Dying Fall

by Judith Cutler

  He shook his head. ‘Can’t miss college. Got to get those A levels. They’re asking two As and a B for Law. If we can’t have the funeral, I shall be in tomorrow. Without fail.’

  The rest of the day was unnervingly quiet. The green-uniformed security men were still around, but had evidently been instructed to show more sensitivity. At the end of my last class, I sought out Winston, the porter.

  He was sitting in the cleaners’ rest room, what looked like a physiology textbook open on his lap.

  He got up when he saw me, but I perched on a large drum of cleaning liquid, and he settled again.

  ‘Fascinating stuff,’ he said, tapping the book. ‘When I’ve qualified maybe I should look into it. Pathology. The stuff those guys could tell from one wound. Amazing.’

  ‘How did you get on with them?’

  ‘I just a porter, man. I don’t know nothing, man,’ he said, his Afro-Caribbean lilt much exaggerated.

  ‘Don’t give me that, Winston, or I’ll set your mum on you.’

  ‘She does it better than me!’ he said, his accent returning to normal.

  ‘’Course she does. More practice. They obviously didn’t suspect you, anyway. Not if you’re here.’

  Winston was, after all, the right size. As tall as Groom, at least, and very powerfully built. He bowled a wicked in-swinger, very fast indeed. He’d had trials with several county sides, and had received a couple of offers. But he’d also been given a place at St Mary’s to read Medicine, and would be leaving for London next September. Meanwhile he earned enough to live on and save, and enjoyed playing the sleepy dim giant. And the students respected him.

  ‘Gave me a tough time, Sophie. And I reckon they’ll want to hassle me again. All they need is a motive.’

  ‘Have you got one?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I told them, I reckon it’s some Muslim Mafia business. And maybe they believe me.’

  I touched the textbook.

  ‘Do they know about this?’

  He shook his head again. ‘No, man.’

  ‘I’d tell them, Winston. Before someone else does.’

  On my way back up the building, I stopped off at the Departmental Office, ostensibly to check my pigeonhole for mail but in reality to catch my breath and rest my leg muscles. Straight into the bin went a load of brochures for books the college couldn’t afford – God knows why they’d found their way to someone as lowly as me anyway. A fistful of memos; I’d check those later. Some telephone messages. One was from the Principal cancelling the lunchtime meeting and asking me to phone his secretary. One from a friend I was suppod to be meeting for a drink: he’d got flu. And one from George – what the hell was going on at William Murdock? He’d see me on Friday, after the choir’s rehearsal and the MSO’s concert.

  When I reached the fifteenth floor, I found the office unlocked and apparently deserted. So much for our new enthusiasm for security. Then I realised I wasn’t alone. Shahida had her head down on her desk and was fast asleep. I’d meant to invite myself round to fill the gap in the evening left by Carl, the man who’d invited me for a drink. Shahida’s mother cooks the meanest samosas I’ve ever eaten, and keeps her daughter supplied. If I gave the smallest hint I was lonely, she’d offer at once. But clearly she needed rest more than I needed company. I gathered my marking up quietly, found my coat, and padded out. I locked the door behind me.

  I must have some nasty masochistic streak which refuses to let me leave my bike at work and take a taxi, even when it’s dark and dirty on the roads. I got wet through just reassembling it, and found I had to battle the long haul up to Five Ways against the wind. By sticking to the gutter I overtook the cars forming a solid jam. At Five Ways itself, a monster traffic island controlled at peak times by lights, I simply took illegally to the pavement. I’d seen enough blood recently to convince me that I didn’t want any of mine to be shed.

  And I didn’t want to go home. It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t want to be alone. I promised myself I could stop off in Harborne and spoil myself with a bag of goodies from Safeway. Whiskey – I’d finished the last of the Jameson’s last night in an attempt to sleep; a packet of mixed salad; chicken tikka; a small baguette; continental butter. And then I dithered by the check-out. Wouldn’t it be nicer to take myself out for a curry? But I would still have to come back home and it would be even later, even lonelier. I told myself that I was being stupid, added a box of Belgian chocolates to my basket and paid.

  My postal address is Harborne, what the classier Sundays refer to as the Chelsea of Birmingham. Balden Road, however, is almost in Quinton, a bastion of suburban respectability, full of identical semis. Mine is joined to its neighbour by the hall, rather than the living-room wall. It is mine purely because of the failure of one of my relatives to make a will. To the rear are the extensive and expensive gardens of FitzRoy Avenue. The neighbours to whom I am not attached aspire to move, and meanwhile subject their house to an endless succession of improvements and extensions. Since their drive is more often than not occupied by a skip, their cars spread across my frontage and that of my other neighbour, Aggie, whose carless state and uneven distribution of aitches enable them to patronise her or, better still, ignore her. I get on very well with her, however: she is a sternly fit septuagenarian, who guards my house as fiercely as she guards her own. I thought I would pop round to see if I could borrow some sugar later in the evening – not for the sugar, of which I had two bags in the pantry, but for her company.

  But Aggie had put a note through my door: her granddaughter, the one who was expecting her first child, Aggie’s first great-grandchild, had flu, and Aggie had gone down to Tewkesbury to nurse her. Would I keep an eye open for the binmen and make sure they didn’t leave the black sack to blow away? If she wasn’t back by the weekend, could I water her plants?

  I stuck the note on my kitchen corkboard.

  The house was too quiet. I seemed to rattle round in it. I went round switching on lights, drawing curtains, checking doors.

  I must have been suffering from PMT or delayed reaction or something. My home is usually a positive refuge and yet now it seemed hostile. Even the cars outside seemed threatening: surely I hadn’t seen that big white van before? It was the sort that was ubiquitous round college, generating the rumours of the Muslim Mafia that Winston had half-joked about. But they were not usually found round here. Even as I looked, however, someone got in, and drove it away. I wished they had remembered to put the headlights on.

  George always looks anxious if I drink spirits before a meal, not because he’s afraid I shall become an alcoholic but because he says it’ll destroy the sensitivity of my palate. Bother George! I reached for the Jameson’s.

  Helen, I could phone Helen. She was always happy to share a glass of wine and a moan about teaching. I could phone and invite myself over.

  Except she had a migraine. The GNVQ group always gives her a migraine. Her husband was just taking the kids to McDonald’s.

  Nothing for it, Sophie, but another finger of whiskey, and an assault on your marking.

  In the end it wasn’t so bad. The food perked me up. I found a good concert on Radio Three, and the essays were better than I had dared hope. And George phoned. God knows how much the call cost him. He wanted to hear all about the goings-on at college, and to moan about their conductor.

  ‘But I thought Ottaka was good? All those recordings?’

  ‘As I’ve said before, it’s one thing to sound good in a recording studio, another to bring everything together on stage. If we knew what was good for us we’d play it like he’s conducting it. That’d show him. And d’you know what the bugger wanted? Only to rewrite Beethoven’s Fifth!’

  Beethoven was George’s passion.

  ‘How?’

  ‘You know that bit at the start? Po-pop-pop-poooom? For the horns? Well, Mr Ottaka thought it might be better with a couple of bassoons.’

  ‘Don’t tell me: you and Jools decided to show him it
wasn’t!’

  He’d spent the whole morning working on new reeds. Some musicians bought them ready-made. Jools did; George didn’t. The reed affects the sound a woodwind instrument makes, and George considered it too important to leave to anyone else. On this occasion he’d persuaded Jools to be his partner in crime. So when at afternoon rehearsal Ottaka put his new orchestration into practice, the hall echoed with what sounded like a massive fart. Ottaka changed his mind, and in five minutes the MSO would be playing Beethoven as Beethoven intended.

  ‘Thank God we’ve only got one more gig with him,’ George said. ‘Then Mayou rejoins us. At least he’s a musician, which is more than you can say for this guy. He’s on Radio Three tonight, with the LSO. Go and listen and see what you think. See you Friday.’

  I obeyed. Schumann’s Spring Symphony. So good I ended up singing along with it, forgot I needed extra whiskey, and fell asleep like a baby.

  Chapter Three

  Thursday. If I skipped lunch there’d just be time to nip down to collect my watch. The road from college to the Jewellery Quarter is so steep it was hardly worth putting the cycle back together. In any case, there’s an island that motorists prefer to shave rather than circumnavigate, and on more than one occasion my bike and I have ended up on the island itself. So I decided to go on foot. The wind had dropped to no more than a brisk breeze, and the sun had emerged from hibernation. Like Pooh, I hummed, but my choice was a bit of Carmina Burana. Probably a fairly vulgar bit.

  The watch was ready; the repair was cheap and guaranteed; and I remembered in time that I needed a pillar box. I had a red gas bill to post.

  I thought at first someone had stuck some of those children’s stickers all over the postbox. Then I looked more closely. There was a poor photocopy of the newspaper headline announcing Wajid’s death, and a red scrawled message.

  ONE DOWN, HOW MANY TO GO?

  I managed to get the worst of it off; then I turned my attention to the rest of the decoration – nasty little caricatures suggesting that the only criminals were Asian. British National Party. I forced myself to be calm. If I was to get the vile stuff off in one piece I had to be calm. I worked with fingernails and the nailfile. The police would see this.

  My anger carried me all the way back up the hill, past the security guards and into the foyer. I toyed briefly with the idea of correcting POLICE PERSONAL with my red pen. But I saw the face I wanted and gave it up, for the time being at least.

  Ian invited me courteously into the room. I expected it to be packed with computers and other useful equipment, but found little more than a couple of coats and a plan of the building.

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be much activity,’ I remarked, perching on a desk.

  ‘Time you got up to date, Sophie,’ he said, smiling with avuncular indulgence. ‘I suppose you were expecting us to be running the show from here.’

  ‘Well, I did expect what you get on TV: an incident room, do you call it?’

  ‘No need, these days. Telecommunication links and everything. We’d use a room at Ladywood nick if we needed, but really everything’s directed from Rose Road. Regional centre. Now, I don’t suppose you came to talk about policing in the West Midlands –’

  ‘No. I came to show you this. Found it on a pillar box down the road.’

  I dragged the unlovely collection from my bag and dropped it on a desk. He poked it with a biro.

  ‘Vile. Not much we can do, not unless we catch them at it. And we can’t watch every pillar box, much as we’d like to.’

  I took a deep breath and said nothing.

  He reached a large hand to crumple it up.

  ‘Don’t you have to report it to anyone?’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Anyone!’

  He stared at me: he’d never seen me angry before.

  ‘Can’t people be prosecuted for printing stuff like that?’ I pursued.

  ‘Who? Didn’t see anyone sticking it there, did you?’

  ‘They’ve left their address, Ian.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not my territory, Sophie. And I’m trying to find out who murdered young Wajid, remember.’

  ‘You don’t suppose there could be a connection?’ I asked dryly.

  He sighed. After a moment, he dug in a pocket and fished out a polythene bag.

  ‘There you are then,’ he said, shoving the papers into it. ‘Evidence,’ he added, with great irony.

  Someone had bought a kettle, and people who’d remembered to bring in mugs were drinking their first non-Vesuvius tea. The person who unwisely remarked it tasted better free was reminded tartly that we all had to contribute to the kettle and the milk fund. We’d already agreed to go independent in the matter of tea and coffee. There was supposed to be a washing-up rota but, having been in other places where cups grew green and furry, I suspected it would be more breached than observed.

  The students were beginning to drift back: that was the general consensus. Most people had classes at least 80 per cent full, and some of the absences could in any case be caused by flu. Two more of the staff had succumbed, and Shahida was looking ominously pale, but she claimed she had no more than a headache and insisted on returning to her class when break ended.

  ‘How’s young Aftab?’ I asked, as she gathered up her papers.

  ‘Not in. Funny, I thought he said he wasn’t going to miss classes on any account.’

  ‘The funeral?’

  She nodded. ‘Maybe I’ll phone him after class,’ she said. ‘He’s a good kid; be nice to offer him a bit of support.’

  We grinned at each other and went our ways, she to her Law A level, me to yet more GCSE English.

  If I stopped off at the supermarket without a list, I should forget three-quarters of what I needed. I sat at my desk and tapped my teeth with a pencil. Teabags, coffee and a mug. And kitchen towel, a bottle of washing-up liquid and a scourer. All for work, naturally. I had also better apply my mind to food. The freezer was depressingly empty – I’d cleaned it out at the weekend – and my fridge ditto, since I had been threatening myself with the direst of punishments if I didn’t defrost it soon. I braced my shoulders; I would do it straight away and reward myself with a steak; it was ages since I’d eaten red meat. Steak in a pizzaiola sauce. Yes and –

  The expression on Shahida’s face brought me back to William Murdock with a bump.

  ‘I just phoned Aftab,’ she said slowly, ‘and he’s not at home. They say he’s at college. Has been all day.’

  ‘Wagging,’ said someone.

  ‘Not like him,’ said his Sociology lecturer.

  ‘Not at all,’ I agreed.

  ‘Could be he needed some time to himself, I suppose,’ said Shahida thoughtfully. ‘But I said to call me if he didn’t get back soon.’

  I was feeling unpleasantly smug. I’d bought all the items on my list, to which I’d added a bottle of Valdepenas. I’d emptied the fridge, defrosted it, wiped it down and refilled it. And I’d managed to prepare some work for my Eng. Lit. group the following morning – Joyce’s Dubliners. Now for my steak.

  The garlic was just browning in the olive oil when the phone rang. Perhaps it would be George: it must be about the time for the concert interval.

  It was also the right time for the break in Shahida’s evening class, and more than time for Aftab to be home. But there was no sign of him, she said, her voice tight with anxiety.

  There was no point in telling her not to worry.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘the only thing I can think of is that they should tell the police.’

  ‘I’ve suggested that. But they say it’ll make it look as if he’s involved in the murder.’

  ‘It does,’ I agreed. ‘But not if you know Aftab.’

  ‘So what shall I do?’

  ‘Call the police?’ I said.

  The garlic was charred, and with it the pan. I put the latter to soak. Somehow steak wasn’t such an attractive prospect after all. Wrapping and all, it went into the freezer. Tomor
row, perhaps. Or the next day. Meanwhile I’d content myself with bread and cheese. If I could face the cheese.

  There’d be no call from George now: the orchestra would be on the way home. I wanted to leave a message on his machine, but had to be careful: if he thought I needed him, I wouldn’t put it past him to come straight over, no matter what time the coaches got back to Birmingham. In the end I just confirmed the arrangement for the following evening – that we’d meet in the pub at about ten.

  I’m terribly priggish about drinking and cycling, so on Fridays I always take the bus. I go straight from college to the choir rehearsal, and then to the pub. This Friday wouldn’t have been a good day for cycling anyway. It was blowing a gale already, and storm force winds were threatened for later.

  If I go down the road, there is a choice of two buses, neither of which follows the main Hagley Road into town. The Hagley Road is thick with traffic whatever time you use it; at rush hours it is solid. So I prefer either the 10 or the 103. On the bus I’d reread the Joyce short stories. Friday morning was the highlight of my week, a couple of hours with really interested students.

  The walk down the hill from Five Ways cheered me even further – I like March days, with the sun battling it out with the wind. To hell with the havoc to my hairdo: my only real extravagance is a regular visit to a classy stylist on Harborne’s High Street. All I have to do is shake my mop and it falls into place. I was in mid-shake, waiting in the queue to show my ID, when I saw Ian Dale, shoving his way into the building with none of his usual courtesy. With him was a young woman, whom I dimly recognised. I caught Dale’s eye; he gestured me over, and into the POLICE PERSONAL room.

  ‘You’ll remember Tina,’ he said.

  ‘Of course: YTS police, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Ah. And I got me a job in the end, too. DC Reed at your service, miss.’

  ‘Sophie,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘You haven’t seen this then?’ Ian threw on to a desk a copy of the local paper.

  ‘“Missing student kidnap fear”? Jesus, not Aftab!’