OxCrimes

  That case was widely reported, and I think that it was the foundation of my career as a specialist academic private investigator. Thereafter, requests for my assistance came thick and fast. I investigated cases of plagiarism, misuse of the photocopying facilities, and cheating in examinations. And then, last year, I was asked to get involved in the affairs of the Pacific North-West Institute for the Study of Forgiveness, which was part of the Humanities School of a small but extremely well-funded private university not far from Seattle. This was one of my most extraordinary cases, and if we learn something from every case we take on, this was one from which I think I learned the most about human nature.

  The call came from the Dean.

  ‘Your name has been passed on to me,’ he said. ‘I understand that you’re an expert on academic investigations.’ He paused. ‘Should I address you as Professor or Doctor?’

  I was not sure whether he was being sarcastic. ‘Mister,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Mr Andersen, we have an issue here, I’m afraid. We have a department of this college where something is going badly wrong. We need somebody from the outside to come and take a look at what’s going on and, if possible, sort it out.’

  He sounded embarrassed, which did not surprise me, as most people feel awkward when consulting a private investigator. We understand of course, and try to make it easy for them.

  ‘I work in the strictest confidence,’ I said. ‘Apart from writing the occasional article or memoir, that is.’

  He laughed. He thought I was joking.

  ‘But I do,’ I repeated.

  ‘Hah!’ he said. ‘That’s fine by me. We all need our little joke.’

  I take that remark of his, by the way, to constitute his formal waiver in respect of what I write below.

  When I travelled up to that rather pleasant little college town, I was met at the local airport by the Dean.

  ‘I teach Ancient Greek myself,’ he explained, as he drove me to the campus hotel. ‘Not that many people study it any more. Students these days are far too lazy to tackle a subject like that. So I teach it in English. Same goes for Latin.’

  I could not think of much to say, although I wondered how one taught Ancient Greek, or Latin for that matter, in English; Academia, I had discovered, was full of such mysteries, most of them clearly not to be solved by me. So I simply said, ‘Well, there you are. That’s the way things are these days.’

  ‘Sure are,’ said the Dean. ‘But let me tell you about this little problem of ours. Then you can freshen up in the hotel before you come in and take a look round.’

  I was already looking at my surroundings. It was typical of those comfortable college towns one finds from Ann Arbor to Oxford, Mississippi: neat houses, small clusters of stores selling football memorabilia and notebooks, coffee houses full of students in front of laptops, neo-classical dormitories with music drifting from the open windows.

  ‘We’re a well-funded institution,’ explained the Dean. ‘We have a large endowment for our size and we were left a lot of land not far from the city. That set us up very well. So we have no real problems.’

  ‘A good place to be,’ I said. ‘But then, if that’s the case, then why do you need me?’

  ‘I meant financial problems,’ said the Dean. ‘There are other sorts of problems, and we have them, I’m afraid.’

  I waited for him to explain.

  ‘We have a few prominent programmes here,’ he continued. ‘We have a very good literature department that’s doing a concordance of twentieth-century Irish literature. Then we have a highly regarded history of art graduate programme. They publish a review of Post-Impressionist painting – one of the best in the country, as it happens, if not the whole world. Then we have the Pacific Institute for the Study of Forgiveness.’

  I could tell from his tone that this was where the problem lay.

  ‘That’s where you’re having difficulty?’

  The Dean nodded. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it odd how issues arise precisely where you least expect them?’

  ‘It certainly is. And their problem …?’

  ‘Fighting,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘Constant bickering. Holding grudges. You name it.’ He sighed. ‘It’s bad.’

  The Institute was run by a director, whom I met shortly after my conversation with the Dean. He had been a professor of philosophy, he told me, before he accepted his current appointment. ‘I had written a number of articles on forgiveness from the philosophical point of view,’ he said. ‘I suppose I was one of the few names in the field at that time – today everybody’s into forgiveness. Most of them have a very superficial understanding of the subject, of course; not that I’m allowed to say that publicly.’

  I studied him discreetly as I sat down in his office at the Institute. He was in his mid-forties, I thought, and he was dressed in the usual not-too-casual style of mid-ranking professors at such colleges. Seeing him in the street one might have put him down as the vice-president of a small company rather than as a philosopher. Mind you, of the academic philosophers I have come across in my career, not one has looked remotely like Aristotle, or Schopenhauer for that matter.

  The Dean had explained to him who I was.

  ‘I was pleased to hear that you were to be involved in all this,’ he said. ‘And not before time. Some colleges would have called in the police by now – particularly after that business with the effigy.’

  I looked puzzled. ‘The effigy?’

  He stared at me intently. ‘The Dean didn’t tell you?’

  I shook my head. ‘He said that there had been incidents. He didn’t …’

  I did not complete my sentence. ‘It was an effigy of me. And somebody had driven nails into it – you know, as they do with voodoo dolls.’

  I waited for him to continue. Suddenly the civil, courteous atmosphere of his office had been replaced by something altogether darker.

  ‘It was discovered in the hall one morning,’ he continued. ‘My secretary arrived and found it in the hall. You can imagine how shocked she was.’

  I felt that I should react. ‘Somebody dislikes you,’ I said.

  He took off his spectacles and polished them carefully. ‘I can’t understand why,’ he said. ‘I have no enemies.’

  I tried not to smile. Everybody has enemies. Everybody.

  We moved on to other incidents. ‘Somebody sent out abusive e-mails purporting to come from the Institute,’ he said. ‘That was another very unfortunate affair. And then somebody switched all the names on our Faculty’s office doors on the first day of the semester. There was terrible confusion. The students all knocked on the wrong door when they went to sign up for classes.’

  ‘An immature prank,’ I suggested. ‘The sort of thing that a student would do.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said the Director. ‘But then again, possibly not.’

  ‘You must have been very angry,’ I said.

  ‘I was spitting mad,’ he said. ‘Who wouldn’t be?’

  I said nothing. I wanted to say: somebody who believes in forgiveness. But I kept this to myself.

  I obviously had to meet the Faculty, of whom there were eight members. The Director provided me with a cover story – that I was a journalist preparing to write an article on the Institute and wanting to get a good feel of the place. ‘They’ll believe you,’ he said. ‘Most of them are pretty naïve.’

  I started with the Associate-Director, Professor Atkins, a rather attractive woman a few years younger than the Director.

  ‘You’ve met our revered leader, of course,’ she said.

  ‘The Director?’

  ‘Yes. The Great Helmsman.’

  I frowned. Her tone was sneering. ‘The Great Helmsman’ had been what Chairman Mao had been called by his adoring colleagues.

  ‘Yes, I’ve met him.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh well,’ she said.

  I waited for her to continue, and she did, after a short and rather uncomfortable silence.
‘His term of office is eight years,’ she said. ‘Six to go.’ She sighed. ‘Six years.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘I take it that you don’t think he’s doing a good job?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ she snapped back. ‘All I said was: six years to go. And counting.’

  ‘I can tell, Professor Atkins, that you don’t like him.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘I used to like him, you know. I used to like him a lot, until …’ She turned her head away. ‘Until he deceived me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He and I were lovers,’ she said. ‘I may as well tell you that. We had an understanding, and all the time he was carrying on with that woman.’

  ‘Which woman?’

  ‘His secretary,’ she said. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘I shall never forgive him,’ she muttered. ‘He could come to me on his knees, begging me to take him back, and I would never, ever take him back. Never.’

  She began to cry, and I put my arm tenderly about her. But then I very quickly took it away again. Academia is touchy about physical signs of sympathy, I reminded myself.

  I met the secretary.

  ‘May I ask you how long you’ve been working for the Director?’ I said.

  Her eyes lost their focus. ‘Two years,’ she said dreamily. ‘Two years, three months, and two weeks.’

  ‘You obviously think highly of him.’

  She seemed to make an effort to pull herself together. Now she was brisk and efficient. ‘He is a very good employer,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘And do you enjoy your job?’ I asked.

  It was as if she had not heard my question. ‘He’s far too good for all of them,’ she said. ‘Particularly for Dr Edwards.’

  ‘And who is he?’

  ‘She. Dr Lilly Edwards.’ She lowered her voice. ‘She has a soft spot for him. You should see the way she looks at him. She can’t take her eyes off him. It’s so obvious, and she thinks that nobody notices.’ She paused. ‘Well, I do.’

  ‘Tell me about Dr Edwards,’ I said. ‘What’s her particular area?’

  ‘Reconciliation,’ she said. ‘She’s written a book on international reconciliation – not that anybody’s read it. Unreadable – and that’s not my word for it; it’s what one of the reviewers said. Professor Thomas. He works here, as it happens.’

  ‘And he described Dr Edwards’ book as unreadable.’

  The secretary laughed. ‘I’m happy to say he did.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Some people wondered whether it was out of malice.’

  ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘Well, they say – and I’m not saying that this is necessarily the case – they say that Dr Edwards once failed a graduate student who had studied under Professor Thomas when he was a junior faculty member at Yale. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. It may be. I don’t know.’

  ‘So you – or rather, they – think that Professor Thomas might hold a grudge?’

  ‘Yes. In fact, I heard – just heard, mind you – that in Professor Thomas’ own book on Healing Dialogue he thanks every one of his colleagues for their helpful comments – except Dr Edwards.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Quite recently,’ said the secretary. ‘About six years ago, I think.’

  ‘That’s a long time to hold a grudge,’ I remarked.

  The secretary shrugged; evidently she thought differently. ‘People who do you wrong can’t complain if you remember it,’ she said. ‘Of course, I’m only the secretary round here, but that’s what I’ve always thought.’

  I refrained from disagreeing with her. One of the lessons I’ve learned in my practice is that people confide more readily in those with whom they believe they are in agreement. I did not want to alienate the secretary, from whom I might need further information at some stage.

  I saw several other members of the Institute that afternoon and then returned to the hotel for dinner. That night I sat my desk in the simply-furnished campus hotel and sketched out a diagram of the relationships within the Institute. Nobody, it seemed to me, liked anybody; most were sworn enemies of each other. Any one of them could be responsible for the rash of disruptive events; without any further information, I decided it would be impossible for a finger to be pointed at anybody in particular. They were all, as far as I could make out, potentially guilty.

  The Dean telephoned me the following morning to find out if I had made any progress in my investigations.

  ‘I’ve been speaking to people,’ I said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s difficult. Quite a few of them have a strong motive. In fact …’

  ‘Yes?’ he said eagerly.

  ‘In fact, it’s difficult to single out anybody in particular.’

  The Dean was silent. At last he said, ‘I’m relying on you, Mr Andersen. Our press office tells me that the papers have got word of something happening. We want to nip this in the bud before we have a public scandal. After all, it is a forgiveness institute …’

  I told him that I was to have further interviews with members of the staff that morning. I assured him that I would keep him informed.

  There was a public lecture in the Institute the next morning, and I joined the sixty or so people who attended it. The lecturer was a member of staff I had yet to meet, a Dr Fontaine, who had recently published a major work on the nature of apology. He was an accomplished speaker, and I found myself being quickly drawn into the subject. The function of apology, he explained, was principally to affirm that an interest had been infringed. ‘If I say sorry to you I am telling you that you are right to feel wronged. I am acknowledging the infringement; I am affirming the value of the interest that I have damaged. I am saying to you: Yes, I have done you wrong. That is what apology does: it restores the balance that has been disturbed by the wrong I have done.’

  Then he moved on to forgiveness. ‘Forgiveness,’ he said, ‘affirms the restoration of the moral balance. When you forgive another, you signal that things are back where they should be. You are effectively saying that the past is no longer going to determine how we relate to one another in the present or the future. Forgiveness, you see, enables the past to be put to bed.’

  Coffee was served after the lecture. I went up to Dr Fontaine and introduced myself.

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ he said. ‘You’re a journalist, I believe.’

  There was something about the way in which he spoke that told me that he doubted my cover story. He looked at me in a bemused, disbelieving way.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve come to find out what’s going on?’

  I nodded.

  ‘At the instance of the Dean?’

  I made a gesture that indicated assent.

  He sighed. ‘He’s in league with the Director. He always has been. The Dean gave the Director’s son a job, you know.’

  I prepared myself for another disclosure.

  ‘And I felt particularly bitter about that,’ said Dr Fontaine. ‘My own son applied for that job. He didn’t even get an interview.’ He paused. ‘It was unforgivable.’

  I stared at him. ‘Do you realise what you’ve just said?’

  ‘About the Dean giving the Director’s son a job?’

  ‘No. I was thinking of your last comment. You said: it was unforgivable.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘So it was.’

  ‘And there you were, talking about forgiveness in your lecture. What did you say about it? That it allowed the past to be put to bed?’

  He was tight-lipped.

  ‘Well?’ I pressed.

  ‘Theory and practice are different things,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ I said.

  He looked away, and I decided to press on with my denunciation. ‘You’re all the same, aren’t you? You preach forgiveness and yet this place is utterly unforgiving.’

  ‘That’s a bit extreme,’ he said.

/>   ‘No, it is not. It’s completely true.’

  He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You haven’t worked out who’s responsible, have you?’

  I was not prepared for this. ‘You know, do you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows.’

  ‘And would you care to tell me?’

  He hesitated, but not for long. ‘It’s the Dean,’ he said. ‘He’s wanted to close us down for years. We put up a fight and he never forgave us for it.’

  I thought about this. ‘So he’s trying to engineer a scandal?’

  ‘You could put it that way.’

  I looked at him. He was smiling in a supercilious way. He was as bad as the rest of them, I decided. But what was his motive? I decided to guess.

  ‘I assume that you want the Dean’s job yourself?’

  My comment went home immediately. He stared at me wide-eyed. ‘What an outrageous suggestion!’ he said.

  I smiled. He had been rattled by the truth.

  ‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘I have the proof.’

  I had no proof, but he was not to know that. It is astonishing how many people fold up if you simply say to them: I have the proof.

  He became silent. ‘The effigy wasn’t me,’ he muttered. ‘That was somebody else – I don’t know who. I sent the e-mails – that’s all.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ I said. And then, ‘Why don’t you go and forgive the Dean? Go right now. Forgive him for whatever it is you feel you have to forgive him. Then tell your colleagues what you’ve done.’

  He hung his head. ‘Do you think that’s what I should do?’

  ‘It’s what you yourself said people should do. I listened to you. You said it.’

  Forgiveness broke out that afternoon, and continued to flourish well into the following day. The Dean made a public apology for having favoured the Director’s son; the Director apologised for holding up the tenure application of two colleagues he did not like; Professor Thomas apologised for his overly harsh review; and Dr Atkins apologised to the Dean for thinking uncharitable thoughts about him. She said that she hoped he and the secretary would find happiness with one another – if that was what they wanted.