Dying Fall

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Did the Principal mention closing classes or anything?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve only spoken to him over the phone. I’ll be seeing him at nine-fifteen, actually.’

  ‘How did he take the news?’

  ‘Without enthusiasm, shall we say. But I managed to convince him that people would be more interested in the actual murder than where it was committed.’

  ‘There was one years ago in a college,’ Ian put in. ‘A man cut his uncle’s head off. Put it in a locker. Aston University now. And the body. An old building in Suffolk Street. Pulled down. Long since. Lift shaft. If I recall.’

  ‘Next floor, Ian,’ I said kindly.

  He nodded. Groom paused between landings and looked about him.

  ‘There don’t seem to be many other people using these stairs,’ he said. ‘Any particular reason? Laziness apart, that is?’

  I looked round, guiding his eyes.

  ‘You can see the only rooms on the landings are loos. There’s been a series of petty little – incidents, I suppose you people would call them. The last flasher who tried waving his silly little prick at me ended up in tears. And I got him thrown out of college. If not from a fifteenth-floor window.’

  ‘Never thought of calling in your friendly neighbourhood constable?’

  ‘Loads of times. But the college has its reputation to think of. Which makes me wonder how they’ll deal with this business.’

  It was fortunate that they wanted refreshment this week, not next. Soon the canteen would be commandeered to house a new suite for the administrators, and we would have either to share with the students – who emphatically did not want us – or to eat sandwiches in our offices. But management had statistics on their side: few people ever patronised the canteen anyway.

  ‘Bit of a hole, isn’t it?’ said Ian, on cue, surveying through heavy breaths the cracked Rexine benches and cigarette-pitted floor.

  I nodded, but then concentrated on cajoling water out of Vesuvius, the ancient urn, into the thick green cups that Noah had used in the Ark. I threw some money into the empty honesty box, carried two of the cups to the table they’d chosen and went back to collect the third. A pallid sun had emerged and lit the men’s faces side on. Ian Dale, with his long, lined face, reminded me of Eyore, but Groom had little in common with Pooh apart from the colour of his hair. Even that was thinning. His complexion was a delicate pinky white that probably burnt to brick red in summer. Unlike Dale, who still wore that sports jacket, he looked very sleek in a suit, remarkably like one my last boyfriend paid an indecent amount for in the Aquascutum sale. It looked better on Groom, possibly because Kenji never made it above five foot six.

  ‘Right,’ I said purposefully. ‘How can I help you? I only ask because I’m teaching GCSE English in thirteen minutes, and I have to make it to the fifteenth floor to collect the register and then get back to the eighth. I think I can deduce that you don’t need to be shown the scene of the crime –’

  Groom permitted himself a wispy smile. Dale jumped in. ‘Been reading too much Agatha Christie, eh? There was a whole team of people here overnight, dear, going over the place with a fine-tooth comb. SOCOs.’

  ‘Scene of crime officers,’ said Groom quietly. ‘If you’re in a hurry, why don’t we get hold of Wajid’s file? We’ll come back to you if there’s anything we need to ask.’

  Presumably most of my colleagues were still stuck either in the queue to get in or in the foyer waiting for a lift. But Shahida was in the fifteenth-floor office, looking very much as though she shouldn’t be. When I introduced Groom and Dale, and explained why they were there, she forced a smile, then put her hand to her mouth and bolted.

  I stopped the men following her. Ian already had his mints at the ready, and Chris clutched something that looked incredibly like a bottle of smelling salts.

  ‘The first time I went into a morgue,’ he said, ‘was to attend a postmortem. It’s part of everyone’s training. I fainted. Occasionally I still do. I must be the only serving officer to carry these.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll help Shahida. And she prefers people to ignore it. Morning sickness.’

  ‘If she’s that bad, why doesn’t she take a sickie?’ asked Ian, still holding the mints.

  ‘Because people don’t,’ I said, ‘take sickies. Not unless they have to. Can’t let the students down. Or your friends, who get lumbered with extra work. Esprit de corps, or something.’

  ‘Sounds familiar,’ said Groom, as if awarding Brownie points.

  When she returned, Shahida accepted a mint. She explained our record-keeping system: one on computers, which might one day be networked, if ever the funds ran to it, and a paper-based one for computer-illiterates like me. She fished a manila folder from the cabinet next to the computer. ‘This is easier,’ she said.

  The folder held a copy of Wajid’s timetable – he should have been in Computer Science this morning. Someone would have to break it to the class. I pointed and looked at Groom. He nodded. His job, or one of his colleagues’. I reached for one of Dale’s mints.

  There was a list of Wajid’s qualifications: seven good GCSEs. A set of comments on his Christmas exams – A grades in all of them. And his punctuality and attendance were exemplary. Then there was a note in ill-formed handwriting asking if he might have leave of absence because his father had died. A college reference – he’d applied for a local-authority grant and his tutor, Shahida, had written a glowing report supporting him very strongly.

  ‘That’s odd,’ I said.

  ‘Odd?’ repeated Groom.

  ‘Yes. Applying for a grant on the grounds of extreme financial hardship.’

  ‘He was absolutely broke,’ said Shahida.

  ‘Broke students don’t wear designer jeans or a Rolex.’

  ‘They’d be cheap copies, Sophie,’ said Dale.

  They hadn’t looked like that to me, but he’d no doubt taken a closer look than I had. There wasn’t time to argue, anyway. I had a class to go to, and the phones had started to ring. I took the nearest. It was a parent. He wasn’t letting his daughter come to college till they’d caught the murderer. Just to make sure, he was sending her back to Pakistan for a holiday.

  I reported back to Shahida.

  ‘Shit! The bastard!’ she said, slamming her hand on a desk.

  ‘Seems reasonable enough to me,’ said Dale. ‘Can’t help worrying when you’re a parent. Wouldn’t want my girls taking any risks.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t marry her off just to make sure. A holiday in Pakistan is all too often a euphemism for an arranged marriage, officer. These poor girls end up with country cousins, real hicks some of them.’

  Groom’s eyes flickered to her wedding ring.

  ‘I was lucky. We fell in love: our parents got on and arranged it,’ she said.

  I gathered up my folder and the register and headed for the corridor. Groom followed. I stopped.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Chris. Of course.’

  Dale coughed gently. To urge discretion, perhaps.

  ‘Fire away,’ said Chris.

  ‘Why didn’t you suspect me?’

  A couple of my colleagues, late and anxious, pushed by. We exchanged terse greetings.

  ‘Would you rather we had? We wouldn’t have had the coffee and cakes in my room, for sure.’

  ‘Sandwiches. But why should you and all your colleagues assume I was telling the truth?’

  Dale fidgeted his feet. I looked at Groom, wishing I was taller so I could stare him in the eye. As it was, I must have looked like a supplicant.

  He looked down at me, crow’s feet of amusement spreading from his eyes.

  ‘Let’s see: you must be about five foot tall?’

  ‘Five foot one,’ I bridled.

  ‘And weigh not much above eight stone? And though you’re fit – very fit!’ He glanced across at Dale –‘you don’t break any records weight-training. Nor are you an ex-medical student.’
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  ‘You saw my file before you saw Wajid’s,’ I said evenly.

  He nodded, almost apologetically, and then regained the initiative. ‘So it was most unlikely that you killed that lad. You’d have to be an expert or extremely strong. Both, for preference. Whoever did it managed to get at the right angle between the ribs, the right distance from the spine. And he – let’s assume it was a he – had to be strong enough to cut through that jacket. Leather, remember.’

  ‘A lot of … of blood,’ I said.

  ‘Not from the point of entry, though. The blade severed the aorta. He bled to death very quickly. It’s just that all the blood collected in his chest cavity.’

  ‘So that when I –’ I gestured.

  Ian Dale offered another mint. I took it.

  ‘Quite,’ said Groom.

  There was a little silence.

  ‘Can I just clear one thing, so we know where to find you? We’ve seen the canteen, such as it was, and we’ve seen your office. Where’s the common room?’

  ‘There isn’t one. They had that last year for the Computer Suite. We use our offices for everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ echoed Dale. ‘You mean you eat and work and relax and everything there?’

  ‘Not much relaxation,’ I said, ‘as you’ll see if you hang around. But now we’re losing the canteen, yes, everything. There are offices – we call them staff rooms – like that scattered at intervals throughout the building, housing staff doing different types of teaching. Engineering. Beauty. Languages.’

  ‘Must make communications a bit tricky,’ said Groom, making a note.

  ‘Phone, rumour or carrier pigeon,’ I said. ‘And now I really must dash.’

  The ideal is to get a whole class together and attentive before you start teaching. Today, my GCSE group fell far short of that. I was a couple of minutes late myself, but it was a further five minutes before anyone else turned up. This was Karen, a girl whose classroom silence was always catatonic, and she retired to her regular corner to chew her hair and look morose. I tried asking about queues and lifts and she looked as if for once she might utter. As she opened her mouth, however, the door was thrown open and a green-uniformed young man strode in.

  ‘You,’ he said, pointing his radio at her. ‘ID.’

  The college management had evidently decided to tighten security. To be honest, I’d expected little more than a flurry of memos and a succession of protracted meetings to which the lower echelons, of which I was one, would not be invited. This sudden overreaction was as startling as it was unpleasant. I ached for the gentle but firm Winston and his long suffering colleagues, who endured constant abuse from the students but managed to keep a tenuous control over the incipient drug dealing, gambling and general nastiness which constantly threatened.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said.

  He contrived to ignore me.

  ‘I said, good morning. You are in my classroom, young man, and I expect you to behave as I expect anyone else in the room to behave.’

  His radio spluttered. He started to reply. I caught his eye. He left the room. Karen started to weep, silently.

  By eleven, there were still only six out of a possible twenty-four students. I gave them some work to prepare for the next week, and toiled back up to my office.

  There was sufficient uproar to divert attention from my minor role in last night’s affair. Where you have two lecturers gathered together, there are generally at least three opinions. Since I shared a room with thirteen colleagues and three hyperactive telephones, the noise level was unbelievable. I herded out into the corridor three or four students who’d strayed into the room and shut the door. In general they have more or less free access, but today would have to be an exception. For good measure, I locked the door.

  I joined the seethe and made what I could of the arguments.

  The basis of it all was shock and distress, there was no doubt about that. We valued our students, all of us, and were outraged that a young life had been wasted. But our outrage took different forms. Clearly one or two had been weeping. Another couple were scapegoating the porters, and were engaged in a loud argument with several others whose students had been subjected to the treatment I’d just witnessed. A couple of the older inhabitants were trying in vain to find cover for classes so they could go to a meeting to discuss the new security arrangements. A latecomer erupted into the room brandishing copies of a memo instructing us not to talk to the press, and warning us to be careful what we said to the police. I slipped a copy into my pocket to show to Chris.

  Another phone call, from the Principal’s secretary this time: I was bidden to see the Principal at lunchtime.

  I turned and caught Shahida’s eye. She nodded imperceptibly. Yes, she would back me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I’ve arranged to see poor Wajid’s family this lunchtime. Shahida and I are going to take them some flowers.’

  I said the same thing to Ian Dale when he saw us leaving the foyer, and he nodded with apparent approval.

  ‘Keep an eye open, eh, Sophie,’ he said.

  ‘I wonder what he was going to say,’ said Shahida, opening her Fiesta’s passenger door for me.

  ‘Ian?’

  ‘H’m. And why all this first-name business? I expected them all to refer to me as Miss. And to patronise me by being too considerate, just because I’m pregnant.’

  ‘You don’t show enough.’ I grinned.

  Shahida had had the foresight to order a spray from a florist in Handsworth, which was where we were heading. She parked on a double yellow line while I dashed in to pay for it.

  I read the A to Z while she picked her way through increasingly depressing streets. Then there was a pleasant surprise. Although the houses in the street we wanted were tiny two-up, two-down terraced villas, the street itself had obviously been on the receiving end of urban renewal money. All the houses had been reroofed and parking areas had been indented into the pavement, which was also new. Different road textures reminded motorists that they were not on the Super Prix circuit.

  Wajid’s house hadn’t been repainted, as some of the neighbours’ had, but someone had cleaned the old paint, and the minute paved front garden had recently been swept. Someone was trying very hard.

  The voices inside the house stopped as soon as Shahida knocked.

  She knocked again.

  At last it was opened, slowly, by someone I knew. Iqbal. Another William Murdock student. Ex-student. Not one of our successes. One or two of us suspected the videos he dealt in were not necessarily legitimate.

  ‘Is Wajid’s mother there?’ asked Shahida.

  He muttered something and shut the door.

  ‘And the same to you,’ said Shahida, taking my arm to steer me away.

  ‘You wouldn’t care to translate?’ To my shame, I didn’t even know which language he was insulting us in.

  ‘“Fuck off”, more or less. But he’s speaking Mirpuri, so I may have lost some of the finer nuances.’

  Angry but helpless, we headed back to the car.

  ‘Mirpuri?’ I repeated.

  ‘A variant of Punjabi. And his was more of a variant than most.’

  ‘Miss! Miss!’

  We turned.

  The door had opened again, and a slight figure was hurtling towards us. Yet another William Murdock face. Aftab, the star of my twilight GCSE-English class and one of the best students of the year.

  ‘I’m sorry. My cousin. He’s very upset. Wajid was his cousin, see.’

  Aftab was upset, too. He was ashen pale, with green smudges of grief below his eyes.

  ‘He shouldn’t have spoken like that. My aunt is very angry. She appreciates what you were trying to do. Please, come in.’

  I demurred. I didn’t want to intrude. Neither did I want to cause offence. I glanced at Shahida.

  ‘Just for a moment, Aftab. We have to get back to college.’

  The front door opened straight into the living room. We were aware of people
melting into the kitchen. An Asian woman grey with grief hitched her dupatta across her face. Aftab muttered something. This must be Wajid’s mother.

  Shahida passed over the flowers.

  With great dignity she took them and placed them on a hard chair. She took my hand between both of hers, then Shahida’s. She spoke slowly to Shahida. I looked covertly around the room. Like the outside of the house it was shabby but clean. There were pale patches on the wall as if someone had taken down pictures.

  Aftab saw me looking.

  ‘A custom. After a death in the family, some people cover mirrors. Others take down family photos. We don’t like to have photos where people are praying.’

  I touched his arm lightly. He nodded, and blinked hard.

  ‘The funeral?’ I said hesitantly. ‘Should the college …?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’ll be a very small family funeral. Islam teaches that we should bury our dead at once. As soon as the police give permission, we go ahead. Maybe tomorrow, they said.’

  ‘At the big mosque in Highgate?’

  ‘You wouldn’t even know it’s a mosque, miss – just a house in the next street. Very small. Just family. Then there’s the burial.’

  ‘Would it be OK if –’

  ‘The women mostly don’t go to the cemetery. It’s not very nice. Not for women. They have the coffin open, you see.’

  ‘What about one of the male staff from college?’

  ‘My aunt thinks you have brought the flowers from the whole college. You’ve done all you should. More would be …’ He gestured, hunting for the word.

  ‘Intrusive?’

  He nodded. I caught Shahida’s eye and we turned to the front door. Aftab opened it.

  ‘See you at college, miss.’

  ‘Take however long you need, Aftab. You’ll soon catch up,’ I said.