The Bursar's Wife (2 page)

“It’s my daughter, Lucy.” She peeled off skin-tight gloves. Her nails must have been seen to while her hair was being done and another diamond on her finger kept a thick gold wedding band company. She put the gloves in a small handbag on her lap and I waited. From afar she’d looked early thirties but this close I put her just the wrong side of forty. Her right hand fussed with the rings on the other, with what I took to be nerves, unless of course she needed a drink, but then she’d have had one before coming here and wouldn’t have been the first.

“I’ve heard it all before, you know, you can’t shock me,” I told her in my most reassuring voice. She took a breath.

“I’m worried about her. I think that she may be running with the wrong crowd.” Her voice was low and smooth, like Grace Kelly in
Rear Window
.

“And what makes you think that?” I was curious as to what colour you would call her eyes. Was turquoise an eye colour?

“Her behaviour of course. She’s started at Emma this year.”

“Emma?”

“Sorry, Emmanuel College.”

I nodded. I knew where she meant, I just didn’t like her taking the knowledge for granted. Some people assumed the whole town revolved around the university.

“I don’t mean to question your concern, Mrs Booker, but isn’t this normal behaviour for a teenager?” She gave me a look telling me she wasn’t here for my insights into human behaviour.

“It’s more than that, there’s something else going on. She’s distracted when she’s at home, she’s deliberately picking fights.” From what little I knew of kids this sounded perfectly healthy to me – I must have looked sceptical.

“Do you have children, Mr Kocharyan?”

I shook my head.

“Lucy is a fragile girl, always has been. She’s easily influenced, manipulated even.” An interesting choice of word,
manipulated
.

“Do you think she’s taking drugs?”

She looked genuinely shocked.

“No! Absolutely not, Lucy would never take drugs.” Right. And she’s probably never had sex either.

“Is Lucy’s father of the same mind, Mrs Booker?”

She shifted her gaze fleetingly over my shoulder and brought it back. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, does he know you’re here?”

“Does that matter?”

“It would make things easier if I took the case, that’s all.”

“I can’t bother my husband with this. I’d rather that he knew nothing of it.”

“Why’s that then?”

She was annoyed at my question, annoyed that I was asking questions at all.

“He has enough on his plate. He has a position of responsibility at the university.”

Shit, not a university bod. I tried to stay clear of university business; a more inscrutable lot you couldn’t find. Like most educated people I’d had dealings with, words came from their mouths that did not match what they were thinking.

“I assume he isn’t a porter there?”

Her fine cheeks reddened and I almost felt sorry for her.

“No. No, he isn’t.” She studied her handbag. It was like pulling teeth.

“So what does he do?” Again with the blushing.

“He’s the Bursar at, erm, Morley.” My jaw tensed and I felt myself redden. It was bad enough he was a university big cheese, but to be at Morley of all places. I didn’t want this job; I wanted to be down the road watching a 1970s Italian crime film. They were showing one every afternoon this week at the Arts Cinema. I wrote MORLEY in capital letters on my pad.

“Have you tried talking to Lucy? Sometimes people just want to be asked whether anything is wrong.”

“Yes, yes of course I have, but she clams up. I know there is something going on, something she’s keeping from me. A mother knows.” Right. If mothers knew, I wouldn’t have them in here asking me to find out for them. My stomach grumbled for the sandwich waiting for me round the corner on Hills Road.

“Will you help me, Mr Kocharyan?”

“Perhaps you could call me George. Look, I’m not sure how I can…” Her impossible eyes shimmered and tears leaked onto her cheeks. Little sparkly jewels rolling out of bigger ones. I pushed the tissues towards her. I had a silly notion that I should dab the tears away myself, but I kept it a notion.

“I’m sorry, I’m just so worried.” She blew her nose and blotted her cheeks. She was either under a lot of strain or a very good actor.

“I’m still not sure what it is you want me to do,” I said. She took a silver compact from the bag on her lap. She opened it and checked her face, speaking as she wiped mascara tracks from her cheeks.

“Just look for unusual acquaintances. Anyone a fresher shouldn’t be consorting with.”

I wasn’t sure what sort of person that was, never having been a fresher myself, but imagined it included the sort of person your parents warned you about in the first place. I felt doubtful regarding the whole thing, it was too vague. She snapped her compact shut and looked at me with renewed confidence.

“I can pay in cash,” she said, fixing me with those turquoise eyes. They were like a weapon she could use at will. I was annoyed at this appeal to the mercenary in me but then I thought of paying Sandra this month – Mr Greene’s payment might not come through for weeks. I also thought of the Inland Revenue and the looming MOT on my ten-year-old Volkswagen Golf. On the plus side, the job would make a change from watching disability claimants to see if they were faking injury, which I hated. Stacked against it though was the fact it involved the university, which I also hated, and Morley College of all places. It was a question of which I hated more.

“It could get quite expensive,” I said, “depending on how long you want me to look.” She smiled for the first time, a triumphant lengthening of the lips which faded quickly.

“Money is not an issue, Mr… erm, George. I can even give you a retainer.” She opened the little handbag and retrieved a crisp white envelope, holding it by its edges as if tainted. It looked satisfyingly thick. “Would a thousand pounds be enough?” It was my turn to smile and I took the envelope, relishing its heaviness. I considered opening it, but counting money in front of her would have appeared cheap. Instead I put it down, opened a drawer and pulled out a standard contract with my terms and conditions on it. She shook her head and her hair swayed.

“Must there be paperwork?” she asked. “I’m prepared to trust you.”

“I’m flattered, but my assistant likes paperwork, it keeps her in a job.” She filled out her details on the form and I gave her a receipt for the money.

“I hope we can resolve this quickly, George.” She pushed the form across the table. She’d put her address as the Bursar’s Residence, Morley College.

“Shall we shake on it?” I said. She raised carefully shaped eyebrows but let me briefly hold her limp kipper of a hand. “I’ll need details of your daughter’s lectures, her regular movements, that sort of thing,” I said.

“It’s all in the envelope. There’s her weekly schedule, the names of her tutors and a photograph.” That explained the thickness of the envelope.

“I’m impressed. If only all my clients were so efficient.”

She favoured me with her first real smile and stood up, putting on her silk scarf and glasses. I could see my reflection in each lens.

“Is there some way I can reach you? Discreetly of course.”

She hesitated before removing a card from her bag. In an elaborate cursive font it read ‘Sylvia Booker’ and a mobile number, no occupation, no address. I passed her one of mine. I suggested we meet in a week unless I had something before. She nodded guardedly, as if reluctant to make any commitment, then looked at a tiny gold watch on her wrist.

I followed her perfume to the door.

“By the way, why did you choose Cambridge Confidential, Mrs Booker?” She stopped and looked back at me through the dark glass.

“I chose you, George, because I recognised the name on the website of your private eye association.”

I could have asked her what she meant but she’d stepped into the hall. Besides, I knew what it meant. It meant that she’d known my father at Morley.

I COUNTED OUT TWENTY-POUND NOTES FROM SYLVIA
Booker’s envelope as I ate my sandwich al-desko. I reached a thousand when the phone rang. It was Jason, Sandra’s eldest.

“Boss, why aren’t you having lunch with the fit Nina?”

“First, you can’t call her fit, I’m told it’s sexist—”

“But she is fit, boss, she’s a nutritionist and she obviously works out.” I rolled my eyes pointlessly.

“Second, I’m not a student like you, I can’t just ask women out.”

“Really? So how does it work when you’re an old geezer? Do you have to fill out a form and apply? Like planning permission but for dating.” He chuckled at his own joke and I thought of the dating agency website Sandra had e-mailed me the link to; I couldn’t even complete my profile on there. It just seemed a bit desperate, which of course is what I was becoming.

“Why am I discussing this with you, for fuck’s sake?”

He laughed down the line. “Relax, boss. She’s just a woman, not an alien. She might even be into older men.”

Jason was nineteen and doing a part-time music technology course at Anglia Ruskin University. His mother kept two jobs, one of which was with me and the other Jason knew nothing about, one which I had only learnt about a few months ago. I wished that I could offer Sandra more work but I struggled to pay her for the stuff she did and even that I could do myself if I could be bothered. But I’d known them a long time – ever since I’d established a few years ago that Jason’s father had skipped the family and country to concentrate on furthering his drug-dealing career.

“What can I do for you, Jason, besides teach you some manners?” I unfolded the sheets of paper that were in the envelope with the money. A head-and-shoulders photograph was paper-clipped to the front: Lucy Booker. Lucy had not inherited her mother’s looks. She had a tense face that reflected little joy. She looked familiar, of a type, mousy with a nose too big for her face. I had a nose myself, so I knew what I was talking about. I was curious to see what her father looked like.

“I’m just checking in, boss. See if you had any jobs going.” I glanced at the photo and then at the money. I could do worse than throw some of it his way.

“Something has come in which might need a younger face than I can manage.” I looked at my reflection in the window. “My windows also need cleaning.”

“OK, I can come by in the morning, but I’m not interested in cleaning windows.”

“Choosy bugger, I’ll need to run it by your mum first.”

“For fuck’s sake, boss, I’m over eighteen.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the arrangement she and I have.” He muttered down the phone. I sympathised, but Sandra did not compromise when it came to her kids. She was determined they would stay on the straight and narrow, and that Jason go to college and not straight into a job to support her and his young brother. Nothing was to get in the way of him finishing his course, not even any extra money that I knew they could use.

Sandra and Jason had also been there for me when Olivia had gone over. Others had been sympathetic but also either embarrassed at the circumstances or unaware of the personal blow to the old machismo – I believed that I must have failed somewhere on the manliness front.

“It was nothing you done, boss,” Jason had told me, a couple of weeks after Olivia had flown with the other woman – from her book group – to Greece to set up an artists’ retreat in an old farmhouse. I was still drowning my self-pity in beer at the time and Sandra would send Jason round to stop me from drinking too much. “She was probably into women all along but didn’t realise it,” he’d said.

“Right, so I just tipped her over the edge, is that it?” He’d had to put me to bed that night, bless him, just as Olivia had done once or twice when she had started to wind down the heterosexual phase of her life. I don’t suppose getting pissed had helped put the case for men, but I hadn’t realised I was making a case at the time; just that she was drifting away.

My train of thought was happily derailed by the thousand pounds in front of me. I returned nine hundred of it to the envelope and placed it in the small office safe. With my feet on the desk I read the neatly printed sheets Sylvia Booker had given me on her daughter. It was all there, the life of one Lucy Booker – daughter of Morley College Bursar – laid out in single-spaced, small-fonted detail, with her photo paper-clipped to the front, including a breakdown of her weekly lecture schedule – she was doing English Literature – and the societies she belonged to. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble putting it together, almost more trouble than I go to myself when tailing someone and writing a report.

There was nothing contentious, political, or even mildly exciting about what Lucy did, at least on paper. In fact her interests outside the course looked quite boring, and I wondered if they had been picked by her mother: Cambridge University Debating Society, Cambridge University Bridge Club, Cambridge Christians, hill walking, rowing team. Jesus, I was surprised she had time to get up to anything that didn’t meet with her mother’s approval. I also noted that she still lived with her parents on Morley College grounds – I hoped I wouldn’t have to go there.

I rang Sandra at home and prayed she wasn’t still asleep. She picked up on the third ring, sounding tired. She worked an adult chat line three nights a week and slept late the following mornings.

“I didn’t wake you?”

“No, you’re OK, I’m just on my way out to pick up Ashley.” Ashley was six years old and had a different father to Jason. Another bloke who didn’t hang around long. “Did you fill in your details on the dating site I sent you, George?” I decided it was easiest to lie.

“Yes I have. No matches yet though.”

She snorted. “You’re lying to me, George, I had a look last night for new entries. You haven’t filled anything in. One day I’m going to answer my premium rate line and you’ll be on the other end asking me what I’m wearing.” I felt my face warm at this image and didn’t know what to say. “Maybe you’re more of a webcam kind of guy, though. Thankfully I haven’t got the body for that sort of work. At least on the telephone I can wear my bathrobe and keep my legs hairy.” Now she was deliberately trying to embarrass me but knowing that didn’t lessen my discomfort.