Love Story, With Murders (7 page)

I find my way to the Head of Faculty’s office. Connor McKelvey. Outside his office, moored like a motorboat and freighted with an impressive amount of office hardware, is a PA’s
station, complete with a blondely fragile PA. An etched plastic plate tells me
that she’s Corinne. On the wall behind her are some photos. Prize awards for some student projects. The Head of
Faculty with donors and grandees. My buddy Ivor Harris, MP, among their number.

‘Hi Corinne.’

I give her my own best smile. I can’t do blandly inoffensive. It’s not my style. But I give good teeth, all brushed and white and shiny.

‘Hello?’

She doesn’t know who I am.

‘I’m Fiona Griffiths, with the police.’

‘Oh yes.’ Corinne arranges her face in a subdued, we’re-all-very-sorry-about-this-terrible-tragedy way.

‘I need to see Mr McKelvey,’ I tell her, and walk, without knocking, into the office she’s guarding.

McKelvey looks up, surprised and a tad annoyed. He looks like you’d expect him to look, half engineer, half bureaucrat. Grey suit, grey-brown
curly hair. Solid looking and slabby, as
though inexpensively manufactured from some durable sheet material.

‘Mr McKelvey, Corinne told me you were free. I’m Fiona Griffiths with the CID. I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time.’

He doesn’t look pleased about it, but waves a hand toward the seating area in the corner. A boxy armchair, boxy sofa, glass table.

I sit on
the sofa. His normal spot. McKelvey does a momentary double take, then sits in the armchair. A red tag dangles from the arm. I reach out and read the label, which has to do with fire
regulations.

‘Flame retardant,’ I say. ‘Nice.’

‘You all right downstairs?’

‘Yes.’

I don’t say anything more. He doesn’t say anything more. He’s waiting for me to start things off, which is good.
I prefer it that way. I sit there saying nothing, because
silence is always uncomfortable if you’re not in control of it.

Eventually I say, ‘Why was Khalifi killed?’

‘Why? I have no idea.’

I nod at that, like he’s said something sensible, and write it in my notebook, slowly.

‘It wasn’t the obvious things, was it?’ I say. ‘Sex. Drugs. Honour killings. None of the above.’

‘Isn’t that your job? To find out?’

I nod again. Write again. I do everything slowly. I don’t know if there’s a particularly annoying way to write, but if there is, I’m doing it.

‘Yes. Yes, it is our job. So why was your colleague, Ali el-Khalifi, murdered? In your opinion.’

‘I don’t have an opinion.’

‘Yes, you do. You think it wasn’t sex, drugs, or honour killings.’

‘I didn’t
say that.’

‘Sorry, so you think it
was
one of those things?’

McKelvey sighs. ‘Look. Ali was a diligent member of the department. We certainly weren’t aware of any –’

‘No. I know you weren’t.’

I pause again. Not a tactical silence this time, a real one. There’s an emptiness in the room, a withholding, that shouldn’t be there. If McKelvey really had nothing to hide,
he’d be more
talkative. I know I’m being a total pain in the arse, but people are inclined to talk more under those circumstances or at least to get angry. McKelvey is being too
controlled. I don’t think he murdered Khalifi or even that he knows why Khalifi was killed, but there’s something that he doesn’t want me to know, which makes me want to know it
twice over.

I try the sex angle first.

‘Obviously,
Mr Khalifi was a single man,’ I say.

‘Yes, and Ali liked to have fun. But look, we aren’t here to judge our staff’s private lives. What Ali did or didn’t do –’

He continues a bit, but he relaxes as he talks. Whatever makes him come over all controlled, it isn’t this. My guess: Khalifi was a bit of a womaniser. He was too smart to risk his job by
playing fast and loose with the students.
The rest of Cardiff would have been a different matter, however.

But the conversation is shifting away from whatever McKelvey is trying to guard. I want to get back to the emptiness, the withholding.

‘Materials science,’ I say. ‘Tell me about it.’

McKelvey nods. This is home ground for him. ‘That was Ali’s speciality. Materials science has to do with the fundamental properties of various
materials. It’s at the confluence
of physics, chemistry, and engineering. Nanotechnologies as well now, of course. Ali was extremely good with various types of steels. Some polymers, high-modulus polyethylenes. Engineering
plastics. That kind of thing.’

I nod, jotting down some of the terms. As I do, he goes on talking.

‘You know, because we’re out here in Cardiff, not a big-name university,
people tend to think of us as somehow second rate. They assume we can’t compete with the big boys. But
you know, we’ve got one of the best engineering schools in the country here. And in our chosen fields, Ali’s for one, we’re as good as anyone. He’s going to be tough to
replace. We’ll miss him.’

I nod, wondering how to use the flow. That’s the thing about secrets, people want to talk
about them. They can’t help themselves.

‘You’ll miss him in other ways too,’ I say, opting to stick with the positive.

‘Yes. I wouldn’t say he was the most, I don’t know, popular member of the faculty. I’m not saying the opposite – just, he was happy enough to work hard, he
didn’t need to come to every summer barbecue. On the other hand, when it came to helping the faculty. You know,
donors, tie-ups with business. Getting students into real engineering
positions. Those sort of things, he was first class. Dedicated.’

I nod again. I can’t see that I’ve got what I came for. On the other hand, I’m not sure how I can get it. Or what it is. My pencil hesitates over the page.

‘I’ll put that he was very helpful, shall I?’

McKelvey smirks at me patronisingly. ‘Yes, you
can put that.’ The air has cleared up now. Like the emptiness isn’t there, or is sealed off, if it is. I insist on talking a bit
more, but I only do that to be annoying. I don’t think I get anything more.

As I get up to leave, I say, ‘Donors. What kind of money are we talking about?’

‘This is an engineering faculty. It’s not one of the arts, where some donor agrees to host a poetry evening
or a wine and cheese party.’

I nod, encouraging more of the same.

‘Look, I’ve got an invoice here for a new universal electromechanical testing machine. Nothing fancy. Not one of our priciest bits of kit. But you take into account data-acquisition
software, installation, everything else, and we’ll have no change from forty, forty-five thousand pounds. We don’t get kit like that on government
budgets. It’s all private-sector
money. Research collaborations, product development partnerships, licensing agreements. We’re going to miss Ali. He was bloody good at all that.’

McKelvey hovers over me, shuffling me towards the door. I’m small, so I’m easily shuffled.

I wonder if my sense of myself would be different if I were taller, bigger, stronger. I think it would.

‘I’ve put
that he was helpful,’ I say, giving him and Corinne a final smile. ‘Very helpful.’

And that’s that. It really is. Except that as I go downstairs from one blue-carpeted floor to another, it doesn’t feel that way at all.

I’m on the stairs. Walking down. Face to the light of the window. Thinking a bit about McKelvey, whether I could sense anything awry in his answers. Thinking too about Jim
Davis.
I’ve been AWOL for the best part of half an hour and he’ll report me if he can. But mostly I’m just walking down the stairs, facing the window, doing nothing very much.

And then – I don’t know. My leg twists. Or it’s as though my ankle can’t support my weight anymore and I just start sliding sideways. I would fall, except that I’m
close enough to the bannister to be able to grab
it for support. And as all this happens, I’m twisted around, as though someone has come from behind and forcibly moved me.

Indeed, that’s what I assume has happened. I assume someone has, for whatever reason, needed to move me violently, as though to protect me from some fast-moving object. Only there’s
no one there. No fast-moving object. No person. Nothing. I’m on the stairs, alone.

I sit down. I assume I’ve just experienced a bout of faintness, though I don’t get faint normally. Didn’t even when I was sick. I don’t feel giddy or sweaty.

I
do
wonder about morning sickness. Surely to goodness
that’s
not the issue. I’m on the pill and my last bleed was completely normal. I worry about the possibility,
before deciding it can’t be that. And it really can’t be, I think. Really
mustn’t be, for that matter.

So it has to be my knee or ankle. I try standing, cautiously, a hand still out on the bannister, but my legs are fine. Ankles, knees, fine.

I’m fine. I’m a young, healthy adult and there is nothing wrong with me. I can feel my feet and hands normally – as normally as I ever can, anyway – and my breathing is a
little flustered but basically okay. I stamp feeling
down into my feet, clench and unclench my hands to get the senses moving there too.

I’m a fit and healthy adult and there is nothing wrong with me.

Walk downstairs, cautiously and with one hand on the bannister, back to Jim Davis and the team, all set for the rest of my merry little interviewing day.

That evening, I’m with Buzz. His place, not mine. A two-bed flat down by Atlantic Wharf. It’s nice. A bit bachelor-ish. A bit IKEA-ish. But nice. Not as IKEA as my
place, and at least Buzz has made an effort. There are pictures on the wall, cushions on the sofa, photos on the shelves, candles on the table.

Every time we have dinner
together, I have this slightly spacy, buzzy feeling. Am I really here? Is this really me? A reasonably pretty girl, reasonably nicely dressed, sitting opposite this
handsome and capable man, who moves around the room setting food on the table, dimming lights, lighting candles, arranging glasses.

I help, of course. I do what I’m meant to do, but I still feel like an actor from a TV movie,
who opened the wrong door one day and stepped out into real life, and is here still, feeling
the lights on her, the cameras, the invisibly watching eyes. My performance is probably good enough for a TV movie, but I’m always being caught out in little things. I remember to dim the
lights, but forget to light the candles. Or I forget that there are napkins, real cloth ones, in a drawer, and don’t
put them out. Or sit down at the table before we’re ready.

Buzz is never impatient with me. Never once, which I find a bit creepy. I’d be impatient with me all the time. Shift your bloody arse, Griffiths, this isn’t a restaurant, you know.
That’s what I’d say.

And Buzz doesn’t. He is the world’s nicest man, maybe. I worry that he’s too naïve to have a girlfriend like me. Shouldn’t someone
warn him? Shouldn’t I?

Anyway. We’re ready. We plate up. Buzz real-lifes himself over to the table with his plate, I TV-movie myself over. Then there’s always this moment. Buzz says something like
‘Well, Fi,’ looks into my eyes, and chinks glasses. I do likewise. I feel spacy when I do it, but I do it.

Then we eat.

I want to talk about the case, but Buzz has these rules, good ones,
about not letting the office intrude too much on the relationship. So we talk a bit about other things. Buzz plays hockey,
which I used to think was mostly a girl’s game, only he plays it aggressively and well, captaining the Cardiff third team, and leading his team out of whichever league they’re in, into
whichever league they’ll be in next. Two of his players got stomach bugs after eating
fast food from a van. He’s angry with them because of breaches in team discipline and is unsure how
to replace them for the upcoming game.

I’m silently amazed that all this is taken so seriously. Amazed that there are even multiple leagues for this kind of thing. And for grown-ups too. Adult men with jobs. But I don’t
say so. I try to follow the ins and outs as best I can. Say the right
things. Evince the right emotions.

Then I say, ‘Mary Langton played hockey. She had a photo in her room.’

Buzz looks sharply at me, then laughs.

‘Okay, Fi, fair enough. Let’s talk about murder.’

I laugh at myself too, but relax into shoptalk.

I say, ‘Do you think it was a sex killing?’

‘Which one?’

‘Either.’

‘Mary Langton. Must be ninety-five percent likely.’

I know the logic. The logic says that if it wasn’t close family or a dodgy boyfriend – and Watkins would have caught any of those if they’d been the killer – then it had
to be a sex-related thing. Partly because Langton was a twenty-something girl. Partly because of what she did – or had done – for a living. Put those two things together and the stats
say it has to be a sex crime. Ninety-five
percent probably undercooks it.

‘And Khalifi?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘I was with his students today.’ His boring, boring students. ‘No frisson from them. If he was some lecherous professor type, I reckon we’d have picked it up.’

‘Right, but sex doesn’t have to be like that, does it? I mean, maybe Khalifi’s a perfect professional at work. Then, maybe not even that often, once a month or
whatever, he
goes down to a club, has a few, loses control and gets involved in something that he can’t handle. Susan Konchesky has been going through his bank records and says that he’s been up for
a party in his time. A bit of a bad boy.’

McKelvey hinted the same thing, more or less.

‘Okay,’ I nod. ‘Let’s assume that’s right. That doesn’t mean there’s any connection at all with Langton.
She’s a twenty-something girl who died
five years ago. He’s a late-thirties man who died on Friday.’

‘True, but . . .’ Again, Buzz doesn’t trace the logic all the way through, but he knows I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking that this is Cardiff. We just
don’t get bodies chopped like stir-fry and scattered over town. Maybe that happens in Baltimore or Mexico City, but not here, not
Cardiff. So if it does happen, it’s weird, a
once-in-a-century thing. If it happens twice, and in the same part of town, there must be a connection. That connection will suggest an avenue for investigation. We find the connection and
investigate hard. Get a break. Get our killer.