Dying Fall

by Judith Cutler

  ‘What is it you say over here? No peace for the wicked? Tell them Beethoven Four and fix a flight. Sophie, why don’t you – no, I guess you’d best take care of that flu.’ He smiled and was gone.

  Back in Harborne, the allergy a thing of the past, I glowered at my marking and wondered what Stobbard would have asked had it not been for my sneezes.

  Then the phone rang. But it was only Jools. Jools? Apologising?

  ‘I said some things that were out of order. Can I cook you a “sorry” dinner some time? Like tonight? I’ve been let down by my date, see, and there’s all this food.’

  I presented myself at eight, at Jools’s very pleasant flat in a modern block just off Augustus Road. I’d have thought any accommodation attached to anyone else’s was inappropriate for a musician. But Jools claimed never to have had any complaints from her neighbours, and they always greeted her pleasantly enough if we encountered them on the stairs.

  I’d caught a bus. I don’t like Saturday evenings full of boy racers who don’t see cyclists till they’ve knocked them over and maybe not even then. I’d treat myself to a taxi home. I took a bottle, of course. There wasn’t any reason for me to follow Jools’s abstinence. It wasn’t as if she’d just become a strict Baptist.

  Her flat didn’t look as if she was a strict anything. She was the only person I knew who had her pad done up by interior decorators. None of your MFI furniture. Maples or Lee Longlands for her, upmarket stores not far from the Music Centre. In the far corner of her living room were a neatish pile of music, her music stand and her bassoon case. Unlike George’s, it was the light-weight, cylindrical type, the sort musicians with cycles or motorbikes prefer. It was as pristine as the rest of her flat. She actually greeted me with a gin and tonic. She stuck to tonic herself, but I took her offer as a tacit peace offering. I followed her into her fitted-everything kitchen to gossip while she cooked.

  Gossip! We hardly spoke to each other. I knew she hated being interrupted while she was cooking, so I got on with dressing the salad while she poked baked potatoes and showed the steaks the grill. I had to ask her to let mine linger there a little. Rare I like but not bleu.

  I did learn that she’d had a fight with Tony over coach travel, and if what she said was true I couldn’t blame her. Apparently she’d asked if she could use her car for the recent trip to the North, and he’d vetoed the idea. Then he’d gone and taken his own. ‘Whoever heard of a grown man getting coach-sick?’

  I tried to remember school outings. Had Tony been one of those who had to sit at the front/by a window/next to teacher lest he be sick?

  ‘New girlfriend?’ I asked idly. ‘New car, of course.’

  ‘No. He’s been doing it for weeks. Long before Stobbard came.’

  Stobbard. Not Mayou. Stobbard.

  ‘How do you get on with – Stobbard?’ I asked in a carefully neutral voice.

  ‘All right.’ The way she said it, she might have added, ‘And what is it to you?’

  While she brewed coffee I went to use the loo. If the rest of her flat was luxurious, the bathroom was truly opulent. I pondered on some weird Perspex lining to the bath, and envied her bathrobe which would have taken me a week to dry. So, for that matter, would her towels. I knew we earned roughly the same: no doubt her parents had paid for this lot. There were times when I rather wished I’d chosen my ancestors a little more carefully.

  I peered at myself at the beautifully lit and angled mirror. Whoever had bequeathed me my genes had ensured that I would be small and wiry, with mousy hair and an undistinguished face. All that activity outdoors was wearing my skin: I ought to take as much care of it as Jools apparently did. I picked up a bottle at random: ‘Capture. Anti-aging complex’. At thirty-five? But Jools had always had a lovely complexion. I’d ask.

  ‘Jools,’ I began, stirring sugar into the coffee, ‘I was looking at some of your cosmetics and –’

  ‘How dare you touch my stuff! How dare you go poking round my things?’

  ‘Hang on, Jools. I only wanted to ask –’

  I thought for a moment she was going to strike me. Then she sat down.

  ‘What did you want to ask?’

  ‘Only how you keep you skin so nice.’

  She condescended to talk cosmetics for a bit. The conversation became beautifully normal and trivial. When the phone rang, however, she carried the receiver into the hall. I might have had a prowl round and inspected her latest acquisition, a small bronze. But I didn’t want to provoke another outburst, so I stayed where I was, letting my eyes rest with great pleasure on the elegant room. George had always admired it. I suppose it was that which made me say, when she came back into the room, ‘Tell me about George. His last concert.’

  I don’t know what response I expected. Another flounce. A moan that she’d been over it time and time again with the police. A bored reiteration of what she’d said in the pub.

  I didn’t expect her to turn chalk white. Nor could I work out why she did.

  After a moment’s consideration she said, quite calmly, ‘He played OK. Until that domino in the slow movement. Afterwards, he said he was going to meet you. But he stopped on the platform to talk to Aubrey. Aubrey’d managed to get his hands on some pheasant feathers from somewhere and was drying out his oboe. You know how seriously he takes the whole business.’

  I nodded. Aubrey takes his oboe very seriously indeed.

  ‘So I went down to the Band Room. With Chloe. Then I came to the pub.’

  ‘So you didn’t see him after that?’

  This time when she went white I’m sure it was with anger. ‘I’ve already been interrogated, thank you. I’m sure your policeman friend would give you a transcript.’

  ‘I’m not trying to interrogate you. I just need to know about George. To lay him to rest. Goodness knows when the funeral will be. I tried laying flowers at the Centre.’ I stopped at the memory of all that mud.

  ‘So I heard. Why don’t you ask Tony? When I left, Tony was threatening to kill him. As I hoped he told your policeman friend.’

  To have phoned for a taxi would have meant asking a favour of Jools and waiting till the taxi came. I preferred to do neither.

  It wasn’t a bad night. The clouds were still high, and when I saw the back of the number 10 bus pulling away from the stop I decided to make the best of it and walk. I’d simply follow the bus route: there weren’t any short cuts to tempt me.

  Of course, walking’s a wonderful way to mull over an evening. There was Jools’s moodiness to think about. She’d always been abrupt; tonight she was abrasive. Steriods – weren’t they supposed to cause aggression? Not that she’d ever admitted to taking anything. There was her flat to reflect on, too. There was something different about it. In my mind I paced round that living room of hers. The full-length curtains. The subtle lighting. The leather chairs. All those were familiar. So what was it?

  At this point I realised I was not alone.

  I’d reached the end of Woodbourne Road, where it turns left into Gillhurst Road. Practically the home straight.

  A car pulled up beside me. And stopped.

  I ignored it. Walked faster.

  As I turned the corner, the car turned it with me. Pulled ahead of me. Stopped.

  If there’s one thing I hate it’s kerb crawlers. I don’t care whether they’re prominent men in posh cars or young idiots in elderly Datsuns like this one. Hate them all. My usual trick is to embarrass them. Stop. Stare as if memorising a face. Peer ostentatiously at the number plates. Write down the number.

  That’s what I meant to do this time.

  But the man didn’t accelerate sharply away. He got out of the car.

  A woolly cap pulled well down. A scarf over the face and heavy-rimmed glasses. A slit, then, of dark skin. A tracksuit suggesting heavy muscles. Gloves.

  He started to walk towards me.

  At this point I did a really stupid thing. For years I’ve taught elementary self-protection to groups of vulnerable women
students. Don’t run, I tell them, unless you can run somewhere safe. A well-lit house; a group of people; even a car with an alarm to activate.

  And what did I do? I ran. I zapped off into a piece of waste land which labours under the name of Chadbrook Walkway. Stupid, stupid, stupid. As I realised when he followed me.

  The thought of being raped on a March night with the rain just starting concentrates the mind wonderfully. I could just lead him round in a circle. I could head for one of the other exits – one would take me to a playing field, the other to a couth housing estate. And in one of those elegant houses lived Richard. No contest.

  Now I knew where I was heading, my breathing cleared. I realised I was grinning. I was going to make my pursuer regret this. He’d have to follow me through the prickliest thickets and back again. All the time I was edging closer to where I wanted to be. Now for the little stream, and the delightfully boggy surround. I knew where to jump. He didn’t.

  I made the last couple of hundred yards without company.

  If Richard and his wife were irritated by my eruption into their quiet Saturday evening, they were too kind to show it. They found dry slippers, whisky, a towel for my hair. And left Schubert on the CD while we waited for the police. Sheila offered to come with me to the police station, and urged me to return after I’d made my statement. But I thought I might be gone some time, and it was late enough already.

  I had a terrible sense of déjà vu. It was all done with efficiency and professionalism. The woman interviewing me made the connections I hoped she’d make – no, I didn’t think it was coincidence that I should be attacked so soon after finding that Asian student’s body. She ran me back herself, saw me safely into my house, and left a contact number.

  Weird, it was only when I was in the bath that I realised that the dark skin of the Datsun driver was feigned. I would swear that he was neither Asian nor Afro-Caribbean.

  And even weirder, as I hauled myself out to phone Inspector Hathersage, that I should quite suddenly realise what was different about Jools’s living room. Hanging on the wall was what looked very like an original David Cox.

  Chapter Ten

  Ian Dale’s Sundays must begin earlier than mine. But then, I suppose that my Saturday evening had been unnaturally long. He’d come about the attack, of course.

  ‘Give me a minute to get dressed,’ I said. ‘I can’t think in a nightie.’

  The poor man sighed almost visibly with relief. I can’t think why. My dressing gown was impregnably decorous – I’d never got round to buying anything more erotic, even when my relationship with Kenji was at its most interesting. And looked at dispassionately, the tracksuit I chose must have revealed far more of the Rivers anatomy. I made tea – it seemed we both liked Earl Grey with lemon – and waited for him to begin. Nice avuncular inquiries about my health. But something was worrying him. I let him drift round to it. Yes: this suggestion that my assailant had been in some sort of disguise. Why did I think that? Brown eyes? Dark skin? Had I seen his hands? Had he spoken?

  Eventually I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, Ian. You’ll just have to trust me. I know, that’s all.’

  He sighed and shut his notebook. We talked about the rest of the day, and whether it was too early to risk pruning roses. What did I propose to do?

  ‘Keep out of harm’s way.’ I smiled glibly.

  He’d be happier not knowing what I had planned.

  I’d never expected burglary to be so easy.

  I’d never quite got round to returning George’s key, of course, and it struck me that Short Dressing Gown should still be in bed with – at very least – the Sunday papers. But as I stepped into George’s hall I found I was shaking uncontrollably.

  I wanted to say goodbye. That was one reason for coming. I could only do it in his home – Oxfam’s now. He’d willed it to all those millions of children whose brothers and sisters had died for want of vaccination or rehydration. I didn’t know about the rest of his will – except for the bassoon, of course. The other reason I’d come was to check through his papers to see why anyone should wish to kill him.

  His diary? The diary he’d have patted back into place in his inner pocket after our phone call. A meeting confirmed. Duke of Clarence, 10.00, Sophie. No sign of it. Then I realised it must be locked in some official file. He’d have had it on him when he was killed.

  I forced myself into the kitchen. His calendar, the one by the phone. A bird for each month – he supported the RSPB too. But he hadn’t filled in the spaces usefully. There was a pencilled S, and a faint R for the same day. R? The cork board listed telephone numbers for his dentist, doctor and bank, a need for coriander (fresh), and a couple of charity appeals he might respond to. The herbs on his windowsill needed water; I put them in a carrierbag to take home.

  Back to the living room and the bureau. A slot for bills pending, another for bills paid. Photos from the American tour. They were all blurred. Unlike George, that. He was always most punctilious in his composition and focusing. Then I realised: it was my eyes that were blurred. I wiped the tear splodges from the top print and shoved the wallets – some three or four into my cagoule pouch.

  I tried his bedroom, of course, as I’d done before. Now a smell of emptiness to go with the stale bedclothes. I put my head on the pillow that still smelt of his aftershave and wept.

  I could smell Sunday lunches cooking as I cycled back. Comforting roasts, milky puddings. Safe as childhood. I ought to eat. There was that steak. I could eat that steak.

  I reached for the Jameson’s. A good slug. Then I saw George’s eyes, reproachful across my kitchen table.

  ‘Damn you, George! Damn you. You leave me but you won’t go away!’ I think I said it out loud. I tipped what I’d poured down the sink. ‘There! Is that good enough for you?’ But it wasn’t, and I smashed the tumbler at the floor.

  The bathos of scrabbling round picking up splinters of glass calmed me a little. Enough to work out that a cup of very strong, sweet drinking chocolate might be just as good, and that I might then be able to think about food. As I sipped, I looked at George’s photos.

  Mostly they were of his colleagues, singly or in groups, usually with a landmark in the background. There was a lovely study of Aberlene, proud as an African princess. Jools arm-wrestling with a horn player – by his expression he was losing. Pam under her double bass’s travelling case. Stobbard Mayou – he’d conducted the band for the first time on the tour in a huge sombrero. Had George realised how beautiful the man’s body was? But of course he had: he’d waited for exactly the right moment to press the shutter. Tony with the woman violinist who’d toured with them. Perhaps she might be the reason why Tony preferred to travel by car; perhaps he was snatching time with her on the way.

  But I ought to ask him. And I ought to ask about his threat to kill George.

  It had occurred to me that cross-questioning an old friend was something better done on a full stomach, so I filled mine with the promised steak. I permitted myself a glass – one glass – of Valdepenas, gesturing, before I drank, at the photographs.

  I cycled to Tony’s flat near Edgbaston Cricket Ground. I wish he’d chosen it because he shared my passion for the game – my father bowled leg breaks for Durham – but Tony can’t tell an off-drive from an over, despite my years of patient nagging. The development cowers behind a decorative but very high wall, and I found to my horror – imagine it, living under someone’s surveillance the whole time – that I was required to tell my business to a security guard before I was allowed in. He was from the same green-coated firm as the guards at college and just as aggressive, though perhaps if I’d come in a Rolls he’d have discovered courtesy.

  Tony was standing at his open door. That was for some time the only indication that my visit might be welcome. He was cool to the point of frostiness, but showed me into his living room.

  ‘Well?’

  I hesitated to pollute his cream leather armchairs with my jeans and cagoule. I pulled th
e latter over my head before sitting. Reminded of his manners, he took it from me and left the room, presumably to hang it up. I looked around me – at a room as elegant as Jools’s. Tony’s interior designer had conceived what he probably described as a more masculine ambience, but it was one I wouldn’t have minded living in. That built-in hi-fi, for instance, with its concealed speakers, would have suited me down to the ground.

  Tony came and sat opposite me, barely troubling to conceal a glance at his watch.

  ‘I thought you might want this,’ I said, producing the US tour photo.

  His face flooded with colour. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Because – Jesus, because I’d like a copy of it!’

  His emotion seemed genuine enough.

  ‘Enough to kill for one?’

  He looked bewildered. ‘Sophie, I get the feeling you’re not joking. Jesus, you’re not, are you? What the hell are you suggesting?’

  ‘George took this. Someone overheard you threatening to kill him. Tony, please, please tell me you didn’t kill him.’ Damn it, my voice had broken, and I could feel tears coming.

  ‘Of course I didn’t bloody well kill him! For Christ’s sake, Sophie, he – I – Look, let’s have a coffee and sort all this out. OK?’

  I followed him into his kitchen, to remind us both, perhaps, that we were friends. He filled the kettle, allowing me a view of a still forbidding profile. Then he reached out china mugs, and, in an odd touch of domesticity, loaded a plate with biscuits. And he made tea, not coffee. I started to laugh.

  ‘Well?’ Then his face softened slightly. ‘Incongruous, I suppose. But George always liked biscuits with his tea, didn’t he? Why the hell should I want to kill him, Sophie? I loved that man. He was my friend, too, remember. And remember the verdict.’

  ‘Why should anyone want to kill him? And I think they’re likely to reopen the inquest. Thanks to you bringing me George’s bassoon,’ I explained.

  ‘So why accuse me of killing him?’