Dying on Principle (24 page)

‘Four?'

‘One for Mr Blake, one for Mr Curtis, one for the chair of governors and one for me.'

The memo crept quietly from the laser printer. I signed each copy as it appeared.

‘Thanks.' I managed a smile. Then I remembered my manners: ‘Are you all right, Mrs Cavendish?'

She shook her head. ‘Like I said, Miss Rivers, I really don't know where he is. Mr Blake. There's no sign of him. His car's in the car park, but he's not in college. And his wife said he came in last night to do some work and that was the last she saw of him.'

‘Does he often do that – sleep here?' I tried not to sound too incredulous, but I always associated such long hours with us lower orders.

‘He has a room. From when this used to be a residential teachers' college. It's locked. I've tried the private number in there. No reply.' More tissues disintegrated in her hand; she stared at me when I passed her a bin, and then dropped them in it.

‘Have you thought of calling the police?' I asked.

She looked at me aghast.

‘If there's no sign—' I began.

‘What's
she
doing here?'

I turned: it was Curtis, as red as Mrs Cavendish was pale.

‘Poor Miss Rivers has been the victim of a most unpleasant prank—'

‘
Prank
? Harassment!'

‘Hm?' He picked up a couple of files and affected to read them, flicking back a lock of blond hair as if he were a matinee idol. It irritated me that such good looks should accompany a personality I'd so far found nothing in to like.

Mrs Cavendish pushed one of my memos at him. He took it idly and read it.

‘Well?' I prompted him at last.

‘The best thing that you can do is clear your room and return to your old college – Cadbury.'

‘William Murdock,' I said automatically.

‘Wherever. The caretaker'll give you a couple of boxes for your stuff. Sooner the better, Iris.'

I think even Mrs Cavendish was shocked. She watched his departing back, and turned to me, shaking her head.

‘He can be quite ruthless at times. He was quite unkind when Dr Trevelyan was taken ill. He told dear Mr Blake they were to make sure she kept her mouth …'

‘Go on.'

‘No, perhaps I've got it wrong. I heard someone saying that to him.' She flushed. ‘Mr Blake'll do something, I'm sure he will. I'll tell him the instant we find him. But – I hope you don't mind me saying this, Miss Rivers – maybe he's right. Maybe it would be better to take a day off.'

I left before I laughed out loud.

I did leave the building, but didn't go home. Soon I'd have to phone Chris, but I needed a few moments on my own. I'd take a breather in the park – the rain was steady enough to put off most people. I followed the path, dodging dog shit, and made my way to the scented garden. Something smelled sickly sweet in the rain and I turned away, almost nauseated. Finding a phone that hadn't been vandalised, I read the graffiti about other women who didn't have even my limited powers to get rid of it, and phoned Chris.

‘It's too much of a coincidence,' I said, drying my feet in the warmth of his car heater. He'd picked me up and driven into a side road. ‘This guy Hendry dies, so they vandalise the college to give everyone something else to talk about. Could that be it?'

‘Could be. If Hendry's sufficiently important as a catalyst to rock the college. But it seems a mighty big sledgehammer to crack a nut. No, if you asked me, I'd say that you were the target. Sorry. And I don't think it's personal. I still think that Chummie thinks you know something. Do you?'

I watched the windscreen wipers – backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. ‘No. I've seen bits and pieces of things that worry me. Someone dropped an odd hint – about paper … but they're more Dave Clarke's area than yours.'

‘Have you told him?'

‘Haven't got my chastity belt locked yet!'

Chris laughed dutifully. ‘Shall I get him over to my office? Or take you over to his?'

I shrugged. ‘Whichever. Why not just phone him?'

‘What's on your mind, Sophie?'

I shook my head ‘You know, I think you ought to search Muntz.'

‘You can't just go busting in on a place uninvited. There has to be some very good reason.'

‘Like a crime.'

‘A crime?'

‘How about the principal's disappeared?'

‘Has he? Is he a missing person?'

‘I've only met him twice so I suppose I don't miss him. But he has gone
AWOL
. Tell you what, why don't you come and have a look at my graffiti and see what else you find? Just as a friend, you understand.'

‘OK, Sophie. Just as a friend.'

My long-awaited meeting with Mr Blake was undoubtedly memorable. It took place in Dr Trevelyan's office. Mr Blake was sitting in front of a state-of-the-art computer, wearing a viritual-reality headset and overalls from which emerged clusters of wires, apparently connected to the rear of the headset via a tube an inch and a half or so in diameter. The tube looked like a narrower version of the stuff they line central-heating flues or extractor-fan ducts with.

Mr Blake was dead.

On automatic pilot, perhaps, Chris felt for a pulse. He shook his head and fished his phone from his pocket. He should, I suppose, have told me to leave, and I suppose I should have left without being told. But I wasn't in the mood for passivity. I didn't touch anything, of course, and I even restrained myself from wandering around the room lest I damage any footprints Chris's team might be able to lift from the carpet. But I didn't switch off my eyes or ears. I didn't even hold my nose.

I turned to Chris. He was busy logging the time in his notebook. Then, like me, he used his eyes. I followed them around the room. Packs of software on shelves. A phone. A waste-paper basket. A couple of boxes of laser-quality paper. The desk itself was bare – Phil or someone must have tidied Dr Trevelyan's desk for her. No one had been in her room – officially – since her hospitalisation. So why should Mr Blake have chosen to use it? He'd certainly made himself at home. His suit was hung neatly over the back of the chair, his folded shirt partly covering white cotton vest and pants. I could see the Marks and Spencer label in the vest.

Chris noticed me at last. He smiled, almost apologetically.

‘All right, I'll go quietly,' I said. ‘But first, tell me – what can you smell?'

‘Smell? Of course it stinks in here: the man's bodily functions packed up when he died.'

‘And? Anything else?'

He shook his head. ‘Only your perfume. Different from usual. Sweeter. Very nice, actually.'

‘Time I went away, then. So you can smell what I can smell.'

‘Tell me.'

‘Not sure, but – No, I don't know.'

He nodded doubtfully. ‘Anything unusual will be mentioned in the pathologist's report.' He started to look round the room again.

‘Is there anything useful I can do, like tell Hector not to let anyone out of the building?'

‘Are you having me on?'

‘Not entirely. Thought you might want him to collect IDs or something before they leave, just so as you know who's in the building.'

‘Who
was
in the building last night – that's more to the point. He's cold, Sophie. And in any case, I don't want you wandering round this place on your own. Stay with me till Ian and co. arrive. They shouldn't be long. And while we wait, for God's sake try and work out why someone should want you out of the building by the time Blake's body's found.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘All that graffiti about you, all that harassment. Don't you see that it all ties up? I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Someone thinks you know something. And I'm beginning to think you ought, just for once, to be sensible.'

‘The students have their exams in less than a month. They were messed about having me wished on them for their last term. I can't mess them about any more.'

‘Arguing again, are you?' Ian asked, making me jump. ‘Team's on its way, Gaffer. Anything I can do?'

‘I think you're supposed to mind me,' I said tartly, ‘until you can find someone more lowly to do it. But I'd have thought you could be doing something more useful.'

‘Can tell she's a teacher, can't you?' Ian said.

‘Look, you'll be in the way here,' said Chris. ‘But I can't let you roam round waiting for someone to do to you what they did to Melina.'

‘Or what they did to this guy? Don't you think he's been done in too?'

‘Let's see what our expert has to say.' Chris smiled at a figure out of my vision. The police surgeon was a young and very attractive woman. ‘Dr Patel may conclude it's a natural death.'

‘Must have been a pretty exciting video game,' Ian said. ‘What you going to do, Gaffer?'

‘Just preserve the scene until we've got something else to go on. Can't waste good taxpayers' money.'

‘But—'

‘Look, Sophie, I reckon there's something fishy. You know I do. But we live in the real world. We need evidence. OK, Dr Patel?' Chris smiled and gestured. ‘He's all yours.'

They summoned a youngish PC to escort me to my office.

‘Funny thing, Ms Rivers,' he said, pausing on the stairs, ‘but this place is so quiet. At the place where I taught there were always students on the move, whatever time of day it was. This place is like a ghost college.'

‘Study leave, I suppose. Where did you teach?'

He opened the door to my office for me, checked there were no unwelcome visitors, and smiled. But before he could reply, his radio crackled and he sped off.

He was right, of course. Compared to the noisy chaos of William Murdock, for instance, the corridors were unnaturally quiet. They always were. I was never jostled on my way to classes, never jammed into a corner of a lift. There was always space.

I sat down at my desk. I didn't want to think about Blake anyway, and perhaps someone at William Murdock would be able to help me. I might as well start at the top. I reached for the phone and dialled.

I didn't recognise the voice on the switchboard but whoever it belonged to put me straight through to Mr Worrall.

‘Sophie! What a pleasure!' I couldn't help feeling that he was over-enthusiastic. ‘Perhaps you could explain why every time I've tried to speak to my colleagues at George Muntz this morning they've reacted as if I've been speaking Chinese?'

‘I believe –' how much could I tell him? – ‘that Mr Blake is, er, indisposed.'

‘Indisposed! He spends enough time looking after himself – squash, badminton, golf. Very fine player, as a matter of fact. Perhaps,' he added with commendable waspishness, ‘George Muntz takes less of his energy than William Murdock does of mine. Now, Sophie, how may I help you?'

Even as I opened my mouth to reply, I remembered those hidden ears. Someone thought I knew something. Would an innocent question confirm their suspicions?

‘I wanted to ask about that new contract,' I lied, blithely. ‘A lot of people here seem to have signed and I wondered what the advantages were.' Perhaps I could drag the conversation round to student numbers.

‘To the employer there is every advantage. You give up your holidays for a maximum of thirty-five days to be taken when I tell you. And you work a minimum of thirty-seven hours a week.'

I couldn't suppress a whistle. I hoped it hurt someone's ears.

‘Seems a drastic change. Why on earth should people want to?'

‘The employer usually offers a little financial sweetener to those who accept. And denies an annual pay award to those who don't. And, of course, it is to the benefit of the college. If you can persuade everyone to work longer hours, it means fewer staff, and thus a better staff-student ratio.'

‘Better!'

‘From the point of view of our new masters, it's better. We're being funded on the basis of an 8 per cent growth in our numbers. If we don't reach our target numbers, our funds will no longer match our outgoings, most of which, of course, are on staff salaries.
Quod erat demonstrandum
.'

‘What happens if a college doesn't have enough students?' This was what I wanted to know.

‘It has to find them pretty damn quick.'

‘How could it do that? Press gangs apart, that is?' I had a nasty feeling I might have gone too far.

‘That would be up to the college,' he said repressively. Of course he'd be circumspect: he was in charge of a rival institution. ‘But any college failing to recruit would go to the wall, Sophie.'

Would it, indeed?

‘You must excuse me: I have a governors' meeting in two minutes. I take it you'll be winging your way to my office to sign on the dotted line?' And then he added, as if for the benefit of those suspicious ears; ‘And next time we speak, perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me why you really phoned.'

Because I want to come home! I thought. Because I hate this place where when I want a cup of coffee all I have is the memo forbidding it. Perhaps orange juice out of a cardboard packet would help, but I was shaking so much I couldn't fit the straw into the little hole. I started to laugh.

By the time I'd wrenched free the under-desk bug and dug out the one Chris had planted, and hurled them both from the window, I found I wasn't laughing but trying not to weep. I might have been laughing again when I let Chris into the room and pointed at the open window.

‘At least it'll have given someone earache,' I said, trying to smile.

How I came to be sitting down with his arm round me and his damned smelling salts making my eyes pour with tears, I'm not sure. But for the moment I wasn't moving. What I wanted more than anything in the world was warm, human comfort. I put my head against his neck and shoulder. The smell was warm and clean, a man very much alive. I could feel the pulse speeding in his neck. I would have to move my head only an inch or so to kiss him. If I kissed him, it would be for the wrong reason; if I had sex with him, it would be for the wrong reason. But just at that moment that was the only thing I wanted to do.