Dying Fall (23 page)

Tina cut them short. ‘So no one could have touched it except your people?'

‘No one except Irene, and ever so particular Irene is, and Wayne, he'd be the one who delivered it –'

‘Who placed the order. Did you see who placed it?'

It was an Interflora order. From Cheltenham. There was a message inside, said the florist. Ever so lovely. She'd written it down herself. She could trace it back if we needed – we only had to ask.

‘Let's see what the message says first,' I said. I fished it out, and turned so that no one else should see it.

‘Sophie: a small token of thanks for your sweet understanding. Til next time. S.'

Kind words. And I was sure the spelling was not his.

I could have sung and danced my way through the rest of the day, evening class included. Chaucer – yes, we had fun with the Wife of Bath, her and her lovely Janekin. Shame the golden-haired, clean-limbed young man turned out to be such a comprehensive louse.

The rose was waiting for me when I took my break.

Sean had set an essay test for the second half of the class. All I had to do was write it on the board and sit down and watch them. ‘Explain why Clym Yeobright's marriage to Eustacia was doomed to failure.'

Invigilating has all the charm of watching the stubble grow back on your legs. Any ordinary day I'd have marked, but now I was too sleepy to do justice to it. I could feel myself drifting off. Even I would regard dozing in front of a class as unprofessional and the Principal might well regard it as a sacking offence. So I hauled myself to my feet and prowled round, peering over the students' shoulders to see what they'd written and even, if I felt generous, to dab a finger on more obvious mistakes. Apostrophe errors abounded, and some spelling was so original it verged on the dyslexic. Then there were odd sentences to enjoy. ‘Clym wandered about the countryside exposing himself at intervals.' Sean should enjoy that. And then – who says great literature is not applicable to every generation? –‘the trouble with Clym is pathetic phallusy'.

Tina's young man and his unlikely van took me back to Tina's flat. In fact, the young man himself seemed less and less ordinary: I didn't expect to see Russell's
History of Western Philosophy
tucked into the door pocket. And when he whistled under his breath, it wasn't pop or rock but Bach. Apart from his whistling – he took us straight through the Fourth
Brandenburg
– and my occasional
a capella
contributions, there was silence. I was too tired to speak. Tina might have been too bored. Or too pissed off with me for singing along with her bloke. If he was her bloke. I didn't know.

I longed for a hot bath to ease the bruises and ache and gravel rash and singed hands. A bath, a cup of cocoa and
Persuasion
but
Persuasion
was at home. At this point I believe I might have started to cry. But I didn't. I swore instead. Who should be sitting in the middle of Tina's living room, a particularly severe expression on his face, but Chris Groom?

I'd hardly sat down – circumspectly – before he started asking me questions. When Tina and the whistling philosopher sat down on either side of him, it felt like the start of the Inquisition.

Particularly when the boyfriend took out a notebook.

There was only one way to deal with this: so flippantly I wouldn't cry.

‘We have met,' I said to him. ‘But we've never been formally introduced, have we?'

He blushed: it was good to know I could still produce a satisfactory twirl of teacher's sarcasm.

‘Thought I'd told you,' said Tina.

‘No. And since you never address him by name –'

‘OK. Seb, this is Sophie: Sophie, this is Seb.'

I held out a social hand. He pulled himself up – only an earthquake would have shifted me from my chair – and offered a reasonably firm grip.

‘How do you do?' I pursued. ‘And what do you do, Seb?' Joyce Grenfell would have been proud of me.

‘Can't we get on with this?' Chris said, roughly.

‘With what, Chris? I'm just making Seb's acquaintance – isn't that quite important? All I know about him is that he's interested in philosophy and may have perfect pitch. What I want to know is what a nice young man like him is doing in a place like this.'

‘For fuck's sake,' Tina muttered.

‘Taylor's in undercover work. Isn't it obvious?' said Chris.

‘Isn't the whole point of undercover work that it shouldn't be?' I asked sweetly. But I was too tired to play the game any longer. I started to sag.

Chris must have noticed. He sat up authoritatively. ‘There's just a few details I want to go over, Sophie, if you don't mind,' he said.

‘I do mind. I thought I'd made that clear.' But I was too stiff to rise with dignity from an armchair as squashy as Tina's.

‘I said I needed to talk, Sophie.'

Vertical at last, I was perceptibly swaying. I didn't care.

‘I believe,' I said, ‘that you are all sitting on what is meant to be my bed.'

‘For God's sake, woman.' But he stood up too.

Seb and Tina retreated through an open door.

‘I've not slept since yesterday morning. I want to now.'

‘Mrs Thatcher says she only needs two hours a night,' he said.

‘Look what happened to her.'

‘We're investigating – in case it has slipped your memory – two murders. Which are undoubtedly tied up with attacks on you. Don't you think a little cooperation might be useful?'

‘Tell you what, we'll have a meeting tomorrow.'

‘Nine?'

‘No. Teaching at nine. Teaching all day, come to think of it. And a meeting at lunchtime I can't miss.'

With a bit of luck he'd wake me up by exploding.

‘What do you suggest, then? Eleven o'clock next Sunday?'

‘How about breakfast tomorrow?' I'd had enough of this round, too.

He stepped towards me, half-smiling. ‘You mean –'

‘Breakfast,' I said.

If the meeting had been minuted, I should think about a page would have covered everything. As it was we went all round the Wrekin, to use the Black Country expression, and got nowhere at all.

Accents:
we chewed them over for a while.

Motorbikes:
those too.

Computers:
a prolonged discussion which would have amused Phil no end. The police were so short of manpower (gusty and ironical sigh from Sophie) they'd not yet come up with anything in the computer project.

Banks:
the police team were notably reticent on the matter of ICB, so I threw my threepennyworth of rumour in. Chris was not amused.

Then things got more frightening.

Names of possible suspects:

1)
Iqbal:
the cousin had temporarily interested them, but had been eliminated on two grounds: he was left-handed and the murderer was right-handed, or vice versa, and he'd been helping the police with their enquiries into quite another matter – cheeking the constabulary.

2)
Tony:
unfortunately he'd got an unshakeable alibi, too, for the time of Wajid's death, but they were glad to say that for George's death he hadn't—

‘I beg your pardon? Did you say glad? Tony's my friend. My oldest, dearest friend.'

But that wouldn't have been minuted.

3)
Jools:
I could vouch for her being in the pub. And – news to me – Stobbard swore he'd watched her leave the building by the front door.

4)
A.N. Other:
my choice. But I couldn't identify him or her. Someone at the bank? The man without a job title? Chris favoured someone from the Asian community – anyone – but hadn't found anyone to pin it on, hard as he'd tried. (That wouldn't be minuted either.)

Motive:
(‘Ah,' I said. ‘Now we're talking. Shouldn't we have done this first for the victims? And treated them separately?'

‘We're only brainstorming,' Chris said defensively. ‘But maybe you're right.'

‘How can we treat them separately?' Seb put in. ‘Ms Rivers is involved with both.')

How would that work out if officialese? ‘It was pointed out that determining motivation for the murders might be instrumental in discovery of the murderer. So far as was known, Ms Rivers was the only common factor.' Something like that?

a.
Wajid Akhtar:
no known enemies, within the Asian community or outside it. Popular at college. But suspected to be involved with computer fraud.

b.
George Carpenter:
no known enemies. But his knowledge of the members of the orchestra and their affairs might have made him dangerous. There is no question that he might have been blackmailing anyone.

‘So why,' asked Seb, ‘encourage a man carrying his bassoon case on to a building site and whack him on the head with a scaffolding pole?'

A O B:
Ms Rivers's burglary. Police confirmed that the security lights and the burglar alarm had been left inoperative by what appeared to be professional thieves. A neighbour had reported seeing heavily built men getting into a parked Transit. No ID yet.

The meeting was adjourned
sine die.
It was time for college. Tina jiggled her car keys at me, Seb consumed the last of the toast, and Chris stared at his coffee mug as if he'd never seen one before.

‘Tell me, Chris,' I said, ‘how you propose to guard me tonight. I've got a ticket for the Music Centre – I've had it for months. Brahms, Mozart and more Brahms.'

‘Skip it. Listen to it on the radio.'

Tina's eyes widened in horror.

‘Tina's hi-fi can only get Radio WM,' I said.

‘But –' And then he realised it was a joke. He blushed very easily for a grown man. ‘I'll see what I can do,' he said at last.

‘Hi, girl,' said Philomena, ‘how your boyfriend, then?'

Tina, a little breathless from the stairs, asked, ‘Which boyfriend?'

‘Oh, she got plenty, our Sophie.' Philomena laughed. ‘The one what sent you roses, Sophie.'

‘Rose. Just the one.'

‘No. Roses. You want to see your desk.'

‘I don't. It's a mess.'

‘What's new, eh?'

Even the very best minder needs to go to the loo at one time or another. With Philly beside me I saw no reason to follow Tina. In fact, I had every reason not to. I wanted a little help from Phil, which Tina would be happier not knowing about.

‘I'll be up in ten minutes, Sophie,' she assured me a minute later, winking luxuriously. And then, for public consumption, ‘You go look at that desk.'

‘Sophie,' someone's ill-formed handwriting said, ‘have tried endlessly to reach you. All I get is your answering machine. Are you all right? Please contact me to let me know I'm forgiven. S.'

And there were a dozen roses this time, as Phil had said.

I'd already opened the cellophane wrapping when Tina returned. I looked at her ironically.

‘Ah,' said Tina. ‘Flowers.'

While she went off to fill an old jug we keep just in case a grateful student says it with flowers – and a surprising number do, bless them – I dug swiftly in my files and shoved the photocopies of Wajid's project in an envelope. The scrawl which constituted the address would have done credit to an old-fashioned GP. I'd just had time to slide some stamps on when Tina reappeared. While we arranged the flowers and brewed a celebratory cup of tea, Philomena came in unobtrusively, removed the envelope from the corner of my desk and strolled out. If assorted police computer experts couldn't crack it, we'd see what one whizz kid could do.

When the phone rang in the staff room during our lunch break, Tina was the only one whose mouth was not too full to answer it. She passed it to me, with an ironic lift of the eyebrow. It was Chris, in his far-from-official voice, offering to guard me. Somehow he'd managed to wangle tickets for a pair of seats.

‘Is Gorgeous Bum conducting?' Tina demanded when I put down the phone.

‘No. An equally lovely Frenchman,' I said. ‘Stobbard's carving in Liverpool –'

‘Eh?'

I waved my arms about. ‘You know – carving. He was already booked there before he picked up Peter Rollinson's schedule. Don't worry – we're not in for the clash of the Titans.'

‘Thought it was the cymbals!'

On impulse, and to stop myself screaming, I offered my original seat to a nearby History lecturer.

‘It isn't your usual seat or anything, is it?' he asked.

‘No, I sit anywhere I can get tickets. Why?'

‘Wouldn't want to get blown up, that's all,' he said cheerfully.

I wasn't surprised when Chris didn't use the underground car park: there would be far too many places for people to lurk. He found a slot in a crowded, brightly lit shoppers' car park and we walked bunching in with other pedestrians as much as we could. Then we had to cross the wide spaces of Centenary Square. In the daytime, the trees offer an oasis of green amid the city grey. Now they were little islands of shadow. It was all I could do not to reach for Chris's arm. Perhaps the events of the last forty-eight hours were catching up with me. And I was still tired: I hoped to God that I wouldn't fall asleep during the concert. But it was no thanks to the conductor that I didn't.

‘Don't glower,' Chris said, as we pushed our way out two hours later.

‘I'm entitled to glower. Waste of time and money. God, to think he made Brahms sound boring!'

‘That overture always takes me back to when I was a kid. My brother singing it: “
Gaudeamus igitur, luvenes dum sumus
. Bombs shall dig our sepulchres – bigger bombs exhume us.” D'you reckon Brahms would have approved?'

‘Moot point, isn't it? The man admired Bismarck, for God's sake! But I love his music,' I added, inconsequentially and unnecessarily. ‘Was your brother part of the protest movement?' I asked. I ought to make some effort to be sociable.