“Night in with the lads is it?”
“No. Just stocking up.”
“Not very healthy, is it?”
“What are you, a dietician?” She looked taken aback. I was a little harsh I admit, but sometimes a guy just wants to be left alone and not be told what to do by well-meaning women. She went quiet and avoided eye contact.
As I was leaving I heard her say to the next customer, “Some people! You try to be friendly…”
In the car park I opened the hatch of the Golf to put the shopping away and saw the black rubbish bag full of the Bookers’ recycled paper. After seeing Elliot dangling from his ceiling I’d put it in the car when I’d quickly left – not wanting to leave it for the police to find – and forgotten all about it.
* * *
As soon as I got home I spread out the Bookers’ recycling over the dining room table. Olivia had been keen on dinner parties and we’d been to several (all her friends) and hosted a few, despite her being embarrassed at the decorative state of the house, saying it was dark and stuck in the 1950s. She had wanted to knock downstairs through to create one enormous room, an idea I’d put the kibosh on, using the excuse that technically the house still belonged to my father and it didn’t feel right turning it into something else while he was still alive, even if he wasn’t capable of knowing the difference anymore. Secretly though, I liked the cosy claustrophobia of the rooms and the ability to shut out the knowing chatter of her book group while I watched TV or read. Sometimes I would open the front door to Olivia’s bookish chums holding the latest Stephen King or Dan Brown just to annoy her, until one day they stopped coming round, about the same time we stopped having dinner parties, and probably the same time she found intellectual and physical comfort with her new friend.
I poured three fingers of an amber liquid into a glass and sorted the pile of rubbish into envelopes, newspapers and flyers. The Bookers, or at least one of them, took The Times and the Sunday Telegraph. There were also some newsletters from various charities with Sylvia’s name on the address label. They’d obviously had a clear out: there were several issues each of the Economist and Harper’s Bazaar magazine, which seemed to be full of Sylvia Booker lookalikes. I ignored the flyers and turned to the letters and envelopes. I could find no personal correspondence; they were obviously very careful about what they put in the recycling. The only letters were generic marketing appeals addressed to the householder.
The Bookers were conscientious recyclers though; even the little plastic windows had been torn out of envelopes. Most of them had contained bills or statements that betrayed their origins either with a logo or a return PO box printed on the back – I’d done this enough times I knew the return PO boxes and towns of most credit card companies, banks and utilities. I found an envelope with a five-day old Cambridge postmark and Special Delivery sticker on it, which meant it had been received on the Friday. Most interesting was the spiral staircase logo I’d seen on the letter Elliot Booker had been holding when he’d opened the door to me. ‘Private and Confidential’ was printed in the bottom right-hand corner and it had Elliot Booker’s name and address printed on a label. I looked on the back for a return address but there was a just a PO box with a Cambridge postcode. I turned up nothing else of interest in the pile so I pocketed the envelope and went to the hall to answer the ringing phone – Jason.
“Boss, are we still on the Booker case?”
“Yes we are, my son. I’d like to pick up the tracker from the Merc; it’s served its purpose and the battery’s probably dead.”
* * *
The next morning Jason and I drove south out of Cambridge towards Royston, where Sandra had traced the registered address of the Merc to the firm that ran the luxury car rental company – Chauffeured Comfort Cars.
“I’ll settle up with you for the work you’ve done so far when we get back to the office,” I told Jason.
“Maybe I can get those headphones you mentioned.” Stuck behind a coach on a straight stretch of the A10 I contemplated pushing the Golf round it as I had a wake of cars behind me and could see clear road ahead.
“How’s that going?”
“Well, I thought about what you said, boss, about it being an acting job, and that sort of helped… Are you going to overtake that coach or what?” I strained the old Golf painfully past the dirty coach and we pulled in front of it with some relief.
“But I think the real solution is for me to get my own place,” Jason said, when the revs had settled down. “It kind of cramps your style, being at home, never mind listening to your mum doing telephone porn.”
“Can you afford it though?” I asked. “We might as well be living in London as far as rent’s concerned.” In my wing mirror I saw a car pull out, overtaking the car that was behind the coach. I thought it was going to pull in behind the coach but it kept on coming. I glanced ahead: the driver would have to get a move on; a lorry was heading towards us. Back in the mirror I could see the car was a Subaru that had one of those vents in the bonnet and a rear spoiler indicating extra horsepower. The driver made it with a car’s length to spare. We heard the extended blare of the lorry’s horn as it thundered past us, rocking the Golf with turbulence. I checked the rear-view mirror: I couldn’t make out the driver because the windscreen of the Subaru was tinted, something I thought was now illegal. I realised that Jason was talking; he’d missed the whole overtaking drama behind us.
“…depending on whether I could get some work to pay the rent. There’re plenty of people who work their way through college,” he said.
“You’re right,” I said. “I met one of them the other day doing nights at McDonald’s. She looked like shit.” I checked the mirror: the Subaru had dropped back and was now letting someone overtake it – odd since it had taken such a risk overtaking the coach in the first place.
“Besides,” Jason was saying, “if I could find somewhere reasonable…” We came up to a roundabout and I drove straight on into the outskirts of Royston. The Subaru was still there (now two cars back) but that meant nothing since we were on the main road that went through Royston towards London. “Surely you could do with some extra cash?” Jason was saying.
“What?” Had I missed something?
“You’ve got three bedrooms, boss. Surely you could spare one.” I was looking at street names and it took me a moment to realise what he was saying.
“You want to rent a room from me?”
“I just wondered—”
“Forget it, Jason. I’m no fucking landlord.” I passed him the sheet with the directions to Chauffeured Comfort Cars on it. “Get us to this bloody place, will you?” He took the sheet and looked at it.
“Next left. Then third right,” he said. The kid was disappointed, I could tell by his deflated tone. But I was not going to have a nineteen-year-old living in the house with everything that entailed – I’d been a teenager myself, and a pain in the neck to my parents. He was a good kid, but I didn’t want him as a lodger. Besides, I was getting used to bumbling around the place on my own. Perhaps I’d been a little harsh in the way I’d dealt with it though. I turned left into an industrial area.
“Listen, if you need somewhere to crash for the odd night then that’s fine, I’m always happy to lend an ear and a bed. I even know how to order pizza.” Jason snorted or chuckled, I couldn’t tell. I checked my mirror as I turned right into a cul-de-sac of five or six industrial units and just caught the Subaru turning off the A10.
“It’s just here on the right,” Jason pointed to a fenced-off area with about a dozen fancy cars parked behind it, one of which was the silver S-Class Mercedes. A sign confirmed that we had found Chauffeured Comfort Cars. I drove past and pulled into a space on the left, in front of a white van. “Why are we parking here?”
“Don’t get out, I just want to check something.”
In my wing mirror I watched the Subaru slow down at the junction we had just come off. Although the side windows were also tinted I imagined the
driver looking down towards us. Then the car sped up and disappeared.
“What is it?” Jason asked.
“Nothing. Let’s get this bloody tracker.” But after I locked the Golf and we checked to cross the road I saw the Subaru turn onto the road and stop in the customer parking bay of a trade plumbing outlet. No one got out of the car.
23
A PORTAKABIN SAT JUST INSIDE THE GATE IN THE HIGH-FENCED area that was Chauffeured Comfort Cars. Jason was surprised that they hadn’t called it Cambridge Comfort Cars, or Cambridge Chauffeured Cars. I know what he meant; it seemed that every company within a fifty-mile radius of the city prefixed their company name with ‘Cambridge’ as if it automatically imparted some aura of respectability and learning. The top of the fence was spiked and high enough to put off climbers and there were CCTV cameras mounted everywhere. I peered through the window of the Portakabin where a thin-haired man was hunched over a desk studying a magazine. I managed to make out that it had more photos than words before he noticed me. He quickly got up and came to the door. When he opened it we got a blast of cheap aftershave, which he must have showered in.
“Morning,” he said. He was of beefy peasant stock and looked ill at ease in a suit that was cut for someone slimmer and shorter – the trousers didn’t cover his ankles, nor the sleeves his wrists. I couldn’t tell whether he was the owner or manager of the place. He kept a rictus smile while he appraised our potential worth as customers. “Can I help?”
“Hello,” I said, sticking out a hand. “I’m here with my nephew and we’re looking for something to take him to his twenty-first birthday party in style.” He reluctantly put a clammy hand in mine, rested it there for a second then withdrew it to his pocket where he proceeded to adjust himself.
“Do you have anything in mind?” I looked at Jason who was scouring the cars.
“Nothing too tacky. Just be me and a few girls,” he said. I rolled my eyes at him, which he ignored. He pointed. “What about that S-Class Merc, can I look at that?” He walked off without waiting for an answer.
“The boy has no taste,” I said. “That looks like a corporate rental to me, am I right?”
“Yeah, that one is booked every week by the same guy,” the man said, as we traipsed behind Jason, me feigning a limp to slow us up.
“You OK?”
“Five-a-side. Sliding tackle,” I said. “So the same guy rents the same car. You’d think buying one would be cheaper.” Up ahead Jason was running his hands over the bonnet of the Merc, like he was smearing suntan lotion onto a woman’s shoulders.
“He likes being driven about, that’s his thing. He always wants the same driver.” Jason moved to the back of the Merc and I stopped next to a stretch limo with tinted glass.
“I think he’d be better off with something like this, no?”
The man nodded, turning to the car and patting the polished roof with his free hand, his other still being used to play pocket billiards. Over his shoulder I caught Jason ducking behind the Merc.
“This is your traditional party rental, the girls love riding in them.”
“I agree it would be more suited to the occasion,” I said, beginning to sound like a salesman myself. He was giving me some stats about the car when Jason wandered over, grinning, waving the tracker at me behind the guy’s back. Then his phone started making that weird noise that passed for a ring. The guy turned and Jason stuffed the tracker in a pocket, pulling his phone from the other. He checked the screen and put it to his ear, turning his back to us. I engaged the guy in talk about rental costs.
“Uncle George,” Jason said, a moment later, and then said it again more insistently. It was on the third go that I cottoned on: I was Uncle George. “It’s Mum, for you.” I excused myself and put the thing to my ear.
“Hello?”
“George, you should get back here pronto.”
“What’s up?”
“I have Lucy Booker with me in the office and she wants to talk to you. Also, someone from the nursing home called. A Megan?”
“Everything OK?”
“Yes, it’s fine. She said she had some information about the person who visited your dad? I’ve left her number on my screen.”
“Thanks,” I said, hanging up before she could ask me more questions.
I lied to the ill-suited man about how we would get back to him about the car hire and we made our way out. As we crossed the road I saw that the Subaru was still there. We’d reached the Golf when I remembered that I’d forgotten to limp. I looked back towards the compound but the guy had disappeared into his Portakabin. In the car I found my notebook and gave it to Jason. I told him to write down the licence plate number of the Subaru as we passed it, just in case.
“Is it following us?” Jason asked. He was looking down at his phone, his thumbs moving quickly over the little keypad.
“I don’t think so, but try and concentrate.”
“I’m on it, boss. Don’t worry.” I watched the Subaru, trying to peer through the impenetrable glass, but I saw just the shadows of two men.
* * *
I sat opposite Lucy in an otherwise empty Antonio’s and we sipped hot cappuccinos from big wide cups. Antonio brought over a small plate of biscotti, delicious morsels made by his wife. I’d brought her over here because Sandra and Jason were in the office, Jason downloading the information from the tracker onto the computer.
Lucy looked even paler than usual with dark rings under her eyes. Eyes which in no way could be confused for her mother’s. I couldn’t remember which parent eye colour was inherited from or whether it was random, nor could I remember the colour of her father’s eyes. She was dressed for Sunday school, a far cry from how she had looked when visiting Quintin Boyd. I’d done the condolences thing, which she barely acknowledged. She could hardly look at me over her wide cup.
“I wanted to thank you for helping me out last Friday,” she said, and the memory of it brought some needed colour to her cheeks.
“It was nothing,” I said, because it was nothing.
She shook her head and worried at a small cross hanging from her neck.
“No it wasn’t nothing. I’m particularly grateful for the fact that you said nothing to Mother about how you… found me.” This was all very interesting but not as interesting as the fact that she had come to my office only three days after her father’s suicide to tell me this.
“That boy who came back with you to the office. Jason, isn’t it?” I nodded. “I’ve met him before, at the Flying Duck, after rowing.” Shit. I’d forgotten about that. “He was there with Rowena and her group of Roughers,” she said.
“Roughers?”
“Yes, as in ‘roughing it’. They compete to go out with people they deem to be, uh, lower than them in social status.” She blushed violently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that Jason was in any way of a lower…”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m sure Jason will be quite flattered to be considered a bit of rough.”
“Does he work for you?”
“Occasionally,” I said.
“Well, he could do better than her.”
“I’ll tell him.” She looked alarmed so I explained that I was joking.
“So tell me, how did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“You told me your name when you drove me home, remember.” She smiled. It was a thin, lipless smile. “No, I wasn’t that far gone. Besides, it’s unusual, so I remembered it when I found your card in Mother’s handbag.” I didn’t ask what she was doing in her mother’s handbag, nor did she deem it necessary to explain. I drank my coffee and nibbled a cantuccini, wondering when she was going to mention her dead father.
“What did my mother hire you to do?” She held my gaze but it was an effort for her.
“Who said I was working for her?” She shrugged and examined her nails. If she was looking for one to chew she was out of luck; they were all painfully bitten to the flesh.
“When you rescued me yo
u said you worked for one of her charities.” I didn’t say anything; it suited me if that’s what she thought. Thankfully she was too polite to pursue it. She’d hardly touched her cappuccino. She looked up at me again, her dark eyes brimming. Here it comes, I thought.
“I was hoping you could help me.”
“Help you how?”
“Find out why my father killed himself.” I looked at her pale face and red nose and teary eyes.
“Have you spoken to your mother about it?”
“Of course. She just says that there were some financial irregularities with the college. I just don’t think that’s enough, is it, for—” Then she started to cry properly.
I figured it was best to leave her to it and signalled Antonio who nodded and came over with a box of tissues, which he silently put on the table in a practised manner, all the while giving me a disapproving look as if it were my fault. He walked away shaking his head and muttering to himself. While Lucy was busy blowing her nose I wondered whether I should ask her about Quintin Boyd, but that would give away the fact that I knew about him and then she’d know what it was I was doing for her mother.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling.
“Nothing to be sorry about. Most natural thing in the world.”
“So will you help me?”
“I’m not sure what I can do, to be honest. The police are handling it and no doubt the college will be looking into the financial side of things.” I studied her. “Do you have any reason to believe that he had something else on his mind?” She shook her head and absentmindedly moved the cross up and down the chain round her neck.
The Bursar's Wife Page 11