The Scholar

by Dervla McTiernan

  It was early Friday evening when Della had arrived at the apartment unannounced. The building’s main entrance was supposed to be a security door, accessible only to those with an electronic key, or to those who were buzzed through by an apartment owner. More often than not on a Friday night, that front door was propped open by some student hosting a party. Della had made her own way through and up in the lift, and her knock on the door had taken Carline by surprise. She’d been alone that night too, studying, trying to force her mind to understand concepts that were becoming more and more complex, spiralling beyond her ability to grasp. Carline had been almost relieved to see Della at first, despite the fact that they had agreed that Della would never come to the apartment.

  ‘I’ve made my decision.’ Della’s cheeks were flushed from the cold. She was breathing quickly, as if she’d been rushing. ‘We can’t keep this secret any more, it’s too important.’

  Carline felt only sinking dread, but she stepped back and opened the door wide in an unspoken invitation for Della to enter.

  ‘Would you like tea?’ she asked.

  ‘God no,’ said Della, shaking her long hair back from her face with her right hand. It was blonde again, dyed for the exam season. She had sat five exams for Carline over the past two weeks, only two exams left to go. She put her backpack on the table, pulled her slim laptop out from between the miscellaneous papers and notebooks that filled the bag.

  ‘I’m so close to finishing,’ she said. The laptop stayed closed. Della lay her hand palm down on top of the computer. ‘Did I tell you? It’s nearly there, and it’s so good, Carline. I really think you’re going to get your money’s worth.’

  Carline felt a rush of anger. What good would the thesis be to her if Della went ahead with her plan?

  ‘It’s a mistake, Della,’ said Carline. Her voice shook a little. ‘It’s dangerous. You want a career. I know you do. This isn’t the way to make a name for yourself. You’re talking about destroying someone’s professional reputation, taking away their position, the respect that they’ve earned. If you talk to James Murtagh, he’s going to slap you down, hard, and everything we’ve worked for will have been wasted.’ Carline knew she had lost before she finished speaking. This was not the first time they had had this argument.

  ‘I’m not going to speak to Murtagh,’ Della said. ‘I’m going to speak to Emma Sweeney.’

  Oh God. It made sense. Of course it made sense. Emma Sweeney, who could be trusted. Emma Sweeney, who would know just what to do. No wonder Della was sparking with confidence. There would be no stopping her now.

  ‘You can’t go today,’ Carline said. ‘Campus is closed because of the asbestos thing.’

  Della waved a hand in the air. ‘The lab will be open. It’s always open. And if it isn’t, I’ll try again tomorrow.’

  There was a long pause when neither girl said anything.

  ‘No matter what happens, I’m still going to give you the thesis,’ said Della. ‘A deal is a deal after all.’

  Carline wanted to hit her. Two years of planning, trying, striving to be something. To become something. Every day wasted. It had been wrong, of course it had been wrong, but it had been so easy to justify in the context of a world so rife with corruption that every second headline brought some new scandal. It had been easy to tell herself that this small lie was a white one. Della had needed their arrangement just as much as she had, maybe more. She’d taken the money, happily. She’d taken everything Carline had to offer: her friendship, all her secrets. And then, like everyone else, she’d looked for more. She’d wanted Darcy Laboratories. The only difference between Della Lambert and Mark Wardle was that Mark wanted money and power, and Della wanted knowledge and position. Looking at Della, Carline felt both a sense of recognition and a profound weariness.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘You’re going to do what you’re going to do, Della. We both know that. You’ve already made your mind up.’

  The other girl flushed. She didn’t want to be the bad guy in this little farce, resented the suggestion that she was doing something unfair. She pushed her laptop back into her bag, then slung it over her left shoulder.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ she said. ‘And I’ll send you the thesis when it’s finished.’

  Carline didn’t say anything. They both knew that the thesis would be useless to her, but there was no point in saying it again. Della had convinced herself that delivering the thesis meant she had satisfied her side of the deal, the letter of it at least, even as she tore the spirit of it to shreds.

  Della stopped and stared out of the window. ‘It’s freezing out there, you know? It feels almost like winter.’ Della rested her hand on Carline’s cardigan, which was hanging over the back of the chair. She closed her hand over it, plunged her fingers into the soft wool. ‘This is lovely,’ she said. ‘Is it warm?’

  Carline looked back at her steadily but the other girl’s expression was guileless – she had been admiring, not asking. Her version of an olive branch.

  ‘Take it,’ Carline said. ‘It’s cold today. You can bring it back next time you come.’

  Della hesitated. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She took the cardigan, slid her arms into the sleeves a little awkwardly and buttoned it closed.

  ‘Carline,’ she said. ‘You know this wasn’t the way, right? It wouldn’t have worked, not in the long run. You have other options, you know? Lots of choices. This …’ She shook her head. ‘This was just a bad idea.’ She ran her hand down the soft wool of the cardigan, said a final, quiet, ‘Thank you.’ And then she left, bag still slung over her shoulder, without a backwards glance.

  Now was the time. She needed to make a decision. She had the laptop. She could take the thesis, try to move ahead with her plan, one way or the other. Or she could go to the police with what she knew and then try to start again. She could leave this place. Go to another college town, where no one knew her. Buy another apartment just like this one and do it all straight this time. She could change her name, be an anonymous girl in the crowd. Was she ready to give up on the dream of becoming a Darcy in more than name? She thought of her grandfather’s cold blue eyes, and wondered why she’d ever thought she had a chance.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Cormac went home. It was a short drive. He was angry, furious with himself for screwing things up so badly. Guilt gnawed at him too. The case would now be shunted on to Carrie O’Halloran and suffer the inevitable difficulties of a case in full forward motion suddenly left with a new pair of hands at the wheel. He parked and went inside. The house was empty and felt unloved. They had spent so little time there over the past weeks. He tried calling Emma’s mobile, twice, but it rang out. More of the bullshit Darcy security measures. Ridiculous that she couldn’t keep her phone at her desk.

  Cormac turned to the desk pushed up against the far wall of the living room. It was an unruly mess of old newspapers, junk mail, leftover bits and pieces of work that each of them had brought home and left there. She’d given him the number for the direct line at her desk. He riffled through the mess, trying to find the post-it note she’d written it on, but failed. Frustrated, he sat on the couch, contemplated the six-pack of beer in the fridge, thought better of it. If he sat there drinking, waiting for her and thinking about how much he’d fucked it all up, he’d be climbing the walls by the time she got home. He forced himself up off the couch, up the stairs to their room, and into his running gear.

  The first ten minutes were enough to remind him that he’d spent too much time lately sitting at a desk. His legs ached and he was heaving air into his lungs like an old man. He pushed harder, pushed through it. He found his anger and his stride at the same time. He ran for almost an hour, pushing himself harder and faster than he had in months, welcoming the pain.

  When he got home the house was still empty. He hit the shower, took his time, and an hour later when there was still no Emma he opened a beer, turned on the fire and the TV and sta
red vacantly at one or the other until he nodded off.

  Emma came home at ten. He woke as she opened the front door, turned to see her through the open doorway, taking her green wool coat off in the hall and hanging it at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Em?’

  She leaned in the doorway. Her hair was wet from the rain. She looked very tired and her eyes were red-rimmed. Had she been crying? Cormac sat up straighter.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  She rubbed at her cheek, looking distracted. ‘I’m all right.’ She sat on the arm of the armchair opposite him. ‘Have you been home long?’

  ‘A few hours I suppose,’ Cormac said, sitting forward in his chair. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, blinked a few times, trying to wake up fully. Neither of them spoke for a few moments. They sat in silence and listened to the rain falling outside.

  ‘You look like you’ve been crying,’ Cormac said.

  ‘Crying? No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sure I look rubbish. I’m frustrated. I’ve been poring over the same question again and again for the last couple of days and I just can’t make this thing I’m working on link up. I can’t make sense of it.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Cormac asked. He sat back again in his chair, knowing that if she told him he probably wouldn’t understand, but it would be a relief to listen to an ordinary, everyday problem for once. Something that had nothing to do with murder, or suspensions.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Emma said. ‘Or rather, it does matter, but I think maybe I’m too close to it. I just need to step back, maybe get some sleep, and look at things from a different angle.’ She was silent for a few seconds. ‘Do you know what, I’m bloody starving. Are you hungry? It’s late, I know.’

  ‘I’ll make something,’ he said. ‘Go and shower. When you come down we can talk.’

  She kissed him and disappeared upstairs. He made for the kitchen, put together sandwiches out of what was left in the fridge, decided that toasting them might make them more palatable, and turned on the sandwich maker. He opened another bottle of beer for himself, took one out for her. She wasn’t long, returned in pyjamas, hair still damp, the day’s clothes bundled under one arm. She put them in the washing machine, turned on a cycle, and there was something comforting about the simple domesticity of the moment.

  ‘You’re a star,’ she said, taking in the food and nodding a yes to the beer. They sat and ate in companionable silence. She did look better after her shower, Cormac decided, but still very tired. She was paler than usual, and the shadows had deepened under her eyes.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked. ‘Might help to get it off your chest.’

  She looked at him. ‘I was about to ask you the same question. You look like you’ve had a bit of a day.’

  He’d have to tell her. There was no way of avoiding it. ‘I’m off the case, Em. Not officially suspended, or anything like that. But it’s been recommended to me that I take a bit of leave. Stay home and stay out of the way until the dust clears.’

  She stared at him, eyes wide. ‘But … why? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s nothing too serious. I don’t want you worrying about it. Internal Affairs aren’t happy that I’m running a case when my partner found the victim, that’s all. It’s a technicality. No one is suggesting that I – or you for that matter – did anything wrong.’

  Emma knew him too well. ‘Tell me the truth, Cormac,’ she said, quietly. ‘How much trouble are you in?’

  Cormac got up to get another couple of beers from the fridge. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘At least not yet.’

  ‘Is someone looking to change that?’

  Cormac thought about it. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But they won’t succeed. I haven’t done anything wrong, and neither have you, Emma. I don’t want you worrying about this, all right? It’s just political bullshit. Game-playing.’

  Emma took the beer he offered her, opened it and drank. ‘Is your job at risk?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Cormac said. ‘They will look at the case closely, see if I did anything I shouldn’t have. There’s nothing to find.’

  They fell silent for a while. He wondered if she was thinking about the conversation they’d had the other day, about whether or not to stay in Galway. He wondered what he would say if she asked the question again.

  ‘I shouldn’t have called you,’ Emma said eventually. ‘If I had just called 999 on Friday night, instead of calling your mobile, this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘It would, Emma,’ Cormac said. ‘Murphy had just agreed to put me back on rotation. The case would have fallen to me either way. And what’s going on here has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the bullshit that goes on in every police station. I’m going to ask you to trust me to handle it, all right? I’ve been handling it for twenty years, and I’ve done all right, haven’t I?’ He took her hand. ‘This isn’t something for you to worry about.’

  She squeezed his hand, lifted it and pressed her lips to his skin, her eyes on him. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I’m sorry that you lost the case.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Emma started to clear away the dishes, and Cormac let his mind wander back over the case, back over his conversation with Nicholls, with Carline. He should talk to Carrie O’Halloran, if she ended up running the case. They might bring someone down from Dublin, in which case it could end up being anyone.

  ‘Someone will have to interview you,’ Cormac said. ‘Maybe Fisher again, maybe someone else. They’re going to want to take your statement about having seen Della in the lab.’ He hesitated. ‘You should probably have a think about who else might have useful information. Is there anyone they should speak to? Anyone else who would have seen Della inside the lab?’

  Emma sat back down, made a face at her half-drunk beer, and went to get a bottle of wine instead. She opened it and poured a glass for herself, then one for Cormac when he nodded at her unspoken question. ‘Alessandro works out of the same lab, and has done all year. Emily Houghton too. And there’s the student, a third year, I think her name’s Alison. They would all have seen Della, more than once. They must have met her.’

  ‘Will any of them talk to us without a Darcy lawyer being present?’

  ‘I … don’t know. Not if they’ve been told not to. John Darcy has a reputation for being litigious. We’ve all signed NDAs. If he’s worried about the nature of the questions, concerned that they might stray into areas of proprietary information, then he might send in the lawyers. But he has no reason to think that, so maybe it’ll be okay.’

  Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t discuss any garda business with her. But that was a stricture followed only loosely – there weren’t very many garda spouses who hadn’t heard a few stories over the years – and now the case was no longer his. And she knew the academic world far better than he did. He wanted to hear her take.

  ‘Graham Nicholls told me that Della was a genius. A once in a generation mind, he said. Which is exactly what Egan said about Carline Darcy. Except that Della’s results at the Christmas exams were middle of the road. Carline’s were stellar, so good that the college bent over backwards to accelerate her through her degree programme.’

  Emma nodded. ‘She really is exceptional though, Corm. Her work in the lab – she’s worked closely with James on finessing the drug design, you know that?’

  That wasn’t how Murtagh had described Carline’s involvement but Cormac nodded. He wanted her to continue.

  ‘I haven’t worked with her directly, but word around the lab is that the work she’s producing is something very special.’

  ‘Tell me about exams,’ he said. ‘Where do they take place, and who supervises them?’

  Emma shrugged, sipped her wine. ‘I didn’t study in Galway, so I don’t know that much about it. I think the exams are held all over the campus. Some of the sports halls are used for bigger ones – you see the signs going up at this time of year. I’d
imagine the university hires in invigilators to supervise.’

  ‘I know the exams are supposed to be marked anonymously. How does that work?’

  ‘If it’s the same as Trinity, each student would be given an exam number, and each number is allocated to a desk. When you arrive you go to your allocated desk, and when you fill in your answer sheet you write your student number on the top.’

  ‘But each student knows their own number, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So what’s to stop that student paying someone to take their place in an exam? Say I’ve got a brother or cousin, and they just happen to be brilliant at maths, or physics, or whatever exam I have this week. What’s to stop my brother taking my place in the exam, writing my number on the answer sheet and working away?’ Cormac asked.

  Emma frowned. ‘Well, the invigilators have a list of exam numbers and names. They go along the rows of desks before the exams start, and check everyone’s ID to make sure that they are sitting at the right desk. And then when they collect exam papers at the end they check the number on the exam paper against the one on the desk, to make sure that no one has substituted someone else’s number.’

  Cormac turned his wine glass on the table, drank. ‘Do you know how high the error rate is in photograph recognition, even among professionals? Passport officers have an error rate that lies somewhere between fifteen and twenty per cent, and that’s with passport quality photographs and training. I’ve seen those student IDs the college issues. The quality is shite.’

  Cormac stood up, walked to the desk in the living room and found his laptop bag. He looked through the papers inside until he found what he was looking for. He put it on the table in front of Emma. ‘That’s a colour copy of the ID that Della was carrying. That’s supposed to be a photograph of Carline Darcy. If it is I doubt her own mother would recognise her.’ The girl in the photograph had moved as it was taken, and the portrait was blurred. Her face was also tilted forward and downwards, so that her hair obscured part of her face.