Dying on Principle Read online

  ‘Would this rumour have anything to do with the pornography? OK, I know when to keep quiet.’

  ‘Except, if you’ll forgive me saying so, Sophie, you don’t,’ said Dave, hard again.

  ‘It was you who came into my place yelling “fraud”!’

  ‘How was I to know the sodding place was bugged?’

  ‘Children, children!’ Chris had donned his glasses and was looking over them. He held up his left hand, pulling the spread fingers down with his right as he mentioned names. ‘Dr Trevelyan. We know she’s up to something. Petty fraud. Bound to get picked up sooner or later. But she didn’t strike me as the sort of woman to get involved with pornography. Mr Curtis. You don’t like him, and I’d guess the feeling was mutual, but you’ve nothing currently on him, except he claims qualifications he may not have. An altogether easier way of discovering the truth would have been to ask me. As soon as nine strikes, Tom will get on to the accountancy organisations Curtis claims membership of. OK? Mr Blake. Because of his sexual proclivities he is unable to make a statement.’

  ‘How come you were at the dratted place anyway, sweetheart?’

  ‘I was part of a team working on computer programs to develop literacy skills. Idiomatic English made easy for people whose first language isn’t English.’

  ‘A geek!’

  ‘Far from it! I know a bit about programming, but it’s the English-teaching bit that I’m best at. In all honesty, I reckon Worrall hatched the plot to get me off Murdock’s turf for a bit.’

  ‘Does everyone realise that? Everyone?’ Chris repeated. ‘Because you always seem to know what I’m talking about these days. Sometimes more, come to think of it – you were dead keen for them not to switch on the computer Blake was using.’

  ‘Only because I’d been reading about it in a mag at the doctor’s. And teachers specialise in bluffing,’ I added.

  ‘Not hacking?’ Dave put in.

  ‘I’ve never hacked in my life. The only time I ever saw it done was actually at Lloyd House,’ I said, with a grin at Chris, ‘with an audience of senior police.’

  The atmosphere had eased at last. Dave and Chris stretched, and I looked at my watch. Nearly nine.

  ‘Is it worth trying William Murdock – the personnel people – again? You never know, Chris, they might respond to the blandishments of you or Dave and tell you his car number and everything. Oh yes, it’ll be on file – for our car-parking records.’ I dialled the number, got through to Rosie, a fellow cricket lover, and posed the problem. She demurred, as of course she should, then came up with a bright idea.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘Why don’t I phone the police and ask to speak to this Chris and then I’ll know he’s real, won’t I?’

  ‘You’re a genius. It’s Detective Chief Inspector Groom. Got that? Great.’

  ‘Except the switchboard’s always so busy it’ll take her ten minutes to get through,’ said Chris. ‘In any case—’

  There was a sharp tap at the door. Tom poked an anxious Geordie head round the door. ‘Chris, man, there’s something you might want to know. I’ve had a call from the Transport Police. Some guy beaten up just outside Bristol Temple Meads. Managed to pull the communication cord.’

  ‘Name of Schneider?’

  Tom nodded, big-eyed.

  We were scuttling down the corridor when Chris asked, ‘Why should the Transport folk call us?’

  ‘Because I thought, if there were no accidents on the motorway, there was always the train, sir. So I got on the blower to them. Ian always said to get all the information, Gaffer,’ he said, almost in extenuation.

  ‘Where are we going, anyway?’ I said, breathless from the rush.

  We all stopped, abruptly.

  ‘Back to my office, I suppose,’ said Chris, turning and leading the way. ‘The Avon lads can ask him what we need to know. It’s just – you know – after all this inactivity a bit of action would be nice.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Dave said glumly. ‘There are times when war, war, war is better than jaw, jaw, jaw.’

  31

  Chris took me back to his office, leaving me there probably against every rule in the book, while he and Dave adjourned to the incident room. Since he made no prohibitions at all, I felt myself honour bound to do nothing to upset his moral code. I read the Guardian twice and even tried the crossword. I hadn’t any marking, of course, or any of the books I’d long been intending to read, and was, in a word, bored.

  One thing I could usefully do was make that dental appointment, and I couldn’t see Chris begrudging me one phone call. The phone book sat neatly on top of the Yellow Pages by the phone, and I hunted for the Cavendish Road Dental Practice. What I always forget is that the Birmingham directory has business numbers at the front, and my search through the main residential pages brought me no joy at all. In fact, there were hardly any Cavendishes, and one, I. M. Cavendish, made me forget about my teeth. She hadn’t been at work when I phoned in yesterday. Chris and I had joked about it; at least I had, and Chris had been rather dampening. I turned to the business section, got myself an outside line, and fixed my appointment for mid-July – the start of the college holiday for those of us not on the new Muntz contract.

  My hands found their way back to Cavendish, I. M., and dialled. No reply. But then, she’d be back at Muntz, wouldn’t she? Not a woman to take sick leave lightly, Mrs C. I dialled Muntz and asked to speak to her.

  ‘I’m afraid Mrs Cavendish is unavailable.’

  ‘Do you mean she’s in college but is too busy to speak to me, or that she’s not in college? It’s Sophie Rivers here, Stella, one of the computer-project people.’

  ‘Oh, I thought I knew your voice! It’s ever so strange, she’s not in, and I don’t know when she last had one day off, let alone two. And I don’t think she even phoned in today. At least I didn’t take the call. Hang on a sec. Sylv, did you take a call from Mrs C this morning?’

  I heard a decided negative.

  ‘No, Sylv didn’t either. Strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘Must have gone to a sale or something.’

  ‘Well, she’s got the money, of course, since her father died.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry – were they close?’

  ‘Never mentioned him until she came in with this lovely pair of shoes, Italian, the softest leather. £159 she said. Lovely.’

  ‘Wish I could spend that on shoes.’ Well, actually, I could. Maybe I should. ‘Look, Stella, is Mr Curtis around? Because maybe I’d better talk to him direct.’

  ‘No. Hey, Sophie, you don’t think they’ve done a bunk together! Thick as thieves, they are.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she be a bit old for him?’ A very ageist thing to say, but needs must.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t look at either of them. He’s nice looking, of course, and now he’s got that posh car, but he’s not really my type. I like warm brown eyes and nice tight little bums.’

  ‘As opposed to nice tight little fists?’

  She crowed with laughter, hurting my ear. ‘Look, Sophie, Sylv’s pulling faces ’cos she’s having to take all the calls. Talk to you again – OK?’

  ‘Cheers!’ Yes, I rather thought we might be talking again. But I didn’t tell her why.

  Meanwhile I was left with the problem of what to do next. Mrs I. M. Cavendish knew more about the goings-on at Muntz than anyone, I reckoned, and I cursed myself for not having talked to her properly on Monday morning when she’d seemed altogether more kindly disposed towards me.

  Not really expecting a reply, I dialled her home number again. I let it ring and ring, before replacing the handset.

  No one had ever spelled it out, but I suspected that unaccompanied members of the public were not encouraged to stroll around inside a police station, particularly one as full of important information as this must be.

  I opened the door and looked out on an empty corridor. No, though I knew where to go, I couldn’t do it, lest it should rebound on
him in some way. Back inside. How about an internal phone call? There was a directory thumbtacked to the wall beside the phone. I’d try Ian’s number.

  I was just going to put the phone down in despair when Ian answered, breathless, apologising for forgetting to reroute it.

  ‘It’s OK, Ian – only me. Look, Chris has left me in his office, and I’ve just thought of something he might want to know. You couldn’t help, could you?’

  ‘In what way help?’ Ian’s voice was instantly suspicious.

  ‘Either escort me to see him, or tell him I want to talk to him, or simply give him a message. You can choose! And when you’ve chosen, you can buy me a cuppa in the canteen – I’m getting claustrophobia up here.’

  ‘OK. Save my legs if it’s message first, then I come and get you.’

  ‘Tell him that neither Curtis nor Mrs Cavendish, Blake’s secretary, is in college, and I can’t raise Mrs Cavendish on the phone at home.’

  He agreed, albeit reluctantly, and promised to come and raise my siege.

  ‘As and when we want to talk to Curtis, we’ll talk to him,’ said Chris in a fierce undertone. ‘Sophie, I really do not have to account to you for my movements.’

  I pushed away from the canteen table, leaning back in my seat. I suppose the gesture I made was pacifying, but inside I was seething. ‘OK. What about Mrs C? Are you going to look for her?’

  ‘Sophie, this is police business.’

  ‘It’s been made my business too, and you know it has.’ My seethe was showing. ‘Chris, she knows more about what’s been going on at Muntz than anyone. The number of times I’ve caught her off guard and didn’t think about it till now! She’s like a spider pulling together all the threads of a web. And without her loyalty to Mr Blake, she might sing.’

  ‘Interesting mixture of metaphors,’ he observed. This was a peace offering.

  I refused to be drawn. ‘And you never know, someone, knowing she could sing, might have decided to silence her.’

  ‘Do you have any evidence at all for that?’ He could sound so very paternal at times.

  I caught his eye and held it. ‘No. And I’ve been wrong before. But—’

  ‘But?’

  ‘If I were you I’d want to see she was all right.’

  He straightened up, looking away as if the floor might provide some answers. ‘I’ve hardly any officers left. Look, I’ll talk to Ian.’

  ‘And tell him I want to go with him,’ I yelled at his departing back.

  ‘These hunches of yours, where d’you reckon they come from?’ asked Ian, opening the passenger door for me. He was driving his own car, a Rover a couple of years old.

  ‘No idea. And don’t think for one minute I believe you or Chris gives them any credence.’

  ‘No?’ He started the engine and eased out of his space.

  I waited until he’d found a gap in the traffic and pulled into the main road before replying. ‘No, of course you don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t be going without backup and I wouldn’t be sitting here beside you.’

  ‘You’ll do,’ he said, and we settled down to talk about bedding plants and hanging baskets.

  Mrs Cavendish lived in a pleasant road in Warley, in a semi notable even among other respectable semis for its air of wellbeing. It must have been a bit younger than mine, perhaps 1935, and was joined to its neighbour in the conventional way, by the living-room wall. The neat front lawn was surrounded by pansies and primulas, still flourishing. The drive had been recently swept. The double-glazed front door was locked. I’d have given up at that point, but Ian headed off down the side of the house, on the path between the house and the detached garage. Two more points of entry for him to check – the door to the kitchen, and a French window. He mimed flipping a coin, and tried the French window first. It was locked. This made him quite casual about the kitchen door, so that when it opened he nearly fell on the floor. Recovering, he raised an eyebrow at me, and spoke into his radio. Then he started calling: ‘Police! Is there anyone there?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘You stay here, Sophie.’

  ‘Not on your bloody life,’ I said, following him into the kitchen and looking round.

  It was perhaps a little too plastic but it was as immaculate as my friend George’s. The whole house was. Unlike his, however, this held no neat shelves of books, records, tapes and CDs. There were no books anywhere, in fact.

  Her bedroom was pleasantly chintzy, everything matching but not offensively. The guest bedroom was more austere, and the boxroom full of neatly labelled boxes. The bathroom was a bit on the frilly side for my taste, but Ian saw no harm in it, probably because it was almost identical to his Val’s.

  The front room was definitely too floral, and smelled of something a bit sickly, but the back one, with the French window, was cosy and welcoming. Needless to say, there was not even a freebie newspaper out of place. We stood and stated at each other, mirror images of puzzlement. We went back into the kitchen. Ian opened the fridge door with a pencil. It was clean and relatively full of food. The opened milk bottle wore a blue and red plastic lid.

  ‘I don’t know, young Sophie, I really don’t.’

  I shook my head; neither did I. But there was something, wasn’t there, something out of place. I covered my face with my hands and smelled Chris’s soap. That therapeutic bonk hadn’t done him any good, had it? He was more abrupt than ever this morning.

  ‘One more look round,’ said Ian. ‘Just in case.’

  It was in the living room we found it. An apple, not fully eaten, brown, on the mantelpiece.

  Goodness knows why I dropped my voice. ‘There!’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Get on to Chris. Tell him she’s been taken, but at least whoever’s done it left his calling card. That bloody apple. She’d never leave anything like that there, she’s far too well-ordered. And look at those tooth marks. They’ll match with someone’s teeth, even if there’s no DNA in the saliva. You get whoever it is, Ian, and by Christ that’ll jail him.’

  ‘An apple!’

  ‘Yes! There was a terrorist waiting to ambush someone. When the target appeared he threw down his apple. After the murder, some bright young bobby picked up the apple, and it became the clinching evidence. It was on TV.’

  ‘Ah, a film.’

  ‘No! A documentary. Ian, please! Oh!’ At last I noticed the expression on his face. ‘You’ve been winding me up!’

  He grinned tolerantly and spoke into his radio.

  ‘I suppose you’d prefer me outside in your car by the time people arrive?’

  ‘Not a lot of point, love. Forensic’ll need to eliminate your shoe prints and – no, you didn’t touch anything, did you?’

  ‘Would I dare?’

  ‘You know,’ he said, consideringly, ‘I don’t reckon there’s much you wouldn’t dare. But you do know the difference between right and wrong. That’s something.’

  32

  I stood by Ian’s car, looking wistfully at the team now gathering to give Mrs Cavendish’s house the going-over of its beautifully maintained life. Not that I’d have wanted to pick over her clothes or check her waste bin, but they at least were doing something useful and constructive whereas I was neither use nor ornament, just someone it would take valuable resources to protect. There was the problem of where to put me, too: somewhere I’d be safe, not a liability. After some discussion over my head – I might have been a stray cat – it was agreed that Ian should take me to his home, from where Chris would collect me later. I acquiesced – to argue would have wasted their valuable time – but made one stipulation: I could go home and get some books and other necessaries first. Chris nodded curtly, and had turned away before I was in Ian’s car.

  Ian took a circuitous route, but no one appeared to follow us. Then, as we headed down the home straight of Balden Road, a car I recognised came up towards us. The driver pulled over to our side of the road, coming to rest outside my house.

  ‘Richard Fairfa
x’s,’ I said briefly in response to Ian’s whistle.

  ‘Nice car, anyway,’ he said, parking nose to nose with the BMW.

  We got out and greeted Alan, the chauffeur, with no particular cordiality. I felt he should have done more to protect me – tried, at least. Perhaps Ian distrusted anyone in a car that size, or perhaps he knew he’d have done better. But Alan looked so distraught I soon thawed. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am, miss. But not Mr Fairfax. There’s a message on your machine, but you didn’t answer so I thought I’d come myself. He doesn’t know. So if you were to phone as if I hadn’t asked you to …?’

  ‘It’s his stomach?’

  ‘The cancer’s spread. Secondaries all over the place. He phoned the hospice this morning.’

  We stood there in the bright sun, cold from his words. I looked from Alan to Ian, grim-faced and perhaps already working out what I should be allowed to do without an outburst from Chris.

  ‘Come in, both of you. Ian, can you fix us all some tea while I phone? Alan, just keep an eye on both those cars, will you? I know I’m getting paranoid, but—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, taking up his station by the window. ‘I bottled out, didn’t I? But that car’s his pride and joy, miss, and with him so ill I couldn’t have faced him if it had been all smashed up. Mind you, I think he’d rather it had been the car than you. When you took him those puddings, with your hands all covered with plasters … He was took bad soon after you went last night, miss.’

  I nodded, biting my lip. To be having sex while he was dying …

  I dialled the number. A woman answered it, the housekeeper, her voice strangely familiar. She put me straight through to Fairfax. Richard.

  ‘Ah, my dear. A little local difficulty here. I wonder, could you do an old man another favour? I need someone to drive me to an appointment this morning, and I’m afraid Alan is unavailable. I’ve fixed the insurance.’

  I nodded to Alan across the room. I’d keep his secret. ‘Of course, Richard. I’ve got someone here at the moment. I’ll get him to give me a lift.’