by Jason Foss
‘Doctor Flint?’ said the hunched man in the ill-fitting suit. ‘I’m Christianson, from the Chemistry department.’
‘Yes – You looked at my resins for me, a couple of years back.’
Christianson seemed to have forgotten. ‘You are the one concerned with that missing girl, Lucy Gray.’
Flint nodded, didn’t he know it?
Christianson shook his head. ‘Students! Why do we bother? I have the same problem as you, so I wanted to talk to you about it. Three years of nurturing him and one of my personal students has deserted his examinations. Dropping out, they call it – well, he’s simply dropped out of existence. It is as if a black hole has opened up and swallowed him.’
An awful feeling of déja vu crept over Jeffrey Flint. ‘What was his name?’
‘Timothy Wright, did you know him?’
‘Timmy? I know Timmy.’ Whatever he was going to in the library was no longer important. ‘Look, come up to the tea room and we’ll talk about it.’
Christianson gave a quaint bow of his head and they walked to the Classics lounge, comparing notes on missing students. Timmy Wright had packed his belongings into a tea-chest, which he had then abandoned in his flat with a note saying his father would collect it. He had not been seen for three weeks.
*
Jeffrey Flint had returned to Kingshaven once more. A chance glimpse along the High Street confirmed that he had not heeded the letter, nor paid attention to the telephone calls. The observer watched as Vikki introduced Flint to Vince and the pair shook hands. Vince offered Flint one of his cigarettes, and took offence when the archaeologist was too obvious in his disgust at the suggestion. A fellow lover of clean air, if not clean living. Jeffrey Flint’s soul stood some chance of redemption.
The archaeologist who pretended to be an investigator posed in front of the museum, which had fallen into the care of a locum curator from the County Museums Service. The photographer danced around, winding film, checking the light, calling out instructions, until the process became tiresome to watch. It was interesting to see the thinly veiled irritation shown by the photographer as the girl took Flint’s arm and led him away towards the pub. The Bridge, a bald sandstone structure along the waterfront, was George Carlyle’s habitual watering-hole. George could present a problem.
*
Flint led the way into The Bridge. ‘We’ve lost another one,’ he said with an air of gloom. ‘Timmy Wright, a chemist. He was one of Lucy’s boyfriends and another dragon freak. The Central College Triangle claims another victim.’
‘Or suspect,’ Vikki said. ‘He could be a suspect.’
Flint refused to allow Vikki to buy him another drink, and glanced along the beer pumps. ‘Grief, it’s a Stones pub. Tonight calls for sacrifices beyond the call of duty.’
He settled for a pint of hand-drawn Bass, which was better than he had at first dreaded. Vikki ordered white wine and soda to go with scampi in a basket.
‘So you’re a CAMRA man, are you?’ Vikki asked. ‘A real Real Ale drinker.’
‘Yes, terribly macho, isn’t it?’ Flint derided his own stereotype. ‘I just know what I like. If pubs served decent wines, I might be tempted, otherwise, I’m a bearded hand-drawn Real Ale junkie.’
Vikki was shaking her head in amusement as George Carlyle walked in. Ex-Signals Regiment, now a museum attendant edging towards retirement, he was smartly dressed in his regimental blazer. Flint intercepted him at the bar and bought a pint of Stones bitter. George thanked him and they small-talked into a corner of the quiet bar. Amongst the heavy red Victorian-style decor, conversation soon shifted towards the missing curator. George must have realised he was in for close questioning.
‘Name rank and number only, remember,’ he joked.
Flint began gently. ‘George, you understand what we’re trying to do? To find Lucy Gray, we need to know more about her and her relationship with Piers Plant.’
George looked into the froth of his beer, searching for his conscience perhaps.
‘We respect your loyalty, George,’ Flint added.
‘I’ll keep it confidential,’ Vikki said, with too much sincerity to be convincing.
The attendant took a short breath and began to testify without looking either in the eye. ‘Miss Gray used to come to the museum quite a lot. She’s been coming for years, since she was a girl. More regularly in the last year or two. Sometimes they would be in his office, sometimes in one of the stores, sometimes they would go behind the woggery.’
‘Woggery?’ Flint’s hackles rose.
‘It’s what Mister Plant calls the north wing annexe. It’s full of Zulu spears, Maori clubs, that sort of thing.’
A casual racist too – Flint liked Plant less and less. ‘Do you think there was anything funny going on?’
‘Sexual?’ Vikki pushed the thought before him. ‘Were they having an affair?’
‘It’s not for me to say, miss. That would be insubordinate.’ He gave a wry grin. ‘We used to get pack drill for insubordination.’ George seemed to be waiting for the opportunity to let the most savoury titbit of gossip drop from his lips. He became conspiratorial, leaning close over the table and lowering his voice. ‘My mate Jack, he reckoned they were having it off in the store room, if you pardon me, miss. It’s shameful really, she’s little more than a girl. I can’t see what she sees in him.’
The Friday evening crowd began to fill the room as George mellowed under as second pint. The air grew thick, the background whisper became a continuous rattle. George was telling how Piers Plant had become gradually more sickness-prone over the past year and how the museum was disintegrating under his lack of interest.
‘Plant’s folklore display is first rate,’ Flint objected. ‘It’s easily the best part of the museum.’
‘I’m afraid it’s the only part of the museum he’s concerned with.’
‘How seriously is he into the occult?’
‘Occult?’
‘You know, witchcraft, black magic, that sort of thing.’
‘I couldn’t say. He’s got a few books on the subject.’
Flint mentally scanned the curator’s office, not recalling anything even mildly supernatural in content. Perhaps Plant kept them at home. Vikki frowned at the line of enquiry and was keen to change tack.
‘Has he ever just vanished before?’ she asked.
‘No, he’s malingering, if you ask me. Perhaps you upset him, Doctor Flint, he’s very easily upset, is Mister Plant. Lack of moral fibre, LMF as we said in the army.’
‘So when did Lucy Gray last come to the museum?’ Vikki asked.
The attendant fidgeted whilst he thought. Vikki was about to feed him a date, hut a nudge stopped her.
‘New Year, perhaps. Yes, it was when the scaffolding went up – that was just into the New Year. We’re having the back wall completely redone.’
George stood up. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me a minute, miss.’ George made his way to the Gents’.
Flint held up a finger to impress an idea on Vikki. ‘Lucy’s mum said she’d stopped coming home last autumn. Lucy used to scrounge the train fare, stay with her mum or her sister. Let’s say that some time before Christmas, she started to come here direct and stopped telling anyone. That’s why there’s nothing on her calendar and even explains why Piers Plant was scrubbed from her acknowledgements.’
‘She’s ashamed to be seen with him?’
‘She’s trying to conceal something. Their relationship had changed and, perhaps, it wrecked the pair of them.’
‘What was all that about witchcraft? You said Lucy was strange, but I just thought you meant playing hobbit games.’
‘Sometimes I think it was more than a game with Lucy,’ he replied, ‘or maybe just one big game, who knows?’
‘George Carlyle?’ shouted the barman. ‘Come on, George! Telephone!’
‘He’s taking his time. Why do men spend so much time in the loo?’ Vikki observed.
Flint signalled to
the barman and went to see what he wanted. ‘You’re with George, are you?’ the barman asked. ‘Will you take his telephone call?’
At the corner of the bar, he picked up the receiver.
‘George Carlyle?’ growled the voice, ‘Leave it, leave now, say nothing to Flint and the reporter.’
‘Is that Piers Plant?’ Flint spoke. ‘This is Doctor Flint.’
‘Lucy is happy,’ the deep, gravelly voice said. ‘Leave her alone.’
George emerged from the Gents’, looking pleased. Flint put down the dead receiver with a trembling hand. It could have been Plant, or Timmy Wright, or even Lucy herself faking that Hammer Horror voice. Someone knew exactly where George Carlyle was and exactly what he was doing. That someone did not want Lucy found. Flint wiped his lips, feeling a thirst but not wanting alcohol.
Vikki came across and he told her about the call. Her mouth dangled open and her eyes widened as he spoke. ‘This is terrific.’
‘Wrong – it’s terrifying,’ Flint corrected. ‘Don’t become like Lucy, don’t think this is a game.’
Vikki tightened her lips at the rebuke. ‘So what are you going to do next?’
‘Go back to Leeds for my mum’s birthday. Then invigilate for the Roman Architecture and Art finals. Then I’m going to find Plant and get some answers.’
Chapter 7
A weekend away was what Jeffrey Flint had needed, so the trip north had been a return to sanity. At his mother’s sixtieth birthday party he mingled with relatives and familiar faces from the old neighbourhood. None had excavated any site more ancient than his grandfather’s allotment, and the hired room above his father’s local was an academic-free zone with not a neurotic student nor exam paper in sight.
By Monday, he was back in London, attempting to justify his wages and regretting his brash vow to find Piers Plant. He did not have a clue where he could be, and nor did the eager Vikki Corbett. When he arrived at Central College he found she had sent him a first-class letter containing her latest masterpiece of creative fiction, WITCHCRAFT LINK TO VANISHED GIRL? She had found her story, forcing it onto the front page by the late edition.
Below the headline was a photograph of a familiar Gothic building, with an even more familiar bearded figure standing before it. Flint grimaced as he read the text, shaking his head and wondering if he was the same Dr Flint being quoted in the text. A Chief Inspector Douglas was also quoted as making no comment. Stung by a throwaway line in the early edition, the Darkewater Valley Constabulary had finally strolled into action, announcing they wished to interview Piers Plant in connection with the Lucy Gray case. Flint sat back in his chair, feeling relieved from the burden of his vow. Obviously, if a whole regional crime squad couldn’t find the three missing persons, what chance did he have?
The time of the red biro had come. Introduction to Archaeological Processes yielded five essays per first-year student; a mountain of gauche tedium awaited. He tossed Vikki’s article on to a chair and pulled the first script across his desk and read the name Alexis da Sancho. Flint groaned as he flicked to the first question; he needed to be in a calm, charitable mood to mark Alexis’ script. Coffee should help.
Once within the gloomy depths of the tea room, he encountered Tyrone reading the Financial Times and eating a Mars Bar.
‘Hullo Doc, how’s the sleuthing?’
Flint sat down beside his student, thankfully sipping the coffee. ‘Confusing. Dead people are much easier to investigate than live ones.’
‘What makes you think Lucy’s still alive?’
‘On Friday, I had a phone call from a guy who tells me she is happy.’
‘He could have been lying. He could have been speaking metaphysically.’
Flint gave Tyrone a quizzical look.
Tyrone lapsed into philosophy. ‘She is in paradise, beyond the cares of the world. She is happy.’
Once he had sufficient caffeine in his system, Flint grabbed a second cup, then went back to his office, studiously plodding through the scripts one by one. Each day that week seemed to be the same: question, answers, ticks and scores out of twenty.
‘Explain the principle of Seriation. On what classes of material might it be employed?’ Flint scrawled a large tick at the bottom of the answer and awarded Neil Unger seventeen marks. Up flicked his eyes to where Lucy hung, pinned like a lepidopterist’s exhibit to his cork board. She was coming to dominate his life, yet where was she? Alive and laughing, or dead and cold? Where was Piers Plant? Where indeed was Timmy Wright? Was the answer to all three questions the same? These were questions with no answers; zero marks to Jeffrey Flint. Weeks were passing in which blanks became only blanker and a cold trail became overgrown with weeds and unusable.
To complete the confused web of non-evidence, Barbara Faber had rung, full of false good spirits. She had received another postcard from Salisbury. Same script, similar brief message.
Salisbury? What remained of Jeffrey Flint’s motivation led him to see possibilities. A wild goose chase to Scotland would have been ludicrously expensive, but Salisbury was closer to home. Lucy was edging into range, and perhaps she was actually willing him to find her. Perhaps her postcards and calls were just part of her complex game.
Lucy’s behaviour did not make sense. Piers Plant’s behaviour did not make sense. Julie Stapleton-Clarke’s answer to Question Three did not make sense, but at least the exam papers were dribbling to a miserable end. In the distance, a loudspeaker van proclaimed the virtues of some party or other. Of course – the elections. He wondered how Chrissie’s Green Party would perform: badly, probably. Just one more script and he’d go out and give them his vote.
Chrissie Collings had first been attracted to Jeffrey Flint by his offbeat sense of humour. He was a philandering egotist, but this left her safe from an overdose of clammy sentiment which could easily stifle a young career. Sitting in the Friday night folk club, she sensed things had run full course. His humour had gone, his sex drive had been diluted, his conversation had become fixed around a missing girl, exam scripts and convoluted Marxist interpretations of third century Roman Britain. It could be time to let him have the news.
In her calf-length gypsy skirt and bolero jacket, her deep-red hair swept up behind a scarf, Chrissie was conscious of how much she had fallen into his scene. Flint wore just a baggy T-shirt he had bought at an All About Eve concert, and one of his smarter pairs of jeans. Yes he really looked the part of the old hippy, as she supposed did she. All that was lacking were the sandals.
The performer was not the best guitar player ever seen in the back corner of an Islington pub and far from the best singer. Between songs, the pair conducted a gentle post-mortem on Thursday’s election results. The Greens had suffered the accustomed glorious defeat. Many votes, much credit, but no power.
‘They are spoiling my world and nobody cares,’ Chrissie sighed over her empty wine glass. ‘I think we should get really drunk tonight.’
The pub was dark, heavy with smoke and hardly environmentally friendly.
‘We should be at Glastonbury,’ Flint said in response, ‘that’s what we should be doing. Camping under the stars, singing our own songs instead of listening to these impoverished efforts. I need a festival, I really do.’
‘You’ll still be going to pop festivals when you’re fifty.’
‘And why not? Same again?’
Flint went to the bar and after some time, came back sipping a pop-and-orange.
‘Feeling alright?’ Chrissie asked as she accepted her red wine. He responded with a bug-eyed stare. ‘Question Three: discuss the principles underlying the term terminus post quem.’
‘You’re insane.’ She could not resist smiling. ‘Is this the great Jeffrey Flint we have all heard about? Hard drinking, womanising...’
‘Rumours, all false. I’m taking it easy tonight. I’ve visited every grotty bar between London and Kingshaven in the past month, sampling more grotty beer than I can take.’
‘Your work is getti
ng to you.’
‘Bloody exams. We ought to abolish them. I can tell brilliance from mediocrity without having to read four hundred tediously repetitive confirmations. I’m going to be like Jules Torpevitch and get a rubber stamp made up embossed with the word ‘Rubbish’. Save a lot of time.’
‘Still, the exams will soon be over.’
‘It’s not just exams, Chrissie. It’s this Lucy Gray thing. It’s just the problem has lodged here,’ he thumped his temple, ‘and isn’t going away.’
‘You’re still chasing sweet Lucy Gray.’
‘Chasing my tail too. She sent her sister a postcard from Salisbury. I’ve half a hunch they’ve met up there: her, Piers Plant and flipping Timmy White. Another half a hunch says I should go and look for them.’
‘White and Gray? It sounds like someone is teasing you, getting you running around to opposite ends of the country and costing a fortune on the train. Going off to Salisbury on your half hunch doesn’t make sense, so forget about it, you’re not a detective. I’m sure she’ll turn up.’
In the background, the singer was murdering ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ in front of forty witnesses. Chrissie realised she couldn’t tell Jeff her news, not yet. He still seemed to need her.
‘I can’t forget about it. It’s too interesting. I hate unsolved problems and I love cracking them; the harder the better. I’m a problem addict, that’s why I do what I do. Can you sign me up to Archaeologists Anonymous?’
She had been wrong about the humour – it was simply blacker than usual.
‘What’s so interesting about a girl skipping her exams?’
‘Interesting was the wrong word. Intriguing possibly. It’s just so crazy, the more I find out about Lucy, the crazier it gets.’