‘I’m the opposite. That smell makes me feel like throwing up. But I am famished.’ Gina glanced through the glass pane on the staffroom door. A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties, with a black shiny plait dangling down her back, glanced over as she flicked over a page on the huge pad and began writing on the blank sheet. She flashed her watch to Gina and then five fingers. Gina nodded back.
‘I have some lovely memories of the school dinner hall. I was quite disruptive back then, not quite the model citizen I am today.’
Gina stared at Jacob and laughed.
He continued. ‘I always ended up standing facing a wall and counting to one hundred for starting the food fight. Forever in detention, I was. It just goes to show that the worst behaved kids can grow up to be okay.’
‘Oh, you rebel.’ Gina sniggered.
‘I bet you were a right swot.’ Jacob turned a little, waiting for her to answer.
He was right, the one detention she had during senior school for accidentally leaving her homework in her bedroom had been an upsetting ordeal. Her mother and father knew when she took the letter home and they had shown their disappointment by grounding her for a week. It had been an accident. ‘I did my best.’ She remembered the other kids teasing her because she had frizzy hair and a brace on her top set of teeth. A loner, she struggled to fit in and that lack of solidarity with any of her classmates had left her craving attention, even the wrong kind. These days, the last thing she wanted was attention but she craved some close human contact, which is why she’d been seeing Briggs again. It had started with a takeaway, then wine, then laughs and warmth. One thing had led to another and now she couldn’t get him out of her head but this wasn’t the time. She thought of their victim, Amber, then about dating and the dangers. She could see the excitement too as she’d researched the site. It promised fun and frivolity. Jacob was still waiting for her to answer and did a mock yawn. ‘Okay, I was a model pupil at school,’ she conceded.
‘Knew it.’
She glanced at Jacob as he watched Mrs Collins. He’d have been the popular kid, the cheeky chappie who threw a few chips across a table with his cute laugh. The joker of the pack, maybe? She’d never know.
The squeaky door burst open and several weary-looking teachers filled the corridor and brushed past them. Only one woman stayed behind. She popped her pen in the little cradle on a table and beckoned them in. Her plait swung as she headed over. Her long, checked skirt reached her black boots and she pulled a cardigan over her shoulders. ‘I’m Mrs Collins, you wanted to speak to me. Please come in and take a seat.’
A cluster of dirty coffee cups were gathered on a tray on the table. Gina pulled the chair away so she didn’t have to smell them. Fresh coffee was a wondrous smell but stale coffee, not a good thing – ever. Mrs Collins picked up her lipstick-stained cup and drank the rest of hers. For some reason, Gina expected Mrs Collins to look a bit like Amber. Except for their hair colour, there was no likeness at all. Mrs Collins looked homely and voluptuous. Her neatly trimmed nails tapped on the cup before she placed it down.
‘How can I help you?’ Mrs Collins picked up her beeping phone. ‘Dammit, I have several missed calls. Can I just have a moment?’
Gina knew they would be from Mr Collins, trying to pre-warn his wife that they would be seeking to clarify his whereabouts. ‘Actually, Mrs Collins, could you please wait a moment? We need to speak to you first.’
The woman looked at her phone one more time and placed it in her pocket. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We need to ask you something. Do you want to take a seat?’
She took the pad from the flipchart and placed it next to them on the table. ‘I’m fine standing. Look, I have twin girls waiting for me to pick them up from the childminder’s so I really need to get going and all those phone calls might be to do with my children. My husband is trying to get hold of me. What’s happened?’
‘Sorry, we won’t keep you long.’ Jacob took out his pad and flicked to a clean page.
Gina cleared her throat and kept her trembling fingers in her lap as she spoke. ‘We need to confirm your husband’s whereabouts between six on the evening of Friday the twenty-second of January and six in the morning of Monday the twenty-fifth. Can you please take a moment to think and tell me what you can remember of your weekend?’
‘Are we in some sort of trouble?’ Three lines appeared across the woman’s forehead as she sat.
‘We’re just making routine enquiries at the moment. As you may know from the news, a body was found at the lake in Cleevesford. Mr Collins was the young woman’s lecturer.’
‘Are you saying that my husband could have done that to a girl? No way!’
Gina leaned back on the creaky plastic chair. ‘We’re not saying that at all. Your husband knew her. We have spoken to him and he said he was with you all weekend. We just need to check that information.’
She began to twiddle the end of her plait. ‘He was with me all weekend, at our home. We value our weekends as you can appreciate, even though we spend a lot of that time working. We had a takeaway together at about four on Friday, then the girls were picked up by my mother who had them for the weekend. I had a lot of work to catch up on, marking and lesson planning so she offered to help me out. Clayton… Clay had lots of work to do too. He was in with me all weekend, even when we went to Tesco together on Saturday morning. That was about ten in the morning – the Tesco just outside Cleevesford, off the bypass.’
‘He didn’t pop out on his own for anything?’
Mrs Collins scrunched her brow and stared at the space between her nose and the cups on the table. ‘No, as I say, we had a lot of work to do and after a long week, we were both tired so we went to bed quite early. He never left the house without me, not once. I can wholeheartedly confirm that.’ She paused and her gaze met Gina’s. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me? What’s going on?’
‘At the moment, we can’t reveal all the details of the case as we’re investigating. Thank you for your time. One last thing, do you know if Mr Collins knew Amber Slater well?’
Mrs Collins swallowed and shook her head. ‘I believe he knew her as well as a lecturer would know his students. He always took the time to help them all. Teaching is more than just a job to him, he wanted them all to get the best results and always gave everyone the time they needed to get there. I often hear him talking over an accountancy problem on the phone with his students, patiently explaining things. He’s a good man.’
Gina didn’t doubt he was good at his job but she did doubt his intentions and she wondered right there and then if Mrs Collins knew of Mr Collins’s past. ‘Have you ever heard the name Scarlett Gregory?’
Mrs Collins went to open her mouth then paused. ‘No, I don’t recognise that name.’ She pulled her phone from her pocket. ‘Look, I really have to go. My childminder will be charging me extra if I don’t and she hates me being late and I’m already working over tonight.’
Gina stood and scraped the chair under the table. ‘Thank you for your time and thank you for clearing that up.’ She passed her card to the woman. ‘If you or your husband think of anything else, please call me.’
