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with a mother, one a father.’
    Jacquie shrugged her assent. ‘Right, so that blows our first theory out of the water.’
    ‘Never mind.’ Henry Hall knew how irritating that could be. ‘What was your second theory?’
    ‘I don’t think we had one, as such.’
    Hall pushed himself back from his desk and picked up the folder. He handed it across the desk to Jacquie and, as she took it, she felt it momentarily turn into a poisoned chalice.
    ‘Is anyone else working on this one, guv?’ she asked, hopefully.
    ‘Not as such,’ he admitted.
    ‘So, I’m on my own?’
    ‘Well, obviously you can have help as and when you need it,’ he said magnanimously.
    ‘Lovely,’ muttered Jacquie, and turned to the door. ‘Who is taking my burglary off me?’
    ‘Look, Jacquie,’ Hall said. ‘I don’t want tooverburden you, but I must admit I have a sneaking suspicion even now that this might be a hoax. Don’t rush on this. Do your burglary first.’
    ‘Thanks, guv,’ she said. ‘Any chance of a quiet room to work?’
    ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, ushering her out. The feeling that the whole thing had gone quite well wouldn’t quite come together in his mind. He felt like a bit of a shit, truth be told, and someone would be getting it in the neck, just to pass it on. ‘I’ll get Matt out of his office. He doesn’t need it now he’s finished that drug thing. I’ll go and tell him now.’
    ‘Oh, thanks.’ Jacquie wasn’t happy with getting the rough end of the stick, but the rough end of the stick had fewer splinters when you were holding it in the corner office one floor up from the hoi polloi. As she went back to her desk, she heard the door to the stairs swing to behind Henry Hall. Fortunately, she couldn’t hear the shouts when Matt was thrown out of his nest; he was calling her a lot of things, but ‘cuckoo’ wasn’t one of them.
     
    Maxwell made his way to his office through a thicket of concerned women. The rumour of the content of Jacquie’s calls trying to reach Maxwell had spread school-wide. It had not reached the dizzy heights of the nick, having stopped short at the steamroller. The reduced severity was offset by the fact that whereas Jacquie worked with aboutseven women, Maxwell had a total of around five hundred to wade through.
    ‘Sir, sir, is your little boy all right, sir?’
    ‘Is it true you were in hiding, sir, when your wife tried to phone you?’ This one from one of the boys, of course.
    ‘Sir, sir …’
    Maxwell turned to face the mob. He knew they meant well. He knew that if he had a Kalashnikov right now, Leighford High School would be another victim of falling rolls. ‘Ladies and …’ he looked around. Just the one boy. Not much of a surprise. ‘Gentleman. Nolan is fine. He took a bit of a tumble at school and needed a few stitches. That’s all. There will be another press statement on the hour.’
    ‘Aaah,’ came as a general comment from the crowd.
    ‘He hasn’t hurt his face, has he?’ said a mascaraed ghoul midway back in the press. ‘He’s ever so pretty.’
    ‘No, Holly-Jane,’ Maxwell said. ‘Thank you for the compliment, though I think he might prefer handsome. He’ll just have a scar under his chin.’ Two hundred heads tilted back to salute the club. ‘Yes, exactly. Just like yours. At the moment he’s a bit sore, but he’s back at his pre-school, so don’t worry. I’ll pass on your regards. Now, off you go. You must have
something
you should be doing. Even here.’
    Muttering mumsily, the crowd dispersed and Maxwell made his way to the staffroom, that haven of sanity in the middle of Bedlam. While the doors were still swinging behind him, there was an indrawn breath as everyone prepared the same question. He got in fast with the stock answer and, grabbing a coffee from the machine, went to sit next to Sylvia Matthews, a calm centre in an hysterical world. On the walls around him the NUT posters demanded a four-day week, a ten per cent pay