Gentlemen and Players

1

Sunday, 31st October

All Hallows’ Eve. I’ve always loved it. That night in particular, rather than Bonfire Night and its gaudy celebrations (and anyway, I’ve always thought it rather tasteless for children to celebrate the gruesome death of a man guilty of little more than getting ideas above his station).

It’s true; I’ve always had a soft spot for Guy Fawkes. Perhaps because I am in much the same situation: a lone plotter with only my wits to defend me against my monstrous adversary. But Fawkes was betrayed. I have no allies, no one with whom to discuss my own explosive schemes, and if I am betrayed, then it will be by my own carelessness or stupidity rather than by someone else’s.

The knowledge cheers me, for my job is a lonely one, and I often long for someone with whom to share the triumphs, the anxieties of my day-to-day revolt. But this week marks the end of a new phase in my campaign. The picador’s role is ended; time now for the matador to take the stage.

I began with Knight.

A pity, in a way; he has been very helpful to me this term, and of course I have nothing personal against the boy, but he would have had to go sometime or other, and he knew too much (whether he was aware of it or not) to be allowed to continue.

I was expecting a crisis, of course. Like all artists, I like to provoke, and Straitley’s reaction to my little piece of self-expression on his back fence had certainly exceeded expectations. I knew he’d find the pen too and leap to the logical conclusion.

As I said, they’re so predictable, these St. Oswald Masters. Push the buttons, press the switch, and watch them go. Knight was ready; Straitley primed. For a few packs of Camels the Sunnybankers had been prepared to feed an old man’s paranoia; I had done the same with Colin Knight. Everything was in place; both protagonists poised for battle. All that remained was the final showdown.

Of course I knew he’d come to me. Pretend I’m your tutor, I’d said, and he did; ran straight to me in tears, poor boy, and told me all about it.

“Now calm down, Colin,” I’d said, maneuvering him into a little-used office off the Middle Corridor. “What exactly has Mr. Straitley accused you of?”

He told me, with a great deal of snot and self-pity.

“I see.”

My heart quickened. It had begun. There was no stopping it now. My gambit had paid off; now all I had to do was to watch as St. Oswald’s began to tear itself apart, limb by limb.

“What do I do?” He was almost hysterical now, his pinched face prunelike with anxiety. “He’ll tell my mum, he’ll call the police, I might even be expelled—” Ah, expulsion. The ultimate dishonor. In the pecking order of terrible consequences, it even takes precedence over parents and the police.

“You won’t be expelled,” I said firmly.

“You don’t know that!”

“Colin. Look at me.” A pause, Knight shaking his head hysterically. “Look at me.”

He did, still shaking, and slowly the beginnings of hysteria began to subside.

“Listen to me, Colin,” I said. Short sentences, eye contact, and an air of conviction. Teachers use this method; so do doctors, priests, and other illusionists. “Listen carefully. You won’t be expelled. Do as I say; come with me and you’ll be fine.”

He was waiting for me, as instructed, at the bus stop outside the staff car park. It was ten to four, and already it was getting dark. I’d left my class (for once) ten minutes early, and the street was deserted. I stopped the car opposite the bus stop. Knight got in on the passenger side, his face pallid with terror and hope. “It’s all right, Colin,” I told him gently. “I’m taking you home.”

I didn’t plan it quite that way. Really I didn’t. Call it foolhardy if you like, but as I pulled out of St. Oswald’s that afternoon, into a street that was already blurry with thin October rain, I still hadn’t quite decided what to do with Colin Knight. On a personal level, of course, I’m a perfectionist. I like to have all the bases covered. Sometimes, however, it’s best to rely on pure instinct. Leon taught me that, you know, and I have to admit that some of the best moves I have ever made have been the unplanned ones; the impulsive strokes of genius.

So it was with Colin Knight; and it came to me in a sudden inspiration as I was passing the municipal park.

I told you I’ve always had a soft spot for Hallowe’en. As a child I much preferred it to the common celebrations of Bonfire Night, which I’ve always vaguely mistrusted, with its candyfloss commercialism, its trollish good cheer in front of the big barbecue. Most of all I mistrusted the community bonfire, an annual event held on Bonfire Night, in the local park, allowing the public to congregate en masse before a conflagration of alarming scale and a mediocre firework display. There is often a funfair, staffed by cynical “travelers” with an eye for the main chance; a hot dog stand; a Test Your Strength booth (Everyone’s a Winner!); a rifle range, with moth-eaten teddies hanging by their necks like trophies; a toffee apple salesman (the apples squashy and brown beneath the coating of brittle bright-red candy); and a number of pickpockets pushing their sly way through the holiday crowd.

I’ve always hated this gratuitous display. The noise; the sweat; the rabble; the heat; and the sense of violence about to erupt have always repelled me. Believe it or not, I despise violence. Its inelegance more than anything else, I think. Its crass and bludgeoning stupidity. My father loved the community bonfire for the same reasons I detested it; and he was never happier than on such occasions, a bottle of beer in one hand, face purple with the heat from the fire, a pair of alien antennae wagging on his head (or it might have been a pair of devil’s horns), neck craned to watch the rockets as they burst brapp-brapp-brapp across the smoky sky.

But it was thanks to his memory that I had my idea; an idea so sweetly elegant that it made me smile. Leon would have been proud of me, I knew; my twin problems of dispatch and disposal both sorted at a single blow.

I flicked on the indicator and turned toward the park. The big gates were open—in fact this is the only time of year when access is granted to vehicles—and I drove in slowly onto the main walkway.

“What are we doing here?” asked Knight, his anxiety forgotten. He was eating a chocolate bar from the school tuck shop and playing a computer game on his state-of-the-art mobile phone. An earpiece dangled languidly from one ear.

“I’ve got something to drop off here,” I said. “Something to burn.”

This is, as far as I can see, the only advantage of the community bonfire. It gives the opportunity to anyone who so wishes to dispose of any unwanted rubbish. Wood, palettes, magazines, and cardboard are always appreciated, but any combustible is more than welcome. Tires, old sofas, mattresses, stacks of newspapers—all have their place, and the citizens are encouraged to bring whatever they can.

Of course by now the bonfire had already been built: scientifically, and with care. A forty-foot pyramid, marvelous in its construction; layer upon layer of furniture, toys, paper, clothes, refuse sacks, packing crates, and—in deference to centuries of tradition, guys. Dozens of guys; some with placards around their necks; some rudimentary; some eerily human looking, standing and sitting and reclining in various positions on the unlit pyre. The area had been cordoned off at a distance of fifty yards or so from the structure; when it was lit, the heat would be so intense that to approach any farther would be to risk incineration.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” I said, parking as close as I could to the cordoned area. A number of skips containing assorted jumble blocked further access; but I reckoned it was near enough.

“It’s all right,” said Knight. “What have you brought?”

“See for yourself,” I said, getting out of the car. “Anyway, Colin, you might have to help me. It’s a bit bulky for me to manage on my own.”

Knight got out, not bothering to remove the phone’s earpiece. For a second I thought he was going to complain; but he followed me, looking incuriously at the unlit pyre as I unlocked the boot.

“Nice phone,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Knight.

“I like a good bonfire, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I do hope it doesn’t rain. There’s nothing worse than a bonfire that won’t start. Though they must use something—petrol, I expect—to start it off. It always seems to catch so fast—”

As I spoke I kept my body between Knight and the car. I needn’t have bothered, I suspect. He wasn’t very bright. Come to think of it, I was probably doing the gene pool a favor.

“Come on, Colin.”

Knight took a step forward.

“Good lad.” A hand in the small of the back—a gentle push. For a moment I thought of the Test Your Strength (Everyone’s a Winner!) booth of my childhood funfairs; imagined myself lifting the mallet high, smelled popcorn and smoke and the reek of boiled hot dogs and fried onions; saw my father grinning in his ridiculous alien antennae, saw Leon with a Camel crooked between his ink-stained fingers, smiling encouragement—

And then I brought the boot lid down as hard as I could and heard that unspeakable—but nonetheless quite reassuringly familiar—crunch telling me that once again, I was a winner.

2

There was rather a lot of blood.

I’d expected it, and taken precautions, but even so I may have to dry-clean this suit.

Don’t imagine I enjoyed it; in fact I find any kind of violence repulsive and would much have preferred to let Knight fall to his death from a high place, or choke on a peanut—anything but this primitive and messy solution. Still, there’s no denying that it was a solution, and a good one too. Once Knight had declared himself he couldn’t be allowed to live; and besides, I need Knight for the next stage.

Bait, if you like.

I borrowed his phone for a moment or two, wiping it clean on the damp grass. After that I switched it off and put it in my pocket. Then I covered Knight’s face in a black plastic sack (I always carry a few in the car, just in case), secured in place with an elastic band. I did the same with Knight’s hands. I sat him in a broken armchair near the base of the pile and anchored him in place with a block of magazines held together with string. By the time I had finished he looked just like the other guys waiting on the unlit pyre, though perhaps less realistic than some.

An old man walking a dog came along as I was working. He greeted me; the dog barked, and they both passed by. Neither of them noticed the blood on the grass, and as for the body itself—I’ve discovered that as long as you don’t behave like a murderer, no one will assume you are a murderer, whatever evidence exists to the contrary. If ever I decide to turn to robbery (and one day I might; I’d like to think I have more than one string to my bow), I will wear a mask and a striped jersey, and carry a bag marked SWAG. If anyone sees me, they will simply assume that I am on my way to a fancy-dress party and think nothing of it. People, I find, are for the most part very unobservant, especially of the things that are going on right beneath their noses.

I celebrated with fire. It is traditional, after all.

I found the gatehouse burned rather well, given the old damp problem. My only regret was that the new Porter—Shuttleworth, I think his name is—had not yet moved in. Still, with the house empty and Jimmy suspended, I couldn’t have chosen a more convenient time.

There is a certain amount of video security at St. Oswald’s, though most of it is destined for the front gate and its imposing entrance. I was willing to take the risk that the Porter’s house would not. All the same, I wore a hooded top, just baggy enough for camouflage. Any camera would simply show a hooded figure, carrying two unlabeled cans and with a school satchel slung over one shoulder, running along the side of the perimeter fence in the direction of the house.

Breaking in was easy. Less easy were the memories that seemed to seep out of the walls: the smell of my father; that sourness; the phantom reek of Cinnabar. Most of the furniture had belonged to St. Oswald’s. It was still there: the dresser; the clock; the heavy dining table and chairs that we never used. A pale rectangle on the living room wallpaper where my father had hung a picture (a sentimental print of a little girl with a puppy) unexpectedly tore at my heart.

I was suddenly, absurdly reminded of Roy Straitley’s house, with its rows of school photographs, smiling boys in faded uniforms, the fixed, expectant faces of the brash young dead. It was terrible. Worse, it was banal. I had expected to take my time, to splash petrol across the old carpets, the old furniture, with a joyful step. Instead I did what had to be done in furtive haste and ran, feeling like a sneak, like a trespasser, for the first time I could remember since that day at St. Oswald’s, when I first saw the lovely building, its windows shining in the sun, and wanted it for my own.

That was something Leon never understood. He never really saw St. Oswald’s; its grace, its history, its arrogant rightness. To him it was just a school; desks to be carved upon, walls to be graffitied, teachers to be mocked and defied. So wrong, Leon. So childishly, fatally wrong.

And so I burned the gatehouse; and instead of the elation I had anticipated, I felt nothing but a slinking remorse, that weakest and most useless of emotions, as the gleeful flames pranced and roared.

By the time the police arrived, I had recovered. Having changed my baggy sweatshirt for something more appropriate, I stayed for just long enough to tell them what they wanted to hear (a youth, hooded, fleeing the scene) and to allow them to find the cans and discarded satchel. By which time the fire engines had arrived too, and I stepped aside to let them do their job. Not that there was much for them to do by then; the gatehouse was mostly ash before they even pulled into the drive.

A student prank, the Examiner will say on Monday morning: a Hallowe’en stunt taken criminally far. My champagne tasted a little flat; but I drank it anyway while making a couple of routine calls with Knight’s borrowed phone and listening to the sounds of fireworks and the voices of young revelers—witches, ghouls, and vampires—as they ran down the alleys below me.

If I sit in exactly the right position at my window, I can just see Dog Lane. I wonder if Straitley is sitting at his window tonight, lights dimmed, curtain drawn. He expects trouble, that’s for sure. From Knight, or someone else—Sunnybankers or shadowy spirits. Straitley believes in ghosts—as well he might—and tonight, they are out in force, like memories set loose to prey upon the living.

Let them prey. The dead don’t have much to amuse them. I’ve done my bit; stuck my little spanner in the school’s old works. Call it a sacrifice, if you like. A payment in blood. If that doesn’t satisfy them, nothing will.

3

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

Monday, 1st November

What a shambles. What an almighty shambles. I saw the fire last night, of course; but thought it was the annual Guy Fawkes bonfire, a few days early and a few degrees from its usual spot. Then I heard the fire engines, and all at once I had to be there. It was so like that other time, you see; the sound of sirens in the darkness, the mother screaming, Pat Bishop like a crazed cinema director with his damned megaphone—

It was freezing cold as I stepped outside. I was glad of my coat, and of the checked scarf—a Christmas present from some boy, in the days when pupils still did such things—wound firmly round my neck. The air smelled good of smoke and fog and gunpowder, and although it was late, a gang of trick-or-treaters was pelting down the alley with a carrier bag of sweets. One of them—a little ghost—dropped a wrapper as he passed—a mini Snickers wrapper, I think it was—and I stooped automatically to pick it up.

“Hey, you!” I said in my Bell Tower voice.

The little ghost—a boy of eight or nine—stopped short.

“You dropped something,” I said, handing him the wrapper.

“You what?” The ghost looked at me as if I might be mad.

“You dropped something,” I said patiently. “There’s a litter bin over there.” I pointed to a dustbin only a dozen yards away. “Just walk over and put it in.”

“You what?” Behind him, there was grinning, nudging. Someone sniggered beneath a cheap plastic mask. Sunnybankers, I thought with a sigh, or juvenile thugs-in-waiting from the Abbey Road Estate. Who else would let their eight-or nine-year-old children roam the streets at half past eleven, without an adult in sight?

“In the bin, please,” I said again. “I’m sure you were brought up better than to drop litter.” I smiled; for a moment half a dozen little faces looked up wonderingly at mine. There was a wolf; three sheeted ghosts; a grubby vampire with a leaky nose; and an unidentifiable person who might have been a ghoul or a gremlin or some X-rated Hollywood creature without a name.

The little ghost looked at me, then at the wrapper.

“Well done,” I began to say as he moved toward the bin.

At that he turned and grinned at me, exposing teeth as discolored as a veteran smoker’s. “Fuck off,” he said, and ran off down the alley, dropping the Snickers wrapper as he went. The others ran the opposite way, scattering papers as they went, and I heard their jeers and insults as they pelted off into the freezing mist.

It shouldn’t have bothered me. As a teacher, I see all sorts, even at St. Oswald’s, which is, after all, a somewhat privileged environment. Those Sunnybankers are a different breed; the estates are rife with alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, violence. Foul language and litter come as easily to them as hello and good-bye. There is no malice in it, not really. Still, it bothered me, perhaps more than it should. I had already given out three bowls of sweets to trick-or-treaters that night; among them, a number of mini Snickers bars.

I picked up the wrapper and put it in the bin, feeling unexpectedly depressed. I’m getting old, that’s all there is to it. My expectations of youth (and of humanity in general, I believe) are quite outdated. Even though I suspected—knew, perhaps, in my heart—that the fire I had seen was something to do with St. Oswald’s, I did not expect it; the absurd optimism that has always been the best and worst part of my nature forbids me to take the gloomy view. That’s why a part of me was genuinely surprised when I arrived at the school, saw the fire crew at the blaze, and understood that the gatehouse was on fire.

It could have been worse. It could have been the library. There was a fire there once—before my time, in 1845—that burned up more than a thousand books, some very rare. A careless candle, perhaps, left unsupervised; there is certainly nothing in the school’s records to suggest it was malice.

This was. The Fire Chief’s report says petrol was used; a witness at the scene reports a hooded boy, running away. Most damning of all: Knight’s satchel, dropped at the scene, a little charred but still perfectly recognizable, the books within carefully labeled with his name and form.

Bishop was there at once, of course. Pitching in with the firemen so energetically that for a time I thought he was one of them. Then he came looming out at me through the smoke, eyes red, hair in spikes, flushed almost to apoplexy with the heat and the moment.

“No one inside,” he panted, and I saw now that he was carrying a large clock under one arm, running with it like a prop forward about to score a try. “Thought I’d try to save a few things.” Then he was off again, his bulk somehow pathetic against the flames. I called after him, but my voice was lost; a few moments later I glimpsed him trying to drag an oak chest through the burning front door.

As I said, what a fiasco.

This morning the area was cordoned off, the debris still fiercely red and smoking, so that now the whole school smells of Bonfire Night. In the form there is no other topic of conversation; the report of Knight’s disappearance, and now this, are enough to fuel rumors of such wild inventiveness that the Head has had no choice but to call an emergency staff meeting to discuss our options.

Plausible denial has always been his way. Look at that business with John Snyde. Even Fallowgate was hotly refuted; now HM means to deny Knightsbridge (as Allen-Jones has dubbed it), especially as the Examiner has been asking the most impertinent questions in the hope of turning up some new scandal.

Of course it will be all over town by tomorrow. Some pupil will talk, as they always do, and the news will break. A pupil disappears. A revenge attack on the school follows, perhaps provoked—who knows?—by bullying and victimization. No note was left. The boy is at large. Where? Why?

I assumed—we all did—that Knight was the reason the police were there this morning. They arrived at eight-thirty; five officers, three in plainclothes; one woman, four men. Our community officer (Sergeant Ellis, a veteran, skilled in public relations and manly tête-à-têtes) was not with them, and I should have suspected something there and then, though in fact I was far too preoccupied with my own affairs to give them much thought.

Everyone was. And with good reason; half the department missing; computers down with a deadly germ; boys infected with revolt and speculation; staff on edge and unable to concentrate. I had not seen Bishop since the previous night; Marlene told me that he’d been treated for smoke inhalation but had refused to stay in hospital and, moreover, had spent the rest of the night in school, going over the damage and reporting to the police.

Of course it is generally, if unofficially, accepted (at least in management circles) that I am to blame. Marlene told me as much, having glanced at a drafted letter dictated by Bob Strange to his secretary, and now awaiting approval from Bishop. I didn’t get a chance to read it, but I can guess at the style as well as the content. Bob Strange is a specialist of the bloodless coup de grâce, having drafted a dozen or so similar letters in the course of his career. In the light of recent events . . . regrettable, but unavoidable . . . now cannot be overlooked . . . a sabbatical to be taken on full pay until such time as . . .

There would be references to my erratic behavior, my increasing forgetfulness, and the curious incident of Anderton-Pullitt, not to mention Meek’s bungled assessment, Pooley’s blazer, and any number of smaller infractions, inevitable in the career of any Master, all noted, numbered, and set aside by Strange for possible use in instances such as this.

Then would come the open hand, the grudging acknowledgment of thirty-three years of loyal service . . . the small, tight-mouthed assurance of personal respect. Beneath it, the subtext is always the same: You have become an embarrassment. In short, Strange was preparing the hemlock bowl.

Oh, I can’t say I was entirely surprised. But I have given so much to St. Oswald’s over so many years that I suppose I imagined it made me some kind of an exception. It does not; the machinery that lies at the heart of St. Oswald’s is as heartless and unforgiving as Strange’s computers. There is no malice involved, simply an equation. I am old; expensive; inefficient; a worn cog from an outdated mechanism that in any case serves no useful purpose. And if there is to be a scandal, then who better to carry the blame? Strange knows that I will not make a fuss. It’s undignified, for a start; and besides, I would not bring more scandal to St. Oswald’s. A generous settlement on top of my pension; a nicely worded speech by Pat Bishop in the Common Room; a reference to my ill health and the new opportunities afforded by my impending retirement; the hemlock bowl cunningly hidden behind the laurels and the paraphernalia.

Damn him to hell. I could almost believe he’d planned this from the start. The invasion of my office; my removal from the prospectus; his interference. He’d held on to the letter until now only because Bishop was unavailable. He needed Bishop on his side. And he’d get him too, I told myself; I like Pat, but I have no illusions as to his loyalty. St. Oswald’s comes first. And the Head? I knew he would be more than happy to present the case to the governors. After that, Dr. Pooley could do his worst. And who, I thought, would really care? And what about my Century? From where I was standing, it might have been an age away.

At lunchtime I got a memo from Dr. Devine, handwritten for once (I assumed the computers were still down) and delivered by a boy from his fifth form.

R.S. REPORT TO OFFICE AT ONCE. M.R.D.

I wondered if he was in on it, too. I wouldn’t have put it past him. So I made him wait; marked a few books, exchanged pleasantries with the boys; drank tea. Ten minutes later Devine came in like a dervish, and on seeing his expression I dismissed the boys with a wave of the hand and gave him my full attention.

Now you may have been under the impression that I’ve got some kind of a feud going with old Sourgrape. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact most of the time I quite enjoy our spats, even though we don’t always see eye to eye on matters of policy, uniform, Health and Safety, cleanliness, or behavior.

I do know where to draw the line, however, and any thought of baiting the old idiot vanished as soon as I saw his face. Devine looked sick. Not merely pale, which is his natural state, but yellow; haggard; old. His tie was askew; his hair, which is usually immaculate, had been pushed out of place so that now he looked like a man in a high wind. Even his walk, which is usually brisk and automatic, had developed a hitch; he staggered into my room like a clockwork toy and sat down heavily on the nearest desk.

“What’s happened?”

There was no trace of banter in my voice now. Someone had died; that was my first thought. His wife; a boy; a close colleague. Only some terrible catastrophe could have affected Dr. Devine in this way.

It was a sign of his real distress that he took no opportunity to berate me for my lack of response to his summons. He remained sitting on the desk for a few moments, his thin chest drawn down toward his protuberant knees.

I pulled out a Gauloise, lit it, and held it out.

Devine hasn’t indulged in years, but he took it without a word.

I waited. I’m not always known for my savoir faire, but I know how to deal with troubled boys, and that was exactly what Devine looked like to me then, a gray-haired, very troubled boy, his face raw with anxiety, his knees bunched up against his chest in a desperate protective gesture.

“The police.” It came out as a gasp.

“What about them?”

“They’ve arrested Pat Bishop.”

It took me some time to get the whole story. For a start, Devine didn’t know it. Something to do with computers, he thought, although no one seemed to know any details. Knight was mentioned; boys in Bishop’s classes were being questioned, though what the charge against Bishop actually was no one seemed to know.

I could see why Devine was panicked, though. He has always tried very hard to ingratiate himself with the management, and he is naturally terrified of being implicated in this new, unspecified scandal. Apparently the visiting officers questioned Sourgrape at some length; seemed interested to know that on several occasions Pat has played host to Mr. and Mrs. Sourgrape; and were now about to search the office for any further evidence.

“Evidence!” yawped Devine, stubbing out his Gauloise. “What are they expecting to find? If only I knew—”

Half an hour later, two of the officers departed, carrying Bishop’s computer. When Marlene asked why, no answer was given. The three remaining officers stayed to carry out further enquiries, mostly in the computer labs, which have now been closed to all members of the school. One of the officers (the woman) came into my form room during period eight and asked me when I had last used my station in the IT lab. I informed her curtly that I never used the computers, having no interest at all in electronic games, and she left, looking like a school examiner about to write an unfriendly report.

The class was completely uncontrollable after that, so we played hangman in Latin for the last ten minutes of the lesson while my mind raced and the invisible finger (never far) jabbed at my breastbone with ever-increasing persistence.

At the end of the lesson I went in search of Mr. Beard, the Head of IT, but I found him evasive, speaking of viruses in the school computer network, of workstations and password protections and Internet downloads—all subjects that hold as little fascination for me as do the works of Tacitus for Mr. Beard.

As a result, I now know as little about the matter as I did at lunchtime and was forced to leave (after waiting over an hour, without success, for Bob Strange to emerge from his office), feeling frustrated and horribly anxious. This isn’t over, whatever it is. November it may be, but I have a feeling the Ides of March have just begun.

4

Tuesday, 2nd November

My pupil made the papers again. The nationals this time, I am proud to say (of course, Mole had a little something to do with that, but he would have found his way in there sooner or later).

The Daily Mail blames the parents; the Guardian sees a victim; and the Telegraph included an editorial on vandalism, and how it should be tackled. All very gratifying: plus Knight’s mother has launched a tearful TV appeal to Colin saying that he isn’t in any trouble and begging him please to come home.

Bishop has been suspended, pending further enquiry. I’m not surprised; what they found on his computer must certainly have helped. Gerry Grachvogel too must have been arrested by now, and very soon, others will follow. The news has hit the school like a bomb—the same time bomb, as it happens, that I put in place during half-term.

A virus to immobilize the system’s defenses. A carefully planted set of Internet links. A log of e-mails sent to and from Knight’s personal station to a hotmail address accessible from the school. A selection of images, mostly stills but with a few interesting webcam clips, sent to a number of staff addresses and downloaded into password-protected files.

Of course, none of this would have come to light if the police had not investigated Colin Knight’s e-mail correspondence. But in these days of Internet chat rooms and virtual predators, it pays to cover all the bases.

Knight fitted the victim profile—a solitary youngster, unpopular at school. I knew they would hit upon the idea sooner or later. As it happens, it was sooner. Mr. Beard helped it along, going through the systems after the crash, and after that it was just a question of following the thread.

The rest is simple. It’s a lesson they still have to learn, the folk of St. Oswald’s; a lesson I learned over fifteen years ago. They are so complacent, these people; so arrogant and naive. They need to understand what I understood in front of the big NO TRESPASSERS sign; that the rules and legislations of the world are all held in place by the same precarious fabric of bluff and complacency; that any rule can be broken; that trespass, like any crime, goes unpunished when there’s no one to see it. It’s an important lesson in any child’s education—and, as my father always said, your education’s the most precious thing in the world.

But why? I hear you ask. Sometimes I still ask it myself. Why do I do it? Why so dogged, after all these years?

Simple revenge? I only wish it were that easy. But you and I both know that it goes deeper than that. Revenge, I’ll admit, is a part of it. For Julian Pinchbeck, perhaps—for the whingeing, cringing child I was, hiding in the shadows and wishing desperately to be someone else.

But for myself? Nowadays I’m happy with who I am. I’m a solid citizen. I have a job—a job at which I have proved myself unexpectedly talented. I may still be the Invisible Man as far as St. Oswald’s is concerned, but I have refined my role far beyond that of mere impostor. For the first time I wonder if I could stay here longer.

It’s certainly a temptation. I have already made a promising start; and in times of revolution, field officers are quickly promoted. I could be one of those officers. I could have it all—all St. Oswald’s has to offer—bricks, guns, and glory.

Should I take it? I wonder.

Pinchbeck would have jumped at the chance. Of course, Pinchbeck was content, if not happy, to pass unseen. But I am not he.

What do I want, then?

What have I always wanted?

If it were simply a matter of revenge, then I could simply have set fire to the main building instead of just the gatehouse and let the whole wasps’ nest go up in flames. I could have put arsenic in the staff tea urn or cocaine in the first eleven’s orange squash. But there wouldn’t have been much fun in that, would there? Anyone can do those things. But no one can do what I have done; no one has ever done what I am doing. Still, one thing is missing from the victory tableau. My own face. The face of the artist among the crowd of extras. And as time passes, that small absence looms larger and larger.

Regard. In English it implies respect and admiration. In French it simply means “a look.” That—to be seen—is all I ever wanted; to be more than just a fleeting glimpse, a twelfth man in this game of Gentlemen and Players. Even an invisible man may cast a shadow; but my shadow, grown long over years, has been lost among the dark corridors of St. Oswald’s.

No more. Already it has begun. The name of Snyde has already been mentioned. Pinchbeck too. And before it ends, as St. Oswald’s spirals to its inevitable fate, I promise you: I will be seen.

Until then, I am content, for a time, to be an educator. But there are no exams to be passed in my subject. The only test is survival. In this I have a certain experience—Sunnybank Park must have taught me something, after all—but I like to think that the rest comes from natural talent. As a pupil of St. Oswald’s, that skill would have been refined out of me, to be replaced by Latin, Shakespeare, and all the comfortable assurances of that very privileged world. For most of all, St. Oswald’s teaches conformity; team spirit; playing the game. A game in which Pat Bishop excels; which makes it all the more appropriate that he should be the first real casualty.

As I said before, the way to bring down St. Oswald’s is a blow to the heart, not the Head. And Bishop is the heart of the school; well meaning; honest; respected and loved by boys and staff. A friend to those in trouble; a strong arm to the weak; a conscience; a coach; an inspiration. A man’s man; a sportsman; a gentleman; a man who never delegates a single task but works tirelessly and with joy for the good of St. Oswald’s. He has never married—how could he? Like Straitley, his devotion to the school precludes a normal family life. Base persons might suspect him of having other preferences. Especially in the current climate, where simply the desire to work with children is seen as legitimate cause for suspicion. But Bishop? Bishop?

No one believes it; and yet the staff room is already curiously divided. Some speak with bold indignation against the unthinkable charge (Straitley amongst them). Others (Bob Strange, the Nations, Jeff Light, Paddy McDonaugh) converse in lowered voices. Scraps of overheard cliché and conjecture—there’s no smoke without fire; always thought he was too good to be true; a bit too friendly with the boys, know what I mean— overhang the Common Room like smoke signals.

It’s astonishing, once fear or self-interest has stripped away the veneer of comradeship, how easily one’s friends may turn. I should know; and by now it must have begun to dawn on him too.

There are three stages of reaction to such an accusation. One, denial. Two, anger. Three, capitulation. My father, of course, acted guilty from the start. Inarticulate; angry; confused. Pat Bishop must have given them a better performance. The Second Master of St. Oswald’s is not a man to be intimidated easily. But the proofs were there, undeniable. Logs of chat room conversations conducted after hours from his password-protected station at St. Oswald’s. A text message sent from Knight’s phone to Bishop’s own mobile on the evening of the fire. Pictures stored in his computer’s memory. Many pictures, all of boys: some showing practices of which Pat, in his innocence, had never even heard.

Of course he denied it. First, with a kind of grim amusement. Then with shock; indignation; rage; and finally a tearful confusion that did more to condemn him than anything else the police had found.

They’d searched his house. A number of photographs had been removed as evidence. School photographs; rugby teams; Bishop’s boys throughout the years, smiling from the walls, all unaware that they would one day be used as evidence. Then there were the albums. Dozens of them, filled with boys; school trips, away matches, last-days-of-term, boys paddling in a Welsh stream, boys bare-chested on a day by the sea, lined up, limbs sleek, hair unkempt, young faces grinning at the camera.

So many boys, they’d said. Wasn’t that a little—unusual?

Of course he’d protested. He was a teacher; all teachers keep such things. Straitley could have told them that; how year after year no one is forgotten, how certain faces linger unexpectedly. So many boys, passing like the seasons. It was natural to feel a certain nostalgia; more natural still, in the absence of family, to develop affection for the boys one taught, affection and—

What kind of affection? Here was the dirt. They sensed it, despite his protests, closing in like hyenas. He denied it with disgust. But they were gentle; spoke of stress; a breakdown; an offer of help.

His computer had been password-protected. Of course, someone else might have learned the password. Someone else might have used his computer. Someone else might even have planted the pictures. But the credit card that had been used to pay for them was his. The bank confirmed it; and Bishop was at a loss to explain how his own card could have been used to download hundreds of pictures onto the hard drive of his office PC.

Let us help you, Mr. Bishop.

Ha. I know the type. And now they’d found his Achilles’ heel; not lewdness as they’d suspected, but something infinitely more dangerous—his desire for approval. His fatal eagerness to please.

Tell us about the boys, Pat.

Most people don’t see this in him at first. They see his size, his strength, his giant devotion. Underneath all that he is a pitiful creature; anxious; insecure; running his endless laps in an eternal effort to get ahead. But St. Oswald’s is a demanding master, and its memory is long. Nothing is forgotten, nothing put aside. Even in a career such as Bishop’s there have been failures; errors of judgment. He knows it, as do I; but the boys are his security. Their happy faces remind him that he is a success. Their youth stimulates him—

Dirty laughter from the wings.

No, that wasn’t what he’d meant.

Then what exactly had he meant? Crowding round now, like dogs around a bear. Like the little boys around my father as he cursed and swore, his big bear’s rump hanging off the seat of the Mean Machine as they squealed and danced. Tell us about the boys, Pat. Tell us about Knight.

“Talk about daft,” said Roach today in the Common Room. “I mean, how stupid can you get, using your own name and credit cards?”

Though he does not know it, Roach himself is in imminent danger of discovery. Several threads point to him already, and his intimacy with Jeff Light and Gerry Grachvogel is well established. Poor Gerry, so I hear, is already under investigation, although his excessively nervous state makes him a less than reliable witness. Internet pornography has also been found on his workstation, paid for on his credit card.

“I always knew he was a funny bugger,” said Light. “Bit too chummy with the lads, know what I mean?”

Roach nodded. “Just goes to show,” he said. “You can’t be sure of anyone these days.”

How true that was. I followed the conversation from afar, with a certain sense of ironic amusement. The gentlemen of St. Oswald’s are a trusting lot; keys left in jacket pockets slung over chairs; wallets in desk drawers; offices left unlocked. The theft of a credit card number is the work of a moment; no skill is required, and the card can usually be replaced before the owner even suspects it is missing.

Roach’s card was the only one I failed to return—he reported it missing before I could act—but Bishop, Light, and Grachvogel have no such excuse. My one regret is that I failed to catch Roy Straitley—it would have been elegant to have sent them all to hell in the same handbasket—but the sly old fox doesn’t even own a credit card, and besides, I don’t think anyone would believe that he is computer literate enough to even turn on a PC.

Still, that can change. We’ve only just begun, he and I, and I’ve planned this game for so long that I really don’t want it all to end too quickly. Already he is poised on the brink of dismissal; he remains only in the absence of the Second Master and because the desperate lack of staff members in his department makes him—but only for the duration of the crisis—indispensable.

It’s his birthday on Friday. Bonfire Night: I imagine he’s dreading it; old people so often do. I should send him a present; something nice to take his mind off the week’s unpleasantness. So far I haven’t had any ideas, but then again, I’ve had a lot on my plate recently.

Give me time.

5

I’ve never liked birthdays since, you know. Toys, cake, paper hats, and friends to tea; for years I longed for those things without ever getting them, just as I longed for St. Oswald’s and its enviable patina of wealth and respectability. For his birthdays, Leon went to restaurants, where he was allowed wine and had to wear a tie. Until I was thirteen I had never even been to a restaurant. Waste of money, grumbled John Snyde. Even before my mother left, my birthdays had been hasty occasions; shop-bought cakes and candles that were put away carefully in an old tobacco tin (with last year’s icing-sugar crumbs still clinging to the pastel stubs) for next time. My presents came in Woolworth’s bags, with the labels still on them; we sometimes sang “Happy Birthday to You,” but with the dogged, undemonstrative embarrassment of the working class.

When she left, of course, even that stopped. If he remembered, my father would give me money for my birthdays, telling me to get summat you really want—but I had no friends, no cards, no parties. Once Pepsi made an effort; made pizza with birthday candles on it, and a chocolate cake that had sunk along one side. I tried to be grateful, but I knew I’d been cheated; in a way Pepsi’s simple-minded endeavor was even worse than nothing at all. When there was nothing, I could at least forget what day it was.

But that year was different. That August—I remember it still with the supernatural clarity of certain dreams—hot and sweet and smelling of pepper and gunsmoke and resin and grass. A rapturous, terrible, illuminated time; I was two weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday, and my father was planning a surprise.

He hadn’t said so in as many words; but I could sense it. He was excited; nervous; secretive. He veered from moments of extreme irritation at everything I did to bouts of tearful nostalgia, telling me I was growing up; offering me cans of beer; hoping that when I left home one day I wouldn’t forget my poor old dad, who had always done his best for me.

Most surprisingly, he was spending money. John Snyde—who had always been so tightfisted that he had recycled his used cigarette butts, twisting the reclaimed tobacco into skinny roll-ups that he called “Friday freebies”—had finally discovered the joy of retail therapy. A new suit—for interviews, he said. A gold chain with a medallion on it. A whole crate of Stella Artois—this from a man who purported to despise foreign beers—and six bottles of malt whiskey, which he kept in the shed at the back of the gatehouse, under an old candlewick bedspread.

There were scratch cards—dozens of them; a new sofa; new clothes for me (I was growing); underwear; T-shirts; records; shoes.

Then there were the phone calls. Late at night, when he thought I had gone to bed, I could hear him, talking in a low voice for what seemed like hours at a time. For a while I assumed he was calling a sex line—that or he was trying to get back with Pepsi; there was the same air of furtiveness about his whispering. Once, from the landing, I overheard; only a few words, but words that lodged uncomfortably at the back of my mind.

How much, then? Pause. All right. It’s for the best. The kid needs a mother.

A mother?

Until then my own mother had written daily. Five years without a word, and now there was no stopping her; we were inundated with postcards, letters, parcels. Most of these remained under my bed, unopened. The air ticket to Paris, booked for September, remained unopened, and I thought that perhaps my father had finally accepted that I wanted nothing more from Sharon Snyde; nothing that might remind me of my life before St. Oswald’s.

Then the letters suddenly stopped. In a way that should have troubled me more; it was as if she were planning something, something that she meant to keep from me.

But days passed and nothing happened. The phone calls ceased—or perhaps my father took more care—in any case I heard nothing else, and my thoughts returned, like a compass point, toward my north.

Leon, Leon, Leon. Never far from my thoughts, Francesca’s departure had found him distant and withdrawn. I tried hard to distract him, but nothing seemed to interest him anymore; he disdained all our usual games; zigzagged continually from manically happy to sullen and uncooperative; and worse, now seemed to resent my intrusion into his solitary time, asking me with sarcasm whether I had any other friends and constantly making fun of me for being younger and less experienced than he was himself.

If only he had known. As far as that went, I was light-years ahead. I had conquered Mr. Bray, after all; soon I was to take my conquests further. But with Leon I had always felt awkward, young, painfully eager to please. He sensed it; and now it made him cruel. He was at that age when everything seems sharp and new and obvious; when adults are immeasurably stupid; when the rule of self overrides all others, and a lethal cocktail of hormones amplifies every emotion to a nightmarish intensity.

Worst of all, he was in love. Nail-bitingly, miserably, cruelly in love with Francesca Tynan, who had gone back to school in Cheshire, and with whom he spoke almost every day in secret on the phone, running up enormous bills that would be discovered—too late—at the end of the quarter.

“Nothing else compares,” he said—not for the first time. He was in his manic phase; soon he would lapse into sarcasm and open contempt. “You can talk about it, like the rest of them, but you don’t know what it’s like. Me, I’ve done it. I’ve actually done it. The closest you‘ll ever get is a fumble behind the lockers with your friends from junior six.”

I made a face, keeping it light, pretending it was a joke. But he was not. There was something vicious, almost feral about Leon on these occasions; his hair hung over his eyes; his face was pale; a sour smell came from his body; and there was a new scattering of pimples around his sullen mouth.

“I bet you’d like that, queerboy, Queenie, bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, eh?” He looked at me, and I saw a lethal kind of understanding in his gray eyes. “Queenie,” he repeated, with a nasty snigger, and then the wind changed and the sun came out and he was Leon again, talking about a concert he was planning to see; about Francesca’s hair and how it caught the light; a record he had bought; Francesca’s legs and how long they were; the new Bond movie. For a time I could almost believe he really had been joking; then I remembered the chilly intelligence in his eyes and wondered uneasily how I had given myself away.

I should have put an end to it right there and then. I knew that it wasn’t going to get any better. But I was helpless; irrational; torn. Something in me still believed that I could turn him round; that everything could be as it was before. I had to believe it; it was the only speck of hope on my otherwise bleak horizon. Besides, he needed me. He wouldn’t see Francesca again until Christmas at least. That gave me five months. Five months to cure him of his obsession, to draw the poison that had infected our comfortable fellowship.

Oh, I had to indulge him. More than was good for him, I suppose. However, there’s nothing quite so vicious as a lover, unless you count the terminally ill, with whom they share many unpleasant characteristics. Both are selfish; withdrawn; manipulative; unstable; reserving all their sweetness for the loved one (or themselves) and turning on their friends like rabid dogs. That was Leon; and yet I treasured him more than ever, now that he finally shared my suffering.

There is a perverse satisfaction in picking at a scab. Lovers do it all the time; seeking out the most intense sources of pain and indulging them, sacrificing themselves again and again for the sake of the loved object with a dogged stupidity that poets have often mistaken for selflessness. With Leon, it was talking about Francesca. With me, it was listening to him. After a while it grew unbearable—love, like cancer, tends to dominate the life of the sufferer so fully that they lose the ability to conduct a conversation on any other subject (so numbingly dull for the listener)—and I found myself trying with increasing desperation to find ways of breaking through the tedium of Leon’s obsession.

“I dare you.” That was me, standing outside the record shop. “Go on, I dare you. That is, if you’ve still got the balls.”

He looked at me, surprised, then looked beyond me into the shop. Something crossed his face—a shadow, perhaps, of pleasures past. Then he grinned, and I now thought I saw a faint reflection of the old, careless, loveless Leon in his gray eyes.

“You talking to me?” he said.

And so we played—the one game this new Leon still accepted to play. And with the game, the Treatment began; unpleasant, even brutish, perhaps, but necessary, just as aggressive chemotherapy can be used to attack cancers. And there was plenty of aggression in both of us; it was simply a question of turning it outward rather than in.

We began with theft. Small things first: records; books; clothes that we dumped in our little hideout in the woods behind St. Oswald’s. The Treatment turned to stronger fare. We graffitied walls and smashed bus shelters. We threw stones at passing cars; pushed over gravestones in the old churchyard; shouted obscenities at elderly dog-walkers who entered our domain. During that fortnight I veered between utter wretchedness and overwhelming joy; we were together again, Butch and Sundance—and for minutes at a time Francesca was forgotten; the thrill of her eclipsed by a stronger, more dangerous rush.

But it never lasted. My treatment was good for the symptoms, not the cause, and I discovered to my chagrin that my patient needed increasingly stronger doses of excitement if he was to respond at all. More and more often it fell to me to think of new things to do, and I found myself struggling to imagine newer and more outrageous exploits for the two of us to perform.

“Record shop?”

“Nah.”

“Graveyard?”

“Banal.”

“Bandstand?”

“Done it.” It was true; the night before, we had broken into the municipal park and smashed every seat on the town bandstand as well as the little railings that surrounded it. I’d felt bad doing it; remembered going into the park with my mother when I was very small; the summer smells of cut grass and hot dogs and candyfloss; the sound of the colliery band. I remembered Sharon Snyde sitting in one of those blue plastic chairs, smoking a cigarette, while I marched up and down going pom-pom-pom on an invisible drum, and for a second I felt horribly lost. That was me aged six; that was when I still had a mother who smelled of cigarettes and Cinnabar, and there was nothing braver and more splendid than a town bandstand in summer, and only bad people smashed things up.

“What’s up, Pinchbeck?” It was already late; in the moonlight Leon’s face was slick and dark and knowing. “Had enough already?”

I had. More than enough. But I couldn’t tell Leon; it was my Treatment, after all.

“Come on,” he’d urged. “Think of it as a lesson in taste.”

I had, and my retaliation had been swift. Leon had ordered me to demolish the bandstand; I reciprocated by daring him to tie tin cans to the exhausts of all the cars parked outside the police station. Our stakes escalated; our outrages grew increasingly complicated, even surreal (a row of dead pigeons tied to the railings of the public park; a series of colorful murals on the side of the Methodist church); we defaced walls, broke windows, and frightened small children from one end of town to the other. Only one place remained.

“St. Oswald’s.”

“No way.” So far we had avoided the school grounds—barring a little artistic self-expression on the walls of the Games Pavilion. My thirteenth birthday was days away, and with it approached my mysterious and long-anticipated surprise. My father played it cool, but I could tell he was making an effort. He was dry; he had started exercising; the house was immaculate and his face had developed a hard, dry grin that reflected nothing of what was going on inside. He looked like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter; a fat Clint, in any case, but with that same slitty-eyed air of concentration on some eventual, apocalyptic showdown. I approved—it showed resolution—and I didn’t want to blow it all now over some idiotic stunt.

“Come on, Pinchbeck. Fac ut vivas. Live a little.”

“What’s the point?” It wouldn’t do to seem too reluctant; Leon would think I was afraid to take the dare. “We’ve done St. Oswald’s a million times.”

“Not this.” His eyes were shining. “I dare you—I dare you to climb to the top of the Chapel roof.” Then he smiled at me, and at that point I saw the man he might have been; his subversive charm; his irrepressible humor. It struck me like a fist, my love for him; the single pure emotion of all my complicated, grubby adolescence. It occurred to me then that if he had asked me to jump from the Chapel roof, I would probably have said yes.

“The roof?”

He nodded.

I was almost laughing. “All right, I will,” I said. “I’ll bring you back a souvenir.”

“No need,” he said. “I’ll get it myself. What?” Seeing my surprise. “You don’t think I’d let you go up there on your own, do you?”

6

St Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

Wednesday, 3rd November

Five days, and still no word of Knight. No word of Bishop either, though I saw him in Tesco the other day, looking dazed before a trolley piled high with cat food (I don’t even think Pat Bishop has a cat). I spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. He looked like a man under heavy medication, and I have to admit that I didn’t have the courage to pursue the conversation.

Still, I know that Marlene calls every day to make sure he is all right—the woman has a heart, which is more than can be said of the Headmaster, who has forbidden any member of the school to communicate with Bishop until matters have been cleared up.

The police were here all day again, three of them, working through the staff, boys, secretaries, and such with the machine efficiency of school inspectors. A helpline has been set up, encouraging boys to confirm anonymously what has already been established. Many boys have called it—most of them to insist that Mr. Bishop couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong. Others are being interviewed in and out of lesson time.

It makes the boys unteachable. My form don’t want to talk about anything else, but as I have been told quite clearly that to discuss the matter might harm Pat’s case, I must insist that they do not. Many of them are deeply upset; I found Brasenose crying in the Middle Corridor toilets during period four Latin, and even Allen-Jones and McNair, who can usually be relied upon to see the ridiculous in most things, were listless and unresponsive. All my form are—even Anderton-Pullitt seems odder than usual and has developed a new, extravagant limp to go with all his other peculiarities.

The most recent word on the grapevine is that Gerry Grachvogel too has been questioned and may be charged. Other, more outrageous rumors are also running, so that according to gossip, all absentee staff members have become suspects.

Devine’s name has been mentioned, and he is absent today, although that in itself shouldn’t mean anything. It’s ridiculous; but it was in the Examiner yesterday morning, citing sources within the school (boys, most probably) and hinting that a pedophile ring of long duration and unprecedented importance has been uncovered within the hallowed portals (sic) of the Dear Old Place.

As I said, ridiculous. I’ve been a Master at St. Oswald’s for thirty-three years, and I know what I’m talking about. Such a thing could never have happened here; not because we think we’re better than anywhere else (whatever the Examiner may think), but simply because in a place like St. Oswald’s, no secret can be kept for long. From Bob Strange, perhaps; rooted in his office working out timetables; or from the Suits, who never see anything unless it comes to them in an e-mail attachment. But from me? From the boys? Never.

Oh, I’ve seen my share of irregular colleagues. There was Dr. Jehu (Oxon.), who turned out afterward to be just plain Mr. Jehu, from the University of Durham, and who had a reputation, it seemed. That was years ago, before such things made the news, and he left quietly and without scandal, as most of them do, with no harm done. Or Mr. Tythe-Weaver, the art teacher who introduced life modeling au naturel. Or Mr. Groper, who developed that unfortunate fixation on a young English student forty years his junior. Or even our own Grachvogel, who all the boys know to be homosexual—and harmless—but who fears terribly for his job if the Governors were to find out. A bit late for that, I’m afraid; but he isn’t a pervert, as the Examiner crowingly suggests. Light may well be a boorish ass, but I don’t think he is any more of a pervert than Grachvogel. Devine? Don’t make me laugh. And as for Bishop—well. I know Bishop. More importantly, the boys know him, love him, and believe me, if there had been any breath of irregularity about him, they would have been the first to scent it out. Boys have an instinct for such things, and in a school like St. Oswald’s, rumors disseminate at epidemic speed. Understand this; I have been teaching alongside Pat Bishop for thirty-three years, and if there had been any kind of truth in these accusations, I would have known. The boys would have told me.

Within the Common Room, however, the polarization continues. Many colleagues will not speak of the matter at all, for fear of being implicated in the scandal. Some (though not many) are openly contemptuous of the accusations. Others take the opportunity to spread quiet, right-thinking slander.

Penny Nation is one of these. I remember the description of her in Keane’s notebook—poisonous do-gooder—and I wonder how I could have worked alongside her for so many years without noticing her essential malice.

“A Second Master should be like the Prime Minister,” she was saying in the Common Room this lunchtime. “Happily married—like Geoff and me.” A quick smile at her Capitaine, today attired in navy pinstripe that perfectly matched Penny’s skirt-and-sweater combination. There was a small silver fish in his lapel. “That way, there’s no possible cause for suspicion, is there?” Penny went on. “In any case, if you’re going to be working with children”—she says the word in a syrupy, Walt Disney voice-over tone, as if the very thought of children makes her want to melt—“then you really need to have one of your own, don’t you?”

That smile again. I wonder if she sees her husband in Pat’s job in some not-too-distant future. He’s certainly ambitious enough; a devout churchgoer; a family man; a gentleman player; a veteran of many courses.

He isn’t the only one with ideas. Eric Scoones has been putting the boot in—rather to my surprise, as I’d always thought of Eric as a fair-minded chap in spite of his resentment at being passed over for promotion. It seems I was wrong; listening to the talk in the Common Room this afternoon I was shocked to hear him siding with the Nations against Hillary Monument—who has always been pro-Pat and who, being at the end of his career, has nothing to lose by nailing his colors to the mast.

“Ten to one we’ll find it’s some ghastly mistake,” Monument was saying. “These computers—who trusts them? Always breaking down. And that—what d’you call it? Spam. That’s it. Ten to one old Pat got some spam in his computer and didn’t know what it was. As for Grachvogel, he hasn’t even been arrested. Questioning, that’s all it is. Helping the police with their enquiries.”

Eric gave a dismissive grunt. “You’ll see,” he said (a man who never uses computers any more than I do myself). “The trouble with you is that you’re too trusting. That’s what they all say, isn’t it, when some bloke gets up on a motorway bridge and shoots ten people dead. It’s always: and he was such a nice chap, isn’t it? Or some scoutmaster who’s been fettling little lads for years—ooh, and the kids loved him, you know, never thought for a minute. That’s the trouble. No one ever thinks. No one thinks it might happen in our own backyard. Besides, what do we really know about Pat Bishop? Oh, he plays it straight—well, he would, wouldn’t he? But what do we really know about him? Or any of our colleagues, for that matter?”

It was a remark that troubled me then, and has continued to do so ever since. Eric’s had run-ins with Pat for years, but I’d always thought, like my own little spats with Dr. Devine, that it was nothing personal. He’s bitter, of course. A good teacher—if a little old-fashioned—and might have made a good Head of Year if he’d made a bit more of an effort with the management. But deep down I’d always thought he was loyal. If ever I’d expected any of my colleagues to stab poor Bishop in the back, it would not have been Eric. Now I’m not so sure; there was a look in his face today in the Common Room that told me more than I’d ever wanted to know about Eric Scoones. He’s always been a gossip, of course; but it has taken me all these years to see the gleeful schadenfreude in my old friend’s eyes.

I am sorry for it. But he was right. What do we really know about our colleagues? Thirty-three years, and what do we know? For me, the unpleasant revelation has not been about Pat at all, but about the rest of them. Scoones. The Nations. Roach, who is terrified that his friendship with Light and Grachvogel might prejudice his case with the police. Beard, who sees the whole business as a personal affront to the IT department. Meek, who merely repeats everything Beard tells him. Easy, who follows the majority. McDonaugh, who announced at break that only a pervert could have appointed that queer Grachvogel in a teaching post anyway.

The worst of it was that no one speaks against them now; even Kitty, who has always been friendly with Gerry Grachvogel and who has invited Bishop to dinner several times, said nothing, but simply looked into her coffee mug with faint distaste and would not meet my eye. She has other things on her mind, I know. Still, it was a moment I could have done without. You may have noticed I’m rather fond of Kitty Teague.

Still, I’m relieved to see that in one or two cases at least, sanity still reigns. Chris Keane and Dianne Dare are among the very few not to have been infected. They were standing by the window as I fetched my tea, still raging against the colleagues who had so summarily condemned Bishop without trial.

“I think everyone’s entitled to a fair hearing,” said Keane, after I had aired my feelings a little more. “I don’t really know Mr. Bishop, of course, but I have to say he doesn’t strike me as the type, somehow.”

“I agree,” said Miss Dare. “Besides, the boys seem genuinely fond of him.”

“They are,” I said loudly, with a defiant glance at the moral majority. “This is a mistake.”

“Or a setup,” said Keane thoughtfully.

“A setup?”

“Why not?” He shrugged. “Someone with a grudge. A discontented staff member. An ex-pupil. Anyone. All you’d need would be access to the school, plus a certain degree of computer literacy—”

Computers. I knew we were better off without them. But Keane’s words had touched a nerve—in fact, I wondered why on earth I hadn’t thought of it myself. Nothing damages a school more cruelly than a sex scandal. Hadn’t something similar happened once at Sunnybank Park? Hadn’t I seen it myself too in the days of the Old Head?

Of course, Shakeshafte’s tastes ran, not to boys, but to secretaries and young female members of staff. Such affairs rarely go beyond the stage of tittle-tattle; they are resolved between adults; they rarely make it outside the gates.

But this is different. The papers have declared open season on the teaching profession. Pedophile stories dominate the popular press. Not a week passes without some new accusation. Head teacher, scoutmaster, police officer, priest. All fair game.

“It’s possible.” That was Meek, who had been following our conversation. I hadn’t expected him to voice an opinion; so far he’d done little but nod energetically every time Beard spoke. “I imagine there are plenty of people who might have a grudge against St. Oswald’s,” went on Meek in his small, colorless voice. “Fallow, for instance. Or Knight.”

“Knight?” There was a silence. In the backwash of the bigger scandal I’d almost forgotten my juvenile runaway. “Knight couldn’t be responsible for any of this.”

“Why not?” said Keane. “He fits the type.”

Oh yes. He fitted. I saw Eric Scoones’s expression darken; he was listening, and I could see from the insouciant looks on my colleagues’ faces that they too were following the exchange. “Staff passwords aren’t difficult to get hold of, either,” said Meek. “I mean, anyone with access to the administration panel—”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Mr. Beard. “Those passwords are absolutely secret.”

“Yours is AMANDA,” said Keane, smiling. “Your daughter’s name. Mr. Bishop’s is GO-JONNY-GO—not much imagination required there, for such a keen rugby fan. Gerry’s is probably something from The X-Files. MULDER, perhaps, or SCULLY—”

Miss Dare laughed. “Tell me,” she said, “are you a professional spy or is it just a hobby?”

“I pay attention,” said Keane.

But Scoones was still unconvinced. “No boy of ours would dare,” he said. “Especially not that little runt.”

“Why not?” said Keane.

“He just wouldn’t,” said Scoones contemptuously. “You need balls to go up against St. Oswald’s.”

“Or brains,” said Keane. “What? You’re really telling me it’s never happened before?”

7

Thursday, 4th November

How very inconvenient. Just as I was about to deal with Bishop too. To make myself feel better I went to the Internet café in town, accessed Knight’s hotmail address (the police must surely be monitoring that by now), and sent out a few nicely abusive e-mails to selected members of St. Oswald’s staff. It gave me an outlet for some of my annoyance and, I trust, will maintain the hope that Knight is still alive.

I then made my way to my own flat, where I e-mailed a new piece from Mole to the Examiner. I sent a text message to Devine’s mobile from Knight’s, and after that I phoned Bishop, adopting an accent and disguising my voice. I was feeling rather better by then—it’s funny how dealing with tedious business can still put you in a good mood—and after a bit of initial heavy breathing I delivered my poisonous message.

I thought his voice sounded thicker than usual, as if he were on some kind of medication. Of course it was almost midnight by then, and he might well have been asleep. I myself don’t need a great deal of sleep—three or four hours are usually ample—and I rarely dream. I’m always rather surprised at the way other people cave in if they haven’t had their eight or ten hours, and most of them seem to spend half the night dreaming; useless, jumbled dreams that they always want to tell other people about afterward. I guessed Bishop was a heavy sleeper; a colorful dreamer; a Freudian analyzer. Not tonight, though. Tonight I thought he might have other things on his mind.

I phoned again an hour later. This time Bishop’s voice was as thick as my father’s after a night on the town. “What do you want?” His bull’s roar, distorted by the line.

“You know what we want.” That we. Always a help when spreading paranoia. “We want justice. We want you dealt with, you filthy pervert.”

By this time, of course, he should have hung up. But Bishop has never been a quick thinker. Instead he blustered, angry; tried to argue. “Anonymous calls? That the best you can do? Let me tell you something—”

“No, Bishop. Let me tell you.” My telephone voice is thin and spidery, cutting through the static. “We know what you’ve been up to. We know where you live. We’ll get you. It’s just a matter of time.”

Click.

Nothing fancy, as you see. But it has already worked marvelously with Grachvogel—who now keeps the phone permanently off the hook. Tonight, in fact, I made a little trip up to his place, just to make sure. At one point I was almost convinced I saw someone peeping out from between the living room curtains, but I was gloved and hooded, and I knew he’d never dare to come out of the house.

Afterward, for the third time, I phoned Bishop.

“We’re getting closer,” I announced in my spidery voice.

“Who are you?” He was alert this time, with a new shrillness to his tone. “What do you want, for God’s sake?”

Click.

Then home, and bed, for the next four hours.

This time, I dreamed.

8

“What’s the matter, Pinchbeck?”

August 23rd; the eve of my thirteenth birthday. We were standing in front of the school Portcullis, a pretentious little add-on from the nineteenth century, which marks the entrance to the Library and the Chapel Gate. It was my favorite part of the school, straight from the pages of a Walter Scott novel, with the school crest in red and gilt above the school motto (quite a recent addition, but a word or two of Latin speaks volumes to the fee-paying parents). Audere, agere, auferre.

Leon grinned at me, his hair hanging disreputably in his eyes. “Admit it, Queenie,” he said in a mocking tone. “Looks a lot higher from down here, doesn’t it?”

I shrugged. His teasing was harmless enough for the moment, but I could read the signs. If I weakened, if I seemed in the least bit annoyed at his use of that silly nickname, then he would strike with the full force of his sarcasm and contempt.

“It’s a long way up,” I said carelessly. “But I’ve been there before. It’s easy when you know how.”

“Really?” I could see he didn’t believe me. “Show me, then.”

I didn’t want to. My father’s passkeys were a secret I had never meant to reveal to anyone, not even (and perhaps especially not) Leon. But still I could feel them, deep in my jeans pocket, daring me to say it, to share it, to cross that final, forbidden line.

Leon was watching me like a housecat who isn’t sure whether he wants to play with the mouse or unravel its guts. I had a sudden, overpowering memory of him in the garden with Francesca, one hand laid casually over one of hers, his skin tawny-green in the dappled shade. No wonder he loved her. How could I possibly compete? She had shared something with him, a secret, a thing of power that I could never hope to duplicate.

Or maybe now, I could.

“Wow.” Leon’s eyes widened as he saw the keys. “Where did you get those?”

“Nicked them,” I said. “Off Big John’s desk, at the end of term.” In spite of myself, I grinned at the look on my friend’s face. “Had them copied at the key place at lunchtime, them put them back right where I found them.” That was mostly true; I’d had it done just after that last disaster, while my father lay despondent and blind drunk in his bedroom. “Slack bastard never noticed.”

Now Leon was watching me with a new light in his eyes. It was admiring, but it made me a little uneasy too. “Well, well,” he said at last. “And there I was thinking you were just another little Lower School squirt with no ideas and no balls. And you never told anyone?”

I shook my head.

“Well, good for you,” said Leon softly, and slowly his face lit with his tenderest, most captivating smile. “It’s our secret, then.”

There is something ultimately magical in the sharing of secrets. I felt it then, as I showed Leon around my empire, in spite of the accompanying pang of regret. The passageways and alcoves, the hidden rooftops and secret cellars of St. Oswald’s were no longer mine. Now they belonged to Leon as well.

We went out via a window on the Upper Corridor. I had already turned off the burglar alarm in our part of the school before locking the door carefully behind us. It was late; eleven o’clock at least, and my father’s rounds were long finished. No one would come at this time. No one would suspect our presence.

The window gave onto the Library roof. I climbed out with practiced ease; grinning, Leon followed. Here was a gentle slope of thick, mossy stone tiles, pitching down to a deep, lead-lined gutter. There was a walkway all around this gutter, designed so that a Porter might follow it with a broom, removing the accumulated leaves and detritus, although my father’s fear of heights meant that he had never attempted this. As far as I could tell he had never even checked the leadwork, and as a result the gutters were filled with silt and debris.

I looked up. The moon was nearly full, magical against a purple-brown sky. From time to time little clouds smudged across it, but it was still bright enough to underline every chimney, every gutter and slate in indigo ink. Behind me, I heard Leon draw a long, wavering breath. “Wow!”

I looked down; far beneath me I could see the gatehouse, all lit up like a Christmas lantern. My father would be there, watching TV perhaps, or doing press-ups in front of the mirror. He didn’t seem to mind my being out at night; it had been months since he had questioned where I went and with whom.

“Wow,” repeated Leon.

I grinned, feeling absurdly proud, as if I had built it all myself. I grabbed hold of a climbing rope that I had strung into place a few months before, and hoisted myself up onto the ridge. The chimneys towered over me like kings, their heavy crowns black against the sky. Above them, the stars.

“Come on!”

I teetered, arms spread, gathering in the night. For a second I felt as if I could step right out into the spangled air and fly, like Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys.

“Come on!”

Slowly, Leon followed me. Moonlight made ghosts of both of us. His face was pale and blank—a child’s face of wonder. “Wow.”

“That’s not all.”

Emboldened by success, I led him onto the walkway; a broad path inked by shadows. I held his hand; he did not question it but followed me, docile, one arm held out across the tightrope space. Twice I warned him; a loose stone here, a broken ladder there.

“Just how long have you been coming here, anyway?”

“A while.”

“Jesus.”

“D’you like it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

After half an hour of climbing and scrambling, we stopped to rest on the flat, broad parapet above the Chapel roof. The heavy stone slates kept the day’s heat, and even now they were still warm. We lay on the parapet, gargoyles at our feet. Leon produced a pack of cigarettes, and we shared one, watching the town, spread out like a blanket of lights.

“This is amazing. I can’t believe you never said.”

“Told you now, haven’t I?”

“Hm.”

He was lying beside me; hands tucked behind his head. One elbow touched mine; I could feel its pressure, like a point of heat.

“Imagine having sex up here,” he said. “You could stay all night if you wanted to, and no one would ever know.” I thought his tone was slightly reproachful; imagining nights with lovely Francesca in the shadow of the rooftop kings.

“I guess.”

I didn’t want to think of that—of them. The knowledge—like an express train—passed silently between us. His closeness was unbearable; it itched like a nettle rash. I could smell his sweat and the cigarette smoke and the slightly oily, musky scent of his too-long hair. He was staring up at the sky, his eyes brimful of stars.

Slyly I put out my hand; felt his shoulder in five little pinpoints of heat at my fingertips. Leon did not react. Slowly I opened my hand; my hand trespassed across his sleeve, his arm, his chest. I was not thinking; my hand seemed divorced from my body.

“Do you miss her? Francesca, I mean?” My voice trembled, catching at the end of the phrase in an involuntary squeak.

Leon grinned. His own voice had broken months before, and he loved to tease me about my immaturity. “Aw, Pinchbeck. You’re such a kid.”

“I was only asking.”

“A little kid.”

“Shut up, Leon.”

“Did you think it was the real deal? Moonlight and morons and love and romance? Jesus, Pinchbeck, how banal can you get?”

“Shut up, Leon.” My face burned; I thought of starlight; winter; ice.

He laughed. “Sorry to disillusion you, Queenie.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, love, for Christ’s sake. She was just a shag.”

That shocked me. “She wasn’t.” I thought of Francesca; her tawny hair; her languid limbs. I thought of Leon and of everything I had sacrificed for him; for romance; for the anguish and exhilaration of sharing his passion. “You know she wasn’t. And don’t call me Queenie.”

“Or what?” Now he sat up, eyes shining.

“Come on, Leon. Don’t muck about.”

“You thought she was the first, didn’t you?” He grinned. “Oh, Pinchbeck. Grow up. You’re starting to sound just like her, you know. I mean, look at you, getting all worked up about it, trying to cure me of my broken heart, as if I could ever care that much about a girl—”

“But you said—”

“I was winding you up, moron. Couldn’t you tell?”

Blankly, I shook my head.

Leon punched my arm, not without affection. “Queenie. You’re such a romantic. And she was sort of sweet, even if she was only a girl. But she wasn’t the first. Not even the best I’ve had, to be honest. And definitely—definitely—not the last.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“You don’t? Listen, kid.” Laughing, full of energy now, the fine hairs on his arms bleached-blackened silver in the moonlight. “Did I ever tell you why I got chucked out of my last school?”

“No. Why?”

“I shagged a Master, Queenie. Mr. Weeks, metalwork. In the shop, after hours. No end of a fuss—”

“No!” Now I began to laugh with him in sheer outrage.

“Said he loved me. Stupid bugger. Wrote me letters.”

“No.” Eyes wide. “No!”

“No one blamed me. Corruption, they said. Susceptible lad, dangerous pervert. Identity undisclosed to protect the innocent. It was all over the papers at the time.”

“Wow.” There was no doubt in my mind he was telling the truth. It explained so much; his indifference; his sexual precocity; his daring. God, his daring. “What happened?”

Leon shrugged. “Pactum factum. Bugger went down. Seven years. Felt a bit sorry for him, really.” He smiled indulgently. “He was all right, Mr. Weeks. Used to take me to clubs and everything. Ugly, though. Big fat gut on him. And old—I mean, thirty—”

“God, Leon!”

“Yeah, well. You don’t have to look. And he gave me stuff—money, CDs, this watch that cost like five hundred quid—”

“No!”

“Anyway, my mum went spare. I had to have counseling, and everything. Might have scarred me, Mother says. I might never recover.”

“And what was it—” My head was reeling with the night and with his revelations. I swallowed, dry-throated. “What was it—”

“Like?” He turned to me, grinning, and pulled me toward him. “You mean, you want to know what was it like?”

Time lurched. An adventure-story enthusiast, I had read a great deal about time stopping still; as in: “for an instant time stopped still as the cannibals crept closer to the helpless boys.” In this case, however, I distinctly felt it lurch, like a goods train in a hurry pulling out of a station. Once more I was disconnected; my hands like birds swooping and fluttering; Leon’s mouth on mine, his hands on mine, pulling at my clothes with delicious intent.

He was still laughing; a boy of light and darkness; a ghost; and beneath me I could feel the rough boy-warmth of the roof slates, the delightful friction of skin against fabric. I felt close to oblivion; thrilled and terrified; revolted and delirious with irrational joy. My sense of danger had evaporated; I was nothing but skin; every inch a million points of helpless sensation. Random thoughts flitted across my mind like fireflies.

He had never loved her.

Love was banal.

He could never care that much for a girl.

Oh, Leon. Leon.

He shed his shirt; struggled with my fly; all the time I was laughing and crying and he was talking and laughing; words I could barely hear above the seismic pounding of my heart.

Then it stopped.

Just like that. Freeze-frame on our naked, half-naked selves; I in the pillar of shadow that ran alongside the tall chimney stack; he in the moonlight, a statue of ice. Yin and yang; my face illuminated; his darkening in surprise; shock; anger.

“Leon—”

“Jesus.”

“Leon, I’m sorry, I should have—”

“Jesus!” He recoiled; his hands held out now as if to ward me off. “Jesus, Pinchbeck—”

Time. Time lurched. His face, scarred with hate and disgust. His hands, pushing me away into the dark.

Words struggled in me like tadpoles in a too-small jar. Nothing came out. Losing balance, I fell back against the chimney stack, not speaking, not crying, not even angry. That came later.

“You little pervert!” Leon’s voice, wavering, incredulous. “You fucking—little pervert!”

The contempt, the hatred in that voice told me everything I needed to know. I wailed aloud; a long, desperate wail of bitterness and loss, and then I ran, my sneakers fast and quiet on the mossy slates, over the parapet and along the walkway.

Leon followed me, swearing, heavy with rage. But he didn’t know the rooftops. I heard him, far behind, stumbling, crashing heedlessly across the tiles in pursuit. Slates fell in his wake, exploding like mortars into the courtyard below. Crossing over from the Chapel side he skidded and fell; a chimney broke his fall; the impact seemed to shudder through every gutter, every brick and pipe. I grabbed hold of an elder tree, spindly branches poking out of a long-blocked drainage grate, and hoisted myself farther up. Behind me, Leon scrabbled higher, grunting obscenities.

I ran on instinct; there was no point in trying to reason with him now. My father’s rages were just the same; and in my mind I was nine again, ducking the deadly arc of his fist. Later, perhaps, I could explain to Leon. Later, when he had had time to think. For the moment all I wanted was to get away.

I did not waste time trying to get back to the Library window. The Bell Tower was closer, with its little balconies half-rotten with lichen and pigeon droppings. The Bell Tower was another St. Oswald’s conceit; a little arched boxlike structure, which, to my knowledge, had never housed a bell. Down one side ran a steep-slanting lead gutter, leading to an overflow pipe that shot rainwater out into a deep and pigeon-stinking well between the buildings. On the other side the drop was sheer; a narrow ledge was all that stood between the trespasser and the North Quad, some two hundred feet below.

Carefully, I looked down.

I knew from my travels across the roofscape that Straitley’s room was just below me, and that the window that gave onto its crumbling balcony was loose. I teetered on the walkway, trying to gauge the distance from where I was standing, then jumped lightly onto the parapet, then down into the shelter of the small balcony.

The window, as I’d hoped, was easy to force open. I scrambled through, heedless of the broken catch that gouged my back, and at once the burglar alarm sounded, a high, unbearable squealing that deafened and disoriented me.

Panicked, I wriggled back the way I had come. In the Quad below, the security lights popped on, and I ducked down to escape the harsh illumination, cursing helplessly.

Everything was wrong. I had disabled the alarm in the Library wing; but in my panic and confusion I had forgotten that the Bell Tower’s alarm was still on; and now the siren was screaming, screaming like the golden bird in Jack and the Beanstalk, there was no way my father could miss it, and Leon was still up here with me somewhere, Leon was trapped—

I stood on the balcony and jumped across onto the walkway, looking down as I did into the illuminated Quad. Two figures stood there, looking up, their giant shadows fanning around them like a hand of cards. I ducked into the shelter of the Bell Tower, crawled forward to the edge of the roof, and glanced down once again.

Pat Bishop was watching me from the courtyard, my father at his side.

9

“There. Up there.” Radio voices across a far distance. I’d ducked back, of course, but Bishop had seen the movement, the round dark head against the luminous sky. “Boys on the roof.”

Boys. Of course, he’d assumed that.

“How many boys?” That was Bishop; younger then, tense and fit and only slightly red-faced.

“Don’t know, sir. I’d say at least two.”

Once more I dared a glance below. My father was still watching, his white face upturned and blind. Bishop was already moving fast. He moved like a bear; heavy, all muscle. My father followed him at a slower pace, his huge shadow doubled and trebled by the lights. I did not bother to watch them anymore. I knew already where they were heading.

My father had turned off the burglar alarm. The megaphone was Bishop’s idea; he used it on Sports Days and fire drills, and it made his voice impossibly nasal and penetrating.

“You boys!” he began. “Stay where you are! Do not attempt to climb down! Help is on the way!”

That’s how Bishop spoke in a crisis; like a character from some American action movie. I could tell he was enjoying his role; the newly appointed Second Master; man of action; troubleshooter; counselor to the world.

In fifteen years he has hardly changed—that particular brand of righteous arrogance seldom does. Even then he thought he could put things right with nothing but a megaphone and a few glib words.

It was one-thirty; the moon had set; the sky, never quite dark at that time of year, had taken on a sheer translucent glow. Above me, somewhere on the Chapel roof, Leon was waiting; cool, collected; sitting it out. Someone had called the fire brigade; already I could hear sirens in the distance, Dopplering toward us. Soon, we would be overrun.

“Indicate your position!” Bishop again, wielding his megaphone with a flourish. “Repeat, indicate your position!”

Still nothing from Leon. I wondered whether he had managed to find the Library window on his own; whether he was trapped or running silently down the corridors, looking for a way out.

Somewhere above me a slate rattled. There came a slithering sound—his trainers against the lead gutter. And now I could see him too—just a glimpse of his head above the Chapel parapet. As I watched he began to move—so slowly that it was almost imperceptible—onto the narrow walkway that led toward the Bell Tower.

It made sense, I thought. He must have known that the Library window option was impossible now; that low, slanting roof ran right alongside the Chapel building, and he would be in plain sight if he tried. The Bell Tower was higher, but more secure; up there he would be able to hide. I was on the other side, however; if I joined him from where I was standing, I would be instantly visible from below. I resolved to go around, to take the long way across the Observatory roof and join him in the shadows where we could hide.

“Boys! Listen!” It was Bishop’s voice, so highly amplified that I clapped my hands over my ears. “You’re not in any trouble!” I turned away to hide a nervous grin; he was so convincing that he almost convinced himself. “Just stay where you are! Repeat! Stay where you are!”

Leon, of course, was not fooled. The system, we knew, was run on such platitudes.

“You’re not in any trouble!” I imagined Leon’s grin at that perennial lie and felt a sudden pain in my heart that I was not there with him to share his amusement. It would have been so fine, I thought; Butch and Sundance trapped on the roof, two rebels defying the combined forces of St. Oswald’s and the law.

But now . . . It struck me then that I had more than one reason for not wanting Leon caught. My own position was far from secure; a word, a single glimpse of me, and my cover was blown forever. There was no getting round it—after this, Pinchbeck would have to disappear. Of course, he could, quite easily. Only Leon had any inkling that he was anything more than a ghost; a fake; a thing of rags and stuffing.

At the time, however, I felt little fear on my own account. I knew the roof better than anyone, and as long as I kept hidden, I might still escape discovery. But if Leon spoke to my father—if either of them made the connection—

It wasn’t the imposture that would provoke the outrage. It was the challenge. To St. Oswald’s; to the system; to everything. I could see it now; the enquiry; the evening papers; the squib in the national press.

I could have lived with punishment—I was thirteen, for God’s sake, what could they do to me?—but it was the ridicule I feared. That, and the contempt; and the knowledge that in spite of everything, St. Oswald’s had won.

I could just see my father standing, shoulders hunched, looking up at the roof. I sensed his dismay; not just at the attack on St. Oswald’s, but at the duty that now awaited him. John Snyde was never quick; but he was thorough, in his way, and there was no doubt in his mind as to what he should do.

“I’ll have to go after them.” His voice, faint but clearly audible, reached me from the Quad below.

“What’s that?” Bishop, in his eagerness to play the man of action, had completely overlooked the simplest solution. The fire brigade had not yet arrived; the police, always overworked, had not even looked in.

“I’ll have to go up there. It’s my job.” His voice was stronger—a St. Oswald’s Porter has to be strong. I remembered that from Bishop’s lectures We count on you, John. St. Oswald’s counts on you to Do Your Duty.

At a glance, Bishop measured the distance. I could see him working it out; clocking the angles. Boys on the roof; man on the ground; Head Porter in between. He wanted to go up himself—of course he did—but if he left his post, who would wield the megaphone? Who would deal with the emergency team? Who would take control?

“Don’t spook them. Don’t get too close. Take care—all right? Cover the fire escape. Get on the roof. I’ll talk them down.”

Talk them down. There’s another Bishop phrase, with its action-man overtones. He, who would have liked nothing better than to climb up onto the Chapel roof—possibly abseiling down again with an unconscious boy in his arms—could have had no inkling of the effort—the astonishing effort—it took for my father to agree.

I’d never actually used the fire escape. I preferred my less conventional routes; the Library window; the Bell Tower; the skylight in the glass-fronted art studio, which gave access onto a slim metal joist that ran from the art block to the Observatory.

John Snyde knew nothing of these, nor would he have used them if he had. Small for my age, I was already getting too heavy to balance on glass, or to scramble through ivy onto the narrowest of ledges. I knew that in all his years as a St. Oswald’s Porter, he had never ventured as far as the fire escape on the Middle Corridor, let alone the precarious complex of gutters and pavements beyond. I was willing to gamble he would not do so now; or that if he did, he wouldn’t go far.

I looked across the roofscape in the direction of the Middle Corridor. There it was, the fire escape; a dinosaur skeleton strung out across the drop. It was in poor shape—bubbles of rust bursting through the thick paint—but it looked strong enough to take a man’s weight. Would he dare? I asked myself. And if he did, what would I do?

I considered climbing back toward the Library window, but it was too risky, too visible from the ground. Instead I used another run, teetering on a long joist between two large art-room skylights before climbing across the Observatory roof and up through the main gully back toward the Chapel. I knew a dozen possible means of escape. I had my keys, and I knew every cupboard, every passage and back stair. Leon and I need never be caught. In spite of myself I was excited; I could almost see our friendship renewed, the silly quarrel forgotten in the face of this greater adventure—

By now the fire escape was safely out of range; however, for a minute or two I knew I would be in full sight of the Quad. The risk was small, however. Silhouetted against the moonless sky, there was little chance of my being recognized by anyone from the courtyard below.

I ran for it then, my sneakers holding firm to the mossy slope. Below me, I could hear Bishop with his megaphone—Stay where you are! Help is on its way!—but I knew he hadn’t seen me. Now I reached the dinosaur’s spine, the ridge that dominated the main building, and stopped, straddling it. There was no sign of Leon. I guessed him to be hiding on the far side of the Bell Tower, where there was the most cover, and where, if he kept his head down, he would not be visible from the ground.

Quickly, on all fours, I monkeyed along the ridge. As I passed into the shade of the Bell Tower I looked back, but there was no sign of my father, either on the fire escape or on the walkway. Nor was there yet any sign of Leon. Now I reached the Bell Tower, jumped the familiar well between it and the Chapel roof, then from the comforting flag of shadow surveyed my rooftop empire. I risked a low call. “Leon!”

No reply. My pale voice ribboned out in the misty night.

“Leon!”

Then I saw him, flattened against the parapet twenty feet ahead of me, head craning like a gargoyle’s to the scene below.

“Leon.”

He’d heard me, I knew it; but he did not move. I began to climb toward him, keeping low. It could still work; I could show him the window; lead him to where he could hide; and then bring him out, unseen and unsuspected, when the coast was clear. I wanted to tell him that, but I wondered too whether he would listen.

I crept closer; below, the deafening yawn of the megaphone. Then, sudden lights harrowed the rooftop in red and blue; for a second I saw Leon’s shadow shoot over the roof, then he was down flat again, swearing. The fire engines had arrived.

“Leon.”

Still nothing. Leon seemed mortared to the parapet. The voice from the megaphone was a giant blur of vowels that rolled over us like boulders.

“You there! Don’t move! Stay where you are!”

I ducked my head over the parapet, visible, I knew, only as a dark protrusion among so many others. From my aerie I could see the squat form of Pat Bishop, the long neon gleam of the fire engine, the dark butterfly-shadowed figures of the men surrounding it.

Leon’s face was expressionless, a mushroom in shadow. “You little shit.”

“Come on, man,” I said. “There’s still time.”

“Time for what? A quick shag?”

“Leon, please. It’s not what you think.”

“No, really?” He began to laugh.

“Please, Leon. I know a way out. But we’ve got to hurry. My dad’s on his way—”

A silence, long as the grave.

Below us, the voices, all blurred together like bonfire smoke. Above us now, the Bell Tower with its overlooking balcony. In front of us, the well separating Bell Tower and Chapel roof; a stinking siphon-shaped depression, lined with gutters and pigeons’ nests, which sloped down to the narrow gullet between the buildings.

“Your dad?” echoed Leon.

Then came a sound from the rooftop behind us. I turned and saw a man on the walkway, blocking our escape. Fifty feet of roof lay between us; though the walkway was broad, the man shook and faltered as if on a tightrope, hands clenched, face stiff with concentration as he inched forward to intercept us.

“Stay there,” he said. “I’m coming to get you.”

It was John Snyde.

He couldn’t have seen our faces, then. We were both in shadow. Two ghosts on the rooftop—we could make it, I knew. The well that separated Chapel from Bell Tower was deep, but its throat was narrow—five feet at its widest point. I’d jumped it myself more times than I could remember, and even in the dark I knew the risk was small. My father would never dare follow us there. We could scramble up the roof’s incline, balance along the Bell Tower ledge, and jump onto the balcony, as I’d done before. From there, I knew a hundred places for us to hide.

I did not think beyond that. Once more in my mind we were Butch and Sundance; freeze-framed in the moment; forever heroes. All we needed was to make the jump.

I like to think I hesitated. That my actions were in some way determined by thought, and not the blind instinct of an animal on the run. But everything after that exists in a kind of vacuum. Perhaps that was the very moment when I ceased to dream; perhaps in that instant I experienced all the dream time I was ever likely to need; an end to dreams for the rest of my life.

At the time, though, it felt like waking up. Waking up all the way, after years of dreaming. Disconnected thoughts shot across my mind like meteors against a summer sky.

Leon, laughing, his mouth against my hair.

Leon and me, on the ride-on mower.

Leon and Francesca, whom he had never loved.

St. Oswald’s, and how close—how very close—I had come to winning the game.

Time stopped. In space, I hung like a cross of stars. On the one side, Leon. On the other, my father. As I said, I like to think I hesitated.

Then I looked at Leon.

Leon looked back.

We jumped.