by Maxine Barry
And then he’d mentioned that name. The name she’d never allowed herself to even think of, over the last ten years or so.
Aldernay. Brian Aldernay.
And she knew it was all up.
After Sir Vivian had stumbled off, after giving her a slurred and rather jumbled speech about honour, and doing the right thing, and resigning, thus saving Oxford from a scandal, and all that other guff, she’d wandered around the room, stunned, but smiling and flirting in all the right places.
At first, she’d felt nothing but fear. It was all over. She’d be shunned and ruined. Then came anger. Why did this have to happen now, after so many years of silence? Then began her self-justification stint. After all, what had she done that was really so bad? She hadn’t killed that brilliant young man, Brian Aldernay. She had, in fact, been a genuine admirer of his. She’d been his supervisor for two years, taking over after his old one had died of a coronary. She had been sad when she’d learned that he’d died in such a senseless and wasteful way. But she was hardly to blame for fate, was she? And besides, why should all that brilliant work go to waste?
She’d known for some time that the thesis he’d been researching and writing was a far superior work to her own. And so the idea had just naturally come to her. They were researching in very similar fields. Few people knew of her exact thesis composition—like all academics, she kept her cards close to her chest, always worried that someone might steal her ideas.
In the darkened streets of Headington, all these years later, Rosemary Naismith paused to laugh grimly at her thoughts.
Then she continued her torturous path through the maze of houses, her thoughts still on that fatal night, and on Brian Aldernay.
After his death in that biking accident, she’d quickly come to realise that Brian too, had kept his cards very close to his chest. Only she really knew the full extent, knowledge, and the brilliant theorising that epitomised his work. And, really, it had all been so absurdly simple. His wife had had no idea what he’d been working on. Didn’t even express an interest. She’d only wanted to take his work back home north with her because it was a reminder, a keepsake of him. A keepsake! That brilliant, original theory?
She’d made an excuse to keep it for a while, and had feverishly photocopied every chapter. Every reference. Every scrap of notes, before handing it back. And then began the slow turn around of her own fortune. She began to discuss her work a little here and there, dropping it in the right ears, preparing the ground. Her college came to learn that their Research Fellow was rumoured to be getting ready to hand over a blinder of a D.Phil.
It had taken her barely six months to refine and complete Brian’s original theory. At first, when it had been so well received, and had earned her a full Fellowship of her college, she’d been scared, sure that someone would crawl out of the woodwork and expose her. An old room mate of Brian’s, perhaps, who might have been allowed to read a few bits and pieces, just enough to piece it all together. Or another psychology Don that Brian might have consulted.
Looking back on it, it had really been quite a gamble.
But it had paid off, she thought proudly. For years, it had paid off. Her future was secure. Her reputation, on that one thesis alone, had been made. It was as she’d always thought—fortune favours the bold.
And then, all those years later, at a Prize-giving Dinner, a boozy old fool had brought her world crashing down around her ears.
For half an hour she’d toured the party, her mind in turmoil. She tried to think up a convincing excuse for resigning from her college and from academic life, but couldn’t think of one. Besides, she didn’t want to. She loved it at Oxford. Loved having men fear and respect her because of her awesome brain power, as well as her sexy ways. She enjoyed the privileges, status and lifestyle that went along with being an Oxford Fellow.
And, at some instant during that evening, she knew that she simply could never give it up. But how to keep it, that was the question. Sir Vivian, she knew, was not the kind of man she could seduce. Which was a shame. A quick affair, then a threat to tell the ill wife, and he’d have been forced to keep quiet, and none of this need ever have happened. Nor was he a man who was likely to respond to tearful pleas. He had too much love for Oxford to allow her to continue to teach in his beloved University. And she knew he’d hardly be open to a financial bribe, even if she had been in a position to offer a substantial one—which she wasn’t. He was already far more wealthy than she’d ever be.
And so he had to die.
Rosemary paused in the dark streets now, looking around her at the mostly dark houses. People wouldn’t be coming home from work until at least five o’clock.
When the thought had first come to her—that she must kill Sir Vivian Dalrymple—she’d been sipping sherry and talking to one St Bede’s many theologians. A man of God.
It had made her feel slightly sick.
But it hadn’t stopped her thinking.
How to kill a man? A woman couldn’t do it physically—not even the fittest of women could reasonably expect to be able to strangle even an older, drunken man. They just had too much superior upper-body strength.
She needed a weapon then.
A knife? There were plenty at the party of course, on the meat trolley. But a knife was too messy. It left too much blood, too much of a forensic trail. She’d be bound to get caught. And then, barely a few seconds after making the decision to become a killer, Rosemary remembered Pete.
And his compound bow.
Pete had bought the newest bow about a month ago. He’d been so pleased with it and eager to show it off that he’d taken her out into the woods to demonstrate it. He didn’t want to take it to his usual archery club until he’d mastered it. His professional pride wouldn’t let him be seen with such a wonderful masterpiece until he could use it like a maestro. Which meant top-secret practising.
And Rosemary, always intrigued by the unusual and the exciting, had gone with him. And learned how to use it right along beside him. For Pete had been only too pleased to show off his prowess, and to be the teacher for once. Usually it was Rosemary who held the upper hand. Having her in the role of learner, for once, had been irresistible to him. He was just a jock—true, an Olympic jock, but nothing more, and Rosemary knew he’d always felt secretly inferior to her. It had always amused her and allowed her to keep the upper hand.
And that night, she’d almost gloated at the way her luck always held. Even when life dealt her a blow, she didn’t sit still for it, but would always meet it head on.
So now she had the perfect weapon all ready and waiting. And she knew how to use it.
The decision made, she’d left the party, racing to Pete’s home in her car, and furiously thinking up some excuse to borrow the bow. In the event she hadn’t had to bother. She got back there to find half his bags packed, and Pete himself missing.
She knew where he’d be of course. In the pub or at a party somewhere, getting drunk and telling some beautiful girl that he was an Olympic champion. She didn’t care. She’d taken the bow from the cabinet he’d cleared out and used especially to house his archery equipment, selected some bolts, and returned to the party.
And there she’d waited in the car park for Sir Vivian to make his way from the party to his room.
Then she’d followed him in the shadows until he was about to enter his residence block.
And then she’d killed Sir Vivian Dalrymple.
She’d put the bow back in her car and slipped away. Only to realise, before she’d gone a hundred yards, that she was being incredibly stupid. Shock, she supposed, had numbed her brain for a few minutes. She’d re-parked the car and returned briefly to the party. Laughed. Drank a bit, making sure several people would remember her and note the time, and then drove herself, and the compound bow, safely home.
Once there, she’d returned the bow to the cupboard and waited up for Pete to return home, all the while feeling curiously calm.
And since then
Pete had packed up the remainder of his gear and had left, taking his bow with him. He was, she knew, on his way to America, where he did his serious training. The world championships were coming up. Which meant that he’d taken the murder weapon with him, all honest and above-board. It would travel overseas with its own licence, all legal and untraceable. The police would never find the murder weapon here now, no matter how much they tore Oxford apart looking for it, and she was free and clear.
Sir Vivian was dead.
But it hadn’t ended there. On no. If only it had!
Instead, she’d begun to hear rumours that Callum Fielding was asking questions, as was that media-bitch, Marcheta Kendall. Apparently, the police had Callum in their sights as a main suspect—which was sort of funny in its own right, when you came to think about it, she mused now grimly.
Unfortunately, it had probably scared Callum into doing some serious thinking. And worst of all, he’d been at the party that night as well, and had heard Sir Vivian spouting off about how someone had been a cheat and a liar. Which had given him a starting point. He also knew the old man very well, which would give him an advantage over the police.
And with the supermodel egging him on, who knew how long it would be before he finally found out what Sir Vivian knew? The librarians at the Bodleian and other places would be only too happy to let him know just what Sir Vivian had been researching lately. And just one little thread leading back to Brian Aldernay’s thesis, and she’d be on the hook again.
Rosemary, rather short-sightedly, didn’t fear the police. She was positive she hadn’t left any forensic evidence behind her on the night of the murder, and didn’t believe they’d ever catch her, let alone convict her. But Callum’s brains, and Marcheta’s money and clout, were something else again.
She needed an out. Just in case.
Which was what she was doing in that particular cul-de-sac, walking cautiously up to the door of that particular house, in the late autumn afternoon.
She rang the door bell and glanced yet again over her shoulder. She must stop doing that! There was no one there and nothing to see.
She saw the little glass spy-hole in the door darken briefly, and knew she was being scrutinised.
A moment later the door opened and a short, dark, swarthy face appeared around the crack. He beckoned her in silently.
Rosemary quickly walked inside. The door was closed rapidly behind her.
The house was uncarpeted. She was led into a living room, where the furniture was cheap, and the whole room had the look of a place that was a temporary stop only. Which is what it was.
Seated at a table, rising and looking at her suspiciously was a man she’d never seen before. Young, and incredibly good-looking, with the raven black hair and soulful black eyes of a true Arab. She turned around, eyeing the man who’d let her in with a warm smile. ‘Hello, Faisal.’
The swarthy man didn’t smile back. He nodded stiffly. ‘Dr Naismith.’
‘Please, call me Rosemary. Can’t you do that, Faisal? For Ahmed’s sake?’
Faisal’s lips twisted grimly. ‘Rosemary.’ He said it with forced politeness.
Rosemary knew Faisal had never liked her. He had a typical misogynist’s attitude to women. Keep them veiled, pregnant, and out of men’s business.
She knew that, as an Oxford Fellow, Faisal resented her even more. She was living proof that women were capable of rising to the top in any field, given the social opportunity to do so. And since he was fanatically loyal to Ahmed, and had always been deeply jealous of her hold over him, Rosemary realised she was in the presence of a man who probably hated her guts.
She smiled. ‘I need a favour, Faisal.’
The stocky man stiffened. A look of disbelief settled over his face. Then a smile. A rather nasty smile.
‘So, even in the west, women still need men, Dr Naismith?’ he said, his voice thickly accented.
Rosemary shrugged one shoulder, and decided it was time to capitalise on her connections. ‘Have you heard from Ahmed recently?’
Faisal’s face fell. ‘No. We think he has been captured by the authorities.’
Rosemary felt genuinely sorry. She knew what happened to freedom fighters (or, as the government preferred to call them, terrorists) in Ahmed’s country.
Death.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Faisal. Truly.’
Faisal inclined his head stiffly once more. ‘What is it you want, Dr Naismith?’
Rosemary smiled again. ‘I want a bomb, Faisal,’ she said softly.
The stranger behind her suddenly shifted, no doubt in stunned surprise. He didn’t altogether share Faisal’s distaste for western women, and had been running his eye appreciatively over the blonde woman’s body. A bit long in the tooth for him, of course, but then it was said older women were more inventive. And needy.
Now he felt shocked to the core.
Faisal, however, merely smiled crookedly. ‘Oh? Any particular sort?’
Rosemary shrugged. ‘A car bomb?’
When she’d first met Ahmed, he’d been wary of telling her what he did. But, over the months, as he came to realise that Rosemary’s gypsy soul would thrill, rather than shrink, from his world of violence and politics, he’d gradually introduced her into his world. Soon, she could talk of guns and hostage taking and death, as easily as she could talk of Freud versus Jung.
Faisal looked at her steadily for a few moments, then nodded his head towards the kitchen area.
‘Follow me.’
The younger man suddenly let rip in a burst of agitated Arabic. Faisal curtly shut him up.
In the kitchen, Faisal lifted up a hidden trap door in the floor, disappeared for a few minutes, and then returned. During that time, the stranger prowled and scowled. When he saw what Faisal was bringing back up from the hollowed-out cellar, he once more broke into a rapid spate of Arabic.
Faisal continued to ignore him.
He closed the trap door, re-covered it with the dirty square of linoleum that had covered it, and placed on the well-scrubbed kitchen table a small, rectangular box. It was about the size of an old video cassette. There were two buttons, one red, one green, on the right-hand side.
Rosemary looked at it with avid interest. ‘This is it?’
Faisal nodded. ‘Simply push the green button. The red button will come on. Exactly five minutes after that . . . boom!’ He waved his hands in a big circle in the air.
Rosemary nodded, reached for it gingerly, and put it in her bag, careful that nothing pressed against the buttons.
She turned to look at Faisal. ‘Faisal, I could kiss you.’
The older man took a quick step back, an appalled look on his face. Rosemary laughed, and walked to the door. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see myself out.’
She was going to go straight to St Bede’s, and have a quiet chat with Callum and see if she could gauge just how much he’d learned.
When she was gone, the young handsome Arab turned to Faisal, a look of amazement on his face. He would never normally even think of questioning his cell leader, but he couldn’t help but satisfy his curiosity.
‘Why did you give her that bomb, Faisal?’ he stuttered, his eyes round as saucers.
Faisal shrugged. ‘For Ahmed. He loved her. And she never betrayed us,’ he added grudgingly.
The younger man shook his head. ‘No, Faisal. I mean, why did you give her that particular bomb? Farquar said he wasn’t sure that it would work properly. It was a new design. It hasn’t even been tested.’
Slowly Faisal began to smile. ‘That was why I gave her that particular bomb, my little pomegranate!’ he laughed, turning to caress the handsome man’s cheek gently. ‘Now it will have its field test. And if it doesn’t work and explodes when she sets it, well, none of us need get hurt. And if it doesn’t perform as it should . . .’ he shrugged. ‘Well, it will be no skin off our noses, will it? Hum?’
And he leaned forward and kissed the younger man on the lips.
He
took this politely, but when his cell leader moved away, he surreptitiously rubbed his mouth with the back of his hands.
But he knew he would die for Faisal. Because Faisal had just shown why he was a cell leader. He was clever, and unscrupulous, and could turn any situation into their advantage.
The cause was lucky to have him.
* * *
Outside, in the darkness, the car bomb in her handbag, Rosemary drove towards St Bede’s.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nesta stretched on the uncomfortable couch, and reached for her notebook. Outside it was fully dark, and the orange streetlights filtered through her thin curtains, casting an eerie orange glow around the shabby room.
She tucked her legs more comfortably beneath her, and shivered a little. She looked around her for her coat, then shook her head. Shivering a little in her cold bedsit was one thing—just a trifle sad. But hunched up in a coat in her bedsit was bordering on the pathetic! She laughed, but only, she admitted to herself with scrupulous honesty, because she had a way out. Soon, she knew, Lisle was going to ask her to move in with him permanently. Or perhaps suggest that they go house-hunting together.
She’d never been so sure of anything in her life.
She tapped her pen thoughtfully against her notebook, but thoughts of her father, and his cheating supervisor were, for once, a long way off.
Lisle.
To think that one man could change your life forever, and with just—what? A look? A word? She didn’t know. She only knew she was no longer the same person who’d left Durham just a few weeks ago. Then she’d been this young girl who knew nothing of life. She’d just graduated with a B.A. in psychology, but what did she really know about herself?
She thought she’d been given a raw deal, a man who’d cheated on her. But people often said that first love was the hardest. Except, of course, she knew now that it hadn’t been love. Or at least, not the same kind of love as the love she’d found with an Oxfordshire copper.
She thought then that she’d been alone. Now, she knew she would never be alone again. First there would be Lisle. Then, a few years down the road, children. Then, decades later, when the children had left, it would be just Lisle and herself. Then, after that grandchildren. Then old age, together. What more could she ask for?
