A Deadly Lesson. Paul Gitsham

It was going to take some time to get used to his replacement.

      Warren slipped his own paper suit on quickly and efficiently, although as usual he needed to lean against the wall whilst manoeuvring the plastic booties over his shoes.

      ‘What have we got?’ asked Warren as he stood on the threshold of the late deputy head’s office.

      Crime Scene Manager Andy Harrison’s portly shape and Yorkshire accent made him recognisable even in his protective suit.

      ‘The deceased was found where she’s lying now, face down on this desk. According to Mr Ball, the desk was as you see it, and is uncharacteristically messy. Obviously, a full post-mortem will be needed, but preliminary indications are strangulation, probably by some sort of rough rope. You can see that by the marks on her throat.’ He held up a handheld infra-red gun. ‘Her core temperature is down eight degrees. It’s not a very reliable indicator, as you know, but my gut feeling is that she was killed last night, rather than this morning.’

      Warren looked around the room. The desk was a cheap, pine version, with a built-in set of three drawers by the occupant’s right knee. It had been positioned directly in front of the window, so that anyone working at it sat with their back to the door. In the centre of the room was a round wooden table flanked by two padded visitors’ chairs.

      Jillian Gwinnett’s head rested barely an inch from the open laptop’s keyboard. An upturned pencil pot had scattered its contents across the rest of the desk, and a pile of papers had been knocked so that half were on the edge of the table, and the remainder on the floor beneath.

      To the left of the room, and behind the victim, was an open archway. Warren walked across and looked into what seemed to be a narrow waiting room of sorts. Three hard-looking plastic chairs sat facing a wall adorned with a picture of Jesus and a pinboard covered in posters primarily dedicated to school rules. Four tall filing cabinets took up the remaining space. There was no natural light.

      Harrison had followed him.

      ‘I reckon this probably used to be a classroom, and that was the stockroom. Now it’s a waiting area for naughty kids.’

      ‘Could the killer have hidden in here?’ asked Warren.

      ‘Quite possibly. There’s no sign of forced entry, of either the office door or the window. The door has an electronic lock on it.’

      ‘So either the killer was already in this little corner area waiting for her, they entered with her, or they came in through the door and surprised her?’

      ‘I can’t imagine that they were able to surprise her, unless the victim was deaf. The electronic lock makes a loud whirring noise and an electronic beep for good measure.’

      ‘So that means they either came in with her – and so she knew her killer – or they were already in here, waiting for her.’

      ‘We’ll use UV to see if we can find any footwear impressions to give us a clue where the killer stood, but I wouldn’t bank on it with this type of carpet.’

      ‘What about other points of entry?’

      ‘The office is self-contained, with no connecting doors. The windows are double-glazed and can only be opened a few inches. There’s no sign that they’ve been forced wider than they should be.’

      ‘And what about exiting?’

      ‘You use a swipe card to enter, but there’s a mechanical handle to exit for fire safety. The victim still has her card. Even assuming that there’s a log kept of entry and exit, it would be easy to either walk in with someone else, or have them open the door to let you in.’

      ‘Anything else?’

      Harrison pointed to the desk.

      ‘The laptop is still switched on, but has powered down to hibernate mode. If Forensic IT can figure out when that happened, it might put some brackets around the time of death.’

      Warren made another note.

      ‘Any idea where the killer was standing?’

      ‘Assuming she wasn’t moved post-mortem, I imagine the killer stood directly behind her. Again, we’ll use the UV to see if we can find any footwear impressions.’

      ‘Any sign of the murder weapon?’

      ‘No rope at the scene. The pathologist is due in the next half-hour. When the body’s gone, we can do a proper finger-printing and trace evidence collection. I’ll try and send you a preliminary report by the end of today.’

      Warren recognised a dismissal when he heard one.

      * * *

      A murder inside a school, even out of hours, was the very definition of a major incident. There was no keeping it quiet; the first pupils were turned away by shellshocked staff – thus starting the social media rumour mill – before Warren had even been called.

      By 9.30 a.m., local media had got wind that something big was happening at the school, and by 10 a.m., the first long-distance images showing the activity around the school’s main entrance were being shown on the national 24-hour news channels. Nobody had released any information to the press yet, but that didn’t stop theories, ranging from a terrorist incident to a multiple shooting, being given airtime.

      In the briefing room at Middlesbury CID, Warren was more interested in dealing with facts.

      ‘The deceased is Ms Jillian Gwinnet, fifty-three years old and the deputy head of Sacred Heart Catholic Academy. She’d been in that post eight years, and at the school for seventeen in total. Her main subject specialism was Religious Studies, which she still taught on a reduced timetable. She was the member of senior staff specifically in charge of staff recruitment and wellbeing and she also took the lead on the most serious pupil discipline issues as well as child protection and safeguarding. Apparently, Ms Gwinnett was the one that the kids feared being sent to.

      ‘Time of death is believed to be some time last night, rather than early this morning. She was unmarried and lived alone, so nobody reported her missing when she didn’t come home yesterday. We’re checking that with her neighbours.

      ‘She was last seen at about 6.30 p.m. by other colleagues, after a Senior Leadership Team meeting. They said that after the meeting concluded she went back to her office. By all accounts, she was the type of person who’d rather stay late than take marking home with her. Her car was still in its usual place when the last of her colleagues left, and appears to have been there overnight. We’re putting together a timeline at the moment.’

      ‘Any motives yet?’ asked DS David Hutchinson.

      ‘So far, nobody has a bad word to say about her, but it’s early days.’

      Warren moved to the whiteboard.

      ‘First priority is interviewing all staff. That includes teachers, governors and support staff, both office and non-office based. I want to know where they were and what they were doing the previous day. Until we get a firmer time of death, we are assuming she was killed late evening, sometime after she left her meeting. Tony, I want you to take a lead on that. Organise a team from Welwyn and start doing preliminary interviews; see if you can get voluntary DNA and fingerprint samples. Flag anyone you are unhappy about for a further look. Liaise with Rachel to run names through the computer, and start generating Actions.’

      ‘Will do,’ replied DI Tony Sutton.

      DS Rachel Pymm, the team’s officer in the case – the person responsible for organising all of the information flowing into the investigation – nodded her agreement, already making notes on her tablet computer.

      ‘It sounds as though CCTV at the school is limited, but let’s collect what we can. Can you also source footage from the local area and traffic video, Mags? See which registration plates were picked up on the ANPR cameras in the area. Pass it on to Rachel for cross-referencing against what the interviewees tell Tony.’

      DS Mags Richardson was also