32. Stand Down, Scooby Gang
They tear Robert Parker’s office apart.
It’s hard to convince Hadley - lying on a school blanket in the shade by the lake, Prada sunglasses on, academic notebooks abandoned in favour of a fairy romance - into the tower, but eventually she comes, pink-cheeked and grumbling.
Westby puts up a good fight, insisting he’s in the flow and cannot be interrupted, but when Tate ignores him and starts opening all the drawers around him, he relents.
‘You are both very horrible,’ he says, hurrying to collect his own work before it can be lost in the rest of the mess. ‘And frankly, I don’t know why you even care.’
Together, they take out everything from the desk and spread it out on the rug, followed by the contents of the bookshelves, the trunk by the door, even the coat stand.
Briar has brought the briefcase from upstairs, and they crack that open too, examining everything inside.
Hadley seems to particularly enjoy sweeping whole armfuls of belongings onto the floor, heedless of what breaks.
They find a black Lego dragon, a credit card, a couple of imported Playguy magazines and a passport in a burgundy leather case. In July of 1998 it would still have been in date.
‘This is freaking me out now,’ Tate says. ‘We’ve got his wallet and his passport. That means—’
‘They disposed of him,’ Westby says. He’s not helping the search, but he has relocated his work to the floor on the other side of the room.
When Briar looks at him, startled, he shrugs.
‘I don’t know why any of you are acting the least bit surprised.
Must have fallen afoul of the board. Had his memory erased, or worse. Nunquam deficere.’
The school motto, emblazoned under the crest everywhere. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Never fail,’ says Tate.
Hadley is trying to open the narrow drawers in the base of a bookcase, and failing. Briar had thought they were simply stiff, or swollen shut, but she says, ‘These are locked. Is there a key? Or . . . a sledgehammer?’
They haven’t found a key, but they renew their efforts, focus narrowed. Briar finds buttons, push-pins, loose change. No key. Tate helps them pull the desk away from the wall; still no key.
‘Let me see the briefcase again,’ Tate says, and Briar passes it to him. He mutters something under his breath, focusing hard, opens it, then runs his fingers very slowly over the striped interiors in methodical lines, until he pauses. ‘Hadley, give me your knife.’
‘Who says I have a knife?’ says Hadley, but she duly fetches it from her bag and hands it over. It’s a foldable pocket knife with a four-inch blade, extremely illegal. Tate makes a neat, deliberate cut in the lining, then smiles triumphantly as he pulls out a tiny gold key.
It doesn’t unlock the first drawer, or the second, but the third clicks decisively, and slides open smooth as water.
There are more notebooks inside, more sheaths of paper, but unlike the academic mundanity of everything else they’ve found in the office, there’s a sickly, panicked quality to the writing.
‘This is a Working,’ Tate says, ‘but it’s so short.’ Westby’s ears perk up, and he comes to retrieve it.
Westby lets out a low whistle. ‘Look at these dates,’ he says. ‘Short, yes, but old Parker worked on this for a very long time. It’s . . . a key, I think.’
‘What do you mean, a key?’
‘It . . .’ Westby gestures, trying to find the words. ‘It unlocks something, but it’s not clear what. He must have had something to hide. Funny. I wonder if it works.’
Briar is flicking through another notebook, plain and cheap, with a heathered blue cover.
It reminds them of the workbooks they used in primary school, rough and utilitarian.
The first few pages contain shopping and to-do lists: milk, teabags, eggs, juice, custard, strawberries, vanilla essence; pump tyres, call M, council tax, dad admin.
Then there’s a list of newspapers, journalists’ names written next to them, some with question marks, some struck through.
Afterwards, things take a turn.
HM watching, he writes. Called P from the village but it just made him upset. L attempted to ensnare me outside library but he never was any good. He forgets I was top of my class, before. They all do.
Then: Still saving scraps from the fire. Harder than I thought. It won’t work again. HM came to help security search my car. They haven’t come here yet. What happens on campus stays on campus as far as they’re concerned
Sleep deprivation jumps off the page, as clear to Briar as the grey shadows under Westby’s eyes. Wish I’d told P the truth now. He’ll never know now and even what he did know might be taken from him like they’ll take it from me
The last note is written in delirious scrawl. It simply says: Give it to the world.
Briar hands the notebook to Tate.
‘The fire he’s talking about is the bonfire,’ he says, frowning, his thumb caught on his lower lip as he reads.
‘We’re supposed to throw anything too damning on it at the end of the year, all our workbooks and notes.
They search rooms afterwards, so you have to try really hard if you want to keep something. ’
‘Like what? A text?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Tate, shaking his head.
‘I don’t really know how, or what the point would be - the board wouldn’t let you get very far with a text in your pocket, and it’s not like anyone outside of Temple would be able to understand it - or even bother to read past the first page.
But whatever it was, it must have been important. ’
‘Stand down, Scooby Gang,’ Westby says, ‘and give me my fucking desk back.’
‘You don’t think this is interesting, West?’
‘The Working? Yes. But otherwise, I think these are the ramblings of a madman in the midst of a breakdown,’ says West. ‘And frankly, as a madman in the midst of a breakdown, I would know. He wouldn’t be the first scholar disappeared, and I’m sure he won’t be the last.’
‘But he was a teacher.’
‘I suspect even plods are human,’ says Westby. ‘Just ask Watson. She’s been testing the theory.’
‘Fuck off, West.’ Hadley is already gathering up her things, searching for her sunglasses among the wreckage of the room.
As thrilling as the day’s discoveries have been, Briar feels they’ve hit a wall. Perhaps this is where the story ends.
‘How do you end up a teacher here?’ they ask Tate, the only person who seems remotely interested. ‘Or - a Dame, or a Housemaster, even? If you can do the Work, why would you be here instead of . . . ?’
‘Hedge-funding?’ says Tate. ‘You’re picked, by the board. Some people think it’s an honour. Other people see it as a punishment. It’s pretty well paid, anyway. Not exactly living pay cheque to pay cheque at a state comp. I wonder what he did wrong . . .’
‘I can have a look from the outside, after I leave. Do some research. Maybe even go to Winterton-on-Sea, find this Grayson guy.’ What happens if Briar breaks their NDA? Nothing good, that’s for certain. They’ll have to be extremely careful, but they think they can manage it.
‘After you leave?’ says Hadley. ‘What, you mean when your contract is up?’
‘Yeah,’ says Briar. ‘I reckon the attic will be done by next week.’
‘Well, how are you going to do that when your brain’s gone bye-bye?’
The atmosphere in the room shifts violently; even Westby looks up, uncomfortable, shooting Hadley a warning glance that’s a few seconds too late.
‘What do you mean?’ Briar asks, watching Hadley’s face carefully for tells.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘Anyone want to scavenge the venders? I could eat a child.’
‘Hadley.’
She swings her canvas tote over her shoulder and leaves, with an infuriatingly breezy wave and a clatter of pen, keys and water bottle; Briar is left with Westby and Tate, who are both studiously avoiding their eye, until Tate relents.
‘They’re not going to let you remember any of this,’ he says ruefully. ‘Sorry, Briar. I thought you knew.’
‘But,’ Briar says, taken aback by the strength of their shock. ‘I did the . . . I signed a non-disclosure. A really long one.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ says Westby. ‘You’re too much of a risk. They’d never let you walk out of here with all this knowledge rattling around in your head.’
‘So they’ll . . . When I leave, I won’t remember anything?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tate says sadly. ‘It might be selective. You’ll probably remember the boring job parts, the bits that make it plausible, so you don’t question any . . . gaps.’
‘But I’ll lose . . . you,’ Briar says, their heart fluttering, a bird in a bag.
Not this. Not again. ‘You guys. And . . .’ They want to say Bastian, and everything that’s happened here, the strange and unexpected new act of their personal history.
Will Briar even know that they’d crossed paths again?
Or will everything go back to exactly how it was three weeks ago, when they thought they’d had the measure of things, and hadn’t known anything at all?
‘Sorry,’ Tate says again, reaching for their arm, but Briar is already leaving, fleeing something they know they can’t outrun.
‘Did you know?’ Briar says, when Bastian answers the door. Momentum has taken them all the way across the twilit campus and up the stairs of Hawthorn, paying no mind to the scholars they’ve passed, dangerously blasé about the possibility that Bastian might not be alone.
‘What?’ Bastian says, darting a sharp glance down the corridor behind Briar and then yanking them hard by the arm into the room. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Did you know they’re going to take my memories, when I leave?’
Bastian drops Briar’s arm like it’s scalding, and takes a step back. His room, previously so orderly, is in a state of general disarray; bed unmade, desk cluttered, mugs piling up at his bedside. No cleaner has been in here for days.
‘Yes,’ Bastian says, sitting down on the edge of his bed, posture alert and upright. ‘I mean, I assumed they would.’
‘What the fuck, Bastian. So . . . none of this matters? Anything we’re . . . saying, doing? This time next week, it’ll all be gone?’