The Head is Dead

  For Mum - who enjoys a good murder as much as I do

  It was her mother’s fault. Of course it was! She understood that now. He’d explained it all to her very carefully. If only the stupid woman hadn’t written her will like that. If only it hadn’t involved quite so much money!

  But she had, and now there was no choice.

  They had to get him away.

  Tonight. While there was still somewhere to hide him.

  Weeping softly, she kissed his cold forehead and stroked his cheek for the last time. Whispering goodbye, she tenderly wrapped the quilt around him before pulling it up over his face.

  In the silent darkness they carried him out of his bedroom and away to where he could be safe and at peace. When the job was done, they returned to the house, shutting the door behind them just as the first blackbird’s song pierced the stillness.

  It was dawn. The sun was rising. Everything would be fine now. He’d promised that in the morning all their problems would be solved – and she’d believed him. He had to be right. He always was. Wasn’t he?

  easter bunnies

  My name is Poppy Fields. I’m quite a peaceful sort of person really: I don’t believe in violence. So let me say right here and now that it wasn’t my idea to kill the head.

  It was the deputy I wanted to murder.

  Not in real life, you understand. The whole event was supposed to be a bit of light entertainment – a fun way of getting people to part with their cash. We never expected anyone to actually die.

  It happened at Easter, which for some strange reason was almost slap-bang in the middle of March. My friend Graham did his best to explain it to me, going on about Gregorian and lunisolar calendars and paschal full moons, but I still didn’t get why it was so early. I mean, Christmas is always on 25 December; New Year’s Day is always on 1 January; my birthday’s always on 7 August. Why does Easter have to move around all over the place? And I wasn’t the only one who was confused by it. While the schools in our county took their two weeks off right after the egg-based-festival weekend, everybody else was having their holiday in April. Which meant that when my mum, Lili, got offered a job in Barnford transforming the St Andrew’s Primary School car park into a wildlife haven just after Easter, she had to take me along with her.

  It was a five-hour drive from where we live, so the school secretary, Mrs Plumtree, had booked us into a local bed and breakfast. Graham came too because his mother was busy at work with some big event and she reckoned that if he was with us, he wouldn’t spend his whole holiday glued to his computer.

  When we arrived in Barnford, the lady who ran the B&B, Mrs Oates (“call me Marjorie”), filled us in on the school’s background before we’d even unpacked our bags.

  “The head, Mrs King, hasn’t been there long,” Marjorie said. “St Andrew’s wasn’t doing too well in the league tables under the old chap. He had a mild heart attack or a stroke or something over Christmas, so he retired on health grounds and the governors brought in Mrs King. They said they wanted a ‘new broom’. She’s made quite an impact already.”

  Marjorie slapped a copy of the local paper down on the table. Mrs King was there on the front page staring aggressively at the camera under a headline screaming: HEAD CUTS OUT DEAD WOOD.

  Mum read the article out loud. There was all sorts of stuff about how Mrs King was going to “shake things up” and “knock the place into shape” and that sometimes you had to “be cruel to be kind”. She’d promised that “sub-standard teaching will not be tolerated” and that “poor pupil behaviour will be rigorously dealt with”. “I’m not afraid of permanently excluding children who prove disruptive,” she’d declared.

  Mum handed the newspaper back and said, “Phew! That all sounds a bit menacing. I bet the staff are terrified, aren’t they?”

  “Not to mention the kids,” I added. It seemed to me that Mrs King really knew how to make enemies.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Marjorie, pursing her lips with evident relish. “I suppose you’ll find out soon enough.”

  Mum’s meeting with Mrs King was scheduled for 9.15 sharp the next morning.

  Mum didn’t want to be late on her first day, not if Mrs King was as scary as she sounded in the paper. We arrived early, and I took the opportunity to observe the staff while we sat in the reception area. I’m dead interested in other people – studying the intricate details of human behaviour is a hobby of mine – and this particular group of subjects was especially fascinating. They all looked slightly stunned: like the survivors of a violent earthquake who have crawled out from the rubble of a collapsed building and are temporarily dazzled by the sun and confused by the changed landscape. They were treading carefully as though cracks might open in the ground beneath their feet.

  The only person who seemed unaffected was Mrs Plumtree. She was a smiling, jolly woman with a massive, matronly bosom and she exuded waves of sweet-smelling floral perfume.

  “Hello, dear,” she said to Mum. “How lovely to meet you at last! How’s the B&B? Was it comfortable? Did you sleep all right?”

  The reception area was really an oversized porch at the front of the building. The secretary’s office was on the right, a sliding window granting access to people who wanted to buy lunch tickets or hand in lost property. Mrs Plumtree kept it open so she could chat while Mum waited for her meeting.

  “You’ll find that the staff are all a little tense,” she told Mum in a confidential manner. “Mrs King’s really upset one or two people, including the governors. I’m afraid Mr Edwards – the chairman – isn’t too keen on the environmental project. The car park was only constructed two years ago and he feels it’s rather a waste of resources. But Mrs King likes to do things her own way and it’s not proving too popular. Of course it’s no problem for me, I’m retiring at the end of the year.”

  “Really?” said Mum. “You don’t look old enough.”

  Mrs Plumtree laughed. “Bless you, dear, that’s very sweet! Actually, I’m taking early retirement. Ricky, my son, has special needs, you see. I’ve decided to spend more time with him.”

  Mum asked, “Is that Ricky?” She was pointing to a vast collection of photographs that were stuck on the wall next to Mrs Plumtree’s computer. They all featured the same brilliantly blue-eyed young man in various exotic locations: smiling in front of the pyramids, grinning by the Eiffel Tower, waving from the top of the Empire State Building.

  “No, that’s Davy, Ricky’s twin. He’s in Peru at the moment.” She waved a photo of him standing in the ruins of Machu Picchu. “He sent me this just last week.”

  “That must cost a bit!” said Mum. “He must work very hard in between trips to afford it all.”

  Mrs Plumtree flushed slightly. “Actually, I pay for them, dear,” she said. “I don’t begrudge him. He so loves to travel.” She heaved a sigh so deep that her bosom quivered like a plate of jelly. “It’s strange how life turns out, isn’t it? They were born a few minutes apart, that’s all. But Ricky had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, so he was deprived of oxygen at birth. It caused brain damage. So Ricky stays at home, and Davy goes all over the world. We really don’t see much of him any more.”

  “That’s hard on you,” said Mum sympathetically.

  “Oh no, dear. I miss him, of course. I miss him so badly!” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a tissue before making a visible effort to pull herself together. “Really, I musn’t grumble. It’s not like the awful things some people have to cope with. We have a roof over our heads, and we’re healthy and well fed. That’s more than you can say for lots of people in the world, isn’t it?”

  The clock ticked around towards 9.15, but at 9.12 precisely a large man with a scary-looking set of tattoos down his arms cam
e crashing through the front door dragging a kid behind him, and – without knocking – burst into Mrs King’s office.

  Mrs Plumtree paled. “Oh dear,” she said. “That’s Mr Walters. I wonder what he wants?” She didn’t have to say any more, because we could hear the drama from beginning to end.

  “What’s this rubbish about Craig swearing?” demanded Mr Walters.

  “Your son used foul and offensive language in front of my secretary yesterday, Mr Walters,” came back a crisp, clear voice that I took to be Mrs King’s. “As you know, we have a zero-tolerance approach to swearing at this school. He will be excluded from attending until I can be sure he’s learnt to control his tongue.”

  “He says he didn’t do it,” Mr Walters growled menacingly.

  “I didn’t do nothing,” chipped in a kid’s voice. “Honest, miss.”

  “You didn’t do nothing,” echoed Mrs King witheringly. “Let me see. Would that be like the time you didn’t flush Billy Kane’s pencil case down the toilet? Or the time you didn’t throw Willa Smith’s shoes over the fence?”

  Craig didn’t answer.

  “He says he didn’t do it and I believe him,” said his father.

  “That’s all very well, Mr Walters, but I don’t.”

  “You’ve got no right to send him home!” roared Craig’s dad.

  “I have every right, Mr Walters. I’m the head.” Her words shot out like bullets. “Until your son can speak without turning the air around him blue; until he learns to admit when he has done wrong; until he learns to face the consequences of his actions, he will remain excluded.”

  “I can make you take him back, you know. I’ll go to the governors. I can force you.”

  “Over my dead body,” growled Mrs King.

  Her office door was flung open with such gusto that we all jumped a few centimetres in the air. Mr Walters stormed back out, dragging the foul-mouthed Craig behind him. Then Mrs King appeared, calm and unruffled, in the doorway.

  “Ms Fields,” she said, shaking Mum energetically by the hand. “Do come in. Let’s get started.”

  Graham and I had planned to just wait in the reception area until they’d finished their meeting, but Mrs King was like a force of nature – she swept us up and the next thing we knew we were sitting meekly in her office listening to her plans.

  “I want the entire car park to go. People will have to walk to school in future. Think of the benefits: it will be good for their health and good for the planet. There are no losers with this project.”

  She wanted a pond for newts and a nettle patch for butterflies, a log pile for hedgehogs and berry bushes for the birds.

  “I was at Cornborough Primary for a meeting last term,” she told Mum. “I gather you did the environmental area there?”

  Mum nodded. “Yes. It was a few years ago now.”

  “Well, what I’ve got in mind is something like that, only twice as big. The sooner we can get started, the better. We’ve got most of the money we need in the school fund and we’re having a spring fayre this Sunday to raise the rest. If you draw the plans up this week you can start digging on Monday.”

  She swung around in her swivelly chair and fixed me and Graham with a steely stare. “What are you two going to do while your mother’s working?” she demanded. “I hope you have something constructive in mind. I can’t bear idleness.”

  Of course we hadn’t planned anything other than hanging around in the park and watching telly at the B&B – we were on holiday after all. But that didn’t seem to be the kind of answer you could give to someone like Mrs King. Words popped out of my mouth that had bypassed my brain completely.

  “We could help with the fayre,” I offered.

  “Excellent idea!” barked Mrs King. “Let’s see… We already have an egg hunt for the infants. I know Easter Sunday was last weekend, but one of the dads has offered to dress up as a bunny, so I don’t suppose anyone will mind. We’ve got all the usual stalls and sideshows covered. But one of my teachers – Mr Piper, I think – came up with the novel idea of a murder mystery trail for the older children and grown-ups to enjoy. Sadly nobody’s had time to do anything about it until now. Think you could arrange one?”

  “Yes,” Graham said helplessly. He blinked in surprise. Clearly he was experiencing the same problem as me.

  “Now I know what vivid imaginations children have, so I want you to come up with a plot.” Mrs King was going full-steam ahead. “The more outrageous it is, the better. A body… A series of clues… Everyone has to pay to enter, of course. People who come up with the right answer will have their names put in a hat. The first one pulled out wins the prize. Got that? Good. I’ll expect some ideas on my desk in the morning. Off you go.”

  So that was that. While Mum measured the car park and began to draw up a plan of the area, we started work on a project of our own.

  the grand plan

  Planning the whole thing was fun. I mean, Graham and I knew a lot about real-life murders, so it was quite nice to be making one up. Or at least it was to begin with.

  We sat in the school library and worked out a stupidly complicated plot. The victim was a nuclear scientist masquerading as a teacher who was secretly married to a woman in Russia but dating a local nurse who was really an undercover spy who was in love with a gardener who had a brother who was violently opposed to nuclear power and determined to stop the scientist designing a new reactor. You get the picture. There’d be objects littered around the place – a jar labelled URANIUM, a syringe, a wedding ring and a Russian passport. Each one would have a written clue attached that would lead to the next one until finally you discovered the body and had to work out who’d done it and why. Our victim was going to be squashed flat by the blade of a wind turbine – a good, symbolic end.

  “What do we do if it rains?” Graham asked.

  “Rain?” I said, incredulous. “On Mrs King’s spring fayre? It wouldn’t dare.”

  We were going to use a dummy for the dead body, but then a teacher called Mr Stuart told us that Mrs King was very keen on using a real person “to add an authentic touch”. So we decided that Mr Piper – the deputy head, who’d come up with the idea of the trail – could be the victim. If anyone was willing to lie motionless all afternoon covered in tomato sauce, it was bound to be him. But just before the bell went, Miss Maris, the librarian, came in.

  “You’re working on Mr Stuart’s scheme, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “The murder trail?” I said. “I thought it was Mr Piper’s idea.”

  “Was it?” She looked puzzled. “Oh well.” She bent over to look at what we’d done. “Are you sure you want Mr Piper to be the corpse?”

  “Yes,” Graham said.

  “Only I just heard in the staff room that Mrs King’s keen to do it.” She pulled a face. We all did. The thought of not doing what Mrs King wanted was too terrible to contemplate. So we changed things around and made her the victim instead.

  Next morning, while Mum was sketching a proposed layout, we took our plans to Mrs King. She seemed really pleased. She actually patted us both on the back, which was kind of like being walloped by a charging rhinoceros, but neither of us complained. We couldn’t. She’d knocked the air clean out of our lungs and we were gasping for breath. It was only then that she noticed we’d given her the part of the corpse, and I have to say that she didn’t seem too pleased about it.

  “I suppose I have to show willing,” she said brusquely. “It’s what leadership is all about. And it’s better than having wet sponges thrown at me.”

  Neither of us were capable of speech at that point, so we didn’t say anything. She assigned us the task of carrying out the plan – getting the props, writing the clues, working out where they were going to be hidden, that kind of thing – and we went off without a word.

  Organizing the details of the trail should have been simple. Mrs Plumtree showed us a whole cupboard full of stuff left over from school plays and assemblies that we could use. But by t
he end of the day everything had completely changed.

  It was weird. Teachers kept coming up to us and giving us bits of advice or telling us things that had been said in the staff room. Bit by bit, line by line, the whole plan got altered so that what we ended up with wasn’t anything like what Graham and I had originally thought up.

  OK, so Mrs King was still the victim. But she wasn’t going to be dead in the shed at the corner of the football pitch, like we’d wanted. She told us she’d been advised that health and safety wouldn’t allow it, and Mr Stuart said he’d overheard Mrs King say that it might frighten any little kids who were doing the Easter egg hunt if they saw her by accident. So we thought we’d stick her in the mobile classroom on the playground, but the caretaker said he’d been told that all the classrooms would be out of bounds for the fayre. Everywhere else we suggested seemed to already be taken for one activity or another. Eventually Mr Piper told us he’d heard it was OK to use the narrow path behind the kitchen. There was a steep bank opposite that led up to the field, but it was so overgrown with bushes that she’d be well hidden.

  We thought we’d finally got it sorted, but then we were told that tomato sauce was out because it might attract flies (according to Miss Maris), or wasps (according to Mr Stuart). And Mr Piper said that being squished by a wind turbine blade was a bad idea because it might give people nightmares. We thought of strangling her with a bit of rope, but apparently Mrs King objected to that on the grounds of taste. We invented all manner of different ways of finishing her off, but one by one we had to abandon them. In the end the only thing no one objected to was knocking her out with sleeping pills and suffocating her with a cushion. It didn’t have the dramatic appeal of the ketchup, but none of the teachers complained.

  Then – just when it was all arranged – the issue of timing came up. We’d thought we’d hand out the first clues as soon as the fayre began, but Mrs King said that Miss Maris was worried it would take attention away from the other activities, so Mr Stuart suggested that we start an hour later. Mr Piper said it would give Mrs King the chance to open the fayre before taking up her position as the body on the path. So we put that down on the plan and waited with bated breath to see if anyone would tell us we couldn’t do it. When none of the teachers sidled up with helpful remarks, staff room rumours or grim comments, Graham and I breathed a sigh of relief.