The Company of Fellows

by Dan Holloway

  “I was thinking more, in and you get better food and better company; out and you get the full three courses and no break for washing up. How about I come round at 7 and surprise you. Don’t put anything on, I’ll dress you for what I’ve got planned from scratch.”

  The phone went dead. Tommy had to take small, shallow breaths. He was experiencing things he hadn’t felt for a long time; since Em, perhaps, perhaps not even then. Was it more than just a crush, than hormones pent up too long in the stiff tweeds and pseudo manners of the overpaid and the overbrained? Was it more than simple lust? On a different level altogether, he thought.

  Tommy knew exactly what lust was like. It was like a cable cut loose in a storm, snaking and sparking, and lashing out at anyone who got in its way. It was a hunger that took you over and made you crave satisfaction, doing anything and everything to bring relief. It was a less extreme version of the madness kept hidden behind the dull, dry, witless door into Ellison’s mind. This was different. No, it was the same in every way but one. It had an object, only one. This one and no other. It was the darkest separation anxiety leaked out of the body along pathways of aching pain. The pain of not being with her.

  He texted Becky before he set off, call you this pm. Back in England. Getting close but things I need to do. L8er.

  The M40 was in benign mood and even after stopping several times for long coffees, Tommy was back in Oxford by lunch. That still only gave him a few hours to get himself together before he’d promised to collect Rosie. He needed a shower badly to get rid of the filth it felt as though he’d picked up in Spain, but he also needed to speak to Becky. Most of all he needed to go back to St Saviour’s.

  Hedley Sansom was the one person who’d admitted knowing that Carol hadn’t died the night she was born. Tommy needed to find out exactly how much more he knew. His enmity for Ellison was tangible. Was that because Ellison had taken the lazy option in life and staid in his comfortable tenure? Was it because Ellison was just plain objectionable? Or was it because Sansom knew what he had done? Would that have given him a motive to kill Shaw? Tommy hadn’t thought the Warden had principles that deep but he and Clarissa had surprised him at lunch by their pleasant intimacy with each other. Maybe he would surprise him on this as well. Tommy certainly wanted the opportunity of watching his reaction to what he had to say.

  It was a dangerous thing to do, he knew. If Sansom believed that Ellison had killed Carol, who knows what he would do? More importantly, who knows when he’d do it? Tommy knew he shouldn’t hang Ellison out to dry until he was absolutely sure what happened. There were so many reasons, from the fact that if he was wrong his line to the truth might jam up forever, to the hurt that he would inevitably bring to Jane and her children. But there was one thought stronger than all these, one thought that drove him on: he couldn’t hold on much longer.

  He paced around. He wanted to shake his head and make it work properly. This was what the anti-depressants had felt like, he remembered. They took away the despair, but they also took away the elation, drained the world around him of its beauty, rendered it flat and empty. This was the same. He couldn’t let himself break down, couldn’t let himself lose the plot completely and hurt someone he loved. He turned the phrase over in his head, “someone he loved,” Rosie, the woman he loved. He thought how it had felt yesterday as he realised the truth of the words whilst sitting in the Plaza in Jerez, the whole world drenched in sun, drenched in heightened colour. It had felt rich and delicate and exquisite and full of the possibility of every kind of sensation.

  Now he was back in Oxford and doing everything he could to cling onto his sanity for just long enough, it felt like a statement, a piece of something he knew to be true like the day of the week, but with little connection to what made it true. Little, but just enough to make him want more. He had no choice but to let go of the peaks and troughs of feelings, to walk a pace or two inland from the cliff’s edge. If he didn’t it would have only been a matter of days, even hours, before he cracked. But the price he paid was the turning of a dimmer switch in his head. It had turned down his emotions.

  It had also turned down his sharpness. He hoped that Tommy at 60% was still smarter than anyone else at 100. That was another fact that he knew in his head was true even if he could feel no evidence in the slow clicking over of the cogs inside his head.

  He smiled at the porter on the way through Martyr’s Gate and headed around St Saviour’s’s unfinished cloisters that were beginning to take on the colours of autumn sun and lose the bleached summer coldness. The quad felt empty. Tourists were tailing off during the week since children had returned to school, and the new batch of students had yet to arrive. Tommy almost thought his knock would echo around the walls.

  Clarissa opened the door in a few seconds. Tommy imagined her sensing the footsteps outside, putting whatever she was doing neatly aside wherever she was, and timing her walk to the door so that she arrived just in time to open it without having to hesitate. Like a Spanish waiter with a lighter.

  “Tommy, you’re not well,” she said as a statement of fact rather than a question. She took his elbow and eased him inside. Like a Spanish waiter herding tourists to their seats. “You need a drink. Strictly no caffeine and strictly no alcohol.” If only it were that simple.

  “Good afternoon, Clarissa. I think you might be right,” he said, sticking as close to the truth as possible. “I’ve been better. I’d love some lime juice if you have any.”

  “As a matter of fact we do. Listen,” she leaned closer. “Don’t let Hedley get you carried away. He’ll be excited to see you. He can’t stand the Chapel crowd, and now he’s leaving he’s like a puppy that’s seen its owner put his coat on waiting to go walkies. You’re about the only person I’ve seen him enjoy talking to these days.”

  Except you, Tommy thought. He could still see that there was a genuine tenderness there, something that didn’t need to be spoken. Perhaps even she didn’t see that it was there.

  “What are you two up to like a couple of schoolboys with their paws in the tuck shop?” Hedley called out from the stairs, smiling broadly.

  “Like a pair of spies in a John Le Carré novel,” Tommy echoed. Hedley the consummate politician, he thought. There hadn’t been a twitch on his face, but there something in his iris for a split second, reflecting a little less light from the chandelier, that gave him away.

  “Shall I bring drinks up to the drawing room?” asked Clarissa.

  “Yes, please,” Hedley said. “Come on up, Tommy.”

  Tommy looked around the shelves in the drawing room. It was instinctive now. He was programmed to look for the Bibles, look for the New International Version. There were none here, he noted, but there wouldn’t be. This was the public area. There would only be old, beautifully bound family Bibles.

  “You look tired, Tommy.”

  “I’m exhausted.”

  “Not that kind of tired. You should put your spade down and stop digging for a bit.”

  “I can’t.” Tommy took a sip of the lime that Clarissa had placed by his side, making barely a whisper with her shoes.

  “I know. You also look like a kid who’s caught his sister kissing the disreputable neighbour.”

  “Did you ever wonder what happened to her?” Tommy said.

  “To Carol? No. I knew I wouldn’t find anything good.” His grave look told Tommy he knew that he wasn’t going to be left to his ignorance. “I assume your digging has unearthed something.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not good news is it?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do with it, Tommy? Haydn and Becky think Carol died when she was born. Carol’s dead. Charles and Stephen are dead. No-one’s in the dark about the basic facts.”

  “Justice has been served, eh?” said Tommy. “And there’s no need for people to see that it has been?”

  “Exactly.” Hedley poured himself another cup of green tea. He was worried. Part of it is certainly
for me, Tommy thought. I wish I could tell how much of it is for him. Here we go.

  “What if justice hasn’t been fully served?”

  Hedley put his tea down. Tommy sensed real surprise.

  “I don’t think Shaw and Knightley were the only ones involved in Carol’s death,” Tommy said.

  “Evidently so. How did you reach that conclusion? Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been to Spain. Charles had Carol with him out there.”

  There was no reaction.

  “She wasn’t with him when he left,” Tommy continued. “Someone else took her. Someone who did something terrible to her.”

  “No.” Hedley’s fingers were drumming on the arm of his chair. Furrows were opening and closing in his brow. “No, that can’t be right.”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to say. Just like you made me promise. I don’t have forensic proof. Not yet”

  “But you know?”

  “I believe so.”

  That seemed to be reason enough. Sansom nodded slowly to himself. Tommy watched the blinkers coming on as though he were in a reverie, turning ideas around, having a look at them from all sides.

  “Does anyone else know?” said Sansom eventually. The blinkers had come off and the tip of a concerned steeple played around his bottom lip.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “What’s going to make your mind up?” Sansom asked.

  “You’ve just worked that out, I think.”

  “Yes.” Sansom was distracted, his gaze floating around the room without alighting anywhere. He was trying to hide his thoughts, Tommy figured, raising his background anxiety like he would if he were attempting to beat a polygraph. “And if this someone turns out to have killed Charles, in your best belief, or if someone else killed him because they knew what he’d done. What then?”

  “I’m afraid I think that would be for Becky to decide.”

  For the first time Sansom looked as though retirement really was the best thing for him. He looked old, looked as though Val’s death was coming back to hit him with its full weight and work was no longer the sanctuary from it that it had been. He was back in his dream, his fingers tapping against his teeth, nodding slowly to himself as though he knew that Tommy was right and wished that he weren’t. Tommy wished he could tell why, but knew that the door was closed. For now.

  ____

  51

  Tommy was exhausted as he drove back up Bane’s Avenue. The Oxford air was choking, even after the dustbowl of Andalucia. Gases hung in the high pressure over the marshes on which the city stood. Confiding in Sansom had been a risk, but it was a risk he was sure it had been worth taking. He was hiding something. Tommy was certain of that now.

  The poison still bothered him. How had someone got Shaw to drink water laced with warfarin without spitting it straight out? How did they know he would even drink water when he had fine wines laid on? And what was the feast for anyway? Perhaps he’d never know the answer to that, although it struck him that it wouldn’t be out of character if it were just a quirk. Did Shaw know the killer was in the house or had they planted the poison and snuck out? It wasn’t difficult to creep in, after all. The door was always unlocked. Except that someone locked it after Tommy left and before Emily arrived. He had assumed that was Becky. Maybe it wasn’t.

  He checked all three doors before going in. Nothing looked disturbed. No windows were out of place. He turned the key in the side door. For a moment he wondered if he should go in SWAT-style, back to the door, cover the corners, secure the staircase blind turn by blind turn. Probably a little melodramatic, he thought, and opened the door, picking up the post from the mat, closing the door behind him, and flicking through the raft of catalogues and junk mail. Everything was postmarked, and everything in flimsy see-through wrappers.

  His bed felt wonderful, but he knew that if he let himself relax into it no alarm would rouse him before morning, so he picked up a phone and speed dialled Becky.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  “Hi, Becky.”

  “Whatcha been up to?”

  “Lots of travelling.”

  “Get anywhere?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know who killed Dad yet?”

  “Not yet,” he said. He could visualise the disappointment on the other end of the line. There was only one bit of news she wanted to hear. “I made progress, though,” he added, although he knew that wasn’t enough. He decided to change the subject “So how was the funeral?”

  “Low key.” No invitations had gone out in the Gazette. There had been no notices on the Faculty website, no circulation of old colleagues.

  “Any unexpected faces?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose Hedley gave the eulogy?”

  “Such as it was. You know, loyal servant of the college, much missed by family and friends, we’ll all miss his famous parties, that kind of stuff.”

  “Sounds better than Ellison’s shmoozing.”

  “Miles.”

  “Need to talk about it?”

  “Yeah, but not today. I’m exhausted. I think I’ll get an early night. Do you want lunch tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Meet me here.”

  I’m exhausted too, he thought as he sat up. Mustn’t let myself sleep yet, though. Need to get ready to see Rosie.

  Tommy thought about working out but decided it probably wouldn’t be safe lifting hundreds of kilos in his condition. He took a shower, rather than a bath. Lying down and hot water was a combination too conducive to sleep. As he towelled himself down he was aware that he was playing his conversation with Becky over in his head. He knew she’d said something important but he had no idea what.

  He got dressed slowly, into a black cotton T-shirt and black chinos, old army issue jackboots and a leather jacket. He made himself a big cafetiere of Columbian dark roast. He wished he did drugs. A few lines would sort him out. No, he wished he was 20 again. That was the surefire way never to get tired. The sudden rush of caffeine on an empty stomach make him feel queasy but using food to settle him would send him straight to sleep. Best go for a walk to keep himself occupied before he picked Rosie up.

  He headed downstairs, one step at a time, at a gentle walk. The thick cream envelope smiled up at him from the tiles. That’ll kill some time, he thought, his mind too fuzzy to register fear. Whether it was tiredness or whether he knew it would be wiped clean, he picked the envelope up in his fingers and took it upstairs. He laid it on his desk and slit it open with his abalone shell letter opener. He was already more awake.

  He shook the envelope. No disfigured Bibles, just a sheet of matching cream paper. He held it up to the light. The watermark was Conqueror, passable correspondence paper, but available from any level of stationery store from Staples upwards. It hardly narrowed things down. The writing was disguised and in ordinary black felt tip. It didn’t look as though enough pressure had been applied to leave an imprint on anything underneath, and the back of the thick paper revealed that the ink hadn’t soaked through, so there was no point looking for marks on people’s desks. Tommy guessed the lack of blotches meant the author was calm when they wrote it, had it all planned out and didn’t let the pen linger on the sheet; but that was probably amateur quackery. It was much more likely he’d find out who it was by good old-fashioned legwork, and much more likely still that events would overtake it all and he’d find the killer first and get the letter-writer by default. Or that the killer would find him.

  He stared at the paper in front of him with its mixture of capitals and lower case:

  LeT hER rEst. LEt thEm All reST.

  He played around for a while, tried separating out the capitals from the lower case, but everything seemed to be random. He looked for anagrams. There were a few words, but nothing that made any sense.

  He
couldn’t work out whether or not it was a threat. He felt sure that the first letter had been, and this was in the same kind of envelope. But the tone wasn’t threatening. If anything it was concerned. But concerned for what? For whom? For Becky and Haydn? For Knightley and Charles? For Carol? Or for the writer? He wished he could see the person past the words. He could read people as well as he could read text. Now he wished he could read text as well as he could read people.

  ____

  52

  It was time to go at last. His conversation with Becky was still niggling away at him as he got back into the Renault. He knew that it almost certainly wasn’t sensible to drive, but he wasn’t going far.

  He parked up in the Ewert Place car park at the back of Rosie’s flat, near north Oxford’s only swimming pool, and checked his heart rate as he walked round the corner. It wasn’t racing but it was definitely raised. A slight expectant sweat had formed at his temples. That was good. Then again it was probably the coffee. No, the feathering on the inside of the wall of his gut was more than caffeine.

  Rosie opened the door and stood in front of him, and, he couldn’t help thinking, in front of half of north Oxford, with absolutely nothing on. What he was feeling now was definitely the result of more than caffeine.

  “Hey Tommy,” she said, looking him over. “I don’t know whether I should say you look fantastic or you look like shit.”

  “Well I know which I’d say to you.”

  Rosie smiled. “Are you coming in, or do you want my neighbours to have a longer look?”

  She leaned back on the sofa, arms stretched out sideways. “So what have you got planned?” she said.

  “Hmm.” He couldn’t pull his eyes away from her.

  “Tommy, I get the feeling you’re eyeing me up like I’m a room you’re trying to design. It’s not flattering, you know.”