In the Arms of the Mafia Part 1
by threehearts_xo
Chapter One: The Last Night of Term
At eleven on the last Friday of term, Harriet stood beneath the club's paper lanterns and raised a glass to surviving another year. Cathy cheered loudly enough for the DJ to notice. Rita, Paula and Sandra joined in, and I lifted mine a beat late. We were six adult faculty colleagues celebrating a year that had required too many emergency meetings and too few working printers.
Our headmaster, Mr. Vale, had left early, pleading a headache. Harriet had rolled her eyes at that, but she had saved him a slice of cake. She always noticed who was missing. I tended to notice what had changed.
For instance, the man with the pale scar across his cheek had entered through the staff door without speaking to the bouncer. His two companions stood at opposite ends of the room, not dancing, not drinking. When the music stopped between songs, I heard the scarred man say our school name into his phone.
I told Harriet. Her smile disappeared. She quietly asked the others to stay together while she went to find the manager. She never reached him. The lights failed; in the sudden uproar, someone guided us toward what he called a fire exit. Beyond it waited a service corridor, three men and a van with its engine running. One of them displayed a weapon without pointing it. We were given a choice that wasn't one.
In the van, Cathy held Rita's hand. Sandra whispered the number plate to me, although I had seen it too. I repeated it silently until it felt like a word. Harriet asked whether anyone was hurt. Nobody answered at first. Then Paula said, very steadily, "We're here."
I counted turns. There were seven before the road surface changed from smooth tarmac to gravel.
Chapter Two: The Office Upstairs
They brought us to a former training centre beyond the ring road. The windows were narrow, the grounds fenced, and two guards watched the only gate we could see. Inside, the scarred man took our phones. He called himself Mercer and spoke in the tired voice of someone who thought intimidation was paperwork.
"Where is the file?" he asked.
None of us knew what file he meant. That seemed to irritate him more than an answer would have. He shut us in a classroom furnished with stacking chairs and a dead projector. Through the wired glass of its door I could see a corridor camera and, farther on, a stairwell. The camera swept left every twenty seconds, then took four to return.
An hour later, Vale appeared on the other side of the glass, escorted toward the office upstairs. He had not gone home after all. He saw us, stopped short, and received a shove that made him keep walking. Harriet waited until the guards had passed before speaking.
"This is about the accounts," she said. The week before, the governors had asked for an independent review of a building grant. Vale had told staff it was routine. Rita, who managed the science department's orders, shook her head. Supplier invoices had arrived for equipment that never existed. Paula had noticed the same supplier on maintenance forms.
I thought of the photograph Sandra had taken at school that afternoon: a delivery docket pinned behind Vale's office calendar. She had snapped it to ask the caretakers about a missing shipment. If the phones were gone, the picture was gone too. But the docket had borne a stamped reference, and Sandra remembered its last four digits.
"Mercer doesn't know what he's looking for," I said.
"Then we find it first," Harriet replied. She sounded certain enough that for a moment I believed the door would simply open.
Chapter Three: What the Walls Remembered
Morning arrived as a grey bar of light above the blinds. A guard delivered water and sandwiches. Harriet asked to see Vale, saying that if they wanted help, they should let us hear the question from our employer. Mercer finally agreed. He brought Vale into our classroom while the guard remained in the hall.
Vale looked older than he had at assembly. He said the missing file was a backup of grant payments, made after he discovered that the school's building contractor was billing for work at other sites. He had sent an encrypted copy to an outside auditor, but the auditor's office had reported it missing. Mercer wanted the local backup and the password. Vale had refused to give him either.
"Did you leave it at school?" Harriet asked.
Vale looked at the ceiling camera before answering. "The archive is here. This place used to host the governors' training days. The old network cabinet is in the upstairs office."
Mercer cut the conversation short. But I had seen Vale tap twice against the chair's metal leg while saying upstairs. In the staffroom he used the same little rhythm to signal that a student was listening at the door. He wanted us to know there was more he couldn't say in front of the camera.
Rita found the loose screw in a chair frame. With its edge, Paula worked the classroom window latch until it lifted a fraction. Beyond it lay a locked courtyard, no easy exit, but the gap carried sounds: a delivery vehicle at noon, its driver signing at reception, the gate opening and closing twice. Sandra tracked the times against the clock on the wall.
Cathy, who directed the school plays, suggested a distraction at the next delivery. "Not a heroic charge," she said. "A problem they have to come inside to solve."
Harriet looked at each of us before agreeing. We had no guarantee it would work. We did have a schedule, a loose latch, and six minds instead of one.
Chapter Four: The Cabinet
At noon, Paula pulled the projector cable from its damaged socket. The lights in our room went out, and Cathy shouted that she smelled smoke. There wasn't any; Rita made that clear to us with one sharp glance. A guard opened the door to investigate. Harriet insisted he fetch someone who could check the wiring before anyone sat near it.
The delivery buzzer sounded. The guard hesitated, then sent his partner downstairs and went to the breaker cupboard himself. For a few seconds the corridor was empty. I slipped through with Sandra while Harriet held the door; Cathy kept talking loudly about safety regulations.
We took the stairs in the camera's blind interval. Upstairs, the office door was unlocked. Vale sat inside, watched through a monitor by no one at all. Mercer had gone to meet the delivery. Vale pointed beneath a desk, where an old network cabinet stood with its side panel missing.
"Blue drive," he whispered. "They checked the computer. Not the cabinet."
Sandra found it clipped beside a router, labelled with the school's inventory code and the four digits she remembered. We could have taken it and run, but a file in our hands would be easy to seize. Vale showed us the cabinet's still-live network port. Paula, summoned up after us by Harriet, knew the centre's old system from a training day: the wall terminal could send files, but its address book had been wiped.
Vale had written the independent auditor's secure intake address on the back of his visitor badge. While Sandra watched the corridor, Paula plugged in the drive. A password prompt appeared. Vale gave her a phrase drawn from the school's founding date, then read the address aloud. The upload bar inched forward. Downstairs, a door banged.
At ninety percent, Mercer called Vale's name from the landing. Harriet stepped out of the stairwell and asked him to repeat what he had demanded of us. Her voice filled the corridor. It bought us ten seconds, maybe twelve. The terminal displayed a receipt number. I wrote it on my wrist before pulling the drive free.
Chapter Five: The Open Gate
Mercer saw us leaving the office. Harriet backed toward the stairs rather than toward him; he followed, focused on the drive in my hand. He caught up at the landing and took it. I let him. The copy had already gone, and he did not know about the receipt on my wrist.
Below us, the delivery driver was waiting for a signature beside the open front door. Cathy called to him, clearly and without embellishment: "We've been held here against our will. Please call the police." For a moment he stared. Then he moved back into his vehicle and raised his phone where we could see it.
The guards tried to close the gate, but their own van blocked its track. Rita had noticed where they parked it every morning; while we were upstairs, she and Paula had asked to carry the empty lunch trays out and slipped its parking brake off just enough for it to roll against the gate post. It hadn't been a safe gamble, and Rita's hands shook afterward. It was enough.
Mercer turned toward the driver. Sandra pulled the fire alarm. Its bell swallowed his orders. We went through the front door together, Vale in the middle, down the short drive toward the delivery vehicle. No one stopped to argue about who should go first. We climbed into its cab and load space as the driver reversed away from the gate.
By the time police cars appeared on the main road, I was still counting: six colleagues, one headmaster, one driver. Everyone accounted for. Only then did I realize I was gripping the edge of the seat so tightly that my fingers hurt.
Epilogue: The Receipt
The auditor confirmed receipt of the files before the week was out. Investigators found a chain of false invoices linking the contractor to people beyond Mercer. Vale gave a statement about what he had found and why he had delayed telling us. He apologized for the delay; Harriet told him that apologies weren't a substitute for making the school safe.
We returned to the staffroom together to clear our desks for the summer. Nobody called what happened an adventure. Cathy brought tea. Rita checked the lock on the door. When Paula asked if I wanted someone to walk out with me, I said yes.
The investigation was still open. One payment in the archive led to an account none of the investigators had identified yet. Sandra copied its reference into a notebook for the next meeting with the auditor. I sat beside her, reading the digits carefully. We knew now how much could hide in plain sight, and how much we could do when we looked together.