Dying Fall

by Judith Cutler

  ‘The same. Bloody hell, who do these people think they are?’ He pointed to a photograph of a smiling city councillor. ‘The kid may lose his life because of this.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You can’t just go messing around with kidnap cases. There’s a procedure laid down by the Home Office. We’re quiet, we listen. We want to find the victim alive, not in a black sack somewhere. But it seems his cousin went and told his councillor we were refusing to act.’

  ‘Hang on. When did he go missing? I know he didn’t come in yesterday, but surely you don’t assume every kid on the skive has been abducted – you’d need a whole force just for our college.’ I grinned at Tina, who blushed.

  ‘Wednesday night, according to his cousin. Apparently they were on their way to some do at their mosque when a car pulls up beside them. They think it’s someone who’s lost his way, go over all friendly-like, and get bin liners pulled over their heads. By the time this cousin’s free, there’s no sign of Aftab and the car’s speeding off, no lights.’

  ‘And the cousin’s Iqbal Ahmed.’

  Dale nodded.

  ‘Wonder why he didn’t tell the family: they thought he was in college yesterday.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  My turn to nod this time. ‘And what’s all this about a councillor? You’d think he’d act in the kid’s best interests.’

  ‘I’m sure he thinks he is. Got the idea we’re racists. Don’t bother about crimes committed against Asians.’

  I did not speak. There was no point in trying to score points. Maybe he was overcasual yesterday but there was no doubting Dale’s anger and concern today.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘that nice girl Shahida’s off today. Doctor’s appointment or something. You couldn’t do the honours, could you? Show us his files, tell us about his mates, that sort of thing. It’s the inside stuff we need, like the Guv’nor said the other day.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t recall telling you anything you couldn’t have found out for yourselves.’

  ‘No, but you introduced us to Shahida, and she did. It’s not the big things, Sophie. Just little things.’

  ‘I’ll show you his file with pleasure,’ I said. ‘I take it that’s been OK’d by the Principal? But honestly, Ian, I can’t think of a nicer kid in the college than young Aftab. He’s decent, honest, hard-working. Very bright. Could be the first Asian Lord Chancellor. I’d like him to be.’ The words came into my mind unbidden –‘If he lives’. ‘OK, Ian. Anything – just ask. Anything that’ll help bring him back alive.’

  After the melodrama of what I’d said, my actions were very prosaic. All they wanted of me was a list of his contacts at college, and information where they’d find them. I pointed them in the right direction, and that was it. I felt there was something distasteful about delivering sixteen-year-olds up to Dale, avuncular or not, and reminded them – in front of him and Tina – that they should tell their parents. And then I went into class. Without any tea, free or otherwise.

  It is an unwritten rule that no one ever interrupts your class, not for anything short of a nuclear disaster. There is a strong rumour that one of my colleagues emerged from a three-hour session to find a note on his desk telling him his mother had died. So I was furious when a student erupted right into the middle of ‘Eveline’. Then I saw the panic on her face. Manjit Kaur.

  ‘They’ll kill me, miss. They’ll kill me!’

  I scooped her out of the room; thank goodness this was one class I could afford to leave unattended. They’d get on without me, quietly reading.

  The only place I could find to talk to Manjit was the nearest women’s loo. I couldn’t imagine anywhere less ideal – who knew what ears were lurking in the occupied cubicles? – but all the classrooms were full, and you might as well try to be private on New Street Station as in our staff room. But as if she were safe, she started to sob openly. For several minutes all I could do was hold her shoulders. Then I thought it was time to try to calm her.

  ‘Manjit? Manjit? Try to tell me.’

  And at last she did. Garbled and disorganised, her story came out. Manjit was afraid someone would tell her parents about being friends with Aftab.

  ‘I thought they were quite enlightened,’ I said. Certainly they were keen for Manjit to go to university, didn’t mind her leaving Birmingham if that was necessary. Surely they wouldn’t mind an inter-community friendship, provided it was no more than that?

  ‘They are. They are. They’ve been so good. All that money they’ve spent on me. I don’t want to let them down.’

  I held her as she started to cry again.

  So what was all this about killing? She was certainly frightened of something. But there was nothing I could say except that I was sure the police would be absolutely discreet unless she was actually involved. She assured me that she wasn’t. I promised to talk to Ian. And I resolved to do a little investigating on my own account to see what was so upsetting Manjit.

  But not immediately. We had a long meeting over our lunch hour to plan a new course, and seemed to spend most of it griping about IT provision. So far I’d missed all the computer courses I wanted to go on, and my prowess in the area was zero. I still found it easier to burrow in our filing cabinets than to summon a file on the student database. One of these days I’d get round to it. In fact, there and then I filled in an application for a course designed to make anyone proficient in a week. Even me. And then – late – I hurtled off to engage in my weekly battle with Beauty Two.

  I had returned, exhausted, to the staff room, to find all three phones demanding my attention. I picked up the nearest. The others continued to shrill.

  I had chosen the right one. George. But he was trying to lure me from the paths of righteousness with a free ticket for tonight’s concert.

  ‘George, you know the only thing I can’t resist is temptation. But I’ve got to. If I miss any more rehearsals I’ll be drummed out of the choir before the Royal Concert.’

  ‘But it’s going to be a little cracker. Schumann – Mayou’s hot on Schumann. And that kid who won Leeds doing the Brahms D minor. Come on. And I’ll buy you a drink in the interval.’

  But I resisted, nobly. Ten, in the Duke of Clarence – and not a moment before.

  Chapter Four

  The rehearsal had been exhilarating but exhausting. Our chorus master had extracted more effort than most of us were capable of after a day’s work. It was, after all, the last rehearsal before we started work with the MSO.

  Birmingham’s city fathers had at last decided to build a prestige concert hall, the Music Centre. There were some who said it sounded more like something on a shelf in your living room, and others who insisted it looked like it. But it was a huge improvement technically on the dear old Town Hall, and there were vastly improved facilities for musicians and audience alike. In April there would be an official, royal opening, with a concert by the MSO and the MSO Choir. It was for this that we were preparing. The first joint rehearsal would be tomorrow, in the auditorium of the Music Centre itself. Never mind that the Music Centre was unfinished, that we’d have to pick our way through unfinished piazzas and walkways; we’d got to get it right for royalty. In any case, the general public were faced with the same hazards: tonight’s concert had been moved there from the Town Hall.

  I joined the exodus from the thirties church hall we use for our rehearsals and headed not for the car park but back towards the city-centre pub where I’d arranged to meet George. The wind was still vicious – lazy, we call it where I come from, in the Black Country, lazy because it goes through, not round you. My eyes were streaming; I’d have to go and fix my mascara as soon as I’d greeted George.

  The bar of the Duke of Clarence was full of streamlined coffins. They were guarding thousands of pounds’ worth of valuable wood. But George’s heavy, rectangular case was not among them. Nor was George at our usual table, sipping his Old Peculiar. He was no doubt still chewing the fat back in the b
and room, probably picking someone’s brains about his van conversion: he wanted to turn it into a motor caravan so he could tour the world on the cheap when he retired. We aimed to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday with lunch in Lima.

  I was thoroughly tidy when I returned to the bar, but there was still no sign of George.

  ‘Luigi says you found a body,’ said a voice. Aberlene’s.

  Aberlene van der Poele is just turned thirty and five foot eleven inches tall. She has a figure any woman would covet and walks like a goddess. She is also black. She has the most difficult job in the whole orchestra – she is the leader – and does it well. Even the men in the heavy brass agree about that.

  ‘Come on: tell us all about it.’

  I grinned. It didn’t seem quite so terrible now I was back with my friends, and I was still on a high after the rehearsal.

  ‘Not till I’ve had a drink – Luigi, could I have some of your Lambrusco, please? Your special?’

  He nodded and disappeared.

  Luigi’s special was nothing like the pink pop you get in litre bottles at supermarkets. It came from his family’s vineyards back home, and fizzed with light and life.

  If I was going to drink, I’d better eat too. I groped in a plastic-covered dish for something film-wrapped.

  Luigi smacked my hand. ‘If you drink my Lambrusco, you don’t eat that. Maria!’

  ‘I’ve had nothing since breakfast, Luigi.’

  ‘You don’t look after yourself.’

  ‘Another meeting.’

  ‘You should eat lunch. Everyone should eat lunch. Maria!’ He bustled off again.

  ‘There!’ He plonked a plate in front of me. On it was a crusty roll which overlapped by an inch each end. It was still not large enough to hold with any dignity all Maria had crammed inside it – antipasti for four at least. As I picked up the plate, an olive rolled free. Hands swooped like gulls on a herring. I smacked a finger looping towards the salami and headed for the group clustered round our usual table. It was in the corner furthest from the jukebox. We’d chosen it before we realised Luigi had intended the jukebox purely for decoration. As if by magic, a label-less bottle and four glasses appeared on the table. I had a suspicion that this was illicit, to put it mildly, and that we ought to buy individual, British standard glassfuls. But this was how Luigi did it. And no one was ever going to be churlish enough to complain.

  He still wasn’t there. ‘Where’s George got to?’

  Aberlene, satisfying at my expense her passion for red rollo lettuce, shrugged. ‘George? Probably fiddling with his reeds. You know what these woodwind types are like.’

  String players, of course, think wind players are neurotic. I suppose they might have something.

  ‘I have to admit that he and Jools saved our bacon last night,’ she said. ‘I suppose you heard about that cretin Ottaka rewriting Beethoven?’

  I nodded.

  Aberlene stood up to check the bar. She sat down again so no one could grab her stool. ‘No sign of him. And Jools is late too. Or should I say “again”? She’s been last on the platform every night this week. I even had to wait for her tonight.’

  A hand reached for an olive that hadn’t so much strayed as been lured away. Pam.

  ‘George left before I did. I held the Band Room door for him. It’ll be great when everything’s working properly – automatic doors, lifts, everything.’

  Pam had a vested interest in such technology. She was one of the few people not to have brought her instrument. Since she was four foot ten in her socks, and weighed about six and a half stone, this was hardly surprising: she played the double bass.

  Talk turned not to the murder or even Aftab’s abduction, but to the Centre itself. I was happy to let it. George would certainly want to hear my news properly, and repeating it wouldn’t make it any better. Aftab: the last person I’d ever have suspected of doing anything wrong enough to get kidnapped for.

  Aberlene topped up my glass and caught my eye. I made an effort to smile, and she patted my hand kindly.

  And then Jools appeared. Jools was second bassoon. Her real name was Julia, but no one seeing her would doubt that her nickname was more appropriate than her given one. We’d known each other since university days, and until recently we’d seen quite a lot of each other. Then she went and took up a new hobby, and became totally obsessed with it.

  I waved the bottle at her and she pushed her way over.

  I knew she wouldn’t drink; she didn’t when she was training. And of course, she was training all the time. She was into body building. By the week, she was turning what was once quite a respectable body, not one you’d give a second thought to, really, into a perambulating anatomy lesson. Each set of muscles was so well defined as to be grotesque.

  To think it was all my fault because I’d nagged her into going to an aerobics session with me.

  She started to fillet out the remaining slices of cucumber.

  ‘Where’s George?’ I asked.

  ‘Isn’t he here?’

  ‘No,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Said he was coming. Said, “see you in a bitter”. You know, his usual memorable quip.’

  So they’d had another row.

  ‘Perhaps it was his domino,’ said Aberlene. ‘Right in the middle of the Brahms B flat instead of B natural. Damn it, you’d think he could play it in his sleep. Not like George.’

  ‘So why isn’t he here, drowning his sorrows?’

  ‘He said it was his reed,’ said Jools. Then she added something I didn’t catch, because some uncouth person had decided to liberate some musically illiterate pop group from the decent silence of the jukebox.

  Luigi stopped pouring in mid-glass. ‘Time!’ he yelled.

  I joined the little group fumbling with change to telephone for taxis. Jools had already slipped out when I returned.

  And where was George?

  Chapter Five

  I left an irate message on his answering machine, of course, and retired to the bath with Persuasion. Half an hour of Jane Austen is an excellent way of cleansing a week of William Murdock from the system. On the other hand, I was glad I hadn’t a Captain Wentworth lurking in my past. At the moment I didn’t want another relationship – I’d only just got rid of the rabbit hairs from my most recent partner’s house-trained angora. Kenji had got so sick of my nightly marking sessions he’d gone back to Japan to research the dietary habits of sumo wrestlers. In any case, even Anne Elliot would have regarded me as well past my sell-by date – wasn’t thirty-four middle aged in those days?

  When George didn’t phone back, I left another message. And another.

  I was sparking with anger by the time I got to the Music Centre. The bastard still hadn’t called me, and trying to phone him had left me too little time to get a bus without running, and I’d celebrated the arrival of the 103 with an asthma attack. I don’t get many these days, and they respond to a quick puff from a Ventolin spray, but I’d rather not have them anyway. And I blamed George for this one.

  But I soon got caught up in the general buzz of anticipation. No one had bothered to tell us how to get into the choir area behind the orchestra, and the air spluttered with references to the British Empire and its spirit of exploration. Even the orchestral players weren’t as insouciant as they pretended – although they’d taken their places on the platform briskly enough, they were spending more time looking round at their new home than tuning up. If Stobbard Mayou, the previous night’s conductor, had inveigled a good performance, he must be worth his salt. Mayou was an American, brought in to replace the resident conductor, currently flat on his back with what the Guardian had described as an athletic performance of Beethoven’s Seventh.

  The omens were good. There was an immediate silence as Mayou strode on to the platform. Several of the string players went so far as to rattle their bows against their music stands – a sure sign of approval, which has to be earned. There was a frisson among some of the women in the choir: Mayou wa
s a very handsome young man. Not that I was going to get a close look at this Chippendale look-alike – back-row sopranos are quite a distance from the centre of power.

  But his smile sizzled even me.

  Some conductors get straight into the music; others prefer a more sociable approach. It seemed Mayou might be one of these. He settled himself on a high stool on the podium. ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And ladies and gentlemen of the choir. May I say how honoured I was to be asked to assist you while Maestro Rollinson is – what d’you call it over here? – indisposed. Yeah, well, I guess I’d call it sick. I’ve already met some of you – in the women’s chorus – in the States, of course, when we did The Planets together. And of course, the orchestra and I got acquainted again last week. And yesterday.’ He paused to smile at Aberlene and the other front-desk players. It must have been a good gig last night. ‘Now, to work. I believe Maestro Rollinson is unlikely to be available for the Royal Concert, and I guess we all want to make it a right royal occasion. Let’s start, then.’

  So far, so good. He had the entire choir ready to eat out of his hand. Aberlene was ready to start. But the perfect Music Centre acoustics let us in on a little exchange between two of the heavy brass.

  ‘How long does it take to get over a sodding bad back?’

  ‘Hope to God it’s not very long.’

  Aberlene’s head jerked up; orchestral bad manners put her in an awkward spot.

  But Mayou merely raised an ironic eyebrow and picked up his baton. I suspected, however, he might not be generous if they dropped any dominoes.

  Someone had chosen Carmina Burana for the royal delectation. Quite what they’d make of its vulgar earthiness I didn’t know; but they’d like the tunes, anyway. And here we were, about to start the opening number, ‘O Fortuna’. Lovely.

  Mayou picked up his baton and raised his arms. Then he put them down again.

  ‘Why, if I might make so bold, do we have no principal bassoon?’

  I hadn’t even noticed George wasn’t there. My God, where could he be?