‘Nick not back yet?’ he said.
‘Not yet,’ I said, then realized. ‘How did you know she’d gone away?’
‘She said. Wednesday night.’
‘Where did you see her?’
‘Here. Just outside here, in a cab.’
‘A black cab?’ Nick never wasted her own money on taxis. I should check the petty cash.
‘Nah. A minicab.’
‘What did she say?’
‘What’s it worth to you?’
‘A tenner.’
‘I came to report, see, and collect my money. You owe me for—’
‘She’ll pay you when she gets back,’ I said, sure that whatever fee he claimed from me would be too much.
‘That’s out of order—’
‘Just tell me, Jonno.’ I gave him the promised tenner and he shrugged.
‘Yeah, well, I said I wanted my money and she said she was going away and she’d pay me Sat’day.’
‘That’s all she said?’
‘Yeah. That’s all she said.’
‘Was she upset?’
‘I was bloody upset. She owed me. Now are you going to get on with this, or what, ’cos I’ve got a Beemer in Elgin Crescent to muck out by three o’clock.’
‘It’s a misper,’ I said, and gave each of them a picture of Sam Eyre.
‘Nick’s asked me about this one,’ said Jonno. ‘Haven’t seen her.’
Solange nodded. ‘Me too.’
‘Keep the pictures. I want you to do a door-to-door, as soon as you can. Tomorrow’s too late. Three streets each, on the estate up on Lancaster Road. We’ve information she’s living there. I want every single flat or house covered in the streets I give you, but keep well away from Bartlett Close. There’s a small block of flats there, but don’t touch them, right? Keep well away. Got it?’
‘Sure,’ said Solange.
‘Yeah, get on with it,’ said Jonno. ‘What’re we asking?’
‘Has anyone seen this girl, where, and when. I want very detailed notes from the people you speak to, and a separate list of the no-answers so you or I can get back to them. Have either of you done a door-to-door?’
They shook their heads.‘Make it clear you’re not from the police, or the Housing Office, or the Social, or the Revenue. We’re acting for a worried mum and no way is anyone getting in trouble. If that looks the way to go, tug on their heartstrings. Innocent young girl, Notting Hill Killer, distraught family. Give out our business cards –’ I gave them a stack each – ‘and encourage them to phone in if they see her. Hint there might be money in it.’
‘What if they won’t answer questions unless we pay ’em?’ said Jonno.
‘Say I’m the one who pays, they should ring me, but make a note and I’ll get back to them.’
‘What’s her name?’ asked Jonno.
‘Her name is Samantha Eyre but she might not be going by that, so don’t confuse them up front by telling them. Any questions?’
‘Yeah. What’re you paying us?’
‘Ten quid an hour for the door-to-door. A bonus if you find her.’
‘How much?’
‘It’ll be worth your while,’ I said. ‘And it’s a great hourly rate.’
After they’d gone I opened the door and the window to get rid of Jonno’s smell. A faint anxiety was lurking at the back of my mind. I’d set him on the trail of Sam Eyre, and I didn’t like him.
But the fear was unreasonable, I told myself firmly. He was money-grabbing and unappealing to look at and he didn’t wash, but that didn’t make him dangerous.
And why had Nick taken a cab? If she was going to Oxford, she’d go by train from Paddington. Paddington was well within walking distance, and she walked a lot, eating up miles of pavement with her jittery energy and long athletic stride. She wouldn’t have had luggage with her. She didn’t even own luggage. And if she was in a hurry she would have taken the tube – Paddington was only three stops away.
I tried her mobile number. Out of service again. This time I was really angry. I’d bought the phone and I paid the rental and bills, mostly to please her, partly because it was handy. So far it had been her toy. Now, when I wanted to use it, she’d switched it off.
I took a deep breath. Angry time was wasted time, and there was plenty to do. It was Friday today. New College would presumably be effectively closed over the weekend, and if I was to track down Hilary Lucas’s woman before next Friday, I wouldn’t be able to do anything at the college for two days. So I should use this afternoon to get into the place and get some contacts before everyone vanished into the woodwork for the weekend.
Chapter Twelve
Looking at the facade of New College, London it seemed that it had been new sometime in Victorian England, when they went in for mock-medieval complete with turrets and portcullises and a general air of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria mediated through the vision of a soap manufacturer on hallucinogenic drugs. Not all the turrets were visible through the fog, which was even thicker down here by the river.
I’d come by tube and, as I ascended into the Strand and walked, guided by my A-Z, the hundred yards towards the river to the place where the college was, I tried once more to marshal my explanation of what I was doing to sound a smidgeon more sensible than idiotic. I couldn’t. But it didn’t matter very much because I’ve come across quite a lot of academics one way or the other, and although they’re presumably very intelligent they’re often not very clever, or perhaps not very interested in anything outside their field.
So I went through the portcullised gates – luckily the portcullises seemed rusted shut – and headed towards the main entrance and up some wide shallow steps, and through the entrance door. I discovered I was in the medical school. A passing student directed me to the History Department; several miles, it seemed, along tiled corridors which would do excellently for location filming for any First World War hospital. I fetched up against a door clearly leading to one of the off-shoots of the main building, and then, there I was. History Department Office, said the sign.
Inside was chaos. Several young men and women – students, probably – milling about. Eventually the only adult there shooed them out.
Suddenly I realized how old I felt. When had I gone from being the same age as the students to thinking of them as being just young?
Looking around at them, I realized that it had happened recently. Usually I looked at students and was jealous, because I hadn’t been a student. That was what I thought when I looked at students. Now, suddenly, I didn’t. Maybe it was because I’d turned thirty. In the sixties they’d thought that, hadn’t they, there’d even been a a song about it. I hope I die before I get old.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’
The speaker, the remaining adult, sounded testy, as if she’d been talking for some time and I hadn’t answered. That was because I hadn’t heard her. I was drifting off more and more: I couldn’t keep my concentration. And now I was drifting into thinking I was drifting.
With a huge effort I focused.
She was presumably the department secretary. She was sixtyish and built on unusual lines, as neo-Gothic as New College’s design. Her top half was long and slender, her bottom half stumpy and wide, her legs as far as I could see completely straight, as wide at the ankle as they were at the knee, and very short. Her dress made no concessions: her swan-like upper half wore a tight-fitting ribbed sweater, her bottom half a skirt which ended above the knee, her legs thick woollen stockings. Her hair was short, thinning, dyed brown, and her face as weatherbeaten as if she spent her working days on a fishing boat in a North Atlantic gale instead of in this stuffy office.
On one side of the room were pigeon-holes, labelled with names. There was a table with piles of paper, a photocopying machine, several filing cabinets, a desk with telephones and two framed signs on the wall behind the desk. One said ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.’ The other said, ‘Historians do it with perspective.’
&nb
sp; I tried to stop imagining what possible sexual purpose would be served by perspective, introduced myself and explained that I was researching a documentary on heart attack victims and that Mrs Lucas had given me permission to use her late husband.
At that point the woman began to cry. Tears ran down her face, she snuffled, her shoulders shook. After about a minute she stopped, blew her nose, cleared her throat, and said briskly, ‘Sorry about that. I’m half Italian, you see. Emotional. Give me a minute.’
She took a phone, dialled, and spoke. It was evident from her side of the conversation that she was talking to Hilary Lucas, confirming my story.
When she replaced the receiver I said, ‘And you’re half Missourian. Suspicious.’
She gave a half laugh, which was half more than the remark deserved. ‘It just didn’t sound all that likely,’ she said apologetically.
She needn’t have apologized to me: I agreed with her, and thought she was sharp enough to be an excellent informant. With any luck I need go no further into the department than, the secretary’s office. ‘What was all that about?’ I said, nodding my head at the departing students. ‘It was nearly a riot.’
‘Bad timetabling,’ she said. How can I help you?’
‘What sort of bad timetabling?’
‘One of the lecturers who shall be nameless goes to the pub Friday lunchtime and stays there. Give him a third-year exam class Friday at three and what do you get? Complaints, that’s what you get, ’nuff said. What do you want to know? I’m happy to answer your questions if you don’t mind me stapling while we talk.’ She was taking one sheet from each pile, neatly tapping and squaring them up, then stapling.
‘I’ll assemble, you staple,’ I said.
We worked side by side. ‘You were fond of Professor Lucas, then,’ I said.
‘Very. We went way back. Back to 1965, to be accurate. We were new here together. I was a typist, he was a junior lecturer. He used to share my sandwiches because he couldn’t afford to eat out.’
‘Was he hard up?’
‘Then, he was. Before he married. She has the money, you know.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know very much at all. She was very reluctant to talk about – anything. It must have been a terrible shock.’
‘Oh it was,’ she said, crying again, but sniffing so her nose didn’t drip on the completed stapled sheets. ‘Just like that. He died before he reached the hospital, they said.’
‘Where was he when.’
‘Here. In his room. Here. He rang through and I found him. The phone rang and there were just awful noises but I knew it was him and – oh, I can’t do this, could you ask me something else please, just till we’ve finished these notes?’
‘Who was his closest colleague in the department?’ I said. ‘Who would be the best person for me to talk to about how he was feeling, what the job was like, and so on?’
‘Me, probably. I’d known him the longest. And he wasn’t a gregarious man, didn’t make friends easily. His real friend in the university was Philip Gein from the English Department.’
‘The one who was killed by muggers?’
‘Oh, you know about that. Yes. Philip was his closest friend. He got on well with everybody, did Robbie, but he didn’t pal around. He wasn’t in all that much, to be honest, did most of his work at home. He liked being at home.’
‘So he was happy there?’
She looked at me oddly. ‘What’s this to do with your documentary?’
Very little, of course. I was hoping for more emotional reaction from her, because she was a possibility. Old enough to be the letter-writer, fond of Robbie . . . ‘An unhappy domestic situation can contribute to stress,’ I said. It was common sense, though hardly the latest medical insight.
‘Of course it can but you’re not going to put that on television, I imagine, telling all England that the marriage didn’t work. Not with Hilary’s agreement. She’s got more sense.’
‘And was it an unhappy domestic situation?’
‘Not at all,’ she said briskly.
‘Well then that’s why she’s prepared to have me ask these questions, I suppose,’ I said. ‘It must be hard making a childless marriage work. Do you have children?’
‘I have a son.’
‘Oh, how old is he?’
‘Grown up and gone,’ she said, stapling the last set of notes and pushing half across to me. ‘Count,’ she said.
I counted, she counted, we agreed the total was two hundred and she stacked the piles neatly on the side of the table.
‘The main thrust of the documentary is stress. About lifestyle, really. Had you noticed that he was particularly stressed before he died?’
‘The stress around here has gone up every year for the past ten years,’ she said. ‘Cuts in funding. The pressure to publish. Short-term contracts. More students, because that’s the only way to keep funding up. Less-qualified students, who need more teaching. The free-market economy way. It’s not just us, of course. Universities all over England. The health service, the schools. Dog eat dog.’
‘You don’t approve.’
‘It’s not a question of approve or disapprove. It’s just a fact. We couldn’t afford the other way, I suppose.’
‘And did this particularly affect Professor Lucas?’
She laughed. ‘To be fair, it affected Robbie least of all, probably. They couldn’t get rid of him and they didn’t want to, he published all the time, he had comparatively few teaching commitments and he’d never been interested in administration or finance so he played no real part in the changes. He spent most of his time at home, as I told you. He kept well out of it.’
‘And how about his personality? Was it particularly anxious? Emotional?’
She laughed incredulously.‘Robbie? He had a wonderful temperament. Wonderful. So easygoing. He never blamed me for anything, he always gave me plenty of warning when he wanted something done, unlike some others I could mention,’ she said, waving her hand at the piles of notes we’d just been sorting. ‘These were in just before lunch, “Can I have them typed and duplicated and sorted by five o’clock. Sorry Elaine I know I should have done them earlier.” He’s been saying, “Sorry Elaine I know I should have done them earlier” for the last twelve years, naming no names, ’nuff said.’
‘The women are better, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Women usually are. At planning forward and warning you.’
‘Some,’ she said. ‘It depends.’
‘If Professor Lucas was eminent, I suppose he supervised quite a few graduate students?’
‘Quite a few, although he was very specialized.’
‘Did he supervise graduates even in the early days? Way back in 1970, for instance?’
She looked puzzled, as well she might. ‘Not so many, of course. Maybe one or two.’
‘Because I suppose it can be quite a lasting relationship, that, can’t it, if you’re interested in the same academic area and then you go on to work in the field, you must keep meeting, I suppose. Maybe I should talk to some of his early graduate students.’
‘Possibly,’ she said.
‘I don’t know much about university teachers, but I do know that with some of the other heart-attack victims I’ve been dealing with, they’ve been stressed by the increasing demands made by paperwork. Forms and memos and letters and such. Letters, for instance. Was there much increase in Professor Lucas’s letters over the years?’
She looked at me, astonished. ‘Letters?’
‘Yes. You sort the mail, I expect. Did he have more letters than most?’ Preferably strongly scented with lipstick kisses and a return address on the back of the envelope, I thought, adjusting my expression to dim but earnest.
‘All academics get letters. All academics shuffle paper. That’s what they do, most of the time. Did you have anything particular in mind?’
‘Not really . . .’ I wished I could just ask her, straight out, for information about what I wanted to know. I thought if anyone in
the department knew it, it would be her. Because she wasn’t easy to pump, at all, and she didn’t trust what I said I was doing, despite what Hilary had told her.
‘The memorial service is next week?’ I asked, sounding unsure because I didn’t necessarily believe what Hilary had said.
‘Yes.’
So at least that was true. ‘And who’s organizing it?’
‘Dr Walsh. He’s the head of department. He likes public occasions.’
‘Perhaps I should speak to him.’
The restrictions Hilary had given me were very irksome. I didn’t feel much more progress could be made with Elaine without alerting her to what I was getting at.
‘You could certainly try,’ said Elaine. ‘I’ll give you his telephone number, you can set up an appointment. He’s a very busy man.’
‘Is he in now?’
‘You’d have to make an appointment,’ she said again, doing her job as a good departmental secretary, which I was sure she was.
I tried for confidential. ‘It’s a bit difficult,’ I said. ‘In something like this, I’d usually rely on the widow to give me most of the background and then check what she said with his friends, because widows only know one side of their husband’s lives, of course. But although Mrs Lucas has agreed to let the Professor be part of the programme, she’s reluctant to talk about him herself.’
‘It was a very close marriage,’ Elaine said. ‘They pretty much made a life for themselves, and what with no children and Elaine’s family money, they could afford to travel. They spent every summer at their place in Italy. And they went away to the sun for Christmas, usually.’
‘Whereabouts in Italy?’
‘Tuscany.’
‘What about research trips?’
‘Of course. Mostly to Brussels and Paris and Rome, but there’s a lively market in medieval archives so plenty of them are held in Oxford and Cambridge and America.’
‘Moving about can be stressful –’
‘Not for him. He spaced his trips out and he sometimes took Hilary with him and they combined his research with holidays.’
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