The Company of Fellows

by Dan Holloway

  As he realised how delicate his life was he saw the effort it had taken to construct it, to close it off completely from a past that held nothing for him but shame and fear and guilt. And he realised just how thin his defences were that still, just, kept that past at bay. He knew, somewhere buried inside him, that they had been damaged beyond repair. It was as though he was on the 80th floor of one of the Twin Towers. The clock was ticking and he had to run for the stairs and hope. You have to make it, he told himself. You have to make it for Becky.

  He put his arms around Rosie from behind. For a moment the clean smell of her perfume washed everything away. She turned to him and kissed him forcefully, pushing him against the wall, pinning his hands against black velvet. He could feel her lips on his neck, on the lobe of his ear. “Thank you, Tommy,” she whispered. Now take me home.”

  He lay in Rosie’s bed listening to the early morning traffic outside on the Banbury Road. His breathing was calm. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on, but for now he was at least functioning. And he knew that he was close to an answer. That brought its own problems of course. Would finding the killer really close the door in his life he had nudged ajar? He knew he was being hopelessly naïve even to entertain the thought. And there were other questions, questions about the people he had just met, people whose lives had become part of his own without him realising it. What would happen to Becky and Haydn when they found the truth? What would Rosie think of him? Would he have to close the door to them as well and start another life from scratch?

  FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 2007

  ____

  55

  Tommy couldn’t remember the last time he needed a bath as badly as he did now. He sank into the deep water, breaking the surface of the patchouli oil, and he felt his whole body coming back to life.

  Where would you go if you wanted to have a spoon sculpted from ice? Maybe there would be a receipt or an invoice lying around the Professor’s house. It wasn’t something he’d been looking for before. It was probably easier to start by asking around. If he asked the right person the reaction would say all he needed to hear. Who better to start with than Clarissa, he thought, trained in the fancy fineries of patisserie? Hedley had said she still worked in the trade. Exactly what kind of work did she do? He wondered whether it included intricate little mouldings.

  The clean linen shirt felt wonderful against his skin, and he enjoyed its coolness before heading back out into the pollution. Even in the early morning blue little clouds were beginning to bubble and break up the blue of the sky, working their way towards the sun. The summer weather would break soon, and wash the particulates away, at least for a while.

  He was already in Bane’s Avenue, halfway to St Saviour’s and Clarissa. But before he saw her there was someone else he had to see. Tommy knew the connection between Carol’s fate and Ellison. Maybe the killer had figured it out as well. He half hoped he’d rap on the door and push it open to find a bloodbath. Then he thought of Jane and her children, saw them kneeling in his blood crying with incomprehension.

  He didn’t want to think what Ellison had done to them over the years. Chances were, or at least he hoped they were, they had no idea of any of that part of his life, no idea until he was dead and everything came out, and another three lives were ruined. Then there would be two more sets of children’s eyes looking anywhere for help to understand what had happened, and a wife who would have to come to terms with the truth about the man she’d shared a bed with for over half her life. Three more lives that may or may not have enough time left to be rebuilt. That was why he had to stop Ellison becoming another victim.

  Tommy pounded on the door. There was no time to work out what to say. He had to trust his judgment. That wasn’t as easy as this time last week, he thought.

  Ellison’s sneering faced appeared around the door. “Tommy West.”

  That was a relief. He couldn’t face Jane or the children. Better they remain anonymous for the moment. He could do without three more sets of eyes haunting his dreams. He was sure there would be photos on Ellison’s desk, part of the conceit of normality. Fortunately it was too far away from the smoke-stuffed sofa for him to see the faces in the frames. “Good morning.”

  “Well,” said the Professor. “We hear nothing for ten years and then you keep turning up like a bad penny. How very interesting.”

  “Do you mind if I have a word, Professor?”

  “Just the one? I’m sure you could manage that at the door, but if you want a conversation, you’d better come in.”

  Tommy thought he’d take a pop at him if he made any more bad jokes with that self-congratulatory smile. He could only bottle up his reactions so far before the cork gave.

  “Will you have tea?” he asked, pointing Tommy to the scruffy sofa in his study. “It’s not tea time but it’s always time for tea, eh? I can get my wife to bring us some.”

  “No, thank you.” Perhaps the endless joking’s a nervous thing, Tommy thought, in which case it was a sign he was onto something.

  “So, what do you want today?”

  “I was in Spain on Wednesday,” said Tommy.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Jerez de la Frontera.”

  “Quite a beautiful town.” Ellison smiled. “Actually, I think I’m going to have some tea anyway.”

  Great. Tommy wondered whether to excuse himself to the bathroom. No, just keep hold of the breeze in his head, blowing jasmine gently against his face. They were talking about Spain, that was good. About where Shaw had been in Spain; with Ellison. That wasn’t good. Angel’s jasmine terrace in Seville. That was very good.

  Ellison picked up the telephone and pressed a single key that was obviously set up as an extension. Like Lord Muck summoning his maid with a bell-pull, Tommy thought. “A pot of Earl Grey, please. Bring two cups, I have a visitor who may want some. And some nice cold milk.” He put the phone down and smiled back at Tommy. “Where were we? Ah, yes, we were in Jerez. How nearly like the Duke of Clarence.”

  Tommy tried not to roll his eyes. He smiled lamely and tiredly.

  “As I was saying,” Ellison continued, ignoring Tommy’s failure to laugh. “One of the most beautiful old towns in Europe. I used to stay there quite regularly, in fact, when Charles Shaw lived there.”

  Tommy said nothing. He hadn’t expected Ellison to come out with it. Tommy could see behind the slightly heavyset eyes that the Professor was playing a game with him. Trying to tease him, perhaps, or to goad him with almost enough information but not quite. If that was the case, then the case would be closed before lunchtime, Tommy said to himself, unable to avoid borrowing the syntax of Ellison’s bad humour. But the more he sat opposite him, the less he thought that Ellison would be capable of duping someone like Shaw. If he was plotting against Shaw, and meeting him every weekend in the Chapel at the very least, Shaw would have sniffed him out in a second. No, he felt a growing confidence that Ellison wasn’t a murderer. No, that Ellison hadn’t murdered Shaw. What he’d done to Carol was a different matter, and Tommy still didn’t know how or if he would make him pay for it.

  “I assume you knew Charles lived out there for a while. I mean, I assume that’s why you went out there, to find out what he did in Spain?”

  “I did, yes. Not many other people do, though.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they do, but we were very close friends. Well, back then, anyway.”

  Tommy was glad he’d said no to tea earlier, or he would have spat it halfway across the study. “What soured the friendship?”

  “You know how it is, Tommy? Fickle things, friends. It’s easy to drift apart, especially when he was in Spain and I was here. That’s the difference from marriage – you don’t have the yoke of law to keep you together.”

  “Or God,” Tommy offered helpfully.

  “Indeed,” said Ellison sharply.

  “Do you know what he was doing in Spain?”

  “Having a breakdown.”

  A good,
solid, dependable reason to drift apart from your friend, Tommy thought. “He wasn’t working on Aquinas, then? That’s what he said in his application for affiliation to the Sorbonne.”

  “He wasn’t working on anything the last time I saw him, except hanging around drinking beer and holding large communal dinners.”

  “Did you stay with him?”

  “No, no. He was far too depressed. It made him claustrophobic. He couldn’t bear to have anyone in the house with him. It gave him the shakes. Held all his dinners outdoors as well.”

  Tommy took in Ellison’s face. It radiated smugness. To the extent that Tommy couldn’t tell how much of what he was saying was how much of a lie. Perhaps that made him smarter than Tommy had reckoned. Probably it didn’t.

  “Here’s tea.” Ellison announced as an even, confident tap, tap, tap came from the door.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Tommy stood. Mrs Ellison was exactly what her husband was. Normal. Grey hair in a wave perm with a plain blouse and slacks. Neat, efficient, above-average intelligence. “Thank you, Mrs Ellison. I’m Tommy West.”

  “I know,” she said. Tommy detected resignation. It was as though she knew that he had come to turn their world upside down; that she didn’t know how, but that she knew when, and that there was nothing she could do but to bring tea and be polite. “I’m Jane. Pleased to meet you.” He felt her normality hit him deep inside his stomach, normality in the middle of a terrible situation that was anything but. He wanted to protect it as much as he wanted to protect Becky. He knew that probably he could do neither.

  “I will have a cup, please,” he said. It was the best thing he could think of to do.

  “Good. Milk?”

  “No, thank you.” Jane at least half-filled Ellison’s cup with milk before adding a splash of Earl Grey. Tommy held the door open for her as she left, and returned to the sofa.

  “What was he like when he came back?” Tommy asked. “Was he better?”

  “A complex moral question.” Ellison lit a roll-up and took a series of shallow little puffs, “I think he was over his breakdown, if that’s what you mean. People didn’t like that. They found it insensitive, rather like many of the Faculty here found it when you succeeded so obviously and so quickly at you new career. He was different, though.”

  “Different?”

  “More measured, I think I’d say.”

  Tommy held his breath for the bad humour, which fortunately didn’t come.

  “He stopped playing around with his students. You know I don’t think he tried it on with another woman from the moment he left his wife. Strange way round to do things, but that was Charles.”

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Tommy said, gulping down mouthfuls of tea that was far too hot still, not wanting Jane to think he had left it.

  “Going already?”

  Tommy smiled, “Goodbye, Professor.”

  “Goodbye. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

  Ellison showed no sign of getting up from his desk so Tommy showed himself out. He cast a glance down the flagstone corridor by the staircase to the basement. He could here the sound of an aerosol spraying and the flapping of a cloth, and wondered how much longer the house would be filled with the sounds of normality.

  ____

  56

  Tommy wondered about Ellison’s falling out with Shaw as he walked the two sides of Martyr’s Quad to the front door of the Warden’s Lodge. It had the ring of truth. There was something in the way Ellison had said it. He didn’t know if it was a hint of disbelief or piqued anger, but it was something that had to do with an enormous ego. Maybe Shaw couldn’t stand to look at him any more. Maybe Ellison was too ashamed to stay close to his old friend. That was unlikely. Shame was an emotion that required a degree of self-appraisal Ellison didn’t possess. It was more likely he was too frightened.

  Tommy waited outside the door for a minute to see if Clarissa would sense him there. It was an experiment he couldn’t resist. No, no anticipatory answer. He rang the bell. About five seconds later Clarissa opened the door. He was smiling to himself when she saw him.

  “What a difference a day makes,” she said.

  “Lime juice is a wonderful cordial.”

  “Do come in, and I’ll get you something with caffeine in today, if you’d like.”

  “Actually, this is just a flying visit. I was hoping to have a quick word with you.”

  Clarissa hesitated slightly, he thought. Tommy wondered how often people came to talk to her without her husband. No, that wasn’t it. She clearly had her own network of friends and contacts in the catering sphere. “Of course. Do you mind coming into the kitchen?”

  “I never mind being in a kitchen.”

  The kitchen smelled of a heady mix of half-cooked chocolate, browning pastry and flamed whisky. It was a working kitchen, like Shaw’s had been, large, smooth surfaces laid out for hygiene and large-scale preparation. Tommy expected she kept her Food Hygiene Certificate in one of the arch files neatly stacked on the shelf next to the spice rack.

  “So, Tommy.” Clarissa worked as she spoke, breaking pieces of bitter chocolate into a Bain Mari and stirring them over a constant steam.

  “Charles’ parties.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about Charles’ parties. I believe the most famous of all was the one he gave for you, if the subject isn’t off limits.” The flaky caramel smell of nearly-done pastry was coming from the oven. She’d put those on before he came, he noted. She was busy, not just trying to give herself something to do to hide her agitation at talking to him. Convenient, though, he couldn’t helped thinking.

  “Not at all. Did you ever do any catering for him?”

  “Well, for the last few years he didn’t have as many parties as he used to. But yes, I produced a few creams and custards for him.”

  Tommy could imagine what a few custards might mean. Exquisitely blended crèmes brulées flavoured with just the right amount of the very best extracts and oils.

  “You never made the ice spoons for his caviar?”

  “No,” she said without a pause or a flicker. “He didn’t get those from a caterer. He got them from an ice sculptor. Martin Laszlo, you’ll find him the Artweeks brochure,” she said. Artweeks lasted for a month each spring during which time local artists and artisans in all fields open up their workshops to the public. “And probably on the web. Martin did them for him for the last 25 years.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why on earth do you want to know about his ice spoons? Planning on having a do? People might think it was a little macabre. They were something of a signature of Charles’, I believe.”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m just…” He wasn’t quite sure what he was just doing, in terms he could explain to Clarissa at any rate.

  “Tying up loose ends?” she offered, making a loud popping sound as she removed a chocolaty finger from her mouth. “Good, that’s ready.” She took the Bain Marie off the heat and cracked an egg, separating the yolk in a matter of seconds and whisking it into the mix nonchalantly. The actions were all complete reflexes and took up none of the higher functions of her mind. Those were free to wander wherever they wanted, and Tommy could see enough of the path they were taking to know that she knew what he was looking for.

  “Yes.”

  “You think that’s how he was poisoned?”

  Had she brought that back with her from travels in her own mind, or had it come from Hedley? What do you talk about when the lights go out, he wondered, not for the first time? It was the same question he found himself asking every couple he met; a question he knew, thinking back, he’d wanted to ask every couple since those terrible nights lying awake with Emily, when every word he’d chosen had been wrong. What do you share with each other? How much of it is spoken, and how much is read from the curve of a shoulder or the pressure of an arm – and how much of that does Hedley have any idea you know?

  “I don’t know. I’m sure Martin Laszlo didn�
��t poison Charles, though.” That was a bold statement he thought. It implied that he had an idea who did, and he really wasn’t sure that he’d be willing to bet his business on it yet. It certainly implied something to Clarissa, who had removed the pastry cases and was pouring chocolate mix into each. She wanted to say something, he thought. Did she want to tell him to be careful whom he told? Did she want him to think of Becky? Of Haydn? Of something she couldn’t say?

  “Do you want to lick the spatula?” she asked.

  “Thank you.” He took it gladly. Now she had finished there was no more distraction. She would have to create one. He held out the handle, which she took with a hasty smile. She was already thinking the same, which was pretty much all he needed to know. And certainly all that it would be courteous to ask.

  He headed straight for the Westgate Library and googled Martin Laszlo ice sculpture Oxford. He remembered the number and punched it into his mobile as he walked out of the door.

  “Martin Laszlo.”

  “Hi, my name’s Tommy West.” Tommy was happy to play things very politely. He was surprised that he didn’t know the name, and realised that none of his clients had asked him for an ice sculpture yet. Maybe now it was something he could suggest. “I was a friend of Professor Shaw’s.”

  “Was? What did you do to piss him off?”

  “Nothing. He’s dead.”

  “Shit, what happened.”