Dying Fall (21 page)

He looked at me oddly, as indeed he might, and poured the champagne that had arrived almost as we had, together with some minuscule canapés.

‘I like the view from here,' he said.

I preened. Perhaps he was a man for small breasts. But he was looking out of the window. He'd meant it all too literally.

‘Come and look,' he said, gesturing with his glass.

I stood a foot behind him.

‘Aw, c'mon, Sophie.' He reached for the window catch. ‘Champagne on the balcony.'

Suddenly I was shivering again.

‘You can see right across the city. The lights remind me of back home.'

‘Sorry. It's vertigo. I can't.'

‘But don't you work in some tower block?'

‘I never look out of the window. Sorry, Stobbard. I truly can't.'

If I hoped he'd kiss and caress my fears from me, I was to be disappointed. He merely turned and rang irritably for more champagne.

The arrival of a waiter bringing a fresh supply of ice and two more bottles of champagne made me feel, despite my expensive outfit, cheap. Whenever I'd slept with a man before, it had always been private. We'd both known – or at least hoped – what would take place, but no one else had. Kenji and I had bought our rough Italian wine at an off-licence and retired – to his bed, that time – and that was that. But for all his discreet and downcast eyes, I knew that the waiter knew that we did not intend to spend the rest of the evening reviewing the ballet. I retired to the loo to sit and think.

The bathroom certainly provided food for thought – not only a bidet, a handbasin and a shower, but also a bath big enough for two. Perched on the far edge was a particularly phallic loofah.

Virtue and dignity, or sex? My body cast its deciding vote. It told the meeting it wished to clamp itself round Stobbard's at the earliest opportunity.

He had removed his jacket and tie and was coaxing the cork from the second bottle. I watched his hands, with their long, curling thumbs, making easy an operation that other people make a fuss about. When he saw me watching, he smiled, laying down the bottle, still just corked, and he turned to me. He slipped his hands on to my throat, his thumbs pushing up my chin to the right angle.

And then he started to sneeze.

Stripped, Stobbard was as beautiful as I'd hoped he'd be. All those wonderful muscles, and a fine clear skin. He was lying face down on the bed, as if hiding from the brief embarrassment that had made me offer him a massage. My hands explored the knots of tension, kneading them in the hope that this time he would rise to me. Down to his buttocks at last, and any moment now he'd roll over, and everything would be all right.

Everything went to plan. He groaned with pleasure under my hands. He rolled over.

But he didn't have an erection.

‘Godamn it, I guess it's those fucking antihistamines,' he muttered, turning away from me.

‘Shall I – would you like me to help?' I asked gently, reaching for him.

He winced from my touch as if my hand were barbed wire.

‘I tell you – enough!' He sat up on the far side of the bed, and reached for my pretty dress, his right hand bunching it so he could throw it across to me. ‘Just get the hell out of here!'

I wouldn't let him see me cry. I picked it up as it slithered to the floor and carried it to the bathroom.

When I emerged he was wearing a tracksuit.

‘Would you mind if I called a cab?' I asked, relieved that my voice didn't shake.

He passed me the phone and poured another glass of champagne.

I called the minicab service we'd used an hour ago.

While I waited I stared at a framed notice advertising the hotel's secretarial service for its guests. Didn't see it. Didn't take it in. It was just something to focus on to stop the tears. But there was something familiar about it.

There'd be a cab outside the foyer in five minutes.

The net curtains washed and billowed over the carpet. He stood by the open window, breathing deeply. Timidly I moved closer. He gave me something approaching a smile and moved his arm, as if inviting me to snuggle up to him. I wanted to. God, I wanted to …

The phone rang. My cab was waiting.

He insisted on escorting me down. Although we had the lift to ourselves, he made no effort to get close. We chattered superficially about his concert with the MSO in Cheltenham the following evening. If only he would ask me to go along – but in any case, I was teaching Sean's class. It was a beautiful programme, if rather long: an early Haydn symphony, Schubert's Eighth (which sometimes appears in print as the
Unfurnished
), and Beethoven's Third Symphony. I would not remind him of another popular misprint – the
Erotica
. Instead, and not much more tactfully, I asked him who was playing the important bassoon part in the Haydn, one of George's favourites.

‘Don't ask. Some goddamn extra. Not Jools. Don't even think of it, I told Rossiter. Over my dead body.'

‘Isn't he trying to get rid of her? As she's so incompetent?' I added, as he seemed to need some explanation.

He stared at me hard, then said, sounding ineffably bored, ‘Musicians' Union. Assholes.'

By this time the pain in my chest was unbearable. My mouth might have been talking but it still wanted the pressure of his. Any moment I was going to cry. I felt so bloody rejected. So bloody all over. Not because I couldn't arouse him. Everyone gets their flat spots and he must have been suffering much more than I. But if a relationship was to develop we should have talked, comforted each other. And he hadn't cared enough.

When Kenji had gone back to his sumo wrestlers, I was so angry I hardly had time to be hurt. But this time my heart hurt, hurt as much as my lips, and still I could hardly walk for wanting him so much.

The minicab was waiting, the driver drumming his fingers on the Montego's steering wheel. Stobbard made no attempt to open the rear door for me. Then the driver looked up and grinned.

‘Hey, if it isn't Sophie!' he said, getting out.

‘Khalid! Stobbard, this is one of my ex-students, Khalid Mushtaq –' I turned to Stobbard, smiling. I hoped he'd shake hands with Khalid, and then – why not? – kiss me good night. But he merely nodded, shoved his hands into his pockets and withdrew into the shadows.

Maybe I could replace some of my misery with honest bad temper: how dared he cut Khalid like that? Khalid, meanwhile, had sensed the slight. And I could scarcely explain that it might have been unintentional, Stobbard still perhaps smarting after what he no doubt saw as a failure.

‘You OK, Sophie?'

‘Sure. Why don't I sit in front so we can talk? You can start by telling me why you're driving a cab. I thought you got a First? In Computing?'

Khalid Mushtaq had been one of my nicest ever students, and one of the very best. At one point it looked as if TB might stop him sitting his A levels, and I'd taken work round, first to the isolation hospital and then to his home. I'd not been the only one by any means, but I suppose I'd been the most regular. And in the end, all the teamwork paid off – Khalid had passed, triumphantly.

‘Yes. LSE. Anyway, I thought I'd better move back up to Brum – my mother's not too good at the moment – and I'm doing my PhD.'

‘What in?'

‘Come off it, Sophie – if I explained all night you'd be none the wiser, would you?'

‘Thanks, Khalid. OK, which uni?'

‘Brum. But the grant's – well, I shouldn't moan. So I do a spot of moonlighting. You still beavering away at William Murdock?'

‘D'you suppose the place would fall down if I built a big enough lodge?'

‘Have to watch it if you're still on the fifteenth.'

‘I do indeed,' I began, about to tell him my recent woes.

He put the car into gear and started to pull into Broad Street.

‘Hang on! Khalid, you'll think I've flipped, but could you take me a really odd way home? Yes, I'm still in Harborne, still the same place. You see, I'm afraid of being followed.' And I was. Suddenly I felt sick with terror.

‘What – are you kidding me?'

‘No.'

‘You mean now?'

‘In general. And maybe now in particular.'

‘Ah.' I knew that tone. I knew I could rely on him to trust me without question. ‘So we head for the city centre, not Harborne, and then do one or two clever bits. Fill me in as we go. Any idea what sort of a tail we could have?'

‘I've met a brown Datsun a couple of times.'

‘Well, let's just prove –' his speech slowed as he checked the rear-view mirror –‘that no one's behind us now, shall we? Hold tight.' Reaching for the handbrake with his left hand, he shifted his grip with his right until it was to the bottom left of the steering wheel. ‘OK?'

Before I really knew what was happening, the car was pointing the other way. He accelerated hard, shooting a set of lights I trust he'd normally have stopped at, and headed not for the underpass but for the island at Five Ways. And went round it twice. Just as I hoped we were going home, he took off down Ladywood Middleway. I suppose he could have dropped me off at college – it would have been the earliest start I'd ever made. As we hurtled downhill, I gave him the barest bones of what had been happening.

‘And how,' I asked, as we turned right at the island at the end of the dual carriageway, ‘can you disguise something really important in a set of notes on computerising the hire of videos?'

‘You sure about that?'

‘No. But it's the only theory I've got.'

Up to the College of Food and a left down Great Charles Street. And he was studying the rear-view mirror with far more than casual interest.

‘Company?'

‘Could be.'

‘Don't worry if it's the police – all we'd –'

‘I'm not worrying about the police – not unless they drive old Datsuns.'

‘Not brown?'

‘In one, Sophie. In one.'

He'd accelerated, but carried on talking as if doing forty round an island were an everyday event. The back end wanted to break away – I could feel him fighting for control.

‘Bloody diesel on the road,' he said, heading back up Great Charles Street. Then he took us under the first of the Queensway tunnels. ‘Funny, Sophie, when I was a kid – twelve, I'd be – they tried it on a bit at school. Asked me why all Pakis drove Datsuns. I didn't know what a Paki was, let alone a Datsun. But it's true, you know. Ninety per cent of the cars in our street are bloody Datsuns. Mostly brown Datsuns. But I don't reckon that one's one of my neighbours'.'

We were through the last of the underpasses now, heading briskly down Bristol Street. So was the Datsun.

We crossed the lights at the big McDonald's just as they changed to red. We could hear the squeal of tyres as the Datsun wove under the wheels of a lorry with right of way.

Priory Road lights, next. If he turned left there was Edgbaston cricket ground and Moseley. But he was surely turning right – and then, slewing from one lane to the other, he finally took us straight on: after a short narrower section, a long dual carriageway which led towards Selly Oak.

‘Look, I'm going to try to loop round the central reservation – another of those handbrake turns. But at this speed …'

I couldn't even see the gap he was heading for. All I could see was trees, lining the road and dotted along the grassed reservation. They were flashing past with terrifying speed.

Suddenly we were going the other way.

Something moved on the road. It must have caught Khalid's eye. His offside wheels caught a kerbstone and we flashed towards iron railings. But he heaved and tugged the car straight –‘There!' And he started to laugh.

I twisted round. ‘Khalid, he's still there – No! He's – oh, my God!'

As Khalid slowed, I watched the Datsun spin into the air, bouncing on to its roof and rolling.

Khalid slewed across the road and stopped. His hand was shaking as he reached for his phone.

‘Ambulance,' he said. ‘And police. And – my God – better make it fire brigade, too. Bristol Road. Those playing fields by King Edward's School. Just by the gates.' He replaced the handset and turned to me. ‘Why didn't I think of that before – actually calling the Bill? Might have saved a few miles' worth of tyres. Come on, better see if we can help that guy.'

Another, less humane impulse struck me. ‘No! There's a killer out there. And he's after us. Let's –'

He flattened me in my seat, pushing the door open as he did. ‘He's got a fucking gun! Get out!'

The windscreen and the window in his door shattered. I couldn't separate sound from light.

I crawled across the pavement, hunting for cover. Khalid was beside me, his hand pushing my head down. The gates! But they were firmly locked, and the racket hadn't yet roused whoever lived in the lodge within.

Then Khalid reeled from my side. I flung myself on top of him. There was nothing to clamp to the gash in his arm except my hand. The blood welled between my fingers.

‘It's just a scratch,' I whispered. For my benefit, not his. He was unconscious.

Bristol Road is one of the main arteries into the city. You'd think there'd be someone driving along nosy enough to stop and investigate. But the road was deserted.

Apart from the Datsun driver.

There was another quick burst of gunfire. Not at us. At the car. The tank.

Then there was the sound of a motorbike. The vomit of fear rose in my throat. One we might escape. Not two. But the Datsun driver stopped firing. I could see the figure recede. The motorbike was almost at a halt.

Both cars exploded into flame.

Suddenly there came another noise: the pon-pon of an emergency vehicle. And another. The bike roared off. And at long last the sodium lighting was slashed by the blessed blue lights I'd been praying for.