‘Bring back anything you shouldn’t?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Drugs, that kind of thing.’
‘Of course not.’
‘We wouldn’t find any suspicious substances, then, if we turned over your mother’s house?’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. What makes you—’
‘Shut up!’ The grey-haired man beside Harry had spoken and now he turned his jowled and pitted face towards him. ‘Listen to me, Barnett. The Greek police couldn’t nail you for anything, but we’re not quite so fussy over technicalities. On the other hand, we’re not unreasonable. We won’t feel obliged to put you under the microscope unless you force us to, but, if we do, we’ll find something nasty, take if from me. So, my advice is: don’t force us to.’
‘How am I—’
‘Shut up!’ He glared at Harry for a moment in silence, then resumed. ‘If the Mallender family hear from you just once more, directly or indirectly, by telephone, letter or in person, by any means whatsoever, we’ll come down on you so hard you’ll think a giant had stamped on your head. Drugs are only one way. Your old ma might take up shoplifting. You might try it on with a girl in the park who turns out to be a policewoman in disguise. Either way, you’ll find yourself in it right up to your neck, get my drift? If so, just nod.’
Harry knew he should have felt indignation at this crude evidence of Charlie and Roy Mallender pulling strings, not to mention a certain satisfaction that they thought they needed to pull them, but all he could detect within himself was a sickening clutch of fear. Hard-nosed policemen in unmarked cars belonged to a world of violence and intimidation he had no wish to enter. In his stomach there churned a disabling sense of his own vulnerability. He nodded dumbly.
‘On your way, then, sir,’ said the grinning occupant of the front passenger seat.
Harry climbed out onto the pavement. The door slammed behind him and the car moved off. Harry watched it until it had turned into Emlyn Square, then began walking unsteadily in the same direction. He did not turn in at the door of number thirty-seven, however. After what had happened, quite a different destination seemed appropriate.
Two hours later, full of beer and bravado, Harry contemplated a reflection of himself in the mirror behind the bar of the Glue Pot Inn and calculated that, even when sobriety had returned to drain away his courage, he would not change his mind. If Roy and Charlie Mallender had hoped to frighten him, they had succeeded. But they had also demonstrated, by their eagerness to deflect him from it, that his was no fool’s errand. As a result, fear was no longer enough. It had come too late to be effective. Wherever Heather’s photographs led, he was determined now to follow.
19
THOUGH OXFORD WAS less than thirty miles from Swindon, Harry had been there only twice before. A school visit to the Ashmolean and a business trip to Morris Motors comprised his entire experience of the city. His unfamiliarity with it was not, however, the result of indifference. He had, in fact, long cherished a secret fantasy in which he had joined the privileged ranks of Oxford undergraduates, racketed through three glorious years of academic and sexual triumphs, then gone on to lead the kind of effortlessly successful life from which working-class origins and a foreshortened education had in reality excluded him.
Alan Dysart was the model for what Harry imagined he could have been, given the advantages bestowed by an Oxford career. He too, it seemed in his more envious moments, could easily have become an officer and a gentleman, if only his father had been as wealthy as Dysart’s, if only he had applied himself to his studies at Commonweal, if only …
But life, as Harry had learned, did not function according to the principles of wish-fulfilment. It insisted that irrevocable decisions be made before their consequences could be appreciated. It ensured there was no turning back, no switching to alternative paths, no way of avoiding the future it had prepared. And no possibility of resisting the force which drew him on, through Oxford’s Christmas-lit streets, beneath the gilded spires and haughty cupolas of a world which had denied him, towards the next link in the chain.
The window of a tailor’s shop halfway along the High Street was where he found it, in an ample display of college scarves, ties and blazer crests. Harry went in, enquired and was given, with no more than an eyebrow-twitch of puzzlement, a comprehensive catalogue of Shepherd & Woodward’s university wares. He did not turn to the centre-spread of college colours until he was outside again, guessing that he would need the privacy of a crowded pavement in which to confront a discovery that was as chilling as it was unsurprising.
Cerise and silver in four equal stripes, vertical for the scarf and diagonal for the tie, were the colours of Breakspear College, Oxford. Dysart’s old college. And Clare Mallender’s. And Minter’s. And Morpurgo’s. The connection was made, forged beyond the power of pure chance to explain. Dysart had referred to it often enough while working in Swindon. ‘I’m at Breakspear. Why don’t you look in some time during term, Harry?’ Harry never had, of course. The contrast between Dysart’s carefree existence and his own would have been too much to bear. But he had remembered – the name and all that went with it. Heather had been this way before him, had seen and understood what he would shortly see and might yet understand. There was not a doubt in his mind as to where she had taken the fifth picture on the film.
Breakspear was both more venerable and less ostentatious than most colleges. Its low-arched entrance off one of the narrow lanes linking High Street and Broad Street could easily have been overlooked had Harry not been intent on locating it. Founded 1259, open to visitors during daylight hours, it proclaimed itself with the modesty of an institution whose confidence in its purposes was rock-solid. And there, in its first and oldest quadrangle, Harry found what he sought. Worn flagstones and an oblong of sodden grass surrounded by grey-stoned walls, leaded windows and the lower treads of spiral stairs glimpsed through open doorways was all that some would have seen. But Harry saw far more. He saw evidence and proof. He saw confirmation and encouragement.
He retreated to the porters’ lodge and tapped on the window. A mottle-faced man with slicked-down hair slid back the glass panel and looked out at him enquiringly. He reminded Harry, in his build, expression and asthmatic wheeze, of a bulldog peering ill-humouredly from his kennel. To his apparent relief, he was able to direct Harry elsewhere.
‘You’d best see the College Secretary, sir. Mrs Notley. Her office is at the bottom of K staircase.’ There followed an elaborate consultation of a gold fob-watch. ‘You should find her in.’
Mrs Notley was indeed at her post, tapping at the keys of a word processor which appeared to represent Breakspear’s one concession to modernity. Harry swiftly discovered that she was impervious to charm, but a sense of duty evidently compelled her to answer his questions.
‘Sixty-five to sixty-eight, you say?’ (Harry had quoted Dysart’s years as a starting point.) ‘Morpurgo is an unusual name, so there should be no difficulty. Let me see.’ She pulled down a bulky volume from the shelf beside her and thumbed through it. ‘Yes, here we are. Morpurgo, W. V. Resident for the period you named. He took an unclassified degree in Modern Languages.’
‘Why unclassified?’
‘There could be many reasons. Illness, perhaps.’
Illness, yes: Harry supposed it could be called that.
‘I wonder if you could look up somebody else. Clare Mallender, late seventies.’
Mrs Notley obliged. ‘Miss C.T. Mallender. Resident 1977 to 1980. First-class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.’ The name began to stir her memory. ‘Don’t I know that—’
‘And another,’ Harry interrupted. ‘Jonathan Minter. Same period.’
But here his deductions encountered their first contradiction. Minter had not been at Breakspear, exactly or even approximately contemporary with Clare Mallender. It was an insignificant point in its way, for Harry knew from Marjorie Mallender that Clare had met Minter whilst at Oxford – he must si
mply have been at another college – yet somehow his faith in his own reasoning was undermined. He returned to the quad, glumly debating with himself what to do next.
There were at least the photographs to fall back on. Drawing the wallet from his pocket, he separated the one of Breakspear from the rest and studied for a moment the view of the college it presented. Gazing about at the walls flanking the quad, it was possible to calculate the exact position where Heather had been standing when she took it: the extreme south-western corner. He walked across to it, turned and surveyed the scene. The angles and perspectives of what he saw were identical with those in the photograph. Yet still, stare about him as he might, they refused to yield their meaning.
As Harry stood there, lost in thought, the porter he had spoken to earlier appeared from the direction of the lodge, rattling a bunch of keys in his hand. At sight of Harry, he pulled up, frowned, then walked slowly across to him.
‘Mrs Notley tell you what you wanted to know, sir?’
‘Er, yes thanks.’
‘You interested in the history of the college, then?’
‘In a sense, yes.’
‘We produce an informative guidebook on the subject.’ He rattled the keys again. ‘Very reasonably priced.’
‘I’m sure it is, but I don’t suppose it would contain the sort of history I’m interested in.’
‘What sort might that be, then?’ He sounded more amiable than before, more inclined to be helpful. Perhaps, it occurred to Harry, he was hoping for a tip.
‘Well, tell me, how long have you worked here?’
‘Twenty-six years, sir. Ever since I left the Marines.’
Harry’s hopes rose: twenty-six years were sufficient for his purposes. ‘In that case, you’ll remember the government minister, Alan Dysart, when he was a student here.’
‘Of course I do, sir. A most likeable young gentleman.’
‘And a contemporary of his named Morpurgo?’
‘Morpurgo. Oh yes. Quite a friend of Mr Dysart’s as I recall.’ He shook his head. ‘A sad case though, was Mr Morpurgo. Badly injured in a car accident in his final year.’ Then he tapped his temple significantly. ‘Never right afterwards, I’m afraid.’
‘A car accident, you say?’
‘Yes, sir. You know how these young gentlemen are when they get behind the wheel.’ He sighed heavily.
‘And in his final year?’
‘Final term, as a matter of fact. Just a few weeks before the examinations. Trinity term of sixty-eight, it would have been. A sad time at Breakspeart that was.’
‘Because of the car accident, you mean?’
‘Not just because of the car accident, no, sir.’
‘Then … what else?’
‘Well, it’s strange you should stand there and ask that question, sir, very strange indeed.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it was the same term – Trinity sixty-eight – when Mr Everett met his death in this very corner of the quad. Fell from a second-floor window smack down on the flagstones not a yard from where you’re standing. He was in the same year as Mr Morpurgo – and Mr Dysart. That’s why I say it was a sad time.’
But Harry was far from saddened by the porter’s recollections. Heather had not chosen this corner of the quad at random. She had deliberately recorded on film the link her mind had established between her sister’s death and that of a fellow-student of Morpurgo’s twenty years before. Had he smiled that day too? Harry wondered. ‘Which came first?’ he asked, exerting himself not to sound too easer for the answer. ‘The fall or the car crash?’
‘Oh the fall, sir.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘Nobody every really knew. He was drunk, the window was open, he leant out for a breath of air, he fell: that was the general opinion.’
‘And the car crash?’
‘Oh, that was in a country lane somewhere. Mr Morpurgo was driving two other students back from a pub. Drunk, of course, and going like the clappers as they all do.’
‘Was Mr Dysart one of the passengers?’
‘Not as I recall, sir, no. They were … Well, I’m pretty sure Dr Ockleton was one of them. Yes, I’m certain he was. As for the other—’
‘Dr Ockleton?’ Something in the porter’s voice had suggested to Harry that the good doctor was particularly memorable.
‘Yes, sir. He doesn’t often speak of it these days, but—’
‘You mean he’s still here?’
‘Oh yes. He was an undergraduate then, of course, but he stayed on for his doctorate, then became a fellow. A charming gentleman is Dr Ockleton. Very considerate to the staff.’
‘And approachable?’
The porter smiled. ‘Approachable?’ he said, with a wheezing hint of ambiguity in his voice. ‘Oh yes, sir. Dr Ockleton is very approachable.’
20
EARLY THAT AFTERNOON, Harry returned to Breakspear College. He had been disappointed to find Dr Ockleton absent from his rooms in the morning, but a pretty girl in jogging kit, who had come loping down the stairs whilst he was knocking at Ockleton’s door, had run on the spot long enough to tell him that the doctor lectured on Tuesday mornings and that Harry would probably have better luck after lunch.
Harry had adjourned to a small low-ceilinged pub in Broad Street to pass the interval, installed himself by the window, supped beer and watched the customers come and go: down-at-heel old soaks somewhat beyond his own position on the scale of decline; and garrulous little knots of students with faces as downily naïve as their opinions were falsely wise. Uncertain whether it was their extreme youth or their budding self-confidence which he envied more, Harry had recognized but not restrained his decline into drunken self-pity. Where was Heather? Why had she not returned? What would he not give to have her by his side, supplanting with her company all the resentment he felt now at the friendship of others? The truth, he had been morbidly inclined to conclude, was as remote as ever.
But the mood had passed by the time Harry walked once more into Breakspear College, sucking at an extra-strong mint and glad to see that a different porter was manning the lodge. He traversed the first quad, its flagstones dented by seven centuries of learning, entered the slightly less ancient quad that lay beyond and ascended to Dr Ockleton’s rooms. The outer door was open this time and a sonorous voice responded to his knock.
Cyril D.G. Ockleton, MA, PhD, looked even younger for his known age, circa forty, than Alan Dysart. Whereas Dysart had the bearing and features of an accomplished thirty-year-old, Ockleton lacked only short trousers and a catapault to pass for a skylarking schoolboy. It was as if, Harry reflected, Breakspear were some kind of Shangri-La, brief exposure to which ensured a stubborn youthfulness, prolonged exposure an accelerating regression to the cradle.
Ockleton’s mop of jet black hair, his apple-cheeked face and the spectacles which had slid to the end of his nose combined with a tattered gown and a skew-knotted tie to create an impression of immaturity entirely at odds with his voice. Visually, he was a blinking caricature of arrested development, an owlish, overgrown nursling sheltered from the world. Vocally, however, he inhabited a different plane, some Olympian plateau of detached and perfect judgement whence the most trivial phrase descended as a profound statement of intellectual certitude.
‘Can I help you? I don’t believe we’ve met.’ The limpid tones were those of a bishop addressing a beggar. Harry could have listened to this man for hours on end simply reading the telephone directory, yet one glance at his absurd and dishevelled appearance would instantly have broken the trance.
‘My name’s Harry Barnett.’
Ockleton grinned toothily. ‘Regrettably, I am none the wiser.’
But Harry knew better. Wisdom was to this man as boredom was to others. And all attempts at deception would therefore be wasted. ‘I’m a friend of Alan Dysart.’
Ockleton sprang from his chair, steered an unerring course through the piles of books and papers that littered his apartment and s
hook Harry clammily by the hand. ‘Any friend of Alan’s, Mr Barnett, etcetera, etcetera. What brings you to Oxford?’
‘Heather Mallender.’
‘Once more, I fear you have the advantage of me.’
‘She disappeared last month, while staying in Alan’s villa on Rhodes.’
‘Ah, that Heather Mallender.’ The incident had been a breakfast-time talking point in hall, his manner suggested. Without the incidental involvement of an old Breakspearean, it would not even have been that. Perhaps they did not take The Courier in the senior common room.
‘I believe you know Heather.’
‘Do you now?’ Ockleton described a sweeping circuit of the room, missing all the many obstacles in his path without apparently noticing them, and finished by the window, where he peered out for a full minute or so at the view it commanded of a blank gable-end and half the dome of the Radcliffe Camera. Then he turned back and stared intently at Harry, his eyes gleaming like those of an aged eagle in his bizarrely fledgling face. ‘You, of course, are Alan’s caretaker on Rhodes.’
‘Correct.’
‘The last person to see Miss Mallender prior to her disappearance.’
‘Yes.’
‘She … mentioned me to you?’
‘No.’
‘Then—’
‘She visited you here about three months ago. Late August or early September, I should guess. You told her something – something significant.’
Ockleton paused to consider a point that had apparently baffled him, then said: ‘If Miss Mallender never referred to visiting me, Mr Barnett, what is there to make you think she did visit me?’
‘I know she came to Oxford and I’m certain in my own mind that she came to Breakspear College. If she did, she won’t have left without seeing you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you were a contemporary of a student named Morpurgo and were with him when he was injured in a car crash in the Trinity term of 1968. Because you were also a contemporary of a student named Everett who fell to his death from a window in the next quad a few weeks before the car crash. And because those two incidents are in some way related to the death of Heather’s sister in June of last year.’
Into the Blue Page 17