Free The One Safe Place by Ramsey Campbell

heard it, and didn't look as if she would take any notice of a referee.
    He was saved by the slam of a desk lid. "In a hurry, are we, Manning?"
    "Miss, rugby practice."
    "You certainly will if you continue to behave like that. And the rest of you will be spending another half an hour in my company unless we have absolute silence. Absolute, Bold, do you understand the word?"
    "Yes, mermiss."
    Marshall was afraid she would take exception to being called some kind of sea creature, but she was busy darting her gaze about in search of potential movement. "For your homework tonight," she said, "I want you to collect at least six examples of crimes from the paper and write how you would deal with them."
    Perhaps she was hoping for groans rather than the few muffled coughs she provoked. "Very well, in rows," she said at last, and scrutinised each as they marched out, so that Marshall didn't quite believe he'd escaped until he was in the corridor.
    Tom Bold caught up with him. "Cow. Would you have to purr put up with that in America?"
    "Never did have," Marshall said, walking fast to leave the incident behind, past the gymnasium booming with footfalls and down the stone steps into the schoolyard full of boys chasing or pummelling each other or huddling together or swinging their schoolbags or dashing for the gates. Every boy was uniformed, the aspect of British school life Marshall had least expected: white shirt, striped tie that wasn't supposed to be removed or even slackened until you were in your own house, grey trousers and socks which were also required to be grey, black shoes and black blazer which had commenced soaking up the sunlight the moment he emerged from the building. His first sight of all that uniformity had made him feel he'd tricked himself into attending the kind of school George S. would have picked for him, but it was mostly better than that.
    Just now, however, Tom Bold mightn't have agreed. "I mean, though, cur cow. Cur keeping us late for no reason and making me miss my burr bus. My mother worries if I'm her home late."
    "Can't you ring her?"
    "Only got enough to get her home."
    "I'll lend you the money," Marshall offered, and had found a twenty-pence piece like a dime with its rim bevelled septagonal when Billy Heathcote strode up, shrugging at the shoulder straps of his bag to free his brawny arms. "I didn't like that, Travis."
    "Yeah, she was pretty—"
    "Not her, you. You."
    "Anything special about me you want to discuss?"
    "My dad says it's people like you and your dad got him beat up."
    "Where does he get off saying that when he hasn't met either of us?"
    "He wouldn't want to, either. It's like Lewie was saying, people who run down the police."
    "Someone tried to run my dad down with a car."
    Billy Heathcote stared as if he was doing his best to regard that as an insult, then noticed the coin in Marshall's hand. "What's that for? Paying Bold protection?"
    "Just trying to help."
    "We don't need your kind of help round here. Another time don't try and do my talking for me. I can talk for myself. I'm not Burr Burr Bold."
    Red patches broke out on Tom's face at once. "Less of that," he said, and took a deep breath, "Heathcote."
    "What'd you say, Bold? Nobody heard you."
    "I sir sir—"
    "That's right, you call me sir."
    "I didn't sir—"
    "Well, if you didn't, Bold, I'll let you off this time."
    Tom's face was wholly red with effort and rage now. He shoved Heathcote's chest hard, and Marshall had a sense of being trapped in an invisible tunnel, at the other end of which he'd spoken up for Heathcote in the classroom, or perhaps it led farther back. Where would it end? With Tom going home with a bloody nose and his mother in hysterics? "Wait up, guys," he said, and stepped between them. "Listen, Billy—"
    Heathcote punched him in the collarbone, and Bold grabbed him by the upper arms and heaved him out of the way, which hurt more than the punch had. "Hey, that was me, Tom. I thought you needed to make a