‘I’m sorry—’
‘I can escort you back to the tour guide and group. It’s no trouble. This way.’ He took her elbow to steer her towards the tour group she could see in the distance.
‘I wonder if you could help me. The thing is, my father was a student here many years ago. About forty, in fact. I don’t suppose you were the porter here then?’
He stopped. ‘You suppose wrong. I was a porter, but very junior. Normally they prefer older, family men, like I am now, but then they made an exception for me for reasons I don’t want to go into. So, I’ve been here more than forty years. I can’t hardly believe it. And I’ve seen some students come and go, I can tell you.’
‘Just imagine, you might have known my dad.’ Alex crossed her fingers. Could she be in luck?
‘Name?’
‘My dad’s name?’
‘Well, you can tell me yours for good measure if you like.’ He smiled, and suddenly he looked like a favourite uncle and Alex relaxed a little.
‘I’m Alex, Alex Devlin.’
‘And my name is Arthur Street. You can call me Mr Street.’
Alex suppressed a grin. ‘My father’s name was Anthony,’ she said.
The porter frowned. ‘Anthony Devlin, let me think. Would he have been called Anthony or Tony?’
‘Oh. I don’t know. He left after a year. Look.’ She got a picture of him up on her phone. ‘This is him about five years ago, but can you—’
‘Hmm.’ The porter shook his head. ‘Can’t say I recognize him. If he was one of those who kept his head down and gave us porters no trouble then I probably wouldn’t. Sorry, love.’
Alex smiled. ‘I don’t think he was the type to give you trouble. It must be a difficult job trying to keep the students in line?’
‘You’re not wrong there, love. You have to be really firm sometimes, make sure they’re not coming to any harm.’ His face darkened. ‘It’s awful when that happens, and you’re always wondering if there was something you could have done. But then there’s the good times when the students include you in their lives. I still get cards at Christmas from some.’
‘There was another student. A girl.’ This time Alex showed Mr Street the photograph on her phone she had taken at Mrs Winwood’s. ‘I only know her first name is Jen.’
Mr Street peered at the picture. ‘Oh yes, I recognize her all right.’ He smiled. ‘She was always sweet and polite. Asked after me and the family. Sends me a Christmas card every year, she does. From America. Jen Tamsett was her name. Lovely girl. Never married.’
‘What about Willem Major? Here.’ She pointed to him.
At that name Arthur Street’s face darkened. ‘Now he was a bad lot, he was. Always playing practical jokes, made us porters’ lives a misery, trying to get one over on us. Sneaking in and out of various colleges. And he was rude to me the whole time, as if I wasn’t worth anything. Oh yes, I remember him as if it was yesterday.’ He sniffed and jiggled his keys. ‘But I did read about what happened to his family. Nobody deserves that. Nobody. Losing his missus and everyone like that.’
‘He finished his degree, didn’t he?’
‘As far as I can remember, yes. Did quite well too, I think. And he made a good living for himself afterwards, didn’t he? But he was one of those who came from a privileged background and that opened a few doors for him. There was something that was hushed up, but I never knew what it was. That was something, I can tell you, if us porters never knew about it.’ He frowned. ‘Hang on, Tony Devlin. Let me have another look at that photo you’ve got of your dad.’
Alex showed him.
‘Yes, yes, he was always hanging around with Major. There was gossip too.’
‘Gossip?’
Arthur Street scratched his nose. ‘You know. Talk. Gay stuff.’ His face cleared. ‘Just talk.’
Gay? Her father? That would be a lot to take in.
The porter jangled his keys again. ‘I don’t know if I’ve been much help to you—’
‘Oh you have, thank you, Mr Street. It’s been good to see where Dad was at university, if only for a year.’
‘Did he do well, your dad, afterwards?’
Alex nodded. ‘Yes, he did well. He’s lived an ordinary life, but he’s been a great dad.’
‘You can’t ask for more than that,’ said Mr Street, nodding.
‘No,’ said Alex. ‘You can’t.’
23
Alex sat in her study wasting time on social media, watching videos of dogs eating bowls of spaghetti and cats wearing pirate costumes and acrobats auditioning for talent shows. She was trying to distract herself, occupy her mind with trivia so she wouldn’t start thinking about her father and her childhood. It wasn’t working.
If she examined her memory really hard, she could find things she and her dad had done together, that they’d all done together, as a family. A holiday on the Grand Union Canal. A week in the Lake District. A visit to a theme park – she couldn’t remember which one, but she could remember sitting in the car of a rollercoaster and feeling safe because her dad’s arm was around her, the heat of his body next to hers. Her mum and Sasha were waiting outside the ride for them.
There’d been a row on that day because they’d forgotten Sasha’s favourite ginger nut biscuits for the picnic. Sasha had flounced off. Mum had refused to let Dad go after her, so Dad spent the whole of the picnic looking miserable and worried. Her mother had sat there with pursed lips in between telling Alex to eat something, but it all turned to cardboard in her mouth. On the way home, after a search found Sasha talking to Teddy the Bear in the so-called Bear Hut and generally having an enjoyable time, she didn’t know who to be more angry with.
Sasha. She didn’t want to think about Sasha. When she’d got home earlier there had been no sign of her. The kitchen was neat and tidy, not the trail of crumbs and butter and dirty knives and plates her sister normally left behind. No, everywhere was clean, with the washing-up cloth folded neatly by the sink and the drying-up cloths hung up where they should be. There had been a note on the table.
Gone to see friends.
Great.
Alex looked out of the window onto the patchy grass that passed for a lawn. She picked up a pen and began to doodle. It wasn’t until she had been forced to be the parent to her parents that she had even begun to think about what they might have been like as people. How she wished there was someone she could talk to about it, someone who would listen without judgement. In her heart she knew who that was, but he wasn’t around; he had chosen not to be around. And anyway, the chances of her finding out any more about him were slim now Heath had gone walkabout.
She looked at her doodles. Boxes within boxes, circles within squares. Had to be something significant in those. Feeling boxed in. Nowhere to go. She threw the pen down and put her head in her hands. She should be making notes, drafting her backgrounder for The Post. But she couldn’t concentrate. Her father had known Daley and Fleet. And Willem Major and Jen Tamsett. They’d been at the same college together, and he seemed to have known them well. They were his friends, he said. Merely one big coincidence, or something more? She didn’t believe in coincidences.
There was a ping as an email from something or someone called ‘The Secret Policeman’ came in. More bloody spam. She was about to delete it when, with a flash of insight, she realized who it was from: who would have the temerity to call himself ‘The Secret Policeman’, for fuck’s sake?
To: Alex Devlin
From: The Secret Policeman
Subject: None
Alex. I’m sorry for everything – you have no idea how sorry. The reason I had to leave you without saying goodbye that day was because you were in danger.
Oh yeah, heard that one before. What the fuck was this anyway? Months without any sort of communication then he emails out of the blue and talks about being sorry and about danger? Her shoulders were up round her ears, and her throat was scratchy.
I can see you saying that you’ve hea
rd that one before
Sure have, matey. Her finger hovered over the delete button.
and I know you’re about to delete this email
Bloody man.
but hear me out. You’ve been trying to find me. Don’t. As I said, you’re in danger. The only way is to forget all about me. Don’t think about me, don’t look for me. But, watch out for yourself, don’t trust anyone. M.
Great. That was it. No endearments, no wasted words, straight-talking, that was all. And no details. Not even his name, just ‘M’. As if that would fool anybody who was really looking for him. Though he was nearly as good as Honey when it came to covering his digital tracks. What was she supposed to do? Spend the rest of her life looking around, worrying that someone was going to hit her on the head because of Malone? Was that the sort of danger he meant? How the hell was she supposed to know? But why was she in danger? And who could be threatening her anyway? And that bollocks about not trusting anyone – who exactly did he mean? Bloody, bloody Malone. Fucking with her life as bloody usual.
She prodded the delete button. Hard.
For God’s sake. Time to get down to work. Find Jen Tamsett on social media. She opened Facebook, knowing it was a long shot. She scanned the search results. One Jenna Tamest and two Jennifer Tamsetts. One of the Jennifers was a teenager, the other a woman in her thirties, as far as she could tell from the pictures. Nothing on Twitter. Nothing on LinkedIn. A complete blank.
Okay. She put Jen’s name into Google and hit the News tab.
And there it was.
A story from two months ago.
Manhunt After Woman Killed in Hit-and-run
The body of renowned academic, Jennifer Tamsett (63), was found by the side of a country road in Hampshire …
That was the right age.
Alex learned that Jennifer Tamsett had been well regarded in her field of economics, she had been unmarried and had been educated at Cambridge University in the mid-seventies before leaving for Harvard. She’d lived in America for many years, and had come back to the UK three months earlier. There was a picture attached to the story, and there was no doubt the dead Jennifer Tamsett was an older version of the young Jen of her father’s time at Cambridge. Her death was described as ‘random’ by police. No one had been arrested – she scrolled through Google news – or had been since the story was written. There were no living relatives. No one to care. And Alex was willing to bet that no one ever would be held accountable for her death.
A police spokesman said the investigation was ‘ongoing’.
Alex’s skin tingled. Another student from the photograph gone. Dead, killed by a hit-and-run. Murdered? And she had come back to the UK around the time of the fire at Willem Major’s home. Coincidence? And was it a coincidence that three of the students from the photograph had died recently? Was it all connected? And if she was right and it was more than a coincidence that her father knew them, could he be in danger too?
Or was she being too fanciful?
Her mother answered the phone on its third ring. ‘Mum—’ God, she hadn’t thought this through. What was she going to say? ‘Mum, is everything all right at home?’
‘Yes. As all right as it can be. Your father is watching a David Attenborough documentary for about the fifteenth time and keeps calling me to go and watch it with him. I’m trying to clean up while I can, put the washing on and … Sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to go on at you like that, but it’s good to talk to someone else sometimes, particularly when you’ve been asked the same question about meerkats over and over again. Why are you asking?’
‘Would you and Dad like to come and stay here? With me?’ The words came out in a rush.
‘What on earth for?’
Should she come clean? ‘Because I’m worried that Dad might be in danger.’
‘Danger? What are you talking about?’
‘That photograph I showed Dad, well, Derek Daley and Roger Fleet are dead.’
‘I know, you said. And thank you for not saying anything to your dad, because he would have been upset and then forgotten and then been upset all over again if you told him again.’
‘I understand, Mum, I really do. But listen. They’re dead. Willem Major, you know, remember, the other person in the picture? His family were virtually wiped out in an arson attack. And the girl, Jen Tamsett, was killed in a hit-and-run. Recently, too.’
‘What’s this got to do with your dad? Those two men, Derek Daley and Roger—’
‘Fleet,’ supplied Alex.
‘Fleet, that’s it. It was suicide, wasn’t it?’
‘It looks that way, but I’m not totally convinced.’
A thought struck her. Yes, that was certainly a possibility. She bit her bottom lip. She had to ask. ‘Mum, could Dad have taken the photograph?’
‘What?’
‘Could he have taken the photo I showed you?’
‘It’s possible I suppose,’ her mother said, slowly.
‘That’s why he isn’t in it, because he took it.’ Of course. Or was it too big a leap to think that? ‘Look, Mum, I’m really worried how safe he is.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Her mother sounded truly bewildered.
‘I’m not sure, Mum. But people Dad knew are dead or have been badly hurt.’
‘Is this a so-called journalistic hunch?’
Was it? Was it no more than a hunch? She sighed. ‘Maybe. Even if it is only a hunch, can’t you come here for a few days?’
‘Of course I can’t, Alex.’ Her mother sounded more businesslike now. ‘Your father needs to know where he is. He needs routine, not change.’ There was a large crash in the background. ‘Oh Lord, he’s knocked something over, I’m going to have to go.’
‘Mum, will you think about it, please?’ But she was talking to thin air.
Damn. That didn’t go as she had hoped. She had to find Willem Major, see what he had to say. And hope she was being over-cautious about wanting her parents to stay with her.
She tried to ring Heath to tell him she had found out about Jen Tamsett and he could stop using his facial recognition software or, more likely, scouring the electoral register, but there was no answer. Oh, for God’s sake.
She sat thinking. Suicide forums. Something she should have done before.
The first entry on the search engine was for the Samaritans. She looked down the list. Several sites devoted to mental health and how to cope with suicidal thoughts. Then The Suicide Place. Alex clicked.
I’m 22 and I don’t wanna to keep living
Anyone know a lethal combination of prescription pills?
Anyone want to drive with me to anywhere and go buy H2S pls email
Want to die but don’t want them to know I chose death … what do I do?
The hopelessness and alienation pressed down on Alex. These websites ought to come with warnings on them, particularly for young people, otherwise you might as well give some poor kid a gun and pull the trigger. She went at first hot and then cold as she remembered what Steve had said – that Gus had been lonely and had been – how had he put it? – ‘Fooling about’ on the Internet and on forums. He’d been a bit depressed, Steve said. Oh God, what if he’d been looking at something like this? What if he’d seen this sort of stuff and thought there might be a way out for him and had got in touch with someone, maybe even the person who was looking to drive anywhere and use H2S (whatever that was), and he had flown to the UK and met up with this person and was even now lying dead in a car on a deserted road and … She took a deep breath. Stop. Just. Stop. There was no point in frightening herself in this way. Gus would not do that to her. (Are you sure? a little voice murmured in her ear.) No, Gus would not do that to her. There was a reason why Gus hadn’t phoned her since telling her he was getting a flight the next day, a reason and a perfectly reasonable explanation.
She slowed her breathing down. The panic subsided.
Had Daley and Fleet really posted on this sort of forum? Would two men in t
heir sixties – one solvent and highly successful – really look to something like this? And if they did, how much of a coincidence was it that they had known one another before?
There was a ping as another email came in. From Honey, this time, telling her that Willem Major was staying in Cley in north Norfolk, and giving her the coordinates of his house. Alex quickly wrote them down, knowing she should really memorize them. And eat the piece of paper. She pulled up the software that would completely wipe Honey’s emails and attachments from her computer. She knew there was no way they could be traced from Honey to her or vice versa as they would have been routed on servers from Russia to Kazakhstan to Outer Mongolia, round the houses and back again.
That done, she stared out of the window once more, thinking that if she didn’t look at her phone, Gus would call her.
Her phone suddenly rang out its tune. Bud. Maybe he’d changed his mind about the campaign on suicide forums.
‘Heath Maitland. Where is he?’ said Bud without any preamble.
Alex wanted to stick out her tongue at the phone. He was so rude sometimes. ‘What do you mean? You pulled him back to the business unit.’
‘I know. He’s only been there five minutes and he’s fucked off,’ Bud said testily. ‘Dickhead. Thought he might be with you.’
‘He’s not, Bud.’
‘What’s he doing then?’
‘I don’t know.’ How the hell would she know? She’d been trying to get hold of him too. Something made her hold back from telling Bud that.
‘He should be here. Now.’
‘Well I’m really sorry, I don’t know where he is.
‘For someone who was desperate to keep his job, he’s going the wrong bloody way about it.’
The sound of him slamming the phone down reverberated in her ear.
The light was beginning to fade. A single magpie landed on what passed for her lawn. She counted from ten down to one. She thought about Malone, wondering where he was now and what he was doing. And what she would do if Heath got back in touch. She frowned. Heath. Bloody man. Like all the men she came across. Bloody, bloody man. The trouble was, she so wanted him to carry on his digging, business unit or no business unit. Come on, she was wasting her time thinking about Heath.
Dark Waters Page 18