Dying for Millions (12 page)

He looked at his note book again. ‘Plant extract.'

‘Hallucinogenic, as well as all those other things?'

He shook his head. ‘No idea. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?'

I wouldn't rush him. I
mustn't
rush him. ‘What are you thinking?'

‘That this bloke took a bit of something, overdid it, and Bob's your uncle. Right?'

‘It was a no-drugs tour.'

‘Well, perhaps he took something that no one'd know about.'

I shook my head. ‘Look – some of them smoke pot, and one or two snort coke, especially the youngsters. But they get the push immediately if Jonty finds out. And no one in his right mind would take anything if he was going to be stuck up that gantry. You wouldn't expect a steeple-jack to have a quick fix, would you?'

‘Ah, but these musicians—'

‘Musicians, my foot. Electrical engineers. Computer experts. Family men, most of them – well, you saw at the party. That guy – did he have a wife and kids?'

‘A partner. Male.' Disapproval oozed from Ian's every pore.

I wouldn't react.

‘Who
says
Pete never took anything except marijuana.'

‘Did they find anything else – on him? At his place?'

‘You sound more like Chris every day!'

We reached the room where I was scheduled to teach. Outside my class was seething round, moaning loudly. When I peered at the door I could see why.

ROOM OCCUPIED.

GO TO ROOM 1504.

I don't like to think what expletive passed my lips.

‘Problem?' asked Ian.

‘None at all. Except that only one lift is working and that Room 1504 is back on the fifteenth floor. Would you call that a problem?'

At lunch-time I wanted simply to put my head down and go to sleep, but there was a Board of Study meeting I had to attend. Since the Board's intention was to make me a scapegoat for the ongoing lack of success of the work experience programme, I drank strong black coffee beforehand and flourished sets of figures. My colleagues were normally tolerant, kindly people, fraught with the same stresses as I – but put them in a room and call them a committee and they became steely-eyed and officious. However, my impressive lists convinced them that I'd done all I could to find placements in an period when employers were besieged with requests; and that my in-college campaign to persuade students to take up the meagre supply of placements had failed because of the students' apathy, as personified by the student rep on the committee.

‘Waste of time, innit,' he said. ‘I goes to her, I goes to Sophie, there's no work to go to, innit? And she goes to me, she's trying. But I goes to her, I goes, she don't find the right places anyway, innit – I mean, ought to be with lawyers or accountants, innit.'

The Head of English sighed audibly – and I knew I had been reprieved. Student literacy might well appear on the agenda for the next Board meeting: I might even chime in myself, with an observation on the use of the verb ‘to go' as a verb of saying.

Late for my one-fifteen class, I still found only a quarter of the usual complement there. Their serious faces and plethora of textbooks told me I had promised them a test; naturally I postponed it until I could trawl a bigger catch, and set instead a comprehension exercise that would take them for ever. While they read it through and listed words they didn't know, I leaned on the window sill, trying to stop my heart pounding as though I were in a race. Pete Hughes and helleborin. Visual disturbances. Auditory interference. No trace of any substances on him or at home … There
had
to be a message from Ian waiting for me back in the staff room. Had to be. And it would tell me that they'd found helleborin in Andy's flask. The suspicion that had nagged so strongly on Saturday – the one Griff shared – must be proved a fact: one I didn't want, now it came to it, to face. There would be poison in Andy's flask because it was Andy for whom it was meant.

At break, over the phone, Ian's voice, normally prosaic and flat, alternated between excitement at what seemed to him a new development and concern for me.

‘The trouble is, love, we need to talk to Andy and he seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Get him to come back to Brum, just for a couple of days, will you?'

‘Can't. Don't know where he is.'

‘Come off it, love. This is serious.'

‘It's my bloody cousin, and someone wants to kill him, and you tell me it's serious! Of
course
it's serious! But I don't know how to reach him. He's in hiding, Ian.'

‘Don't tell me he didn't tell you where he was going.'

‘I – what is it? Can't you see I'm on the phone? Just one second, Ian.' I covered the mouthpiece. ‘I'm busy, Karen. Wait a minute, please.'

‘I can't. It's so
important
?'

‘Two minutes. And wait outside. This is personal.'

‘Is it Andy? Sophie, tell him—'

‘Outside!' I watched her almost stagger from the room. What on earth was wrong with the girl? ‘Ian, I'm sorry. Look, John Griffiths – his minder – left me his card. I can get him to contact Andy, make him contact you. That's truly the best I can do.'

There was a long silence.

‘You're telling the truth, aren't you? You really don't know.'

It was the first time in thirty-five years I didn't. He'd always carried my name on his dog-tag as next of kin: now he would have Ruth's.

‘Give me Griff's number, will you, love?' His voice was distressingly kind. ‘Thanks. Now, Val's trying out that lamb casserole recipe you gave her – how'd you like to come round this evening and see how she's got on with it?'

‘Love to, Ian,' I lied. ‘But I've got to do another work experience visit on the way back, and goodness knows how long it will take.'

In fact I had to go and see Naheeda, the student who'd alleged misconduct against her temporary employer. It was an assignment I was not looking forward to, but anything was better than Ian being tactful. I picked my way through the late afternoon traffic to Hockley, nosing through increasingly mean streets to the two-up two-down house. I rang gently, knocked gently; then did both less gently. At last an old man emerged from the house next door, wearing a round fleecy cap, black waistcoat and white pyjama-like shirt and trousers of a thin cotton fabric. My heart bled for him: he must have been in danger of hypothermia.

‘I wanted to see Naheeda,' I said, turning in to the wind to face him, pulling strands of hair from my eyes and mouth.

‘Naheeda gone,' he said, making a palms-down scissors movement with his hands. ‘Gone Pakistan.'

‘Pakistan! But she goes to college!'

‘Naheeda gone Pakistan. Marry.'

‘But she's only seventeen!'

‘Marry in Pakistan.' He infused a frightening note of satisfaction into his voice. ‘Gone.' A final scissors movement with his hands, and he was gone too, his sandals flapping on bare feet. I found myself hoping he'd get chilblains.

Back on the road again, I missed my way and found myself heading into the city rather than round it. Cursing my stupidity, I tried to work out which possible route might have the fewest jams, and decided to surface on Great Charles Street, so I could leave the city on Broad Street. Then I could choose – if the Five Ways Island was solid I could risk the underpass and the Hagley Road. There would be plenty of time to decide. The traffic had slowed to breathing pace – a combination of cars turning right and others illegally parked. It was fortunate that it was then I decided to test the Renault's front bumper.

I saw Andy, you see. Nipping across the pedestrian crossing by the Music Centre.

I apologised profusely to the Volvo driver in front, who'd inspected every last centimetre for possible damage – though even my little bumper was unscathed, I'd touched so lightly – and when I at last found somewhere to park, Andy was nowhere to be seen. Of course. I told myself, as I fastened myself back into the Renault, that my eyes must have deceived me, that in the dazzle of the lights and the gentle sleet I couldn't have recognised anyone. That from the back Phiz looked like Andy – and so, with a wig, did Griff. So, probably did hundreds of men. That Andy was somewhere safe in the north. That no one with any sense would return from a safe house to a place where someone was trying to kill him.

But I knew those shoulders, the set of that head, that walk, better than I knew my own.

Trying to prise information out of Griff was predictably tough. He insisted that Andy – he referred to him only as ‘our friend' – would be where he was supposed to be. When I floated as the merest possibility a journey south, he tried very hard not to tell me to be a fool; while he censored his words, he couldn't quite control his voice. Since I could scarcely spell out exactly whom I had seen and where, lest there be any unwanted listeners, I tried hard not to blame him. At the end I wrung from him a grudging promise to talk to ‘another friend' – his contact, presumably – and call me back.

It naturally became one of those evenings when all your friends phone expecting a long natter. I'd never quite got round to having BT signal another caller, and so my enjoyment was spoilt by the constant suspicion that someone with vital information was being denied access to me.

So I heard all about the problems Aberlene was having with her new bloke, who seemed to resent her being the leader of the Midshires Symphony Orchestra while he was only a back-desk second violin.
All
about them. I managed after half an hour to suggest we should meet to discuss it – a girls' evening at a nice restaurant. There was a little, hurt pause.

Then I remembered that itinerant musicians saw more restaurants than the rest of us.

‘Or how about a meal here?' I suggested.

We found a date and wrote solemnly in our diaries.

Carl next: why he hadn't contacted me at work goodness knows. His wife had suspected that we were lovers years before we actually were, and presumably still regarded me with suspicion, though I'd given her no grounds for nearly two years now. So why should he take the risk of phoning me? Was it simply to enrage a not-very-nice woman? All he wanted to talk about was our ‘expedition' – his word, not mine – up the River Severn. He read out the instruction leaflet he'd prepared, asked me what I thought of his checklist of essential items, speculated on the likely state of the weather, and generally irritated the socks off me.

My hand was poised to phone Griff when another call came through, this time from college.
College
? One of my colleagues, an historian, had found this student in tears outside the staffroom …

It had to be Karen. Surely she hadn't been waiting there all that time …
No, don't be silly, Sophie.

‘She says she has to talk to you. She says – I'll put her on, shall I?'

‘OK, Mags – but don't tell her my number!'

‘Sophie? Sophie? I've got to talk to you, I really have. Sophie, it's about Andy … Have you sent him my letters?'

‘No. You asked me to destroy them.' I didn't mention that I hadn't yet got round to it.

‘But Sophie – I need – he must –'

She must be deadly serious: she'd dropped that interogation.

‘Must what, Karen?' Keep the voice calm – that's what they taught on counselling courses.

‘
Talk
to him! Sophie, I
must
.'

‘That's not possible at the moment, love. He's not in Birmingham.'

‘He is, he is! I
saw
him!'

Where? Where?
No – mustn't scream down the phone at a student. I said nothing.

‘I
saw
him,' she insisted.

‘Are you sure? When did you think you saw him?'

‘This afternoon. I
saw
him. Why won't you let me speak to him?'

‘Because –' I might as well tell her the simple truth – ‘he's on holiday with Ruth and I don't have a clue where.'

‘You're lying! You don't want him to know how much I love him! You're
jealous
!'

She cut the line abruptly. The phone rang again almost immediately.

Mags again. ‘Wow! Something seems to have upset her, Sophie. What d'you want me to do? Apart from wring her neck, that is?'

‘Would you be an absolute angel and get out her personal file? Oh, hell, you can't, can you?' One of the recent funding changes meant that all the students' files now had to be kept centrally: I wasn't quite sure how, or why, except that the change was accompanied by an inordinate amount of form-filling. Everything we did for our students was now documented, allegedly so we could claim money for it, but somewhere along the way the notion of instant access had been lost. And it is a truth inadequately acknowledged, that every single tutee in possession of a problem must be in want of comfort outside college hours. ‘I just wanted her phone number, to let her mother know she's in a state.'

‘Are you sure she isn't eighteen?'

‘Doesn't behave like it!'

‘Maybe not, but you can only contact parents if they're sixteen or seventeen. Rules is rules.'

‘Yes, Mags. But it's all a bit academic, isn't it, if we can't find her telephone number anyway?'

What was the girl's surname? Harris? There were an awful lot of Harrises in the phone book, and since I'd no more than the vaguest idea of her address – somewhere in Acocks Green, wasn't it? – that was that. The best I could do was go chasing tomorrow, first thing.

Next came ActionAid, asking me to do a door-to-door collection. Then a couple of wrong numbers. Ten o'clock – and still no news from Griff.

At five past I was startled out of the ITN News by a strident ring at my front door. A peep through the spy-hole showed Inspector Stephenson, with Ian two paces behind.