‘Well, we’ll clean this off,’ I mutter as I wipe the board. ‘And perhaps we’ll have no more of this silliness.’
My tone would better suit a room full of toddlers, I know. I need to reassure them, to be Mrs Nice again. I take a deep breath and launch us into Spot the Error. (I give them a passage with twenty errors in it for them to identify; they work in two teams. A team gets one mark for correctly identifying an error but loses two marks for an incorrect claim). It gets both competitive and hilarious and good humour is fairly rapidly restored.
When I get back to my office, I call David Scott to see if he knows about the Turks. I’ve given his card to the Amiels but I’m embarrassed to find that I’ve memorised his number. I find his mobile is turned off so I leave a text. I’m just leaving for lunch in the SCR when my office phone rings.
‘Mrs Gray?’ the voice asks, crisp and prissy. ‘This is Janet Chisholm here. The Principal would like to see you.’
Again? My day is sliding downhill by the moment.
‘Right, Janet,’ I say breezily. ‘I’m just going to –‘
She cuts me off.
‘Right away please, Mrs Gray.’
When I get over there, I’m kept waiting for ten minutes – a deliberate ten minutes, I would say. My reception is very different from last time; there will be no coffee and sandwiches today, I feel sure. Eventually a buzzer sounds on Janet’s desk and she tells me I can go in, without moving her eyes from her screen. When I get inside, I get no handshake this time, no greeting of any kind, in fact.
‘Well, I hope you’re pleased with yourself,’ he bellows. ‘This is what you wanted, I suppose.’
His face is extremely red and he seems barely under control. I resist the urge to run out of the room and I play for time, feigning confusion though I know, of course, what he’s talking about.
‘I’m not sure what you mean but if this is about Asil and Ahmet leaving –‘
‘Asil and Ahmet!’ he mimics in an exaggerated falsetto. ‘Asil and Ahmet! They’re all leaving, the whole bloody lot, every Turk in the college.’
‘Every Turk in the college?’ I am genuinely amazed.
‘Well, all the government-sponsored ones anyway,’ he mutters. ‘A few of the private ones may stay, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they go too.’
He has deflated a bit but he gets a second wind.
‘You know you’re responsible for this, don’t you?’
‘Me?’
‘You could so easily have prevented this. All I asked was that you had a quiet word with your policeman friend to get him to lay off a bit, but no. So in they went with their size elevens, upsetting the wives, making all kinds of insinuations about drugs and such, and this is the result. In future, the Minister of Education tells me, they’ll be sending their students elsewhere to learn English, somewhere with “more sensitivity to their culture”.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have thought –‘
‘I don’t care what you’d have thought,’ he thunders. ‘The point is, we’ve lost them. And it’s potentially a huge market. It’ll be vast when Turkey joins the EU.’
He comes across and looms over me.
‘I’m expecting your resignation on my desk tomorrow morning, Mrs Gray.’
‘You don’t mean it!’
‘On my desk!’
He is so very red in the face that a bit of my brain wonders if he’s going to have a stroke, while the rest contemplates a jobless future.
‘And if I don’t resign?’ I ask.
‘Then you’ll wish you had. I shall make life very difficult for you indeed.’
‘Then it sounds as if I’d better talk to my union,’ I say, and I turn for the door.
‘You’ve been grossly disloyal to the college, Mrs Gray,’ he calls out as I’m leaving, ‘and I don’t allow that, not on my ship.’
Not on my ship! I only just get out of Janet’s office before I start laughing. I am a bit hysterical, of course, and I find that my legs are a bit shaky, so I head for the refectory, rather than the SCR, and order a pot of strong tea and a plate of chips.
Back in my office I call Judith Roth, my University and College Union rep. She’s a New Yorker working in the Law department and she has a brisk, laconic style which I find reassuring. She advises me to start keeping a diary.
‘Open a file,’ she says. ‘Make a note of anything – anything at all – that could be construed as bullying or harassment, with times and dates. Anything in writing, including e-mails, keep as evidence. We’ll need it all if we want to argue constructive dismissal.’
Someone should have told me this during the years of my marriage. Constructive dismissal. Is that what my divorce was? I thought I chose to divorce Andrew, but did he, in fact, set out to make my life so impossible that in the end I resigned?
‘You will need to be strong,’ Judith was saying in her forceful twang. ‘I should warn you, men stick it out – they’re more stubborn – but most women give up in these situations. They decide it’s not worth the hassle.’
‘Not this woman,’ I assure her with as much conviction as I can muster.
‘Good girl.’
A busy afternoon of teaching puts other thoughts out of my head but as I climb the stairs to my office at five o’clock I realise that I’m dog-tired. I unlock the door, sling my briefcase across the room and find David Scott standing by the window.
‘I thought,’ I snarl as I kick the door closed, ‘you wanted the door between these offices kept locked. I don’t come wandering in there at will, even though it’s my office, so I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t wander in here whenever you feel like it.’
‘You sent me a text,’ he says, as though this justified his presence. ‘I’ve been moving heaven and earth this afternoon to try and stop my two chief suspects from leaving the country and I’ve got nowhere’. He looked at his watch. ‘They’ll be taking off from Heathrow as we speak. How have they managed it? What did they tell you?’
‘Nothing. Their government is calling them home.’
I’m emptying my briefcase and refilling it with stuff to take home.
‘Our revered principal, on the other hand,’ I tell him without looking at him, ‘tells me that it’s your fault. They’ve been whisked home to save them from being subjected to further police brutality and intimidation.’
‘Is that right? Well that fits. I went storming in to see Superintendent Lake this afternoon, demanding to know why my suspects had been allowed to leave, and he said the Chief Super wants to see me in the morning. He’s very concerned about the way I’ve handled the case, apparently.’
I laugh and it comes out as a rather unattractive cackle. ‘Well, that’s both of us with our jobs on the line then. I’ve been hauled over the coals for disloyalty and letting the college down. The Principal believes I could have stopped the Turkish exodus in its tracks if I’d tried.’
I stop and take a look at him.
‘Poor Asil and Ahmet. Did you bully and intimidate them? Did you frighten their wives?’
‘What do you think?’
I start to put my coat on, avoiding his eye.
‘We’ve all got a mean streak in us, I suppose.’
He comes over and helps me into my coat.
‘Do you suppose there’s anywhere we can get a drink?’ he asks.
Well, there isn’t anywhere at five o’clock in the afternoon, so I invite him home and open a bottle of wine, and after a while I go off to the kitchen to make us some pasta. Annie comes in and rolls her eyes and says she’ll just put a frozen pizza in the microwave and take it to her room, so David and I eat alone. I open a second bottle and it starts to feel more comfortable between us. We stop the ‘Mrs Gray’/ ‘DCI Scott’ business and we talk about anything but the case – holidays, books and films mainly. He’s really keen on archaeology and goes to interesting sites on his holidays. He knows how to talk about them without being nerdy or boring. It’s a congenial evening and I realise with a shoc
k that he’s my generation really, only six years younger than I am.
He seems in no hurry to go and I’m not sure what he has in mind, but at ten o’clock, because he has to see the Chief Superintendent in the morning, and because he’s a policeman and can’t drive with a bottle of wine inside him, I ring for a taxi and send him home.
16
FRIDAY: Investigation Day Nine
Chief Superintendent Hamilton’s office was on the fourth floor of the County HQ, with a view of distant hills in one direction and of water meadows in the other. His desk, however, sat between these two aspects, facing the door, and Scott wondered if he ever looked out of either window at all.
He was not, at first sight, impressive: a small man, mainly bald with a ring of sandy hair. His eyes were bright and humorous, though, and Scott had been warned that you underestimated him at your peril. He gestured Scott to sit down, consulted a single sheet of paper on his desk, sat back and surveyed him in silence. When he finally spoke, his question came from left field.
‘These Turks,’ he said. ‘Yurekli and Kurtal. Do you think they’re your men?’
Scott was taken off-guard. He had come prepared with defences to all sorts of accusations, but not for this. He could feel himself flailing a bit as he answered,
‘It’s a very complex case, sir. I can’t say at this stage. We’re pursuing several lines, but that’s hardly the point. As I told Superintendent Lake yesterday, I feel -‘
‘I can imagine how you feel, Chief Inspector. You’ve lost your key witnesses. No need to spell it out.’ He glanced again at the sheet of paper on his desk. ‘Bullying, intimidation, harassment. How much of that went on?’
‘I felt they were holding out on us, sir. They had information material to the investigation and they weren’t talking. I brought them into the station for questioning because I thought it would put pressure on them. And it worked. But the tapes will tell you no – ‘
‘I’ve heard the tapes. And the wives? What happened to them?’
‘DS Powell talked to them, sir, with a WPC. We took care that no male officers were present and DS Powell is very p.c. – very culturally aware, sir. I’m confident that she will have dealt sensitively with the situation.’
‘You said this was a complex case. What makes it complex? Summarise for me.’
‘It’s the background and activities of the victim. He was working as an informer for the Turkish government, which won him a lot of enemies, but he was also dealing in cannabis, cocaine and probably heroin. In addition, forensics suggest there could have been a sexual motive for the killing.’
‘Nice chap. And he had the protection of his government.’
The Chief Superintendent got up and walked away from the desk, his hands in his pockets.
‘I’ll ask you again, do you think Yurekli and Kurtal are the killers?’
Scott stood too.
‘No sir. It’s only a gut feeling but frankly I don’t.’
‘So it doesn’t matter that they’ve gone?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, sir. They’re a very valuable source of information about the victim.’
‘Precisely. And no doubt the Turkish government knows that too.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Of course, I’m not privy to what goes on at the highest level and I’ve no doubt this piece of business was fixed up at the highest level – minister to minister I would say.’
‘Why, sir?’
‘We can all read the newspapers. It’s no secret that a lot of the EU member states – this country in particular - are desperate to have Turkey join the club. As a bridge into the Islamic world, Turkey is crucial to the ‘hearts and minds’ approach to the Islamic threat. And the Turks themselves are equally desperate to join, for the most part – not the religious extremists, of course, but most of the rest. The only thing stopping it is Turkey’s less than attractive human rights record.’
‘I’m not following you, sir. How do these guys … ?’
‘Think about it, Scott. It’s hardly going to advance the cause, is it, to have a couple of Turks standing up in a British court and describing how the Turkish government routinely sends informers to spy and report on the private lives of Turkish students studying here?’
‘So the intimidation and harassment ?’
The Chief Superintendent waved an impatient hand.
‘Is a fig-leaf, yes.’
‘So, what do you want me to do now, sir?’
‘I assume you have some other lines to pursue?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then I suggest you go and get on with them.’
Which was all very well, Scott thought as he took the stairs down the four flights and headed for his car, but the other lines of inquiry weren’t proving particularly fruitful. Nor had they made any progress on Laurent Amiel. He was relieved, of course, that he hadn’t been taken off the case, but he couldn’t say he was enjoying it.
His mobile rang and he recognised the caller number.
‘Gina?’
‘David. There’s been another development, I’m afraid. Ceren Vural has gone missing.’
‘The Turkish girl? When you say gone missing - ?’
‘She disappeared some time during the night. She went to a film with Yukiko and Christiane last night and they dropped her off at her hall of residence at about ten. When they went to pick her up to go to class at ten to nine this morning, they got no answer. Her door was locked so they got the porter to unlock it. Her bed was made, they said, everything was tidy and she was gone. They’ve tried calling her mobile but it’s switched off. Sound familiar?’
‘You sound upset.’
‘I am. Laurent is flaky. He may just have taken off, and he can probably take care of himself. But Ceren is so young and she’s been so protected up till now. She’s never been away from home before. Even when she did her undergraduate degree she lived at home in Ankara. I personally told her parents that we’d look after her here. I feel we’ve let her down.’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll get a team on to it and I’ll be over myself later. Will you be free?
‘I’ll be free at twelve. I’ll see you then.’
As he drove to the campus, Scott acknowledged to himself that he was looking forward to seeing Gina again. Last night had been unexpected, to say the least. She had been different at home: less spiky, less superior, less amused by him. He had enjoyed himself. He liked her: he liked the house, which was messier and less self-conscious than he had expected; he liked the wine and food, which had comforted his bruised spirit; he even liked the elderly cat and the sassy daughter, who’d asked him if he carried handcuffs in his pocket.
He was waiting outside her office at twelve and noticed how tired she looked as she reached the top of the stairs. Her eyes looked strained as she smiled at him and unlocked the door.
‘Have you been over to Ceren’s room yet?’ she asked.
‘No, not yet. I’ve got officers in there now. I’ll go over in a minute. I just want to ask you a few questions first.’
She sank into an easy chair by the window and he pulled a chair over to join her.
‘I asked her, and she denied it, so now I’m asking you – do you think there could have been anything going on between Ceren Vural and Yilmaz?’
She looked at him in astonishment.
‘Ceren and Ekrem? Absolutely not! None of the girls could stand him – he was a creep.’
‘But Ceren was upset the day the body was found. She’d obviously been crying when I saw her and she was on the verge of tears through most of the interview.’
‘Well, maybe she was just shocked – and scared about talking to the police.’
‘Maybe. Have the other girls always been as protective of her as they’re being at the moment?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You said they walked her to her room last night and then went to walk her the few yards to class this morning. Could they have thought she was in danger?’
‘Oh God, I don’t know. I don’t seem to know anything at the moment. Usually, I pride myself on knowing everything that’s going on with my students – a real mother hen I am – but there seem to be all sorts of undercurrents with this lot and I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘Christiane and Yukiko seem to be together a lot. Could they be an item?’
‘There you are, you see! I’d never thought of that. You have a far more colourful imagination about my students’ love lives than I have. But the answer to your question is no, actually. Yukiko’s not a lesbian – she fancies you for a start.’
‘Don’t be absurd.’ He was furious to feel himself blushing.
‘It’s true. She gets all fluttery whenever she mentions you.’
Time to shift ground, he thought.
‘What’s the atmosphere like in the class at the moment? Were they surprised to see the Turks go? Do you have the sense that anyone knows more than they’re telling?’
‘I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I think they all know what’s going on. I picture a Murder on the Orient Express scenario - they all did it and now they’re having to silence Laurent and Ceren – and anybody else who’s flaky. Sometimes I think they know nothing and don’t really care. I told you about the grammar exercise that ended with The man was crushed didn’t I? I couldn’t work out who manipulated that, if anyone. And then there was this latest message, The criminal was executed. They all sit there looking at these things and they’re just mildly embarrassed, as far as I can see. Embarrassed for me, I think, as though it’s in bad taste.’
‘I wasn’t thinking Orient Express as much as Seven.’
‘Someone’s punishing my students, you mean? I’ve got Kevin Spacey in my class?’
‘Well, it’d have to be two someones, in fact. I’m convinced one person alone couldn’t have killed Yilmaz.’
‘But who would want to punish Ceren – or Laurent? I can see that someone might decide to get rid of Ekrem because of his drug dealing – and because he was horrible - but Laurent does no harm to anyone but himself, and no-one could be more harmless than Ceren.’
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