Dying to Write

by Judith Cutler

  As we retraced our steps, he said quietly: ‘I’d give a lot to find out what’s happened to our other oriental friends.’

  I nodded. ‘So would I. Chris, what information could be worth so much money? Drugs?’

  ‘Could be. But I’d expect a Chinese, not a Japanese connection. Have you heard from your friend Kenji?’

  I shook my head. ‘No time, really. I slept like the dead last night, and got rather overtaken by events this morning. By the way, a strip of my asthma tablets seem to have disappeared now. I hope you don’t mind – I asked Ian to phone Agnes to see if she’d got them.’ I wouldn’t tell him about the jogging yet. With a little luck he’d assume that my conversation with Ian Dale had been my first of the morning. ‘I suppose I could always phone him from here. But don’t tell me your colleagues in Japan aren’t beavering away.’

  ‘This CNN reporter of his might have picked something up that hasn’t reached them yet. It’s worth a try. Come up to my office: I’ll get the call put through for you.’

  His room was as disgustingly tidy as when I’d first seen it last spring. True, there were as many files on my desk at William Murdock, but they were relegated to a side table. And the stacks didn’t look as if they were about to cascade to the floor. He now had a small TV and a video player by his desk, and a ghettoblaster on a filing cabinet.

  While he spoke to the switchboard I stared at Harborne through his windows. When the number stated to ring, he passed the phone to me and left the room. It was a terrible anticlimax to have to call him back in again. I wanted to tell him how I appreciated his tact: perhaps smiling would do. I passed him the handset: he’d just be in time to hear the last of Kenji’s voice asking me to leave a message on his answering machine and the tone that told me to start. I left a message, though my accent was already rusty, and rang off.

  ‘Jesus! That sounded impressive.’ He perched on the edge of his desk.

  ‘I just asked him to phone me. And told him to pat his rabbit.’

  ‘Is that some ancient curse?’

  ‘Just his elderly angora. Cuddlier than a rat, but much worse at shedding hair. And it gave me asthma when it moulted.’

  Hugh had plainly been waiting some time when Chris returned me to reception, but he seemed to accept that life in police stations has its own immutable pace and shook hands courteously enough with Chris.

  Back in his car, he turned to me, a delightful gleam in his eye. ‘A chemist’s? And then – afternoon tea, perhaps?’

  ‘Boots is just back there,’ I said, pointing.

  Harborne may be part of a big city but it prides itself on having a village atmosphere. Amid the estate agents and building societies there are still some privately owned shops where the staff make it a point of honour to greet you by name. This is delightful when you are buying meat and vegetables but for various reasons I didn’t want my local pharmacist, who always provides exactly the right remedy for teacher’s throat or end-of-termitis, to help me select condoms. Hence Boots, nicely anonymous and in the same block as the restaurant we’d eaten at earlier in the week. Parking was a problem – Friday afternoon, of course – but at last Hugh insinuated the big car into a space. He looked at me inquiringly.

  If I sat and waited in the car, I suspected I might feel too passive. So I decided to accompany him. But I didn’t know if our relationship was up to giggling over the wild names on the packets. It seemed it might be: I’d been lurking discreetly by the vitamin pills when he turned to me, two rival packets in hand.

  ‘At least I shan’t be needing this sort,’ he said, pointing to the name – Arouser.

  I was just about to suggest that I’d always thought there should be a brand called Toughasoldboots, when I realised that the girl smiling from the far side of the counter was this year’s star GCSE student. ‘Hi, Marietta,’ I said exuberantly. ‘I can’t seem to find the earplugs.’

  We had just parked in front of my house when his car phone rang. I started to get out, but he gestured me back, and sat idly stroking my ear with his free hand.

  ‘Shazia,’ he mouthed at me. His voice became steadily less gentle. ‘For God’s sake! That’s totally unreasonable … OK. Can’t you? I suppose not. Bloody hell, I was just helping out – it’s really nothing to do with me.’ Then there was a long pause while he listened. Finally he snarled, ‘OK. In about half an hour, I suppose, traffic permitting.’ And hung up. If that’s the term for car phones.

  He released my ear, and stroked my cheek with his index finger in a curiously valedictory way.

  ‘Trouble at t’mill?’ I prompted.

  ‘Bloody right. Jesus, what do these people want? Blood?’

  ‘I’d have thought they’d had enough of that.’

  ‘That, my sweet Sophie, is where you’d be wrong. They want a teacher. They paid for two teachers, remember? One of the teachers is taken ill, so Matt arranges a substitute. The substitute carelessly disappears. And with appalling insensitivity to the needs of the deprived students, Matt gets arrested. The fact that he conned me into taking Kate’s place for a few hours now swims into the students’ consciousness: why am I derelicting my duty and not teaching them now?’

  ‘But you did it out of the goodness of your heart, not out of some contractual obligation!’

  ‘“Goodness of your heart,”’ he repeated, starting the car. ‘What a lovely pre-Thatcherite phrase!’

  ‘So where are we going now, Hugh?’

  ‘Where do you bloody well think? Back to Eyre House, blast and bugger them all! Because if they don’t get taught, they’re going to fucking sue. That’s why.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hugh parked, not very neatly, in the tutors’ car park and cut the ignition. Feeling the same awkwardness as before, I jerked my head at the steadily darkening horizon.

  ‘Getting a bit dark over Bill’s mother,’ I said, in my Oldbury voice.

  ‘Ah,’ he replied, Quarry Bank. ‘Be a bit damp for another run.’

  We nodded sagely, like two old codgers.

  He half turned to me. ‘Any road up,’ he began, half laughing, ‘you will –’ he hesitated just the right amount, and abandoned his Black Country accent – ‘come up for a drink tonight? I hate to expose you to … But those student rooms aren’t very …’

  I smiled and put my hand on his, palm to palm. ‘What time will you throw out the last of your clients?’

  ‘Oh, half ten. They can’t expect me to go on much later than that, surely? Or shall I put you down as the last one? For ten thirty?’

  ‘Hugh, everyone knows I’ve not written a word!’

  ‘But you’ll come up? Later?’

  ‘About eleven. Perhaps later than that. They’re bound to overrun their slots.’

  ‘Even with me teaching.’

  ‘Especially with you teaching,’ I said, letting my eyes hold his and laughing.

  Our hands gripped slightly before we released them. Even that made the muscles in my stomach tighten in anticipation. I was sprucing myself up for supper when someone tapped on my door.

  ‘Chris! You’re the last person I expected to see. I thought you were stuck in sunny Harborne.’

  He came in, shutting the door quietly behind him, and smiled bleakly. ‘I should be. And I shouldn’t be here asking you to do this.’

  ‘But you are here. And what are you asking me to do?’

  He sat heavily on the bed and opened a file he’d been carrying. When I sat down beside him, he passed me a photocopy of a letter.

  ‘The original,’ he said, ‘was printed by an ink-jet printer. Probably Canon. We can’t find a similar one on the premises. In Eyre House,’ he corrected himself. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘About the typeface or the contents?’

  ‘Either or both. Try the contents first.’

  I didn’t want to read the letter at all. I certainly didn’t want to read it with Chris looking on, all that weight of unexpressed emotion on his shoulders.

  My dearest love,
<
br />   After what has passed between us surely you can deny our love no more. It is time to speak out and acknowledge our passion to the world. I’ve got enough money for the both of us, I will happily support you while you strive for the success you deserve. I cannot bear the thought of you touching that woman, she is so beautiful, and all the things I am not. Please, please, stop, or I shall have to find a way of stopping you and do not speak to me of your wife! Every word you utter in her defence is a crime against love. I want to tell you to tell me how beautiful I am, my body rises to yours when you touch me. When we fuck, your beautiful cock raises me to the heights of passion and I gasp for more, I want to fuck and fuck …

  I stopped reading. Chris was watching me when I looked up.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘How authentic do you think it is?’

  ‘What’s its provenance?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sophie, stop hedging. I have photo-copied the first piece of serious evidence we may have found, and all you do is fend me off. Do you think Kate might have written this letter to Matt?’ he asked, speaking very slowly, as if to an idiot.

  ‘It would seem odd to me – but remember, I’m still a neophyte as far as computers are concerned – to write a love letter using a word processor or whatever. But I’m sure other people use them. You could polish each phrase, couldn’t you? Get it absolutely right. And no spelling mistakes, either. Hey, have you come across that American Christian program which won’t let you use rude words? It rejects things like “bastard” and “piss” and –’

  ‘Well, that is a help. We know for certain that this wasn’t written using that program, then. I take it the rest of the letter was too fruity for your maidenly eyes.’

  ‘I just don’t like the thought of reading other people’s letters.’

  ‘Especially if the incriminate their recipients.’

  ‘How does this incriminate Matt?’

  ‘We found it in his room this morning, Sophie. He denies ever having received it, of course, and he says –’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘No. I want to hear what you say. Do you think Kate would have written that letter to Matt?’

  I looked at it again. From the little I knew of Kate I would have expected her style to be economical to the point of self-effacement. And what was that about fixing Nyree? She had dealt more than adequately with Nyree, whose antics had clearly repelled poor Matt. Surely she was too sane to worry about Matt’s resistance for a mere week when she had – apparently – longer-term plans for him?

  Slowly, I shook my head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Instinct.’

  ‘Bloody hell! Is that all you can come up with?’

  ‘Chris, you know as well as I do it is possible to make a very good guess about the authorship of something by comparing two pieces of work. Experts do it all the time. Lit Crit, it’s called. I’m not a lit critic, but I’d say Marlowe didn’t write Shakespeare. If I were to read Kate’s stories and her novel, I might be happier about speculating. For what it’s worth, though, as an English lecturer, I’d say this is not the work of someone who wins prizes for her prose. What do you think?’

  He looked embarrassed. ‘It did strike me as being … not very original.’

  ‘Not even very grammatical.’ I sat staring at the letter. The second letter I’d read in this room in the space of a week. ‘Have you found out anything else about my little billet-doux?’ I asked. ‘Like the printer that was used?’

  He shook his head. ‘No trace of one in Eyre House.’

  ‘How does it compare with this?’ I tapped the paper.

  The expression on his face was comical. ‘Another Canon. Or the same one! Jesus bloody Christ!’

  ‘Careful,’ I said. ‘You’ll have the American Christians on you. You haven’t checked? OK, there’s still time. And before you start beating your breast and apologising for being inefficient, tell me how much sleep you’ve had since Tuesday night. And how long it takes to get over jet lag.’

  ‘I should have spotted it, Sophie.’

  ‘Hang on – we don’t know yet it if is the same printer. But if it is, it ought to clear Matt.’

  ‘Not necessarily. He might have a printer somewhere else.’

  ‘Like where?’

  ‘Anywhere except Eyre House! He wouldn’t need mains electricity – these things run off batteries, don’t they? Sophie, I just don’t know where to start looking. We’ve searched the grounds, we’ve been over the house, we’ve bloody occupied the stables: still no further forward. Someone nicks tampons and asthma sprays and antihistamines. Biscuits disappear. A rat pops in and out like a jack-in-the-box.’

  ‘And all you want to do is sleep. Chris, did you ever find Kate’s notepad and printer? Computer notepad, I mean – not her scribbling block.’

  He shook his head again.

  ‘Wouldn’t you just bet that these things were printed on it?’

  ‘Is that just a guess, or would you have any evidence?’

  ‘I can’t even remember the make of either the computer or the printer. I saw Matt carrying them, and spent about ten minutes sitting beside them. Matt might know the make.’

  He heaved himself to his feet. ‘Better go and ask him, hadn’t I?’

  ‘Why you and not someone on the spot? Why not treat yourself to an early night?’

  ‘You know something, Sophie? When I’ve asked him, that’s exactly what I’ll do. I shall go home and put myself to bed.’

  I got up and patted his arm. ‘That could be the most sensible thing you’ve said today. Mind you do it, eh?’

  ‘Wild horses couldn’t stop me,’ he said, and was gone.

  Supper must have been the grimmest meal ever taken at Eyre House. Hugh refused to eat with the students, saying he needed time to read the work that had piled up outside his room. Shazia was hardly speaking to what I suspected was the group who’d demanded their rights – Gimson, Toad, Mr Woodhouse and Tabitha.

  I thought that if I kept quiet while I picked my way through overcooked beef (they’d been too busy fussing to cook properly), I might pick up the odd smidgen of carelessly dropped information. Would Gimson suddenly weep contrite tears? Or Toad confess that he could keep his secret no longer? Not on your life. All the talk was about writing. What Hugh would say about this paragraph, how he’d feel about the new opening. The sci-fi student was discoursing about Matt’s inadequacies in that genre. Tabitha had gone so far as to write a short story and was anxious about it.

  I was a complete outsider.

  At last, their structures and metaphors and outlines and treatments exhausted, they turned to me for entertainment. But they didn’t get it. I quelled any attempts to question me with the erroneous but convincing statement that everything was sub judice.

  Eventually Toad got up, saying that since everyone was so bad tempered – I suspect he looked in my direction – he was going to practise his viola for a while. Gimson shuddered and, without leaving the table, ostentatiously started to read a Times he’d removed illicitly from the library.

  I left the dining room. The two constables in the student corridor nodded courteously. The older one asked if I was all right after the morning’s little upset.

  ‘Fine, thanks. Just a bit tired. And I’m stiff.’

  ‘That’ll be your bruises coming out from last night. You want to look after yourself a bit, miss.’

  I nodded. I was very tired, now I came to think about it. A couple of hours’ sleep before going up to Hugh’s room was a most desirable prospect. But it was one I’d better turn my back on. Hugh had found Matt a solicitor; I wanted to help find the real murderer.

  ‘I thought,’ I said, ‘I might go for a quiet walk. Just in the grounds. I might look for Sidney.’

  ‘That rat? Ade was saying one of the students saw him, not far from the stables. Didn’t try to catch him, of course. Just called a policeman,’ he concluded, in an ultra-r
espectable voice. ‘Make you bloody sick, some of these types.’

  He was clearly ready to embark on a quite justified diatribe against people who wanted others to help but were never prepared to do a hand’s turn themselves. But I hadn’t time to listen. It had just occurred to me what I ought to be doing.

  ‘Quite, quite,’ I agreed in the sort of voice I use to soothe irate principals. I almost spoiled it by laughing when I saw the poor man’s face – if I had a reputation, it was obviously not for being a quietly acquiescent type.

  I popped into my room, collected a jacket and casually set off for my ostensible walk. The constables nodded affably. I didn’t immediately leave, however. I slipped into the Library for something to read – today’s Guardian and a copy of The Rivals, a set text for A level next year. If Gimson could ignore house rules, so could I. I tucked them under my jacket and walked at what I hoped was an unobtrusive pace to where George’s van was parked.

  I got in but made no attempt to start it. I huddled down, wishing for something warm to wrap my hands round. August, yet, and hot and humid enough for thunder, but my hands felt cold. If it got any worse, I’d put on the extra jacket I’d slung over the passenger seat.

  Doing obbo was what detective fiction told me was the right term. One day I’d ask Chris what it was really called. Certainly it was boring and cold. When the idea had come to me, it had seemed quite neat. Someone, I was sure, was keeping Kate hidden somewhere not all that far from Eyre House. Someone who stole biscuits and tampons. One of the women? None of them had the sort of build I’d associate with using force, though of course Chris said there was no evidence of violence. To my shame I’d made no effort to get to know any of them, so I’d no inkling of whether they might have any motivation. Dared I narrow the field down to the men in the group?

  I could only act on what might be a poor instinct; if one of the men tried to leave the building, I would tail him. I would dearly have loved it to be Gimson, but my reasoning dismissed him. Easier to imagine was Toad. But as I’d passed his door I could hear him starting his practice.

  I certainly didn’t want it to be Naukez. He was the first out, calling something over his shoulder to Shazia as he set off to the Land-Rover. He reached a giant umbrella from within, shook it at her, replaced it and got in. She waved him out of sight.