Dying on Principle Page 14

  I swirled the last drop of beer round the bottom of the glass. ‘We used to joke about that sort of thing at William Murdock.’

  ‘I was joking too, Sophie! Industrial relations can’t be that bad, surely?’

  ‘Want a bet? Damn it, Chris, the principal brought in a bloody riot squad to deal with a union meeting the other day. OK, I know such a gathering’s probably illegal these days, but for Christ’s sake …’

  ‘I think that could have been a bit of overreaction at our end too,’ he said carefully. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about life and its rich pattern as lived at George Muntz. I want to talk about your life. Your accident may have been just that, but neither of us believes that a so-called gutterer prowling round your house had good intentions. And that bug’s certainly not accidental. What the hell do you know that you shouldn’t?’

  I spread my hands.

  ‘Sophie, someone wants to shut you up. Let’s just assume for a minute it’s something to do with Melina. Is there anything she said to you that casts light on all this?’

  I shook my head. ‘If only I’d made time to speak to her that night—’

  ‘Don’t start that again.’

  ‘All I ever talked to her about was computers. Did you get round to checking her last job?’

  He nodded. ‘Her old boss even gave us a list of the firms whose computers she worked on. All respectable firms.’

  ‘Big industrial secrets, though. Espionage? No, not Melina,’ I answered myself. ‘Tell you what, though: if she was doing the same thing here, she might have found something she didn’t like.’

  ‘And from what the people at her church said, she was the sort of woman who might have felt obliged to tell someone. What’s up?’

  I grimaced. ‘Do you remember Philomena?’

  ‘The lovely black woman at William Murdock? Who could forget her!’

  ‘I had a word with her. I thought she might be able to cast some light on the church’s attitude to lesbianism – you remember that suicide note? But she’s become a humanist and I thought we were going to get tied up with female circumcision and I couldn’t bring the conversation round to it—’

  Chris laughed. ‘What a good job I’ve got a whole police force to help me! Tina and Ian have already talked very nicely to most of Melina’s family and friends. Why didn’t you tell me you’d been round, by the way?’ He didn’t wait for my answer. ‘Their conclusion is that she wouldn’t have professed open homosexual love like that. They could be wrong, but they all seemed pretty certain. She seemed to be getting on nicely with one of the lads at the church, too. I know about smoke screens and all that, but he couldn’t believe she was anything other than heterosexual. And, before you ask, he’s got a watertight alibi for the evening in question: he was teaching a Bible-study class to twenty-three truthful Christian witnesses.’

  ‘OK. I sit corrected. No need for amateur dabblings. Sorry. I just wanted to see—’

  ‘A family devastated by grief despite their belief in the hereafter?’

  I nodded. ‘I suppose you’re no further forward with the case? I must say, I’d have liked to see you a bit higher in the profile.’

  ‘Crimewatch?’

  ‘Why not? If it’d help.’ But perhaps things were in train that he couldn’t tell me about, so I let him off the hook. ‘OK. Back to our moutons. This bug. What are you going to do with it?’

  He gestured at my glass and picked up his. ‘Another half?’

  So he still hadn’t decided. While he waited to get served, a couple of my neighbours came and leaned over the table. We talked late frosts and petunias and Warwickshire cricket for a bit, and then they drew up chairs and drank with Chris and me. All very relaxed and convivial. Except for that furrow between Chris’s eyebrows.

  ‘What I’d like to do,’ he said as we walked gently home, ‘is leave the bug in place. But I’d like another one – one of ours – in place too, so we know what information you’re giving them. And I’m not sure how you’ll feel about this, Sophie, but I’d really like to get your house done as well.’

  ‘You mean bug it?’

  ‘Keep your hair on. Just check for bugs, at least at this stage. I’ll get your phones looked at too. OK, I may be overreacting. Just as you may think I’m overreacting if I ask to come in and make sure you’ve got no visitors now. Uninvited ones,’ he added.

  ‘If they’ve penetrated that alarm and all the other defences you set up last year, they’ll be uninvited,’ I said flatly.

  He looked under every bed, in every wardrobe, with great exaggerated movements which reduced us quickly to giggles. At last we collapsed into each other’s arms, howling with laughter. I gave him what was meant to be a friendly hug. And then I knew I shouldn’t have done. The effect it very obviously had on him gave me ideas about ending my celibacy, but Chris would have wanted more than just a leg-over. Quite a bit more. And it seemed to me that right then my life was already complicated enough.

  16

  Polly and I were sitting on the bench that Phil and I had used the previous day, sucking fruit juice from packets. I’d used the sun as an excuse for leaving my room, but I did rather wonder if her office had had the bug treatment too. I could hardly ask, however; Chris would not be amused if I let anyone know what was going on. He’d arranged to meet me for a quick lunch, and, when he called to collect me, would no doubt be attaching his own device somewhere convenient. About such things one did not blab. If I were to ask Polly about security, she was bright enough to wonder why I should be suspicious. Clearly I’d have to choose the moment with extreme care.

  For the time being, anyway, we were talking about Ena Trevelyan. Polly had taken the trouble to visit her in hospital, taking some flowers to augment the meagre bunch which was all the collection paid for.

  ‘Did you know her well?’ I asked. I sucked my fruit juice.

  She shrugged. ‘She’s a human being, isn’t she? That’s what we’re put on this earth for, after all – to do unto others … Anyway, it’s on my way home. I didn’t stay very long. Not that she wanted me to.’

  ‘Not want a visitor bearing goodies!’ I thought of Fairfax’s flowers – I enjoyed them even if I didn’t rate the donor. And I thought of the flowers I’d so unceremoniously dumped at the hospital. I didn’t want to tell Polly about that. Perhaps I might try again, if only I could think of an excuse. In my present mood, though, it’d more likely be an excuse not to.

  Polly shook her head. ‘I don’t think she really wanted me there in the first place. We had nothing to talk about, anyway. She was really rude when I asked her to join NATHFE when she first came to Muntz. Told me in no uncertain terms what she thought of unions. So I thought she wouldn’t want to know about our goings-on here, and hearing about Tom wouldn’t do much to cheer her up. When you come down to it, there isn’t much to talk about except work, is there?’

  I took one last suck of juice: the slurp and gurgle made me cringe with embarrassment. I crumpled the packet and slung it into a waste bin.

  ‘I forgot to ask about your leg,’ Polly said at last. ‘How is it?’

  ‘Much better. More physio tonight, then they’ll see. It’s not going to get me the sack for extended sick leave, anyway. Not like Dr Trevelyan,’ I added, not quite guilelessly.

  ‘Not her either, not any more. You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather,’ Polly said. ‘Fancy Blake taking the trouble to write to her! In hospital, too.’

  ‘Fancy la Cavendish condescending to type the letter! I wonder what her cure for mental illness might be … Overtime and antibiotics, I should think. In that order.’

  Usually Security would phone to tell you your visitors had arrived and you had to go down and sign them in. On this occasion, however, Hector brought Chris up himself – whether out of deference to Chris’s position or out of kindness to my knee I didn’t know. I rather hoped it was the latter: that sort of gallantry seemed sadly lacking at Muntz. Certainly he smiled and asked how it was
progressing.

  ‘Oh, I shall soon be on the move again.’

  ‘My dad’s got a dodgy knee,’ Hector said. ‘Does all these exercises for his quadriceps, but as soon as he tries to kick a ball he’s on the ground crying. Had this operation and all. Off his feet for weeks, and then physio. But he still can’t kick a ball.’

  ‘Doesn’t play for the Albion, does he?’

  ‘Chris, you know they’re going to be in the First Division next year!’

  Whoever was listening to my bug must have had an invigorating few minutes. We argued football and progressed to cricket. We were still bickering agreeably when my phone rang: Peggy for Hector. He showed no especial inclination to take the call, still less to return to his post.

  ‘It’s so fucking boring,’ he said. I coughed loud and long – it might just be a Muntz bug and I didn’t want him to get the sack. ‘Never any action. Now the police – that’d be something else, man.’

  ‘I’ll talk to you about it another time,’ said Chris, laughing, but holding open the door nonetheless. ‘Nice young man,’ he said when he had shut it. ‘Very helpful. I’d like to see people like him in the force. It was thoughtful of him to bring me up here, wasn’t it? You were right about Peggy, too – a most charming woman. An efficient place, this.’

  While he prattled, he opened the tampons and tights drawer in my desk, slipped in a small grey plastic box, unwound a piece of wire from it, and winked. He closed the drawer again and straightened.

  ‘Lunch?’ I prompted.

  ‘Do you ever think of anything except your stomach?’ he asked. ‘And yet no one would ever know it, to look at you.’

  I crossed my eyes at him and ushered him out of the room. ‘Shall I set the whatsit?’ I asked, pointing to the centre of the door handle.

  ‘The snib, Sophie. What a good idea.’

  ‘What beats me,’ Chris said, lying back and looking up at a hyperactive squirrel, ‘is why any reputable organisation should buy computers from an e-mail number.’

  We’d come to Warley Woods, just up Balden Road and across the main Hagley Road, to eat what might be glorified by the term ‘picnic’. Actually it was some overfilled rolls prepared by Chris himself, and a selection of fruit, washed down with mineral water which we swigged from the bottles. Chris insisted the grass was dry enough to sit on, but I’d preferred a single slat bench, on the grounds that he wouldn’t need a crane to get me up.

  ‘There must be more than an e-mail number,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t pay an e-mail number.’

  ‘You could tell it your credit-card number.’

  ‘But there must be proper paperwork. Somewhere.’

  ‘Ian and that technician – Phil, is it? – have gone through all the computer section’s accounts. Not a sign.’

  ‘What about the main college system? They must keep copies.’

  ‘Mr Curtis does not seem keen to release them.’

  ‘Can’t you do something to encourage him? Like torture him until he does?’

  Chris laughed, and returned to the vertical to peel a banana.

  ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘you can trace someone’s address through e-mail?’

  ‘Sophie! I thought you were computer literate! No, it’s not that easy. All you get to is the bulletin board.’

  ‘But you have to pay to use the bulletin board. And I don’t suppose you pay in used fivers. Must be a traceable cheque or credit-card payment.’

  ‘But when you buy a service like that, you tend to buy privacy. OK, there are ways of doing it quickly. Fraud Squad – they’ve got some useful contacts. You’d better be nice to Dave Clarke.’

  ‘You’d better be nice to him!’

  ‘No need. I’ve already been nice to his boss. But since this isn’t obviously germane to any inquiry, it may not be top of anyone’s in-tray. And they’ve got very full in-trays. Meanwhile, I’d love to know where all the paperwork is. It can’t have disappeared off the face of the earth.’

  I contemplated my apple. ‘If Dr Trevelyan’s as paranoid as Phil thinks she is, I bet it’d be at her house. But how you’d get into it—’

  ‘Don’t even think of it! Don’t let even the remotest possibility of it cast a shadow over your mind. You are not, repeat not, going to do your burglary act. Not ever again. Ever. D’you hear me?’

  His face was absolutely straight: not so much as a twitch of a crow’s foot. And I don’t like being bollocked. Not like that. What I’d have liked to do was leap to my feet and stalk away. I’d have to find another way of making my point. Without speaking I tidied up the food wrappings and put my apple core alongside his banana skin in the sandwich box that had held the rolls. There was room for the mineral-water bottles, too.

  ‘Better get back to work,’ I said.

  ‘That burglary last summer saved a life,’ he said to the grass he was shredding. ‘Another would risk yours. Sophie, for God’s sake—’

  ‘I don’t know where she lives,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t find out from college even if I wanted to – Personnel are apparently reasonably professional and won’t disclose information about the staff.’

  ‘So you had thought about it!’

  ‘I hadn’t so much as looked her up in the phone book,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘Please God, let her be ex-directory,’ he said. ‘Funny, how we no longer talk about a telephone directory – it’s even called the phone book! – but we still retain that expression. I wonder why.’

  If he had gone down on his knees he could scarcely be begging more fervently for forgiveness. I stuck out my hand. ‘Winch me up, Scottie.’

  We were sitting in Chris’s car, outside Muntz’s front door.

  ‘Were you serious last night? About bugs in my house?’

  ‘Planting them or searching for them?’

  ‘Both, I think. The latter, certainly.’

  I was always impressed when people like Chris could slip ‘the latter’ and ‘the former’ into normal conversation. There was a time when I thought he was trying to impress me. Now I knew him better I realised it was a natural preference for correctness and had begun to use them myself.

  ‘Does that mean you’re willing?’

  ‘Does what mean I’m willing?’

  ‘That long silence.’

  I looked at my watch: I had five minutes before my next class. ‘OK. You can check.’

  ‘It’ll be one of my forensic-science colleagues.’

  ‘OK.’ I didn’t have much choice, did I? ‘Better go. Here comes Hector to yell at you for parking here.’

  But Hector had come to open the car door for me and to assist me, if necessary, up the steps. As I stumped off, clutching his arm, I refused to look back.

  Later I hobbled home, my limp aggravated by my bad temper. As I approached the house, I was intercepted by Aggie, waving frantically from her front window. There seemed to be more excitement than alarm in her face when she opened the door.

  She greeted me in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I’ve got a young man of yours here! He wanted the key to go in and mend something, but that nice Chris – remember what he said—’

  ‘I don’t need a body guard with you here, Aggie,’ I said, wishing she were of the generation that hugged routinely. ‘But you’re taking an awful risk, inviting him in.’

  She smiled. ‘Thought I’d set him a bit of test, me love. Told him about my fridge – asked him to have a look at it. He’s in the kitchen now. And Chris is on the way.’

  How would he appear? With an armed-response unit? Or merely as a chance visitor?

  Aggie opened the kitchen door with a flourish. ‘Here he is,’ she declared, standing aside for me to inspect him.

  ‘Simon!’

  He stood up and grinned, waving a pair of mucky hands. Then he looked beyond me to Aggie. ‘Sorry, there’s not a lot I can do with this. I reckon you’re losing coolant. You could have it topped up, of course, but with CFCs—’

  ‘Them’s the things as is causing this global warming,�
�� she said. ‘Don’t want to ruin the world for me grandchildren.’

  ‘Right.’ He patted the fridge. ‘Don’t reckon this owes you much anyway.’

  ‘Ah. Be one of those as Noah threw out when he sailed his boat up the cut,’ she said, grinning. ‘Might as well go off into Harborne and get meself a new one – if you’re sure he’s all right, Sophie.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ I said. ‘But I’m glad you didn’t let him in. Nothing personal, Simon. But it looks as if this –’ I patted my leg – ‘wasn’t accidental.’

  Back in my house, I offered him tea, but he declined. Aggie had pressed several cups on him and all he wanted was my loo. I tried to call Chris and his rescue party but couldn’t get through on his own number, and the Rose Road switchboard was busy too.

  When Simon came down again, I was in the kitchen. With a flourish, he laid a small wire framelike construction on the table. ‘There!’

  I peered. ‘Half a mousetrap?’

  ‘Toaster element. I spotted an old toaster at a car-boot sale the other week and bought it on the off chance. Well, sometimes they work. Then I remembered yours had packed up, and thought we could cannibalise one to repair the other. You haven’t thrown yours away?’

  I dug it out of the cubbyhole.

  ‘Proper little Aladdin’s cave, that,’ he said. ‘What’s in all those carrier bags?’

  ‘That one’s for the bottle bank, that one’s for foil, that’s waste paper for the Scouts, and there’s the aluminium-can bag. Oh, and the Oxfam sack. I never seem to get there in opening hours.’

  ‘Sophie, patron saint of recycling.’

  ‘Saint Simon, more like – spare toasters indeed!’ I stuck my tongue out at him.

  The doorbell. Chris. He was talking to Aggie from my front step, and as I watched, two patrol cars and a couple of unmarked cars drove off. Perhaps it was a good thing for both of us that we couldn’t speak freely, what with Simon in the kitchen and possible bugs anywhere. Chris’s voice was only just under control when I introduced him to Simon. Given that their relationship could have been one of arrester and arrestee, they seemed to take to each other remarkably quickly. Simon permitted himself one test slice of toast, and then bowed himself out: the MSO were playing in Lichfield at eight.