieutenant nodded, understood why Nicholls had wanted to preserve the victim’s dignity with a covering, and appreciated the use of a dry tarpaulin, when everything around was still dripping wet. The rain would have obliterated any useful clues, such as footprints, but just to be sure Miller had organised the sergeant and his men to tape off the area. There wouldn’t be the usual hordes of stickybeaks. A quiet Saturday morning, now a ruined weekend.
- Was there a party on last night, a dance or something?
- No. Last day of mid-year exams, then a late afternoon footy match against Peters. Mr. Cairncross would’ve been in the office till about seven …
- Not a sport, eh?
- Cricket, sir. And swimming. Preferred not to run around like a barbarian.
- Any way I can check on his movements?
- The log, sir. At the office.
One of the junior secretaries was unlocking the office, trying to get the systems up and running before the Deputy Head arrived. He’d be in a foul mood, the weekend away quite ruined, and there would be hell to pay all the next long next week, and Morrison would have to be hauled back from his Canberra jaunt. More jollity.
Miller appeared at the door. He shook the rain off his umbrella, wiped his feet assiduously on the matting, entered the reception area. He stood, waiting till she noticed him, and only then fished out his warrant card.
- I can help you?
- Possibly.
- How?
- That fellow, Cairncross …
- Nigel, his name was Nigel. Nigel Cairncross, friend to all and favourite of none.
- Kept his distance?
- He was nice. The kids liked him, and …
Miller cut her off. He wasn’t here to get a personal profile on the stiff, nor the girl’s complex story of broken hearts and misdeeds. Miller knew how Cairncross had died, a single soft shot to the back of the head, at close range. But he didn’t know how, or why, he had got from the staffroom to the side gate.
- Staff rosters. Attendance book.
- And his file?
- Yes. Also, any CCTV records.
- No. We don’t run those things any more. The rules changed, oh, when I was still in school.
- Not that long ago, yes?
The girl, a Miss Joyce by her nametag, led Miller into a warm room, bustled about as he set to reading the growing pile. An hour passed, a tea tray appeared. Toasted cheese sandwiches. Miss Joyce smiled when she cleared the emptied plates. Miller kept reading until about eleven.
- I’m off for the time being.
- You’ll be back?
Did she want him to return? She was smiling.
- Yes. I’ll need that room. People to interview. Maybe twelve-thirty.
- Some extra chairs? Water?
- You’ve done this before? Set up for interviews?
Miss Joyce related what she called ‘a nasty incident’, when one of the Sporters had knocked out Mr. Phlelps, the Physics teacher. Not that he had done anything wrong, just that he’d been passing the Bursar’s office when Mr. Kruise had come storming out of Morrison’s office and had shouldered Phelps into the trophy case.
- Into?
- Head first. Blood everywhere. Year 11 girls screaming. Ambos, cops, the Department. Bloody circus!
- And those two?
- Kissed and made up. More or less.
- When was this?
- Start of Term.
- Two more files then.
He considered putting in for overtime for this weekend, Mother cooling her heels till he got back into town for the Friday family dinner: she was roasting a schnapper, she had announced, properly boned. Forensics had been and were going, Heyden supervising. He does all the Blutarbeit, swims in it: paper is my terrain.
Miller walked back to the scene, waved to Heyden as the ambulance was finally being loaded. His team were stepping out of their whites, checking notepads, swapping photographs, routines so well established that they were welded onto their skins. Miller waited. Heyden sauntered over.
- So?
- As you said Miller, there is a wound. Nothing subtle. No cartridges found.
- Burn marks, powder?
- As expected. At arm’s length, or less.
Trust in one’s fellows, comradeship, familiarity, they are wonderful qualities. Miller had enjoyed his school days, his years in the laboratories cooking chemicals, listening to his instructors as he was inducted into the great fraternity of scientists. He’d been tapped on the shoulder and buried in Forensics a month before his parents were relocated to Burra. A temporary work assignment, they were told. Four years, clinical duties. They’d had trusted the system, managed to survive, their friends understood and welcomed the Millers back to the barbecue. Gemütlichkeit reigned once again. So, it was no wonder that Miller was now musing over reasons why Cairncoss was now stretched out, being shuttled through the scanner before what was left of the dum-dum found their way onto a specimen tray.
- Anything else?
- We missed it at first, but he’d been hit before the coup de grace, under the right arm. Then I guess he was finished off, then shifted.
- More than one then?
- Probably. I’ve asked the squad for another hour or so.
Cairncross had trusted someone, but that trust had been misplaced. Or, it could have been more brutal than that, a payback, or even walking into a situation. Miller looked at photos he’d been handed. No burn marks on the first entry, the tweed quite ragged around the hole, and the bloody stains trapped under the man’s jacket and shirt, so that neither Nicholls nor himself had noticed the first bullet’s entry point. Which left the question of where the first shot had been taken, and if not immediate, then whereabouts?
One of the juniors was waving. Over by the long red shed. A few staff cars still parked there.
- What’s up?
- Cartridge case, sir. Right calibre.
Miller followed the constable. His mates were scouring the shed. Nothing more, as yet.
- Here, sir.
- And over there, see, lodged by the sump.
Miller followed the pointing finger and spotted the second shell, perhaps by a trick of sunlight now cutting into the shed. A few minutes beforehand no light would have slanted that way for the brass casing to glint, not even with heads being pointed downwards. They scoured the shed, but there was nothing else to find, and about four they gave up. Miller told the lad to write it up and have on his desk tomorrow, by eleven. No need to hurry. Things were starting to fall into place.
Chapter two coming soon.