Free Dead Unlucky by Andrew Derham

matter has long been closed to their satisfaction. I also do not see what the suicide of a girl more than three months ago can possibly have to do with Sebastian Emmer’s murder yesterday. And I do not know why you are so angry,’ she concluded triumphantly.
    ‘It’s for me to decide on any connection between the two incidents, not you, and I’ll also decide when I want to be furious. And that decision wasn’t hard to make. I want to see the room where the girl died.’
    ‘Yes, that’s reasonable, of course,’ Mrs Hargreaves stated with irritating calm. ‘I’ll arrange for it to be unlocked. But you’re going to be disappointed. There’s nothing up there now. The bed, furniture and everything else have all been removed. Nobody wants to sleep in there, not once they know a girl hanged herself in that room. It may be several years before it’s occupied again, Chief Inspector.’
    She was right. Even the carpets had been ripped up, and Hart stood inside a bare shell which recalled no memories of the young life that had thrived there, or of the death that had snuffed it out.
    Hart returned to Redpath, making an imperfect effort to cool his temper down as he went.
    ‘Who’s next on our list?’ he asked brusquely.
    ‘Lunch, Sir, I thought was right at the very top of the agenda,’ replied Redpath, but knowing as he spoke that the next meal had now been relegated to who knows where.
    ‘We’ve no time.’ Hart was like a dog that wouldn’t let go of a rag.
    ‘Then it’s Mrs Morris the maths mistress. But she’s teaching at the moment.’
    ‘I’ve got no patience for Cluedo, and I don’t care if she’s sitting on the bog or golfing on the Moon. Get her in here.’

8
     
     
    After Hart had left the Headteacher’s office, displaying even less grace than when he had entered it, Annalee Hargreaves waited half an hour before climbing the curved staircase of the Old House herself. She walked the short distance to the door she knew so well, and stood outside the room in which Nicola Brown had died. A turn of the key, a twist of the brass doorknob, and she was inside.
    She needed time to think, to get away for a few minutes, escape from the brewing storm. And, now that one of the teachers or kids had blabbed and the storm would be whipped into a hurricane, she somehow felt the need to come up to the room one more time.
    Whatever the frenzy going on outside, it was certainly quiet in here. She didn’t believe in ghosts or any of that nonsense, didn’t kid herself that Nicola Brown was somehow watching her as her own eyes shifted around the bare room, but the place still gave her the shivers. She walked into the bathroom and looked up at the rail which had held the shower curtain; not a flimsy stick of plastic you could buy from Homebase, but a chunky rod of metal screwed into the wall years ago. And Nicola Brown had dangled herself from it to end her life for reasons that only she had known, and that knowledge was now lying with her in the churchyard. Yes, you didn’t need to be superstitious or a weakling for that thought to make your flesh creep.
    But, whatever the girl’s motives, Annalee Hargreaves knew that she had been damned selfish. That kid had everything going for her. Okay, she was poor. In fact, her parents looked like a walking jumble sale and the girl always turned up for social gatherings in clothes which were embarrassingly cheap. But her mother and father had certainly demonstrated consummate good sense and judgement when they saved up their pennies to send their daughter to Highdean School. And, of course, Highdean had done the rest. She was being transformed from a naive girl into a clever woman and her exam results were going to be terrific. What’s more, making a success of a kid from a so-called disadvantaged background was just the sort of thing the press and politicians were clamouring for. And then she goes and kills herself. Despite everything that had been done for her.
    This room