The Bursar's Wife (12 page)

“Your so-called client has yet to confirm that she even
is
your client,” Brampton said.

Stubbing piped up again. “Even you can understand that the last thing on her mind at the moment will be lowlife like you.”

I continued to ignore her and concentrated on Brampton.

“How did Elliot Booker die?” I asked.

“Did you meet with Elliot?” she countered.

“No, I just told you I didn’t meet anyone.” Stubbing took a long drink of her coffee.

“Did you go near the bursar’s residence?” Brampton asked.

“Look, am I a suspect or what?”

“What time did you leave Morley?”

“I wasn’t there long, about half an hour.”

“Did you go in the house?”

“No.”

“What about the back garden?” Stubbing spat.

I shook my head, knowing I had to give them something. “Look, I went there to meet with Mrs Booker but she didn’t turn up, so I left.”

“You went to her house at eleven-thirty to meet her?” Sylvia asked disbelievingly.

“Yes, well, no. I was to meet her in the car park, not at her house.”

“And she can verify this can she?”

I shrugged noncommittally. It was a weak point in my story, but I was hoping Sylvia would see that I was trying to protect her privacy, although she could be forgiven for throwing me to the police at this stage. “So am I a suspect?”

Brampton consulted her file. “When you left Morley you would have driven past the McDonald’s you were at earlier, outside of which is a phone box from which a 999 phone call was made at 12.03. Did you make the call?”

“No.”

She pursed her lips.

“Bit of a coincidence. You being there and it being the same place someone makes a call from, telling us to go to Morley?”

“Yes it is,” I said. “Can I go now, if I’m not a suspect?”

“Perhaps you’d prefer to be one?” Stubbing said.

I made a show of thinking about it: finger on the chin, eyes scrunched in concentration at the ceiling.

“Let’s see…” I said.

Stubbing snorted. “Let’s book him on suspicion, ma’am, we can place him at the scene of the crime.” But Brampton seemed oblivious to Stubbing’s eagerness and I knew they weren’t going to because Stubbing wouldn’t have asked Brampton in front of me.

“Just what are you doing for Sylvia? Does it involve Elliot, or perhaps her daughter Lucy?” Brampton asked. Stubbing shot her a glance, like Brampton had veered from the script. Also, something was wrong about the question but before I could answer Brampton stood up and said, “I’m curtailing this interview for the moment.” Stubbing looked confused at this turn of events, but quickly rallied and stood up too.

“Am I free to go?” I asked.

“I’d rather you didn’t. I’d like to check your McDonald’s story and confirm that you are working for Sylvia Booker and had arranged to meet her.” She checked her watch. “If you left I might get the wrong idea and make you stay. That would take a lot longer than it would if I went and made a couple of phone calls; there’s so much paperwork involved with charging someone you see, Stubbing here is very meticulous.” Stubbing showed me her gappy teeth.

“Can I have some coffee at least? While I’m waiting.” Brampton nodded and left the room.

Stubbing stayed long enough to pour the remainder of Brampton’s coffee into hers and pass it to me. “There you go, Kocky.”

* * *

Three boring hours later I left Parkside police station and emerged into a dark but dry Cambridge. According to Brampton, Elliot Booker hung himself at least a couple of hours before I’d picked up his rubbish. She’d come back to the interview room and given me the news in brutal fashion. She also told me that Lucy and her mother had been in London on the Sunday, with Sylvia staying on for a Monday morning meeting and Lucy heading straight for Morley College. Sylvia couldn’t remember whether we’d arranged to meet and I said she must have forgotten. I was just relieved that neither she nor Lucy had been the ones to find Elliot. Brampton had been thinking the same.

“I’m pleased that someone,” and here she gave me a meaningful stare, “made that call from a public phone box outside that McDonald’s on Huntingdon Road, otherwise Lucy would have been the one to find him.”

“Did he leave a note?” I asked. She thought about whether to tell me then said, “No, but they just as often don’t as do.”

* * *

I stood looking over Parkside towards town, wondering whether to walk home or to the office. I pulled my raincoat lapel up against a bitter breeze.

“George?” A familiar voice at my ear. I turned to see Sylvia behind me, having come out of the police station. She was pale, red-eyed and makeup free. She still looked beautiful, but in a tragic and vulnerable way, like she should be in a black and white film with Humphrey Bogart. I wanted to give her a hug but where we were standing was not the place for it.

“Sylvia, I’m really sorry about your husband.”

“Thank you. I put Judith right about you.”

“Judith?” The name that Jason had overheard Quintin using on the train.

“Sorry, Judith Brampton. You know her as Detective Chief Inspector Brampton.”

So Quintin had been talking to Brampton. “Yes, she said you were friends.” Something flitted across Sylvia’s face. A concealed emotion involuntarily leaked.

“We were…” She shook her head, then: “I’ve known her a long time.” She looked round at the police station; many of the blinded windows still had lights on behind them. Perhaps, like me, she was wondering whether Brampton was looking down on us.

“Did you tell her why I hired you?” she asked.

“Of course not. Did you?”

“I told her I’d asked you to watch Elliot. She said something about us meeting last night. I told her I couldn’t remember, I hope that was the right thing to do?”

“Perfect.” That explained why Brampton had accepted my lie about meeting Sylvia. Sylvia looked at me and I waited for her to ask me what I’d been doing at the house. But she had other things on her mind.

“Did you find… Elliot?”

“Yes,” I said.

She tipped her head to indicate the building behind her. “I need to get away from this place,” she said. “Do you need a lift?” I hesitated, reluctant to impose at this time. “I could do with the company,” she said. Surely she didn’t lack people to have around her. She read my mind. “There are lots of people I could go to right now, but I need to be with someone outside my immediate circle, someone who didn’t know Elliot. Do you understand?”

I sort of understood. Like Sandra, Jason and Kamal had helped me when Olivia had gone, rather than our common circle of friends, who turned out not to be friends at all.

SYLVIA SAT ON THE COUCH THAT BRAMPTON AND STUBBING
had occupied that morning. She nursed an out-of-date peppermint tea (something Olivia had left) and stared at the glowing asbestos plates in the gas fire. She’d told me in the car that Lucy was staying at her grandmother’s while she’d come down to Parkside to talk to Brampton. “I couldn’t bear them coming back to the house. They’d been there all morning,” she’d said. She shifted around on the sofa, dressed in designer jeans and a soft-looking jumper I yearned to stroke.

“I wanted to thank you for bringing Lucy home the other night. It was awfully decent of you.” I shrugged and said nothing because it
was
nothing. “I’m sorry that I didn’t acknowledge you, but I hadn’t told Elliot about you, and…” Her face crumpled and I had to get up and take the cup from her so she could cry. Despite what romantic fiction writers might claim, no one looks good crying, even a beautiful woman such as Sylvia. One does not, as depicted in films, remain expressionless and simply ooze tears. The face screws up in an ugly grimace, the mouth twists in pain. I wanted to comfort her and pondered sitting next to her and putting an arm round her but instead I went to get tissues; she was technically still a client after all.

“Thanks.” She sniffed, taking sheets of tissue from the box I held out and blowing hard. “It’s better to get it out now; I can’t really do this when I get back to Morley, it would make people uncomfortable.” I marvelled at the kind of people she knew that couldn’t bear to see her cry when faced with the suicide of her husband. She dabbed at her eyes.

“He made some bad investments on behalf of the college,” she said, looking at me.

“You don’t have to explain it,” I said, although I was dying to know.

“He’d been struggling with it for some time.”

“How did you find out?”

She looked away. “I’ve known for a while…” She was about to continue but started crying again and blew her nose hard. I wondered whether it was a good time to bring up my employment.

“This is probably not the right time to ask, but do you want me to carry on looking into Lucy and Quintin Boyd?”

She sat up straight. “Please, you must carry on. Please don’t stop. Please. With Elliot gone there is no one to protect Lucy.” Protect her? She reached out and grabbed my hands. “You’ve got to help Lucy.”

“OK,” I said, taken aback. “In which case can I ask you something?” She was still holding my hands. Her hands were softer and warmer than I remembered when I had shaken one in my office.

“Of course.” It was cruel to ask her at such a time but she was vulnerable and perhaps more likely to answer. Cynical, I know, but sometimes getting to the truth requires an underhand touch.

“The night I brought Lucy home, what were you and Elliot arguing about?” Sylvia reddened and looked like a frightened deer, ready to bolt. She took her hands away.

“I… I can’t remember. What did you hear? Does it matter? Probably about money. He was always telling me I spent too much on clothes.” She smiled weakly.

“So it wasn’t about Lucy?” She shook her head but seemed to be struggling with something. I got the clear impression that she wanted to tell me, or someone, to unload something she was carrying around. She looked up.

“No, it wasn’t about Lucy.” OK, so I learnt she was lying; not terribly useful except in confirming my view of human nature. She examined her tiny watch. “I have to go,” she said. “There are people waiting for me.” She asked me if she could use the bathroom and I directed her to the downstairs toilet, hoping it was clean. The phone rang as she went to find it.

“George. It’s Sandra, where the hell have you been?”

“Waiting for coffee at Parkside police station. The service is atrocious.”

“I read about Elliot Booker, it was in the
Argus
. Reading between the lines it looks like he topped himself?”

“It looked like that to me,” I said. I heard the toilet flush and water running in the sink. I tried to remember if the towel was fresh – Sylvia was used to better things.

“Jesus, George, don’t tell me you found him? Is that why you were at Parkside?”

“For my sins.” The loo door opened and Sylvia came out. She’d done something to her face – added a little colour perhaps.

“I have to go, Sandra.”

“Wait, I’ve got some news on Sylvia Booker. Remember you asked me to check whether she’d been at Morley the same time as Quintin Boyd?” Sylvia came down the hall and stood there, smiling abstractedly. I held up a finger to her and mouthed ‘one minute’. She nodded and went to the hall mirror.

“What did you find?” I said.

“Well, they were there at the same time, and she was doing Law as well, although not corporate like him, civil. They graduated the same year and get this, they were in the same house. Apparently the colleges have these things called houses—”

“I know what they are.”

“OK. You don’t sound very impressed.”

“It’s not a good time.” Sylvia was adjusting her hair in the mirror. She’d lied to me about knowing Quintin. Two lies uncovered in one evening.

“Why didn’t you say? I have more,” Sandra said. Sylvia turned to me and pointed to her watch and then the door. I held up my finger.

“Make it quick,” I said into the phone.

“Elliot was also a student there at the same time, same house, did Economics.”

“Thanks, that’s very interesting. I’ll catch you tomorrow,” I said into the receiver.

“Wait,” Sandra shouted.

“What is it?”

“They all graduated the same year,” she said.

“And?”

“It was the year your father left.” Jesus Christ. Of course it could just be a coincidence.

“George?” I looked at Sylvia who was finding her coat. “Did you hear me?”

I put the receiver down on Sandra and said to Sylvia, “Sorry about that.” I helped her on with her coat.

“Thank you, George, for the tea, for taking me in. I appreciate it.”

“Thank you for the lift,” I said.

She took a deep breath and released it. “I better go and sort things out.”

“If you need anything…” I said.

She put her fingers on my forearm. “Find out what Quintin wants with Lucy.”

I watched her walk to her Mini and get in.

As she pulled away from the kerb I grabbed my jacket and keys, got into my car and followed.

* * *

Sylvia didn’t head back to Morley; instead she drove straight to the railway station. It was approaching five, and too many cars were parked outside the station entrance, waiting to pick people up as they emerged. Sylvia pulled into a small space on the wide part of the pavement right outside the entrance. I drove past her and double-parked in the car park where I could watch her if I craned my neck. She was looking towards the station entrance where a stream of people started to emerge. A car blocked my view and the driver beeped at me. He couldn’t go round me as I was blocking his route. I drove round the parking lot, hoping to get back into position. Stupid of course, since everyone was doing the same thing. Cars were following me round, circling as they waited for the people they were picking up to come out of the station. I glimpsed Sylvia approaching someone in the crowd. Some wanker blew his horn at me. I gave him two fingers then discovered it was a woman. She returned the gesture, despite the toddler in the back. I kept driving.

Sylvia was talking to, no, shouting and gesticulating at, Quintin Boyd. I had to drive out of the car park and go past the Mini hoping that Sylvia wouldn’t see me. She was too engrossed. I was back into the car park where I pulled into a disabled parking space. When I got out Sylvia seemed to be begging Quintin to get into her car. He, however, was having none of it, and just then his silver Mercedes pulled up and he opened the back door.