The Bursar's Wife

by E. G. Rodford

  As I was about to leave something nagged at me, so I decided a last sweep of the place would be prudent; it’s not unknown for things to drop out of pockets or a mobile phone to be left behind. I looked in the bedroom, studied the large camera aimed at the bed. I remembered what Stubbing had said when she’d rung me early this morning, about tying the Trisha strangling footage she’d described to the camera now before me. Could she use it if I took it to her? My scant knowledge of the law was that here, unlike in the US, evidence could be admissible however it was obtained. But it was a large piece of equipment usually used on a tripod or carried on the shoulder, which presumably is why he had the other, smaller handheld camcorder. Besides, I wasn’t about to do Stubbing’s dirty work for her, just because she was worried about her career.

  The nagging feeling amplified. What was it? Something about the cameras. There were two. It was the smaller handheld, that’s what it was. The one Quintin used in addition to the fixed camera I was staring at. The small one. The one, had he taken Trisha up to the Gogs that night, he would have used, not the big one. Where was the raw footage from it? All on the hard drive, I supposed, so anything incriminating would be on there. But what was it recorded onto in the first place? Not a DVD, it was too small, but a memory card. Memory cards that we’d seen him buy that morning in Cambridge. I went to the office, where the camcorder was connected to the computer. Cameras and camcorders I could understand, and it wasn’t long before I saw that it contained one of the largest capacity cards you could buy. The adrenalin made my hands tremble as I flipped open the screen and navigated the menu system to play back what was on it.

  52

  MY ORIGINAL IDEA WAS TO GET JASON TO DELETE THE offending footage of Sylvia and my father from the drives and to help me look for further evidence of Quintin and friends’ involvement in Trisha’s sad end. But there was no need for that now, not after what I’d seen on the camcorder, which left nothing to the imagination. I put the camcorder in a Waitrose carrier bag I found in the kitchen and left. In the car I made a phone call to Kamal, who listened and said he would get back to me. Then I drove home.

  * * *

  Through the brambles at the bottom of my garden is the small shed where my father kept his tools. I went there with the hard drive and backup drive and a small blowtorch Olivia had used once to sear the top of some crème brûlées for a dinner party. Inside the shed, tendrils of bramble had snuck through the large gaps in the rotting slats and were thriving despite the gloom. I fought them and large cobwebs to reach a dust-covered worktop to which a rusty vice was fixed. I jammed the drive in it, turning the handle and increasing pressure until it cracked and bits pinged off. Jason had said that I needed to get at the circular wafers inside. Once I had done the same to the backup drive I was left with a collection of thin brown magnetic discs to which I applied a blowtorch causing them to melt and contract into dark brown balls of plastic.

  * * *

  As promised Kamal called me back, and after talking to him I rang Stubbing, having to leave a message on her voicemail – no doubt she was sleeping off last night’s self-pitying binge. I drove to Addenbrooke’s.

  * * *

  Quintin had bagged himself a private room. According to Kamal’s nursing contact he was waiting for a neurosurgical consultation, due to possible nerve damage in the shoulder. He was sitting up in bed, his ear bandaged to his head like an extra in a Second World War film. His left arm was in a sling and judging by his vague expression he was on strong painkillers.

  “Ah, Kockers Junior, at last, I’ve been ringing for ages. I need you to hold my pecker so I can have a whizz.”

  I put the Waitrose bag at the foot of the bed.

  “Did you bring champagne?”

  “Why did my father retire early?”

  He smiled, as if realising why I was here, and shifted his buttocks on the bed.

  “Because, you Armenian retard, I showed him the film. I gave him a choice. I’d show the film to his employers, the relevant bit anyway, and he would be sacked with no pension and charged – although to be honest the spineless wonders at the college would do anything to avoid a bad name – or, he could retire early voluntarily. It was a no-brainer. As it was he lost five years of his pension.”

  “But why?” I said, more curious than angry. “What had he ever done to you?”

  He shrugged and grimaced, as if remembering something unpleasant. “Nothing. He was always around, always there, waiting for us to finish so he could clean up. He watched the films, knew what was going on. He was almost part of the club.” He picked up a glass of water. “But I did it mainly because I could.”

  So that was Quintin’s reason? Not because of what my father had done to Sylvia, no, but simply because he could. He didn’t give a shit about Sylvia. Quite the opposite.

  “You set him up with Sylvia, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I thought it would be good to mix things up. There should be more intermingling of the classes, I feel.”

  “And your interest in Lucy? What was that about?”

  He sipped at his water and smacked his lips.

  “Just more sport. I thought it would be fun to do the daughter of the mother, catch my drift?” He smiled that sensuous smile. “Especially when I’d had a hand in creating her.” Here he guffawed and if he’d been hooked up to a life support system I’d have happily unplugged him and locked the door to prevent his resuscitation.

  “Except you can’t, can you?” The laughter stopped.

  “Can’t what?”

  “Do her, of course. You can’t get it up, can you? It’s all trouser with you and no cock. You can’t stand up for women, if you catch my drift.” He tried to get comfortable in the bed, his gaze unfocussed and wary, his smile fixed. He opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off. “I don’t know what happened to you, or what caused it, and I don’t really give a shit. But you probably thought, in that mess of a mind of yours, that you could compensate with your artificial substitutes and coerced victims, and that putting it on film for your sad little friends gave you some sort of masturbatory satisfaction.”

  “It gave us plenty of satisfaction as a matter of fact. And I gave pleasure to plenty of women.” I ignored going down that twisted route and carried on.

  “Not Trisha, though. Trisha was different, wasn’t she?”

  At that point Stubbing came into the room, looking like she’d just got out of bed having slept in her clothes.

  “Who’s this?” Quintin demanded.

  “Detective Inspector Stubbing,” said Stubbing, in a hoarse voice.

  “What’s she doing here? I called Brampton.” I exchanged a look with Stubbing.

  “It’ll become clear why she’s here,” I said. That’s when Brampton came in, looked surprised to see me and Stubbing, and went straight to Quintin’s side, glaring at us with all the distaste of someone who’s found a pubic hair in a sandwich they’ve already bitten into. All I needed now was Sylvia to arrive and I could do a Poirot and dazzle the gathering with my deductive powers.

  “Ah, Judith, better late than never,” drawled Quintin. “I want you to arrest Sylvia Booker for assault. This gumshoe here is a witness to her unprovoked knife attack.”

  “Shut up,” I said. “She’s had years of provocation from you.”

  “What are you doing here?” Brampton spat at Stubbing.

  “I was just about to explain about Trisha Greene,” I said before Stubbing could answer. It was Brampton’s turn to look confused.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded of Stubbing.

  “Just listen, ma’am,” Stubbing said. I went to the door and closed it. Quintin was protesting to Brampton.

  “I was wondering,” I said, cutting him off midstream, “why Quintin here would want to do what he did to Trisha. Strangle her all the way, I mean, not just a little bit for perverted kicks.” A gratifying hush filled the room. “A psychiatrist could get a fat research grant to look into this but my take, for what it’s wo
rth, is that it’s because she was the only one of Quintin’s conquests, if I can call them that, who actually wanted sex on his terms.”

  Quintin laughed again and shook his bandaged head, almost in sorrow. “I already told you she was a slut. But I didn’t kill her. You’ve completely lost the plot. Why would I kill her if she was giving me what I wanted, you idiot? Besides, I only did to her what she wanted done.”

  “Exactly. You gave her what she wanted, but that’s not how you roll, is it? She irritated you because you didn’t need to coerce it out of her, that’s the thing. No blackmail, no date-rape drug. And you didn’t like that, did you? Trisha made you angry, didn’t she, because she actually took everything you threw at her and enjoyed it?”

  “What the hell is going on here, George?” Brampton said, her brow furrowed with worry. Quintin was reaching for the buzzer that summoned a nurse. He’d be lucky if he got a response on a Sunday with all the staff cuts. I looked at Brampton.

  “I bet you a high-table college dinner that if you checked the back seat of Trisha’s convertible you might find a hair or even some fibres that match our American friend’s tailor-made trousers.”

  “Why on earth would she want to do that?” Quintin shouted.

  I shouted back: “You’re forgetting, Boyd, your compulsion to film every fucking thing you do.”

  There was a silence like the sort experienced in the seconds after an explosion. Brampton was staring at Quintin with disbelief.

  “I gave her what she wanted, that’s all. It was the natural conclusion,” he said, as if explaining why he’d given someone too much cake and they’d been sick.

  “You filmed it,” Brampton said to herself. “You bloody filmed it.”

  “Where is it?” Stubbing asked. I picked up the carrier bag with the camcorder inside it and handed it to her.

  “Everything is on there, the critical bits are filmed by his sidekick Kevin. Try to make sure this one doesn’t get damaged or wiped.”

  She opened the bag and smiled, then showed it to Brampton, who made to take it from her. Stubbing pulled it back and looked askance at Brampton, who nodded in resignation.

  * * *

  I left as Stubbing was formally detaining Quintin Boyd as a suspect in the murder of Trisha Greene.

  53

  STUBBING ARRIVED THE NEXT MORNING, EARLY, HER HAIR bound tighter than ever. She followed me – without mentioning my pyjamas – into the kitchen where I sat at the table. I poured her some coffee, yawning.

  It was only after she’d added two sugars to her mug and stirred it to buggery that she spoke. She was still standing.

  “I suppose I should thank you,” she said.

  “Consider us even.”

  She smiled. “Do you want to press charges against little Kevin?”

  “I don’t think so. Besides, he’s got enough heat without me wasting my time on him.”

  She nodded. “That’s true enough, plus he’s got form. He’s been singing like a canary since I showed him the video.” She sniggered. “He was just following orders, apparently.”

  I sipped my coffee. “Have you seen footage like that before?”

  She sat down opposite and looked at her mug. “I’ve seen some pretty sick stuff, mainly with kiddies, but this is disturbing in a different way. It’s like he lost it at the end and wanted to see how far he could go.”

  I didn’t agree with Stubbing’s evaluation of the video. All I’d seen was the concentrated hate and effort on Quintin’s face while he was doing it, then the relief and pleasure when he’d finished. He’d collapsed in the back seat, panting, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d smoked a cigarette then had a nap, except that the runt, realising what he’d just filmed, had called out to his boss, “Mr Boyd, what the fuck have you done? Mr Boyd? Fuck.” He’d put the camera down on the bonnet of the car without switching it off, and it had desperately tried to autofocus on the windscreen and Trisha’s just-dead face at the same time. The face that had kept me awake all night. Then you could hear the runt dragging Quintin from the back seat, trying to pull him from his trancelike state, all the while grunting and swearing with the effort. Then he’d picked up the camera and it had gone dead.

  We sat for a bit, drinking our coffee, then Stubbing got to why she was here.

  “So, George, anything to say about all the DVDs and tapes cooked in the arsehole’s flat, not to mention some missing hard drives?” She was oddly calm, perhaps realising the futility of her task.

  “Not really,” I said, sipping my drink. “He must have done it himself when he knew you were onto him.”

  “Don’t try and give me a warm feeling by pissing down my leg, George. You’re not going to hand over the hard discs you took from there?”

  “What hard discs?” She put her mug on the table.

  “So if I get the ferrets in here to rip the place apart they’re not going to find anything?”

  “Not a sausage.” She raised her thin eyebrows.

  “Was it something to do with Sylvia?”

  I weighed up the option of stonewalling against telling the truth and hoping I touched some human streak of decency in Stubbing.

  “He did have something that belonged to Sylvia. It has nothing to do with Trisha.”

  “And because you have a hankering for posh quim you removed any possible copy of it on Quintin’s hard drive, thinking she might be grateful enough to throw a desperate dog a bone.”

  I looked impassively at her over my cup.

  “Women like that don’t put out for blokes like you,” she said.

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “And Brampton, how was she involved?”

  “Like I told you, they were all at university together, watched a bit of porn, that’s all.” Stubbing sneered as only she can and made a noise like an asthmatic pug.

  “She seemed bloody relieved that Quintin’s computer had no data on it.” That didn’t surprise me. She must be as relieved as Sylvia, especially since disembowelling his computer, which was running as a server, meant there’d be nothing available online anymore, something Sylvia seemed blissfully unaware of. But I wasn’t expecting a thank you card from Brampton.

  “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean about her wiping the memory stick. She did do it, didn’t she?”

  “Well, all I know for certain is that she was the first person to get her hands on it. Waylaid young Turner as he was taking it down to the tech unit, saying she would take it down herself. It didn’t get there until last thing Friday and she told them it wasn’t a priority.” She shrugged. “But I can’t prove anything. I mean maybe the techies could show that the files were deleted, but to be honest she probably just gave them an identical brand-new one.” Her jaw tensed and her eyes went hard like marbles. “And of course anything he might have had on her has conveniently been destroyed.” She mimicked something disappearing with her hands and shook her head in disgust, not looking at me. I said nothing, waiting for her to calm down.

  “Maybe she’ll move on,” I said. She looked up.

  “She’ll probably be promoted out the way,” she said. “That’s what usually happens.”

  “Will you apply for her job if she does?”

  She made another pug-like noise and took a deep drink of coffee. She studied my face and I raised my eyebrows – I’d seen that look before; it resulted in putting on a condom. But to my relief she must have thought better of it because she sighed and slowly got up. She put out her hand and I took it.

  “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Vicky.”

  “Likewise, George.”

  * * *

  Midmorning Monday Sylvia came into the office. After writing a cheque she sat back in her chair.

  “To be honest I didn’t think he was capable of murder,” Sylvia said. “Manipulation and abuse, yes, but this?” She was a lot more relaxed than when she was last here. No unnecessary sunglasses,
no twiddling of rings. She wore a black trouser suit that had been tailored with great care and sat up straight with her hands flat on a black leather portfolio resting on her thighs. “Judith says the whole thing was filmed?”

  “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

  “At one point I wondered what had made him the person he is.”

  “Probably something to do with his mother,” I said, then wished I hadn’t because something flickered across her face.

  “Mothers are blamed for most things,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  She waved my apology away. “He wasn’t all bad, you know, he used to contribute generously to charity.”

  I declined to comment and she had the grace to look embarrassed. “I must say you don’t seem surprised by any of this.”

  “Nothing surprises me,” I said.

  “Really? Even Lucy?”

  “Well, maybe that,” I granted. I gazed into her turquoise eyes but they looked less alluring to me than two weeks ago. And I no longer fantasised about her whispering into my ear.

  “I want to thank you, George, for what you’ve done.”

  I shrugged in an it’s-all-in-a-day’s-work manner.

  “No, Judith told me that… his hard drives had disappeared and someone had destroyed all the recordings?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot,” she said, in a way that suggested she hadn’t forgotten at all. She unzipped the portfolio and took out two white envelopes. She handed me one with my name on it.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s the DNA results that Quintin had sent to Elliot. I thought you might want to see them.” I put it unopened in my jacket pocket; I didn’t want Sandra opening it. I hadn’t told her about Lucy and didn’t really want to. She’d been trying to pump me on the phone the night before, but I’d put her off, accepting an invitation to eat with her and the boys that night when I promised to reveal all.