Dying on Principle (10 page)

I nodded, hardly surprised, and waited.

She glanced skywards in exasperation, and returned to the phone. ‘Mr Curtis was quite definite about it. And common sense must tell you, you simply cannot afford to take sick leave of those proportions. No: your contract is quite clear.'

I pricked my ears.

‘Oh, I'm sure you will, Mr Teague. Quite sure you will. And if you take my advice, you'll get that back of yours out of bed and back into the classroom on Monday.' She put down the phone firmly. ‘You people don't seem to realise the world has changed,' she said, eyeing me with hostility. ‘No more feather-bedding. The new contract will see to that.'

‘What if people don't want to sign?'

‘They'll sign quick enough if there's no food on the table.'

I winced: people had said things like that in Dickens's time, hadn't they? But there was no point in yelling at a messenger, so I merely pulled myself up to my full height and said firmly, ‘I need to see the principal. On a matter of the greatest importance.'

‘Mr Blake sees staff on Mondays,' she said, not bothering to open the desk diary.

The tape was rerunning, was it? I looked at her sardonically. ‘I don't suppose he's even in the building, is he? Not at four on a Friday. He'll be off back to – Solihull, is it?'

‘Knowle, actually.'

Knowle considers itself posher than Solihull.

I suppressed a snigger. ‘First thing on Monday. And perhaps he'll want to know that I shall ask the union rep to come too.'

‘The union has been derecognised,' she said.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Derecognised.'

‘Since when?'

‘Since eleven this morning. At the governors' meeting.'

‘And is the union aware it has been – derecognised?'

‘I should imagine so. Now, if that is all—' She turned back to her computer.

‘No! I still don't have my appointment with Mr Blake. Monday, you'll recall.'

At last she opened the diary. ‘Five thirty?'

‘Nine,' I said, pointing to an empty slot.

She glowered but filled it in. Her pencil stopped. ‘On what subject?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘On what subject do you wish to speak to Mr Blake?'

‘On a subject that I will raise with him, Mrs Cavendish.'

‘That's not good enough. The principal will want to know—'

‘Oh, he'll know soon enough,' I said, turning on my heel.

My exit was blocked, not quite deliberately, by Curtis, cross-armed on what would soon be the threshold. He held my eye for an unpleasant moment, then smiled, very slowly.

‘Goodbye, Miss Rivers,' he said, standing aside to let me pass.

I had time to pop home and cook myself cheese on toast – after that lorryload from the abattoir, vegetarianism was clearly indicated – before heading back into the city for a choir rehearsal.

With my present run of luck, I suppose I wasn't surprised to find my toaster expiring with a pungent electrical fault. When I went to the building society for cash for that ghetto blaster, I'd have to get enough to buy a new toaster as well.

Friday is the choir's rehearsal night. I set off promptly, but suddenly realised the last thing I wanted to do was sing. Everyone would want to know the details – it's OK to take a macabre interest if the details come second-hand. But I didn't want to relive my inadequacy, my impotence. I didn't want to stand in a minute's silence for a death I – No! That way madness lay. I got off the bus in the High Street. The walk back wouldn't hurt me.

And then I saw another bus, one going towards Birmingham University and to the hospital where Dr Trevelyan was detained. On impulse, I ran for it.

The hospital occupies an enormous site, and it took me a few minutes to get my bearings. The area is so large that some of the corridors have to slope to accommodate the contours of the land, and it was up one of these I was directed to find the flower shop. Even flowers seemed, come to think of it, a pretty weak pretext for what I suspected was really a snoop. Back to the Psychiatric Unit. Stairs or lift? The stairs would give me more time to think.

As I approached the nurses' station, a young man pushed open the door to the day room, holding it for someone to follow him. Inside a woman was sobbing with the abandon of a child. Not Dr Trevelyan. She was hunched over her cigarette, rocking herself backwards and forwards. The fiercely cut hair was lank and greasy, and her face was bare of make-up. I didn't want to see any more. I dropped the roses and carnations on the nurses' desk and fled.

There is a theory that a bath and an early night will clear all ills. I helped myself to Irish whiskey, a dollop of lavender oil and
Pride and Prejudice
for my bath, and soaked until I'd finished both book and booze. But when I slept I saw blood and bone and heard the howling of a mad-eyed woman.

Only Chris would phone someone at eight on a Saturday morning. His voice had the ring of conscious virtue I associate with someone who's already completed a five-mile run and has showered and shaved. To compensate, I burrowed further under the duvet.

‘What time do you want to start, then, Sophie?'

‘Start?'

‘Looking at cars. You were going to fix up some test-drives, remember?' If only his voice were not so disgustingly bright.

‘Oh. Ah. Well, to be honest, I forgot.'

‘Thought you would. Quite a week you've had, after all. But there's nothing to stop us turning up on the off chance. I'll pick you up in half an hour?'

‘Chris, my sweet, if you dare arrive before nine I'll – Tell you what,' I continued, beginning at last to surface, ‘why don't you stop off at Brown's for some bacon and eggs and we'll have a wicked breakfast? It's Saturday, after all. We can afford some cholesterol.'

‘Anything else while I'm there? Or have you already shopped? Go on – dictate.'

I dictated. Chicken, mince, pâté. ‘Why not get some bread from the deli? And some butter, come to think of it. We could have bacon butties. And what about croissants?'

‘The woman tempted me,' he said.

I managed to crawl out of bed and into the shower. By the time he arrived, I'd washed my hair and was thoroughly decent in shirt and jeans. There'd even been time to put on some cosmetics: although Chris had seen my face in its natural state times without number, I still felt awkward about his watching the make-up process itself.

I shoved the
Guardian
to one side for him to dump the carrier bag on the kitchen table and wished I dared kiss him, he looked so pleased with himself when he opened the bag to reveal a tight little posy of roses. I grinned at him and shoved them in water. And then, because it was a nice sunny morning, I did reach up and kiss his cheek. He blushed, but managed to hug me in a reasonably fraternal sort of way.

A good start to the day. Especially with crisp smoked bacon between two pieces of bread cut to just the right thickness and buttered.

While he sprawled back dangerouly in the chair to read the
Guardian
and drink almost viscous tea from my Pooh Bear mug, I thought I might outline my revised itinerary for the day – taking in the building society on the High Street to get some cash and then Comet for my goodies. I didn't get much further than the word ‘cash' before he returned to the vertical.

‘Cash? You don't want to carry that sort of money around!'

‘No option, Chris,' I said, getting up to fill the kettle. I wanted more tea, the sort you don't have to chisel from the mug.

‘You're never over your credit limit!' He was clearly about to rebuke me for my improvidence, and I hated it when he got parental.

‘No. But my card is.' I explained my card's overseas adventures. ‘Hey, where are you off to?'

‘To call a friend,' he said tersely, heading for the phone extension in the living room.

I made the tea, filled my mug straight away, and left the rest of the pot to brew for Chris. I turned to watch him, in silhouette against the living-room wall. His jeans fitted as if they'd been made for him. A nice, neat bum, and the shoulders appropriately broad, even if his tendency to stoop was increasing – I'd have to nag him about those Alexander Technique lessons.

I was reading the paper when he came back in – the early season's cricket reports. I looked up enquiringly, but not necessarily expecting a reply. Chris couldn't always reply to questions, and I never liked putting him under pressure. But this time he grinned. ‘Just fixed up a mid-morning coffee meeting.'

‘But I thought—' I said without thinking. He was doing me a favour, after all, and I shouldn't whinge if he had something more important to do.

‘You too, Sophie. In fact, it isn't me he wants.'

‘What rotten taste! Who is he, anyway?'

‘Just a mate from the Fraud Squad.'

I was deadlocking the front door when the phone started to ring. I couldn't remember if I'd left the answering machine on, so I went back in and took the call: Simon. Could we have a drink some time?

I had an idea that it might not be the easiest of occasions, and in any case, I didn't know how long I intended to spend with Chris. Sometimes our days together drifted into evenings; sometimes they were terminated abruptly by the demands of the West Midlands Police. Whichever happened, in my book the needs of an old friend took priority over those of someone not much more than an acquaintance, albeit one I'd felt quite attracted to. So I temporised: if I had a chance I'd phone him back later.

Parking in Harborne was never entertaining, especially on a Saturday, so I wasn't surprised when Chris parked in his slot at Rose Road Police Station. We walked briskly up to the High Street, to one of the many building-society branches which now clogged up what was once a thriving shopping area. I always hated it when travel agents and building societies outstripped ordinary shops.

My purse replete, I expected us to collect the car and head off to Comet. But instead, we went into the police station and up to Chris's room.

It was already occupied when we went in. If Chris looked like a teacher, this man might have been a rather seedy pop musician. He was wearing scruffy jeans and the unlaced German paratroopers' boots much in vogue among the kids at college. His T-shirt advertised some band I wasn't familiar with. He even sported a ponytail and some rather inadequate blond designer stubble, although he was probably older than I and possibly older than Chris: forty-one or -two, perhaps.

Chris shook his hand, smiling as though they were friends, and slapped his shoulder. ‘DI Dave Clarke,' he said. ‘Sophie Rivers.'

DI Dave Clarke smiled not at Chris but at me. We shook hands. He had a good handshake and an open smile disclosing crooked teeth which, if they'd been seen to, would have made him remarkably pleasant to look at.

‘So,' he said, ‘tell me.' He settled himself on the corner of Chris's desk, one leg on the desktop, the other just touching the floor, so from the visitor's chair I had an unrivalled view of the bulge of his genitals.

‘The credit-card business,' said Chris dryly.

I took a deep breath, shifted the chair slightly, and told him.

‘Why will you people never learn?' Dave demanded rhetorically when I'd finished.

‘Learn what?' I asked, always eager to enrich my knowledge.

‘Never to let your credit card out of your sight,' he said, at last hitching himself off the desk and into a more conventional position on a chair. He reached out a familiar notebook and made rapid jottings. I wondered why he'd waited till I'd finished my narrative, but decided not to ask. The answer might have had to do with giving me his full attention, in view of the way he leaned towards me, treating me to little gusts of a rather nice body spray.

‘Why?' I asked eventually.

He looked up, startled. Perhaps he'd forgotten his last pronouncement. Then he smiled.

‘It would take me a couple of hours to tell you all the ways people can commit fraud with other people's credit cards,' he said. ‘In fact, that sounds like a good idea. Why don't we fix up for you to come round to my base and see what the team are doing? I'll clear it with my boss.'

He sounded so enthusiastic that I was almost convinced his invitation was disinterested. But Chris's expression suggested otherwise.

‘Tell you what, come along now and I'll take a statement,' Clarke continued. ‘No problem.'

‘Come off it, Dave,' Chris said. ‘You're not at the statement stage yet, surely to God. Jesus, Sophie, these people just love their paperwork. The rest of us disappear under it; Fraud bloody wallow in it.'

‘Proper documentation,' said Clarke huffily. ‘When you face trials lasting four or five years, you have to get the documentation right. Meticulous attention to detail, that's what we call it.'

‘Why,' I interposed gently, ‘don't we take a rain-check on the statement? I'm allergic to the things. Especially on Saturday mornings. And in any case, Barclaycard said they were taking it up with you people. I'd guess I'll be a very small footnote in your paperwork.'

‘Not in mine,' he said.

Hell, what sort of man was this, to try to snaffle me from under Chris's nose?

‘Rain-check all the same,' I said, reaching for my bag and catching Chris's eye. We were, after all, supposed to be discussing ghetto blasters and toasters. Not to mention cars. ‘You won't be wanting me for the inquest, will you, Chris? Monday?'

‘I don't know. This suicide-note business … But I intend to ask for an adjournment.'

Clarke showed no sign of leaving; in fact, he looked pointedly around the office. ‘There was a rumour you make good coffee, Chris.'

We all looked around the room. No sign of his percolator; not even a cup.

‘Shit! The bastards! They'd have the shoes off your feet in this place!' Chris picked up his phone and started to talk.