The Bursar's Wife (6 page)

I sat there for ten minutes and saw two taxis draw up and several people arrive on bicycles, wondering which of them was Rowena. At ten past a new model Mini Cooper turned onto the road and stopped outside the entrance, the exhaust smoke flattened by the rain. Sylvia Booker was at the wheel, Lucy at her side. I couldn’t see them clearly because of the rain on my windscreen. Sylvia seemed to be having a one-sided conversation with her daughter, who was looking straight ahead. Then the passenger door opened and Lucy Booker got out, a knee-length skirt showing under her raincoat. I couldn’t make out her features except to see that she had shoulder-length flat hair, which I knew from her photo to be blonde. A slight person, she walked with arms crossed against the cold into the college grounds, a large bag swinging from her shoulder. She was not someone I would associate with a rowing team. The Mini waited, Sylvia watching her daughter until she had gone into the building before driving off. I sank down in my seat as the Mini passed me, turned round at the end of the road and passed me again. I thought about getting out of the car and watching some bridge when the building door opened and Lucy’s head appeared. She looked up and down the road, saw that the Mini had gone and came out. I cleared the windscreen with a single flick of the wiper. She had a cardigan and blouse done up to the neck under the raincoat and now put a scarf over her head against the drizzle, or perhaps as a form of disguise. She looked younger than her photo. She walked to the end of the road and I started to get out and follow when she just stopped at the corner of Cranmer Road, her back to me. She checked her watch. I did the same – it was twenty past eight.

On watching Lucy Booker waiting at a street corner, it crossed my febrile mind that she was on the game, and wondered how I would break it to her mother. It is not unknown for undergraduate women to turn to prostitution, but not well-bred middle-class girls like Lucy who didn’t need the money, despite the buzz the idea might give sad men like myself. Sandra was right, I needed to get laid – cold showers didn’t help. This was not, after all, Histon Road, where the residents had campaigned hard to get rid of the women working the street. I wasn’t sure where they worked now; it had been a while since I’d followed an errant husband to pick one up.

I’d calmed myself down when a big fuck-off silver Mercedes pulled up in front of Lucy and my imagination set off again. But she just stood there and a capped driver in a suit got out and opened the rear door, which had a tinted window. He was gym fit under his tight suit, sleeves too short. He took his cap off briefly as she got in and revealed a crop-haired and square-faced head. He did not speak to Lucy as she got in, just gave her a small nod. I had the feeling that I’d seen him before, but he could just have been of a type. I fumbled for a notebook as he closed the door on her, to write down the licence number, which I couldn’t see as the car was side-on. The Merc set off and I followed. The rear window was also tinted so I could not see who else, if anyone, was inside with Lucy. I opened the notebook in my lap and wrote the licence number without looking away from the road. It’s a skill I’ve had to learn, like urinating into a cut-off plastic Coke bottle while seated.

I let a couple of cars get between us as we drove down The Backs, then towards Chesterton, near where I live. The Merc was easy to keep in view, even in the rain, and we turned as if to go into town across Elizabeth Way but before the bridge he turned left at a petrol station, went down the road and turned right into a gated residential block. The gates opened slowly, to let the Mercedes in, and I managed to quickly turn into a small open-air car park opposite. The gates closed behind the Mercedes. I yanked the camera with the telephoto from the bag in the passenger foot-well. Through the lens I could see the driver of the Merc unfold a large umbrella before opening the rear door.

The Lucy Booker that stepped out of the car was not the one that had got in. First, her legs appeared, the skirt now unbuttoned to show some thigh. Then her head appeared. She had lost the scarf and her hair was fixed up in a bun. I zoomed in. She had applied red lipstick and black mascara. Her cheeks were rouged. Something sparkled in her earlobes. The most surprising thing though, as I zoomed out slightly when she fully emerged, was that she had taken off her raincoat and undone several buttons of her cardigan and blouse to create some cleavage.

BACK IN THE OFFICE I TOOK OFF MY DRIPPING COAT, POWERED
up the computer on Sandra’s desk and wished I had a coffee machine. I waited for the computer to come to life – starting Windows was like waking someone with a bad hangover early in the morning. I connected the camera to it and waited for the photos I’d taken to upload. I had an interesting evening to mull over.

After watching Lucy go into the building and the driver walk over to a pub opposite, I’d wondered whether I should try to befriend the driver and pump him for info, or stick with Lucy. I decided to stick with Lucy. I went over to the pub and checked through the window; my friend was settled with a pint and a
Daily Express
. Once again he jogged a memory that I couldn’t place. I didn’t try too hard though; it would come to me at some point if it was there.

I went back over to the apartments. It was a new five-storey block, called River Views, and a plaque on the gate advertised it as being fully serviced and security monitored. The cars in the car park were all executive late models (no people carriers here), and there was no legit way in except with a key or by ringing someone’s bell in the panel of about twenty-five that was lit up beside the pedestrian entrance, also gated. Above the gate a camera swivelled slowly. It headed my way. Beyond the gate, in the wall beside the path leading to the lifts, was a mirrored window next to a door marked ‘Caretaker’. I studied the names next to the bells but they meant nothing to me. I was about to press them all in the hope that someone would buzz me in with the old pizza delivery trick, when the caretaker door opened and an elderly man came out. I knew him, or rather my father had known him. I’d even done a job for his daughter once. He shuffled over to the gate carrying a big set of keys and a torch.

“Can I help you, son?” he asked, trying to sound officious. He had a cheap uniform on with ‘Caretaker’ sewn onto the breast pocket.

“It’s Eric, isn’t it? Eric Partridge?” I asked. He studied me with watery eyes. My father had said he was a drunk and his face seemed to confirm that; the drink had made his capillaries burst and his skin sag. But he did recognise me.

“You’re George Junior, aren’t you? How are you, son? What’re you doing here?” Before waiting for an answer he opened the gate and I was in. I pointed to the door he’d come out of.

“You got a kettle in there?”

* * *

Once we were squeezed into his tiny cubby hole he filled the kettle from a tap over a sink so small he had to fill a mug to pour into the kettle. He sat at a small metal desk, gesturing to a small two-person sofa that was designed, size-wise if not quality-wise, for hip-less supermodels. A phone was mounted on the wall to save space and the small electric kettle sat on a two-drawer filing cabinet. Notices on the wall proclaimed various fire and security warnings around a shallow metal cabinet. A small black and white screen on the desk showed a swivelling picture of the car park, then alternated with a view of the outside of the gates. The room smelled of booze and stale farts and I couldn’t wait to get out.

“How’s your old man, son?” I gave him the low-down on George Senior’s state. He became subdued, perhaps brooding on his own mortality. He checked the door was locked and opened the bottom filing cabinet, fishing out a flat half-pint bottle of Johnny Walker from behind some files. “Let’s drink to him.” I had a sip from my mug and let him have another on his own. He’d forgotten to care about what I was doing here in the first place; he was just glad of the company. I gestured at the little screen when it switched back to the car park.

“Nice Merc. Is it the S-Class?” He looked out of the one-way window and I realised we could see the car through the glass.

“Yeah, the 320. Sixty grand new. More than what I earn in four years.” He looked at me. “You still doing that snooping stuff, son? I never thanked you for exposing that shit of a son-in-law. You saved my daughter from wasting her life on a worthless prick.” He shook his head and sipped from his mug. “I mean stealing from his own wife’s business. It’s like stealing from yourself, isn’t it? She’s done alright now, she has. Runs a restaurant with her new fella. He cooks, she does the books. You should go and eat there, George.” I waited while he wrote the name down and elicited a promise that I would go there and tell them I was a friend of his so I could eat for nothing. I bet his daughter loved the fact that he was so free with her business.

I remarked that it was a bit ostentatious for Cambridge, the car – you might see its sort parked outside a new detached executive home in one of the villages. The kettle noisily filled the small room with steam and then it clicked off. Eric had forgotten all about making tea though and offered me more whisky. I let him put some in my mug so he didn’t feel so bad putting some in his own.

“Yeah, you’re right there, son. That’s Mr Boyd’s Merc. Comes up every week from London for a few nights.” I pretended to sip my whisky.

“A hit with the ladies, I bet.” I noticed a shallow cabinet on the wall, slightly ajar, the sort that held keys. Eric sipped and nodded.

“Right you are. He brings a girl every Friday or Saturday night. But always the same girl on Wednesday nights, always driven here by Mark and always driven home. She never stays more than an hour. She’s not a looker, not like the ones he has over on Friday and Saturday nights. They’re usually different – sometimes there are two of them; sometimes there’s a bloke as well, a thin guy. And sometimes,” he leant forward and I got a blast of JW, “Mark and this guy go upstairs with them.” He settled back and closed his eyes and I thought he’d gone to sleep. Then he opened them and leant forward again. “Mr Boyd likes ’em young, let me tell you.”

“Like how young?” I asked. He sat back and unfocussed his gaze. He was making me dizzy with his constant shifting.

“In my day you could tell when a girl was, well, ready, you know?”

I nodded encouragingly.

“Nowadays they look ready when they’re not.”

Since he couldn’t tell an eighteen-year-old from a thirteen-year-old I moved on to safer ground. “And do they stay the night?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes they leave on their own and Mark drives them home, sometimes he leaves with them. Mark and this skinny guy had to carry one of them out last week, she was pissed as a newt.”

“Quite the gentleman, this Boyd. Do you know what he does?”

Again with the head shaking. “I just do nights, son, don’t get to speak to the residents much. I just see them come and go, that’s all. There’s a big turnover here; it’s not the sort of place people settle down in, you know? In my day you bought a place and that was it…”

I jumped in before he could continue. “So where’s he from, this Boyd?”

“Boyd? He’s American,” Eric said, nodding, as if this explained everything. He went to the filing cabinet and pulled out a file.

“Quintin, his name is Quintin Boyd. He’s got the whole top floor to himself.”

* * *

I’d tried to get more out of him but too many reminiscences got in the way and I wanted to be in my car when Lucy came out; according to Eric she didn’t stay for long. But Eric hadn’t even met this Boyd, just his driver, Mark, a pleasant enough fella apparently, but not someone who liked to chat. Outside River Views I crossed the road and looked up at the fifth and top floor. There were vertical blinds across the tall windows, the sort you see in offices, a soft glow coming through them. I went back to the Golf, watched Mark the driver go to River Views at nine forty-five, took some more photos of Lucy getting in the Merc and then followed them back to Selwyn College.

When she got out near Selwyn, Lucy’s makeover was gone; she’d reverted to her plain self – lipstick-free, buttoned up to the chin and down to the knee. I’d waited until her mother had picked her up and now here I was uploading her photos onto the computer.

I left for home, but not before leaving a note for Sandra to do a vehicle check on the Merc’s number plate.

* * *

At home I let a couple of cold Pilsners nurse me while I switched the computer on. I Googled Quintin Boyd and the top hit led me to the home page of the corporate law firm ‘Quintin Boyd’. It could have been a coincidence, a firm with the same name, but on the ‘about us’ page he was listed as the senior partner who had formed the company twelve years earlier. According to their own publicity they were earmarked as ‘fastest growing corporate law firm’ by some corporate law body. The page also listed the many mergers and acquisitions the firm had been involved in. There were sixty partners listed, in three different departments spread over London and New York. I could see no mention of a Cambridge office. I clicked back to the partner listings and brought up Boyd’s profile. A head and shoulders photo of him stared out, taken at some meeting, looking off at a slight angle. He was smiling, with the sort of teeth you see in Hollywood mouths, and dimples that, if you had them, would make you want to keep on smiling. He was handsome, no doubt, with slightly too much black hair (greyed at the temples), a little long but erring on the side of acceptable for a corporate lawyer. He had the usual dark suit, pink shirt and Windsor knot at his throat you expect to see on those types. He had no extra fat in the face, nothing hanging beneath the chin like
I
saw in the mirror each morning.

I clicked away from him and checked my email. Nothing there but invitations to spend money on enhancing what was between my legs. In my case this would be like souping up a rusty 1982 Ford Cortina, parking it in a garage and throwing away the keys. It did serve to remind me to look at the dating website where I half-heartedly filled in some details against my profile but could not think of a message to write that would make anyone want to contact me. “Middle-aged man who turned wife lesbian and makes living destroying marriages and photographing benefit cheats seeks cuddles and maybe more,” was not going to attract the ladies, and I was in no mood for bullshitting. The Pilsner had run out of nurse so I considered opting for the intensive, watch-you-while-you-sleep care only a large whisky can provide. Instead I stood over my chess problem for fifteen minutes until I’d cracked it. I slept like a baby.