Chapter Five Out Field
Chapter five
Out Field
Warren’s first week had been exhausting.
But not bad.
He’d enjoyed it. More than he’d expected to.
There was something about slipping back into the rhythm of it. Early bells, muddy pitches, the easy banter of kids who didn’t know who he really was, that felt almost comfortable. Familiar.
Beneath that, of course, the UC part ticked along like a metronome.
Every corridor he walked, every classroom he stepped into had been filed and logged.
Access points. Blind spots. Who hung where between bells.
The building itself was bigger than it looked from the outside.
Modernised with glass walkways and open-plan corridors designed more for aesthetics than control.
Too many staircases. Coded doors on IT suites.
A CCTV camera on every hallway junction.
And not enough staff on duty when the bell rang.
The behavioural hotspots had already started to surface.
He could tell by how certain kids moved.
Heads down, always watching, voices too loud when they thought no one was listening.
Posturing. Testing. Claiming corners of the school as theirs.
Warren saw it all. Took mental notes while running warm-ups and refereeing football.
This was the job. The duality. Teach rugby in the morning, profile a fifteen-year-old mule before lunch.
And try not to let his gaze drift too often towards the Humanities block.
Of course, it did though.
How could it not?
He told himself it was the job. Ellison was on his watch list, after all.
Keeping an eye on him in lessons was as important as clocking him on breaks.
That was the line Warren stuck to. But if he was honest, once he’d clocked that Ellison’s classroom overlooked the sports field, he found himself checking the windows more often than necessary.
In case there were eyes on him. In case he was there.
All part of the job, he told himself again.
Except the pull in his chest didn’t feel like work. Not in the same way he analysed the Year Tens crowding corners of the yard, or the way he measured the kids’ responses to Mr Stanmore, Head of PE and his direct supervisor.
That was assessment. Pattern recognition.
With Jude though, it was… something else.
Warren didn’t want to put a name to it.
Most of the week had been spent with Mr Stanmore. Ex-rugby type. Built like a boulder in a tracksuit. Veins like rope. He’d slapped Warren on the back as if they were already old teammates.
“Good to have another set of hands,” he’d said. “Mornings are chaos. We’re short-staffed, and half the Year Tens are still using broken toes as an excuse to sit out.” And he kept calling him Newbie.
Warren hadn’t been called that in years.
At thirty-six, he was well past the age of fresh starts.
But his carefully curated CV painted him as a former PE teacher turned personal trainer, now easing back into school life after an ACL rupture.
So, fair enough. He was meant to be new. Green. Unweathered.
Nobody here needed to know he’d seen more blood, betrayal, and buried truths than half the staffroom combined. That was the point of the cover. Let them underestimate him. It made the job easier.
And allowed Warren to watch.
No one had flagged as a behavioural outlier yet.
No safeguarding triggers. Just kids trying to survive their first PE lessons without humiliating themselves.
And between short breaks where Stanmore regaled him with tales of his glory days on the rugby pitch through mouthfuls of Greggs sausage rolls, he pressed too many questions about Warren’s years out of teaching, giving Warren a chance to rehearse his cover.
In the gym, the Year Nines took to him quickly during basketball. Lay-ups, basic shooting drills. He had them laughing, focused, trying. His height drew questions. Had he ever played pro? He gave the answer he’d rehearsed.
“Nope. Had a hoop on the side of the house growing up. South London. Played until the bolts rusted off.”
They seemed satisfied with that. Hero points earned.
Trust inched closer. Because none of it was a lie.
Which was unusual. On most ops, he had to think fast or stitch together backstories until they felt real.
Here, he was mostly… himself. Strip away the detail that he was an undercover detective with the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit, following the thread of a trafficking network right into a school, a thread that might tangle one of their own teachers, and Warren was being Warren.
A once sporty kid who grew up in South London and if it hadn’t been for his stable upbringing, and the discipline sport gave him, he might have ended up on the wrong side of the fence he skirted for a living.
And even though the first rule of undercover work was never to blur the lines between who you were and who you played, here, so far, being himself worked.
He liked it.
Liked it more than he should.
Because he hadn’t been himself in so long, he’d almost forgotten what that even felt like.
By Friday lunch, he headed, as usual, to the staffroom.
Partly to dodge Stanmore’s latest war story, complete with pastry number three, and partly because he was hoping to catch Jude Ellison.
The history teacher he was meant to be profiling.
The one who seemed to slip through his fingers every midday, tied up in meetings or running clubs.
Busy. Involved.
Could be the mark of a good teacher.
Or the cover of a man with other reasons to stay occupied.
The staffroom was how it always was at lunchtime.
Microwaves pinging, the hum of half a dozen conversations bleeding together.
Teachers slouched on sofas with Tupperware balanced on their laps.
Others hunched over laptops, grimly hammering out lesson plans they’d ignored all summer.
The usual mix: overprepared, underfed, and terminally caffeinated.
No Jude.
Warren crossed to the fridge, crouched, and pulled out the salad he’d stashed earlier, the bottle of water balancing on top. A packet of crisps slipped from beneath it, his private indulgence, quickly scooped up before anyone could notice.
When he straightened, he jolted.
Ellison was right there. Clutching a bunch of printed papers and smiling.
Warren’s stomach tilted, a sharp twist that had nothing to do with hunger.
Adrenaline, he told himself. The familiar rush of being caught off guard by a target. He’d felt it before. Plenty of times. When someone on the job had turned their eyes on him a fraction too suddenly. That jolt of being seen.
But this wasn’t quite the same.
Because instead of freezing, he smiled back.
And instead of whacking the bloke or lying through his teeth, his brain had tripped over the dimples in Jude’s cheeks. The faint crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. The way his shirt hung just so, as if someone had cut the cloth deliberately to test Warren’s patience.
He snapped the fridge shut with his foot.
And needed to get his head straight.
Fast.
“Healthy.” Jude nodded at the salad box before plucking the packet of crisps from the top and waggling them at him. “These? Not so. Typical PE teachers. Always do as we say, not as we do.”
“Those are for you.” Warren smiled sweetly.
Jude raised a brow, checked the packet. “Monster Munch?”
“You look like a man who appreciates a claw-shaped snack.”
Jude narrowed his eyes. “Pickled onion flavour.”
“With a bit of tang.” Warren winked.
Jude barked a laugh. “Alright, thanks. But I’ll have to confiscate them as crimes against flavour decency.” He held the packet between his teeth as he reached into the fridge, juggling a sandwich box and an apple with one arm and the thick stack of papers with the other.
Before Warren could say more, someone called across the staffroom. “Hey, Jude!” Angie Patterson, Geography Warren believed, balanced a laptop on her knees as she waved from the sofa.
Jude half-turned, packet dangling from his mouth. “Hmm?”
“You’ve been promoted. Captain of the quiz team. Dog and Duck tonight.”
He let the crisps drop onto his Tupperware. “Why am I captain?”
“You got the most questions right last year.”
Jude rolled his eyes. “Great. Thanks. You lot love giving me more paperwork.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t love it.” Angie blew him a kiss as he wandered out, papers slipping from his overburdened arm.
A few teachers shifted as if to help, but Warren launched for it.
“I’ve got them.” Warren crouched to scoop them up before Miss Downes—Head of English, if he remembered right—could get there.
“You sure, love?”
“Yeah, no problem. Heading that way anyway.” He dumped his lunch on the counter, flashed her an easy smile and was out the door before she could protest. “Hey, History!”
Jude spun, chin clamped down on the crisps on top of his Tupperware, and Warren got the full weight of his gaze behind those glasses.
Soft brown eyes, yes. But shadowed. Not the surface-level exhaustion teachers wore by default, but something deeper.
A tiredness that had settled in and made itself at home.
Maybe he was just a very busy, dedicated teacher.
“You dropped these.” Warren lifted the stray papers, stepped in close, and plucked the crisps from Jude’s mouth with a smirk. “Trade you for these back.”
Up close, Jude’s smile wasn’t the polite staffroom version. Not the half-teasing one he’d been throwing across the past few days either. This one was unguarded. Softer. Carving faint lines at the corners of his eyes, speaking more of weight carried than charm performed.
The pull in Warren’s chest was sharp. Immediate. Dangerous.
A feeling that had no business surfacing on a job.
Especially not this job.
And not for a bloke.