The Chief Super thanks U 4 Ur cooperation!
Bet she did.
Urgh...
Suppose there was only one thing for it, then.
‘But we’ve got a quick stop to make first.’
The pool car scrunched to a halt on the driveway and Logan scrambled out, running for the front door. Unlocking it and letting himself into the house. Peeling off his suit jacket as he charged upstairs.
Dumping it on the bed, unclipping his tie, then stripping down to his socks and pants, before hauling on his itchy uniform trousers. While Cthulhu watched from atop the laundry basket, head on one side, tail twitching, as if he was insane.
Clingy, black, police-issue T-shirt on, Logan straightened his epaulettes and rushed downstairs again. Sitting on the bottom step to lace up his black boots.
Into the kitchen.
He tore open a sachet of chicken and extruded the gelatinous slab into Cthulhu’s bowl – giving her a wee stroke and a kiss on her fuzzy little head as she tucked in.
Then into the hallway again, grabbing his lanyard and peaked cap before wheeching out the front door, slamming it behind him.
Locking it.
Then leaping back into the passenger seat.
Logan banged a hand on the dashboard. ‘Drive. Drive!’
And Tufty did.
Kirkenwell Academy was a concrete monstrosity that looked about as welcoming as a prison block.
Actually, strike that – HMP Grampian wasmuchnicer than this miserable series of grey boxes masquerading as a school. A pair of three-storey blocks were bolted together at right angles, with a bunch of other, smaller wings sticking out in random directions. All flat roofs and dirt-streaked walls. Over a dozen ancient Portakabins clustered about the edges – no doubt a temporary measure when they were erected, twenty or thirty years ago.
Rusty chain-link fencing was a bit of a theme: eight-feet tall; dividing the secondary school from the primary; wrapping around the rhomboid of tarmac that passed for a playground; and enclosing a tatty patch of grass that was just big enough for a couple of five-a-side football pitches and a weedy running track.
The pool car pitched and lurched between potholes.
A miserable OAP, dressed in brown overalls, was scraping great sticky globs of chewing gum off the school sign: ‘KIRKENWELL ACADEMY~WHEREDREAMSGROWANDFLOURISH’.
Tufty gave him a wave on the way past and got nothing but a stony look in return. ‘Yeah...’ He scooted down in his seat. ‘Is it just me, or can anyone else hear banjo music? Backa-dow-dow-dow dow dow-dow-dow...’ Following the pitted road to the back of the school, where a leprous patchwork of tarmac pretended to be a car park. Crowded with rundown estate cars, sagging hatchbacks, and the occasional flatbed truck. Surrounded by yet more chain link.
Adeeplyunattractive, bread-van-style Citroën Berlingo was parked by the gated entrance to the school grounds – a sticker in the rear window boasting ‘MYOTHERCARISA POLICEVAN’.
Suppose it would’ve been too much to hope that Tara was the one running late for a change.
Logan undid his seatbelt, setting the dinger off. ‘Close to the gate as you can.’
Tufty drove right up to it – slamming on his brakes at the last moment – and Logan jumped out into the oppressive evening air. Tasting toasted dust at the back of his throat as he battered through the gate into a fenced-off compound. Pulling on his peaked cap as his phoneding-buzzed another incoming text message.
Probably Tara, wanting to know where the hell he was, but there was no time to check it.
The compound’s barricade of chain link was topped with barbed wire, protecting a squat building about the size of a garage forecourt. It’d been painted white once, long, long ago, but now grass grew in the flat roof’s gutters.
Weirdly, all the windows were coated in that stuff boy racers used to hide the interior of their wankmobiles – the sort of pinky-orange film that was only see-through if you were looking out.
The door was marked: ‘STRICTLY STAFF ONLY!’but some helpful soul had taped a pair of laminated signs to the wall: ‘←PARENTTEACHERMEETINGS:SECONDARY’ and ‘PARENTTEACHERMEETINGS:PRIMARY→’
Logan went right – jogging around the side of the teachers’ bunker to what looked like the entrance to a prison exercise yard. But it was a bare-and-basic playground instead, with some hopscotchy things painted on the potholed tarmac, and a couple of wonky climbing frames. Though those were cordoned off with yellow-and-black-striped tape and signs screaming: ‘WARNING–UNSAFE!’
