Europe at Midnight

by Dave Hutchinson

  The Librarian who found the bodies was no help; he couldn’t remember seeing Anna and Lou going into the Apocrypha, and he couldn’t remember seeing anyone else there that evening. The visitor’s book, for what it was worth, showed that it had been a quiet night for the Librarians – the last person who had visited the Apocrypha before Lou and Anna had signed in and out more than two hours earlier. Which, I supposed, at least narrowed down the time of death, but little else.

  I cleared my desk of everything and sat and read reports all day. The reports of the two Sergeants, statements from everyone who had been in the building around the time of the murders. Harry brought the preliminary autopsy results over to me personally around lunchtime and we drank tea and made smalltalk and he told me the flu outbreak in the south was getting worse and he wanted Rossiter to suspend all travel to and from the area, and I nodded absently. Rossiter himself popped in from time to time during the day, but he didn’t know what to say to me and I didn’t want to talk to him, so his visits were brief. I asked my Secretary to try and find an address for Lou’s family so I could write to them. I recommended Sergeant Skinner and his mate George, who had behaved in exemplary fashion last night, for promotions. The rest of the time, I stared into space.

  Investigating a murder looks easy in the books. You have a number of suspects, you keep your eyes open, you assemble all the evidence, you find your killer. It’s not like that in real life. Real life is horrifically complicated and you can never be sure that you have all the information you need, or even whether what you have is in the right order. You start with what you know – fact: two dead women – and work outwards, but did you miss something? Does someone you haven’t thought to talk to have some vital piece of the jigsaw? Is the murderer here in this very room with you?

  My Secretary heard the noise of things breaking and put her head round the door. She saw the smashed remains of the teapot at the base of the wall opposite my desk and withdrew again.

  After a couple of minutes, I got up and went into the outer office and said, “I’m sorry, Anne, I seem to have broken the teapot.”

  “Yes, Professor,” she said.

  “Do we have a spare anywhere?”

  She closed the folder she was writing in and locked it in her desk. “I’ll see if I can find one, Professor. Will you be wanting to break this one as well?”

  “I think it’s entirely possible, yes.”

  She nodded. “There’s one with a chipped spout downstairs; nobody will miss that.”

  “Thank you. And perhaps a dustpan and brush as well. And a damp cloth.”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  I went back into my office and took my coat from the rack. “I’m going over to Security,” I told Anne. “Leave everything in my office; I’ll tidy up when I get back.”

  “I can do that, Professor,” she said.

  “No,” I said, making for the door. “It’s my mess. I’ll clear it up.”

  I FOUND SKINNER and George in the Sergeants’ dormitory in the Security Faculty. They’d just come on shift and were still changing into their uniforms.

  “I just promoted the two of you to Inspector,” I told them. “You don’t have to wear uniforms any more. Come with me.”

  On the way down to the cells, I filled the two newly-minted Inspectors in on the suspected bootlegging and drugs manufacturing operation in Science City.

  “Is this something to do with the murder investigation, sir?” asked Skinner.

  “It has crossed my mind,” I told him, and he and George exchanged glances. “What?” I stopped on the stairs and looked at them. “What?”

  They both looked a little uncomfortable. They were barely out of their teens, Students until a few months ago when they’d answered my call for volunteers for the new Sergeant force. George said, “This bloke Brooks, sir. You do know who he is, don’t you?”

  “I know he’s a Doctor of Literature who thought it would be fun to dispense drugs to his own students.”

  “He’s married to the Dean of the Science Faculty’s sister,” Skinner told me.

  Did you miss something? Does someone you haven’t thought to talk to have some vital piece of the jigsaw? “How did I not know this?”

  Skinner and George shrugged in unison.

  I looked at my watch. It was almost twenty-seven hours since we had arrested Callum’s brother-in-law, and so far not a single word about it from Science City. Not even a polite enquiry about his wellbeing.

  “All right. Doctor Brooks can cook for a little while longer, then. Do you two have bicycles?”

  They nodded. It was a stupid question; everybody had a bicycle. “Good. See if you can find me one as well and meet me outside Admin with as many armed Security men as you can round up. We’re going for a little ride.”

  THIS TIME WHEN I approached the Science Faculty things were a little busier. The Inspectors and I were still a couple of miles away when a Student on a bike rode up and began cycling alongside us. He nodded pleasantly to us, but otherwise seemed oblivious to our presence. The same was true for the next Student who joined us, and the next, and the next. By the time we arrived in the plaza outside the Science Faculty, we were in the middle of a phalanx of perhaps thirty Science Students, all of them in fine spirits and laughing and joking among themselves. I had been expecting it, but I could tell it was unnerving the Inspectors. George in particular looked as if he wanted to bring one of the Students down and beat them to death with their own bicycle.

  There were more Students waiting outside the Faculty, all of them smiling and charming and witty. I ignored their attempts at conversation, chained my borrowed bicycle to the billiard ball sculpture, and shouldered my way through the doors, trusting that the Inspectors would follow.

  The enormous foyer was full of people. Some were chatting, some just walking from one place to another in that strange dead air caused by the sound-absorbing floor. It was the first time I had seen anyone here except the receptionist. I couldn’t work out whether this was the Faculty’s natural state or whether it had all been hurriedly staged for my benefit, but when I marched in accompanied by the Inspectors and a dozen armed Security men every head turned to look at us.

  I walked straight past the reception desk and up the stairs without pausing. Trailing armed men, I went down the second floor corridor, then up two more flights of stairs to Callum’s office, where I opened the door and marched in without knocking.

  Callum was standing by the window looking calm and amused. He said, “You know, even by your standards this is a poor decision.”

  I took the little white cardboard box from my pocket and threw it at him. It rattled when it hit his chest and fell to the floor. He looked down at it then smiled at me.

  “Your brother-in-law has been handing out drugs,” I told him.

  “You have no proof of that,” he said. He sounded very sure about it.

  “I have his signed confession,” I said. This was a lie, obviously, but I was so angry that I doubted anyone would be able to tell.

  Callum’s smile dimmed a fraction. He looked down at the box again, looked at me, and raised an eyebrow.

  I said to him, “You’re under arrest on suspicion of aiding and abetting the production and distribution of illegal substances. You can come with us voluntarily, or I can handcuff you and drag you out of here kicking and screaming. Either way, you’re coming with us.”

  “You have no formal powers of arrest,” he said smoothly.

  “No,” I said. “But these gentlemen do.” I indicated Skinner and George, who greeted the news by staring inscrutably at Callum.

  He smiled again. “You know,” he said, “I think I’ll come voluntarily. I’m genuinely interested to see how you plan to get me back to Security without becoming involved in a bloodbath.”

  “That’s up to you, Callum, not me,” I said.

  He thought about it. “You really are quite a violent man, aren’t you,” he said for the benefit of everyone else in the room
and out in the corridor. “We’ve all heard what you did to the Colonel.”

  “This is different,” I told him.

  “Is it?”

  “Shall we see? Come on.”

  The corridor was packed with Students and academic staff, and they all silently moved aside as I escorted Callum out of his office, and then fell in behind us as we passed. It was rather eerie, but not quite as eerie as the sea of faces that met us when reached the top of the stairs leading down to the foyer.

  “You really haven’t thought about this at all, have you,” Callum murmured in an amused voice, looking out at the massed ranks of his people.

  “Only every other day,” I told him. “Come on; we have a long way to go.”

  There are situations where the presence of a number of armed men can make you feel all but invulnerable, and situations where they make no difference at all, and this was the latter. The crowd in the foyer parted to let our little group through, then closed up behind us. We were jostled a number of times – not seriously, just enough to make us feel even more uncomfortable than we already were. It took us no more than a year to make the walk to the doors, and when we got there we found more crowds waiting silently outside in the plaza.

  “This is beginning to irritate me, Callum,” I said. “Make them go away.”

  “They’ve got every right to be here,” he told me, completely relaxed. “More than you do.”

  “Keep walking,” I told him.

  Under the massed gaze of the crowd, we retrieved our bicycles. There was a moment of low comedy when we realised that Callum didn’t have one, but then a Student came up wheeling a nice shiny new bike for their Dean of Faculty, and the crowd parted again as we pedalled away.

  They followed us all the way back to Security. By the time we arrived I had lost count of how many of them were cycling behind us. It looked like almost the entire Science Faculty. Not angry, not shouting. Just following. And when I emerged from the building after locking Callum in one of the cells they had all sat down outside and were watching me, a sea of silent, impassive faces. For a moment, I understood how the Old Board had felt on that day last year when the booing had started. Except I was right. I was the Good Man. I told that to myself. I’m right. I am the Good Man. I am not like them. I felt my toes dangling over the edge of an abyss.

  Skinner emerged from the door behind me and stood at the top of the steps looking at all the Science Students and Lecturers.

  “Well, Inspector,” I asked him. “What did you think of your first day at work?”

  He thought for a moment. “Permission to speak, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  “The Dean of Science is a bit of a cunt, isn’t he, sir.”

  3

  “YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY have thought you would get away with it,” said Rossiter.

  “I did get away with it,” I told him.

  “No you didn’t,” he snapped. “And stop trying to be clever.”

  “I thought that was supposed to be my job.”

  “Well you’ve made a bloody arse of it then.” He scowled at me across his desk. “What the hell were you thinking, marching over there and arresting him?”

  “He’s involved in this.”

  “In what? You arrested his brother-in-law on suspicion of distributing drugs; you’ve got no evidence at all that Callum had anything to do with that.”

  “He’s involved,” I said again.

  He sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Look,” he said more calmly, “I know you’re upset about Anna –”

  “Anna had nothing to do with it,” I said.

  “Do I look like an idiot?” he asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  He shook his head in exasperation. “We had to let him go.”

  “You utter fucking weakling, Richard.”

  “There was no evidence,” he said stonily. “You’re the one who’s always going on about how important it is to do things properly. Everything by the book, a fair trial. The truth is you just arrested Callum because you don’t like him.”

  “If I did that half the Campus would be in the cells.”

  “You don’t like him,” he said again. “You don’t like him, you’re angry about Anna and what’s-her-face –”

  “Lou.” I said, keeping my voice level with an effort. “Louisa.”

  “Louisa. You’re angry about that.”

  “I am angry about it, but it isn’t affecting my judgement.”

  “We’ve been worried about your judgement for some time now. The incident with the Colonel, that was... I don’t know what goes on in your head, I really don’t.”

  “If you want my resignation, you only have to ask.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want your resignation.”

  “All right then.”

  “I don’t need it. The Board has already voted to strip you of your post.”

  I blinked at him.

  “You really didn’t think you could get away with a stern talking-to after something like this, did you?”

  I blinked at him again.

  “You’ve been under impossible stress,” he said, not unkindly. “And we’ve been responsible for a lot of that. But we can’t trust you not to do something like this again. You’re behaving irrationally, and that’s the last thing we need right now.”

  I blinked at him again.

  He stared at me for a few moments, then became businesslike. “All right,” he said. “You’ll be allowed to keep your promotion, of course, and we’ve voted to let you keep your Residence.”

  “That was... kind,” I said quietly.

  “There will have to be a period of handover. You’ll have to pass on your workload to your successor, give him the combinations to your safes and so on. Shall we say a week?”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  “You left us no choice. You really didn’t. This is all your own fault.”

  “Fuck off, Richard.”

  “YOU CAN’T SAY I didn’t tell you so,” said Harry.

  “Yes I can,” I said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Well, I would have done if you’d asked. Another?”

  “Yes, please.” We were sitting in his office, putting a dent in his contraband whisky.

  “Who’s taking over?” he asked as he topped up my beaker.

  “Bob Miller.”

  He snorted and said, “Arse.”

  “He’s not a bad bloke.”

  “I’ve seen urine samples with more imagination.”

  I shrugged. “Safe pair of hands. Unlikely to arrest Deans of Faculty. Etcetera.”

  He leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the corner of the desk, and raised his beaker. “Confusion to your enemies,” he said.

  “Cheers,” I said, raising my own beaker and sipping the whisky.

  “What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know. Go back to teaching, I expect.”

  “You find the prospect exciting. I can tell from your voice.”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you think they’ll take any notice of the MG42 report now?”

  “I don’t see how they can’t. What?” Harry was looking shifty. “What?”

  He shifted awkwardly in his chair. “I left something out.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He unlocked one of his desk drawers and started rooting about inside. “I left something out, because frankly I didn’t know what the fuck it was and I still don’t.” He put a little screw-top jar on the desk between us and started looking in the drawer again. “Here. You’ll need this too.” He put a magnifying glass on the desk beside the jar.

  I picked up the jar and held it up to the light. Inside were about a dozen tiny things that rattled. I took the lid off and tipped a couple of them into my palm.

  “They were inside all the bodies I examined,” Harry said. “Under the skin of the upper right arm. I found the first one by accident, but it wasn’t hard to find the rest once I knew where to look.�
�

  Under the magnifying glass, the objects were narrow ovals, pointed at each end, grey and metallic. There were tiny little letters and numbers on their surface.

  “I don’t have the equipment to examine something like that properly, so I sent a couple over to Science City to see if they’d help,” said Harry. I looked at him and he held his hands up. “I know, but it was more about crossing t’s and dotting i’s; it’s not as if we didn’t already have enough evidence.”

  “And the Science Faculty’s response was...?” I asked with a sinking sensation.

  “After about a week I got in touch and asked if they were making any headway.” He sat back and spread his hands. “They didn’t get them; they didn’t know what I was talking about. Could I perhaps send them some more samples?”

  I shook my head.

  “Now, here’s a thing,” he said, getting out of his chair. “Take off your jacket and roll your right sleeve up.”

  “Why?”

  He went over to one of the cabinets on one side of the office and took out a scalpel, a pair of tweezers, and a bottle of surgical alcohol and some cotton balls. “Just humour me, eh?”

  I did as he asked and he came round and looked at the tuberculosis vaccination scar on my upper arm. He squeezed it a couple of times, then swabbed it with the alcohol. “This will hurt.”

  “What are you...? Ow!”

  “Please stop jumping around,” he murmured. “I’m trying to concentrate. And I have been drinking.”

  It only took a few seconds. He came round in front of me holding up the tweezers. The ends were bloody, but between them I could see another of the little oval objects.

  “Fucking hell,” I murmured, taking the tweezers from him. “What the hell is it?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “But I will tell you this, it’s sciency stuff, it’s not supposed to be there, and I think everyone on the Campus has one.”

  “Everyone?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I do. And so do the boys and girls. I haven’t had time to check the rest of the population. Let me get you a plaster.” He went back to the cabinets.