Trick of the Dark

by Val McDermid

  And now she was going to have to pluck up the courage to call her. It wouldn't have been such a trial six months before, when Charlie had still been someone with a decent professional reputation, albeit tinged with a degree of notoriety. But now? Charlie stared at the phone and sighed. It was no good trying to pretend that Corinna would know nothing of her disgrace. Oxford colleges were gossip factories, their Senior Common Rooms a buzz of speculation built on slender accumulations of half-truths and rumours. But in this instance, they'd only have had to glance through the neat stacks of daily newspapers on the SCR table to fuel lengthy excursions through the moral maze of Dr Charlie Flint's professional actions.

  'Oh, bugger,' Charlie muttered, reaching for the handset. This time of day, Corinna should still be in college. With luck, not teaching but reading. Or lying on the big green velvet chaise longue, thinking. The porter answered on the third ring. No such thing as a professional switchboard operator; the twenty-first century and still the college operated as if they'd barely made it out of the nineteenth.

  'St Scholastika's College. How may I help you?' The burr of a local accent that sounded as if it had escaped from a BBC costume drama.

  'I'd like to speak to Dr Newsam,' Charlie said, more brusque than she'd intended.

  'May I ask who's calling?'

  'Dr Charlotte Flint.'

  'Dr Flint? How nice to hear you. One moment, I'll see if Dr Newsam's available.'

  Bloody Oxford. Never lets you go. Charlie waited, hollow silence in her ear. Nothing as tacky as canned muzak for her alma mater. She'd almost given up when she heard a sharp click followed by a familiar drawl. 'Charlie? Is that really you?'

  'Corinna,' she said, taken aback by the warmth she suddenly felt. 'But you're not really surprised, are you?'

  'That depends on why you're calling.'

  The joust was on. Charlie felt tired at the thought of it. She moved in a different world these days, and she preferred it. 'I'm calling because you sent me a package of newspaper clippings, ' she said. 'About the trial of the two people who allegedly murdered Magda's husband on their wedding day.'

  'Why would I do that?' Corinna sounded as if this were no more important than a routine tutorial inquiry about some detail of an essay.

  'I think it was a challenge, Corinna. Given what you sent, would I be able to figure out who had sent it? And why? You did it because you're a philosopher. You've grown so accustomed to setting everyone tests and challenges that you've forgotten how to ask a straight question.'

  'And what could my motivation for such a challenge possibly be?' Charlie thought she could hear tension in Corinna's voice now, but she couldn't swear to it.

  'I'm not sure,' she said. 'But I did track down one photograph that gave me pause. I think if I was a mother and my daughter was running around with Jay Macallan Stewart, I'd be shouting for the cavalry. Now, I know I'm not everybody's idea of the cavalry, but I'm probably all you could think of at short notice.'

  There was no humour in Corinna's laugh. 'I thought my memory was still reliable. You always had a gift for investigation and resolution. It's good to see the years have only sharpened it. Well done, Charlie.'

  'What's all this about, Corinna? Apart from me being your self-fulfilling prophecy?' She didn't care that she sounded impatient.

  'I need your help.'

  Charlie sighed. 'It's seventeen years since I graduated, Corinna. You don't know anything about me.'

  'I know enough, Charlie. I feel pretty certain you've got a burning desire to redeem yourself right now.'

  Charlie closed her eyes and massaged her forehead. 'That's a little presumptuous, don't you think?'

  A moment's silence, then Corinna spoke crisply. 'We know you here, Charlie. And there is a strong feeling among the senior members in college that you have been made a scapegoat. That you have in fact acted with honour and honesty. It may have been uncomfortable, but it was right to stand up for Bill Hopton's innocence when he was actually innocent. It's not your fault he went on his killing spree afterwards.'

  'Some might disagree with you,' Charlie said, her voice weary. 'Some might say it was his very experiences at the hands of those of us involved in law enforcement that sent him over the edge.'

  'Speaking as a philosopher, I find that an untenable proposition, ' Corinna said briskly. 'Now, there's nothing we can do to help you professionally, obviously. Although I'm sure, where influence exists, it's being brought to bear. But what I can do is offer you the chance to be useful. To use your skills for good, if you like.'

  Charlie didn't know why, but she felt like laying her head on the desk and weeping. 'I don't have the faintest idea what you're on about, Corinna. And I'm pretty sure I don't want to.'

  'Charlie, we can help each other here. But a phone call isn't the way to do this. Come and talk to me. Come to Oxford for the weekend. Bring your partner if you like. I'm sure she'd find plenty to amuse her in the city. You don't have to come and stay with us if you'd find that awkward after all this time. We'll find you a room in college.'

  'I don't think so, Corinna.'

  'All I'm asking is that you listen to me, Charlie. No obligation. If you won't do it for me, do it for Magda. You and Magda were always buddies. Charlie, I understand the reason you do what you do. It's because you have a desire to protect the vulnerable. Right now, Charlie, my daughter has never been more vulnerable. Can your conscience really afford any more burdens?'

  'That's a very poor effort at emotional blackmail, Corinna.'

  'You said yourself if you had a daughter who was running around with Jay Macallan Stewart, you'd be shouting for help. That's all I'm doing here.'

  'I understand that. But I'm not the person to help with this. I don't know how to break up Magda and Jay Stewart, even if I thought that was an appropriate thing to do.'

  'I'm not asking you to separate my daughter from Jay Macallan Stewart,' Corinna said, sounding ruffled for the first time. 'I wouldn't be so crass. I know my Magda well enough to understand that finding out the truth about the kind of person Jay Stewart is will do the job perfectly well. What I'm asking is that you bring your talents to bear on uncovering that truth. At heart, this is about a miscarriage of justice. I thought you still cared about that kind of thing, Charlie.'

  It doesn't take long for silence on a phone to loom large. After a few empty seconds, Charlie said, 'I don't understand.'

  'Paul Barker and Joanna Sanderson did not kill my son-in-law, Charlie. The jury's out today, the evidence is stacked against them. They're going to jail. And it's wrong.'

  'Haven't you left it a bit late to try and drag me into this? If it was really about avoiding a miscarriage of justice, surely you should have called me weeks ago.'

  Corinna's exasperated sigh was not unfamiliar to Charlie. 'This hasn't exactly been easy for me. I thought it would be thrown out of court. I had no idea how far . . . Look, Charlie, what matters here is that the two people in the dock are innocent. They didn't kill Philip.'

  Charlie couldn't help herself. 'Who did?'

  'Some things don't work over the phone. Come and talk to me, Charlie.'

  Hook, line and sinker, Charlie thought. Here we go again.

  8

  I left Northumberland Jennifer Stewart and arrived at Oxford Jay. A small thing, for sure, but the first stage of my transformation. A lot more was needed, that much was soon obvious. Years later, I still have vivid, humiliating memories of my first tutorial with Dr Helena Winter.

  Helena Winter was one of the reasons I had chosen St Scholastika's. Hers had been the first book about philosophy that had fired my enthusiasm for the subject. When I'd come to the college for my interviews, I'd thought her the most stylish woman I'd ever seen. Impeccable in a charcoal pin-striped suit, she radiated calm composure. Her face was inscrutable, her hair a perfect chignon the shocking white of a new ream of printer paper. I desperately wanted to impress her.

  I had prepared my first essay on the history of philosophy with her in
mind and, as instructed, began reading it out. It may be hard to believe now if you've ever heard me on the radio or TV but back then I had a Northumbrian accent you could cut with a knife and spread on stottie cakes. I was barely into my stride when I became aware of Dr Winter's raised hand, like a genteel officer of the traffic police. I faltered to a halt.

  'I'm so terribly sorry, Miss . . . Stewart,' Dr Winter said, not caring whether she sounded condescending or not. 'Your accent is positively splendid, and would be a great asset were you to be studying Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. But unfortunately I haven't understood a word you've said thus far. I wonder, could you possibly return to the beginning and speak a little more slowly?'

  I was mortified. But at eighteen, I had no notion that a woman like Helena Winter was capable of being put in her place, never mind how to do it. So I started again, forcing my mouth round the sort of phonemes that would have earned scorn and mockery in my native Wearside. By the end of that first term, I was bilingual. BBC English for Dr Winter, Northumbrian when I was thinking and talking to myself.

  The junior philosophy don was a powerful antidote to the formality of Dr Winter. Corinna Newsam was the polar opposite of most of the college's tutors. The list of differences was long and significant. She was Canadian; she was Catholic; she was married so she lived in a proper house, not a set of rooms in college; she had children of her own; she was no more than thirty-five, a mere child by Oxford's donnish standards; and she was informal, insisting we call her Corinna.Those were the tangible differences. But there were intangibles too. She was lively, making the ideas of Ancient Greek philosophers vibrant and relevant. She never patronised, and she wasn't a snob. Probably half of us were half in love with her.

  Jay paused and reread the last paragraph. 'No,' she muttered. 'Strike the last sentence.' She had to keep reminding herself there were new brakes on candour. Magda would read this memoir. Most of what Jay didn't want Magda to know overlapped with what she wanted the rest of the world not to know. But there were more things that were off limits now. It was tacky to reveal to your lover that at the time she'd first had a crush on you, you were in love with her mother. So she erased the last sentence and took off her glasses, polishing them on her T-shirt while she figured out a new bridging sentence.

  In short, she was the only member of the Senior Common Room who seemed to have friend potential for any of us.

  What I didn't realise back then was that it wasn't friendship I needed. What was missing in my life was what had always been missing. I needed a mother. And somehow, Corinna Newsam picked up on that need.

  Jay smiled in satisfaction. That would play much better with Magda. It also shone a benevolent light on Corinna, providing Magda with more ammunition against her mother's hostility. She could imagine Magda saying something to Corinna like, 'But she's so nice about you. She talks about how kind you were to her. Why are you being so unkind now?' Every little helped.

  Jay checked the time in the bottom corner of her computer screen. Eighteen minutes till the next news bulletin. According to Magda, the jury would be going out sometime today. But it would be tempting fate to expect them to come back with a quick verdict. Jay longed for it to be over so she and Magda could forge ahead with their lives without fear. But she knew from past experience that when you set a chain of circumstance in motion patience was the only ally worth cultivating. It would all be fine. The ball she had started rolling on Magda's wedding day would score a goal soon enough. The next news bulletin was irrelevant. Plenty of time to write more.

  At the end of our third seminar, Corinna called me back. 'Are you in a rush?' she asked.

  'No.'

  She nodded and smiled. 'Fancy a beer? I'd like to have a chat about your work.'

  I didn't know whether to be apprehensive or thrilled. I was only four weeks away from a world where adults didn't mix with those they considered children. We walked out of college and down to the nearest pub, hurrying against bitter driving rain that left no breath for small talk. One or two undergraduates glanced at us as we entered, doubtless recognising Corinna as she shook herself dry like a dog. At the bar, she bought two pints of bitter without asking what I wanted, then steered me to a corner table.

  'I figured you'd prefer a pint,' she said, following her remark with a swallow that emptied the first inch of the tall glass. I decided it wasn't the time to remind Corinna I was under age or point out that I came from a teetotal Methodist background.

  'Thanks,' I said. 'What was it you wanted to talk about?' I had no finesse in those days. I tasted the beer. It was thin and bitter and smelled of wet dog.

  'Your essay was excellent. One of the best I've ever seen from an undergraduate. I think you might do well to consider the philosophy of language as a special option.' I tried to speak, but Corinna held her hand up. 'I think you've got interesting insights in that area. You'd probably be one of only two or three in the college doing it, so you'd get a lot more attention from your tutor. Which would be me.' She grinned. 'I like to steal the most talented undergraduates for my specialisms. It makes me look good when the exam results roll around.'

  I had been sipping my beer while Corinna spoke and I'd managed to get it down to the same level in the glass as my tutor. 'I've already made a decision about my option,' I told her. I let Corinna wait long enough for the disappointment to show. 'I'm going for the philosophy of language. I've already read most of the set texts anyway.'

  It was the right thing to say. It opened the door to unrivalled access to Corinna's intelligence and knowledge. And I was in love with that knowledge. Within a couple of weeks, we'd become regular drinking companions, meeting once or twice a week, usually around nine in the evening after Corinna had gone home from college, fed, bathed and bedded the children and eaten supper with Henry. I found her awesome; the idea of juggling a life like that was beyond my imagination. Corinna was awesome for other reasons too; no matter how much she drank, she was always coherent, always stimulating. Or perhaps it was that I was too drunk to notice anything different. We talked about our backgrounds and gossiped about people in college. Corinna complained about Henry, I complained about whoever happened to be the current man in my life. The men never lasted for more than a couple of weeks and all traces of their names have long since vanished from my memory. But Corinna used to laugh uproariously at my stories and regularly told me never to fall for a man just because he made me smile. I gathered it had been a long time since Henry had done that for her. From what she said, he'd grown more fond of drinking than of her. In the process, his world view had hardened into a hybrid of High Tory and hardline Catholic, where immigrants, lefties and homosexuals vied for top slot on his hate list. I had the distinct sense that if it had not been for her religious convictions Corinna would cheerfully have thrown Henry out of the house and their children's lives.

  Jay paused again. It was all very well letting the prose flow, but she would have to edit her indiscretions before Magda got anywhere near the text. That last bit was certainly going to have to go. Henry had been as useless a waste of space then as he was now. But even though Magda knew her mother treated her father with all the disdain due to a feckless drunk, she wouldn't thank Jay for exposing Henry's failings to the rest of the world. She erased everything after 'different' and started typing again.

  After the pubs closed, we would return to Corinna's rambling house in North Oxford and retreat to the sprawling basement kitchen. Henry never joined us, and I never thought that odd. If I thought about it at all, I presumed he wasn't interested in college gossip or the intricacies of philosophical speculation. Corinna and I would drink strong black coffee and talk about ideas and language till gone midnight, then I would throw my right leg over the crossbar of my step-cousin Billy's bike and wobble off into the night.

  A couple of weeks after that first drink, Corinna asked me to babysit. 'The kids are all fed and ready for bed. All you have to do is read them stories in relays. I've threatened them with a fate worse than dea
th if they play you up. Take no backchat,' she'd said, sweeping past me in a slinky black number and enough musky perfume to stun an ox.

  I looked around the kitchen. Maggot, the eldest, eleven years old, so-called because Patrick couldn't manage 'Magda' when he was learning to talk, sprawled on an ancient chaise longue, supposedly reading a Judy Blume novel, but actually watching me like a hawk from under a white-blonde fringe. Patrick and James, nine and eight but looking like identical twins, were building something complicated from a kit, ignoring me and arguing about which piece had to come next. And four-year-old Catherine, the baby, known as Wheelie because she was born on Bonfire Night, was sitting in front of the TV, ignoring her Thomas the Tank Engine video and staring at me with a look somewhere between fascination and terror.

  I took a deep breath and bent down, holding out my arms to her. 'Bedtime, Wheelie.'

  Catherine scowled and folded her arms across her chest like a caricature of a Geordie matriarch. 'No. Stay here.'