Dying Fall (3 page)

‘Let's see: you must be about five foot tall?'

‘Five foot one,' I bridled.

‘And weigh not much above eight stone? And though you're fit – very fit!' He glanced across at Dale –‘you don't break any records weight-training. Nor are you an ex-medical student.'

‘You saw my file before you saw Wajid's,' I said evenly.

He nodded, almost apologetically, and then regained the initiative. ‘So it was most unlikely that you killed that lad. You'd have to be an expert or extremely strong. Both, for preference. Whoever did it managed to get at the right angle between the ribs, the right distance from the spine. And he – let's assume it was a he – had to be strong enough to cut through that jacket. Leather, remember.'

‘A lot of … of blood,' I said.

‘Not from the point of entry, though. The blade severed the aorta. He bled to death very quickly. It's just that all the blood collected in his chest cavity.'

‘So that when I –' I gestured.

Ian Dale offered another mint. I took it.

‘Quite,' said Groom.

There was a little silence.

‘Can I just clear one thing, so we know where to find you? We've seen the canteen, such as it was, and we've seen your office. Where's the common room?'

‘There isn't one. They had that last year for the Computer Suite. We use our offices for everything.'

‘Everything?' echoed Dale. ‘You mean you eat and work and relax and everything there?'

‘Not much relaxation,' I said, ‘as you'll see if you hang around. But now we're losing the canteen, yes, everything. There are offices – we call them staff rooms – like that scattered at intervals throughout the building, housing staff doing different types of teaching. Engineering. Beauty. Languages.'

‘Must make communications a bit tricky,' said Groom, making a note.

‘Phone, rumour or carrier pigeon,' I said. ‘And now I really must dash.'

The ideal is to get a whole class together and attentive before you start teaching. Today, my GCSE group fell far short of that. I was a couple of minutes late myself, but it was a further five minutes before anyone else turned up. This was Karen, a girl whose classroom silence was always catatonic, and she retired to her regular corner to chew her hair and look morose. I tried asking about queues and lifts and she looked as if for once she might utter. As she opened her mouth, however, the door was thrown open and a green-uniformed young man strode in.

‘You,' he said, pointing his radio at her. ‘ID.'

The college management had evidently decided to tighten security. To be honest, I'd expected little more than a flurry of memos and a succession of protracted meetings to which the lower echelons, of which I was one, would not be invited. This sudden overreaction was as startling as it was unpleasant. I ached for the gentle but firm Winston and his long suffering colleagues, who endured constant abuse from the students but managed to keep a tenuous control over the incipient drug dealing, gambling and general nastiness which constantly threatened.

‘Good morning,' I said.

He contrived to ignore me.

‘I said, good morning. You are in my classroom, young man, and I expect you to behave as I expect anyone else in the room to behave.'

His radio spluttered. He started to reply. I caught his eye. He left the room. Karen started to weep, silently.

By eleven, there were still only six out of a possible twenty-four students. I gave them some work to prepare for the next week, and toiled back up to my office.

There was sufficient uproar to divert attention from my minor role in last night's affair. Where you have two lecturers gathered together, there are generally at least three opinions. Since I shared a room with thirteen colleagues and three hyperactive telephones, the noise level was unbelievable. I herded out into the corridor three or four students who'd strayed into the room and shut the door. In general they have more or less free access, but today would have to be an exception. For good measure, I locked the door.

I joined the seethe and made what I could of the arguments.

The basis of it all was shock and distress, there was no doubt about that. We valued our students, all of us, and were outraged that a young life had been wasted. But our outrage took different forms. Clearly one or two had been weeping. Another couple were scapegoating the porters, and were engaged in a loud argument with several others whose students had been subjected to the treatment I'd just witnessed. A couple of the older inhabitants were trying in vain to find cover for classes so they could go to a meeting to discuss the new security arrangements. A latecomer erupted into the room brandishing copies of a memo instructing us not to talk to the press, and warning us to be careful what we said to the police. I slipped a copy into my pocket to show to Chris.

Another phone call, from the Principal's secretary this time: I was bidden to see the Principal at lunchtime.

I turned and caught Shahida's eye. She nodded imperceptibly. Yes, she would back me.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, ‘but I've arranged to see poor Wajid's family this lunchtime. Shahida and I are going to take them some flowers.'

I said the same thing to Ian Dale when he saw us leaving the foyer, and he nodded with apparent approval.

‘Keep an eye open, eh, Sophie,' he said.

‘I wonder what he was going to say,' said Shahida, opening her Fiesta's passenger door for me.

‘Ian?'

‘H'm. And why all this first-name business? I expected them all to refer to me as Miss. And to patronise me by being too considerate, just because I'm pregnant.'

‘You don't show enough.' I grinned.

Shahida had had the foresight to order a spray from a florist in Handsworth, which was where we were heading. She parked on a double yellow line while I dashed in to pay for it.

I read the
A to Z
while she picked her way through increasingly depressing streets. Then there was a pleasant surprise. Although the houses in the street we wanted were tiny two-up, two-down terraced villas, the street itself had obviously been on the receiving end of urban renewal money. All the houses had been reroofed and parking areas had been indented into the pavement, which was also new. Different road textures reminded motorists that they were not on the Super Prix circuit.

Wajid's house hadn't been repainted, as some of the neighbours' had, but someone had cleaned the old paint, and the minute paved front garden had recently been swept. Someone was trying very hard.

The voices inside the house stopped as soon as Shahida knocked.

She knocked again.

At last it was opened, slowly, by someone I knew. Iqbal. Another William Murdock student. Ex-student. Not one of our successes. One or two of us suspected the videos he dealt in were not necessarily legitimate.

‘Is Wajid's mother there?' asked Shahida.

He muttered something and shut the door.

‘And the same to you,' said Shahida, taking my arm to steer me away.

‘You wouldn't care to translate?' To my shame, I didn't even know which language he was insulting us in.

‘“Fuck off”, more or less. But he's speaking Mirpuri, so I may have lost some of the finer nuances.'

Angry but helpless, we headed back to the car.

‘Mirpuri?' I repeated.

‘A variant of Punjabi. And his was more of a variant than most.'

‘Miss! Miss!'

We turned.

The door had opened again, and a slight figure was hurtling towards us. Yet another William Murdock face. Aftab, the star of my twilight GCSE-English class and one of the best students of the year.

‘I'm sorry. My cousin. He's very upset. Wajid was his cousin, see.'

Aftab was upset, too. He was ashen pale, with green smudges of grief below his eyes.

‘He shouldn't have spoken like that. My aunt is very angry. She appreciates what you were trying to do. Please, come in.'

I demurred. I didn't want to intrude. Neither did I want to cause offence. I glanced at Shahida.

‘Just for a moment, Aftab. We have to get back to college.'

The front door opened straight into the living room. We were aware of people melting into the kitchen. An Asian woman grey with grief hitched her dupatta across her face. Aftab muttered something. This must be Wajid's mother.

Shahida passed over the flowers.

With great dignity she took them and placed them on a hard chair. She took my hand between both of hers, then Shahida's. She spoke slowly to Shahida. I looked covertly around the room. Like the outside of the house it was shabby but clean. There were pale patches on the wall as if someone had taken down pictures.

Aftab saw me looking.

‘A custom. After a death in the family, some people cover mirrors. Others take down family photos. We don't like to have photos where people are praying.'

I touched his arm lightly. He nodded, and blinked hard.

‘The funeral?' I said hesitantly. ‘Should the college …?'

He shook his head. ‘It'll be a very small family funeral. Islam teaches that we should bury our dead at once. As soon as the police give permission, we go ahead. Maybe tomorrow, they said.'

‘At the big mosque in Highgate?'

‘You wouldn't even know it's a mosque, miss – just a house in the next street. Very small. Just family. Then there's the burial.'

‘Would it be OK if –'

‘The women mostly don't go to the cemetery. It's not very nice. Not for women. They have the coffin open, you see.'

‘What about one of the male staff from college?'

‘My aunt thinks you have brought the flowers from the whole college. You've done all you should. More would be …' He gestured, hunting for the word.

‘Intrusive?'

He nodded. I caught Shahida's eye and we turned to the front door. Aftab opened it.

‘See you at college, miss.'

‘Take however long you need, Aftab. You'll soon catch up,' I said.

He shook his head. ‘Can't miss college. Got to get those A levels. They're asking two As and a B for Law. If we can't have the funeral, I shall be in tomorrow. Without fail.'

The rest of the day was unnervingly quiet. The green-uniformed security men were still around, but had evidently been instructed to show more sensitivity. At the end of my last class, I sought out Winston, the porter.

He was sitting in the cleaners' rest room, what looked like a physiology textbook open on his lap.

He got up when he saw me, but I perched on a large drum of cleaning liquid, and he settled again.

‘Fascinating stuff,' he said, tapping the book. ‘When I've qualified maybe I should look into it. Pathology. The stuff those guys could tell from one wound. Amazing.'

‘How did you get on with them?'

‘I just a porter, man. I don't know nothing, man,' he said, his Afro-Caribbean lilt much exaggerated.

‘Don't give me that, Winston, or I'll set your mum on you.'

‘She does it better than me!' he said, his accent returning to normal.

‘'Course she does. More practice. They obviously didn't suspect you, anyway. Not if you're here.'

Winston was, after all, the right size. As tall as Groom, at least, and very powerfully built. He bowled a wicked in-swinger, very fast indeed. He'd had trials with several county sides, and had received a couple of offers. But he'd also been given a place at St Mary's to read Medicine, and would be leaving for London next September. Meanwhile he earned enough to live on and save, and enjoyed playing the sleepy dim giant. And the students respected him.

‘Gave me a tough time, Sophie. And I reckon they'll want to hassle me again. All they need is a motive.'

‘Have you got one?'

He shook his head.

‘I told them, I reckon it's some Muslim Mafia business. And maybe they believe me.'

I touched the textbook.

‘Do they know about this?'

He shook his head again. ‘No, man.'

‘I'd tell them, Winston. Before someone else does.'

On my way back up the building, I stopped off at the Departmental Office, ostensibly to check my pigeonhole for mail but in reality to catch my breath and rest my leg muscles. Straight into the bin went a load of brochures for books the college couldn't afford – God knows why they'd found their way to someone as lowly as me anyway. A fistful of memos; I'd check those later. Some telephone messages. One was from the Principal cancelling the lunchtime meeting and asking me to phone his secretary. One from a friend I was suppod to be meeting for a drink: he'd got flu. And one from George – what the hell was going on at William Murdock? He'd see me on Friday, after the choir's rehearsal and the MSO's concert.

When I reached the fifteenth floor, I found the office unlocked and apparently deserted. So much for our new enthusiasm for security. Then I realised I wasn't alone. Shahida had her head down on her desk and was fast asleep. I'd meant to invite myself round to fill the gap in the evening left by Carl, the man who'd invited me for a drink. Shahida's mother cooks the meanest samosas I've ever eaten, and keeps her daughter supplied. If I gave the smallest hint I was lonely, she'd offer at once. But clearly she needed rest more than I needed company. I gathered my marking up quietly, found my coat, and padded out. I locked the door behind me.

I must have some nasty masochistic streak which refuses to let me leave my bike at work and take a taxi, even when it's dark and dirty on the roads. I got wet through just reassembling it, and found I had to battle the long haul up to Five Ways against the wind. By sticking to the gutter I overtook the cars forming a solid jam. At Five Ways itself, a monster traffic island controlled at peak times by lights, I simply took illegally to the pavement. I'd seen enough blood recently to convince me that I didn't want any of mine to be shed.