Different Class Read online

  About the Book

  Fun Facts About Murder: Use Coca-Cola to clean up blood spills. The combination of ascorbic acid and carbonated water actually digests the blood, leaving no trace of evidence.

  After thirty-four years at St Oswald’s Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. Each class has its clowns, its rebels, its underdogs, its Brodie Boys, who, whilst of course he doesn’t have favourites, hold a special place in an old teacher’s heart. But every so often there’s a boy who doesn’t fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy capable of twisting everything around him. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

  With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new broom has arrived at the venerable school, bringing PowerPoint, sharp suits and even sixth-form girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist this march to the future, a shadow from his past is stirring. A boy who, even twenty years on, haunts his teacher’s dreams. A boy capable of bad things.

  Set in Malbry, the same Yorkshire village as Gentlemen & Players and Blueeyedboy, Different Class shows Joanne Harris at her darkest and most unsettling, and confirms this impressively versatile writer’s mastery of the psychological thriller genre.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Four

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Five

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Six

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Seven

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Eight

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Joanne Harris

  Copyright

  To my Brodie Boys:

  You know who you are.

  PROLOGUE

  1

  September 1981

  Dear Mousey,

  Fun Facts About Murder: Use Coca-Cola to clean up blood spills. The combination of ascorbic acid and carbonated water actually digests the blood, leaving no trace of evidence.

  Not that I’m planning a murder. But it is an interesting subject. Unlike most of the subjects I will be studying this term – Maths; Latin; English; French. Actually I do like English. But the reading list is awful. To Kill a Mockingbird; Chaucer; Barry Hines. And Shakespeare. Always Shakespeare. Why can’t we read something fun, for a change? Something with a bit of bite?

  Still, you’d have been proud today. I didn’t give myself away. Never tell tales, never cry, and never give yourself away. That’s what it takes to do well at school. That and being cool, of course. Which is why no one will ever suspect that I am writing this diary. A diary isn’t cool. Diaries are for sissies and girls. A diary gives everything away, which is why I’m going to write my thoughts in a place my parents will never look. My new St Oswald’s Prep diary, handed out this morning on the first day of the Michaelmas term. Hiding my story in plain sight, like a corpse at a graveside.

  They never look at my schoolwork, except for the bit in red at the end. AAA: the row of tents. As long as those tents are there, it’s fine. And my form-master will never look. I can tell that already. Mr Straitley, Quaz to the school. That’s short for Quasimodo, because he looks like a gargoyle and lives in the Bell Tower. I think that’s supposed to be a joke. It doesn’t seem very funny to me. In fact, Mr Straitley scares me a bit. I don’t think I’m going to like him.

  Back at my old school, Netherton Green, my teacher was Miss McDonald. She was blonde, and pretty, and young, and wore Indian skirts and ankle-boots. Mr Straitley wears a cape, like all the other teachers. But his is dusty and covered in chalk. He calls us by our surnames. We all go by our surnames here. It’s one of those St Oswald’s rules, like not running in corridors, and never leaving your shirt untucked.

  They tell me it’s important to follow all the rules this time. St Oswald’s is a New Start, far away from Netherton Green. A new start. No trouble; no pranks. No hanging around with the Wrong Sort. No sharp objects. No rough games. And always follow all the rules.

  Of course, I don’t know all the rules. That’s part of being a Seventh Term Boy. Seventh Term Boys have a whole two years to catch up, including schoolwork, making friends, joining teams and learning The Ropes. That’s a nautical term, by the way. Dad likes nautical terms. He’d have liked me to join the Navy one day, but I can’t, because of My Condition. (That’s what they call it. My Condition, Mousey.)

  My Condition means that there are things they’ll never let me do at home. My Condition determines the friends I make, the games I play, even the school I attend. That’s why Dad chose St Oswald’s. St Oswald’s is a Church school, with a Rigorous Moral Code. That’s what I need, apparently. Well, maybe there’s some truth in that. After all, there’s no fun in breaking rules unless they really mean something. Running in corridors doesn’t count. You need to see past the trivia before you can reach for the fun stuff.

  Oh, and Never Get Caught, of course. That’s the most important thing. Breaking rules is only fun if you get away with it. That means not telling anyone, even your best friend – assuming I had one, which I don’t. Not any more, anyway. Perhaps that’s why I’m telling you all my secrets, Mousey. Imaginary friends – like dead ones – don’t talk. They never give the game away. Still, it might be nice to find someone who shares my interests. Someone who likes to break the rules. Someone to share in the fun stuff. The fun stuff, like at Netherton Green.

  The fun stuff. Like murder.

  PART ONE

  Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.

  (VERGIL)

  1

  St Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

  Michaelmas Term, September 7th, 2005

  Ah, yes. T
here she blows. St Oswald’s, a metaphor for eternity if ever I saw one, heaving into view like something from a boys’ adventure book – a Jules Verne, perhaps, as the mysterious island peers over the horizon. Or a Rider Haggard, in which sinister natives cower and lurk at the gates of the Forbidden City. You can see the Bell Tower from the road, the peaked turret that has never housed a bell a haunt for pigeons – and lately, mice. And behind it, the long spine of the Middle Corridor, mullioned with light, and the illuminated front of the Chapel, the rose window casting its fugitive gleam across the walk of lindens.

  Home at last, I tell myself, and the thought is at the same time a benediction and a curse.

  Silly old fool, comes my silent retort, in a voice eerily like that of my colleague and long-time adversary, Dr ‘Sourgrape’ Devine. I’ll be sixty-six on Bonfire Night, with a hundred and two terms under my fast-expanding belt – what will it take to keep me away?

  Good question. It’s a drug, of course. Like the occasional Gauloise, taken in secret behind the door of my office, it helps to keep me going. And my ticker pills, of course, prescribed for me by my doctor after last year’s little incident – along with a good deal of unwanted advice on smoking, stress and pastry.

  My doctor is an ex-pupil of mine (the Village is full of them nowadays), which makes him hard to take seriously. He means well, for all that, and I do try my best to humour him. But stress is a part of the job, and besides, what would the old place become without me? Thirty-four years I’ve served on this ship. I know it from every angle. Master and boy; teacher trainee; form-tutor; Head of Classics; and now, Old Centurion. Might as well try to knock the gargoyles off the Chapel roof as dislodge old Straitley, and if the management don’t like it, at least they have the sense to keep quiet on the subject. I did the School a service last year – the year that, after a promising start, became our annus horribilis – besides which my Latin results were the best we’ve had since ’89. At the time, I’ll admit it, I was close to giving in. But murder, scandal, deception and fraud have driven the old ship on to the rocks. How could I leave St Oswald’s to the scavengers and the wrecking crew?

  So here I am again, two days before the official stampede, watering the plants, clearing my desk (well, I aim to) and generally planning next year’s campaign with the cunning and precision of a Marcus Aurelius. Or so I hope my colleagues will think, when they arrive this afternoon for the ritual pre-term staff meeting to find me already installed in my room in the Bell Tower, smoking a quiet cigarette and fully conversant with the new term’s class lists, timetable, gossip and dirt, the stuff on which St Oswald’s dines like the graveyard kings of old.

  I owe much of my insider information to a single source. Jimmy Watt. My secret weapon. Reinstated after last year and promoted to the position of Assistant Porter. No intellectual, but sound, and good with his hands – besides which Jimmy owes me a favour or two, and through him I hear much of what is denied my more elevated colleagues.

  ‘Morning, boss.’ His face is round and good-natured, lit now with a brilliant smile. ‘Good holiday?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Jimmy.’ I try to remember the last time I went on holiday. Unless you count that School trip to France in 1978, when Eric Scoones took the boys on foot to see the Sacré-Coeur by night, blissfully unaware that the famous basilica sits in the middle of the most notorious red-light district in Paris.

  I suppose I must have had a holiday – if you can call it that, with its burden of wasps and cricket and bare midriffs and unseasonal rainstorms, with tea in the afternoons and the mantelpiece clock ticking away the long and somnolent summer days. Gods, I think, it’s good to be back. But how long for? A term? A year? What next? What then?

  Holidays, I suppose. Leisure activities. Novels. An allotment, perhaps, somewhere up by the Abbey Road estate, where I will grow rhubarb and listen to the wireless. Hobbies. Pub quizzes. Sudoku, whatever that is. All the things I postponed in the name of duty, back in the days when such things were still to be desired. Depressing prospect. A St Oswald’s Master has no time for frivolities, and it is far, far too late for me to develop a taste for them now.

  ‘Yes, back in the jug for another stint,’ I told Jimmy, with a smile so that he would know that I was joking. ‘You’d almost think I liked it here.’

  Jimmy gave his honking laugh. I suppose it must seem strange to him; but then, of course, he’s still young. He has his pastimes – such as they are – and the great white whale of St Oswald’s has not yet consumed him entirely.

  ‘Any sign of the new New Head?’

  ‘He’s in his office. I’ve seen his car.’

  ‘He didn’t introduce himself? Pop into the Lodge for a cup of tea?’

  Jimmy grinned and shook his head. I expect he thought I was joking. But a good Headmaster knows his staff before he takes the helm of the ship – and that means the cleaners, the Porter and the ladies who make the tea. A good Head values the rank and file at least as much as the officers. But since his appointment in early June, sightings of the new New Head have been infrequent, to say the least. We know him by name and, to some extent, by reputation. But only a privileged few have seen his face. Rumours abound, however. Meetings held behind closed doors; whispers of insolvency and academic failure; all compounded by a far from friendly School Inspection which, added to the most appalling set of exam results in St Oswald’s memory, has brought us to this all-time low; a Crisis Intervention.

  The dreadful events of last year; the murder of a schoolboy, the stabbing of a member of staff and the scandal that split the Common Room still reverberate, even now, and there have been many casualties. We lost our Second Master, Pat Bishop, as a result of those events, and since his departure there has been unrest, unease and downright rebellion among the rank and file, while Bob Strange – the Third Master, a clever administrator, but with no flair for people – tried to keep the old galley from sinking with the help of computers, management courses and internal assessment.

  It didn’t work. Our Captain, the erstwhile New Head, unaccustomed to command, began to flounder. There were mutterings in the ranks; some staff deserted (or walked the plank) and finally, in June, came confirmation from the Governors of what they called an ‘emergency management restructuring’. In layman’s terms, the hemlock bowl.

  Not that I cared much for the man. Suits come, Suits go, and in sixteen years he’d achieved little for us, and still less for himself. St Oswald’s tradition dictates that a Headmaster shall always be known as the New Head, until he has earned the respect of the crew. The old New Head never managed this. A state-school man in shades of grey, whose tendency was to dwell on the smaller transgressions of St Oswald’s dress code rather than turn his mind to the general health of the corpus scolari.

  The new man, rumour tells us, is very different. A Super-Head, trained in PR – and sound, according to Bob Strange, which makes him eminently qualified to take the helm of our leaky old ship and to steer us triumphantly into happier waters. I personally doubt this. He sounds like another Suit to me – and his absence throughout the summer term, when he could have been getting to know his staff, suggests that he will be one of those men who expects the menial work to be done invisibly, by others, while he enjoys the benefits; the publicity and the glory.

  His name, we know, is Harrington. It happens to be the name of a boy I once disliked very strongly: not the new man’s fault, of course, nor is it such an uncommon name, but I can’t help wishing that his name had been Smith or Robinson. We know little else about him, except that he is a guru of sorts, having already saved two failing schools in Oldham and in Milton Keynes; is a prominent member of Survivors, a charitable organization dealing with child abuse, and has an MBE from the Queen. We also know, thanks to Jimmy Watt, that he is young, good-looking, well dressed and drives a silver BMW (a fact that already ensures him Jimmy’s wholehearted support and admiration).

  ‘That’s what St Oswald’s needs,’ says Bob Strange. ‘A new broom, to sweep away
the cobwebs.’

  Well, I, for one, liked the cobwebs. I suspect that to Strange I am one myself. But our Bob has hopes of promotion. At forty-six he is no longer a Young Gun, and his flair for technology, which might have been unusual twenty years ago, is now the norm for the new generation. Failing the Headship, he covets the post of Second Master – and with reason; he’s been doing Pat Bishop’s job since Christmas. Of course, a post at St Oswald’s is always more than the sum of its parts, and the things that made Bishop a success – his heart, his humanity, his genuine affection for the boys and for the School – had nothing to do with his job description. Strange has never quite grasped this, and the rest of us have long since given up hope that he might emerge from his cocoon of paperwork as a flamboyant Second Master. On the other hand, it could be that the new man will need inside help; someone to show him the ropes, perhaps, and to give him the dirt on his pirate crew.

  Strange most certainly fits the bill. His glaucous eyes see everything: who is late for lessons; who has trouble with the boys; who steals the Common Room copy of the Daily Mail to read in his form-room during Prep. He keeps to his office most of the time, and yet his ears are always open. He has his spies among the staff (some even suspect him of using hidden cameras), and as a result he is respected and feared, though seldom actually liked. He runs the timetable, and those unfortunate enough to be out of favour get more than their fair share of Friday afternoon cover and lower third-form sets. A sneak, in short. A management stooge.

  This morning as I made my way up the stairs to my form-room I wondered – with some small apprehension – what the coming term might bring. So many things have changed since last year; so many colleagues reshuffled, or gone. Bishop; Pearman; Grachvogel; the Head – and, of course, our own Miss Dare. I could have been among them – in fact, I fully intended to retire – but for the state of the dear old place, and the gnawing conviction that the moment I left, Bob Strange would delete my subject from the curriculum.

  Besides, what would I do without the perpetual soap opera of St Oswald’s to sustain me? And my boys – my Brodie Boys – who else but I could look after them?