House of Dust (34 page)

Chapter Fifteen

I glanced at the old sundial in Brase front quadrangle as I hurried towards my staircase. Ten past seven. I tried without much success to keep my excitement in check. Davie and Katharine would be as amazed as I'd been by Hel Hyslop's presence in Oxford. I kept telling myself it could be a coincidence but the temptation to look for a link between her, Duart, and what had happened in Edinburgh was irresistible. I paused as I reached the doorway. The evening was warm and still. Somewhere nearby a choir was giving what sounded to me like a faultless rendition of a medieval religious piece. It definitely wasn't the O-blues.

I ran up to my rooms and put my control card in the slot by the door. It swung open and voices cascaded out.

“Ah, Quint, there you are,” Davie said, grinning at me and holding up a glass. It wasn't a beer mug, but it must have held close to a half a pint of pale brown liquid. “We decided not to wait.”

“How did you get in?” I asked, looking at my card.

“We had some help.” Katharine was standing at the armchair by the open window.

A figure in tweeds stood up shakily. “How are you, Quintilian?” The old don Elias Burton nodded at me, his bright blue eyes glinting beneath his lank yellow hair. “You don't mind if I call you by your full name, I hope?”

“Nah,” Davie said. “He loves it.”

I raised an eyebrow at him and turned back to Katharine. She was sipping from a smaller glass. “You had help?” I asked.

Burton took an unsteady step towards me. “Forgive me. I found your friends on the stair. My rooms are on the floor above.” He pointed to the nostrum that was dangling from his wrinkled neck. “I managed to access your entry code.”

“Brilliant,” I muttered, wondering how many other people had been through my door during the day.

“And I managed to work out how to access the college cellar,” Davie said, looking pleased with himself.

“With a lot of guidance from me,” Katharine said, smiling at him acidly.

I shook my head at them, glad to see that they were still observing their traditional hostilities but frustrated by Elias Burton's presence; it was getting in the way of my news.

Katharine took the old academic's elbow and steered him back to the armchair. “Doctor Burton's been telling us more about the set-up in New Oxford,” she said, giving me a meaningful look. “Apparently there are over thirty incarceration facilities in and around the city.”

The classicist nodded. “That's right, I'm afraid. The Faculty of Criminology is a law unto itself.”

I took the heavy glass that Davie handed me. “Is it right that the faculty is controlled directly by the Hebdomadal Council?” I asked, remembering what Harriet Haskins had said.

Elias Burton took a sip of sherry and nodded again. “That's because of the huge amount of funds generated by Crim Fac.” He looked up at me, his head twitching. “You see, a different research project is run in each prison. The transnational companies and the independent foreign states are desperate to find the most cost-effective ways of handling the huge prison populations that have resulted from the breakdown in law and order all over the world.”

That squared with what Pete Pym had told us. I remembered the windowless blocks we'd seen in the colleges on Broad Street.

“What research goes on in Balliol and Trinity?” I asked. “I mean Ball and Trin.”

Elias Burton pursed his dry lips. “Terrible things in the former, Quintilian. The facility in the former Balliol College was constructed for political prisoners. They are sent here from numerous countries.” He shook his head. “Keep this to yourselves,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I've heard they even torture the inmates.”

I glanced around the room, hoping for the old don's sake that we weren't under aural surveillance. Maybe he was past caring.

“And Trin?” I asked.

“Ah,” Burton said, looking less despondent. “Trin isn't so bad. The prisoners there live communally. They're encouraged to do their own cooking and laundry.”

“But they're still locked up in a concrete pile without any fresh air,” Davie said, shaking his head.

“What about the people who live in the suburbs?” Katharine asked. “They're treated as little better than slaves, aren't they?”

The old man nodded, his head bowed. “That's true. Why do you think they're called subs?” He put his glass down carefully on the window ledge. “The university authorities don't really need their labour. They simply use them as laboratory rats.” He looked up at us. “You've been out there. You've seen how they live.”

I glanced at Katharine and Davie. They'd obviously let slip something about what we'd been doing.

“But the children aren't given any schooling,” Katharine said, impervious to my concern. “Apart from the ones who are chosen to be indoctrinated in the boarding schools.”

Burton laughed bitterly. “'Twas ever thus, dear lady. This university has operated a strict selection policy ever since the thirteenth century. The school you went to usually counted much more than any natural ability.”

I remembered the guy in the outfitters and decided to throw the word he'd used at the old don. “Tell me, doctor, what exactly are Grendels?”

He took the question without any giveaway twitches. The only thing that suggested he might have been surprised was his brief silence. Then he looked straight at me. “From your use of the plural form, I infer that you are not asking about the creature who caused the early Danes no end of bother in the old poem?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on him. The choir was still singing the Lord's, or more likely the administrators', praises in the background.

Burton ran his tongue over his lips. “Grendels? You have been busy, Quintilian. Even I have heard very little about those individuals.” He smiled. “And I, as you may have gathered, am quite a collector of information.”

“Gossipmonger is the word,” said Davie in a low voice as he refilled our glasses.

Burton raised an unsteady hand to decline more sherry. “The Grendels,” he said, lowering his voice again, “are the Faculty of Criminology's pride and joy. A highly trained, highly” – he glanced at Katharine – “to use your term, highly indoctrinated group of paramilitary operatives. They patrol the outer reaches of the state, especially the so-called Poison Fields, and deal with both interlopers and escapees.”

“Highly trained?” I said.

“Lethal, I should say. Capable of killing people with their bare hands. They're also heavily armed.” The old don looked out of the window at the shadows that had now fallen across the lawn. “They are violence personified. So much so that they are restricted from entering the central university area. The bulldogs are lightweights compared with Grendels.”

I glanced at Davie and Katharine. It looked like they too were thinking about the mutilated bodies we'd seen in Edinburgh and in the Viewing Room here.

There was a trill from my nostrum. I raised it from my chest and saw Administrator Raphael's face appear on the screen.

“Citizen Dalrymple,” she said, looking straight at me, “I want a full report from you. Kindly present yourself at the Hebdomadal Council Block immediately. And citizen?”

I returned her stare but didn't speak.

“Come alone.” There was a dull click and her face disappeared.

“Do you know where you're going, Quintilian?” Burton asked.

I nodded. “What used to be the Clarendon Building, on the far side of what used to be the Bodleian.” I drew Davie and Katharine towards me as I headed for the door. “Did you find out anything interesting?” I asked in a low voice.

They both shook their heads.

“No one in the Department of Metallurgy would give me much more than the time of day,” Davie complained. “Verzeni sat on my back all the time. I got nothing more than what the murder file shows.”

“Surprise, surprise,” I said, turning to Katharine.

“Same here,” she said. “Though I think Doctor Connington needed a drink by the time I'd finished with him. You?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “I struck twenty-four-carat gold.” I shrugged. “I'll have to tell you about it later, though.”

“Quint!” they exclaimed.

I pushed them aside and went back. “One more thing, Doctor Burton,” I said, thinking of the high walls and chimney-like towers we'd seen from Dead Man's Walk, and flying a kite. “What kind of prison facility is located in Christ Church?”

The old academic was leaning forward in the armchair. “Christ Church?” he repeated in a voice that was suddenly even shakier. “Christ Church? They . . . they call that—” He broke off and gave me a pained look, as if the words he was about to speak were already burning his mouth. “They call that the House of Dust.” He didn't say anything more.

That kept my mind occupied as I went to meet Raphael. Until I remembered my act of arson at the Department of Forensic Chemistry. Maybe the flames were about to be lit under me.

I cut through Noxad, the high walls of the former library glowing pale gold in the failing light, and walked across the path to the administrator's lair. A pair of bulky specimens in black suits and bowler hats were standing outside the central arch of the two-storey Hawksmoor building. Trout and Perch.

I nodded to them as I approached. “Evening, gentlemen. Or should that be—?”

“Don't,” Trout said, his heavy face set hard.

“Fair enough,” I said, deciding on discretion. “The chief administrator's expecting me.”

“You think we don't know that?” Perch asked, his lips curled.

I tried to look unconcerned as they made a point by blocking my way for a few seconds. The Grendels that Burton had told us about must have been seriously worrying if they were worse than these apes.

After they'd stepped aside, I followed the line of red lights that had suddenly appeared on the floor in front of me into the old building. Well, the outside was old – early eighteenth century, I guessed – but the interior was stunningly high-tech; like the flight deck of a spaceship in one of those high-budget, low-intelligence Hollywood movies that used to be served up, before California fell to the religious right in the first decade of the century. Everything was shiny metal and tinted glass, with wall panels dotted and traced with multicoloured lights thrown in for contrast, the panels being scanned by personnel in high-necked dark suits.

The red line on the floor stopped in front of a highlighted section. I suspected that I'd just stepped on to an elevator pad. The only question was whether the sherry I'd drunk was going to be shaken up or down. There was a sigh of compressed air as a curved glass safety panel came up to my waist. Then, like an Old Testament saint, I was translated upwards. Not, I was relieved to see, to the pastures of heaven but to the first floor. I found myself in a long, airy room with deeply recessed windows looking out over Broad Street. I could see Administrator Raphael at the far end, near her a small group of individuals in the clothing worn by that rank, as well as a few others in academic robes.

The safety panel dropped down and I moved towards the occupants of the expansive room. The walls were hung with portraits of university worthies from days gone by, the sober paintings at odds with the gleaming metal and the glass screens. I wasn't paying too much attention to the artwork though. I had plenty I wanted to nail Raphael about, as well as certain things I wanted to keep to myself. I was keen to see how she and her colleagues reacted to the outrage I was about to express; it had been building up since we'd been in the suburbs and had got even more intense since Burton confirmed what Pete Pym had told us about the prisons and the slave culture. I also wanted to see how she explained the Grendels. I was beginning to have major suspicions about them, though if it was true that they were kept out of the city centre one of their number would have had trouble murdering Ted Pym. And, last but not least, I wanted to know what Hel Hyslop and Duart had been doing in the Department of Forensic Chemistry.

As it turned out, I didn't get the chance to broach any of those issues. I reached the gaggle of officials and realised immediately that something critical had happened. Their faces betrayed extreme anxiety and their voices were strained. Doctor Connington, resplendent as usual in his blue and red gown, looked like he was about to keel over. Even Dawkley, the science administrator, was jerking around like a puppet on a string, talking in a hoarse whisper to Professor Yamaguchi and Doctor Verzeni.

Raphael had moved a couple of paces to the rear and had turned her back to the others. She was speaking in a clear voice to nobody in particular and I realised that she was using the voice facility on her nostrum. Through the high window behind her I made out the Bridge of Sighs that was originally built to connect parts of Hertford College, now presumably called Hart. I wondered if the enclosed structure with its elegant arch was used by condemned prisoners like the Venetian original had been.