A Room Full of Killers - Michael Wood (motivational books to read txt) 📗

a blank expression. She was a strange-looking woman. Her features seemed out of proportion to her small face. Her eyes were too close together, her nose was bulbous, and the tops of her ears poked out of her thick wavy hair, giving her the look of an extra from Lord of the Rings. According to her age and height she was short and looked older than the twenty-eight years her date of birth suggested.

The date of her leaving day was just sixteen months after she started. When Matilda turned the page she saw why Elly had left so abruptly. A photograph of a badly beaten and bruised Jacob Brown was shocking. One eye was swollen shut; there was a thick padded bandage on his forehead; he had a split lip and bruises on his cheeks.

‘Bloody hell, she really laid into him,’ Matilda said to herself.

Putting the file to one side she reached for her laptop and spent the next ten minutes trying to find any record of the assault being reported to South Yorkshire Police. There was none. A minor had been assaulted by an adult. The police should have been called in to investigate. Kate had obviously dealt with it in-house and dismissed Elly Caine as part of a cover-up. It seemed Kate would do anything to stop Starling House falling into disrepute including ignoring serious crimes. If she could gloss over an assault, what else had been swept under the carpet over the years?

‘Kate, we need to talk,’ Matilda said when she found her in the middle of the corridor.

‘Of course,’ Kate said, leading the way to her office. ‘Take a seat.’

‘I won’t say you’ve been lying to me but you’ve certainly been holding things back.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The extremely high staff turnover; Elly Caine and the reason she left.’

Kate swallowed hard. Despite being questioned about her staff and her running of the place, her iron-maiden façade refused to drop. ‘Do you have any idea what it is like running this place? Nobody wants to work here. Not just people from Sheffield, but anywhere. You should see the dregs I get applying for jobs, and I have no option but to hire them because they’re the best I can get. When they start and they see the boys staying here, the crimes they’ve committed, the way they’re nonchalantly getting on with their lives, well, it’s not easy to see, and some of the staff can’t cope with it.’

For the first time since she’d met her, Matilda started to have empathy with Kate. She may seem cold and hard, but she had to be. The people of Sheffield were against her, the media were itching for her to fail so they could write a scathing exposé, and her staff were woefully underqualified. She was one woman fighting a bitter battle.

‘Tell me about Elly Caine,’ Matilda said.

‘You’ve read the file. You know.’

Matilda sat in silence, arms folded. She had no intention of leaving this office without the full details.

Kate took a deep breath. ‘Elly didn’t interview for the job. Her cousin works here, Richard Grover. He mentioned that she was looking for work so I told him to get her to come in for a chat. We’re always looking for staff here.’

‘Did she have the experience and qualifications to work here?’

‘Of course she didn’t,’ Kate admitted. ‘Not many of them do. I try my best with them. I give them training. Oliver Byron gives them training.’

‘So what happened?’ Matilda asked.

‘I think it was a clash of personalities between Elly and Jacob Brown. Elly wasn’t a strong person and Jacob found that out quite quickly. He often played up when she was on duty. When she wasn’t he was a model inmate. They didn’t get on. It really was that simple.’

‘I’ve seen the photograph of what she did to Jacob. That was a very brutal beating.’

Kate took a deep breath and swallowed hard as she conjured up the memory. ‘There was a football match on. Now, we have rules that all inmates should be in bed for nine o’clock but they’re not set in stone. During the Olympics and the Euros this year, for example, we allowed the inmates to stay up late. However, Elly took the rules too far and demanded the television be turned off at nine o’clock while the match was still going on.

‘Jacob stood up to her. She wouldn’t back down. An argument between the two broke out and it ended up getting personal. Elly just snapped.’

‘Was she in the room on her own with the boys?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that normal?’

‘Yes it was. It still is. The recreation room is their room to relax in.’

‘What happened when she snapped?’

‘She slapped him with the back of her hand. The other boys said she just lost it. It was a massive slap and it almost knocked Jacob off his feet. Then he retaliated. He went for her, but he’s only fifteen. Elly is older, taller, and since working at Starling House she had enlisted in a self-defence course, in case she ever needed to stand up for herself. She laid into him.’

‘Didn’t the other inmates try to intervene?’

‘No. I believe they were taking bets. Fortunately, one of the other guards was walking past and heard the commotion.’

‘What injuries did Jacob have?’

‘It was mostly bruising and a few cuts. He had a bruised rib and a fractured wrist. He didn’t need external hospitalization though. We have adequate medical care here.’

‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

Once again, Kate looked down. She knew she was in the wrong for keeping this incident private. ‘I didn’t want the negative attention.’

‘Elly Caine committed a serious assault on a minor. She should have been charged.’

‘She lost her job. Surely that was enough.’

‘Do you honestly believe that?’

After a beat Kate said: ‘Yes. I do.’ The lie was obvious.

‘What else have you been hiding from us?’

‘Nothing,’ Kate replied firmly.

‘In the twenty years Starling House has been open you’re telling me there have been no serious incidents you’ve covered