From outside, came a loud crash followed by the sound of a car alarm. Cindy raised her head to look through the window.
“Don’t stop now.” Doug groaned, “It’s just another idiot dropping bricks onto parked cars.”
For several weeks, there had been a spate of incidents in which various projectiles had rained from tower windows. It had started with water bombs, then the water turned to paint, prompting angry warnings from the dean after his old blue Mercedes gained a red roof one afternoon. When it progressed to heavier objects including bricks, the police became involved although miraculously there had still been no casualties. Unfortunately upon arrival, the police had made the mistake of parking too close to one of the towers. As soon as the men had stepped clear of the patrol car, a fridge had crashed through its roof. Eventually three stoned first-years had been taken away and since then, things had been quiet – until now, that was.
The wail of the car alarm was now accompanied by screaming - female, high pitched, hysterical, and soon to be joined by others. The clatter of opening windows resonated through the blocks as students peered out to investigate, while an air of panic started to permeate the buildings. Doug reluctantly got up and joined Cindy at the window. Leaning out slightly he could just make out a small red car, perhaps a Golf cabriolet, with its indicators flashing. It was at the bottom of Kal’s tower and there appeared to be something protruding from the top, though what exactly, was unclear.
“What’s going on?” said Cindy.
“Looks like something’s been dropped on that red car down there. I thought we’d seen the last of all that shit.”
“I don’t like it. Why are they still screaming like that?”
“It’s all right, I know someone in that tower. I’ll give him a call.”
Doug picked up his mobile and dialled Kal’s number again. Still the stupid greeting.
“I want to go and see,” Cindy said putting her clothes back on. All Doug could think about was getting back into bed, but he knew the moment was lost. He pulled on his boxers and then, bending over double, just managed to force a pair of jeans over the top.
A siren could now be heard racing towards the campus. As they made their way along the road between the towers, a small crowd was forming around the red car. The ambulance passed them, blue lights flashing, but the siren now off. It was not until they reached the edge of the gathering that their worst fears were confirmed. The object jutting through the torn roof of the cabriolet was in fact a pair of legs. They were short, brown and chubby and one was bent impossibly at the knee. On the feet were a flashy new pair of trainers that Doug recognised immediately.
“Oh my God, it’s Kal!” he said, staring at the trainers. Several people turned to glare at him as if knowing the victim somehow made him responsible. The ambulance men had opened the door and were leaning into the car, obscuring any view of the body. Even so, there seemed surprisingly little blood around. Perhaps he had survived, he thought to himself, but a glance up at the open window thirteen floors above was enough to remove any such hope. Cindy buried her head in Doug’s chest as he wrapped an arm around her. The ambulance men stood up and walked slowly back to the van with a look of defeat on their faces. There was no hurry. No medical attention was necessary; just a stretcher and a black bag. Doug moved closer. Through the open door of the car, he could now see Kal’s face, eyes open with a trickle of blood over his chin and throat. The neck had evidently snapped on impact with the driver's seat, forcing his head the right way up while his chest and body remained inverted. Only a small hole had been torn in the vinyl roof. Doug started to feel sick and just managed to get away from the crowd before vomiting. At that moment, two police cars arrived from which four men appeared and started clearing the area.
“Did anybody see it happen?” one of them asked. Silence.
“Does anyone know which floor he came out of?” It was the same man again. He was in plain clothes, a huge man in both height and girth with a deep gravelly voice. Some of the bystanders turned and pointed at Doug. “He knows him,” one said. The big man moved towards him. He had a tangled thatch of grey hair atop a bushy grey beard and moustache. His equally shaggy eyebrows were raised and what little face could be seen through all the hair, seemed to repeat the question.
“I didn’t see it happen,” said Doug, wiping his mouth nervously, “...but it’s Kal Gupta and his room’s on the thirteenth floor.”
The big man looked up, waved an arm and the two uniforms were dispatched inside. The fourth policeman was much younger looking, obviously more junior and rather gangly in appearance. He too was dressed in plain clothes and was busy scribbling something in a notebook. “And your name is?” he asked.
“Doug - Doug Richards.”
“And where were you when it happened?”
Doug looked around for Cindy, but she had disappeared. “I was in my room.”
The big hairy face was asking for more.
“Room nine, twelfth floor, William Morris - It’s the last tower on the right there,” he added pointing back up the road.
“Thank you Mr. Richards. We’ll let you know if we have any more questions.”
He whispered something to his gangly colleague then turned to the crowd. “We’d appreciate if you all went home now. We’ll take it from here.”
Doug looked around for Cindy again, but she was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t even know how to contact her. He wanted to go up to Kal’s room. He wanted to know what had happened, but he knew they wouldn’t let him in. There had been a suicide the previous year - some first year with a history of depression and bad grades. Doug hadn't known him personally, but by all accounts he had been a seriously troubled young man. He was fairly sure that Kal had not suffered from depression, at least not in the clinical sense, and his grades had always been excellent. They had been friends since sharing a flat in the first year and had sat together at most lectures. In fact Kal had been one of the most cheerful students he knew - always optimistic and game for a laugh. Doug felt a lump in his throat. It made no sense. He looked up at the window again. It couldn't have been an accident though; the windows were all fitted with stops that usually prevented them opening all the way, unless purposely removed.
Another car pulled up and was approached by the big man. Gangly-features was trying to disperse the few remaining stragglers. Doug started back to his room, wondering again why Cindy had disappeared. Just then, his mobile bleeped twice indicating another text. It was from a number he didn’t recognise and simply read “Need 2 talk – Cxx”. It had to be Cindy, although he hadn’t given her his number. He toggled through the options and selected call.
Cindy answered immediately. “Are you OK?” she said.
“No, not really. Where did you go?”
“I had to get away from there. I’m sorry. Can we meet by the lake?”
“What? Now?”
“Yes”.
He wanted to ask why? - Why the lake? - But she had hung up. He re-dialled, but it went straight to voice mail. “Damn it! What’s going on?” he said to himself, as he turned and set off across the grass. The ground was waterlogged from the previous week’s rain and soon his trainers and socks were soaked through. A cold wind blew across the park piercing Doug’s thin sweater like icy needles. He’d probably catch a cold now and have to miss the match on Saturday. He stopped. What was he thinking? His best friend had just become part of a Golf cabriolet and he was worrying about a rugby match?
As he approached the lake, three ducks flapped angrily into the water. Where the hell was she? He trudged round a little further and called her name. A couple of geese took flight, startled by the sudden noise and disappeared under the grey clouds now looming ominously above. A drop of rain landed on his cheek followed by another. He started to shiver.
“Fuck!” he shouted across the empty park. “Fuck!”
He turned and started running back to the tower, his mind a jumble of unanswered questions: Had Kal jumped? Could h
e have been pushed? Where had Cindy come from and where was she now? The rain picked up and his pace increased. Despite the sodden trainers, he felt curiously light-footed as he sped across the damp earth and in no time at all, found himself back at William Morris. With the lift apparently stuck at the twelfth floor, he took the stairs. He and Brian often raced each other up the twelve flights after a session at the gym. They would usually run about five, walk a few and then sprint the rest, but this time Doug ran the whole way. He burst into the flat, his heart pounding like some demented jackhammer intent on escaping through his rib cage, while his lungs screamed out in pain, prompting another silent vow to stop smoking. On reaching his room, he noticed the door was ajar. Perhaps Cindy hadn’t shut it properly as they'd left. A cursory glance around showed his things to be in order, or rather the same state of disorder as before. With rain and sweat pouring off his body in torrents, darkening the thin beige carpet tiles around his feet, he headed once more for the shower. Someone had now mopped up the vomit from the floor of the shower room, although the acrid smell still lingered. This time, no naked nymphomaniacs were waiting for him as he got out, so he dried and went for a drink of water.
In the kitchen, he found Brian busy frying scraps of bacon from a two-kilo economy pack of off-cuts. He glanced up as Doug entered, but looked away again sheepishly. “Want some?” he offered, as Doug filled a stolen pint glass with tap water. Doug had expected Brian to be hostile after Cindy’s sudden change of allegiance, but if he was, it didn’t show. Perhaps he didn’t know.
“Yeah thanks. I’ve got some eggs if you like.”
Brian tugged at the pack of bacon until a piece the size and shape of a door wedge emerged from the plastic and fell into the pan. He prodded it around distractedly. The two were silent for a good minute then Brian turned to him. “Why the hell would Kal top himself? Especially after such a cracking party like that.”
“Fucked if I know.”
“You don’t think someone …” Brian’s voice trailed away as he turned to flip over the door wedge.
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking.” It had crossed Doug’s mind too, but Kal was just too popular for anyone to bear that kind of grudge. Doug opened the fridge, rummaged amongst his flatmates’ stale leftovers for a moment and removed two eggs from the back. Giving them a quick sniff, he cracked them simultaneously into Brian’s pan. He and Brian seemed to eat as much as the other seven guys put together. He was constantly amazed at how little food they seemed to need, as indeed were they at the quantities he and Brian consumed. Doug washed a couple of plates from the festering pile on the draining board and set them on the table so Brian could empty the fatty contents of the pan.
“Best cure for a hangover,” said Brian, carefully easing his bulk into one of the plastic moulded chairs, testing its integrity before committing all his weight. “I heard you talking to Cindy in the kitchen this morning. What do you reckon?”
Doug looked at Brian’s face. He obviously didn’t know. “Cracker!” Doug replied. “You two must have been banging all night.”
“Like a barn door in a hurricane!” Brian said with a self-satisfied grin. “I do have a confession to make though.”
You have a confession to make, thought Doug.
“Well, you see, last night at Kal’s flat, I had just gone into the kitchen to grab a couple of beers, when in walks Cindy. I’m just staring at her ‘cos she’s so tasty, you know. Anyway she eyes me up and down, as though she recognises me, walks up and says, “You must be Doug,” like you’re famous or something. I was about to say no, Doug’s the drunken fart in the corner with a bottle of whiskey in his lap, but instead I say, 'Who wants to know?' With that she flings her arms around my neck and says, 'I’ve heard a lot about you.' Then she kisses me. After that we come back here and well, you can guess the rest.”
“You bastard! So she thought you were me.”
“Up until this morning. When I woke up, she was sitting at my computer searching through my files. She said she was just checking her email, but I know she wasn’t ‘cos she had Windows Explorer up on the screen. Anyway, she switched it off - at the switch instead of shutting it down properly, which pissed me off, and then she went off to the kitchen to make some coffee. I think that’s when she twigged I wasn’t you and when she came back in, she got all bitter and twisted about it.”
“Well in that case, I’ve got a slight confession to make too,” Doug ventured hesitantly. “Shortly after that, I met her in the shower and – well - after she left your room she came straight round to mine.”
“No shit!...You bastard!”
“We didn’t get very far though. Just as things were getting interesting…”
“Kal!”
“Yeah that’s right. We went over there and I saw him.”
“Shit! Are you OK?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
The two friends finished their breakfast in silence, each trying to make sense of it all. Doug put his plate back on the pile and started for the door.
“Hell of a girl though,” said Brian.
Doug turned to look at him, grunted and went back to his room.
CHAPTER 3
Sitting at the large oak desk, Peter swivelled round on the high-backed leather chair to survey his work. With the floor clear of debris, books returned to shelves, and papers piled neatly, there seemed twice as much space as before. The large airy room, painted in a fresh creamy white, was fitted, on two of the walls, with dark-wood bookshelves from floor to ceiling, while a selection of watercolour landscapes adorned the remaining wall-space. It was the sort of study of which he had always dreamed. Over the desk, two sash windows looked out across the front garden towards the gate. When Martin and Isabelle had first moved in, the grounds had been little more than uneven lawns bordered by shrubs and annuals. In the ensuing years, these had been transformed into a symphony of constantly changing colour, texture and scent. The front was Peter’s favourite. Now awash with the first colours of spring, it had a natural, almost wild feel to it, belying the years of soil preparation, planting and cultivation he knew to have gone before. It had been Isabelle’s idea to create a cottage garden here, and she who had chosen most of the plants. Martin, with his natural sense of aesthetics had concentrated on the overall design, his pride and joy being the hardwood pergola, which, planted with several varieties of clematis and climbing rose, extended the length of the driveway and in the summer created a shaded, meandering, tunnel of perfume and colour. Peter thought of his own study in Bracknell. The seven-by-ten box room on the first floor, overlooking the neighbours’ compost bins had always seemed adequate before, but compared to this, it was nothing short of a hovel. Martin had had it all: the successful career, fame - at least within the world of chamber music, the beautiful house in the country, and the stunningly attractive wife. It was a life straight from the pages of a Sunday colour supplement, yet in spite of it all, he had sat at this very desk and chosen death.
Determined to make more progress before lunch, Peter took the pile of papers and started sorting them into ‘rubbish’, ‘to file’, and ‘action’. This worked fairly well, although choosing between ‘to file’ and ‘rubbish’ proved harder than anticipated, prompting the creation of a ‘Probably Rubbish’ group, to which he assigned an old cardboard box in the corner by the door. In the ‘action’ pile were numerous bills, some of which, reminders of reminders, threatened legal action, or discontinuation of service. It was clear his brother had not attended to any paper work for several months. With Martin’s former income and Isabelle’s family money, Peter doubted there would be any problem paying, and a glance at the latest bank statement confirmed this. He would later ask Isabelle for her chequebook, and write out all the cheques ready for her to sign. He would then draft a standard letter informing of Martin’s death and requesting all further correspondence be addressed directly to her.
He leant back against
the leather and looked around. He had hoped to find more of a pattern to his brother’s obsession, but the remaining papers seemed to be pulled from the Internet almost at random. They appeared to cover every subject from religion and philosophy, to mathematics and astronomy. The sheer breadth was quite astounding, and judging by the date stamps, most had been printed within the last few months. “What on earth were you up to, little brother?” he muttered under his breath.
Tucked into the bookshelves on the wall to the right was a midi HI-FI system. Around this were hundreds of CDs and tapes, all stacked neatly and sorted alphabetically by composer. Peter was surprised by the orderliness, which seemed in stark contrast to the rest of the room. Perhaps a little music would help him think more clearly. He started searching for something familiar, then noticed a self-recorded cassette lying in the open tape deck. Could this have been the music to which Martin had popped a bottle of tranquillisers and drained half a bottle of whiskey? He powered on the system and hit play. The tape turned silently in the machine. Peter looked around for the speakers, but there were none. Of course! Martin had always preferred listening through headphones, claiming the acoustics to be truer to the original performance. Scanning the room, he caught a glimpse of yellow foam between the desk and computer base unit, sat on the floor beneath. It was an old pair of Sennheisers, the lead from which was plugged into the audio output of the PC. Interesting, he thought, Martin must have been listening to digital audio files when he died. Peter hadn’t touched the PC yet. Knowing Martin to be a bit of a technophobe, he assumed it had served as little more than a glorified typewriter, but the headphones were a surprise. He would check this out after lunch. Placing the foam pads over his ears, he jacked the cable into the midi system. On starting the tape, the pure, crystal clear voice of a choirboy filled his head. It was Allegri’s Miserere, a piece once the exclusive domain of the Vatican, and for a while, considered so special, no copy was allowed to leave the Sistine chapel. The extract on the tape was the point at which the solo treble rises to a top “E”, falls away, and then resolves the chord with a drawn-out turn. Peter leant back, shutting his eyes. He could feel goose bumps rising along his neck and spine. It was one of those magical moments discussed with Martin during their debate about music. The sound stopped abruptly, there was a slight pause, and then it jumped to Samuel Barber. He couldn’t remember the name of the piece, only that it had been theme to the film, “The Elephant Man” centred on the sadly deformed real-life character of John Merrick. Again it was a passage which seemed to arouse something deep inside. After about twenty seconds, this also stopped, only to be followed by another equally evocative sample of some violin solo unknown to Peter.
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