The Bursar's Wife (11 page)

* * *

I spent Saturday night alone, reading Olivia’s email about how their restoration plans were going, and slightly envious of her and the weather in Greece. I did feel pleased for her, and that she’d found someone who was suited to her. Perhaps I was maturing as a person? After finishing with my emails I looked up some other women online. Claims of maturity were too soon as I longed for a faster Internet connection.

* * *

Sunday morning I inspected the fence in the garden, just to make sure I wasn’t being over-charged. I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for it, unless I could get more money out of Sylvia. There was also my father’s decrepit shed at the bottom of the garden that needed replacing or removing; I’d never been in it and couldn’t think what I would use it for. That afternoon I fell asleep in front of Formula One racing – the only thing it’s good for as far as I’m concerned. This led to a dream where I was struggling to change gears on the Golf (it has a sticky third) so I could keep up with Sylvia Booker in her Mini. She had a passenger with her, a man, and I was trying to pull alongside to see who it was, but she looked at me and laughed then pulled away. Then something was ringing in the car and I woke up. It was dark and I had a dry mouth. The black and white TV showed people singing in a church. The ringing was still there; it was the phone in the hall. I reluctantly got up to answer it.

“George, it’s Sandra.”

“Sandra, hi. What’s happening?”

“You OK? You sound weird.”

“I was napping, you woke me up.” She didn’t bother to apologise.

“The police have charged Al Greene with the murder of his dogging wife. It was on the local news.”

“Well, they needed to charge him or let him go.”

“Suppose so. I still don’t think he did it.”

“Neither do I, but there’s fuck all we can do about it.” It went quiet and the sound of people singing a hymn started coming from the TV.

“Jason tells me you’re doing a rubbish collection tonight.”

“Jason needs to learn to keep his mouth shut.”

“What has the Bookers’ rubbish got to do with Quintin Boyd?”

“I don’t know, Sandra, that’s why I’m going up there. Listen, do me a favour tomorrow, I know you’re not in the office but could you find out what years Sylvia was at Morley?”

“Will do. You think she was there with Quintin?”

“That’s what I want to find out; they’re about the same age.”

“Sure, it makes sense to check it. Erm… listen, George. If you ever fancy a family meal of an evening then you’re always welcome here, you know that, right? Ashley’s just about house trained and Jason could do with having another bloke about the house.” I looked through to the dark kitchen.

“Thanks for the invite.” And I meant it.

* * *

John the maintenance man had told me, after making a couple of phone calls, that Morley recycling was collected on a Monday morning. Which is why I left home at ten-thirty Sunday night dressed in dark clothes – torch, gloves, and extra strong bin bags in the boot of the car. On the way I stopped at a McDonald’s and had a scalding coffee, which I sipped with care. I watched the night-shift truck and taxi drivers sit on their own and wolf down what had been lying in the keep-warm tray – the staff had long stopped cooking.

I brooded over the futility of what I was about to spend a cold evening doing and what a miserable career profession I had drifted into when a young woman in a McDonald’s uniform and row of gold stars on a badge that read ‘Cathy’ came up to me. She was holding a large bunch of keys.

“We’re closing,” she said. “Would you mind drinking up, please?” I looked round to see that I was the only person in the place and half the lights were switched off. I emptied my cup.

“I was savouring the coffee.” She gave me a polite grin. She was probably a few years older than Lucy, but with a face toughened by too much responsibility too early. She picked up my empty cardboard cup.

“Sorry, but I have to close up and write something original about hybrid polymers.” I stood up.

“Really? Where are you studying?” I asked as we walked to the doors.

“Wolfson College.”

“You sound like a Cambridge girl. Am I right?”

“Yeah, one that is actually going to Cambridge University, would you believe?” We stood at the doors and she searched for a key amongst the many on her key ring.

“Tough, is it?” I asked.

“It is when I’m in my final year and have to put in three nights a week here and the customers won’t leave.” She opened the door and smiled at me. For a moment I forgot that I was about to riffle through other people’s rubbish.

IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN WHEN I CONTINUED THE DRIVE UP TO
Morley in a light drizzle, this time parking in the public car park rather than driving up to the Bookers’ house. I sat in the car for a bit watching to see whether my gravel-crunching arrival had made anyone curious. About a third of the lights were on behind drawn curtains in the student block. None of them twitched and nobody was wandering around this late on a cold and wet Sunday.

Once I was halfway confident that I wasn’t going to be seen I got out and removed the gear from the back of the car. I stepped onto grass as soon as I could and then headed towards the bursar’s house, keeping to the bush-lined edge of the large lawn separating the house from the student residences. When I got to the wall that surrounds the house I looked through the open gate I had driven through last night. I could see a light on in one downstairs room and the Saab was parked in the drive, but no Mini. Staying on the outside I followed the wall round to the back of the house, where compost bins and gardeners’ sheds huddled in the gloom. Just outside a wooden door set in the wall surrounding the house there were two plastic recycling containers, one full of glass, plastic and tin, one full of paper. I emptied the paper into one of my bin bags and tried the door in the wall. It was locked.

Instead of heading back to the car as any sensible private investigator would have done, I searched for something to climb on. I pushed a wheelbarrow full of leaves over to the door. With my feet in wet leaves I could just see over the wall into the garden. It was about a hundred and fifty feet to the house. Light leaked from between long blackout curtains at the French windows on the ground floor. The top floor of the house was dark. Curiosity and that little buzz of voyeurism I get from spying on people got the better of me. I pulled myself up until I could get a leg on the wall and then scrambled over the top, dropping heavily onto thankfully soft earth the other side. I had to lie there and catch my breath for a minute; I was getting too old for this shit.

I walked up to the house and the French doors where the light was coming through the drapes. The gap in the curtains was wider at the bottom so I bent down to have a look. I wish I hadn’t bothered, because I saw Elliot Booker hanging from the ceiling. Hanging by his neck.

* * *

Too early the next morning I opened my front door in pyjamas to stop the urgent knocking that was aggravating my alcohol-induced headache. I was faced with a rain-sodden Stubbing. Behind her a female uniform was noting down my Golf’s licence number. Brampton was standing at her car, which they had squeezed onto the drive so it was bumper to bumper with mine. She was under an umbrella and squinting upwards into the rain, looking as if she was appraising the state of my roof – possibly noting that it was the only one on the street that hadn’t had a loft conversion done. There was no way they could have traced my anonymous call reporting Elliot’s death, and I’d carefully removed any trace of myself from the back garden, raking over my footprints and replacing the wheelbarrow.

“Ah, the witch and her flying monkey,” I said, taking advantage of the fact that Brampton was out of earshot. Stubbing’s white face reddened and she angrily worked those thin lips as Brampton walked up the drive. The uniform showed Brampton the licence number she had written down. Brampton glanced at it and came to the door. The uniform got in the driver’s seat of the unmarked police car to escape the rain.

“George, how are you?” Brampton asked. Up close she was pale and tense, her eyes puffy. “I hope you don’t mind us waking you up so early?” It wasn’t a question I was meant to answer.

“He probably went to bed late, ma’am,” said Stubbing, leering at my pyjamas. Brampton ignored her.

“May we come in, George? It’s raining outside,” Brampton said. I really didn’t want them to come in.

“Is this a social call?”

“Not at six-thirty in the morning, it isn’t,” Stubbing said. She sounded very tired. No doubt they’d been up all night. I opened the door wide, shepherding them into the sitting room.

They sat on the sagging couch and I remained standing, thinking it gave me some sort of psychological advantage, although what advantage it might have given me was more than offset by the fact I was in my jimjams. “I won’t offer you tea, I’m sure you won’t be here long enough,” I said, even though I was gasping for some myself.

“OK, George. We’ll get to the point,” said Brampton. “What were you doing on the grounds of Morley College last night?” Stubbing, dripping on the worn rug, was piercing me with those icy blue eyes, intent on my answer. Perhaps I was better off sitting down after all; it would give me time to think about whether they were trying it on or whether I had been seen. Perhaps an OCD-afflicted student sat at his window and made a note of every car that parked in the Morley car park. I couldn’t think of a reason to lie; I didn’t need to tell them why I was there. After all, I could have been dropping someone off, or making a nostalgic late night pilgrimage to where my father used to work. Lame, I know, but they were ideas to work with. I took a seat in an old armchair, my father’s favourite.

“I was there for about half an hour.” Stubbing beamed triumphantly at Brampton, who simply looked as tired as the carpet she was staring at. She raised her eyes to me without moving her head.

“What time did you get there, George?” she asked. I didn’t say anything, remembering something my occasional lawyer had said about the police trying to place clients at the scene of a crime before they even knew there was a crime, but I’d kind of blown it already.

“Last night sometime. Why, is there a problem?”

“Do you want to tell us what you were doing there?” Brampton asked. Stubbing was piercing into me with a laser-like intensity that was uncomfortable.

“Not really,” I said, beginning to feel hot. “Not until you tell me what is going on.” They exchanged a glance and Brampton stood up and examined the Bakelite clock on the mantelpiece above the gas fire. A gas fire with asbestos-backed plates that glowed nicely when hot – Olivia had wanted to replace it with an imitation ‘real’ gas fire with pretend coal but I couldn’t see the point in anything imitation. Brampton turned to study me.

“Elliot Booker was found dead at Morley College last night. Someone called it in.”

“How did he die?” I asked, my thinking being that it was the first thing I would ask if I didn’t know. The vision of him hanging from the light fixture in what looked like his study with a step ladder lying on its side beneath him was still fresh in my mind. I was struck at the time at how high the ceiling was in the house.

“What were you doing there, George?” Brampton asked.

“I was on a case.”

“Wherever you go people end up dead,” said Stubbing. “Funny that, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Who are you working for?” Brampton asked. “The Bookers are old friends of mine, you see,” she said. Stubbing shot Brampton a glance; perhaps as surprised as I was. Brampton’s professional face rearranged itself for a second and I understood that she was upset at Elliot’s death. She was friends with the Bookers, but Sylvia hadn’t confided in her, or at least Brampton wasn’t letting on. It was going to be difficult to keep it from the police now that Sylvia’s husband was dead. I decided to play it straight, but without telling them anything.

“I’m working for Sylvia Booker,” I said. I stood up, to indicate that it was the end of the conversation. Stubbing stood up as well, watching me as if I might bolt for the door. Brampton turned professional again.

“In what capacity?” she asked.

“That’s between me and her.”

“Then perhaps we should continue this conversation at Parkside.”

“Are you arresting me?”

Brampton slowly got up.

“Well, you were at a crime scene with no reasonable explanation, so in theory you would qualify as a general suspect, if not a specific one. But I would like to think of you as a witness at this stage, George, so you’ll be helping us with our enquiries. Unless of course you don’t want to?”

I WAS PUT IN THE SAME INTERVIEW ROOM WHERE I
’
D GIVEN MY
statement to Stubbing on Wednesday. I was left to stew for a couple of hours, visited occasionally by DS Turner, the same guy who’d claimed on my previous visit that Stubbing was a good detective. I tried to pump him for information but he wasn’t having any of it. I counted holes in the foam tiles on the ceiling until Brampton and Stubbing came back carrying a cup of coffee each. It smelled good.

“Don’t I get any?” I asked. They ignored me. Brampton flicked through a file and Stubbing wrote at the top of a yellow pad. Brampton examined me and folded her hands on the table, as if in prayer.

“What time did you get to Morley College last night, George?”

“Sometime after eleven and before half past.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

“The night manager at the McDonald’s on Huntingdon Road,” I said. “We had a conversation just before I left. It was just before closing. Cathy, her name was.”

Stubbing and Brampton exchanged a look. Stubbing said, “Blimey, reduced to chatting up McDonald’s employees, are we?” Brampton ignored her. So did I.

“Who did you meet at Morley?” Brampton asked.

“No one,” I said.

“So what were you doing there?”

“That’s between me and my client,” I said, even though Sylvia was not aware that I was going to collect her rubbish, nor, I imagined, would she be terribly pleased about it.