I remember Sally Healey on telly the evening of the fire – her pink linen shirt and cream trousers and assembly voice and immaculate make-up. And how the carefully assembled frontage had started to fall apart.
AB: Can you tell me who you knew to be in the building at the time of the fire?
SH: Yes. There was one reception class. Our other reception class was at the zoo. All their names are in the register I gave you. There was also Annette Jenks, the school secretary; Tilly Rogers, a reception teacher; and, of course, Jennifer Covey, who’s a temporary classroom assistant.
AB: Was every other member of staff out of the building?
SH: Yes, at sports day. We needed all of them. We are ambitious in the number of activities and it would be chaotic unless there were enough staff to run things smoothly.
‘Christ,’ Jenny says. ‘Even now she’s trying to promote the school.’
AB: Did you see any members of staff return to the building?
SH: Yes, Rowena White. Or, at least, I didn’t see her but I was told she’d gone to get the medals.
AB: Anyone else?
SH: No.
AB: I know one of my officers asked you about this at the scene of the fire, but if you’d bear with me, I need to go over the same territory again.
SH: Of course.
AB: How easy is it for people to get into the school?
SH: We have one entrance to the school, which is a locked gate. It has a numerical keypad. Only members of staff know the code. Everyone else needs to be buzzed in from the office. Unfortunately, there have been instances in the past where parents have been irresponsible and held open the gate for someone, without checking. We had an incident when a complete stranger got into the school because a parent inadvertently held the gate open for him. Since then we have had a monitor installed and our school secretary has to watch exactly who she is letting in.
AB: So you think your school is secure?
SH: Absolutely. Security for the children is our top priority.
‘Like Annette can be bothered to watch the monitor,’ Jenny says scathingly.
‘Mrs Healey must know what she’s like, surely?’
‘Yes. I don’t suppose she did when she hired her.’
‘And she knows that parents and some children know the code?’
‘Gets really annoyed about it.’
If she’s lying about the security on the gate, what else might she be lying about?
AB: Do you know of anyone who has a grudge against the school?
SH: No, of course not.
AB: I have to tell you that it looks, at this stage, as if the fire was arson. So can you please think if there is anyone who may have a grudge against the school?
[SH is silent.]
AB: Mrs Healey?
SH: How could someone do this?
There are no stage directions for her mood at this point – misery? fury? panic?
AB: Can you answer the question, please.
SH: I cannot think of anyone who would want to do this.
AB: Perhaps a member of staff who-
[SH interrupts.]
SH: No one would do this.
AB: Have any members of staff left the school recently? Say, in the last six months to a year?
SH: But that’s nothing to do with the fire.
AB: Please answer the question.
SH: Yes. Two. Elizabeth Fisher, our former school secretary. And Silas Hyman, a year-three teacher.
AB: What were the circumstances?
SH: Elizabeth Fisher was getting too old to be able to do the job. So sadly I had to let her go. There were no hard feelings. Though I know she misses the children a great deal.
AB: I’ll need her contact details, if that’s possible?
SH: Yes. I have her number and address in my palmtop.
AB: You also said Silas Hyman, a year-three teacher?
SH: Yes. Circumstances there were more unfortunate. There was an accident in the playground when he was on duty.
AB: When was this?
SH: The last week of March. I had to ask him to leave. As I said, health and safety is our top priority.
AB: You actually said security was your top priority.
SH: It all lumps in together, in the end, doesn’t it? Keeping the children safe from physical or criminal harm.
The words ‘or both’ must have hung in the air but weren’t recorded.
AB: Are Silas Hyman’s contact details also in your palmtop?
SH: Yes. I haven’t updated it.
AB: Can you write them down for me.
SH: Now?
AB: Yes.
[SH writes down Silas Hyman’s details.]
AB: If you could please excuse me one moment.
[AB leaves the room and returns six minutes later.]
Baker must have gone to tell Penny about Silas Hyman. Presumably he also sent someone to find him – he’d told you the police had spoken to Silas Hyman that evening.
AB: We were talking about school security. Can you tell me about the fire regulations at the school?
SH: We have appropriate fire-fighting equipment – extinguishers both foam and water, as well as fire blankets and sand buckets on every floor and in vulnerable areas such as the kitchen. The walking distance to the nearest extinguisher does not exceed thirty metres. Staff are trained in the use of appropriate equipment. We have signed exits, both pictorially and in writing, in every classroom and in rooms such as the Art room, dining room and kitchen. We also routinely practise evacuating the building. We have certified smoke detectors and heat detectors, which are linked directly through to the fire station. We have quarterly, yearly and three-yearly maintenance and testing by a qualified engineer as required by BS 5839.
‘It sounds like she’s memorised it all,’ Jen says, and I agree with her, but why?
AB: You have all those facts to hand?
So AB noticed this too.
SH: I am the head teacher of a primary school. As I just told you, safety is my number-one concern. I delegated myself as the fire safety manager. So yes, I have the facts to hand.
AB: Firefighters reported that windows at the top of the school were wide open. Can you comment on that?
SH: No. That’s not possible. We have window locks to prevent them being opened more than ten centimetres.
AB: Where are the keys to the window locks kept?
SH: In the teacher’s desk. But surely…
She must have trailed off at this point. I imagine again that figure going to the top of the school, but now more was required before he could fling open the windows and let the breeze suck the fire upwards.
AB: You said your staff were trained to put out fires?
SH Yes. Clearly containment, alongside evacuation, is the best method of minimising the impact of a fire.
AB: But the staff were all out at sports day? Apart from the three you told me about?
[SH nods.]
AB: Why was Jennifer Covey inside the school and not at sports day too?
SH: She was in charge of the medical room. For minor injuries.
AB: Where is the medical room?
SH: On the third floor.
AB: At the top of the building?
SH: Yes. We used to use the secretary’s office. Elizabeth was a qualified nurse. There was a sofa in there and we had a blanket. Just to hold the fort until a parent arrived to take the child home. But the new secretary isn’t medically trained in any way so there was no point keeping it there. Mr Davidson, our head of upper school, has it on his floor. He’s our trained first-aider but he was needed at sports day.
AB: How long had you known that Jennifer Covey would be the nurse this afternoon?
SH: Nurse is a little grand for the title. Clearly I didn’t expect a girl that age to deal with anything remotely serious.
‘I did a St John Ambulance training, you witch,’ Jenny says as she reads it and I’m glad she’s focused on Sally Healey’s answer and not Baker’s question. Because right at the beginning he’d suspected the fire was aimed at her. I suppose he’d have put her name in the computer and the hate-mail case would have come up instantly.
AB: If you could answer my question. How long had you known that Jennifer Covey would be the nurse this afternoon?
SH: I announced it at the Thursday staff meeting last week. It wasn’t my original plan but I decided that in view of Jennifer’s consistently inappropriate clothes during the hot weather it would be better if she wasn’t in view of the parents.
‘She is a witch, Mum,’ Jenny says.
AB: Original plan?
SH: Initially I’d allocated the job to Rowena White. Rowena has done a St John Ambulance course. She was upset about the change but I felt it was appropriate.
Jenny turns to me. ‘Do you think Rowena could have told her father she was going to be nurse, to make him proud, same old, but then didn’t tell him when I replaced her?’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
Was the wrong girl hurt?
AB: Who was at the Thursday staff meeting when you announced the change?
SH: The senior management team. Then they disseminate the information to all the other members of staff.
[SH is silent.]
AB: Mrs Healey?
SH: Jenny, is she going to die?
[SH cries.]
It didn’t say for how long.
Sarah takes the final photocopy out of her bag. I’d hoped it would be a transcript of Silas Hyman’s interview but it’s Tilly Rogers’s, that archetype of a reception teacher – pink cheeks and long fair hair and smiling face with white, pearly teeth. A healthy, clean-living, nice girl who’ll do this job for a few years before marrying and having a family of her own. Children in her class love her, fathers feel wistful, mothers maternal.
I can’t imagine she has anything to do with the fire.
Tilly’s interview started at 6.30, so after Mrs Healey’s. It was AB, Inspector Baker, who interviewed her.
I skim-read it, just getting the basics. She was with her class doing circle time when the alarm went off. Maisie White helped evacuate the children, who all knew her already as a volunteer reader. She didn’t mention a delay before Annette brought her the register, maybe because she didn’t notice or because she didn’t think it was important. Nobody had noticed and asked her. It’s two pages before I see a question that seems relevant.
AB: Do you know Silas Hyman?
TR: Yes. He was a year-three teacher at Sidley House. Up until April that is. But I didn’t exactly know him. We taught on different floors. I’m right at the bottom – well, you know that already. And the reception classes don’t integrate with the rest of the school, not until they reach year one.
Is she telling the truth about not really knowing Silas Hyman? Is it possible that she’s his accomplice? Did the fresh-faced, floral-frocked Tilly Rogers leave her class with their storybooks and Listening-Teddy to go upstairs and find the keys to the windows and open them for him? Pour out white spirit and find a match?
Once I’d have said that it was impossible to imagine. But nothing is impossible to imagine any more.
But I can’t see how she could have got back to her classroom in time. Because if she’d started the fire, surely Maisie would have arrived to help with the evacuation and found her missing.
AB: Is there anything else you think may be relevant?
TR: Rowena White. I don’t know if it’s relevant but it was extraordinary.
AB: Go on.
TR: I was outside the school with the children but most of their mothers had got there by then, so I was able to look around. I saw Rowena running into the PE shed and coming out with a towel. A big, blue swimming one. The children leave them in there some times. There were two bottles of water on the gravel at the side of the school, by the kitchen entrance. You know, the really large four-litre ones? And she poured water on the towel. Then I saw her going into the school. As she got to the door, I saw her putting the towel over her face. It was just so brave.
Sarah leaves to find you. Jenny and I wait a moment, both quiet with disappointment. No magic sentence to free Adam from guilt.
‘Maybe Aunt Sarah will see something we haven’t,’ I say. ‘Or it will at least give her a lead.’
‘Yes.’
A little while later, we join you and Sarah in the corridor of ICU. You’re looking through the glass at Jenny, holding a transcript.
Jenny is standing a little distance away, so that she can’t see herself through the glass.
‘Do you think it’s like my mobile?’ she asks. ‘An infection risk?’
‘Must be.’
But I wonder if the photocopied transcripts really are an infection risk or if Sarah is trying to be as discreet as possible, avoiding Jenny’s highly staffed bedside.
You’re holding Annette Jenks’s transcript. I hope I’ll now hear Sarah’s take on it, which I could only guess at before.
‘But how the hell can Jen have signed herself out?’ you say as you read it. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not convinced yet that she did,’ Sarah says. ‘It could be that Annette Jenks just wanted to stop people from blaming her. A hit-and-run mentality.’
‘So there’s nothing useful from it.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. It’s clear from her statement that she didn’t actually light the fire. She says she was with Rowena White in the office when the alarm went off and Rowena told me the same thing earlier. The office is on the upper-ground level; the Art room on the second floor. So neither of them could have started the fire.’
‘Could she have let Hyman in?’
‘She claims not to know him, or even have heard of him, but I find it strange that she didn’t hear any gossip about him at all. She strikes me as a gossipy kind of girl. So, for some reason, I think she’s probably lying. And we know from both Maisie and Rowena White that she waited a few minutes before coming outside. In here she makes no mention of that. We have to find out what she was doing.’
As I expected, Sarah is bang on the button.
You read through Sally Healey’s transcript, pausing when you get to the fire regulations she had in place.
‘It’s like she’s memorised the manual,’ you say to Sarah.
‘I agree. And Baker picked up on it too. I think Sally Healey was worried about the real possibility of a fire. Almost as if she knew it was going to happen and was trying to minimise the consequences.’ She catches your expression. ‘No fire regulations would have stood a chance against an accelerant and open windows and an old building.’
‘Maybe she knew that?’
‘I can’t see why she’d burn down her own school. But something’s not right. As well as having all this down pat, she said there were no hard feelings when Elizabeth Fisher, the old secretary, left. But on Elizabeth’s side, there clearly are.’
‘Is that relevant?’ you ask, sounding a little impatient.
‘I don’t know yet.’
I feel sick as I reread the head teacher’s statement. Because this time her telling Baker that the medical room is on the third floor, right at the top of the building, leaps out at me. So too does her announcement that Jenny would be nurse, and that the information would be disseminated to all the other members of staff.
Everyone at the school knew Jenny would be up on the top floor, on her own, in a virtually deserted building.
‘Is this all you’ve got?’ you ask.
‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’
‘Can’t you-’
‘I was only able to get copies because the paperwork was temporarily in an insecure area. Everything will be securely filed by now.’
‘But you will talk to Silas Hyman?’
‘Yes. And I’ve already set up a meeting with the head teacher and Elizabeth Fisher. And while I’m doing that, you can go home and see Addie.’
You are silent.
‘ICU is heavily staffed, Mike. If you’re still worried, I could get Mohsin to sit with her.’
You are still silent and she doesn’t understand.
‘Addie’s only got you right now, Mike. He needs you to be with him.’
You shake your head.
Her grey-blue eyes look deeply into your matching ones, as if searching for an answer there. Because you are a loving father; not a man who would ignore his eight-year-old child, especially not now. Surely, in there somewhere behind the hard expression on your face, is the boy she’s known all his life.
You look away from Sarah as you speak so she can’t read your face any more; can’t see the man inside.
‘They told me Jenny has three weeks to live unless she gets a heart transplant. A day less now.’
‘Oh God, Mike…’
‘I can’t leave her.’
‘No.’
‘She will get a heart transplant…’ you begin, but I am looking at Jenny’s face as she hears a car speeding towards her. Death isn’t quiet but loud, deafening, getting closer. A joyriding grim reaper mounting the pavement, directly at her, and there’s nowhere to run.
She leaves the room and I hurry after her.
‘Jen, please…’
In the corridor, she stops and turns to me. ‘You should have told me.’ Her face is white and her voice shaking. ‘I had a right to know.’
I want to tell her that I was trying to protect her, that I knitted a shawl of untruths to wrap her up; that I believe in your hope for her.
‘I’m not a child any more. Your daughter, yes. Always. But-’
‘Jen-’
‘Can’t you get it, Mum? Please? I’m an adult now. You can’t run my life for me. What’s left of it. I have my own life. My own death.’