Dying Fall (15 page)

He. Or she. But I shut my mind firmly against that suspicion and turned my attention to the envelope. Recycled paper by the look of it. A self-adhesive label. It looked as it it had been printed several times in a mixture of faces, roman and sans serif. The print was so blurred I was surprised the postman could read the postcode.

‘What's the matter, Sophie?' Chris asked sharply.

I shook my head.

‘Come on. Do you recognise something?' He leaned towards me, his voice no longer harshly official.

‘It just seems … so cold and professional. A house number, yes, even a street – you can get those easily enough. But the postcode! He must have had to look it up.'

Ian pushed gently from the table, taking our empty glasses with him. Chris waited, then said, ‘You're very vulnerable, Sophie. What if I were to offer you protection? Would you be sensible?'

‘Protection?'

‘To make sure the cold and professional author of that cold and professional note doesn't get too close to you. At very least, go and stay with a friend.'

‘Might that put the friend at risk?'

‘I can't deny it might. What about having a WPC to stay with you? Tina, for instance. You know her.'

‘What? All the time?' I didn't yet have a love life but being chaperoned would seriously damage my chances of getting one. ‘For the time being, couldn't I just fit a few more locks? A burglar alarm? My back garden's enclosed with a Berlin Wall and there's one of those rottweiler hedges at the bottom –'

‘Berberis,' put in Ian, plonking malt whiskies on the table.

‘And I've got one of those automatic lights. I've switched it off – the foxes …'

‘Switch it back on the minute you get back in,' said Ian. ‘What about the front? Open plan?'

‘No, they are in the Beech Lanes Estate, but I've got a fence. And another automatic light.'

‘Also switched off because it might scare the foxes?' asked Chris.

‘No. Just because they keep activating it.'

He swirled his whisky thoughtfully. When I looked up I found him staring at me. He dropped his eyes swiftly to the whisky.

‘Tell you what,' he said at last, ‘I'll have a word with an old friend. He'll send in a team looking like gas men or decorators or something and upgrade your security. You'll have to give up that bloody bike, too. I take it you're more than capable of putting it back together if I have to dismember it to get it in my car.'

‘You wouldn't pollute your nice new Peugeot with a tatty old push-bike? My God, that's concern above and beyond the call of duty! But as a matter of fact I shan't call on you to make the ultimate sacrifice – it's Friday, remember. And Friday night is drinking night. Came on the bus today.'

He didn't laugh. ‘OK. So you're safe for tonight. I'd like you to take taxis – get the drivers to take different routes. I may even be able to organise a driver for you. I suppose you couldn't deign to take a few days off work?'

‘I don't know how the Principal would like that. And I'm not sure how I would. I like teaching and I like the company. And surely to goodness I'll be safe at college?'

‘I'll bet Wajid thought that too.'

The scream came louder and louder. I dragged myself from my nightmare to find the noise got worse as I woke up. I was shaking, my heart pounding so much that it hurt. And the screams went on.

Someone had to help.

I forced myself to the window.

No sign of anyone.

I dragged on my dressing gown and hurtled downstairs.

There it was again. A choking gurgle. The sort Wajid might have made it he'd had time. Desperate. Inhuman.

Which is, of course, precisely what it was. Through the glass of my front door I could see the shape slinking away. A fox.

But although the vixen did not call again, the sound echoed on and on in my head, and I did not want to fall asleep lest I heard it again for real.

Saturday's rehearsal was completely unremarkable. Stobbard Mayou worked us hard, but without drama. He did not attempt much eye-contact with me, and he concluded the rehearsal early because he had to dash off to Bournemouth for a gig with the Sinfonietta. Tony ran him to New Street Station, so I saw nothing of him, either. On Chris's instructions I took a taxi home. The house was full of workmen ready for tea and coffee, and the house rang with Radio One. One of the men – who introduced himself as Gavin, a friend, he said, of Chris's – casually slipped off his overalls and accompanied me to Safeway, making interesting suggestions about cheese and selecting a Hungarian white wine which he swore would be fruity. An instinct to stay away as long as possible made me insist on buying my meat from a local family store. Gavin stayed in his awkwardly parked pick-up truck while I exchanged badinage with Roger, the butcher, and his team. As an afterthought I bought a home-made pizza and a variety of pâtés and exotic sausage. Yes, I agreed, I was stocking up for a siege, and yes – with what emphasis I said it they were of course unaware – yes, I'd welcome a relieving army.

The rest of Saturday I spent cleaning up after the workmen. Gavin made what might have been a serious proposal for a date but I wasn't sure how Chris would rate a round of golf for safety and I thought it might score high for boredom. Then I cooked: sauce for spaghetti and chilli con carne. And then my time was my own. Dreadfully my own.

I'd got the marking out of the way by ten on Sunday morning. It was pouring with rain and normally I'd have taken myself to my fitness centre, buying the Sundays on the way back. But I'd agreed to eschew my cycle, and the occasional presence of a large white van fifty yards down the road did little to persuade me to break my promise.

So there was nothing for me to do except plough through the computer manuals and photocopies. I yearned to correct the English of the former, and the latter were all afflicted by an irritating blot in exactly the same place. Chris was right, of course. There was no substitute for hands-on experience. On Monday I would ask Philomena to let me into the Computer Suite – later I'd cajole a key from Richard – and I'd try to get into WordStar or WordPerfect on one of the Amstrads. If the Office Technology kids could master them, so could I.

‘Well, Sophie, how you going on?' asked Philomena after I'd been tapping away, much more slowly than the students she'd let in too, for perhaps an hour. She parked her vac, one with a face painted on it, and peered at my screen.

‘Fine, thanks.'

‘So why you been using all those rude words, girl? If I was your mum, I make you wash your mouth out.'

‘Sorry, Phil. I didn't realise anyone could hear.'

‘The good Lord, He can hear. Well, you got yourself a document. Now what you going to do with it?'

‘Print it. And save it. And all it does is bleep at me.'

‘I don't blame it, all that language.'

I never knew quite how serious Phil was when she went into gospel-talk, and I preferred not to risk offending her. So I kept mum.

‘An' I think –' I could feel her smile before it broke –‘if you want to save, F10 might help you. There.'

There was an eager buzzing. A light pulsed in what I now knew was the disk drive.

‘And now you want to get your printer on line.'

She stubbed her finger on a touch pad. The printer clattered into action.

‘Look,' I cried, clapping my hands like a kid. My document, there in black and white, peeled towards me. ‘That's brilliant, Phil.'

‘I just started this course, see, Sophie. With the OU. Computer Technology. But don't tell no one, eh – or ol' Philly, she never get no work done.'

The phone rang. Phil looked at it and at me and picked it up. ‘Ms Rivers's secretary,' she said, cool and Moira Stuart. ‘No, I'm terribly afraid he's not in yet. May I take a message? You're sure? Very well. Good morning.' She replaced the handset. ‘They want the Computer Suite Manager. Only an hour too early for him.'

I grinned in appreciation. Then an idea occurred to me. ‘You said Wajid used the phone a lot?'

‘Like he owned the place.'

‘Did he bring anything in when he came? A little box?'

‘Not what you'd call a box. More a little flat packet, this big.' Her hands suggested a cigarette packet. ‘First time I saw it, I say to him, “You know you not supposed to smoke in here, young man,” and he give me a lot of lip, and say it to do with the computer and ol' Philomena an ignorant ol' woman. But next week he buy two whole books of raffle tickets from me for the Sickle Cell Fund, so I forgive and forget. I don't tell no one about his modem.'

‘Modem!' My blush started in the region of my navel.

‘I tell you he use the phone,' she said, sardonically. ‘Why else he use the phone? I think you better do this course, Sophie.'

I spent the intervals between the morning's classes trying to cajole one of my colleagues into swapping evening classes with me. No one was very keen, but at last Sean, the head of English, agreed that he really ought to be home for his daughter's third birthday party and that he would indeed allow me to get my hands on his evening A-level group. A three-hour class for a two-hour one – but as a beggar I could scarcely choose. All I had to do now was nip down to his room to collect copies of the texts I would be teaching – Hardy and Chaucer.

The lifts or the stairs with their ninety-degree bends? I hesitated at the staff room door. I was frightened. After all this time at college I didn't want to leave the security of the staff room. I listened. The place was unnaturally quiet. None of the phones was ringing. All my colleagues were teaching or closeted away in meetings. For once there were no students demanding help. The corridor was so quiet I could hear the pings of the lifts. At the far end a class laughed, politely, obediently. In a room nearby someone was playing a French video.

And I had to make my way to the tenth floor.

I did, of course. Used the stairs, too. Found the books and legged it back again. Up the stairs.

The staff room door was unlocked. Surely I'd locked it?

I flung it open. And woke Shahida, who had her head down on her desk.

She blinked up at me. ‘You seen a ghost? Sophie?'

‘I'm fine. Honestly. And you? Shas, don't make a martyr of yourself. If you feel rough, why not go home?'

‘Just tired. But I've got something for you. I suppose I could have passed it on to Chris Groom myself, but he'd rather have it from you.'

‘Me?'

‘You must have noticed – he really fancies you. And now Kenji's gone home –'

‘I'm happily living on my own. Very happily. Just because you're besotted with Tanvir you want everyone else to smell of April and May. What have you got, anyway?'

She burrowed in the chaos she called her desk, sifting through piles of marking. At last she turned to the windowsill behind her desk and grabbed a single sheet from another pile of academic detritus.

‘There. Tim was going to throw it out. The report from Wajid's work-experience placement.'

‘Why chuck it?'

For answer she glanced across the room. Tim's desk was completely clear.

‘I didn't like to think … just because he was dead … Here.'

All our students have the chance to go to local firms to learn about Real Life – shops, solicitors' offices, even a bookmaker's. There was a strong rumour that two of our former business students were financing their course at Southampton by running what was by all accounts an extremely profitable brothel.

I looked at the paper she'd passed me, a single A4 sheet. Presumably it was the standard report. It had been completed in a convoluted script. Wajid had worked very hard and come in early if necessary. He had been pleasant and cooperative. He had learned how to input and retrieve information. His appearance had not been up to standard. He had not therefore worked with the public.

I tapped the sheet. ‘This bank. International Commercial. Never heard of it.'

‘You wouldn't,' she said. ‘You'd be a Barclays or a Lloyds woman. But if you had a shop on the Soho Road, you'd bank with International Commercial. My father did.'

‘Did?'

‘Oh, there were some rumours a few months ago. He moved his account – to Barclays as it happens. But most of his friends stayed put. Too much bother to change your bank, especially when the staff speak Urdu or Punjabi or whatever.'

‘What sort of rumours?'

‘Perhaps people's money wasn't as safe as they'd thought. But nothing positive.'

‘Would Tim have visited Wajid at the bank?'

‘He should have done: why?'

‘Just a feeling. And I don't even know what sort of feeling, yet.'

Shahida smiled. ‘Trust intuitions,' she said. ‘Always.'

Apart from his determination to keep paperwork to a minimum, Tim was an old softie. You didn't even have to wheedle him, you just asked. So I asked him if he'd care to take me to visit the International Commercial. No, he didn't have anything particularly urgent on this afternoon except a meeting he'd rather dodge, and taking me on a visit would provide a splendid excuse for dodging it. He didn't even blink when I told him how he was to introduce me.

I'd rather have gone on my own, of course. But I'd worked out a scenario which shouldn't arouse too much suspicion, and Tim was an essential adjunct. Not to mention a useful chauffeur, though it must be confessed I found his whole approach to wheels somewhat casual. It must have been the influence of Chris and Ian. He rejected two possible parking slots as too short, and, when he finally found one to his liking, didn't so much park the car as abandon it.

The International Commercial staff – the deputy manager and someone whose job I never quite established – welcomed us cautiously. Perhaps they were disconcerted that Tim should want to bring me into what seemed a male preserve. I thanked the gods of coincidence that I'd chosen a much longer skirt than usual that morning.