Dying on Principle

by Judith Cutler

  If only I knew what.

  Mrs C’s horrified response had surely been genuine. Curtis’s had, too: why don’t you get out of here? Was that all that someone wanted? Me to be out of the action? And surely the fact that I had the phone call on the Sunday evening suggested that the graffiti wasn’t the work of a malevolent student. Someone had been busy over the weekend.

  The accident could have been more serious. It could equally well have been less serious – it was only my dodgy knee that had made it bad. The graffiti was deeply unpleasant but not physically threatening. The attack on Aggie that Saturday afternoon could have been infinitely worse. That Saturday afternoon – the phrase stuck. The afternoon I’d been safe with Fairfax. The afternoon when he’d had a phone call saying that William had interrupted a job. I’m no crossword expert but even I could now see that William and Old Bill were not so far apart.

  So did it all point where I thought? To the Chair of governors who happened to have property interests? Did he want the Muntz land? Enough to persuade them to take on new premises? No: although George Muntz was a corporation, all its property actually belonged to the Further Education Funding Council. All its existing property. What if it bought something else, with monies acquired by savings on the engineers’ salaries?

  Why had normal decent teachers got entangled with wrong-doing – the pornography, the dubious property deal? Overpromoted, perhaps, yet they were people who’d once been as concerned about their students as I or any other teacher.

  On impulse I reached for the phone. Dave was at Rose Road, but he’d welcome a break, he said, and he’d be right over. I found myself burrowing for my make-up and smoothing my hair. Then I did up the top two buttons on my shirt and put away the perfume unopened.

  I needn’t have worried. He was interested only in the Muntz business.

  ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing,’ he said, slumping at the table, ‘I’ve never seen figures in such a mess. The auditors’ll have a field day next April.’

  So whoever wanted to commit fraud would have until April to do it?’

  ‘Yes. But they’d have to have skipped to bloody Patagonia by then. Jesus, sweetheart, they’ve lost paper records, wiped computer ones. Total shambles.’

  ‘Anything to do with the fact that Curtis wasn’t qualified?’

  ‘Everything. How did he get the job, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Placed there? Muntz doesn’t seem to have any qualms about appointing people without advertising and interviewing.’

  ‘Placed?’

  ‘By Blake and the Chair of governors? There are some interesting files in his safe.’

  ‘Let’s get at them, sweetheart!’

  I shook my head. ‘Fairfax is going to put the code on my answering machine and give me the key. But I shan’t get the key until he’s dead.’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, we can get a warrant, get in there somehow.’

  ‘A warrant against a dying man? Let it wait till morning, Dave. He’s dying. You’re knackered. Let it wait.’

  He nodded reluctantly. To give him something to do, I said; ‘You know, I’d love to see if any of Luke’s messages reached my desk. Fancy running me down to Muntz to have a look? Maybe a pint afterwards?’

  He shrugged but agreed.

  It was rather nice parking in a management space at Muntz. There was still a police presence, of course, but no one stopped me walking in, though perhaps I had Dave to thank for that. In fact we were halfway up the stairs when someone called him back. I told him my room number and pressed on. His knees would move more briskly than mine.

  As soon as I opened my door, I knew something was wrong. I tried to back out fast and slam the door behind me. Not a chance. Whoever it was behind that door was too slow to get a proper grip, but he kicked at me, and grabbed my hair as I went down. I managed one good scream before he clamped his hand over my mouth. One of the heavies or Curtis? I assumed it was the latter. And made sure he couldn’t shift his grip on my hair by throwing myself one way, then another. He got behind me and started to drag me backwards.

  ‘Sophie, what the hell?’ That was Dave. Better late than never, I suppose.

  But now of course it didn’t matter whether I screamed or not, so, his one hand still in my hair, my attacker could move the other. Next thing I felt was something cold and sharp on my neck.

  I could see the whites of Dave’s eyes. Maybe he could see mine.

  ‘Hang on there,’ he said, inadequately.

  ‘I want a helicopter. Money. Now. Tell him, Sophie.’ Yes: it was Curtis.

  ‘Seems like a good idea, Dave. Please.’ I tried not to scream as the point jabbed a little.

  ‘Do it. And stay here while you do it.’

  ‘Please, please, Dave. Use your radio so he knows for sure.’ I was finding it hard to be brave.

  Dave spoke hurriedly, incoherently. I couldn’t catch the reply.

  ‘Now turn round and walk down those stairs. Get!’

  Dave tried to walk backwards, watching me till the last, perhaps.

  ‘I said, turn round and walk. Do it!’

  ‘Dave, tell Chris—’ I yelled. But it was a good job Curtis jerked me into silence because I didn’t know what message Dave should give.

  And now we started to move, backwards. Along a corridor. Round a couple of bends. Difficult to say where I was. Then up some stairs. Stairs? The roof. That’s where he was taking me. Melina had slipped off her shoes to leave a clue. Should I take mine off too? No, I might need to kick. And I didn’t want sore feet – though that might be the least of my troubles. Perhaps there’d be time to do something when he stopped to unlock the door to the roof.

  But someone must have left it open, for suddenly we were breathing fresh air.

  He was panting. Was it from the effort? No, I’d co-operated. His hand was shaking too: the knife jagged against my skin. Must be fear. Perhaps if I could talk, it would keep him in one place, keep him still. Give them time …

  ‘Why – why are you doing this?’ I began. I ought to call him by name, make him realise I was human. But I couldn’t call him Curtis. And I couldn’t remember another name. ‘Please?’

  ‘I said they should have got rid of you. But no, not them. Keep her quiet, they said. Get her out of the place. That’s all!’

  If he was telling me all this, it wasn’t transport he wanted. At least not till he’d disposed of me.

  Better try again. ‘Did you – was it you who …’ The words wouldn’t come. ‘Was it you who killed Melina?’

  ‘Who? Oh, that technician.’

  I took that as a negative. It fitted in with what Mrs C had said.

  ‘But it must have been you that dealt with Blake? The electronics? How did you do it?’

  He laughed. For a moment I thought I might be winning. Then I decided I didn’t like the tone after all. ‘Neat, wasn’t it? A lot of thought, mind, then just a dab of a zapper.’

  I thought of the squashed squirrel.

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘It’d take too long to tell you. Get moving!’ We started a sideways progress.

  ‘Why kill Blake? Why did you want to kill Blake? Because they told you?’ Dared I risk it? ‘Did Fairfax tell you to?’

  We must be quite close to the parapet by now. Why were there no sirens? Why weren’t they coming? Chris, please!

  ‘Chris says it was a brilliant piece of work,’ I said. ‘You ought to be working for NASA or something. I mean, all your qualifications—’

  That was a mistake. The knife jabbed. I could feel a trickle of blood, nothing much. Not yet.

  ‘Curtis?’

  We both jumped. Loud-hailers have that effect.

  ‘Des? This is Dave Clarke.’

  Dave! But he was about as subtle as a bulldozer. I didn’t want him negotiating for my life.

  ‘Des?’ Was that Curtis’s first name? ‘We’re over here.’

  ‘Here’ wasn’t on the roof. Nowhere I could see, anyway. He dragged
me backwards again, yards this time. Then he heaved me upright.

  ‘On the parapet. Right on top. Now,’ he said, pushing me.

  People lose control, don’t they, when they’re afraid. They pee or mess themselves. I started to retch. Val’s beautiful lamp chops. And I had long enough to know I was going to drown in my own vomit because he wouldn’t let me tip my head forward.

  ‘Des, let her go, she’s ill. Can’t you see she’s ill?’

  Then there was so much noise I couldn’t hear anything else they said. They must have alerted all the emergency vehicles in Birmingham. I couldn’t hear Curtis’s response either.

  I could hear another voice, though, close at hand. Another person who didn’t know how to address Curtis. A mild little voice with a Brummie accent.

  ‘I mean, this is a bit much. Come on, a bit of fair play, mate.’

  ‘Just fuck off out of here!’

  But Phil’s intervention had diverted him enough to let him slacken his grip on my hair, and I slumped forward, choking so fiercely I lost sense of what was going on. The lamb chops went over the parapet. I was still on the safe side of it. I retched again.

  ‘Look, chum, you got to face it – you been caught out good and proper. That Trevelyan lady, she’s left enough on her hard disk to—’

  ‘You talk – over she goes. Right?’

  I was halfway over. My feet! I still had shoes. I kicked back, up, as hard as I could. I made contact, but the effort drove me further forwards, my arms flailing over nothing but that drop. I was going over.

  Suddenly I was on my knees, wondering why I was still alive. And then I didn’t bother wondering any more, because I passed out.

  I came to, still on the roof, surrounded by very tall people in black overalls and woolly hats. No smelling salts, so no Chris. But Dave was there, kneeling beside me, looking as green as I felt. I’d been sick again. I touched my neck, and my fingers came back dry. A siren retreated into the distance – several sirens.

  ‘Is that your lot taking Curtis somewhere?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. And a few of us making sure he stays in the car.’

  I nodded. I found I could sit up and take interest. ‘How did you get up here?’

  ‘Fire escape. While he was looking the other way.’

  ‘You were very quiet.’

  ‘Trained to be.’

  ‘Phil? Isn’t that Phil?’ I could make him out the far side of some very white shirtsleeves.

  ‘The bugger damn nearly blew it for us,’ said Dave.

  I felt a bit more enthusiastic. ‘Hell, he stopped him—’

  ‘If he’d told us what he was on to a bit earlier—’

  ‘What was he on to? Hell, this is ridiculous. Phil?’

  He sidled over, looking sheepish.

  ‘Thanks, Phil,’ I said. ‘I owe you.’

  ‘Like he was saying, perhaps I should have let on earlier.’

  ‘Bloody right,’ Dave muttered.

  Phil ignored him. ‘But you never know. And like they say, there’s more than one way of skinning a cat. Now, you know Dr T didn’t want us to know who we were getting our stuff from. Right? Well, I reckoned there might be other stuff on her hard disk, too. Even stuff she’d wiped. Now, I’ve got this mate who knows about hard disks. Bit of a whizz, you might say. And so I asked him to get back the material she’d denied me access to. I just put another hard disk in her computer. Didn’t think it’d matter since no one knew there was anything on it.’

  Dave opened his mouth, presumably to boast about police computer expertise, and shut it as I clipped his shin.

  ‘Any road, she must have got hold of his accounts –’ he jerked his head in the direction they’d taken Curtis – ‘and copied them on to her machine. And I’ll bet he thought he’d wiped them. But my guess is she was bright enough to do what my mate did: retrieve them, then wipe them. And then transfer the files to her disks. And “lose” them again. Clever woman, though, like I say, it didn’t do her much good.’

  The conversation dwindled. The various men and women started to go their various ways. Someone slung some sand on the remains of my supper. I felt cold and alone and sick. Perkiness was my usual response to situations like that, so I’d better try perkiness.

  ‘I suppose it’s a bit late for that drink, Dave, but I’ve got some whiskey that might settle my stomach. Tell you what, could you all look the other way while I take these disgusting laddered tights off?’

  ‘I think you ought to make a statement—’ Dave began.

  ‘You and your bloody statements, Dave. Not until I’ve had at least a finger of Jameson’s! And got some different clothes on. OK?’

  In the end, it was Dave who took me to the hospice. I’d phoned on impulse at about eleven thirty, and spoken to a kind-voiced woman who said she’d just been going to call me.

  ‘Can it be as quick as that?’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes, if you’ve saved a supply of tablets and left a note propped against your water jug forbidding resuscitation.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘He’s still alive, Sophie, if you want to come and say goodbye.’

  ‘His family …’

  ‘No. He doesn’t want family. Just you.’

  I had to go. I stayed there all night, a counsellor ready to help me when I needed it. I think he died at five thirty-seven, but I waited on a while. At last, I spoke to him: ‘I don’t know why you did all this. I think you killed – or had killed – at least two people, one of whom was a sick young woman. I wonder why you spared me?’ There was much more to ask, of course. But my voice sounded too loud.

  I laid his hands together, closed his eyes and wandered into the dawn-cold garden. A young man joined me. I don’t know who he was. None of the staff wore white coats of uniforms. He steered me back into an office for tea, and waited for me to talk. When I didn’t, he reached into a filing-cabinet drawer and passed me an A4 envelope. Keys to the safe, and a set with a BMW fob. A set of papers, some witnessed at the bottom. There was a note that Mr Fairfax must have dictated for the writing did not match his signature, still strong, almost fierce. It was a codicil to his will. I found I was responsible for Pilot, but only until I could find him a good home. He’d been overhasty in his treatment of Alan – would I ensure his solicitor made amends? He wasn’t going to leave me his house; what he ought to have done was burn mine down so I’d have to cut free. What I was to have was his car. The insurance certificate and deed of gift were attached. And the sago pudding was more successful than the rice, which for my future information needed more salt.

  I took a taxi home, wrote down the number he’d left on the answering machine, and set the alarm for nine. Justice could wait a few more hours.

  Chris could hardly exclude me from the unlocking of Ali Baba’s cave. I was there in Fairfax’s snug with Dave, Ian and a number of people from the team. I set the number and turned the key. Inside were the files: ‘Management Centre, Provence’, ‘College without Walls’, ‘Newtown Site’ and a number of others with different logos. I distributed them as if they were exercises for homework, and then stood staring at the empty safe until moved quietly aside by a young woman in glasses, who peered at the lock mechanism and a couple of bits of gubbins inside and announced it was fortunate we’d not tried to force the safe because the whole lot would have gone up in flames if we had.

  ‘Here we are!’ Ian yelled. ‘They were only setting up a bloody holiday home down near Nîmes.’

  ‘What about this business of the College without Walls, Ian? Did Worrall say anything yesterday afternoon?’ Chris asked, grinning.

  ‘A lot. But that might be franchising,’ he said. ‘Seems they might be franchising courses. You work out how much it would cost you to do it in your college, and then license someone else on other premises to do it cheaper. Only you get the profit, see.’

  ‘Especially,’ I said, ‘if you get nonunion labour to do it on the cheap. Does it say how much they were proposing to pay the lecturers?’


  ‘Does £5 sound right?’

  ‘It sounds bloody awful.’ I couldn’t stick it any longer. I fed and fussed Pilot, and found my way into the cast-iron conservatory. It was so humid I needed air, and figured it wouldn’t come amiss for poor Pilot to relieve himself. He dashed out with vigour, lolloping and somersaulting like a pup. Then he froze, his face ugly with purpose, and hurtled for the orchard at the far end. There was a scream. I remembered who was supposed to be in charge. ‘Pilot! Pilot! Heel! Heel!’

  He slithered to a shuddering halt, snarling.

  ‘Stay! Stay! And you there,’ I yelled at a figure trying to keep Pilot at bay with a garden fork, ‘stay exactly where you are or I shall let him go. Chris! Dave! Come here!’

  Pilot didn’t like them any more than he liked the man in the orchard, but so long as I held him with one hand and patted him with the other, he consented to stay with me. I recognised the man when they brought him back to the house, even though he wasn’t smiling. Gardener and odd-job man, he said he was. Some very odd jobs indeed.

  ‘He’ll squeal,’ Ian said. ‘Give us other names.’

  There was a lot of booze still to be drunk in the incident room, and they’d be glad to see the back of me so they could rib Chris about going down on his knees to shake paws with a dog. There might be other things they could rib him about, such as sharing his girlfriend with an old man who turned out to be Mr Big. It wasn’t the existing Muntz land he’d wanted, but the derelict Newtown site, to get access to the land at the back. There were plans in his safe for a hypermarket. Whether he had further plans for the Harborne site wasn’t clear, but it certainly seemed to be he who was steering Muntz into bankruptcy. Clearly he had Curtis by the throat.

  ‘Has Curtis said much yet, Ian?’ I asked, gathering my bag.

  ‘Enough. Incriminating his solicitor as much as anyone. You mix with an interesting class of person, young Sophie.’

  ‘But they’re all respectable businessmen!’ I said, wide-eyed with innocence.

  ‘Less of your cheek, my girl. You’re sure you won’t have a drink? I’ve got some Tio Pepe here.’