House of Dust (37 page)

“Don't worry,” I said with a laugh. “It'll be reflected in the bill.”

He smiled. “I wish you luck. Extracting payment from the Hebdomadal Council requires a heroic temperament.”

“Oh, we're all endowed with one of those,” I said.

“That'll be right,” Katharine said, getting to her feet. “I'm away to my bed. Coming, Quint?”

I shook my head. I was dog-tired and I didn't fancy another night on her floor. Besides, there were things I wanted to ask the old guy.

“Sleep well, then,” Katharine said, tossing her head. “Goodnight, doctor.”

“Night, Quint. Doctor.” Davie followed her out.

Elias Burton was looking at me thoughtfully. “You and the lady are a couple, are you not, Quintilian?” he ventured, dabbing wine from his lips with a discoloured handkerchief.

I nodded. “After a fashion.”

“Romantic attachments are discouraged in New Oxford. Be careful they don't put the two of you in a cage to observe your every move.” His voice was bitter, his head moving from side to side. “They experiment on everyone in this city,” he said.

“I know. We saw what happens in the suburbs.”

“I'm not just talking about the suburbs,” Burton countered. “It's even worse within the university, you know. Surveillance everywhere, conversations logged . . .”

I looked at him. “Hadn't you better be more careful then?”

He laughed hoarsely. “They don't care about me. I'm dead wood. I'll soon be on my way to the House of Dust.”

I pricked up my ears. There it was again. That was one of the things I wanted to ask him about. “It's the second time you've used that expression, doctor,” I said. “What does it mean exactly?”

The old don was gazing at me. “Ah, the House of Dust, Quintilian. Man's long home, as it's called in
Ecclesiastes
.” He smiled sadly. “The university has spurned the teaching of ancient literature and culture. Even the Bible is ignored, except when it comes to the teaching of effective business practice in the few remaining Catholic countries.”

I felt a yawn coming on and swallowed it with difficulty. “Yes, but what is the House of Dust?”

Elias Burton registered my impatience. “Never fear, Quintilian,” he said, getting his lips round my full name with evident pleasure. “You will visit the House of Dust when your time comes. We all will.” He smiled again. “In the old Mesopotamian epic poem the hero Gilgamesh laments his friend Enkidu, who dies and descends to the House of Dust.” His eyes were on mine. “The House of Dust is the underworld, Quintilian. The realms ruled by Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dead. We are all bound there.” He sat back, the wine glass held loosely in his hand.

I stared at him. “But what's that got to do with the buildings that used to be Christ Church?” I demanded. “You referred to them as the House of Dust.”

Burton was sprawled in his chair, his limbs loose. After a few moments he shook his head feebly. “Enough, Quintilian. I've said enough.” He waved me away, his appetite for talk suddenly sated. “Goodnight to you.” He bowed his head, already lost in a reverie.

I got up and left him to his thoughts. I had the feeling that, even though I was ready to drop, sleep would not come easily.

I was wrong. The combination of a long day and a late intake of food and booze knocked me out as efficiently as a cosh to the cranium. Never mind the House of Dust – I spent what seemed like aeons trying to walk through a viscous, sucking sludge that threatened at any moment to drag me downwards and clog my lungs terminally. I was distantly aware that I'd been writhing around, the thin, temperature-regulated quilt wrapping itself round my limbs like a winding sheet.

Then everything suddenly became much clearer. I heard a clock chiming in the distance. The dim lights in the quadrangle were lining the outside edges of the curtains, but otherwise the room was pitch dark. I tried to move, but my legs still seemed to be caught up in a glutinous morass and my arms refused to rise from my sides.

That was when I saw the figure. It was surrounded in what seemed like a hazy aura and it was large, both tall and bulky. I felt my heart begin to pound, but, apart from my eyes, that was the only movement in my body. My brain was sending frantic messages to nerves and sinews that were resolutely off duty.

So I lay where I was and watched the figure as it approached, then leaned over me. My heart was thudding like a bass drum that was providing the backing to a particularly explosive solo by some old blues maestro. I still couldn't move a muscle. The face was lowered to within a foot of mine and I could hear the susurrus of steady breathing. I tried as best I could to make out the features but they were amorphous and unstable, as if an electric field were distorting them. And then, for a moment, the image solidified and I saw a heavy male face with unnaturally smooth skin. But it was the eyes that made me stop breathing. The irises were jet black, immobile and completely devoid of life. I heard myself gasp as my lungs filled with air, but by then the face had been withdrawn, the features losing their shape again. There was a brief hissing noise and I felt myself falling, losing touch, entering the void.

The last thing I remembered was a sensation of joy. Somehow I'd managed to evade the night visitor with the terrible staring eyes.

I came round slowly, my eyes gummed together and a jumble of unconnected thoughts cascading through my mind like a mountain stream in spate. Then I remembered what I'd seen and sat up so quickly that I almost put my back out. I rubbed my eyes and ran through the vision, gradually coming back to the real world – or at least the New Oxford version of it. Outside I could hear the restrained voices of students on their way to the hall or to early lectures. I moved my arms and legs gingerly and found that they were in working order again. Then I got up and crumpled to the thin carpet like a house of cards beside an open window.

“Shit,” I said, trying to remember how many glasses of claret I'd got through. I didn't think it had been enough to floor me.

I pulled myself up and staggered to the wash basin, then bent down and sluiced my head with cold water. I still hadn't worked out how to programme hot on my nostrum. Clarity gradually returned to my consciousness. I stood up and rubbed my head and face with a towel. And opened my eyes to get another shock.

Two lines of letters and numbers had been written on the mirror glass in marker pen:

Crim Fac Access Code

RED3694T00699

I stepped back a couple of paces and tried to make sense of what was going on. Here, at least, was proof that the apparition had been real. Given how terrifying the guy was, I could have lived without confirmation of that, but at least I hadn't been seeing things.

Then I looked down. On the carpet beneath the basin pedestal was a prime piece of evidence. It was a heavily indented muddy footprint. I estimated that it was a size eleven sole – and it was ribbed in exactly the same pattern as the ones we'd found at the crime scene in Leith. An NF138B. Jesus. I sat back down on the bed and tried to get a grip.

The idea that I might have been in close proximity to one of the mysterious Grendels took me some time to digest.

I eventually managed to get some coffee – acrid and murky – out of the delivery unit. My stomach seemed to be experiencing a delayed reaction to what had happened during the night, so I decided against eating. I copied the writing into my notebook and took a tracing of the footprint. After carefully cleaning the writing off the mirror, I left my rooms. To my relief I didn't see Katharine or Davie as I headed for the college gate. I wanted some time to think about what was going on, as well as to check out the code reference that had been left for me. I had the feeling that prefix “RED” meant that it was top secret in spades. The question was, how could I guarantee myself a reasonable shot at accessing whatever it was that the mystery visitor wanted me to see?

I decided to let that stew for a while and walked across Radcliffe Square towards Noxad. As I went, I looked up at the gleaming panels of the surveillance dome on the Camera and wondered if my steps were being tracked. If I'd had any money in my pocket I wouldn't have bet against it, but New Oxford apparently worked on a digital credit system. Then a thought struck me. Had the cameras and sensors picked up the night visitor? If they hadn't – and that seemed likely, considering no one had come to investigate – then perhaps the Grendels had some kind of anti-surveillance device. On the other hand, Grendels were denied access to the city. What the hell was going on?

I cut through the former library and on to Broad Street. The clouds above were darkening: it looked like the rain shields were about to come in useful. The usual bustle of sober students was all around me, some of them piling into the Faculty of English Language across the road. I vaguely remembered that the building used to be a world-famous bookshop. There were very few books in New Oxford, of course. If what Elias Burton told me about the vocational nature of the university's courses was right, those would probably be foreign students learning English rather than native speakers reading
Beowulf
and the like.

That thought made me perform an emergency stop, causing a tall, black female student to collide with my back. She was the one who apologised, though I hardly noticed. Christ,
Beowulf
. It came back to me out of the mists of my youth. In the old poem the eponymous hero lays into the marauding monster Grendel and rips his arm off at the shoulder. Christ. Could that similarity to the killer's modus operandi only be a coincidence?

I was still pondering that when I passed the thin finger of the Martyrs' Memorial and reached the Faculty of Criminology at the bottom of St Giles. Was my adolescent passion for epic poetry reimposing itself unduly? I didn't think so, especially after what I'd seen in the night. It seemed clear enough that one or more of New Oxford's most lethal servants were connected with the murders, but I needed hard evidence if I was to stand any chance of convincing Raphael. She knew more than she was saying about the Grendels, but she had given me the footwear reference that initially put me on to them. I still didn't have a clue about her agenda. Maybe I'd find one in the headquarters of the university's most repressive faculty.

The high neoclassical façade rose up before me, four great Ionic columns stretching skywards like the bars of a huge jailhouse window. I looked at my father's guidebook and discovered that each column had originally been surmounted by a figure representing the languages of France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Like the UK, those four countries had been torn apart by drugs gangs a couple of decades back. Presumably that explained why all that was left of the statues was the odd shattered leg.

Inside the tall doorway was a panel showing the location of the various sub-faculties and institutes. I was amazed to see that there was a Department of Crime Writing – maybe fiction was as significant to the criminologists as fact. Surprise, surprise, it was in the Dorothy L. Sayers Wing. I recalled that she had an unhealthy interest in heroic poetry too.

“Can I help, Citizen Dalrymple?”

I turned at the sound of the female voice. “If it isn't Harriet Haskins,” I said. “We must stop meeting like this.” I gave the blonde bulldog a cold smile. “I mean it.”

She looked at me with what I was pretty sure was feigned surprise. “I don't know what you mean. I happened to be on my way to—”

“Where are Trout and Perch?” I asked. “I haven't seen them today.”

“Really, citizen,” she protested. “I don't know what—”

“Forget it,” I interrupted. “Since you're here – for whatever reason – you can direct me to Professor Raskolnikov's office.”

“I can do better than that,” Haskins said eagerly. “I can take you there.”

“All right,” I said. “And then you can leave me on my own.”

“Very well.” She led me to a transparent lift shaft, her lips pursed.

I've always found it effective to take enthusiastic officials down a peg. Or six.

Up or down? I flipped a mental coin before the floor moved and got it wrong. We shot upwards and hissed to a halt on the third floor.

Haskins led me to a heavy oak-panelled door. “The professor liked the old style,” she said, nothing akin to grief in her voice. Members of her rank were strangers to emotion. She admitted me to a huge split-level room that, unusually for this computer-driven city, was lined with fully occupied bookshelves.

“I see what you mean,” I said, running my eye round the place. “Was this once a library, by any chance?”

“I believe so,” the bulldog replied. “The professor's desk is behind that bookcase.” She pointed to a wide antique piece made of dark wood and stacked with bound volumes.

“Right,” I said, turning to her. “Close the door behind you.”

She gave me a perfunctory nod and complied with my instruction. No doubt she'd be telling Doctor Connington exactly where I was. I wondered if senior academics' offices were subject to surveillance. It didn't take me long to come up with an answer. Of course they were. I grabbed the nearest chair and leaned it against the door, the backrest under the handle. That would give me a few seconds' grace if anyone came to stop what I was about to do.

I scouted around the cavernous office. A glass cupola was casting light over the central area, the clouds that were visible through it even blacker than they had been. From what I could see of his personal possessions – icons, a samovar, bottles of vodka – the Russian had been very receptive to his own country's culture. I couldn't fathom how that tied in with his role in the Faculty of Criminology. Then I remembered the Siberian gulags and the industrialisation of crime that had started with Stalin and ended up with the so-called Mafia governments of the early twenty-first century. Plenty of crime and bugger-all punishment.