It was a day off, probably a week off, and it was free time that Rayah didn’t welcome. She loved her job and her class, the school as a whole, and for some of the pupils, school was a safe place, safer than home sometimes. She’d spoken to Jake that morning about using one of the barns as a temporary classroom and having a week of farm education for her class, just to keep some form of routine and give them something to think about. Her brother was all over the idea, she just need to broach the idea with her head and governors, something to do this afternoon.
The trees were still, the breeze barely there. Green shoots were erupting from the ground and in a few weeks the area would start to smell of the wild garlic that grew in abundance. In summer there would be bluebells, but that seemed years away.
Rayah slipped through the trees down to the river, the burnt building still visible through the greenery. A foreign colour caught her eye: a red stick. It was clean, without the mud that would’ve suggested it had been there for some time.
Curiosity was her biggest strength and biggest weakness, so Rayah bent down and picked it up. It was a simple pen drive, the red of the casing unbranded, the sort a high school student would have to bring work to print out at school. She put it in her pocket and carried on with her walk, the singe of the fire lingering. She’d check the pen drive when she got home; the likelihood was it would belong to one of the local teens and she’d be able to pass it on, maybe save someone from having to redo homework.
Yesterday had started a fire inside her. She didn’t trust Garrison. Her gut was telling her that there was something very wrong there, and she knew she should leave it at that. Jonny’s tone when he’d asked her to leave it had acted like a knife to the gut: he was worried she would get herself mixed up in something that would be problematic.
Then he’d have to save her again. He’d spent their childhood saving her from one scrape or another and she didn’t want what they had now to be tarnished with the same theme. But she couldn’t leave this notion that what the little girl had said had far more truth than what Garrison had given credit.
Her fingers toyed with the pen drive in her pocket as she continued her walk. She had nothing to rush back for. Usually, this time on a Friday, she’d have been teaching history or geography. Today she had planned a food tasting session as they were looking at China as part of their geography topic. If it had been a training day, she’d have been potentially marking books or making resources, or quality checking English books as she was the lead teacher in that area. Instead the books and resources, the students’ art work and belongings were now piles of ash. The classroom she had carefully constructed with purposeful displays and creative corners for reading and play, was gone.
Rayah wiped tears away from her face. She hated to cry. Having only boy cousins and a brother had taught her that crying got you teased or ended up with her male relatives feeling uncomfortable and having no clue what to do apart from hug her a little too tightly, so she tended to bottle up what she was feeling.
Jonny would want to know though. He was at home with Sadie, Harry and Charlie, having a morning of baking before he took them for a walk up one of the peaks after. She’d promised to join them so they could do a bit of climbing, something Charlie was becoming more and more interested in.
Heading back towards the town, she saw the police still there, no sign of Garrison, and a couple of men she knew from the Search and Rescue team who were part of the forensics crew. She kept her head down, not wanting to have a conversation or hear another set of theories about what had happened and who by.
Back on the Main Street, she passed by a newly painted phone box, decorated by Severton’s phantom artist. An unidentified inhabitant liked to spray paint the phone boxes and post boxes with various scenes. This one had clearly been done in the early hours, depicting the fire at the school and the emergency teams that had been there. One word,heroes, was written on it with the inevitable hashtag. In a few weeks, the picture would be different, another scene that would be immortalised through social media as it became the most photographed part of town.
Her house felt foreign to her now, more time spent at Jonny’s than anywhere else. As she entered she detected a slight musty smell to the living room, the heating having been off and the fire unused. She checked the rooms, opening curtains and windows, turning on the heat to thaw out the walls and lighting a candle. The milk in the fridge was out of date so she skipped making a brew, instead heading upstairs to air the beds and open more windows.
After being at Jonny’s so much with him and his children, her house felt empty and lifeless, void of vibrancy. Needing something to do, something to focus on, she pulled out her laptop which was normally left untouched, preferring her school issued one that had been in the fire, and started it up, watching the clouds over the peaks while a circle of doom tried to pretend that something was happening rapidly.
She toyed with the pen drive, flicking off the lid. It wasn’t new, the brand having worn off over time, but it was clean. As soon as the computer came to life she inserted the pen drive into the USB port and waited.
The file opened and she saw not files containing a college student’s essays, but photos, some dated three or four years ago, others older. They were of people, faces, some taken a distance away and some were familiar. Not familiar in the sense that she knew them, but that she recognised them.
Rayah saved an image, someone she knew from somewhere but couldn’t place. He was a good looking man, dark hair that was probably almost black and swarthy skin, a nine o’clock shadow as opposed to six, and he was wearing a suit that looked as if it had been made to measure to the nearest millimetre.
The reverse image search threw up a name straight away. Drew O’Malley. He was a Manchester man, dedicated to the north, a business mogul and multi-millionaire before he hit thirty. He was also associated with Manchester’s underworld.
A second search of another man turned up a news article about how this person had been found dead at the bottom of one of the canals, with no clear cause of death. The quoted inspector was one she was familiar with: Garrison.
More and more searches brought up names and pictures associated with the city; a woman who was thought to be the on-off girlfriend of a Premier League footballer but also the sister of a man associated with Drew O’Malley; a teenage boy who had been killed in a hit and run and then there was a face that looked more familiar than just someone who had been on the news.
Rayah stared at her screen, enlarging the picture. It was dated four years ago and was of a blonde hair woman, slender and smiling, her hair straight and her eyes grey and shining.
It was the only photo she saved.
Rayah tookthe pen drive to Alex who was drinking coffee in Scott’s bar, reading through the financial section of the morning newspaper.
“I found this on the path to the river behind school. I thought it was a student’s.” She slid it to him.
“I take it that it wasn’t?”
“Good deduction skills, Sherlock.”
“Is it porn?”
“I think Jake stopped walking round that path a few years ago.”
Alex tipped back his head and laughed. “What’s on it?”
“Photos of gangsters. Pictures of people who are now dead. Women who have been associated with said gangsters. Not essays on the Weimar Government or the erosion of sandstone.”
“You’re giving me this anonymously?”
