The Bursar's Wife (17 page)

“Quintin’s driver is called Mark, I bet even money that this is him.”

“You better get on it then.”

I looked at her. “How’s Jason?”

“He’ll be out today but stuck at home for a few weeks. It’s going to be difficult to sound sexy on the phone if I know he can hear me.” I sat at my desk and wondered if I should tell her that Jason had already heard her. Not really my place, I decided. “Well if you wanted to use the office…”

She smiled. “Thanks, sweetheart, but I’ve got a dedicated number set up at home and it would be too complicated to get it transferred. Although, imagine how it would go down with the rest of the building.”

“They would hold a meeting.” I went through my post. There being nothing of interest I put it down.

“I wouldn’t have used Jason on the case if I’d suspected it was dangerous. You know that, right?”

“Yes, George,” she sighed, “I know that. Let’s just nail the bastard that did it.”

“Did you have any luck with that PO box I gave you last night?” She rooted round on her desk.

“Yes. I’ve got an address from the Post Office but no name or anything. It’s just a unit number in the Science Park.”

“The Science Park? OK, maybe I’ll pop there on the way to…” I checked the sheet she’d just given me, “…Haverhill.”

I recounted my conversation with the woman who’d been in Quintin’s apartment.

“Was she a pro?” Sandra asked, when I told her what she’d said about Quintin getting his take. I recalled the prostitutes I’d come across in the course of my work.

“Could be. She had that hardness about her, you know, but I couldn’t really say.”

“I could tell you, if I met her.”

“You think he’s a pimp?”

She shrugged and said, “She was there all night though, it doesn’t really add up.”

“Maybe he uses the flat as a brothel. Maybe he likes to watch.” She cackled at that and the phone went. It was Addenbrooke’s. Jason would be ready to go home in an hour. I suggested we go to the Science Park together and then I would drop her off at Addenbrooke’s on my way to Haverhill.

* * *

To pass the time driving across town I told her about Sylvia’s visit that morning.

“Well, well, who’d have thought little miss Booker had it in her. Do you think they called it the Cambridge Blue Club when they only watched the odd porn film?”

“Not really. Maybe it was the main purpose of the club, maybe the sole purpose.”

“Exactly. But why put it on the website? It’s not the kind of thing those sort of people want to advertise, is it?”

“I wondered that. She claimed she didn’t offer the information.”

With Sandra’s help I found the right road. I could sense her studying me as we pulled into a car park outside a utilitarian unit.

“You get a kick out of it, don’t you? Admit it,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the gorgeous Sylvia watching porn films giving you a thrill.”

I gave her a smile that I hoped conveyed my contempt as I got out of the car.

* * *

I had only been to the Science Park once before, when I was hired by a management consultancy firm who suspected one of their partners of fiddling his expenses. It turned out he was, using the money to finance a mistress on the side. The guy kept his job and I was made to sign a confidentiality agreement despite declaring my investigator’s code of conduct. I studied the buildings before me, one of three on this road, all one storey, a seven-foot layer of brick, then a layer of steel-reinforced window, then corrugated iron topped with a flat roof. More industrial units than offices, each a thousand square metres at most. This was the less glamorous area of the Science Park, not the glass and steel edifice of a management consultancy. No clues as to what went on inside from where I was standing so I looked for the entrance of the right unit. What I was looking for was a sign. And there it was on the first set of frosted glass double doors. One of them had my spiral staircase on it; the other had the words ‘Legacy Labs’. I couldn’t really reconcile the two things, nor was there any clue as to what Legacy Labs did. I wrote the name down in my notebook.

I asked myself how best to approach things. I could go in and bluff it, or I could go look Legacy Labs up back in the comfort of the office, and at least know what I was dealing with. I tried the door but it was closed, probably for lunch. That deciding things, I rejoined Sandra.

I dropped her off at the hospital, taking some cash out of my wallet.

“This is for a taxi home. I’ll charge it to the gorgeous Sylvia.”

She took the cash, saying, “Your secret is safe with me, sweetheart.”

It was scary how well she could read me, it really was.

* * *

I continued out of Cambridge to Haverhill, travelling through the Gogs and past the car park where Trisha Greene had been found topless and dead. I hadn’t given her or her husband Al Greene much thought since becoming involved in Sylvia and her world. A world apart, the Bookers and the Greenes. Once I’d left Cambridgeshire for Suffolk I stopped to fill up with petrol and bought an
Argus
and a sandwich.

Parked in a lay-by I looked for an update on the Greene case but found nothing. There was a small item on Elliot Booker, whose funeral was to take place the next afternoon. It said that the college had decided that it would go ahead with the alumni lunch on Sunday because of the number of people who had already made travel arrangements to attend from abroad. Quintin Boyd, as keynote speaker, was quoted as saying he was heartbroken at the news of Elliot’s death as he was a ‘personal friend’, and that he thought the lunch would be a good way to celebrate Elliot’s contribution to Morley College. I read all this as I ate my petrol-station sandwich with soggy prawn filling.

* * *

I found Mark Stillgoe’s address easily enough and cruised past the 1980s semi. I saw no Subaru in the driveway or on the street so I parked pointing the way I’d come. Retrieving my clipboard and fake charity badge from the back seat I went to the front door. It was a PVC door like the windows, which had mock bars in the panes to make them look like they were panelled. I rang the doorbell and Big Ben chimed inside. Someone shuffled up to the door and it opened to reveal a woman in her late fifties. Despite it being the middle of the afternoon she wore a green dressing gown with matching slippers. The whole outfit crackled with static. I was struck by the smell of cigarette smoke, fresh upon stale. A new source of smoke hung from her lip like a protruding tooth on the proverbial witch. She squinted at me through the blue haze, a slack look on a prematurely aged face.

“What is it?” she said, without removing the cigarette. I flashed my fake charity ID at her.

“I’m just doing a survey on behalf of Save Our Trees. Is Mark Stillgoe in?”

“Nah, Mark’s at work.”

“OK, what time is he likely to be back?”

“It don’t matter, since he don’t care about saving trees.”

“Well maybe you can help me. Can you tell me his occupation?”

“Who is it?” said a male voice from within the house. An Essex voice, a raspy Essex voice. A voice I’d heard on the phone only the previous afternoon, a voice identified by Jason. The woman turned her head to address it.

“It’s just someone collecting for charity,” she shouted.

“Well fucking get rid of them, you’re letting in the cold.” She turned back to me and started to close the door, without as much as a goodbye. Some people are so rude. I stuck my foot in the opening. She looked confused.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she asked.

“Coming in,” I said. “Saving trees is important.” I pushed past her into the narrow hall.

“What the fuck’s going on?” That voice, coming from the end of the hall, from what looked like the kitchen. I strode towards the open door where a man appeared, a thin runt of a man. Braces held his trousers up and he too had a lit cigarette dangling from his narrow lips. It was clearly the way to smoke in Haverhill. At least he removed his to speak.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I want to talk to you about where you were yesterday evening.” His eyes narrowed and his right hand went to his trouser pocket. I noticed a big ring on his middle finger, a gold coin mounted in a claw.

“Who the fuck are you again?” he said. He took his hand from his pocket but I couldn’t see anything in it.

“You remember breaking someone’s fingers yesterday? A young lad, long hair?” His wrist moved and a narrow blade shot from his fist. Then his eyes flicked behind me and I remembered my back was to the woman. I turned just in time to see her with a baseball bat over her head that was about to start its downward swing. I put my palm, fingers spread, into her face, pushing her out of the way. I didn’t see the fag in her mouth and her face appeared to emit a shower of sparks, my palm stinging on the lit end. She let out a muffled yelp of surprise. I didn’t turn to see what the thin man would do with his blade but I stepped past the woman and headed for the open door. Something caught the back of my jacket but I didn’t stop. It was only when I was on the pavement that I looked behind me and saw the thin man standing in the doorway, his eyes glinting like the blade he was wielding. We stared at each other for a few seconds then he closed the door carefully as if he didn’t want to disturb the neighbours. I could feel a wetness at my back but I got in the car and drove straight to Kamal’s without daring to check it.

KAMAL
’
S CURRENT FLATMATE, AN IRAQI JUNIOR DOCTOR AT
Addenbrooke’s, stitched up my shoulder with four of his best while I sat, stripped to the waist, the wrong way round on a chair, resting my forearms on the back. We were in Kamal’s room in a small flat over a Chinese supermarket on Mill Road. One of his walls was decorated with floor to ceiling paperbacks, one had a bed against it, the third had hooks in the wall with coat hangers on them and served as storage for his meagre wardrobe. The fourth had a desk and chair under the window and it was here that I sat looking at the ancient laptop that Kamal wrote on and gritting my teeth with every new puncture of flesh – there was no anaesthetic. Kamal supplemented his income by subletting a room in his flat to a succession of Arab medical students.

The thin man had sliced through my raincoat, jacket, shirt, vest and skin, leaving a three-inch-long gash in the lower right shoulder. Kamal was wittering on instead of refilling my glass with Jack Daniels, and he was beginning to get on my nerves. For the son of Palestinian exiles I always expected him to take a dim view of authority, or at least to be wary of it, but he had spent the last couple of hours bemoaning the fact that I hadn’t gone to the police. I’d explained that I’d come to him rather than going to Addenbrooke’s precisely because I wanted to avoid the police. Doctors were required to report knife crime and I didn’t want to risk a protracted explanation to the police of what I was doing in the Haverhill house. The woman had only to say I had forced my way in and punched her in the face. And the thin man had only to say that he was defending her from my vicious attack and for there never to have been a baseball bat. The tables would be turned on me in no time. Despite Kamal’s nagging he’d done the right thing and called in his flatmate who told me he perfected his sewing technique by practising at the kitchen table on pork skin.

“I don’t eat it myself,” he said, tugging at some thread and causing me to wince.

“Religious, eh?”

“No, I just don’t like the taste.”

He tied off the last stitch and dressed the closed wound. He told me I should get it changed tomorrow and the stitches would need to come out in a week. I thanked him and he said it was nothing. He went off with his medic’s bag; he had a night shift to get through.

“Why don’t you pour me some more of your whisky?” I said to Kamal.

“Because you’ve had enough and I have to make it last. What you need is something to eat.”

“You can’t cook and I’m not going out. How about a takeaway?” We settled on Chinese and I gave him enough of Sylvia’s money to buy food and a bottle of Jack Daniels as well as a bottle of whisky for his flatmate.

“He does drink, doesn’t he?” I asked.

“Like Captain Haddock,” Kamal said.

* * *

While he was out I rang Sandra to check on Jason. She said he was fine if a little bored. I told her that she should get me out of doing the DWP case as things had escalated. She reluctantly agreed, moaning about losing what could be regular income. Then I told her about my trip to Haverhill and subsequent adventures.

“Maybe you should go to the police, George. This bastard sounds a little dangerous.”

“Going to the police means involving Stubbing and Brampton, as they seem to have taken an interest in me, and I’m convinced our knife-carrying finger-breaking friend belongs to Quintin, who is a university friend of Brampton’s.”

“It doesn’t mean they are in cahoots.”

“I know, but they studied together and watched porn together so I’m guessing she’d not be happy with me linking him with crims just days before he gives the keynote at the alumni lunch.”

“Speaking of alumni and porn, I looked up that website again to see if I could find any other ex-members of the Cambridge Blue Club. I thought I might find someone local we could talk to, get a clearer picture of what they got up to.”

“Good idea. How did you get on?”

“Well, the thing is, the site was down for maintenance until about an hour ago and then when I managed to get back on it again all references to the club had gone. It had just disappeared from everyone’s entry.” I looked at Kamal’s books and felt the throbbing in my shoulder. “George, you still there?”

“Yes. I’m guessing it was probably Sylvia got onto whoever runs the site to take it off. Wants to protect her image I guess.”

“And Elliot’s,” Sandra said. I heard Kamal come in and turned to look at him, yelping as I sent a tearing pain through my wound. “You all right, love?” Sandra said in my ear.

“Yes, just moved the wrong way. Say hi to Jason; I’ll pop round to see him tomorrow.”

“He’ll like that. You need anything, you let me know. I can nurse two blokes as easily as one.”