by Kara Silver
Kennedy felt a little silly. All right, a lot stupid. There didn’t seem a logical place to report suspicions about a possible conspiracy. WWCD? What would Chandyce do? Pick the best-looking geezer, her friend’s voice shrilled in her ear. Oh and stick some lippy on and your tits out.
She obeyed the first dictum and smoothed on a smear of lip gloss before marching to the end bit of the counter and the youngest-looking office standing there.
“Lemme guess,” he said before she could speak. “Tha’bike?”
“Sorry?”
He had a warm accent, rich and full, sort of warm and crumbly like a thick cake. He wasn’t local.
“I like to try and guess what folks are coming in t’bobby ’ole for!” he said, bending towards her and lowering his voice. “You’re tricky. I first thought, ey up, stolen bike. But then…mebbe about the bike auctions we hold? That you’re wanting a cheap bike, like? But now… Sommat different.”
“Different, all right. You’re from even farther north than me?”
“Pickering. Yorkshire. Constable Chris Collier.”
“Kennedy Smith. I’m at college here.” Well, d’uh, she tacked on, shuffling her feet. He smiled, his dark-brown eyes lighting up in his somewhat baby-looking face. “And I was just doing some research…”
“Oh, tha’needs some statistics, or data, then, is it?” Chris nodded.
“Sort of. Yes.” Kennedy decided the best thing was to show the constable, and swung her bag from her shoulder to her front, to tug her notebook free. “Statistics is actually a good way to describe it. I was just reading up about the town and the college and so on”—she didn’t feel able to describe what she’d seen in the graveyard—“and I noticed that quite a few girls have gone missing from Oxford, going back a few years. The most recent seems to be this one, about this time last year. Nia Ambro, her name was.”
“Miss…Smith, you said?”
“Kennedy.”
“I don’t see what you’re asking.”
“There was stuff in the papers about her recently, when it had been a year. Even a segment on the local news show.” She’d seen that mentioned online.
“Oh, yes, I think I saw that.” PC Collier nodded. “It’s still unsolved.”
“Do you have any more information on any of the other cases? I made a list of names.”
“Well, not personally.” He tapped a pen on the desk. “I’m not assigned to this. Not long taken this post here, as a matter of fact.”
“Could you check? Even just a couple, if it’s complicated to search for them? Please?” Kennedy glanced around. She didn’t know why, but she would rather this remained just between them.
“Well, seeing as I’m not busy, and seeing as tha’asked so nicely…” And he winked, actually winked, as he pulled out a keyboard on a ledge under the counter. Kennedy wondered how old he was. Early twenties at the most, she guessed. He looked fairly young. She snorted and he looked up.
“Nothing. Just feeling my age.” That’s what they say, isn’t it, that you know you’re old when policemen look young to you?
“Tha’looks—Well.” He coughed. Was that a hint of a blush staining his cheeks? Score one for the lip gloss. “This case, Nia Ambro, is still open, as you might expect, Unsolved.” PC Collier nodded at the screen. “Show me your list?”
Kennedy held the pad so he could see it.
“Jade Slater…missing person. Case still open. Kelly McGuire…same. Alesha Bonnet, yep, missing, case open.”
“These two? Kelah and Shannon?”
“Same.” He pushed the ledge with its laptop in.
“PC Collier—”
“Chris.”
“Don’t you think that’s a lot?”
“Compared to what?”
Good question. “I mean, it seems a lot?” She shrugged. “Look, could you give me more information on them? I’d like to check some things.”
“Funny. You don’t look old enough to be a grad student.” Chris gave her a slow up-and-down scrutiny. “But I know the uni doesn’t have Criminology at undergrad level, so— Ah! I know! You’re one of those child prodigies! Played t’violin and spoke French before you could walk, and got a string of degrees before the age of twenty.”
“Hardly!” His droll humour made her laugh. “I barely scraped through A-Levels. I…just got interested in the cases for something I’m doing. So, any info you could give me…”
Despite hearing Chandyce’s voice in her head, instructing her to undo her top buttons, lick her lips and stand with her mouth half open, Kennedy just looked at Chris, and he broke eye contact first.
“Ah dunno if ah can just, like, print you out anything from the case notes.” He tapped the top of the screen.
“I can pay for the printing,” Kennedy offered.
Chris laughed. “It’s not that.”
“Or if you want to read it out, I can write really quickly,” she continued, wondering why she was insisting. This seemed so… Put it this way. If I were a dog, I’d be barking up the tree next to the one with a squirrel in it. She sighed. “You’re right. This—”
“Hang fire.” Chris held up a finger as the door behind him opened and an older man came out. Chris stood straighter and after one look at the newcomer, Kennedy swept her notepad into her bag and zipped the latter up.
“Sergeant, this young lady is asking for details about some unsolved cases. I was wondering—”
“That right?” The sergeant approached and stood close, his head jutting forward on his neck. “You another one of those journalism students from Oxford Brookes, taking up police time, wanting someone to do your homework for you?”
Kennedy blinked at that. She hadn’t even known the town’s other university taught journalism, but for some reason, this seemed a good route to take. “I don’t need spoonfeeding, thanks, but I’d like some information, if possible?”
“What’s she asking about?”
Kennedy’s mouth dropped open at the sergeant’s rudeness in speaking about her as if she wasn’t there. She’d done nothing to him yet even his short greying hair bristled with irritation, and suspicion gleamed in his dark eyes as he looked from her to his constable.
“Missing girl in the news this week…Mia or Nina…”
“Ambro,” Kennedy said over Chris’s babbling. “And there are others missing, over a period of time.”
“Closed cases?” The sergeant swung from her to Chris, stiff and alert. At his constable’s head shake, he pounced. “Then you’ll have to go through the proper channels to get information on what you want to know about open cases. In writing, not barging in to the desk and—”
“What I want to know is if you’ve explored the possibility that whoever is responsible for the girls’ disappearances is targeting scholarship students.”
Her words, abrupt and shocking and loud, to drown out the sergeant’s voice, crash-landed in the quiet station and their echo seemed to thicken the silence that greeted them. The man stared at her, his eyes made more deep set by the heavy bags under them. When he opened his mouth to speak, the lines on his face deepened.
“I take it you’re here on a scholarship, then.”
Kennedy almost jumped at the question. She didn’t know if she’d imagined the sound of an audible intake of breath, and if she hadn’t, which of the three of them had made it. She wanted to lie, but then, she’d wanted a lot of things in the past week, all of them as cowardly as that. “Yes. I’m on a full bursary. Just started.”
She threw it down like a gauntlet. The sergeant turned, and she thought he was leaving, but instead he jerked his head to the left, to the end of the counter, and Kennedy found herself keeping step with him, despite her brain screaming, “Never go a second location!” That didn’t count in a police station, did it, when only a few steps were involved? She fought not to shrink back as the man swung up a section and stepped from behind the wooden counter, looming over her so she was trapped against the wall.
“You didn’t co
me here to ask my advice, but here it is. If I were you, I’d leave Heylel College and Oxford itself while you still can.”
“What the hell?”
He gave a quick, almost sly look over his shoulder. “And I’d also advise you to keep your mouth shut and trust no one. Got that?”
“I…” Kennedy firmed her lips into a thin line then tried again, staring into his pinched face, noting the narrowed nostrils, his rigid posture. “I don’t have any words of wisdom for you, but I do have a question. Just what are you afraid of?”
“Afraid of? More than you can ever even imagine, little girl.” The man stared her down, making her drop eye contact, before he turned and walked away. Kennedy stayed where she was, her palms flat against the wall behind her and wondering if that had just happened, before springing forward after him.
“Miss? Kennedy?” a voice called after her, the constable’s by the accent, but she didn’t stop, pushing through a small group making their way in the door, who complained and shoved her in their turn. And when she got outside, the sergeant was nowhere to be seen. She looked up and down the street and across the road, seeing no tall, forbidding figure. And what would I say to him anyway? she mentally chastised herself.
She retraced her steps, dragging her feet inside the station again. She’d tell Chris what his superior had said—maybe the constable had heard it anyway. But the counter was busy, Chris barely visible behind the group milling there who were complaining loudly that Milo had had his wallet lifted, just now, just along the street in the Grapes and they’d chased the filthy thief but…
She left, a whole series of question churning in her mind, paramount among them and sending a shiver down her spine: what did the sergeant mean? But running a close second, making her rub her arms against the chill, was: how did he know I’m at Heylel?
9
Kennedy had some luck—her bike was still there. She took deep breaths before attempting to pull it free because she didn’t want her hands to shake. There, fine. See, creepy old cop? Her stomach rumbled as she cycled, making her remember that tonight was Formal Hall. She still wasn’t sure what that was. Extra food with extra Latin, was a definition she’d read somewhere. So, a three-course meal with waitress service and someone up at the top table saying grace, she guessed.
And…for which she’d need a gown and cap. Damn, she should have checked back at college to see if graduating students left theirs for broke newbies, like they did bikes. She detoured down the High Street to find the outfitters closed. Attempting a short cut down a side street to Broad Street, and making her teeth chatter as she clattered over cobbles, she saw a similar, if small and old-fashioned gown and robe shop and propped her bike against the window to go in.
And go back in time… She’d seen little shops like this in old movies on TV, where very little was displayed and most things had to be fetched by the assistant attending the customers. Who wasn’t very interested in attending said client when it was close to closing time and he was busily sorting through a box of clothes on his counter.
“Very quickly,” Kennedy promised. “I need a cheap gown and flat cap. Flat black hat thing.” She gestured at the one on the mannikin standing in the window, thinking to a Yorkshireman like the police constable had been, a flat cap was a tweed cloth thing old men wore. “Preferably second-hand?”
The stooped old man who’d shuffled out to greet her, running his tape measure through his fingers, now held the strip still in his gnarled hands, making it crack like a whip. “I’m afraid we don’t have ‘cheap’ items, madam. We do have ex-hire gowns, which are priced very reasonably,” he answered, his watery eyes hooding as he looked her up and down.
“Hire?” Kennedy had never thought of that. “Is that cheaper?”
“Well, that depends on how often you’ll be wearing it, doesn’t it? Are you attending Formal Hall? Public lectures? Chapel? Tests at the start of term? End of term academic progress reports? Or possibly disciplinary hearings in the Proctors’ Court?”
Kennedy had started to nod, then shake her head, then shrug and finished on a frown as his list went on.
“And of course, university examinations. Should one get that far.” The man muttered the last bit, but Kennedy caught it.
“Fine, I’ll buy one. Medium size.” She turned the display model around. The robe was just a knee-length piece of black cloth that didn’t even fasten, and had slits for the arms to go through. It didn’t justify the price, in her opinion, but this was Oxford.
“Commoner’s gown.” That came out on a sigh. “And sub-fusc?”
“Sub-what?”
“The requisite dark, formal clothing required with it?”
“All that?” Kennedy ran her hand down the black skirt and white blouse on the dummy. “Even the ribbon tie thing?”
“And hosiery.”
“What?”
“The, erm, legwear and footwear, madam.”
Those thick black tights and clumpy shoes? Uncaring of the man’s opinion, Kennedy fished out the price tags from the garments and twisted them and held them up to see the amounts handwritten on them in tiny figures, adding everything up. Wow. She reviewed what she had in her wardrobe. Would her stretchy black trousers and white polo shirt from her bar job do? The gown would cover the pub name. She could afford the silk ribbon, and she had flat black shoes.
“The Commoner gown is a lot more economical than the Scholar’s, of course.”
Kennedy turned at the assistant’s dry utterance. “I know you’re getting a kick out of my ignorance, so here’s another hit for you and try not to choke on it—what’s a scholar, in this sense?”
“Why, an undergraduate who has been awarded a scholarship by an Oxford college. They wear this style of gown.” He twirled a second dummy around from its place in the shop window, and Kennedy eyed the black artist’s smock thing it wore, the gathered yoke, the puffy sleeves, the long length, the price tag… And of course, she’d be needing that one. Unless she played dumb and got the cheaper, hands-free version? She hadn’t realised college would have so many strings attached. Wearing lame clothes, working for free at a job she didn’t— Working! Oh, thank you, whoever’s up there!
“Sorry, just realised I can’t sit through Formal Hall after all.” Kennedy gave the old man a big smile. “I have a prior engagement so can’t spare the time for a ceremonial dinner. Sorry to take up your time.”
Turning to go, she noticed the old man had been sorting through a box labelled SECONDS, and saw the Heylel crimson colour on top. It proved to be a sweatshirt with a hood and pouch pocket. The hood had no drawstring and the pocket’s stitches were coming undone, two things she could easily fix. “Now this is what I call priced very reasonably! I’ll take it.”
With the money she’d saved in not needing a cap and gown just yet, she bought a pint of milk and a packet of biscuits from the supermarket, for the kitchen at the museum, feeling quite well-disposed towards the job, it having saved her. The bike lock would have to wait, as would bike lights, although she’d need both soon enough.
“Oi! No cycling in college!” warned the porter as she entered the gate.
“Sorry! My first time.” Kennedy swung herself down. She might as well check her pigeon box thing now she was here. She walked slowly along the wall of mail slots behind the desk in the Porter’s Lodge—she couldn’t think of the place as the plodge. It sounded like someone vomiting—and went back to the As.
“Do you know if Aeth has checked his mail? Have you seen him, I mean?” she asked.
“Name?” enquired the man.
“Aeth. Short for Aethelstan.”
The porter sighed. “Surname?”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
The porter raised an incredulous eyebrow.
“But it’s an unusual name, though—you’d remember it, and him, right?”
The man didn’t need to spell out he couldn’t help her further. Maybe, Kennedy thought, wheeling her bike to the shed, Aeth doesn’t really g
o here. Could’ve been a prank, or something. She was sick of men telling her what to do, she decided. She dressed in definitely non-sub-fuzzy-whatever jeans and quick-mended college sweatshirt and hauled her books and laptop to the cellar bar, hoping to catch up on some work and grab something—anything—to eat before her shift.
And men not talking to me. Edson, the only person in the otherwise empty bar, hardly spoke. Huh. Maybe he’d been told to keep his mouth shut and trust no one. He certainly acted like it, sitting reading and taking notes, his stuff spread before him on the counter.
God, she had so much reading to do. The lectures and the practicals were so interesting and touched on so many areas and researchers she wanted to explore in depth, but she had to focus more on the tutorials. Even when it wasn’t her turn to present the work there, she’d be judged on her contributions to the dialogue and arguments, which meant acquiring a knowledge of the topics, even those from last week, in her absence. Sharpish. She would have called in sick at the museum, if she could, just to get her work done.
But two beers, along with the half-price sandwiches leftover from lunch, made the museum seem not as daunting as before. And curiosity fuelled Kennedy. The mark she hadn’t been able to see had been ever-present in her mind, low-lying but a definite presence. She went into the museum kitchen to unload the supplies she’d purchased. There was another little note left, just as she’d surmised, this one recapping the rules about kitchen cleanliness and the desire for a pleasant shared working environment, addressed particularly to those unfamiliar with the place and ending with an exhortation to please leave the note in place. Thank you.
How about cutting those unfamiliar with the place some slack, giving them a chance? Fighting the urge to add comments to the end of the note and start a social media thread about it, Kennedy made her rounds. A wave of something she preferred not to think of as loneliness hit her as she stood on the top floor, looking down. Pretending it was the stuffy atmosphere, Kennedy made for the roof and fresh air. If it wasn’t so cold, she could stay there for her entire shift. But she wanted to check the gargo—grotesque—see if its resemblance to Aeth was a figment of her imagination.