Under Pressure

3-2

“I am at the moment,” Dennis Harrison said. “Max Clarkwell is the owner though.”

Nathan could see that Harrison was unhappy with the situation, which was to be expected, but he was holding himself together better than his colleagues were.

“Where is Mr Clarkwell?” Nathan asked with a glance at Burke to check that he was taking down what was being said, which he was.

“He’s in town, running a few errands, I believe.”

“Okay, we’ll talk to him later. Can anyone tell me what happened to Mr Banks?” he asked. “I was told he drowned, but he’s not dressed for swimming, or for any other activity that involves being out on the water.”

“We don’t know,” Harrison said. “He wasn’t out on the lake. At least he wasn’t with any of the groups we had out there this morning. We had three groups on the lake this morning; Teri had the swimmers, Luke had the sailors, and I had the kayakers. He was supposed to be with me and the kayakers, but he never showed up, and none of the kids in the group knew where he was.”

“Okay, so he was supposed to be on the lake in a kayak but wasn’t, and his clothes suggest he had no intention of being on the water, so how did he end up there?” Nathan was speaking to himself, so it didn’t surprise him that no-one answered him. “Who found him, and where?” he asked of the group.

“Emily Struthers,” Steven Irish answered. “She’s one of our pupils.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s being looked after by Mrs Collins, one of our chaperones,” Steven Irish said. “We decided it would be best if the students were kept away from this, so we took them into the dining hall, and left Mrs Collins and Mr Johnson, he’s our other chaperone, to keep an eye on them. They’re all shocked by this, it’s such a surprise, a tragedy.”

“I can imagine. It’s probably going to take them a while to get over this, but we have a psychologist we can recommend if any of them need help coping with what’s happened, or even any of you,” Nathan told the group. Taking out his wallet, he removed one of the cards he kept in there and handed it to the gym teacher. “We’re going to need to speak to all your pupils, though, to everyone who has been here at any point this morning, so we can establish where they were, and what they might have seen. We’ll make arrangements for that shortly. For now, though, let’s get back to Mr Banks. Where was Miss Struthers when she found him, and what she was doing?”

“She was with my group,” Harrison said. “She’d moved a little away from the rest of the group. She was paddling around not far from where the river empties into the lake. It’s not a great place for a novice, and I’d just shouted for her to come back to the group when she screamed. I headed over to where she was to see what the fuss was all about and found her with her paddle caught in his clothes. From what I could tell, she didn’t see him until she got her paddle stuck, and once she realised what had happened, she panicked and nearly tipped herself over. I had to give her my paddle and a shove away from the body to get her on her way back to the shore. I stayed with the body until Teri reached me, and together we got the body to the shore and out of the water.”

“We tried giving mouth to mouth,” Teri Garland said, “but had no luck.”

Nathan glanced at the two paramedics briefly but didn’t waste time asking the question on his mind. Instead, he turned to Burke. “Any idea when the doc’s going to get here?”

“No, sorry. I’ll check in with Frost and make sure Jones has been notified and is on his way. He should be, but you never know.” Burke moved away from the group so he could make the call without getting in the way of Nathan’s questioning of the group.

“What time was Mr Banks found?” Nathan asked of the two who seemed most able to answer his questions: Dennis Harrison and Teri Garland.

The two looked at one another briefly, as though debating their answer, before Harrison said, “A bit before eleven. We’ve got a bell that rings the hour during the day, so we don’t lose track of time. It rang for eleven o’clock a little after we got him out of the water.”

“And when was the last time Mr Banks was seen prior to being found in the lake?”

Her sobs now under control, Catherine MacMillan, who taught English, answered that question. “I saw him at breakfast, between half seven and eight o’clock. I left the dining hall at eight to get myself ready for the first activity, Graham was still there then. I didn’t see him after that.”

“Did any of you see him after breakfast?” Nathan asked. Everyone shook their heads, but he saw something flit across Steven Irish’s face that made him think the gym teacher was lying. He chose not to question him about that just then, however, preferring to wait until he could speak to the man alone. “Okay, next question, how was Graham this morning?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Ms MacMillan,” Nathan said, turning again to the English teacher, “did he seem upset or afraid of anyone or anything? Did his behaviour this morning give you any reason to think there might be something wrong?”

There was a moment of silence as she thought about the question and then Catherine MacMillan gasped. “Oh my God! You think someone might have killed him, don’t you. Why would anyone have done that?”

Nathan spoke quickly to calm her before she could become hysterical. “At this time, I have no reason for thinking that anyone might have done anything to Mr Banks, but he has died, and I need to find out how and why. Knowing how he was feeling and behaving this morning, even if it is only your perception of that, will help me to figure out what led to his death, as will knowing what sort of person he was and how he behaved on an average day.”

“He was fine, acting normally. There wasn’t anything wrong with him,” Catherine MacMillan said, her words coming quickly as if to emphasise them.

“What about the rest of you?” Nathan asked. “Did any of you notice anything that seemed abnormal or unusual the last time you saw Mr Banks?”