The Girlfriend: A Josie Cloverfield Detective Novel

by Jack Carteret

  However, once my jubilation at simply finding the room had subsided, I stood there for what felt like a couple of minutes, trying to overcome nerves. Not just any old nerves, but big, shameful, jelly-belly nerves.

  I tried to build myself up with all the recent images which had served to make my blood boil; Liam being led away by the CID officers, snooty Fliss looking at me like I was some kind of grimy accomplice. Detective Inspector Malcolm Thorn sneering at me, my best friend, and my alleged crime of poverty.

  It took a few seconds to work, but by the time I’d got to DI Thorn, I was almost snorting with rage and could have kicked the door of the office down with ease. However, I tried the handle first and was gratified to find it unlocked. Taking a deep breath, I lurched into the room and closed the door behind me. I leaned against the wall of the office and listened to my terrified breathing for a few seconds.

  It was pitch dark in Matty Jameson’s office, and I felt along the wall for a light switch. Almost fearing to switch it on, I was rather glad that I’d finally summoned up the courage.

  There was nobody in there waiting to pounce on me for trespassing. Also, there were no windows at all. I was torn between feeling sorry for Matty Jameson and his obvious lower-end-of-the-scale-lecturer status, and relief that I would not be observed from the outside as I carried out my clandestine activities.

  The problem was, although I had been full of investigative zeal on my canter from the Quad, I had absolutely no idea what I should be looking for. There was another door, presumably leading to another room of Matty’s, at the back of his office. It certainly wouldn’t lead back into the corridor I had just tip-toed through.

  But first things first.

  I hurried to stand behind Matty’s desk and wiggled the computer mouse enthusiastically until the whirring of the fan and the flickering of the monitor told me that, like all other campus computers, Matty’s would spring to life somewhere in the next five minutes.

  As the standard Grantstone University screen saver came into view, I felt a little pang of disappointment. It wasn’t that I expected to see a happy-couple photo of Hannah and Matty suddenly come to life, but rather that I didn’t expect a long coated, stripy scarf wearing, big haired guy like Matty Jameson to have such a run-of-the-mill conformist screen saver.

  Suddenly thinking of fingerprints, just in case my hunch actually came to anything, I dug my gloves out of my duffle coat pocket. I say gloves when what I actually mean is mittens.

  I know; not great for performing a detailed yet hurried search, just a giant clump of wool and an opposable thumb. Before putting them on, I used one of them like a cloth and rubbed the door handle, light switch, and computer mouse thoroughly. God alone knows why, but it certainly made me feel better.

  I went back to the computer and stared uselessly at the password box. Never in a million years was I going to be able to guess at a password for Matty Jameson. It always kind of makes me laugh when you see a TV show and the hero cop, or whomever, has three or four really inspired attempts before finally hitting the jackpot.

  I knew right away that I was not about to emulate any of my telly heroes that night, so I didn’t bother to try. Plus, how many smart TV cops wear mittens whilst trying to type on a keyboard? I’ll tell you exactly how many; none.

  Instead I sat down in Matty’s chair and tried each of the two desk drawers. In the first was a rather broad array of over-the-counter nose un-blockers; sprays, vapour rubs, that type of thing. Poor dude must be one of the chronically bunged up types. The collection was vast and, judging by the faded colours on some of the dated packaging, had been carefully built over a number of years.

  Drawer two was no better; It was all pens and pencils, not to mention pencil shavings. Seriously, why do that? Why open a drawer and sharpen a pencil over it, allowing the skimpy wooden spirals to simply land inside? Why not just reach a little further and do it over the bin?

  So, apart from finding out that Matty had sinus issues and was clearly too lazy to reach for the bin, I basically had nothing.

  I scanned the room for anything else of use. There was no filing cabinet or anything else with drawers I could snoop through. There were a couple of old comfy chairs covered in brown corduroy, slightly facing each other. It reminded me either of a talk show interview set up, or a psychiatrist’s office.

  Matty probably held his one-on-ones with his students right there. I nurtured a mental image of Matty sitting in one chair, his floppy curls dangling over his eyes like a cockapoo puppy, and Hannah in the other chair, her shoes on the floor and her legs tucked under her totally unselfconsciously as they talked about her progress on the arts degree course.

  I checked my watch; it was almost half past eight. Only half an hour of the vigil to go. Still, to assume that Matty would stay for the whole thing might be a mistake. After all, he might have been trundling his way over to his office at that very moment. Or he might not even return to his office until the following day. Whichever was the case, I needed to get on with it.

  Judging there to be nothing else of interest in the first room, I hurried over to the second door. I was hardly able to believe that it was locked. Matty’s main office was left wide open for anyone to stride into, day or night, yet his back room was locked. Well, that got my spider-senses tingling, I can tell you.

  With no other detective expertise to rely on, I had seized upon the locked door means something to hide theory. Rather stupidly, I tried the handle of the door again, as if it would somehow have become miraculously unlocked in the few moments in which I had stared at it. Almost forgetting my earlier fear and need to hurry, I looked about the room for some way of making my way in.

  The ceiling was made up of those big grey tiles which sat suspended in a flimsy aluminium framework. You know the ones; you’re sitting in a lecture, bored, and suddenly you’re looking up at tiles of all different ages, judging by the yellowing of some, and wondering at the watery stains and holes which look like a rodent has been up there nibbling.

  I wondered if there was any way I could go in through the ceiling, like Jack Bauer or something.

  I pulled one of the brown chairs over and placed it next to the big old cast iron radiator. It was floor mounted, so I was sure it would take my weight. As I stood on the chair and put my foot on the radiator, I wondered at the total stupidity of what I was doing.

  Then I thought of PC Betty Butler. If I was Betty, I’d already be in that back room, expertly rooting through Matty Jameson’s secrets.

  I climbed up onto the radiator and wobbled about as I pushed up one of the ceiling tiles and slid it away into the ceiling space. I squinted as dusty bits showered down from above, then stifled a sneeze. My sneezes are always pretty epic and I knew that if I gave into it, the sneeze might very well rocket me clean off my precarious perch.

  I looked up again and could see that the wall between the two rooms was good old-fashion brick. I could pull myself up onto it without risking pulling the whole wall down on top of me.

  I would love to be able to say that I hopped up onto said wall in a graceful ninja style, but that was very much not the case. I gripped the wall and scrambled, puffing and panting, in a most undignified manner until I was perched on top of it.

  I then leaned over into the ceiling space in the back room and pulled another tile out of the way. I leaned in a little, looking around in the room.

  There was a line of top-light windows, you know, the sort that you have to open with a hook on a stick. Anyway, there was a good bit of campus lighting shining in through them, so I could see that the room was a jumble of all manner of stuff.

  I hadn’t really thought through the details of how I would get down into the back room. I looked down and felt a bit foolish. It would be ridiculous to get this far and have to turn back.

  With that in mind, I turned around and, holding on to the top of the brick wall I was sitting on, I kind of slid down. When I got to the point where I was at arm’s length and my poor little
hands were supporting my entire body, I just let go. And not willingly, I just fell.

  I landed on my feet, then fell over backwards, in the most painful sit-down I’d ever done. My backside was going to be bruised, I had no doubt about that. Getting quickly to my feet, I scanned the room and realised that I would probably need to put the light on.

  I didn’t want to alert anyone to my presence but, at the same time, the windows were so high up that nobody would actually be able to look in on me anyway.

  With the light on, I could see that the room mostly contained paintings on canvas, all over the place, stacked several deep against the walls. There was an easel in the middle of the room, and a big basket full of brushes on an old paint-splattered table. The table was the flat kind, with no drawers for me to rummage through.

  With a big sigh, I suddenly realised that I had crawled through the ceiling like Spiderman only to land in a room of Matty’s paintings. Well, I assumed they were Matty Jameson’s.

  I decided to have a quick shuffle through the canvases before I made my perilous journey back into the ceiling, through Narnia, and down into the first room.

  It’s fair to say that I don’t know a great deal about art, but I thought that Matty Jameson’s paintings were really good. There were a few landscapes, but not the normal kind. They had been purposefully painted in the wrong colours; grass was not green, but orange, skies were not blue but purple, and so on. They seemed to have been skilfully painted and I couldn’t help but like the topsy-turviness of his colouring.

  As I trawled through, I could see that Matty’s real area of expertise was portraits; he’d painted loads of them.

  I was once again struck by my previous dismissal of art and its value. Just as with the fine detail of Hannah’s little bumble bees, Matty’s portraits held the sort of detail I’d never bothered to notice before.

  I looked at a portrait of an elderly man and was mesmerised by a tiny, tiny stroke of light-coloured paint on the eye. It was an almost non-existent fleck of paint which had been applied to the faded blue iris, but it’s effect was amazing. It gave an age to the eye, a kind of vaguely watery appearance that was totally lifelike.

  There was something about that tiny fleck of paint, that minute attention to detail, which left me with the feeling that I was looking right into the real face of the man who had sat for the portrait.

  I might have been a superb mathematician, but in many other respects I realised that I was a totally single-minded philistine. Still, there wasn’t time to work on my somewhat flawed personality at that moment, and I hurriedly pulled the painting forward to look at the one behind it.

  I had taken at quick squint at most of the paintings and was starting to feel that my intuition settings were obviously broken, when I finally hit pay-dirt. And, wowsers, what pay-dirt indeed!

  As I’d leafed through the last stack of canvases I suddenly came face to face with none other than Hannah Davenport. Not in the flesh, but in oils on canvas.

  Hannah seemed to be looking right at me, her face a picture of pure melancholy. It was absolutely and unmistakably Hannah; Matty had employed the very same high standard of attention to detail, and the portrait was not off in any way. It was entirely, exactly, like Hannah. It was a perfect likeness.

  I had never seen Hannah wearing that kind of expression before, and something about it made me feel so very sad. Actually, kind of gutted. There was something there in those oil-paint eyes which spoke of pain and, if she had really felt anywhere near as sad as she looked, then I could feel only pity for her.

  What the hell had happened to her to give her such a look? Surely it hadn’t been contrived for the painting? Or maybe it was all from Matty’s imagination? Maybe Hannah hadn’t actually sat for the painting at all.

  In many ways, I rather hoped that she hadn’t because, much apart from looking so deeply unhappy, Hannah was also entirely naked.

  I was pretty shocked, but not in the way you’d imagine. I was shocked that Matty had painted one of his students naked, but I wasn’t shocked by the nakedness itself. It wasn’t a kind of lascivious nakedness, if you will.

  Hannah was simply sitting on a chair with her head tilted slightly to one side and that heart-wrenching look on her face. Oddly, the nakedness seemed almost secondary to the whole piece, almost as if she had sat down and had forgotten she wasn’t dressed yet. From my perspective of knowing next-to-nothing about art, I’m kind of hoping that makes sense.

  One thing I was certain of; Emjay was MJ was Matty Jameson. Emjay is so funny! He acts like the sight of naked flesh is some kind of spiritual experience! There was no other explanation for it.

  And what were the chances of there being another person called Emjay with whom Hannah had been naked in the last few weeks? I shrugged off my new-found art appreciation jacket and stepped back into my cloak of logic; balance of probabilities… I’m just saying.

  As I knelt on the floor congratulating clever old me, there came that scratchy noise of someone putting a key into a lock. I nearly expired there and then. I had nowhere to go and no time to switch off the light and hide behind a tiny canvas.

  And anyway, there was a chair up against the radiator and a ceiling tile out in the other room; it wouldn’t have taken Sherlock to know what was going on. I was pretty much busted and I knew it.

  I realised with a sort of horrible clarity that my predicament might well go beyond the obvious nightmare of being busted. I was in a deserted part of a huge university campus at night, and probably about to be in the company of a man who may or may not know more than he was saying about the disappearance of one of his students.

  Not only that, but he’d painted her naked. There was a connection here and I’d more or less made it; and that much was about to become abundantly clear to the man who was now opening the door and about to discover me.

  Matty Jameson entered the room cautiously, his eyes darting furtively to and fro like some kind of hunted animal. To my horror, he was holding a weapon high above his head as he inched his way into the room, although perhaps I would be one of the few who would have recognised it as such.

  It was a heavy-looking art text book. Respect to the ninja.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” He lowered the book when he saw me crouched on the floor amongst his paintings. I didn’t know whether to be relieved that he wasn’t going to kill me on the spot, or insulted that the lowering of the book suggested I was no threat whatsoever to him.

  Instead of answering, I continued to crouch as my mouth opened and closed goldfish style. I just couldn’t come up with a thing to explain my presence in his room.

  “You’re a student, presumably! Which course?” He demanded, all strident snottiness.

  “Mechanical Engineering.” I croaked dryly.

  “Well, we’ll see about that!” He was one of those people who spat a bit when they spoke in anger, and I was tempted to use one of his canvases as a shield.

  “What?” I was just getting a hold of his threat.

  The mop-headed naked-student-painter was threatening to get me thrown off the degree, I felt sure of it.

  “You heard me. The University most certainly does not take breaking into a lecturer’s rooms lightly.” He threw his head back, somewhat diva-like.

  His little threat had tipped me over from scared and busted to insanely angry.

  “And tell me, Mr Jameson, how lightly do the University take the notion of a lecturer painting one of his first-year students naked?” My anger notwithstanding, I wondered at the ambiguity of my question. “I meant that she was naked, not that you were naked whilst you painted her. Well, I don’t think you were. Oh God, you weren’t, were you?”

  Despite the entirely un-cool manner in which I was conducting my investigative interview, somehow, I now had the upper hand and it was Matty Jameson’s turn to let his mouth open and close wordlessly.

  My fear had departed altogether. Something about this man and his bumbling attempt at a threat h
ad left me doubting that Matty was dangerous. I didn’t drop my guard altogether in that respect, I just felt a hell of a lot calmer.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here.” His tone had changed into something far less strident and his obvious comment seemed to be all that he could summon in his defence.

  “And you’re not supposed to be painting naked teenagers!” As soon as I’d said it, I knew I had behaved in absolutely the very worst Daily Mail way possible.

  I had chucked the word teenager in to set the seal on my victory; I was making it absolute and entirely unequivocal. And I felt like a complete git, because that’s exactly how I’d behaved.

  I’d used the word to suggest something I didn’t even suspect him of, and I’d always, always hated people who do and say anything to win; the kind of people who spuriously throw child and animal welfare into arguments because they feel sure that nobody would dare challenge it.

  Yes, Hannah was a teenager, but she was nineteen, almost twenty, not thirteen, just finished being twelve. Like me, Hannah was a grown woman.

  “Hey look, I didn’t mean that how it came out. I should have said student, not teenager.” My cheeks were flaming, and so were Matty Jameson’s. This interview was turning into a disaster. “What do you say we start again, without threatening each other, huh?” I tried to sound like the adult I was not entirely sure I could claim to be at that moment in time.

  “Yeah, ok.” Matty’s shoulders dropped.

  I rose from my crouch and, feeling the bruising on my backside with every step, was almost relieved to have been caught so that I wouldn’t have to climb back through the ceiling.

  As he sauntered out of the back room and into the office, I followed him, glad for a couple of second’s worth of unobserved bum-rubbing.

  Matty sat down in one of the brown corduroy chairs, and I dragged over the one I had left as my stepping-stool next to the radiator. We sat opposite each other, and I was reminded of the talk-show interview image.