The Mail Order Mystery
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I was sitting in the back of a car, looking for any sign that this wasn’t just some kind of weird coincidence. It’s like you’re watching an old TV show and someone comes out of the shadows behind you, or something falls out of the sky onto your head. I was so scared that if it happened again, it would feel like my skin coming off.
But the world didn’t fall out on me. We pulled up outside one of those big office blocks like they have down near Canary Wharf in London. The sort of place where all the suits go when they need to get their hair done. They were doing something to the windows as we walked through a door and into the elevator.
A man with grey-streaked black hair stood beside the door, staring at his reflection and adjusting the collar of his shirt. He had dark brown eyes like mine – but different. They seemed to stare straight into me. I felt as though he could see everything inside my head. And then, as soon as the doors closed, the feeling was gone.
They took us all the way up to the top floor. It’s funny, because I don’t think any of us thought twice about the lift being a glass tube hanging from cables and stuff, but I’d seen enough movies to know what happens when you look at a mirror. I looked away before the doors opened.
There’s something weird about the offices here. When I say offices, I mean rooms, because there are no walls or ceilings – just endless corridors of desks and chairs, with windows looking out over the sea. There’s one room in particular where everyone seems to congregate: it looks more like a bar than anything else.
At first, I couldn’t work out how the drinks got there. Then I realized that the tables were round, and there was a big round hole in the middle of each table, where the glasses are kept. It made me realize that we must be sitting somewhere deep underground. That, or maybe they’d brought the furniture and the drinks down by helicopter. Or perhaps the building floats?
We’ve been told that we’ll have access to our phones again, after three days. But it hasn’t worked yet and I’m still missing my phone. I can’t help wondering if there’s something wrong with it. If someone has hacked into the system, I bet they’ve found my number. Maybe even my address.
How far does anyone really go to find a person these days? My parents used to worry that someone would track their movements through my mobile phone – but I knew better. You couldn’t do that kind of thing without leaving evidence.
So, whoever it has probably just sent me a text message saying ‘Where are you?’ and then I’d have to reply: “What?” And then they’d say: “Why did you lie? Are you in trouble?” and I’d say no and ask why they were asking such personal questions anyway and they’d say “Well, you said…” and I’d tell them that it was none of their business what I was doing…
As we entered the conference room, my stomach twisted itself into knots. The last time I met people in this very same room, things turned bad pretty quickly. This time, however, things seem to be going smoothly, which was strange considering how little information we had about our case.
It didn’t take long to recognize everyone in the room as being part of the team investigating the disappearance of Sophie Smith. Everyone was wearing white shirts under dark blazers, with ties and waistcoats. As we sat around the table, they asked me where I’d come from.
I told them that I lived with my parents in a house near Reading, with my mum and dad and two brothers and one sister. They wanted to know whether my family owned the house and how much money they earned, but I wouldn’t answer.
They asked about a school – was I good at anything? What did I want to be when I grew up? And, finally, what had happened at St Paul’s School?
When I started answering their questions, the man who’d introduced himself as John leaned forwards in his chair. “You know what I think would help your investigation?” he said. “If you talked about what you saw when you were taken.” His face became stern and serious. “It might help us to understand why this happened, and to put an end to all your suffering. I think it would be best if you spoke about it now,” he added.
I nodded. I knew it was important, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet. I felt sick at the thought of reliving what I’d been through. The truth was I still hadn’t fully recovered from it. I wasn’t sure how I could get myself back to where I’d been before. I was trying to hold on to some sort of normality, but I guess it’s normal for teenagers to feel confused and anxious, isn’t it?
“You see… well…” I said.
John smiled. “Let’s start again, shall we?”
The others nodded in agreement. Even though I was reluctant to open up, I realized that I didn’t have a choice, and I didn’t really like having choices anyway.
After they heard what I’d seen on my way to the car park, they were all surprised that we hadn’t been questioned more urgently at St Paul’s School. One of them asked me about the fire that had been set in the hall and whether we’d found out who had done it, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak about it.
The only reason I knew that we had a culprit was that the police came to interview my class and my teacher showed them photos of all the kids involved in the arson attack.
I wasn’t even sure how the teachers had managed that; maybe they’d given the students some kind of warning – that they weren’t allowed to leave school premises without permission, or that they shouldn’t talk to reporters – and then the police went through every single photo and found the culprit among those pictured.
When I told them that I’d never seen the perpetrator, the headmistress suggested that it might not have been the same person who attacked us later in the day and that it might have been someone else.
She also claimed that we couldn’t know for certain until we’d found the person responsible for both incidents and that she hoped the police would do so soon, and that we should all stay positive.
That was when one of the adults looked at her sharply and said “Don’t make assumptions, Mary, we don’t know that we’ve got anyone yet, let alone that you’ve found them, but if you think that there might be somebody who wants to hurt your pupils, then why not send round the whole school and tell us all what you know?”
She didn’t reply immediately, and everyone fell silent.
“We’re here to investigate the events surrounding Sophie Smith’s disappearance,” the headmistress finally said. “That means that any information that might help is welcome. If we think you could help us find this person, then we’ll go to the school first thing tomorrow morning and talk to the children.”
A couple of the adults chuckled and whispered to each other.
I waited patiently for the meeting to finish. After everyone left the room, Mary called the office staff over to discuss what had just happened and told them to keep an eye out for anyone suspicious. When they walked away, the woman who’d spoken to me before made sure she stayed by my side. We didn’t say much, except that they’d promised to look into it.
Then they walked off together towards the stairs, and the next minute I was standing in the car park again with no idea what had happened while I was inside. I was glad they didn’t pressurize me any further about what I saw, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the way they’d dealt with the issue.
It seemed to me that they weren’t really interested in helping, but rather protecting themselves, and making sure that nothing else bad happened to children at the school. I wondered if they’d been briefed in some way to ignore any information they gathered that might implicate people working at the school in a crime.
Perhaps I was imagining it or overreacting, but I wasn’t sure how many times I could deny things before they wouldn’t believe me.
***
As we drove away from St Paul’s School, Sophie told me that if she could remember anything useful, the police wanted her to come to their headquarters the next day and describe what she’d seen on Sunday morning. As she spoke, John pulled into a pub car park near the school and turned to me.
“What do you reckon? Do you think they’re trying to protect themselves?”
I looked at him. He seemed confident that he knew what was going on, but he had no proof. All he’d told me was that he felt they weren’t being completely forthcoming, and it was easy to assume that they’d been instructed to take the same line as Mary Hadley had when talking to my class.
“It doesn’t feel right, does it?” I said. “But I can’t tell what they’re up to unless they start lying.”
They both laughed, but I noticed they kept looking at each other and nodding thoughtfully.
When they left, I sat in the car for another half hour. I was tired after our long trip to London, and I needed time to process everything. I had a strong sense that I shouldn’t get too excited about what had happened, even though I desperately wanted to tell someone that it might be important to the police.
I’d told Sophie, John and now the two officers, but if I told someone higher up and they started asking questions that the police wanted to avoid, they might start getting angry at me, and maybe even blame me for interfering in their investigation.
I had no proof that my information was of any significance and I didn’t want to lose the support of the authorities by giving them false hopes. Besides, it had happened so quickly and there hadn’t been anything that would indicate it was connected to what had happened at the school.
There was no need to jump to conclusions without knowing more. So instead of telling anyone else that day, I did what I always do in these situations – I went home.
The following morning I met Sophie at a nearby café, where I tried to explain why I was still unsure of what was happening. But after hearing Sophie’s story, and that of one of her classmates, it wasn’t hard for me to see why she might not mention what she’d seen on Saturday.
She claimed that the kids had all agreed to keep quiet because if they talked about it, they were scared they might be blamed for doing something wrong. The whole thing sounded like the kind of childish games that teenagers play, but I couldn’t imagine any adult keeping such an act secret. And besides, they’d all known that Sophie had found the body on Sunday.
Sophie said she’d told her parents, but only as part of an effort to try and get the police involved. She wanted them to make inquiries to try and find out what happened. That was a lot more sense than telling her parents, which was why I couldn’t understand why the police had asked her to keep mum.
They were clearly using this situation as cover for whatever else they were investigating. In fact, it sounded a bit like they were using it as an excuse to pretend they were doing something constructive when they actually weren’t really looking into any new developments.
But then again, perhaps Sophie was the only person who knew what they should really be looking at. It was strange that the police weren’t even interested in what she’d done on Sunday, yet I had a feeling she might know more than any of them realized.
She said she’d heard nothing else about the case since she gave evidence yesterday, and there wasn’t much more she could say without risking putting her parents in danger. It made me wonder why the police had even bothered coming to speak to her family in the first place.
Then again, it may have been a good excuse to talk to Sophie alone and find out just what she might know. Either way, it wasn’t fair on Sophie or her mother, who was suffering enough already with what was obviously an extremely traumatic experience for her daughter.
I was surprised to learn that she hadn’t spoken to my parents either and that they had no idea about her role in helping the police.
We finished breakfast early and walked back to school. We passed two policemen walking across the playing field towards the main road, wearing dark blue uniforms with badges on their chests. I pointed them out to Sophie, but she just smiled and pretended to go back over our conversation for the tenth time.
When we reached the school entrance, I asked her to stay with me while I spoke to the headteacher, Mrs. Hadley. As expected, he was busy sorting through paperwork and seemed oblivious to the approach of his visitors.
Mrs. Hadley greeted us warmly, as usual. I’d never met her when she hadn’t been dressed smartly in a suit. I guessed she was probably used to dealing with people from outside the school. It wouldn’t be unusual for solicitors to visit her office, so maybe it was the first time she’d received two policemen at once.
They were both in their thirties and looked like serious men who liked things to be handled professionally. One of them held out a hand to shake mine and introduced himself as Sergeant Williams. The other, who I assumed must be Detective Constable Jones, stood behind him.
“Mrs. Hadley, you’ve had a phone call today,” Williams began. “It came from Inspector Thomas of the Metropolitan Police. He’s asked me to pass on some information.”
I thought I detected a hint of disappointment in her face, though it took me a moment to realize why. Perhaps she’d wanted me to take a different approach to the inspector, and now here he was, calling personally. But instead of showing concern, she just listened intently and asked questions.
There didn’t seem to be any problem with the call, and it made sense that Inspector Thomas would choose her over anyone else. She was the right person for the job, even if she did work for the police.
After explaining who he was and what had brought him to St James’, Mrs. Hadley explained that she didn’t think the call had anything to do with what had happened on Monday night. I agreed, adding that I was pretty certain Inspector Thomas wasn’t asking about the events of Sunday evening – that had happened too long ago.
It appeared that Inspector Thomas was talking to someone else entirely.
As we chatted, Sophie was watching me closely and taking notes on a clipboard she carried everywhere. She asked Mrs. Hadley if she’d been contacted by Inspector Thomas before. I watched the two detectives exchange glances and wondered what kind of answers they were hoping for. The answer was clear to me, but they obviously wanted something very specific.
“He called last week to say they’d found some blood in a skip near your house,” Mrs. Hadley replied casually. “They needed to take photos of it, and he’d sent a photographer round. That’s all.”
“Blood?” Sophie whispered. “You mean the man I saw on TV? What’s happened?”
Mrs. Hadley glanced up at the sound of her voice and said the blood wasn’t connected with what had happened at St James’. And that wasn’t true anyway; the police would already have known if any connection had been found between Sophie and the crime scene.
But I suspected they knew it all along and were simply trying to make sure we didn’t slip up and tell Sophie what they already knew. Or perhaps they hoped that she might remember something new. I was starting to suspect that they were using Mrs. Hadley to distract us.
A minute later, Mrs. Hadley led them away, and we followed her to her office. It took several minutes to sort out the logistics of how they were going to interview Sophie that day. They wanted to come into school after lunch when she’d finish the exams that afternoon.
She was allowed to leave with me as I went home for the weekend, but they’d want her to return next week when the holidays ended. Then there would be another three days’ worth of examinations, which the detectives intended to attend.
They told me that would give them plenty of opportunity to quiz Sophie, but I couldn’t see a problem; we would know the exact times of each test beforehand and could plan accordingly. In the event, the dates for Sophie’s tests were changed slightly and we didn’t have any trouble arranging for the detectives to watch her.
Mrs. Hadley seemed reluctant to let Sophie go with me. She was adamant that the police should come to her office where they would be given priority because otherwise, it might affect the students’ results.
As usual, she made no mention of the fact that Sophie was under suspicion, only that it was important the police were kept informed of everything. She suggested it might be better if Sophie stayed on site until the detectives left.
This made no sense to me, and I felt sure Sophie understood this as well. We argued, but Mrs. Hadley insisted the decision was hers alone. I was getting more and more confused by the day. I’d never heard Mrs. Hadley refuse anyone before. I decided I would talk to one of the teachers and ask for their advice on how to handle things in the future.
“Do you think the tests will take long?” she asked Sophie.
“No, probably not,” Sophie answered. “I have a feeling they’re just going to ask me a couple of questions each time.”
She didn’t sound concerned. I wondered if she was bluffing. If so, the other teachers would need to keep an eye on her and try and stop her from doing anything silly.
The End