Free Child's Play by Alison Taylor Page A

changes caused by immersion in water it’s a bugger trying to distinguish between ante- and post-mortem injuries.’
    ‘ How soon will you be able to report on the injuries?’
    ‘ Once I can exclude pre-existing trauma, perhaps twenty-four hours. The harbour master tells me low tide occurred just after one on Wednesday morning, so she wouldn’t have moved far until the tide picked her up as it rose. She’d be near unrecognisable had she been carried under the bridges and through the Swillies up to Puffin Island where the tide turns, so she was probably washed out the other way, caught in the currents and brought back.’

 
     
    8
     
    As McKenna crossed the forecourt to the school the policeman at the doors saluted. ‘Inspector Tuttle’s kept everyone bar the cooks in the refectory, sir,’ he said, holding one door open, ‘which is down that corridor to the right. The cooks are still clearing up after the evening meal.’
    The subdued roar of many voices reached McKenna long before he had walked the length of the corridor. Opening one of the refectory’s heavy double doors, he stepped into a room that looked at first sight as big as a football pitch, seething with girls, staff and police officers. Evening sunshine poured through huge windows, here and there touching silvered epaulettes, small hair ornaments and spectacle frames.
    Long tables, simple slabs of unadorned wood on sturdy legs, had been pushed together to form an unbroken length around three sides of the room. At the far end, under a panoply of portraits, smaller tables stood on a dais, with women of varying ages, sizes, and manner of dress grouped around them on plain wooden chairs. In the well below, girls sat in rows on the floor, while others rubbed shoulders with the police officers, social workers and solicitors on the benches at each table. Leaning, sitting and squatting against the opposite wall were still more girls. The noise in the room bounced off the ceiling, humming in McKenna’s ears.
    Every girl wore a navy-blue skirt, he noticed, but their shirts were striped with the house colours of red, blue, yellow and green. Searching the sea of faces, he located Dewi, in earnest discussion with an ample woman dressed as a nurse. As he threaded his way around the crowded walls, causing a stir of interest, faces turned to look and he felt the scrutiny of many eyes.
    ‘ This is Matron,’ Dewi said when McKenna reached them.
    ‘ Are you in charge?’ she asked. The remnants of a Scottish accent quavered in her voice. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’
    ‘ Is it important?’
    Tears suddenly welled in her large, slightly bulging eyes. ‘Of course it’s important! It’s about poor Sukie.’
    ‘ Give me fifteen minutes or so,’ McKenna told her, then drew Dewi out of earshot. ‘The security guards who were here Tuesday night are down at the main gates. See what they’ve got to say about visitors, whether official or not, trespassers and, most important, the girls’ nocturnal activities.’ He looked at the girls once more and saw an epidemic of yawning breaking out. ‘How many have been seen so far?’
    ‘ Fifty. Sixty, maybe,’ Dewi said. ‘We started on the lower-school kids so they could get away to do their homework before bedtime.’
    ‘ Any pointers yet?’
    ‘ No, sir. Not a thing.’ He paused, gazing absently around the room. ‘Something might show up when we start collating statements, but even though the girls have been under surveillance since coming out of lessons, I expect there’ll be a lot of cross-contamination in what they tell us. Or,’ he added with a frown, ‘don’t tell us. Everyone, from the deputy head to the smallest kid on the block, gives you the feeling she’s scared to open her mouth without the headmistress’s say-so.’
    ‘ Then we need to make them realise that if someone in this room is a killer, any one of them could be the next victim.’ From the corner of his eye he saw a girl with a long