Dying on Principle (28 page)

‘I'd rather have red, please.' I was setting myself the tests now. Could I order Fairfax about, and how would I fare in the room with the dog?

Fairfax acknowledged the challenge with the nearest thing he'd so far managed to a smile, and I continued to wander round the room. When I thought I'd proved my point, I sat down and patted my lap. Pilot looked interested and padded over, sinking at my feet with his head on my knee. At this point Fairfax came in, and laughed out loud. He proffered an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon. ‘To your taste? Yes, I thought you'd be a New World woman.' He drew the cork and poured. He made no pretence of drinking it himself, sipping mineral water. ‘You did well, my dear. I wouldn't have let him hurt you, but you did well. You should face up to your fears, you know, all of them. Confront them.' He sat down opposite me. Pilot shifted so he could transfer his head to Fairfax's lap.

The wine was excellent, a wonderful bouquet and fruity on the tongue. I relaxed, as much as I ever did in Fairfax's company, and looked at him as he played with Pilot's ears. For all tonight's
bonhomie
, he was a very sick man, I was sure of it: his breathing seemed to be something of an effort.

‘You really ought to break out of this rut,' he said, as if concluding a conversation, not initiating it. ‘It's clear you're bored. Everything about you says you're bored. Your job doesn't challenge you; you have the personal life of a gerbil. When are you going to get on with living? You only get one life, you know.'

I couldn't help laughing, though perhaps it was more with embarrassment than with amusement. And there was some irritation there too. ‘What is this? Some conspiracy? You're the third person this month to say the same thing. But I don't see myself as a gerbil!'

‘You spend your waking life doing pointless work. Then you curl up in a corner of your cage and go to sleep. I'm an expert on gerbils. My children inflicted generations of them on me. They used to live in aquariums, and die inconveniently. An exercise in pointlessness.' His face fell into bitter lines. Then he smiled again. ‘They used periodically to escape. We'd find them cowering in corners. They didn't want to be caught, of course, but when they ran away they'd always go to another corner. I sense you like your corners too, Sophie.' He reached across and topped up my glass.

I could think of nothing to say, and to my chagrin found myself flushing. I told myself that it was with annoyance, but perhaps it was because I recognised a truth only a friend should have been privileged to tell me. And of course they had, Aberlene and Chris.

‘Risks, that's what you should be taking at your age. Risks.' His eyes glowed and his face softened. ‘A respectable job, respectable home in a respectable suburb. I bet even your friends are respectable. Nice women like Aberlene.'

I swallowed the impulse to tell him to mind his own business.

‘Don't look so sulky. It's an old man's privilege to advise the young.'

I didn't interrupt to contradict him. In years he might be less than sixty; tonight he looked old.

‘My advice,' he continued, ‘would be to walk out of Harborne tomorrow and put yourself on a plane, go somewhere with some challenge. A one-way ticket, mind. And when you've worked your way back here, find a job that'll make you tingle with excitement. Drive a real car – none of this piddling around on a cycle.'

‘Don't you mean pedalling?'

We started to laugh.

‘Find yourself a decent man. No, you don't have to marry him, or have children. But someone ought to be out dancing with you, wining you, dining you. And don't tell me that anyone in your life at the moment fills the bill because I can tell you now it's quite evident no one does. You're bored. Agh!' He pressed his hand against his stomach. No more Old Father Time dispensing wisdom, just a sick man crying for help.

I was on my feet. ‘What can I get you?'

‘Cloakroom. In the cupboard. In a bubble pack.'

Pilot attempted a snarl.

‘Stay!' I snapped, and was too anxious about Fairfax to look back.

I stood in the luxurious loo, holding the packet of tablets. They were horribly familiar; the medics had put Mum on them about two months before she succumbed to her cancer. She had fought and fought, but her constant message had been the opposite of Fairfax's. I shook myself. This was no time to think about philosophies. When my mother had demanded her tablets it meant she was in unbearable pain, and every second I dawdled meant more pain for Fairfax.

The relief was almost immediate, it seemed, but he sat with his eyes shut, fondling the dog's ears, for ten minutes.

‘Shouldn't you have some food?' I asked gently at last.

‘There are times,' he said without opening his eyes, ‘when I want a rice pudding.'

‘Rice pudding?'

‘A very comforting food. Not the bland and watery variety. Thick and creamy and cooked for hours alongside the Sunday roast. My mother-in-law was a Tartar, but her rice puddings – indeed, her sago puddings – were heavenly. My wife tried to make them, but never managed it. It was a matter of honour for her not to ask her mother, and I truly believe the old bat would have died sooner than tell her. In the meantime, you'll find some water biscuits and cheese on the kitchen table. You might care to feed Pilot. Insist that he sits before you open the tin, and be prepared to hit him if he tries to eat before his bowl is on the floor.'

I stood, and clicked my fingers to the dog. ‘Food?'

He got up, stretched briskly and followed me. He did sit when told, but inched closer in a rather endearing bottom shuffle. But he flinched when I caught his eye, and waited, head down, till I'd scraped the last of the meat into a red plastic bowl and put it gingerly in front of him. ‘OK, get on with it.'

I picked up the tray already set with cheese and biscuits and two plates, and left the dog to it.

Alan, the chauffeur, appeared as soon as Fairfax opened the front door, and ushered me as before into the back. Had Fairfax not sagged so visibly as soon as he thought I was no longer watching him, I would have laughed all the way home at the ridiculous spectacle of me being whisked home in such state. This time we did take the suburban route, past the Botanical Gardens and then along Augustus Road. At this point I realised what I might have realised before, had the wine been less strong; another car, a Cavalier, was uncomfortably close to our tail. Some boy racer out to out-drag a flash car; no doubt Alan could shake him off if he wanted to. However, apart from increasingly irritated checks in his mirrors, he did nothing. Perhaps he was relying on the sheer power of the car to shake off the pursuer if he became too impertinent. At last he shot across the lights with some determination.

‘We're being followed, aren't we?' I asked.

‘Someone playing silly beggars,' he said repressively.

‘Could we go straight to the police station then? I don't – Christ!'

Just before our left turn into Gillhurst Road, the tail pulled out alongside us. Simultaneously, a van shot out and pulled up nose to nose with us. Why the hell didn't Alan use his superior weight to shunt his way out? Why didn't he use the central locking to protect us?

The two drivers were out of their vehicles, one on either side of the car. The rear doors, or course. Simultaneously, they started to open them. I grabbed Alan's headrest and rolled up and over the front seats. I didn't have time to turn round to open the passenger door – I dived across his lap, ending up on my forearms on the tarmac. If I hurt him as I kicked free, I didn't care overmuch. The attackers must have taken a moment to register what I was up to; in any case, the door itself held up the man on the driver's side. I had a second – no more – to think. The Walkway!

I slid between the van and the Cavalier, and darted across the road. Just off a narrow gulley lay an access point to a disused railway, now set aside for walkers. I slithered down the cindered path, slaloming round barriers designed to stop anyone doing just that. Right, through the tunnel under the road. It's always damp under there, and I dared not lose my shoes – silly lightweight flatties. Up to my right, I could hear cursing and crashing. Perhaps they were trying to save time by forcing a way where there wasn't one. Encouraged, I slowed enough to sling my bag across my chest, and then picked up speed. If I encountered a walker, I'd ask for help. Otherwise I'd run to the end – only a mile – and pray I had enough wind to take me straight up Rose Road and the sanctuary of the police station.

Not a walker, not a cyclist in sight. I kept on, trying despite the deepening gloom to watch where my feet should go, desperate not to twist that knee again. Branches had been allowed to droop and a hawthorn slashed at my face, but I couldn't tell whether the wetness was blood or sweat. I was tempted briefly by the track through the bird sanctuary – there might still be someone in the allotments at the far end to unlock the gate. But there might not, and I'd have to battle up a steep slope through unforgiving undergrowth to get back to the main path.

Now I could see the end of the walkway, with the shallow steps back to suburban normality. Yes. But a whim drove me another twenty yards, on to the newly repaired bridge. Which way?

Dropping to my knees, I raised my head just enough to peer over the bridge's parapet. One decision made for me. No wonder I hadn't been bothered by my pursuers – a reception committee of a van and a Cavalier was waiting on the road below. I'd have to double back somehow. A vicious throb from my knee as I dropped back told me I couldn't go far, not in near darkness. The committee wouldn't wait all that long and any second the others would catch up. I'd have to risk a scramble. And then I realised the rubble on the bridge stretched on, and I could pick out fence posts. They'd extended the path into the pretty new development of tiny houses at the bottom of Park Hill Road.

It was only a matter of yards up that hill to safety. There was a gulley they might not know about, one which cut through to Rose Road. It would be amusing to lead any pursuers straight into the arms of the police. If my knee would manage. Up that hill. Then my lungs gave out. Bloody asthma!

By the Fire Station. Strong people there. Uniforms.

No! I'd make it to the police station.

And at last I pushed open the blessed front door, only to collapse in an asthmatic heap on the reception counter. I didn't even have enough breath to dig my Ventolin spray out of my bag; all I could do was gesture feebly. The woman on duty must have called for help – there'd be people trained in first aid in a police station, after all – and I suddenly heard words like ‘ambulance' and ‘hospital'. I managed to drag in enough oxygen to let me tip up the bag and scrabble.

There! Two miraculous drags and I was alive again.

I agreed with someone's suggestion that I could use a cup of coffee, and then put my brain back into gear.

‘I suppose it's not possible to contact DCI Groom, is it?' I asked. For in the heap of detritus I'd shaken from my bag lay something that suddenly seemed very important.

‘DCI Groom's not on duty,' said the receptionist, in a voice that said I had a cheek to ask.

‘I know. I'm sorry.' He was out at a head-wetting, wasn't he, and probably Ian with him. ‘Is there anyone on the team dealing with the George Muntz business I could talk to?'

There was a muttered colloquy.

‘Because,' I pursued, ‘I didn't get this way having a quiet evening jog.' I spread my hands, sticky with gravel rash I'd only just noticed. ‘I need to report an attempted attack, and I think I'd like some protection.' I tried not to look over my shoulder as the door whooshed open. Reason told me that no one would try to pick me off under the very eyes of the police, but I found that although my mouth was making reasonable, indeed responsible, noises, the rest of me was shaking in a huge, silent scream.

One of the WPCs muttered urgently: ‘She's the gaffer's woman. Better get Tom to sort her out.'

Wrong. I wasn't anyone's woman, and I didn't need sorting out. But I would be glad to get out of the reception area, where the latest whoosh of the door had admitted a stinking wino whose lice I could see from here.

I followed the WPC through the airlock to an interview room. Tom proved to be a man in his thirties with pale orange hair, a
retroussé
nose and white eyelashes. He had one of the thickest Geordie accents I'd come across outside the northeast, and was drinking tea from a Newcastle United mug. At first his expression was one of ineffable cynicism, but as my story unfolded he grew more alert.

When I paused at the point where I had dived out of the car, he raised his pencil. ‘I want the gaffer in on this,' he said.

‘He's on the booze tonight,' I said lightly.

‘Didn't anyone ever tell you, man,' he asked, ‘that we're trained to hold our beer? And knowing Chris, I'll bet he's on nothing stronger than slim-line tonic. He only left here half an hour ago, mind. Believes in his work, does Chris. Specially if it's murder. Tell you what, d'you want to get those hands seen to while I raise him? I'll get one of the lasses to sort you out, pet. And we can always start on a statement and get you looking at some faces while the memory's still warm.'

I was in their incident room scrutinising photographs when Ian surged in.

‘Sophie! What the hell are you doing? They said there'd been a development, but they never said it was you who was involved. Silly buggers! The gaffer'll have your sodding hide for this, Tom.'

Orange Hair looked as serious as it's possible to look when all your features turn naturally upwards.

‘Always give the full story, lad, remember that. Part of your story should have included the name Sophie.'

The men grinned, enjoying, no doubt, the thought of their serious boss soft in the head with love. I smiled gently, because my face needed some expression, but inwardly I was resolving to tell no one except Chris about the magnetron in my bag.