Dying Fall (2 page)

Groom and Dale nodded, though not necessarily in sympathy.

‘There was a rumour that Wajid had –' I stopped. ‘He never did anything they'd throw him out of college for. There are kids who wreck the loos or the drinks machines. Wajid wasn't one of those. Not a ringleader. When you reach the scene of crime.'

‘
Macavity's not there!
' said Groom, straight-faced.

‘Why couldn't you throw him out?' asked Dale, unmoved.

‘Because, apart from anything else, he wasn't “a monster of depravity”.' I flicked an eye at Groom, whose eyes flickered back. ‘He was actually a very good student. Look, we keep files on all our students – I could show you where we keep them tomorrow.'

‘So I seem to have become a copper's nark,' I told George's answering machine half an hour later.

George was my friend. I was fond of him.
Fond
fond, not sexy fond. He played the bassoon in the Midshires Symphony Orchestra, and was the person I needed to confide in. George was much older than I was – fifty-six to my thirty-four. We got to know each other because in my spare time I sing in the Midlands Choral Society, which works with the MSO whenever a choir is needed. I suppose we hadn't all that much in common – but we loved and trusted each other implicitly. He and the orchestra had been in Lichfield that evening. They'd probably be back already, but George hadn't been sleeping well recently and the last thing I wanted to do was ruin a night's rest for him by asking him to come over and comfort me. Wednesday would be Derby, then on Thursday it'd be Sheffield. They wouldn't be back till early Friday morning. We'd meet after Friday's concert – hence the phone message. If he woke late he'd leave one on my machine in reply. It was nearly as good as being properly in touch. But I rather hoped he'd get up early and phone me before I went into work.

It was only drizzling when I set out for work the following morning, but by the time I'd got through Harborne into Edgbaston it was raining properly. Rain's bad news if you cycle. Apart from getting you thoroughly wet, it enhances your chance of being mown down by a motorist who is apparently too busy counting raindrops on his precious polished paintwork to notice other people on the road. But it was too late to go back, and no one's yet devised a way of folding a cycle small enough to take on a bus, so I toiled on.

The college buildings are dismal examples of cheap sixties architecture. There is a persistent rumour that they were intended as factories, another that they should have become low-cost flats. Perhaps both are correct: we have, after all, a low, dumpy building and a fifteen-storey tower block, neither of which is appetising. Naturally the staff based in either prefer the ambience of the other. Those who were in the tower block the day of the Birmingham earth tremor, which left cracks horribly visible in the south-facing wall, know they are right.

The buildings stand side by side but have separate entrances, and open on to a big but inadequate car park. This morning the car park was full of wet students, in large queues meandering from both entrances. As I chained the parts of my cycle I leave outside, a police car joined the others near the tower-block entrance. Ian Dale emerged and joined me. We walked towards the head of the queue, which magically parted. It must have been for him, not me.

Then I saw what was causing the delays. They were checking students' IDs. Some egalitarian soul had pointed out that the staff should have IDs too, and that they should be subjected to the same scrutiny as everyone else. Quite right, except that the card tended to drift inexorably towards the bottom of my marking. I retrieved it eventually from a set of notes I thought I'd lost – an idiot's guide to the apostrophe.

There was no sign of Winston in the group of porters checking IDs; I'd ask his mother how he was when I saw her. I left a wheel and my handlebars in the caretaker's cubbyhole and rejoined the maelstrom in the foyer.

One of the lifts –
the
lift – was still taped off, and a chalk message on one of the classroom doors declared it was for the use of
POLICE PERSONAL
only. The handiwork of another of my ex-students, no doubt.

The grumbling which had been simmering outside was bubbling over in the foyer. None of the other lifts was working properly. I grinned at Ian and headed straight for the stairs.

‘We're not going all the way up there – not fifteen floors!'

‘How about stopping off at the canteen for a coffee?' asked another voice. Groom's. I hadn't noticed him before. Presumably he'd been lurking as invisibly as six foot something of policeman can hope to lurk. ‘I must say I was surprised to see you here so bright and early,' he continued, falling into step with me and leaving Ian a pace behind.

‘
You
are,' I said. ‘And I do have classes to teach. If the students ever get to them.'

‘How much further?' came Ian's voice from behind.

‘Only another couple of floors. Canteen's on the fifth.'

‘Is that for everyone or just teachers?'

‘Lecturers,' I said.

I pressed on up the stairs.

The high-rise part of the college is built around a core of lifts and stairs, with a band of corridors separating them from the classrooms on the outside of the building. The stairs have, of course, no natural light, and are further isolated by fire doors, which cut off both smoke and noise. The students, especially the women, dislike them intensely, preferring to wait hours for the overcrowded lifts to risking the endless series of ninety-degree bends.

Ian Dale would obviously have preferred a lift, but Groom kept pace with irritating ease. But he didn't seem inclined to talk. It is one of my foibles that I eschew the lifts in order to keep fit – the fact that I had used one last night was attributable to a sudden realisation that I had buses to catch. Perhaps I should have engaged him in conversation to prove that I at least had enough breath to talk, but I couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted to say. And what I ought to be doing was running a mental review of the day's classes and what I should need for them. If indeed there were to be classes. A murder on the premises might well disturb the daily pattern.

‘Did the Principal mention closing classes or anything?' I asked.

‘I've only spoken to him over the phone. I'll be seeing him at nine-fifteen, actually.'

‘How did he take the news?'

‘Without enthusiasm, shall we say. But I managed to convince him that people would be more interested in the actual murder than where it was committed.'

‘There was one years ago in a college,' Ian put in. ‘A man cut his uncle's head off. Put it in a locker. Aston University now. And the body. An old building in Suffolk Street. Pulled down. Long since. Lift shaft. If I recall.'

‘Next floor, Ian,' I said kindly.

He nodded. Groom paused between landings and looked about him.

‘There don't seem to be many other people using these stairs,' he said. ‘Any particular reason? Laziness apart, that is?'

I looked round, guiding his eyes.

‘You can see the only rooms on the landings are loos. There's been a series of petty little – incidents, I suppose you people would call them. The last flasher who tried waving his silly little prick at me ended up in tears. And I got him thrown out of college. If not from a fifteenth-floor window.'

‘Never thought of calling in your friendly neighbourhood constable?'

‘Loads of times. But the college has its reputation to think of. Which makes me wonder how they'll deal with this business.'

It was fortunate that they wanted refreshment this week, not next. Soon the canteen would be commandeered to house a new suite for the administrators, and we would have either to share with the students – who emphatically did not want us – or to eat sandwiches in our offices. But management had statistics on their side: few people ever patronised the canteen anyway.

‘Bit of a hole, isn't it?' said Ian, on cue, surveying through heavy breaths the cracked Rexine benches and cigarette-pitted floor.

I nodded, but then concentrated on cajoling water out of Vesuvius, the ancient urn, into the thick green cups that Noah had used in the Ark. I threw some money into the empty honesty box, carried two of the cups to the table they'd chosen and went back to collect the third. A pallid sun had emerged and lit the men's faces side on. Ian Dale, with his long, lined face, reminded me of Eyore, but Groom had little in common with Pooh apart from the colour of his hair. Even that was thinning. His complexion was a delicate pinky white that probably burnt to brick red in summer. Unlike Dale, who still wore that sports jacket, he looked very sleek in a suit, remarkably like one my last boyfriend paid an indecent amount for in the Aquascutum sale. It looked better on Groom, possibly because Kenji never made it above five foot six.

‘Right,' I said purposefully. ‘How can I help you? I only ask because I'm teaching GCSE English in thirteen minutes, and I have to make it to the fifteenth floor to collect the register and then get back to the eighth. I think I can deduce that you don't need to be shown the scene of the crime –'

Groom permitted himself a wispy smile. Dale jumped in. ‘Been reading too much Agatha Christie, eh? There was a whole team of people here overnight, dear, going over the place with a fine-tooth comb.
SOCO
s.'

‘Scene of crime officers,' said Groom quietly. ‘If you're in a hurry, why don't we get hold of Wajid's file? We'll come back to you if there's anything we need to ask.'

Presumably most of my colleagues were still stuck either in the queue to get in or in the foyer waiting for a lift. But Shahida was in the fifteenth-floor office, looking very much as though she shouldn't be. When I introduced Groom and Dale, and explained why they were there, she forced a smile, then put her hand to her mouth and bolted.

I stopped the men following her. Ian already had his mints at the ready, and Chris clutched something that looked incredibly like a bottle of smelling salts.

‘The first time I went into a morgue,' he said, ‘was to attend a postmortem. It's part of everyone's training. I fainted. Occasionally I still do. I must be the only serving officer to carry these.'

‘I don't think they'll help Shahida. And she prefers people to ignore it. Morning sickness.'

‘If she's that bad, why doesn't she take a sickie?' asked Ian, still holding the mints.

‘Because people don't,' I said, ‘take sickies. Not unless they have to. Can't let the students down. Or your friends, who get lumbered with extra work. Esprit de corps, or something.'

‘Sounds familiar,' said Groom, as if awarding Brownie points.

When she returned, Shahida accepted a mint. She explained our record-keeping system: one on computers, which might one day be networked, if ever the funds ran to it, and a paper-based one for computer-illiterates like me. She fished a manila folder from the cabinet next to the computer. ‘This is easier,' she said.

The folder held a copy of Wajid's timetable – he should have been in Computer Science this morning. Someone would have to break it to the class. I pointed and looked at Groom. He nodded. His job, or one of his colleagues'. I reached for one of Dale's mints.

There was a list of Wajid's qualifications: seven good GCSEs. A set of comments on his Christmas exams – A grades in all of them. And his punctuality and attendance were exemplary. Then there was a note in ill-formed handwriting asking if he might have leave of absence because his father had died. A college reference – he'd applied for a local-authority grant and his tutor, Shahida, had written a glowing report supporting him very strongly.

‘That's odd,' I said.

‘Odd?' repeated Groom.

‘Yes. Applying for a grant on the grounds of extreme financial hardship.'

‘He was absolutely broke,' said Shahida.

‘Broke students don't wear designer jeans or a Rolex.'

‘They'd be cheap copies, Sophie,' said Dale.

They hadn't looked like that to me, but he'd no doubt taken a closer look than I had. There wasn't time to argue, anyway. I had a class to go to, and the phones had started to ring. I took the nearest. It was a parent. He wasn't letting his daughter come to college till they'd caught the murderer. Just to make sure, he was sending her back to Pakistan for a holiday.

I reported back to Shahida.

‘Shit! The bastard!' she said, slamming her hand on a desk.

‘Seems reasonable enough to me,' said Dale. ‘Can't help worrying when you're a parent. Wouldn't want my girls taking any risks.'

‘But you wouldn't marry her off just to make sure. A holiday in Pakistan is all too often a euphemism for an arranged marriage, officer. These poor girls end up with country cousins, real hicks some of them.'

Groom's eyes flickered to her wedding ring.

‘I was lucky. We fell in love: our parents got on and arranged it,' she said.

I gathered up my folder and the register and headed for the corridor. Groom followed. I stopped.

‘Can I ask you something, Chief Inspector?'

‘Chris. Of course.'

Dale coughed gently. To urge discretion, perhaps.

‘Fire away,' said Chris.

‘Why didn't you suspect me?'

A couple of my colleagues, late and anxious, pushed by. We exchanged terse greetings.

‘Would you rather we had? We wouldn't have had the coffee and cakes in my room, for sure.'

‘Sandwiches. But why should you and all your colleagues assume I was telling the truth?'

Dale fidgeted his feet. I looked at Groom, wishing I was taller so I could stare him in the eye. As it was, I must have looked like a supplicant.

He looked down at me, crow's feet of amusement spreading from his eyes.