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“Thank you for seeing us, Dr Pennant,” he said. Tom shook his head as if bringing his attention back into the room.
“Please, gentlemen, have a seat. Have we offered you tea or coffee?” he asked.
“We’re fine thanks, Dr Pennant,” Charlie said.
“Tom, please. How can I help you today? You should understand that I’m only the acting principal. Sir John Singer has taken a leave of absence. I was abroad when the assaults took place, so if it’s anything to do with that …”
That it wasn’t Tom’s office was clear when Charlie looked properly. Several trays of papers sat on the windowsill, as if they had been moved to make space on the desk. A paint-stained wooden box sat on the floor in the middle of the room. The walls were adorned—there could be no other word—with decidedly camp renderings of cherubs, angels and a variety of drooping figures of uncertain gender, all in ornate gold frames. He couldn’t have explained it, but Charlie knew Tom hadn’t chosen them. Tom saw him look.
“Hideous, aren’t they? Beautifully executed sugary confections. They make my teeth ache. Sorry. You aren’t here to critique Sir John’s taste in art.”
“We’re here about two missing students,” Charlie said. “Kaylan Sully and Rico Pepperdine. Rico’s father has been in contact with us. What can you tell us about them?”
“Honestly? Not much.”
Charlie had a copper’s distrust of anyone beginning a sentence with the word “honestly”. From the slight stirring in the next chair, so did Eddy.
“I have their records, such as they are, or my secretary can get them for you.” Tom gave a quick smile. “I’ve never had a secretary before, but she seems to know everything.” He stood up and went to the door, opened it and politely asked for the records.
“I never met either of them,” Tom said when he came back. “Like I said, I’ve been away. I’m not convinced they are actually missing. I mean, by all accounts they’re not here, but I’m not sure that constitutes missing.”
The obvious next question was what did constitute missing, and Charlie asked it. “Not turning up to lectures, not answering their phones, absent from their accommodation, or what? Mr Pepperdine reports no phone calls, no social media presence, no contact at all for over a week. That seems like missing to me.”
Tom cleared his throat, and made to get up, “I’ll just see if Ann has got those records for you,”
“Tom, please,” said Charlie, “who should we talk to about when the students were last seen or where they might be? What arrangements does the college have to monitor that students are safe and well? I’m assuming there are some procedures?”
“Procedures?” Tom asked. “Yes, of course there are procedures. They are adults, of course… but the college has a duty of care. So, we do ask students to leave a message with their hall warden if they are going to be off campus overnight. In case there’s a fire. No one questions their right to go where they like … though we talk to them if they start missing a lot of classes.”
“They didn’t leave a note?”
Tom looked down at the desk. “No note.”
“And when did anyone notice they weren’t around?”
Tom’s face flushed. “Please understand that the new students have only been here for a couple of weeks. By Christmas all the tutors will have a good idea of all the students’ names. Their personal tutors will know everyone much better than that. But this early in the term… our best estimate is that they were here until the middle of last week, and they haven’t been seen since. I hate to keep saying it, because it sounds like an excuse, but I’ve only been back for a few days. I’m a printmaker, not an administrator.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Look, I have asked around. Lots of students disappear in the first few weeks. Some go home. Some are holed up in their rooms with fresher’s flu, or hangovers. They haven’t found their friendship group yet. We take registers, but often they aren’t up to date because people drop out or start late. If a student doesn’t want to engage, that’s their choice.” Tom’s voice had risen as he spoke. He took a breath and cupped his flaming cheeks in his hands. “And as for parents … don’t forget some of these kids come to get away from their parents. We’re not allowed to give information out, even to parents, without the student’s written consent.”
“So, essentially the college has done nothing?” Charlie asked.
Tom sighed. “Yesterday morning, their tutor group was due to go into Swansea to visit a gallery. The coach was due to leave at eight, but there was no sign of Kaylan or Rico. The tutor in charge asked the campus services officers to check their rooms, and they weren’t there. They asked in the neighbouring rooms, and no one had seen either of them.”
“So, you do think they’re missing, as in the police should be looking for them?
“I simply don’t know.”
After all he had heard, nor did Charlie. But he needed to find out.
“We’d like to go and look at their rooms, now, please,” he said.
Tom asked his secretary to call a Campus Services Officer with a full set of keys to meet them at the hall of residence entrance. Tom led them down the stairs and around the inside of the building. Several doors were standing open, showing students working in cubicles made from cheap, white-painted board. Some had easels as well. Most were covered in postcards, sketches, pages torn from magazines and general detritus. There was surprisingly little noise, just a few soft voices. There was an overwhelming chemical smell of what Charlie supposed was paint.
The next door led them to the foyer of a library. Charlie could see the shelves of books, computer stations and yet more cubicles. Next to the check-out desk was a chocolate vending machine and a water cooler, and then they were out of the sliding glass doors and back into the sunshine. A hundred yards away was another set of glass doors to another building in front of which stood a man in navy blue trousers and a matching fleece with the college logo. The sign over the door read St Mary Hall.
“We need to see Kaylan Sully’s room, and Rico Pepperdine’s,” Tom said, and the man led them up to two neighbouring rooms on the first floor, looking back out towards the library. Kaylan’s was closest.
Kaylan’s room reminded Charlie of the cells in a modern police station. Not the furnishings, but the size, the slot-shaped window and even the colour scheme of inoffensive pale blue. He wondered at the architect who could condemn hundreds of young people to minute windows in already tiny rooms. Unlike in a police station, the ambient noise was pop music rather than shouting, but the doors closed with the same heavy thump. A bench desk ran from side to side underneath the window, with a chair upholstered in pale blue, matching the easy chair on the other side of the narrow single bed. The bed had been stripped, and a clean set of bedlinen was folded on top. The room couldn’t be personalised, at least not by moving the furniture — there was literally nowhere else for it to go. Charlie spied the open door of the en-suite bathroom. The cube it borrowed from the rest of the space was barely big enough for a toilet and basin, let alone a shower.
The room was overcrowded with the four of them.
