by Tom Sharpe
Purefoy got out and tried the gate. It was locked. ‘I hope to goodness he’s got the key,’ he said. ‘I don’t fancy having to kick the fence in. It would make a hell of a noise.’
From the sea there came the slop of the waves on the mudflats. The tide was in and the wind had risen, and far out the lights of a ship coming from the Continent and heading for King’s Lynn could be seen. Purefoy shivered and went back to the Transit van to check that the doors at the back were already open so that they could hoist Skullion and the wheelchair in quickly. He didn’t want to hang about. He had the feeling that what he was doing was somehow illegal like kidnapping and if the police came along it would be difficult to explain. Mrs Ndhlovo had no such worries. She was enjoying herself. Skullion had impressed her. Even in his wheelchair and semi-paralysed she had recognized him for a proper man though understandably a nasty one.
It was one o’clock exactly when they heard the wheelchair and saw the dark shape coming slowly towards them up the old tarmac drive.
‘Gates open inwards or outwards?’ Skullion asked.
‘Inwards, I think. Yes, inwards,’ Purefoy said.
‘Right, then here’s the key. It’s the one I’ve got in my fingers. You open them while I back off.’ He handed the bunch of keys over and Purefoy used the torch to find the lock. When it was undone and the gates open, Skullion came through. ‘Now lock them again and with the chain and give me the keys. That’ll teach them what it feels like to be locked in when you want to go to work.’
‘I thought you didn’t want them to come after you,’ Mrs Ndhlovo said and made Skullion chuckle.
‘Come after me, duckie? They wouldn’t turn out to look for me, not unless I was the only poor bugger down there and their jobs depended on it. Glad to see the back of me. The same as I am of them. And they keep the phone locked too, so only they can use it or hear what you say. And I’ve got the key of that too and of the cellar and the kitchen cupboards. Mean as cats’ whiskers. Now this is the difficult bit, getting me up into the van. You do the chair first. I’ll prop myself up here.’
He got out of the chair and stood leaning against the side of the van. By the time Purefoy and Mrs Ndhlovo had lifted the chair in and Purefoy had tied it securely to the passenger seat with the rope, Skullion had worked his way round to the back to watch.
‘Now give me the end of the rope and I’ll pull and you shove. I still got some strength in my arms. One of them anyway. Here, put my bowler somewhere out of the way.’
It was a struggle getting him in but they managed it and presently, with Skullion seated in the wheelchair and breathing heavily, they started up Fish Lane.
‘Where do you want to go, Mr Skullion?’ Mrs Ndhlovo asked.
‘Home,’ said Skullion. ‘Where the blooming heart is.’
‘You mean to Porterhouse?’
‘Oh no, not there. Not yet, any rate. Just drive down to Cambridge and I’ll show you. Take the Swaffham road. Won’t be much traffic on it this time of night.’
37
It was late when Purefoy and Mrs Ndhlovo woke that morning. It had been after three before they reached Cambridge and left Skullion with a couple who lived in a side street near the Newmarket Road and who had seemed to take his unexpected arrival in the middle of the night quite calmly and as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
‘Old friends,’ was all that Skullion had to say about them. ‘You come here when you want to and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. They won’t find me here if you don’t say anything. And I don’t think you will.’ They had left him there and Purefoy had parked the van on the other side of the river before walking wearily back to Porterhouse.
Now in the morning the whole interlude had an air of unreality about it, at least to Purefoy. To Mrs Ndhlovo helping a man in a wheelchair escape from a so-called retirement home in the middle of the night was apparently the most normal thing in the world. ‘That place gave me the creeps, and as for that Mrs Morphy, I’m sure she’s in favour of involuntary euthanasia. I like your Mr Skullion, though. He’s different.’
Purefoy didn’t disagree. Skullion was different but he still wasn’t at all sure he liked him. There was a hardness about him that alarmed him and in any case he couldn’t forget the menace in Skullion’s voice when he threatened the Dean. ‘That’s because you’ve lived such a protected life, Purefoy,’ Mrs Ndhlovo told him. ‘When are we going to take the van back and fetch the car? Not today, please. I’m too tired and anyway I think you ought to hear what he has to say first.’
They went out to lunch and it was four when they finally went to the house in Onion Alley off the Newmarket Road. A plump woman let them in. ‘He’s in the front room because of the stairs and we never use it really,’ she said. ‘Special occasions. So we made up a bed for him. He’s still in it. I’ll just go and see he’s tidy. Oh, and I’m Mrs Rawston. Charlie, my husband went to school with Mr Skullion.’
They found Skullion sitting up in bed with his bowler on the table beside him. ‘Wondered when you was coming. Thought you might have got cold feet.’
‘There’s no need to be rude,’ said Mrs Rawston.
‘Not being rude,’ said Skullion. ‘Dean’ll know by now I’m gone from the Park and you gave that B-I-T-C-H your name didn’t you? So they’ll have a fair idea.’
‘Nobody’s said anything to me,’ said Purefoy. ‘But it’s true. That dreadful woman does know my name.’
‘Just so long as you don’t let them know I’m here. If they ask you can say I told you to get lost. They can go on searching the mud for a bit. Do them good. And it’ll do them good at the College to wonder what’s become of the Master. It’s all right, Mrs Charlie, you don’t have to wait unless you want to hear a lot of history.’
‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ said Mrs Rawston and went out.
‘We’ll get round to why I did what I did to Sir Godber Evans in a bit,’ Skullion went on. ‘First I’ll tell you what they’re like and why I’m here and not where that General Sir Cathcart D’Eath promised I’d go if I kept my trap shut, out at Coft Castle which isn’t any sort of castle and he trains horses.’
They listened as he told the story and presently Mrs Rawston returned with the tea tray and some biscuits and left them to themselves.
‘You do shorthand?’ Skullion asked Mrs Ndhlovo who said no but she wrote fast. ‘Right, then you’ll have to use a tape recorder and I’ll go slow because I’ve got a lot to tell if you want to hear it. The history of the College from a different point of view than any you’d get from anyone else. As it really is or was and not dolled up with things left out because they wouldn’t look nice. Forty-five years I was there in the Porter’s Lodge and what the porters and the College servants don’t learn in forty-five years isn’t worth knowing. More than the Dean, more than the Praelector, more than anyone. And I’ll tell you if you want to hear.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ said Purefoy. ‘I don’t suppose anyone has written a history of Porterhouse from that angle.’
‘Course they haven’t. Haven’t asked and the Dean and them wouldn’t have allowed them to if they had. They won’t allow you to either, not have it published at any rate. But you can write it down for the record. Just be careful and don’t keep it in your room. Dean and Senior Tutor went through your stuff one day you were out.’
‘What?’ said Purefoy in astonishment and anger. ‘Went through all my notes and … Are you sure?’
‘Dead certain,’ said Skullion. ‘Watched them from my bedroom in the Master’s Lodge. Saw them through the window and they came out looking shifty and went to the Secretary’s office. Want to know why?’
‘Yes, I bloody well do.’
‘Because there’s a copier there. Then the Dean went back up again and came out looking smug.’ Skullion laughed. ‘I may miss some things but not a lot and what I don’t see or hear, other people tell me. But that’s not for anyone else’s ears. Right?’
‘All right,’ said Purefoy, st
ill fuming. ‘Just the same they had no right –’
‘Oh come off it. Right? Right doesn’t come into it. You come up here all of a sudden as the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow, get appointed when the Dean’s away and the Senior Tutor gets me to sign my name to your appointment without telling me what you are or who put up the money, and they’re still not certain, and you think they’re not going to want to find out? Was there anything in there said Lady Mary was behind you?’
‘No, no I don’t suppose there was.’
‘Must’ve been something, because the Dean drives out to Coft Castle to see Sir Cathcart that afternoon and he don’t do that just for a chinwag. Never mind that. Just don’t leave what I’m going to tell you lying around. Put it somewhere safe out of College.’
He finished his tea and handed the cup to Mrs Ndhlovo. ‘And you’d better not be seen around,’ he told her. ‘You’d be better off in digs. Mrs Charlie’ll recommend some. The Dean and the Senior Tutor don’t hold with women in College.’
‘I don’t care what they hold with. I’m entitled –’
‘Entitled? You may be entitled but they can dig up something in College Rules and Regulations says you’re not and cause him a lot of trouble arguing about it. Take my word for it. When I’ve finished, that’ll be different. For the time being keep your head down. They can think what they like but there’ll be nothing they can do. And I don’t want them finding me and trying to stop me spilling the beans.’
‘If you say so, Mr Skullion, if you say so.’
‘Sensible,’ said Skullion, pleased by the ‘Mister’. ‘Now you’ll be wanting to get that van back and fetch your car and you don’t want to be all night about it. Ask Mrs Charlie about the digs and I’ll see you tomorrow. Any time in the morning.’
It was almost midnight when they got back to Cambridge and slipped up to Purefoy’s rooms. ‘Just this once,’ Mrs Ndhlovo said. ‘I’ll move into the digs in the morning.’
*
Dinner in Hall had been a sombre affair. Mention of Porterhouse Park was normally avoided as being an unsuitably morbid topic but there could be no avoiding it now.
‘Dr Osbert and a woman went up to see him? How the deuce did they find out how to get there?’ the Senior Tutor wanted to know.
‘It seems our young colleague is rather more ingenious than his manner suggests,’ said the Dean. ‘Someone claiming to be from the hospital phoned to say that blood was needed for a transfusion, Skullion had burst an ulcer or some such nonsense, and they needed the address. Walter gave it to them. And now Skullion has disappeared and the police tell me that all the gates were locked and the keys have gone.’
‘Nasty, very nasty. He couldn’t by any chance have taken himself off?’
‘One hardly supposes a man in his condition in a wheelchair would get very far without being spotted. No, I think the presumption must be that Dr Osbert agreed to help him get away from there.’
‘But what on earth for? I shouldn’t for a moment imagine he and Skullion have anything in common. Just the sort of young man he most dislikes.’
The Dean kept his thoughts on the matter to himself and glanced significantly at the Praelector but the Praelector had preoccupations of his own. The Bumps were coming up and after them the May Balls, and for the first time in several years Porterhouse was having its own May Ball. By that time Hartang would be installed in the Master’s Lodge – for once the Inauguration of the new Master was being postponed until the Michaelmas Term in case certain ‘rearrangements’ had to be made – and the Praelector had spent part of the afternoon with three people from London whose IDs suggested they were Customs and Excise but whose questions and inspection of the College and in particular the Master’s Lodge seemed to have more to do with security. The woman had been the one who had impressed the Praelector most. In her forties, she had the air of a perfectly ordinary housewife on her way back from a supermarket – she actually carried a shopping bag – or the local library to collect a new historical romance. Her hair was permed and slightly blue, she was short and plump and at first sight she appeared happily absent-minded. By the time they had finished that first impression had been replaced by another. The patina of cheerful absent-mindedness had been overlaid by too much intelligent questioning and the authority she obviously possessed. The Praelector preferred not to wonder what was in the shopping bag. She seemed particularly interested in the May Ball.
‘Anyone who pays for a ticket is entitled to come,’ the Praelector told her, and was promptly assured that this year there would be certain unspecified measures taken to keep the rowdier element away.
‘We want it to be a happy occasion,’ she said. ‘I think you can safely leave the staff arrangements to us. We have some excellent caterers we can provide and it will save the College authorities extra work. Now about the Master’s accommodation.’
The Praelector had taken them to the Master’s Lodge and had left them there. ‘I shall be in my room if you need me,’ he said.
They had spent several hours there and had come away apparently satisfied. ‘Such a very pleasant house. And so handy having a lift. Of course it needs rewiring and a few refinements added. We will send some electricians up in a day or two. There is no need for the College to concern itself. They will use the main door of the house and Bill here will be with them. He knows about these things.’
Bill was the taller of the two men, and looked as though he knew a great deal about a great many things.
‘And now if we could just have a word with the porters?’
The Praelector had taken them down to the Porter’s Lodge and had gone back to his rooms uncomfortably aware that he had just made the acquaintance of three very hard people. It was going to be a very odd May Ball. And when that evening he had gone down to see if there was any mail in his pigeonhole Walter had been in an unusually serious mood.
‘Bloody coppers,’ he said with uncharacteristic frankness when the Praelector asked him if the visitors had stayed long. ‘Telling me how to run my own business. Going to put a bloke in here with Henry and me for May Week. What do they want to do that for?’
‘I think they may be looking for pickpockets and people using the occasion to come into College to steal,’ the Praelector said tactfully. ‘I’m sure they’ll keep out of your way.’
‘They’d better. Got enough to do without having the place crawling with flatfoots. Stick out like sore thumbs they do, and rude with it.’
*
Sir Cathcart would have found the comment precise. His feelings about the police were even less friendly. He’d had two uniformed officers and a plainclothes man in a patrol car drive up without bothering to make an appointment that morning and he hadn’t liked their manners in the slightest. They had said they had received a complaint from a Mrs Ransby and had reason to believe he might be able to help them.
Sir Cathcart had tried to laugh it off. ‘You mustn’t believe anything you read in the papers. An utter travesty of the facts. As a matter of fact she was trying to blackmail me.’
‘Oh yes, sir. Was she indeed? Blackmail you? And how was she trying to do that?’ the Sergeant had asked in a tone of voice the General hadn’t heard from a policeman before. The CID man said nothing. He had just stood there looking at the furniture in the hall and seeming not to be interested. Something about him annoyed Sir Cathcart, who had had two drinks for breakfast.
‘Mrs Ransby tried to blackmail you and you didn’t feel inclined to pay her. Very natural, sir, and may one enquire what your reaction to her demand, I presume it was for a sum of money, what your reaction was?’
‘I told her to fuck off,’ said the General. ‘And frankly I’d be glad if you would go and make yourselves useful somewhere else. If you want to discuss anything more with me, you can make an appointment. I am extremely busy and …’
The plainclothes man introduced himself. ‘My name is Dickerson, Detective Inspector Dickerson, and I have here a warrant to search premises in Botanic Lan
e …’
It had been an appalling moment, and the morning had got worse. Sir Cathcart had reacted angrily, the police had asked him if he wanted to speak to his solicitor and have him present when they searched the house, Sir Cathcart had said he did although it was the last thing he wanted, and had then changed his mind and had tried a different approach. That hadn’t worked either.
‘The Chief Constable is in London today, sir. If you’d like his deputy …’ Sir Cathcart didn’t, and had suffered the ignominy of being driven to Botanic Lane because as the Sergeant had pointed out it wouldn’t look good if he was stopped for driving over the limit.
Nothing had looked good. The architects on the ground floor had watched his arrival with interest and when they got up to what Sir Cathcart had in the past jovially referred to as his little love nest he had been shocked by the mess it was in. Evidence of Myrtle’s drunken struggles with the latex costume was everywhere and the brandy bottle was still on the floor of the bedroom. In the bathroom things were worse still. The consequences of the brandy were in the basin, the toothbrush was on the floor with the old razor, and the smell was most unpleasant. There was worse still to come.
‘A one-way mirror, eh? And a video camera. Well, well. Someone is into porno by the look of things. I think we are going to need a photographer and the print man,’ the Inspector said, and suggested they wait outside in the car. The General went downstairs and ran the gauntlet of the architects’ office and sat in the police car. He’d changed his mind about his solicitor.
‘You can use the car phone, sir,’ he was told. An hour later with the solicitor, a very respectable solicitor who, if he had known General Sir Cathcart D’Eath in happier circumstances, didn’t show it, they all climbed the stairs and inspected the rooms once again. The leather straps and the inflatable gag were placed in plastic bags.
‘There is no need for you to say anything, and I strongly advise you not to,’ the solicitor informed Sir Cathcart and requested that his client be allowed to go home. The General had to wait for a taxi and the Inspector said he would make an appointment to see him when they needed to ask him any further questions. Or perhaps he would prefer to come to the police station instead when they let him know. The solicitor said his client would prefer to be interviewed at home. Sir Cathcart went back to Coft Castle and was photographed by a young newspaperman who just happened to be there.