The Bursar's Wife (29 page)

I sat down opposite him and wetted my lips. Nice, no salty aftertaste this time.

“So why won’t her having the tape help her?” I asked. “It will finally get you off her back, won’t it?”

His lips twitched again. It was an involuntary expression of pleasure, is what it was. One that he wasn’t aware he was making.

“Because, Kockers, technology has moved on from VHS. How do you think people watch porn nowadays? How do you watch it?”

“On the Internet.”

“Indeed.”

I waved the VHS tape. “You mean, this…”

“Yes, Kockers, you’ve got it.” He gestured towards the office. “It’s sitting on a server in there, available to a few select members of my virtual film club along with some other special clips.” He looked pleased with himself, like a conceited chess player declaring that he would win in three moves before you’d had a chance to work it out yourself.

“Film club? You mean like the Cambridge Blue Club?”

“Yes, very good, Kockers, it’s developed a bit since its early days. Just a small group of broad-minded people who share the same interests.”

“Like films of women who’ve been drugged?”

He deliberately adopted a very relaxed pose, leaning back and crossing his legs. He smiled his dimpled smile.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

My phone rang out but I didn’t answer it – I wasn’t about to have a conversation in front of Quintin.

“That’s probably Sylvia asking you to hurry to her with the tape. She might be very grateful if you’re lucky, although I’m not sure you’re her type.”

His smugness was beginning to get on my nerves. I wanted to tell him that his flick-knife friend hadn’t managed to destroy both DVDs but I didn’t want to land Stubbing in hot water just yet, and it was always good to keep something up your sleeve. Instead I hit him with information that I had found out myself. “You obviously know that I was following Trisha Greene, ’cause I assume it was you who arranged for my photos to disappear, and for my office to be knocked over.”

His face was fixed in an expressionless smile.

“The thing is there was a backup after all…”

That caused a break in his expression and he struggled to recover the smile.

“…and the police now know that she was probably in your apartment a week before she was murdered.”

“A nice if stupid bluff, Kockers. The police know nothing of the sort. Assuming that’s based on your silly tracker all they know is that she was parked outside here a week before her murder.”

“But coupled with the fact that your driver was seen with her at the Gogs, I’d say there was strong circumstantial evidence that you knew her.”

He shrugged and removed his black tie.

“You’re not worried? I suppose because of what you have on Brampton?” I held up the tape. “Is she on here too?”

“She and Sylvia together,” he said, smacking his lips. “It’s worth watching just to see a DCI go down on a socialite. Of course they were just girls then.”

“Brampton can’t stop this now, it’s too big. Trisha Greene was strangled remember.”

“Trisha was trash, if you’ll forgive the alliteration. She went too far with her sexual cravings. I applaud her for not being hung up like most English women but she became a slave to her own desires and there was a tragic inevitability about how she died.”

“So you did know her then?”

“Yes, I’ll even admit she was here, but nothing was done to her that she didn’t want doing.”

“What people think they want and what they might need are two different things. You took advantage of her addiction, just like you take advantage of Sylvia’s indiscretion.”

He laughed. “George, you delight me with your insight, even if it is disappointingly prosaic. Let me give you a real insight. Sylvia is not a hostage to her past, to one night’s indiscretion, as you put it, recorded on tape. She’s a hostage to her middle-class English need to keep up appearances. She’s so consumed with what people will think of her that she will do almost anything to prevent the truth coming out. Yes, I’ve benefited from that, just as I benefited from Trisha’s needs. In fact I was desperate for them to meet. But alas, I could only push Sylvia so far; asking her to do something more extreme than what I already had her on film doing didn’t work. That’s why I never filmed her again, alas.” He swallowed more bourbon – he clearly enjoyed gloating about how many lives he’d fucked with.

“What about Elliot?” I asked.

“Ah yes, Elliot.” He nodded and wagged a finger at me. “Elliot, may he rest in peace, was trapped by the same fears. So much so that he preferred to kill himself rather than face loss of respectability.”

I raised both the tape and my eyebrows in a question.

“Yes, he’s on there. But his main concern was protecting Sylvia from exposure. The poor sap adored her.”

“So you used that to get him to make dodgy investments, which became another secret that needed hiding when they went tits up.”

“Well, let’s say I convinced him to invest in some highly speculative unregulated hedge funds. Then I lent him the money to cover his ass. The funny thing is that Morley are working their balls off to stop his financial indiscretions coming out.” He chuckled. “It’s deliciously ironic that they’ve asked for my help; they’re terrified of how it might reflect on the college.”

“But what really tipped him over the edge was when you told him Lucy was yours, or at least got him DNA tested without his knowledge. That’s what did it for him wasn’t it, learning that Lucy was yours.”

The beginnings of a frown then a satisfied smile. “Actually, George, you’re off track there: I told him that Lucy wasn’t
his
, not that she’s
mine
.” Before I had time to digest what he was saying he stood up. “Where is Lucy by the way?” he asked. “Are you hiding her somewhere?”

I put my glass down and stood up too.

“Does Sylvia know you’ve made the tape available on the Internet?”

“Sylvia understands even less about technology than you do. It’s the tape she wants. It would never occur to her that it could be copied to a different media. Now leave. Take her the tape and tell her what you like.”

I stepped outside and he said, “Give me the keys will you, I’m sick of you turning up here.” I handed them over and walked to the lift. Then his voice at my back: “Oh, and make sure you watch the tape, before you give it to her.” I turned to check his expression but he had closed the door.

I WONDERED, IN THE DESCENDING LIFT OF RIVER VIEWS
, whether to go home and, as Quintin suggested, watch the video I was carrying. Although I was curious about it on a purely carnal level that curiosity didn’t overcome my discomfort about who was on it. If I’d not known Sylvia, not known the anguish the tape’s existence was having on her, I would of course have watched it, which I know makes me a hypocrite. I did feel a sort of loyalty to her (she was a client after all), and I just wouldn’t have been able to face her if I had watched it. Besides, having Quintin tell me to watch it made me determined not to become part of his machinations.

* * *

After a long minute waiting outside the bursar’s lodge at Morley the porch light came on and Sylvia opened the door slightly, popping her head round it to peer at me. She was make-up free with red-rimmed eyes, pale lips and rumpled hair. Her face was colourless and pasty.

“Thank God it’s you, I thought it was…”

“Quintin?”

“Do you know what time it is?”

I looked at my watch – it had gone one. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I thought you’d want to…”

“It’s cold, you better come in.” She opened the door just enough for me to squeeze through and shut it behind me. She was in an ankle-length dressing gown which she clutched to her throat against the cold. She peered at me and pointed.

“What happened to your forehead?”

I felt the wound between my eyes. “Nothing. I thought you’d want to have this as soon as possible,” I said, fishing the tape out of my pocket in what I judged to be an understated but dramatic gesture.

She didn’t jump up and down, or clasp me to her bosom in joy, or kiss me passionately on the lips in gratitude. If anything she looked insulted by my bringing something that unsavoury into her house.

“He didn’t find you in his apartment then?”

“Yes he did, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m sorry, I did try and ring you.”

“It really doesn’t matter. It’s done,” I said, although if it was her that had rung when I was talking to Quintin then she’d left it a bit late.

“What did he say?”

“He wanted me to watch the tape before I brought it over,” I said.

We stood there for a few seconds, me holding the tape, she looking at it.

“And have you watched it?” she whispered.

“No, of course not, why would I?”

She put her hands to her cheeks, as if her head had become too heavy, glanced at me then looked away. “Watch the tape, George, then we’ll talk.”

“What?”

Her eyes locked on mine. “Please, just watch it. All the way through.”

She moved to the door and opened it.

“I don’t understand, why would you want me to watch it?”

“You’ll understand when you see it. But watch it to the end, not when you think it’s finished.”

Studying her I thought it best not to argue. I stepped outside and she closed the door behind me. I felt like the cat who’s brought a dead bird into the house for its owner and has been hurt to learn that they don’t like dead birds. I sighed and looked down the stone steps at my car. Then the porch light went out, leaving me in darkness.

* * *

Arriving home I half expected Stubbing to jump out at me from the undergrowth but all I found was a note trapped in my letterbox. I put lights on in all the downstairs rooms. It was cold, an established cold you get after hours of no central heating. The note was from Stubbing: ‘TRIED TO RING YOU. DVD IS DYNAMITE. RING ME.’ She hadn’t left a number. I checked the mobile and saw the call I’d missed at Quintin’s but the number had been withheld and there was no message. It wasn’t Sylvia that had rung me then. Maybe she’d wanted Quintin to catch up with me. I yawned and stretched which made my freshly stitched wound pull and the pain was enough to incapacitate me for a few minutes. Once it had faded I checked landline messages. There were two, one from Sandra left a couple of hours ago telling me that all was well at her house but where was I so late at night, and please would I check in. The other message was from Stubbing who reiterated her wish that I call her, however late, and this time she’d left a number.

I rang it from the office mobile, and by the time she answered I had the gas fire on in the front room.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Georgie Porgie. I’ve watched that DVD. Your hunch was right. That was a good call, picking it up.”

“That means a lot coming from you,” I said, only half joking.

“Fuck you.” I heard her take a drink, ice on glass.

“So what was on it?”

“Trisha Greene was on it. In a big way, yes she was. So was our little torturing friend, so was the driver, so was Mr US of A.”

“Sounds like some orgy.”

“Bloody right it’s an orgy, Kocky. Makes the film we saw earlier look like the
Teletubbies
.”

“The what?”

“It’s a kids’ programme, for fuck’s sake.”

“Please tell me you don’t have children, Stubbing.”

She mumbled something and I heard liquid being poured. I wondered how much she’d had to drink. “So did you learn anything new?” I asked, fingering the forming scab between my eyes.

“Yes, your hunch paid off alright. It shows Quintin filming Trisha on his sofa while Mark pleasures her with those toys we saw and, get this, Kevin strangles her.”

“Bloody hell. Quintin recorded her murder?”

“No, nothing so convenient. It was just a bit of erotic asphyxiation, all part of the show he was filming.”

No wonder the thin man (or Kevin as I could never call him) was keen to get rid of the DVD, but what the fuck was erotic asphyxiation? I was being immersed in a world I didn’t want to be part of. I felt very tired. Plus the cold wasn’t helping my shoulder. Stubbing’s voice grated in my ear.

“At the end of the footage she’s fine, laughing and getting dressed and she even suggests doing some more filming outdoors. Guess where?”

“The Gogs?”

“Spot on. Can you believe it?”

“But wouldn’t the post-mortem have shown finger marks? I thought she was killed with the belt.”

“He was using the belt,” she said, her voice rising an octave in excitement. “The very one she was found with round her neck at the Gogs.”

I wasn’t in much of a state to process what she was telling me. “Her husband’s belt? I don’t understand.”

Stubbing chuckled at my incomprehension and I wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on. “Trisha was wearing the belt at the beginning of the film, like an accessory around her dress.”

“She was wearing the belt the night she was murdered?”

“Will you stop repeating everything I say for fuck’s sake.”

I poured hot water onto a teabag and waited for Stubbing to take a gulp of whatever she was numbing herself with.

“There’s no real way to prove the date and time the film was recorded but it was already dark when the footage was taken.”

“Which means after four. Of course she could have gone home afterwards and been confronted by hubby – remember that’s the day he learnt about her – then driven him to the Gogs to show him what it was all about and then he lost it.”

“Maybe, but he would have needed another car to get back to Haverhill, unless he walked the thirteen odd miles.”

“How does he explain it, then, since he confessed?”

“He doesn’t. He’s saying nothing, just that he killed her. There’s nothing to pin on him except the belt.”

“So the husband’s off the hook?”

“Not necessarily – it explains why his belt was round her neck, but the main thing is that it provides a credible alternative to his story.”

“So what now?” I asked, taking my tea to the glow of the gas fire.

“I don’t know. Technically I’m not on the case and I’d have to run all this by Brampton, so I still don’t have enough really.”