Read Online White Rage by Campbell Armstrong - Free Book Online Page B

eyelids. ‘Really I did. Built it up from … Worked hours, long hours. It isn’t easy. Handling parents and children. Finding staff.’
    â€˜Tell me about Indra,’ he said.
    â€˜Indra? Oh, the kids adored her. She was gentle. She enjoyed her work.’
    â€˜What about her personal life?’
    Amy Blyth replaced her glasses. The lenses made her brown eyes look very big. ‘I make it a rule not to intrude in the private lives of my staff, unless there are exceptional circumstances.’
    â€˜I’ll need her address.’
    â€˜I have her file here.’ Amy Blyth opened a drawer of her desk and took out a manila folder, which she slid towards Perlman.
    He picked it up. ‘I have to borrow this,’ he said. ‘Has anyone contacted Indra’s family?’
    â€˜I think one of the teachers did.’ Amy fingered her crucifix, a small gesture of uncertainty.
    Perlman tucked the folder under his arm. ‘I’ll get this back to you.’ He stepped from the room, shut the door, walked into the corridor. A small boy emerged from a toilet and almost collided with him.
    â€˜You in a big hurry, wee man?’ Perlman asked.
    â€˜Going home,’ the boy said. Gaun hame . He had untidy red hair and freckles and green eyes, and he wore a blue pullover and flannel shorts. A Glasgow face, Perlman thought. He’d seen this boy thousands of times in different incarnations, in buses, on street corners, a face in a crowd on the way to a football match.
    â€˜Somebody kilt Mizz Gupta,’ the boy said.
    â€˜Did you see it happen?’
    â€˜Aye. Man had a gun. Know what he said?’
    Perlman leaned down, bringing his face level with that of the child. ‘Tell me.’
    The kid whispered. ‘Are you pishing your knickers.’
    Absent-mindedly, Perlman removed a length of white thread attached to the boy’s sweater. ‘He said this to Miss Gupta?’
    â€˜Aye.’ The kid ran off down the corridor.
    Perlman watched him go. Are you pishing your knickers . Was that some nasty jibe before the trigger was pulled and the gun exploded? A moment of verbal brutality imposed upon Indra Gupta before she died? Think about that. A young woman is staring into a gun and her killer is goading her. What does that tell you about your man, Lou? Cruel. Granted. But what else?
    Something more. He enjoyed killing Indra Gupta. He made sport of it. He prolonged it. A fucking sadist.
    He found Sandy Scullion inside the murder room. The technical people had gone. There was no sign of Mary Gibson. Sandy sat squeezed behind one of the small wooden desks. He looked grotesquely huge.
    â€˜The Inspector relives his childhood,’ Perlman said.
    â€˜I was trying to imagine everything that happened here through a kid’s eyes. But I’ve forgotten how a child sees the world.’
    â€˜It’s called growing old. It’s the deal you get the day you’re born. The nappy, then the shroud.’
    â€˜It’s happening faster than I like,’ Scullion said.
    â€˜You know what it does to me when a thirty-six-year-old man such as yourself tells me he’s getting up in years? I feel like I’m a Polygrip junkie in Weetabix City.’
    Scullion got up from the desk, stretched his legs. ‘When I was four or five I wanted to be a bus conductor. Instead, here I am at a murder scene in a kindergarten. At some point I’ll go back to Pitt Street and stick coloured pins into wall maps and talk to forensic guys and collate facts – which is a far cry from how I saw my life.’
    Perlman surveyed the classroom, his eyes drawn to the blood on the blackboard. A gunshot. A young woman falls dead. Little kids scream and cry. He imagined echoes. He didn’t like the sounds they made in his head. He remembered something, a flicker out of childhood. ‘My earliest ambition was to be a rabbi.’
    â€˜What stopped you?’
    â€˜An awful