Thus it was that, about a decade ago, Barry Trubshaw chose to re-invent himself essentially under the same dissembling guise as before, perhaps cognisant, even then, that resonances would once again reverberate down the years and that, once again and with absolute certainty, he would find himself in an impossible situation.
And here it was. He was like an actor on stage who has not properly learned his lines. Should he mumble and stamp and filibuster and look desperately to the prompt for help? No. This time he would step calmly over the footlights, apologise to the audience and prostrate himself before its mercy. This time, he would corpse.
I steered the Slingsby in from the north, very low, and landed uphill on the Claich, the field on the periphery of Clerk Maxwell that Farmer Bain hired out for gigs. I cut the engine as soon as I’d landed. I don’t think anybody saw me. The haar was gone. The campus was radiant in winter sunshine.
Barry Trubshaw had taken home with him a Venflon, a bag of saline and a drip-giving set, a vial of thiopentone and another of suxamethonium. Nobody could say this was meant to be ‘a cry for help’. Veronica found him. The drip had tissued. He couldn’t even do that right. Poor bastard. Over in ICU at Little France they were squirting ice water in his ear, looking at one another and shaking their heads. It wasn’t looking good. They would do it all again tomorrow, on the day of a nativity.
Trubshaw. I remembered the man in the tightly buttoned white coat, the quivering jowl and the forced bonhomie. He was my doppelgänger. Twenty five years down the track, I wouldn’t be Pearson, I’d be Trubshaw. Pearson was too urbane, too accommodating, bending with the breeze, going with the flow. I struggled away at life like a man pushing his way through a crowd with his elbows, always about to miss my footing, slip, and be trampled. We are all of us impaired.
If I were a loner, disgruntled, disaffected, malcontent, camouflaged in my army surplus fatigues, interested in guns and the internet, and with a massive chip on my shoulder, I would choose to carry out my mass shooting on a university campus.
These places are so vulnerable – not like an airport, where policemen stand on corners with index fingers curled round the triggers of semi-automatic weapons, where the bored customs officers x-ray you with their icy stares; or a bank, or a mall, or a hospital emergency department. Even a garage forecourt has CCTV.
But look at this. I strolled past a Checkpoint-Charlie-style security barrier for vehicles where the attendant didn’t give me a second glance. Now I have the run of the place.
Near the entrance to the Joseph Black Building I ran smack into Dumyat and Whangie Horton. I could see them both make a double-take. I hadn’t washed or shaved for three days. They both stared at me open-mouthed. When Whangie found her voice she spoke so slowly that each disconnected word had its own independent existence.
‘Oh
‘My
‘God …’
‘Dumyat. Get out of here, man. Whangie, I like you. Go home. No. Not that way. Get off the campus. Quick. Do as I say.’
They began to retreat in the direction I’d indicated. If they stuck to my advice they’d be down on the public road within two minutes.
I slipped into the Joseph Black Building. The place was deserted. I took the stairs, not the lift. All the way up, I never passed a soul. My footfalls echoed in the stairwell; I thought I could hear other steps, then a series of thuds. It seemed to come from outside. Somebody’s car was back-firing. On the eighth floor I moved with complete silence along the carpeted lobby, placing my feet with the fastidiousness of a big hunting cat. I noticed the carpet wasn’t an Axminster at all. It was a Wilton. The door to Professor Horton’s office suite was slightly ajar. I pushed it wide open. The anteroom was empty. I walked across. I could see three blurred silhouettes through the frosted glass. One, with the slim profile and the Belisha beacon scalp, was unmistakable. I had no plan. So I just walked right in.
The room was as I remembered it, spacious, well appointed, with the smart luxury of a five star hotel penthouse. The reds and golds, the art, the oak furniture, the huge triptych picture window, the grandfather clock, just as they had been on my last visit. Tick … tick … tick … Professor Sir Douglas Horton, Muir Foye, and Alan Stobo sat in frozen immobility. It was a tableau. A Vermeer. Sunlight was slanting in from the east in broad beams, spilling across Horton’s desk. Horton and Stobo posed in stultified silence opposite one another; Ms Foye had adopted her secretarial pose in the grey twilight zone of the Horton penumbra. Her gaze was directed toward the few objects that occupied the great expanse of the red leather desk top. They sat, strategically placed, like chess pieces in an endgame in which all extraneous complications have been spirited away to leave a distilled situation. White to play and mate in two. A paperweight; a Toby jug; a telephone; a Webley service revolver. Ms Foye fixed on the point on the desk where the light seemed to focus most sharply, glinting off the blue-grey gunmetal of the handgun Stobo had placed before him. She stared fixedly at the long barrel. Her face was a skull wrapped in papyrus. Nobody spoke.
Professor Horton had adopted a negligent pose. He sat back from the desk, slightly slouched in his chair, both hands gripping his right ankle which rested on his left knee. He was staring at the ceiling as if he was monumentally bored, absently whisper-whistling a vaguely familiar tune. He was very smartly turned out. Checked shirt, green tie, sports jacket, fawn cavalry twills, brown brogues. Immaculate. The sooner we work through this pantomime, said the demeanour, the sooner we can get on with life. He’d be late for Conversazione! Absurdly, both he and Ms Foye were wearing paper hats of the sort you pull out of Christmas crackers. It occurred to me there must have been an end of term breakfast meeting. Horton wore a blue crown and Ms Foye a pink tiara. Maybe they would offer a modicum of protection. Surely you couldn’t shoot somebody wearing a funny hat. Horton carried on whistling his nervous tune through his teeth. All the nice girls love a sailor. He was trying to impose his own agenda at a meeting where he was definitely not occupying the chair. I shifted my gaze away from Horton and over towards Stobo and my heart sank. I’d seen the piercing eyes before but not quite with this mad gleam. Stobo on steroids; out to lunch.
Nobody registered any surprise at my entrance. I wasn’t even sure that I had been noticed. Something compelled me to walk over to the picture window. It was like walking round the edges of a hologram. I gazed through the double-glazed panes towards the unbearable chatoyance of the diamond blazing low in the south-east sky. Reluctantly I turned my attention and looked down at the silent world one hundred feet below. A group of people were lying in various attitudes of abandonment, strewn around the quad, as if they were taking part in some kind of protest demonstration, against global warming, or the rape and pillage of the third world. When I spoke, my voice sounded unnaturally loud.
‘Alan. What have you done?’ But it was as if I wasn’t there.
Then Horton seized the initiative. The clasped hands released the grip on his ankle and he sat up from his casual slouch. I noticed he was deliberately unhurried, eliding each movement. He kept both hands clearly visible above the desk top. He reached across it for the Toby jug. It was a representation of a stout, jolly frock-coated trencherman enjoying a frothing stein of beer. He flicked open the lid with a thumb.
‘Sweet?’
Stobo didn’t move.
Horton extracted one, unwrapped it, and jammed it into his cheek. He returned the jug to its original position on the desk. He spoke with his mouth full.
‘“Curiously strong” mints. Werther’s Original. Or is it Callard and Bowser? Can’t tempt you?’
‘What, the fair Ophelia!
‘Sweets to the sweet, farewell!’
The compulsion to laugh was almost irresistible. I jammed a palm over my nose and mouth in case twitchy Alan decided to silence me with the Webley. I realised I had made a gross misdiagnosis. Pressure of speech! Flight of ideas! The textbook description issued me with a sharp reprimand.
There followed an eerie s
ilence. Horton’s aghast stare had frozen on his face. He was racking his brains, recalling the countless interviews that had taken place across this desk, trying to remember the last candidate or supplicant craving an audience who had behaved remotely like this, and how he had dealt with it. He looked like a man with a toothache, a Callard and Bowser dental abscess. The applicant had wandered off script. Now Stobo was joining in the desk-top dumb show. He had extracted a small article from his inside jacket pocket and was laying it down beside the paperweight. It was as if he had queened a pawn. A small sandglass.
Now he was grasping the handgrip of the Webley and rising to cross behind Horton to move to the triptych window. I was aware that the revolver had dragged Ms Foye’s stare along with it. Horton’s eyes were fixed on the egg timer. I could see Stobo taking care where he placed his feet, taking his time, keeping his balance with quick darting movements of the head, keeping the barrel of the gun trained on his cornered quarry. He stole a quick glance down to the quad. Simultaneously, I watched a figure in camouflaged army fatigues suddenly emerge from the Cultural Arts Centre and commence a quick darting run, swerving to avoid the bodies, in the direction of the Joseph Black Building. The carrot red hair above the dark face evoked a vague memory. There was something pathetic about the camouflage gear. In the wide open space of the campus and in the brilliant winter sunshine the figure might have been visible from ten miles. As if in confirmation of this, it suddenly stopped in its tracks, threw up its arms in an absurd salaam gesture, and fell stock still. It was such a poor enactment of a death scene that if the figure had been a film extra on set the director would certainly have cut and ordered the scene to be retaken. Yet the body remained quite still. Stobo whispered something almost inaudible. It sounded like ‘Peace on earth’.
He moved back to the desk and resumed his seat.
‘Why didn’t you take steps to prevent this?’
Horton was still staring at the sandglass.
‘Why didn’t you – how did you put it? – keep me in the loop? Why did you expect me to – what was it you said? – “take it on trust”? Can’t you see? It wasn’t a fake degree this man needed. It was help! We could have found a way.’ He placed the revolver back on the desk top and reached forward for the stout glass paperweight.
‘Something could have been done!’ The crash of the paperweight on the desk top, splintering its wooden edge, was simultaneous with the harsh bray of the telephone. I saw Horton start and Ms Foye uttered a short, involuntary, stifled scream. Horton’s toffee bounced off the desk top with the expedition of a tennis service ace and landed somewhere on the carpet.
We all stared at the phone. The din did not relent. It was a retro-tone, reminiscent of an emergency vehicle of the fifties, a Black Maria. Nobody moved. Perhaps it was a cold caller. They would hang up in a moment. But the caller was very persistent. I prayed, Oh God, make that noise cease.
Stobo was irritated. ‘You had better answer that, Ms Foye.’
The relief when the ringing stopped was immense. Ms Foye spoke in a breathy whisper.
‘Yes? … Yes… . Yes? … Yes …’
She held the receiver towards me. ‘It’s for you.’ She couldn’t control the coarse tremor in her arm. The receiver danced around as if she were discharging a canister of air freshener. I raised my eyebrows at Stobo.
‘Put us on speaker phone, Ms Foye.’
She fumbled to press a button and replaced the receiver. It clattered as she tried to control it with both hands. The acoustic of the room seemed to change.
‘Dr Cameron-Strange? Is that you? It’s Ralph Parkinson.’
‘I hear you, Dr Parkinson.’ I hadn’t moved from the picture window.
There was a fractional pause. Parkinson had noted the change in timbre. I could see him mouthing silently to the officers around him. ‘Speaker phone.’
‘Do you have Professor Horton with you?’
‘Yes. He’s here.’
‘Is he unharmed?’
‘He’s perfectly all right. We’re all unharmed here.’
‘Cameron-Strange, it’s over.’
‘What?’
‘Your accomplice is –. Your accomplice has been incapacitated.’
I said nothing.
‘Who’ve you got there?’
I made the introductions. ‘Ms Foye, Dr Stobo, Professor Horton … Dr Parkinson …’ I thought I was going to have a fit of the giggles. It sounded like a teleconference for academics. I could just see Parkinson scratching his head, revising his appreciation of the situation. I remembered the legend on his business card.
You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
I could sense Parkinson constructing scenarios, gesturing wordlessly to those around him. The assault team would be taking up their positions around the building, waiting for the word.
‘This thing has gone far enough. You can stop it now. Alastair, you still have a future. We want you to come out of the building. Leave your weapon. We can sort this all out.’
But I didn’t have a weapon. I had left the package that I had picked up in Badicaul down in the back of the Slingsby. I just couldn’t envisage any scenario where I would choose to point it at somebody and pull the trigger.
I said, ‘Give me ten minutes.’
‘I’d like to trust you, Alastair. But do you remember the half hour we gave you this morning? We’re here to help you, Alastair. But you must promise us, no funny stuff.’
He was getting very palsy-walsy. I decided to reassure him. ‘That’s all right, Ralph. No more shenanigans.’
‘Okay. I’ll give you a call in ten minutes if you’re not out.’ The line was disconnected.
‘Alan, I think we should go out now.’
I don’t believe anybody in the room heard me. Perhaps I wasn’t there. I was like a time-traveller in a science fiction story, afforded the privilege of witnessing a famous historical scene, so long as I made no attempt to change the course of events.
‘Now look here, Stobo. This has gone quite far enough.’
I thought, Horton, you idiot, shut up.
‘I can’t say it’s not a serious matter, coming in here and threatening us with a deadly weapon. But we can still sort this out. I know you’ve been under a lot of strain. God knows we all have. I dare say you’ve had rather a rough ride. We can look at that. We can start again. What has happened, has happened. The important thing is that we draw a line under it, and learn by our mistakes.’
He was blabbing.
‘I fully admit I’m not immune to the odd cock-up. I’m fallible. Oh yes, by Jove. I’ve made some real howlers in my time. Like underestimating you, for a start. I own up – I treated you with a certain flippancy. Now I see I must regard you with a certain – caution, not to say respect. You’ve got backbone, Stobo. I admire that in a man. I like people who stand up to me. Your talents are clearly languishing in your present position. You certainly ought to have a senior lectureship. That can be arranged. Perhaps even a readership. That can free you up. It would afford you time and freedom, to pursue your own interests. Research and so forth. Perhaps with an eye to a Chair.’
Then he made a tactical blunder.
‘What is it you want? Money? Compensation? Muir, write out a cheque for Dr Stobo. He can name his price. I’m sure it will be reasonable.’
Ms Foye made no move. I believe she was still taking the minutes. It was all she knew. It was her way of maintaining self-control. It was she who had first taken note of the last visitor to slip unobtrusively into the room; the man with the white face and the black cape. Stobo stared incuriously at Horton the way he might have watched unmoved as a drama student failed an audition.
‘You’ll find the cheque book in the filing cabinet Ms Foye. Top drawer. What would you consider an adequate out of court settlement, Alan? For stress and harassment in the work place I mean. One hundred thousand?’ Horton had lost perspective. He was beginning to sound ridiculous.
Stobo rema
ined perfectly still.
‘All right, two hundred, dammit.’
The Lawrencian stare was unblinking.
‘A quarter of a million. That’s my final offer.’
‘Professor Horton, you can’t afford me. Ms Foye, you are free to go.’
She shook her head dumbly. Abruptly, Horton pushed his chair back and made to get up.
‘Wait here, Ms Foye. I’ll get this all sorted out. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.’
‘Not you, Professor. You aren’t going anywhere.’
Stobo reached forward and flicked the little figure-of-eight sandglass over. The pink sands of time began to trickle. Horton froze, white knuckles on the arms of his chair, half seated, half standing. Now Stobo picked up the Webley in his bloodied right hand – he must have cut himself when he smashed the paperweight – and with his arm fully extended over the desk top directed it at point blank range at Horton’s chest. I was reminded of another tableau, a picture I’d seen in some art gallery – was it a Manet? – of a firing squad taking aim on a condemned prisoner. It wasn’t seemly. Surely the perspectives were all wrong. How could you possibly stand that close to someone you intended to annihilate? Blood was trickling from Stobo’s palm down the handgrip to form large crimson droplets at its butt. They fell to the leather desk top with regular periodicity and bounced up in transient rose petal blooms. I was still standing by the picture window somewhere behind Horton because in my memory I seem to share his view of that tumescent gun barrel. I will not dwell on the way in which Horton finally lost his poise. In fact he lost control of his bladder. It is a hard thing to disguise in a pair of cavalry twills. Suddenly all my antagonism towards him fell away. In his shoes, I don’t suppose I would have done any better. When he spoke his strangled voice – the harsh falsetto I had heard once before – was no longer human. The poor wretch had become Winston – the other Winston – in Room 101.
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