Dying to Write (24 page)

‘Why have you arrested Matt, Chris?' I asked.

‘Matt hasn't been arrested. He's helping us with our inquiries, that's all.'

I gave him an old-fashioned look.

‘He's answering some questions,' Chris corrected himself.

‘Not necessarily friendly questions, however?' Hugh suggested.

Chris leaned forward and put his forearms on the table. I had never seen him look so authoritative. ‘This is a murder inquiry. One woman is dead, another missing. I'm concerned with the welfare of the other women on the course.' He smiled grimly: no, he wouldn't want any emotion to show. ‘Unpleasant things are happening to innocent people –' now he smiled at Hugh – ‘in a case like this. We shan't be trying to trick Matt, or roughing him up to extract a confession. Sophie knows me well enough to believe me.' Another smile at me. It was a professional smile, like the one he'd directed at Hugh. Almost.

‘Why pick on Matt?' Even to my own ears my voice sounded petulant. ‘I mean, why choose today to decide to ask him questions?'

‘Evidence has come to light which justifies bringing him to a place where we can all concentrate.'

‘Evidence?'

‘Sophie, you know I can't talk about such matters.'

‘It'd do his marriage a lot of harm if he were charged with –' Hugh began.

‘It didn't do Nyree a lot of good being murdered!' I objected.

‘I mean, accused falsely. If Matt did it – and I don't need to remind you I find the whole idea inconceivable – have his hide and welcome. But I don't think his marriage would survive the implication that he'd had such a relationship with either woman that he might wish to kill her,' said Hugh. He too sounded authoritative. I could see him in some boardroom making tough decisions – if, that is, I'd ever seen a boardroom. But I was more interested in what he was saying about Matt. He'd never mentioned his wife as far as I could remember, not even the conventional quasi-humorous moans married people often seem to make about their partners. Some not even quasi, come to think of it.

‘We shan't be phoning Mrs Purvis to tell her about our conversations. I assume you won't be either?'

Hugh shook his head.

‘Off the record,' said Chris, ‘is the marriage on the rocks?' He judged his tone nicely – interest, compassion, apology. And authority again.

I thought of the tensions between Matt and Kate. The expression on Kate's face when she'd watched Nyree in action. Other moments when they had appeared very close without needing to put anything into words. I knew she was attracted to him; I hadn't needed Matt's telling me about their glass of whiskey and the subsequent humiliation of finding himself put to bed by the woman he'd planned to take to bed to persuade me of that.

Hugh shook his head. ‘They bark at each other. Bark at the kids. So do other people, but … She's in the same line of country as me,' he added.

‘Which is?'

‘Imports, exports. We're working on developing links with the Far East, among other areas. Huge market potential there. That's how I met Matt – at one of these sponsored do's one has to go to. I knew her slightly, thought of head-hunting her at one point. Brilliant negotiator. Hard as the devil's head.'

‘And Matt?'

‘Sort of towed around in her wake until he found I wrote poetry. And then we became friends. I made sure he got tickets for any sporting functions at grounds where we had hospitality boxes. Likes his football and his cricket, Matt.'

‘D'you offer free tickets to
all
your friends?' I asked hopefully.

He cuffed me, very gently.

It was obvious that Chris wanted to terminate our meeting. He also wanted me to make a statement about my morning's adventures. I was beginning to find tedious the whole business of regaling people with things I'd rather forget. But I could quite see that such matters ought to be recorded.

‘Tell me,' I said lightly to Chris as he held open the door for me, ‘when are you going to come up with some rabbit out of the statement hat? Find some flaw in someone's account, like they do on TV, and publicly pounce!'

‘We do go through the statements,' he said. ‘Exhaustively. Exhaustingly.'

‘Nothing yet?' asked Hugh, who would also have to tell his story.

Chris shook his head. And yawned.

I completed my statement very quickly. I'd just signed it when Chris popped his head round the door to say goodbye.

‘Any news of that Mercedes my Japanese friends were using?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Surely – I'd have thought communications in the police would be very speedy?'

‘Come along here a minute,' he said, and ushered me through the now familiar smart corridors.

‘Here' proved to be the control room. One woman, a computer and a headset. There were messages scribbled all over a white-board, and a constant surge in and out of uniformed officers in a hurry.

‘And it's exceptionally quiet now,' said Chris.

‘Point taken. No matter how quick your response, it can't be instant. Consider yourself forgiven.'

As we retraced our steps, he said quietly: ‘I'd give a lot to find out what's happened to our other oriental friends.'

I nodded. ‘So would I. Chris, what information could be worth so much money? Drugs?'

‘Could be. But I'd expect a Chinese, not a Japanese connection. Have you heard from your friend Kenji?'

I shook my head. ‘No time, really. I slept like the dead last night, and got rather overtaken by events this morning. By the way, a strip of my asthma tablets seem to have disappeared now. I hope you don't mind – I asked Ian to phone Agnes to see if she'd got them.' I wouldn't tell him about the jogging yet. With a little luck he'd assume that my conversation with Ian Dale had been my first of the morning. ‘I suppose I could always phone him from here. But don't tell me your colleagues in Japan aren't beavering away.'

‘This CNN reporter of his might have picked something up that hasn't reached them yet. It's worth a try. Come up to my office: I'll get the call put through for you.'

His room was as disgustingly tidy as when I'd first seen it last spring. True, there were as many files on my desk at William Murdock, but they were relegated to a side table. And the stacks didn't look as if they were about to cascade to the floor. He now had a small TV and a video player by his desk, and a ghettoblaster on a filing cabinet.

While he spoke to the switchboard I stared at Harborne through his windows. When the number stated to ring, he passed the phone to me and left the room. It was a terrible anticlimax to have to call him back in again. I wanted to tell him how I appreciated his tact: perhaps smiling would do. I passed him the handset: he'd just be in time to hear the last of Kenji's voice asking me to leave a message on his answering machine and the tone that told me to start. I left a message, though my accent was already rusty, and rang off.

‘Jesus! That sounded impressive.' He perched on the edge of his desk.

‘I just asked him to phone me. And told him to pat his rabbit.'

‘Is that some ancient curse?'

‘Just his elderly angora. Cuddlier than a rat, but much worse at shedding hair. And it gave me asthma when it moulted.'

Hugh had plainly been waiting some time when Chris returned me to reception, but he seemed to accept that life in police stations has its own immutable pace and shook hands courteously enough with Chris.

Back in his car, he turned to me, a delightful gleam in his eye. ‘A chemist's? And then – afternoon tea, perhaps?'

‘Boots is just back there,' I said, pointing.

Harborne may be part of a big city but it prides itself on having a village atmosphere. Amid the estate agents and building societies there are still some privately owned shops where the staff make it a point of honour to greet you by name. This is delightful when you are buying meat and vegetables but for various reasons I didn't want my local pharmacist, who always provides exactly the right remedy for teacher's throat or end-of-termitis, to help me select condoms. Hence Boots, nicely anonymous and in the same block as the restaurant we'd eaten at earlier in the week. Parking was a problem – Friday afternoon, of course – but at last Hugh insinuated the big car into a space. He looked at me inquiringly.

If I sat and waited in the car, I suspected I might feel too passive. So I decided to accompany him. But I didn't know if our relationship was up to giggling over the wild names on the packets. It seemed it might be: I'd been lurking discreetly by the vitamin pills when he turned to me, two rival packets in hand.

‘At least I shan't be needing this sort,' he said, pointing to the name – Arouser.

I was just about to suggest that I'd always thought there should be a brand called Toughasoldboots, when I realised that the girl smiling from the far side of the counter was this year's star GCSE student. ‘Hi, Marietta,' I said exuberantly. ‘I can't seem to find the earplugs.'

 

We had just parked in front of my house when his car phone rang. I started to get out, but he gestured me back, and sat idly stroking my ear with his free hand.

‘Shazia,' he mouthed at me. His voice became steadily less gentle. ‘For God's sake! That's totally unreasonable … OK. Can't you? I suppose not. Bloody hell, I was just helping out – it's really nothing to do with me.' Then there was a long pause while he listened. Finally he snarled, ‘OK. In about half an hour, I suppose, traffic permitting.' And hung up. If that's the term for car phones.

He released my ear, and stroked my cheek with his index finger in a curiously valedictory way.

‘Trouble at t'mill?' I prompted.

‘Bloody right. Jesus, what do these people want? Blood?'

‘I'd have thought they'd had enough of that.'

‘That, my sweet Sophie, is where you'd be wrong. They want a teacher. They paid for two teachers, remember? One of the teachers is taken ill, so Matt arranges a substitute. The substitute carelessly disappears. And with appalling insensitivity to the needs of the deprived students, Matt gets arrested. The fact that he conned me into taking Kate's place for a few hours now swims into the students' consciousness: why am I derelicting my duty and not teaching them now?'

‘But you did it out of the goodness of your heart, not out of some contractual obligation!'

‘“Goodness of your heart,”' he repeated, starting the car. ‘What a lovely pre-Thatcherite phrase!'

‘So where are we going now, Hugh?'

‘Where do you bloody well think? Back to Eyre House, blast and bugger them all! Because if they don't get taught, they're going to fucking sue. That's why.'

Hugh parked, not very neatly, in the tutors' car park and cut the ignition. Feeling the same awkwardness as before, I jerked my head at the steadily darkening horizon.

‘Getting a bit dark over Bill's mother,' I said, in my Oldbury voice.

‘Ah,' he replied, Quarry Bank. ‘Be a bit damp for another run.'

We nodded sagely, like two old codgers.

He half turned to me. ‘Any road up,' he began, half laughing, ‘you will –' he hesitated just the right amount, and abandoned his Black Country accent – ‘come up for a drink tonight? I hate to expose you to … But those student rooms aren't very …'

I smiled and put my hand on his, palm to palm. ‘What time will you throw out the last of your clients?'

‘Oh, half ten. They can't expect me to go on much later than that, surely? Or shall I put you down as the last one? For ten thirty?'

‘Hugh, everyone knows I've not written a word!'

‘But you'll come up? Later?'

‘About eleven. Perhaps later than that. They're bound to overrun their slots.'

‘Even with me teaching.'

‘Especially with you teaching,' I said, letting my eyes hold his and laughing.

Our hands gripped slightly before we released them. Even that made the muscles in my stomach tighten in anticipation. I was sprucing myself up for supper when someone tapped on my door.

‘Chris! You're the last person I expected to see. I thought you were stuck in sunny Harborne.'

He came in, shutting the door quietly behind him, and smiled bleakly. ‘I should be. And I shouldn't be here asking you to do this.'

‘But you are here. And what are you asking me to do?'

He sat heavily on the bed and opened a file he'd been carrying. When I sat down beside him, he passed me a photocopy of a letter.

‘The original,' he said, ‘was printed by an ink-jet printer. Probably Canon. We can't find a similar one on the premises. In Eyre House,' he corrected himself. ‘Any ideas?'

‘About the typeface or the contents?'

‘Either or both. Try the contents first.'

I didn't want to read the letter at all. I certainly didn't want to read it with Chris looking on, all that weight of unexpressed emotion on his shoulders.

My dearest love,

After what has passed between us surely you can deny our love no more. It is time to speak out and acknowledge our passion to the world. I've got enough money for the both of us, I will happily support you while you strive for the success you deserve. I cannot bear the thought of you touching that woman, she is so beautiful, and all the things I am not. Please, please, stop, or I shall have to find a way of stopping you and do not speak to me of your wife! Every word you utter in her defence is a crime against love. I want to tell you to tell me how beautiful I am, my body rises to yours when you touch me. When we fuck, your beautiful cock raises me to the heights of passion and I gasp for more, I want to fuck and fuck …

I stopped reading. Chris was watching me when I looked up.

‘Well?' he said.

‘What do you want me to say?'