House of Dust (28 page)

I saw Davie appear at the hall entrance in his guard uniform and waved to him. “Em, excuse me asking,” I said, turning back to Doctor Burton, “but if the courses are all vocational, how come you've still got a job?”

He laughed sharply. “No use for the poetry of Horace in the modern world, you mean? Quite so. That is the administrators' position too. I give a series of lectures on Latin terminology in the sciences.” He shook his head. “Pathetic. I have also been compelled to study the economics of early imperial Rome. There are many similarities between Roman trading practices and international business in the 2020s.”

“Really? I thought the Romans took what they wanted and wiped out anyone who objected.”

The old don looked at me approvingly. “Exactly.” He banged his fist on the table. “Of course, I struggle to accomplish my research because so many of Oxford's finest libraries have been closed.”

“So I heard. Everything's supposed to be accessible with this.” I pointed to the nostrum that I'd hung round my neck.

“Rubbish!” Burton's voice was shrill. “All you can get from the database and the webnet are the basic course materials. In their wisdom the administrators have sold off thousands of the most valuable manuscripts and incunabula to the few foreign universities that still care about original texts.”

Well, well. Maybe Raphael wasn't quite as incorruptible as her manner suggested. “What's the webnet?” I asked, remembering that I'd heard the term in Edinburgh.

Davie showed up on the other side of the table, his tray piled high. The students had refrained from staring at his unusual clothing, but Elias Burton's eyes were wide open. I introduced them then gestured to the doctor to go on.

“Where were we? Ah yes, the webnet. It's the university's version of the Internet – remember that virtual monstrosity?”

I nodded. In the years before independence in Edinburgh the role of the global network in promoting civil disorder and drugs trafficking had become a major issue. Then the violence erupted and personal computers disappeared from the “perfect” city, leaving the Internet a virtual void.

“Obviously a restrictive utopia like this one can't allow its population access to the real Net,” Burton said ironically. “So they've set up their own. Highly controlled, highly censored – there's no pornography, for example – and highly tedious. I never bother with it myself.” He was gazing at Davie. “What's that uniform?” he asked. He turned to me. “What exactly are you people doing here?”

I stood up and beckoned Davie to follow suit. He glared at me and started stuffing toast into his pockets. “I don't think you want to know that,” I said, smiling at the don. “Thanks for the background information.”

“Think nothing of it,” Burton replied. “I've enjoyed letting off steam. Perhaps we'll meet again, Quintilian Dalrymple.”

I moved away, then stopped. “I don't suppose you attended the Innes Lecture back in 2000? It was at Christ Church.”

Elias Burton gave what looked to me like an involuntary start then, after a long pause, shook his head. “No, I don't think so,” he said. “Your father? I would have remembered, I'm sure. I must have been . . . must have been on sabbatical.” He turned to the front again. “Farewell.”

“Goodbye, doctor,” I said, steering clear of the archaic term that seemed to be standard in New Oxford.

As I headed for the door, I thought about his reaction to the college my old man had lectured at. That was the second time a reference to Christ Church had provoked a startled response. Maybe, even these days, it was full of upper-class loudmouths with beagles and hunting horns who drove everyone else in the city to distraction.

We met Katharine in the quadrangle.

“I wondered if I'd find you in the dining hall,” she said, watching as Davie retrieved a piece of toast from his pocket.

“I wasn't allowed to stay for long,” he complained.

“Sorry, big man,” I said. “I reckoned I'd dallied with that old academic long enough.”

Katharine was playing with her gleaming new nostrum. “Did you not find the breakfast facility in your rooms?” she said.

That explained why the hall hadn't been very busy.

“No.” Davie sounded even more aggrieved.

“If you'd bothered to familiarise yourself with your nostrum, you'd have found all sorts of useful things.” She moved her fingers dextrously over the miniature keys. “I don't fancy talking into machines so I've been using the touch facility.” She looked up. “For instance, you can activate the hot water in your shower.”

I let out a groan. “That would have been good.” Apparently New Oxford wasn't as Spartan as I'd thought.

“As well as get a delivery of coffee and rolls from the flap next to your desk that you probably didn't even notice.” Katharine eyed Davie. “Though no doubt you'd still have made a visit to the hall, guardsman.”

Davie concentrated on swallowing.

“All right, children,” I said, looking at the sundial on the wall across the quad. The shadow it cast was accurate even though the sun hadn't got above the college walls yet. “Time for a plan.”

“Aye,” Davie said, brushing crumbs from his uniform. “Where are we going? The murder scene?”

I shook my head. “Maybe later. After all, we've already seen it in Quadrihypervision. The first priority is the bullet that took out Lewis Hamilton.”

Katharine looked up. “Aren't we trying to find a connection between the murder here and what happened to Lewis Hamilton? The guy in Dead Man's Walk wasn't shot.”

“No,” I said, setting off round the lawn towards the gate. “But he was a cleaner in the Department of Metallurgy. I want to check out his place of work.”

“Because the bullet was made of metal?” Davie said doubtfully.

“We've got to start somewhere,” I said, glancing round.

Neither of them looked particularly enthusiastic about that line of enquiry.

Trout and Perch were standing on the kerb that ran round the Radcliffe Camera. Next to them was a medium-sized Chariot, its transparent shell shining brightly even in the early morning light.

“Two faithful bulldogs ready for a walk,” Katharine said under her breath.

“We're not taking them anywhere,” I said as I headed over. “Is this ours?” I asked.

Trout nodded once. “The activation code is 37 Morris.”

“Right,” I said. “I don't expect to see you two again today,” I added.

“You won't,” Perch said, a vertical vein in his forehead pulsing. Maybe his bowler hat was too tight.

We climbed into the Chariot, Davie taking the front seat. Katharine and I got in behind.

“You do realise that you can be a back-seat driver in this contraption,” I said, taking my old man's battered Oxford guidebook from my pocket.

“Forget it, Quint,” Katharine said. “If you drive, I'm going on foot.”

“I don't know what you've got against my driving,” I said, finding the city plan in the book.

Davie spoke the activation code and prompted a quiet hum from the Chariot's power system. He turned round. “Do you want a fully itemised list of complaints?” he asked.

“All right, all right,” I said. “I'll stick to navigating.”

“Good,” he said. “Where to?”

I held the map out to him. “Let's take a tour to acclimatise ourselves.”

Davie nodded and read out the name of the street I was pointing at. The Chariot moved away, gliding sinuously round the bicycles and pedestrians.

Looking up at the great panelled ball on the top of the Camera, I wondered if the proctor and his outfit were watching where we went. Despite Administrator Raphael's agreement to my terms, I was pretty sure that no surveillance wasn't an option in New Oxford.

“God, this is spectacular,” Katharine gasped as we moved along Broad Street.

I couldn't fault her judgement. The golden-hued stones of the old buildings were cleaner than I remembered them. There was little sign of drugs war damage to the Clarendon Building's massive four-columned Doric portico designed by Hawksmoor. A couple of the lead muses on the roof that my guidebook referred to seemed to have disappeared though.

“That's the Hebdomadal Council Block,” Katharine said, looking up from her nostrum.

I could see a grid on her screen, with red lettering around it. “Is that a street plan you've accessed?” I asked.

She nodded. “Central University Area High Definition Map is the file.” She glanced at my book. “They seem to have changed that building's name and function.”

I nodded. Raphael and her fellow administrators had certainly left their mark: the Bodleian renamed Noxad, this pile bearing the name of the city's ruling body.

“What does your map call this?” I asked, pointing at the D-shaped structure behind the railings and their oversize stone heads. When I was last in Oxford most of them had been festooned with college scarves or traffic bollards, but the contemporary student body was leaving them well alone. Were the students just well behaved by nature or did they live in fear?

“The Mendoza Memorial Theatre,” Katharine replied.

“Amazing,” I said. “They've changed its name.”

Katharine's fingers moved rapidly over the nostrum keys. “The description says that the former Sheldonian Theatre was one of Sir Christopher Wren's least successful buildings, an ineffectual and unimaginative copy of a Roman theatre.”

Trust the new regime to have the last word. I looked to the right and took in the cottages that stood in front of Trinity College's open garden space. At least that was how my guide put it. In reality there was a fifty-foot-high, windowless concrete block stretching up behind the humble buildings on the Broad.

“What the hell's that?” I asked.

Katharine's fingers played again. “Don't know,” she answered after a pause. “There's nothing about it in the Trin College description.” She looked at the concrete monstrosity again. “I'm not surprised. It's unsuccessful, ineffectual and unimaginative.”

“Aye,” Davie said. “But this heap's even worse.” He told the Chariot to stop and we gazed out at the nightmare building on our right.

“Hang on . . .” Katharine fiddled with her nostrum then shook her head. “It doesn't say anything about this place at all, doesn't even show the outline of the walls on the map.”

I didn't have to look at the guidebook to remind myself what used to stand here. Balliol College was one of the few that had stuck in my sixteen-year-old mind: first because Hector had gone on about its Scottish connections and its intellectual traditions; and second because I'd watched a group of underdressed female students playing volleyball on the lawn outside the dining hall while he was talking to some classics don. What had then been drab Victorian Gothic walls had now disappeared, replaced by a great metal-sheathed block that must have been a hundred yards long and at least twenty high. Like the concrete lump in Trinity, this construction had no windows, its smooth silver walls as out of place in the street where Cranmer and his friends were burned in the sixteenth century as a carbuncle on a child's face. The administrators had certainly had a ball with what used to be Balliol.

We took a right turn on to Magdalen Street then headed north towards the science zone. Although I could recognise the main buildings and monuments in the guide, there was more evidence of reconstruction and repair. What was the Taylorian Institute, now apparently the headquarters of the Criminology Faculty, still retained its neo-classical columns and entablatures, but the windows were shuttered in heavy steel. So too the façade of St John's College – no doubt known as the john if there were any piss-artists remaining in Oxford – was patterned with replacement blocks that were much lighter in colour than the original blackened stone. Presumably a drugs gang had used the place where Charles I and Archbishop Laud once held sway to try out every one of their weapons.

“Seen enough sights?” Davie asked as we moved out of the city centre, past lines of trees with bright pink and white blossom.

“For the time being,” I replied, nodding thoughtfully. Everything I'd seen so far was telling me that a lot of major changes had been made to Oxford. That impression wasn't reversed by the sight of the polychromatic brick walls and chimneys of Keble College, which Katharine informed me was now called Keeb – it still looked like a High Victorian public lavatory. The Hebdomadal Council had obviously attracted plenty of funding for the university; but why had Raphael's coterie spent so much of it on buildings that looked more like concrete bridge caissons than colleges?

“Where to now?” Davie asked as we drew up at a corner with a view across the university parks. According to the old man's guide, they accommodated numerous rugby pitches in the winter, as well as the pavilion used by the university cricket team in summer. Now there was a vast tented encampment beyond high barbed-wire fences. Katharine's nostrum wasn't forthcoming about what went on there either. I almost headed for the heavy metal gate to see if the free access I'd been promised applied in the parks, but the muscle-bound bulldogs inside put me off.

“Let's hit the Department of Metallurgy,” I said.

Davie repeated the direction and the Chariot turned obediently to the right. It was time to find out what the top-secret research project that had produced the bullet was all about.

The university science area started opposite Keeb, nondescript twentieth-century buildings interspersed with tall modern towers of glass and steel. There were even more sensor posts around here and numerous pairs of bulldogs were on patrol, their hands behind their backs. It struck me that New Oxford's police officers didn't carry any obvious weaponry. I wondered how they managed to handle the suburbs where, according to Connington, murders were perpetrated. Maybe their bowler hats were more sophisticated than they looked.