The Bursar's Wife (7 page)

LEAVING MY HOUSE TOO EARLY THURSDAY MORNING I WAS
hailed in a fake friendly manner by the besuited man who lived next door. He drove a new Volvo estate that he washed and waxed every Sunday (and replaced every year) while his harassed-looking wife tried to cope with a couple of shrieking toddlers. I deduced, given his regular garb, that he was some managerial type. He had once complained when one of his precious offspring had scratched her face on a large bramble that had reached through the rotting fence onto his patch, although I don’t know why he couldn’t have clipped the offending plant himself. I don’t intentionally cultivate brambles – my mother was the gardener of the family, and after her death my father just let it go wild. And when Olivia and I had moved into the house after my father went into care, I hadn’t the skills or heart to tackle it.

By my neighbour’s hearty tone I presumed that he wanted to make some new neighbourly complaint, since it was the only time he talked to me. Sure enough he was asking me about the shabby fence between our gardens and wondered when, if ever, I was going to replace it; it wasn’t keeping the ivy and brambles from his clipped and snipped garden. He was trying to make light of it but things like this bother these suburban types. He probably tossed and turned over it at night. I made a promise to get someone to look into it.

“Would you split the cost?” I asked. He made a face and got in his car, my chances at being invited for Christmas drinks blown. I drove off myself, keen to get up to Cottenham before people started leaving for work.

* * *

Two butt-numbing hours later I was back in the office. No benefits cheat had left number thirty-two to go to work, and I wanted to type up my report and get together with Sylvia Booker. The case had gone quicker than I’d liked from a financial point of view, but sometimes things were just that simple. Besides, I could possibly get follow-up work with the unanswered questions: despite confirming Sylvia’s suspicions about her daughter, which is what I was being paid to do, I’d not really established the nature of her relationship with Quintin Boyd beyond the obvious. Who was this Quintin Boyd and why did he come up to Cambridge several nights a week? On the face of it he came to seduce consenting young women; as far as I knew, hardly a crime.

I was typing up my report at Sandra’s desk when Sandra came in, bearing fresh coffee and biscotti from Antonio’s.

“We should get married,” I said, as she placed the steaming cardboard cup on my desk.

“What, so I can bring you coffee? Sod that.” She looked over my shoulder at the screen. “Whatya doing?” I told her about the breakthrough with Lucy Booker. She wanted to see the photos so I relinquished her chair and she brought them up on the screen, studying Lucy’s transformation.

“She’s obviously tarted up for something or someone,” she said.

“There’s only one thing she would get tarted up for, isn’t there?”

She stared at me as if to check that I wasn’t retarded. “Don’t be an arsehole, George. A woman can get dressed up for a variety of reasons, not just ’cause she wants sex. She may do it to feel better about herself, or to fit in, or just to be glam for the sake of it. You think women go around dressing up just for your benefit?”

I kept quiet; I knew better than to argue with her, especially when she got that furrow between the eyes. I sat at my desk and Sandra insisted on finishing my report since she used ten fingers to type as opposed to my two. It left me free to ring Sylvia Booker to arrange a time to meet and update her. This time she sounded crisp and professional.

“Let’s meet up this lunchtime, George. Do you know Stanmore Barns in Shelford?”

* * *

I bumped into Nina on the way out of the office. She was looking harassed and attractively flushed. The cloth of her white coat sounded satisfyingly crisp and freshly starched.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said, before I had time to think about whether it was a good idea. “We should do something, maybe catch a film. What do you think?” She shrugged. I saw some wriggle room in the shrug and tried a different tack.

“I know a place that knows how to undercook a steak,” I pursued. She glanced over my shoulder and crossed her arms.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she said.

Shit. I was fucking it up and losing confidence like water from a colander. I took heart from the fact that she was still standing there, albeit with crossed arms.

“Then pizza. We can do pizza; I know a place where they make proper pizza.” She considered me as if deciding. “You can choose your own toppings,” I said, and she smiled. “Would tomorrow night be OK?” I asked. She squinted to consult a mental diary.

“Tomorrow is good.”

STANMORE BARNS IS A COLLECTION OF UPMARKET SHOPS: AN
organic butcher, an overpriced grocer, a couple of nostalgia stores that sells knick-knacks such as 1950s teapots, wooden clothes horses, tin bread bins and laundry mangles. I could make a fortune as I had inherited many of these things when I took over my parents’ house – but I still use them. The car park had a good crop of shiny top-of-the-range SUVs with top-of-the-range baby seats in the back. It was a favoured venue for diet-thin leather-trousered mums who left their children with the au pair while they went out for a bite. The au pair would eat a sandwich at home and maybe rifle through her employer’s bedroom drawers and then have a cry because she was homesick. I’d had occasion to come into contact with some of these nannies (parents wanting them checked out to protect their precious ones), and they were not a happy bunch.

There is a café at Stanmore Barns that sells you homemade soup and a hunk of bread the price of which would buy you a passable steak and chips in a pub, as well as a pint to wash it down with. I didn’t have the place pegged as Sylvia Booker territory (too artificial, too ladies-who-lunch) but perhaps that was why she’d chosen it, so she wouldn’t bump into her own kind. The cars towered over my rusting, diminutive Golf and also Sylvia’s red Mini, which was parked three cars down from my own. I walked towards the café checking my suit for stains and wondering whether I should do up my tie. The driver window on the Mini slid down with electric ease – some detective I was; I hadn’t seen Sylvia sitting inside.

“George, would you mind terribly?” She leaned over and opened the passenger door. I got in and closed it; the seat was too far forward and I had to squeeze in. It was not how I liked to brief my clients, but it wasn’t the first time I’d done it in a car park.

Sylvia had tailored trousers on, flared over pointy boots, and a white mac with faint yellow spots on it. A short silk scarf was tied side-on at her neck and she looked the business. I detected a subtle trace of the perfume I’d smelled when she’d first come into my office.

“Thanks for coming out here, George. I hope you don’t mind?” She tilted her head sideways and looked at me with her jewelled eyes and I didn’t mind, though my knees were pressed against the dash, and I felt it would be too awkward to fiddle about and try and move the seat back – I didn’t know the inside of a Mini and I’d have to ask how to do it. She was turned in her seat and looking at me. Did Elliot Booker ever tire of looking into those dazzling eyes? In time, one could take anything or anyone for granted. “You said you had some news.” I twisted in my seat – difficult when you can’t move your knees.

“Yes I do.” I looked away because it was too much to look directly at her. “I’ve reason to believe Lucy is seeing someone, and has been for a while.” Sylvia put her fingers lightly on the steering wheel in front of her and looked towards the butcher’s, where an advert for wild boar sausages hung in the window. “It seems she’s been visiting someone, a man, when you believed her to be playing bridge.” I paused, to see what effect this might be having, but she showed no reaction apart from a slight stiffening of her manicured fingers.

“Go on.”

“Before I do, Mrs Booker, please remember that Lucy is an adult, at least in the eyes of the law.”

She turned to me. “Are you telling me this man is her boyfriend?” Her voice was soft and controlled.

“I’m not sure if he’s a boyfriend, as such. He’s an, erm, older man.”

Her face hardened. “Who is he?”

“I must stress that at this stage I do not have first-hand proof of the nature of their relationship, just that she has been visiting his apartment.” She gripped her hands on the wheel, as if trying to keep the car on the road, but she was still looking at me.

“His apartment? Who is he?”

“He’s a corporate lawyer called Quintin Boyd. An American.” She turned her face towards the front and her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. She was breathing quickly through parted lips and she closed her eyes for a few seconds.

“Do you know this man?” I asked. She shook her head and removed her hands from the wheel, leaving sweaty imprints on the leather. Then she stared at her hands, resting on her thighs.

“It’s… well, it’s just come as a shock. I mean Lucy isn’t ready for this, she…” I wanted to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder but felt it would have been out of order. I did need something explaining.

“Can I ask? Is there any reason that she shouldn’t be seeing someone, someone older, distasteful as it might seem?”

“How much older do you think this man is, George?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Is it normal for a girl with Lucy’s…” She glanced outside and reconsidered. “Of Lucy’s age to be sneaking around visiting a man of this sort in his apartment?” She couldn’t know what sort of man he was. I wanted to tell her that I’d seen some odd couplings in my time, and that Lucy being introduced to womanhood by an older man might in fact be preferable to the quick fumblings of a horny fresher. But I wasn’t sure how you said that to the mother of the girl in question.

I watched a group of women come out of the café. They stood chatting in the leisurely manner of people who had nothing to do next except spend more money. I knew this because I’d followed enough of them, their overweight workaholic husbands panicking at the thought of their gym-fit, expensively dressed, coiffured, manicured, waxed and pedicured wives with time on their hands while they made six-figure salaries in the city or venture capital or whatever they did. On the whole they had been guilty of nothing more than squandering their lives and their husband’s money, spending their time planning dinner parties after dropping the kids off at one of the many private schools in Cambridge. One or two had found solace in the muscled arms of a tennis coach or even, à la Olivia, the lithe arms of a Pilates teacher. Sylvia was looking at the women too, but I’m not sure she was seeing them, certainly not the same way I was seeing them.

“I’d like you to confirm whether there is anything, uh, you know…” and she had to force the next word out, “…physical going on between Lucy and this… this Quintin Boyd.”

“I’d sort of assumed there was, to be honest.”

She put her hand to her face as if I’d slapped her.

“I need to know for sure. That is what you do, isn’t it, confirm that people are having sex?” Ouch. “I want to know how they met. How did he… this man, get hold of Lucy?” Her voice was rising and then, perhaps realising that she was becoming shrill, she smiled thinly and took a breath. Then she put a hand on my trapped knee. “George.” She had taken her voice down an octave. “Lucy is a sensitive girl, and I just need to make sure she is not being taken advantage of by some lothario.” The hand was still there. “You’ll help me won’t you, George? You’ll help Lucy.” Her eyes brimmed and all I needed was for her to tell me that I was a big strong man.

“OK, I’ll try and get some more information on Quintin Boyd, and confirm the nature of their relationship,” I said. She took her hand off my knee. I was so easy. “But what happens then? The fact remains that she is probably seeing him of her own free will.”

“We all do things of our own free will that we later regret, George,” she said, blushing strongly and looking away. You can fake tears, but not blushing. “Anyway, you should know that in your line of business.”

I nodded. “Best not to talk to Lucy until I’ve got back to you,” I said.

“Do you need more money?”

I told her no and got out of the Mini.

After I watched her drive off I rubbed my knees to bring them back to life.

AT SEVEN-THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING, AS IT WAS GETTING
light, Jason and I were sitting in my Golf in the small car park opposite River Views, Jason wearing a woollen hat with ear flaps on his head texting furiously into a mobile phone. He’d put it away but every now and then the damned thing would make a sort of whooshing noise and he would whip it out and check the incoming message, chuckling to himself before thumbing a reply. It was starting to annoy me; I thought students were all asleep until ten. We’d been here since six-thirty, having established that Quintin was in his penthouse by the glow of lights that had come on behind the vertical blinds soon after our arrival.

I was about to pour us some more coffee from the flask Sandra had provided when the silver Merc purred up to the gates and stopped, exhaust discharging into the grey sky. We hunched down so we were less visible. I could see Mark, the driver, talking as if to the dashboard. He didn’t have his cap on and from this angle he looked vaguely familiar again, with his square head and number one haircut. A roll of fat had been squeezed from the top of his collar at the back of his neck.

“I wonder who he’s talking to,” I said. Jason looked up briefly from his phone and whistled.

“Nice car. He’s probably talking to someone on a hands free set.” I opened the glove compartment and took out the GPS tracker that I was planning to attach to the Mercedes. I wanted to know where Quintin Boyd was going when he was in Cambridge. The tracker was the one I’d used to log Trisha Greene’s car movements. It had to be retrieved and connected to a computer to download the log of where it had travelled.

The driver stopped talking, powered down a window and lit a cigarette. He turned towards us to blow out some smoke and I could see he had one of those silly wireless things stuck in his ear.