The Good Teacher: A gripping thriller from the Kindle top ten bestselling author of ‘The Perfect Neighbours’

From the doorstep we can see that the house is alive with scenes of crime staff in their white forensic suits, looking through waste bins, checking drawers, and examining carpets with an E-vac. One of the forensic scientists in the hallway looks up and raises his hand in a latex glove. “Long time, no see, Mike.”

“Hello, Dave,” DS Matthews calls as he slips on his forensic suit. “Didn’t expect to be working with you again. I thought your team had moved to Briggham.”

“We have. Got put on to this job by the ACC himself.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Matthews replies.

“It does me. I’d expected separate teams here and at Martle Top to avoid crosscontamination, but not the cavalry.”

“Depends who the senior investigating officer is,” Matthews says.

“Who?”

“Liz Bagley.”

Dave grins. “Is it true what they say about her?”

“What do you think?” Matthews replies. “She’s persuaded the assistant chief constable to cough up the staff, hasn’t she?”

“Inspector Bagley?” Dave leers. “Expect a Shagley more like.”

Both men laugh but stop when they remember I’m there. Matthews glowers at me and I brace myself for another tongue-lashing, but he just asks me to put on coveralls and check on progress upstairs.

Once suited up, I enter the house and walk up the narrow, carpeted staircase. The bathroom is at the top of the stairs, tidy and ordinary. Apart from a plastic cup on the washbasin containing two toothbrushes and a tube of paste, and two dry towels hanging over the bath, the bathroom suite is clean and free of clutter. I lift the lid on the wicker laundry basket even though the kidnappers are unlikely to have stopped off to do the washing. The basket is about a third full of what looks like pale tops and white underwear – quite unlike the overflowing colour riot of my linen bin. I let the lid fall and turn to the wall-mounted cabinet. Inside is a neat arrangement of cut-price shampoo, shaving foam and razor, full-coverage foundation, concealer and a powder compact. The only person I’ve known with such an immaculate bathroom cabinet (but without the make-up) is my father after he left my mother and before he married Joanne. I close the cabinet and head into a bedroom.

Chapter 3

Across town Bartholomew Hedges climbs down his ladder. He can’t work. He tells himself it’s the heat, but knows it isn’t. The fair weather is his friend, kind for completing the exterior paintwork. The Lord shines the sun on him. He should be getting on; the customer has started asking questions. Bartholomew can’t blame the dormer roof for much longer.

As he replaces his brush in the paint can, some of the white undercoat slops onto the patio. He scoops it back in with his palette knife and removes the rest of the stain with white spirit. He sprinkles more spirit on his hands and wipes them down with the rag from the pocket of his shorts.

His fingers aren’t clean, but pale like a white man’s. He needs a wash down with soap and water. But he doesn’t want to go into the house as the customer’s wife is at home. She might ask him why he’s stopped again.

He sits on the edge of the patio. The step down to the lawn is low and his paint-flecked knees come up high in front of him. The grass is yellow, even though he’s seen the owners using a sprinkler every evening. He’s heard them talking of having it re-turfed – as soon as the decorating’s finished. He sighs. Perhaps he should tell them that God will replenish their lawn long before Hedges House Painting Services retouches their eaves.

He’s surprised they gave him the contract at all. He knows the man didn’t want to and he can’t blame him. As far as he was concerned Bartholomew had already proved himself unreliable. In February he’d been due to start on their dining room – a big job to take off the Anaglypta wall covering, cross line it and paint over in mushroom gold. Bartholomew had to cancel at two weeks’ notice when he couldn’t find his steam stripper. It would have taken a month of God’s sacred Sundays to scrape off Anaglypta without a steamer.

The machine disappeared from the back of his van one night, but there’d been no sign of a break-in. Had he forgotten to lock the van? Convincing himself that it was his own foolish mistake, he hadn’t gone to the police or contacted his insurance company. Back then, the possibility that someone else could get hold of the van key hadn’t crossed his mind. Bartholomew wipes his chin with his forearm and wonders whether that suspicion had been in his head all along but he’d chosen to ignore it. February? Were the signs already there?

He shuffles along the patio edge to his toolbox. Underneath his Thermos flask of Cherry Tango is his Bible, wrapped in a plastic bag. He longs to take it out, ask it the questions, and seek solace. But he can’t touch it until he’s washed his hands.

The same passage comes into his mind. It’s been there almost constantly for three weeks now. Proverbs 10: 1: “A wise son makes his father proud of him; a foolish one brings his mother grief.” The words have been pressing against his brain ever since he saw his own son, Saul, being … doing …

He shivers. The fear comes back and he thinks of Job 20: 16: “What the evil man swallows is like poison.” Is Saul evil? Every day he prays for a sign, for the Lord to reassure him. Bartholomew needs to know that the evil lies elsewhere, not in a boy like Saul. Again and again he’s asked Saul why he did it. Saul says it’s like falling into cotton wool. It lets him find a warm and happy place that he wants to keep going back to. Where did Bartholomew go wrong? He’s found comfort from a life of faith. Why hasn’t Saul found it there, too?

A scenes of crime officer dusts a bedside locker while another hunts through drawers. I look at the unmade double bed that the Brocks must have been dragged from in the night. The room’s simply furnished – a large pine wardrobe and matching dressing table – again tidy, no lipsticks or perfume bottles in sight.

The second bedroom looks like an advert for an office suppliers. A black swivel chair slots underneath a desk as if it’s never been used. Even the few sheets of printed papers on top lie in a perfect pile. A plastic dust sheet covers the computer. The blotting pad looks fresh and a single ballpoint pokes out of a pen-tidy. The only incongruous item is a birdcage, complete with a bell and a seed hopper, under the desk. Two forensic officers come in behind me, so I leave them to begin a detailed search.

Whereas the rest of the upstairs appears sterile, the third bedroom is a surprise. Three walls are bright yellow and the fourth displays a magnificent hand-painted circus scene. Trapeze artists fly across the red and white striped backdrop of the big top. Clowns juggle silver hoops and two white horses rear up at each other. It must have taken someone days to complete. In the middle of the room is a large cot with a clown motif mattress, but no bedding. The drawers of the nappy changing unit next to it are empty.

I go downstairs, psyching myself up for the next round with Matthews.

He’s on his mobile, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “No, ma’am, nothing of interest so far. They’ve bagged up a few bits and pieces.”

I wander into the kitchen. Dave, the forensic scientist, kneels at the opened back door, scraping at a broken pane of glass. I look beyond him into the garden. Typical new-estate small, the paved patio is surrounded on three sides by conifers.

Two familiar figures come round the side of the house and I smile in relief. “Anything interesting?” I call.

“Hi, Pippa, good to see you. Nothing out here,” PC John Whitton says, coming towards the doorstep. “But Forensics pulled some clothes out of the washing machine. They want to check whether anyone’s tried to wash away evidence.”

“Unlikely though,” PC Kieran Clarke says. “It’s a towel and a few men’s shirts and trousers, probably the husband’s. We won’t find any bloodstains. All his blood is spread across Martle Top.” He gives a half-hearted chuckle.

“The relief’s missing you already,” John says. “So how are you getting on in CID?”

The thought of my day so far makes my insides clench but I manage a breezy “Fine”. Trying not to sound desperate, I say how glad I am to see them again and go back through the kitchen.

The lounge curtains, closed when the police broke in, are now pushed back to let maximum daylight onto the crime scene. With the light comes the fire of a midsummer day. My hand goes to undo my jacket but the protective suit is in the way. Apart from the pungent smell of forensic chemicals sprinkled into the carpet, the room is orderly. Matching cushions on the sofa and paperbacks on the small bookcase. Red roses on the coffee table and a cheap carriage clock on the mantelpiece, but otherwise no ornaments or photos.

My own small lounge has every available space crammed with photos: old ones of Mum and Dad in the same frame; one of Dad’s wedding to Joanne and several of their son, Jamie, from newborn to the current cheeky eight-year-old. But no photos in this house, no clues to the occupants.

I kneel over the kitchen chair in the middle of the room and get a whiff of the oily scent left by the fingerprint experts. Hard to know what colour the chair is under its dosing of white powder. A pale wood, perhaps, and there are several paint spots, evidence that the chair has been a makeshift decorating ladder before its latest incarnation as a prison for Gaby Brock. Some of the spots are summer yellow and partly obscured by splodges of blue. The circus room with its yellow walls probably wasn’t the most recent project.

On the bookcase, two shelves of light romances mingle with classic horror, and another shelf of paperback textbooks. Understanding Shakespeare; Yoga Postures; Towards the National Curriculum; Modern Grammar; Advanced Yoga. Which books belonged to the husband and what will the wife do with them now?

Dave, the forensics officer, puts his head around the door. “Tell Mike Matthews I’m off. I’ll have my initial report ready this afternoon.”

“Ok, I’ll tell him. It was nice meeting you,” I say.

Dave grins. “You too, Agatha”. Then he’s gone.

My cheeks burn. Matthews must have told him about my failed Agatha Christie joke. It wasn’t that funny, was it?

PC Kieran Clarke appears at the door. “Mike Matthews wants us to make a start on the house-to-house enquiries. Find out if anyone saw Brock’s Mondeo leaving in the middle of the night.” He pauses to give his face time to break into a smirk. “So you’d better hurry up, Agatha.”

There’s more danger that her Jimmy Choo heels will pierce the forensic overshoes and sink into the melting tarmac of the Martle Top road than they will bury themselves in the dried-out grass verge, but force of habit makes DI Liz Bagley tiptoe to the edge of the ditch. She shouts across to the kneeling figure of SOCO Steve Chisholm.

“Anything?”

He stands up. “Not much. There are some tyre tracks on the grass over there.” He looks towards a patch of ground a few feet ahead. “From a bicycle, I think. The grass is flattened as if someone’s laid a bike down.”

“That fits. The man who found the body was on a bike. Where’s Dr Spicer?”

Chisholm points to the white incident tent a few metres behind him. “In there with the victim.” He folds his arms, a half-smile hovering over his mouth.

In that moment Liz hates him. Clockwise Chisholm might be the station’s resident anorak, with his hand semipermanently stuck up the back of a computer, but he’s astute enough to realize that, to get to the tent, she’ll have to cross the ditch. Its banks could harbour a few wet spots despite the heatwave. She isn’t going arse over tits for anyone.

“Get me a plank,” she says.

“I’ll call DC Holtom.”

“Not that sort of plank.”

Chisholm grins. “I meant he’s got the bridge.”

“Tell him to be quick,” she says, cursing herself for not bringing her wellies. She took them out of the car caked in mud weeks before, but forgot to put them back.

DC Holtom comes over with a duckboard. She steps across the ditch, placing one foot deliberately in front of the other. Her expression hardens against the curious gazes of Chisholm and Holtom. No way is she giving them the satisfaction of seeing her slip.

At least DS Mike Matthews isn’t here. He’d enjoy watching her walk the plank. The man is dire. So polite and correct, apart from his outsize broomstick hair. “Yes, ma’am, certainly ma’am. If you want me to, ma’am.” But behind the plodding reliability, Liz has the feeling he’s waiting for her to fall flat on her face. It’s a good thing he’ll be preoccupied from now on with supervising DC Adams. He’ll be too busy keeping that towering toddler on her feet to trip up his detective inspector.

Matthews and DCI Hendersen did the interviews for the vacancy, so it’s their fault they’ve ended up with a girl trainee. Lads are much easier to knock the corners off. They’re a bit wet behind the iPhone, but they know who’s boss. Women, on the other hand, make loose cannons.

Liz complained to John Wise about it, of course. That’s lover’s perks. But Assistant Chief Constable Wise was non-committal. There was no suggestion, on his part anyway, of wading into Hendersen’s office and pulling rank.

And the upshot is DC Pippa Adams. An overgrown cheerleader, all pink cheeks and ponytail. Detective material? Unlikely. Time will tell.

As Liz steps off the duckboard, she goes down on her ankle but rights herself despite the pain. With all the dignity she can muster, she heads into the incident tent.

Chapter 4

“I didn’t think you’d catch up with me this quickly,” a woman’s voice says through the polished brass letterbox. The door opens a fraction and the voice continues, “Can I ring Stuart – that’s Mr Perkins, my husband – before you take me in? I’m allowed one phone call, aren’t I?”

A pair of hunted green eyes appear and I wonder what crime I’ve stumbled into. Isn’t that how we caught the Briggham killer – routine enquiries into another case? I glance up the road, but my colleagues are nowhere in sight, each having allocated themselves a different avenue on the Southside estate for the house-to-house. I knocked at the first house in a cul-de-sac that runs off the road behind the Brocks’ house.

“I suppose you’ll want to come in while I’m on the phone so I don’t abscond,” the woman says. She opens the door wide.

I step over the threshold. Should I call for backup? After a shaky start on my first day are things about to get even rockier?

“I must be in a lot of trouble if they’ve sent a CID officer,” the woman says. She leads me into the lounge. What villainy could have taken place in a room where paisley pink curtains match the sofa cushions?

“What do you think will happen to me? I know it’s not much of an excuse, but I would like to say in my defence that I only saw it was back this morning.”

“Back this morning?” I ask, trying to disguise my bewilderment. The woman is chatty. I’ll feed her enough rope, get her to confess to whatever it is she’s done and make an arrest. Maybe even redeem myself in DS Matthews’s eyes.

“It was propped against the front wall. I swear it wasn’t there yesterday. And Stuart walked up and down the avenue before we spoke to your officers on Wednesday. There was no sign of it. I know we shouldn’t have kept it in the front garden. The way other people let their children stay out till all hours. It’s asking for trouble in this day and age.”

“Is it?” I ask.

“They’ll take anything if it’s not nailed down, even a tatty old thing like that. Except they didn’t take it because it’s back now. But I swear it wasn’t there yesterday, not since Wednesday.”

“A tatty old thing?”

“I’d had it since college.” She waves a hand at the mantelpiece, which displays two graduation photographs. One is of a youth with wispy hair reaching to his oversized collar and big tie. Stuart? The other is of a young woman with sparkling green eyes and a magnificent smile, lavishly framed by lipstick. I study Mrs Perkins’s tired, pale features. She must be in her late thirties but carries herself as if in middle age. She resembles an Afghan hound with messy, permed hair over her ears. Loose grey cords and a baggy cardigan conceal long limbs. Has a guilty conscience tarnished her former radiance?

“And you spoke to us on Wednesday?” I ask, trying to make a jigsaw out of the pieces the woman is giving me.

“We both came down to the station to make a statement, give a description. We didn’t mean to waste anybody’s time.”

“You wasted our time?” I begin to think she’s wasting mine.

“Are you going to charge me? We thought it had gone. It never occurred to us it would come back.”

I give up. “What came back?”

“My bicycle, of course.” Mrs Perkins raises her voice an octave but returns to deferential tones to explain that she and her husband had reported her bicycle stolen from their front garden on Wednesday but that it reappeared this morning. “I was going to phone you. I didn’t want the police force out looking for it any longer than necessary. I know wasting police time is a serious offence. I’ll just phone Stuart, or should I phone a solicitor?”

My eyes move back and forth between the woman and her graduation photograph. Intelligence manifests itself in so many ways. I reassure Mrs Perkins that the Brigghamshire Constabulary won’t be taking any further action on this occasion. Doubtless my fellow officers will be delighted that Mrs Perkins’s property has been returned safe and sound. Mrs Perkins launches into a torrent of thanks. When she pauses for air, I explain the real reason for my visit and find myself accepting an offer of a cup of tea.

“Not to worry. Thanks for your help anyway,” DS Mike Matthews says outside number 23. He puts away his notebook. All of them wise monkeys. No one saw or heard anything, and they aren’t saying much either. Not even: would you like to come in out of the heat and have a drink, officer.

Chance would be a fine thing.

“Have another piece of chocolate cake,” Mrs Perkins offers. “It’s lovely to see a young woman enjoying her food. I’m afraid with this talk of murder, I’ve rather lost my appetite.”

I hastily swallow. “Quite. Did you see anyone in the avenue during last night?”

Mrs Perkins shakes her head. “We’re heavy sleepers. Perhaps if we weren’t, we’d have seen what happened to my bicycle.”

“Maybe you saw something before you went to bed. A car, perhaps, a Ford Mondeo?” I’m anxious to steer the conversation away from the bicycle.

“I’ve got an awful feeling we’ve met the victim. I don’t think I’ve seen him round here, but there’s a chap we see up at the allotments now and again that matches the man you’ve described. Big, scruffy. Stuart says he’d lose a bit of weight if he put his back into it. His plot’s a mess. Not like Stuart’s. He’s up there every evening. We grow all our own veg.”

She smiles at his graduation photo, no doubt proud that a man in a psychedelic tie could evolve into one with green fingers. “Things taste much better when you grow them yourself. All those additives these days send children into orbit. Give them a home-grown diet and they’re good as gold,” Mrs Perkins continues. “We’re doing runner beans this time. It makes a change from courgettes. I’ve still got tubs of puree in the freezer from last year. I’ll give you some to take home. Let me put the kettle on again.”

Matthews puts a tick against number 27. It always amazes him how many people are at home during the day. Only three doors didn’t answer. He hasn’t found out anything from the others, but at least he can cross them off. Someone must have seen something. Two men forcing another man into his own car and then driving off intent on murder. It’s hardly a routine occurrence, not on Southside. On the Danescott estate, maybe, but not round here.

He goes back to the car. Perhaps the uniforms or Agatha will have had more luck. Agatha. He screws up his face and clenches his fists. Agatha. He’s only just met her, and yet … He’s worked with junior DCs before, so why does this one wind him up so much?

“Is that the time,” I say, standing up.

“I’ll get your courgette puree,” Mrs Perkins says. “Time does fly. The children will be coming out of school soon.”

Despite the risk of venturing into what must be another pet subject for Mrs Perkins, I can’t resist asking another question. “How old are your children?”

The hunted look returns to the woman’s eyes. “I don’t have any of my own. I meant the children in general would be coming out of school. Stuart and I haven’t been blessed.” She stops speaking, her eyes watering. I feel bad and sit down again to coax Mrs Perkins back to the happier topic of her vegetables.

“One, Agatha! Just one!” The blood pulses visibly through the veins in Matthews’s neck, and he grips the steering wheel. “We covered half the estate, while you interviewed one householder. So what did you get, a full confession? A request for several previous capital offences to be taken into consideration?”

I stare blindly out of the window. All I see is misery. “It’s people like that who spot things,” I offer without conviction. “And the lady seemed unhappy. She needed someone to talk to.”

“Tell her to phone the Samaritans. If I spend much more time with you, I’ll be needing them myself.”

Chapter 5

I follow Matthews into the main entrance of Penbury General Hospital. Glad of the wide corridors, I keep my distance. He isn’t about to play the caring supervisor and whisper words of reassurance en route to the mortuary. He wants me to squirm and his wish might well be granted. Thinking about the post-mortem I attended three years ago during police training still brings me out in a sweat. I’ll have to draw on the skills I learnt in my performing arts degree to appear in control.

When we reach the mortuary anteroom, I drop my bag alongside DS Matthews’s brown briefcase. I put on a gown, fumble with the plastic overshoes and take a deep breath as Matthews pushes open the wide swing doors into the main lab.

The smell triggers a kaleidoscope of memories. I’m back in Matron’s room at school. I only went there twice, both times to escort a sick friend, but there’s no forgetting the stench of disinfectant designed to terrify any virus into submission. The mortuary shares not only the same fragrance but also, bizarrely, the same cosy warmth. At the training post-mortem, all the police cadets on my intake remarked on the unexpected heat of a morgue.

I rub my dripping forehead and decide that Penbury’s mortuary needs better air conditioning. The stuffy room isn’t much bigger than Matron’s office, but there’s an ominously empty space in the centre.

A masked and gowned man sits at a computer screen, making notes on a clipboard. He stands up to greet us. “Ah, Mike Matthews and …?” He looks from Matthews to me.

“I’m DC Adams,” I explain.

“Charles Spicer, pathologist. What’s your first name, DC Adams?”

“She’s called Agatha,” Matthews says.

“Actually, Pippa,” I say coolly, not about to show him how rattled I am by the nickname. I’m grateful for the distraction of Bagley’s arrival.

“Good. Everyone’s here,” Bagley says, shuffling through the door in the plastic overshoes. “Can we make a start.” It’s a command, not a request.

Dr Spicer rolls his eyes but says nothing. He presses the button on the intercom next to his computer. Before I have time to rehearse my reaction, the wide double doors at the far end of the room fly open and two young men dressed in white tunics push in a trolley bed containing the lifeless body of a man. They line the trolley up parallel with the doctor’s desk and leave through the doors.

My stomach lurches and I’m glad I declined a second slice of Mrs Perkins’s cake. I study the coveralls on my shoes, but like a bystander at a traffic accident, can’t resist a morbid peek at the horror. A crisp green cloth covers most of the corpse, but has been turned down to show his waxen head. A large head, made even larger by the crop of tangled hair and the dense stubble that frames it. He looks like Moses.