The Bursar's Wife (32 page)

I parked in the car park opposite River Views and put on some silk skin-tight gloves, the sort bikers wear under their leather gloves, and with Quintin’s keys let myself into the front gate. I doubted Eric would be on duty – his night shift would be over – but I didn’t care if he was. There was little he could do except ring Quintin or perhaps Mark, and Mark was a pussycat compared to Quintin’s knife-wielding minion who was in Stubbing’s custody.

* * *

As I emerged from the lift on the top floor a young woman with a mascara-streaked face rushed by me into the lift, pressing furiously at the lobby button and ignoring my stare. She didn’t look much older than Lucy. I let myself into the penthouse. A half-empty bottle of wine and two glasses sat on the coffee table – the girl (she was really no more than a girl) who’d passed me must have arrived last night after I’d left. I went to the hall leading to the bedrooms and office.

Quintin’s bedroom door was open. The bed was unmade and two sex toys from his vast selection sat on the bedside table. At the foot his semi-pro camera was fixed to the tripod and aimed at the now empty bed, no doubt recently occupied by the same girl – another unwilling recipient of the Quintin magic. It’s probable that she’d arrived voluntarily but what had happened in here was not done by consent. Quintin did not have relationships with women who wanted to. His
modus operandi
was to pay, drug and blackmail them into it, excepting perhaps Trisha. I found a DVD in the camera – he’d obviously not had time to catalogue it – so I took it out. At the oak cabinet in his office I ignored the cupboard full of bought porn and opened the drawers below. I took out all the carefully dated DVDs from their sleeves, and the VHS tapes from their cases, and carried them all into the kitchen. I put the DVDs into the microwave and set it to high, for three minutes. They sparkled and popped alarmingly as I filled the oven with the tapes – including Sylvia’s in my pocket; I ripped the tape out of it for extra measure – and set the dial to high. Then it was back to his office.

I found that the actual computer, under the desk, was a silver metal tower with a mesh-like back and handles at the top. The front of it was facing to the left, the long side towards me, a large Apple logo on it. Kneeling down, I eventually found the switch on the back and turned it off. The low hum subsided. I couldn’t work out how to open the thing to get the cover off though, there didn’t seem to be any screws. I thought of smashing it but it was made of aluminium and I might not be able to destroy the hard drive inside, and even if I thought I had, the police could recover things from the flimsiest of evidence. I remembered the computer in my office: someone had removed the hard drive from it – it was the only way to be sure that nothing was left behind. I took out the mobile and dialled Jason’s. He answered on the third ring, groggy with sleep.

“Morning, son. You up for providing computer support?”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“I’m kneeling in front of an Apple Mac with the prospect of the Mac’s owner appearing any minute. You told me you use Macs at college, don’t you?”

“What do you need to know?”

I explained my desire to extract the hard drive from the machine. He asked me the model which I got from the back.

“You’re in luck then; it’s a doddle on that machine, you won’t even need any tools.” He guided me to the lever embedded in the back, which I pulled, enabling the panel with the logo on it to come clean off.

He talked me through removing the drive, which, as he’d promised, was straightforward. Then he told me how to put the panel back.

“Is there a backup machine attached to the computer?” he asked.

“How do I know?” I asked. “There doesn’t seem to be anything connected to it apart from a camcorder.”

“Well, if you don’t find it, and he’s bound to have one, what you’ve just done is next to useless.”

“There’s nothing coming out of the computer,” I said.

“Then you better hope there is a wireless backup somewhere in the house and that he wasn’t doing it over the Internet like we were. Although that’s unlikely given his material.”

“Shit. What am I looking for?”

“A box somewhere. It might be in another room or in a cupboard or something, probably next to the router.”

“That’s helpful. Perhaps you could tell me what the router looks like?”

I trawled the house and came across a cupboard next to the front door in which sat a variety of equipment that left me bewildered. It was like a mini disco going on what with all the lights flashing in there. With Jason’s help I identified the culprit backup drive from which I unplugged a power cable and a network cable connected to the router, which was distinguished by its antenna. It was bigger than the drive I’d taken from the computer in the office and wouldn’t fit in my pocket.

* * *

Fiddling around under the desk and in the cupboard hadn’t helped my shoulder and I tried not to think of what it had done to my fresh stitches. Checking my watch told me I must have been at it for forty-five minutes or so. The smell of burning plastic from the kitchen reminded me that I should check my cooking.

I turned off the oven and opened the door, releasing acrid black smoke. Once I’d cleared the smoke inside I established that the tapes were a molten mess. I nearly had a heart attack when the smoke alarm went off over my head and I had to get on a chair and smash it with the heel of my shoe, spluttering in the smoke. I switched on the extractor fan over the hob before putting Quintin’s keys on the dining table – he might think he’d left them there himself, until, of course, the smell hit him and he went into the kitchen.

As I was about to leave something nagged at me, so I decided a last sweep of the place would be prudent; it’s not unknown for things to drop out of pockets or a mobile phone to be left behind. I looked in the bedroom, studied the large camera aimed at the bed. I remembered what Stubbing had said when she’d rung me early this morning, about tying the Trisha strangling footage she’d described to the camera now before me. Could she use it if I took it to her? My scant knowledge of the law was that here, unlike in the US, evidence could be admissible however it was obtained. But it was a large piece of equipment usually used on a tripod or carried on the shoulder, which presumably is why he had the other, smaller handheld camcorder. Besides, I wasn’t about to do Stubbing’s dirty work for her, just because she was worried about her career.

The nagging feeling amplified. What was it? Something about the cameras. There were two. It was the smaller handheld, that’s what it was. The one Quintin used in addition to the fixed camera I was staring at. The small one. The one, had he taken Trisha up to the Gogs that night, he would have used, not the big one. Where was the raw footage from it? All on the hard drive, I supposed, so anything incriminating would be on there. But what was it recorded onto in the first place? Not a DVD, it was too small, but a memory card. Memory cards that we’d seen him buy that morning in Cambridge. I went to the office, where the camcorder was connected to the computer. Cameras and camcorders I could understand, and it wasn’t long before I saw that it contained one of the largest capacity cards you could buy. The adrenalin made my hands tremble as I flipped open the screen and navigated the menu system to play back what was on it.

MY ORIGINAL IDEA WAS TO GET JASON TO DELETE THE
offending footage of Sylvia and my father from the drives and to help me look for further evidence of Quintin and friends’ involvement in Trisha’s sad end. But there was no need for that now, not after what I’d seen on the camcorder, which left nothing to the imagination. I put the camcorder in a Waitrose carrier bag I found in the kitchen and left. In the car I made a phone call to Kamal, who listened and said he would get back to me. Then I drove home.

* * *

Through the brambles at the bottom of my garden is the small shed where my father kept his tools. I went there with the hard drive and backup drive and a small blowtorch Olivia had used once to sear the top of some crème brûlées for a dinner party. Inside the shed, tendrils of bramble had snuck through the large gaps in the rotting slats and were thriving despite the gloom. I fought them and large cobwebs to reach a dust-covered worktop to which a rusty vice was fixed. I jammed the drive in it, turning the handle and increasing pressure until it cracked and bits pinged off. Jason had said that I needed to get at the circular wafers inside. Once I had done the same to the backup drive I was left with a collection of thin brown magnetic discs to which I applied a blowtorch causing them to melt and contract into dark brown balls of plastic.

* * *

As promised Kamal called me back, and after talking to him I rang Stubbing, having to leave a message on her voicemail – no doubt she was sleeping off last night’s self-pitying binge. I drove to Addenbrooke’s.

* * *

Quintin had bagged himself a private room. According to Kamal’s nursing contact he was waiting for a neurosurgical consultation, due to possible nerve damage in the shoulder. He was sitting up in bed, his ear bandaged to his head like an extra in a Second World War film. His left arm was in a sling and judging by his vague expression he was on strong painkillers.

“Ah, Kockers Junior, at last, I’ve been ringing for ages. I need you to hold my pecker so I can have a whizz.”

I put the Waitrose bag at the foot of the bed.

“Did you bring champagne?”

“Why did my father retire early?”

He smiled, as if realising why I was here, and shifted his buttocks on the bed.

“Because, you Armenian retard, I showed him the film. I gave him a choice. I’d show the film to his employers, the relevant bit anyway, and he would be sacked with no pension and charged – although to be honest the spineless wonders at the college would do anything to avoid a bad name – or, he could retire early voluntarily. It was a no-brainer. As it was he lost five years of his pension.”

“But why?” I said, more curious than angry. “What had he ever done to you?”

He shrugged and grimaced, as if remembering something unpleasant. “Nothing. He was always around, always there, waiting for us to finish so he could clean up. He watched the films, knew what was going on. He was almost part of the club.” He picked up a glass of water. “But I did it mainly because I could.”

So that was Quintin’s reason? Not because of what my father had done to Sylvia, no, but simply because he could. He didn’t give a shit about Sylvia. Quite the opposite.

“You set him up with Sylvia, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I thought it would be good to mix things up. There should be more intermingling of the classes, I feel.”

“And your interest in Lucy? What was that about?”

He sipped at his water and smacked his lips.

“Just more sport. I thought it would be fun to do the daughter of the mother, catch my drift?” He smiled that sensuous smile. “Especially when I’d had a hand in creating her.” Here he guffawed and if he’d been hooked up to a life support system I’d have happily unplugged him and locked the door to prevent his resuscitation.

“Except you can’t, can you?” The laughter stopped.

“Can’t what?”

“Do her, of course. You can’t get it up, can you? It’s all trouser with you and no cock. You can’t stand up for women, if you catch my drift.” He tried to get comfortable in the bed, his gaze unfocussed and wary, his smile fixed. He opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off. “I don’t know what happened to you, or what caused it, and I don’t really give a shit. But you probably thought, in that mess of a mind of yours, that you could compensate with your artificial substitutes and coerced victims, and that putting it on film for your sad little friends gave you some sort of masturbatory satisfaction.”

“It gave us plenty of satisfaction as a matter of fact. And I gave pleasure to plenty of women.” I ignored going down that twisted route and carried on.

“Not Trisha, though. Trisha was different, wasn’t she?”

At that point Stubbing came into the room, looking like she’d just got out of bed having slept in her clothes.

“Who’s this?” Quintin demanded.

“Detective Inspector Stubbing,” said Stubbing, in a hoarse voice.

“What’s she doing here? I called Brampton.” I exchanged a look with Stubbing.

“It’ll become clear why she’s here,” I said. That’s when Brampton came in, looked surprised to see me and Stubbing, and went straight to Quintin’s side, glaring at us with all the distaste of someone who’s found a pubic hair in a sandwich they’ve already bitten into. All I needed now was Sylvia to arrive and I could do a Poirot and dazzle the gathering with my deductive powers.

“Ah, Judith, better late than never,” drawled Quintin. “I want you to arrest Sylvia Booker for assault. This gumshoe here is a witness to her unprovoked knife attack.”

“Shut up,” I said. “She’s had years of provocation from you.”

“What are you doing here?” Brampton spat at Stubbing.

“I was just about to explain about Trisha Greene,” I said before Stubbing could answer. It was Brampton’s turn to look confused.

“What’s going on?” she demanded of Stubbing.

“Just listen, ma’am,” Stubbing said. I went to the door and closed it. Quintin was protesting to Brampton.

“I was wondering,” I said, cutting him off midstream, “why Quintin here would want to do what he did to Trisha. Strangle her all the way, I mean, not just a little bit for perverted kicks.” A gratifying hush filled the room. “A psychiatrist could get a fat research grant to look into this but my take, for what it’s worth, is that it’s because she was the only one of Quintin’s conquests, if I can call them that, who actually wanted sex on his terms.”

Quintin laughed again and shook his bandaged head, almost in sorrow. “I already told you she was a slut. But I didn’t kill her. You’ve completely lost the plot. Why would I kill her if she was giving me what I wanted, you idiot? Besides, I only did to her what she wanted done.”

“Exactly. You gave her what she wanted, but that’s not how you roll, is it? She irritated you because you didn’t need to coerce it out of her, that’s the thing. No blackmail, no date-rape drug. And you didn’t like that, did you? Trisha made you angry, didn’t she, because she actually took everything you threw at her and enjoyed it?”