Cambridge Blue (27 page)

The narrow beam caught something shiny on the landing. He knelt down beside it, directing the torchlight down the stairs. Bryn had tripped over a side table, then sent it crashing down to the hall below.

And, before it had fallen, it had been home to a small pile of junk mail: brochures for holiday parks, lawnmowers and orthopaedic mattresses, still in their cellophane envelopes. There were four of them altogether, inconspicuous and easily overlooked. But none read ‘L. Spence’; they were each addressed to other people.

The first two names he recognized: ‘V. Nugent’ and ‘J. Moran’. The other two were new to him: ‘Miss H. Sellars’ and ‘W. Thompson-Stark’.

They’d all been carefully opened, cut open with nail scissors by the look of the neat seams.

He rescued the table from the foot of the stairs, leaving it propped up against the landing wall to hide its newly broken leg. He scribbled the four names and addresses on a scrap of paper, replaced the brochures, then left to vanish into the night.

Suddenly he had much to do.

THIRTY-THREE

Victoria scuttled from Lorna’s flat on to the street. She ran, clattering along the pavement as fast as her spiked heels could carry her. Everyone thought she was tough but her brittle coat of bravado had just chipped and shattered.

Yes, she’d played the scene out pretty much as she planned, but Bryn wasn’t the pushover she’d expected him to be. Instead of recoiling at her big finale, he’d become infused with rage, the room had filled with it. She suddenly wondered if she’d been terribly wrong about him. She hadn’t finished their encounter with an arrogant flounce out of the door, instead she’d bolted.

Now she didn’t care if anyone saw her, since the only thing on her mind was fear of being caught. Fear of Bryn.

She clutched the small handbag containing her phone, keys, money and cigarettes, none of which she could afford to lose. She darted through a back alley and was out of sight of Lorna’s flat before the door reopened. Ahead of her was a dark tunnel of unlit back fences and high gates, but at the end she knew she’d find a narrow gap taking her out on to the footpath running alongside the Cam.

She was furious with herself, having been so excited by the prospect of humiliating him that she’d been too vague in considering the details of what might happen afterwards. She had already planned this route, but only thought about it as it looked in daylight. She’d accepted that it might be muddy, but now she couldn’t even see the thick puddles underfoot. Silty water slopped into her left shoe.

There’d been another oversight too; she’d arrived in Bryn’s car and now she was cold, with no underwear and no jacket but, more importantly, he could still drive and she had no hope of reaching her flat first.

As the moon vanished behind a shifting cloud, she could only inch her way forward until it reappeared. She needed to run, but not wearing these shoes, and not in the pitch black.

She finally emerged on the path beside the river and then hurried towards the illuminated restaurants on Magdalene Bridge, wondering whether she should hail a taxi. But the lights were only on while staff cleaned up, and the customers were long gone. She glanced up and down the street in case a cab was parked up, waiting there for a job from its dispatcher. Nothing but an already occupied car, whose driver and passengers all stared at her as they rolled past.

She glanced down at her deliberately tarty skirt and mud-caked shoes, and imagined what they must be thinking. She hurried away from the kerb, realizing that any cab driver would be disgusted at taking her such a short distance and, anyway, the wait itself looked as if it would be longer than the journey.

As she moved away from the centre towards home, she kept to the inner side of the pavement, checking regularly over her shoulder and ducking into doorways as soon as she saw the beams of car headlights.

Victoria rented a small flat in the annexe of a large Edwardian house. The approach to it was therefore impressive, even if her flat itself wasn’t. A waist-high wall enclosed the gardens, like an immovable girdle keeping the conifers pinned up against the house. Movement sensors controlled security lighting, and she could now see its familiar glare from a hundred yards away. She kept low and close to the wall, peering over it between the low straggling branches.

Bryn’s old Ford waited in the driveway. Lights off. Engine silent.

Victoria hugged herself and waited. A passing taxi flashed its lights on to her, but then drove on. She wondered whether someone would think she was loitering and perhaps call the police.

Five minutes later, she heard the Zodiac’s engine start up. But it didn’t move and, several minutes on, she heard the fan running, kicking warm air into the interior and clearing the windows. Bryn was planning to wait.

She lit a cigarette, not a conscious decision, just one instinctively made by her agitated fingers. She drew a couple of quick breaths, with her eyes shut, and opened them again just as the taxi returned. This time he slowed to a stop and rolled down his electric window.

‘All right, miss?’

‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘Just waiting for someone.’

‘You don’t want a lift then?’

‘No.’ She shook her head firmly, and he pulled away. Before he’d travelled fifty yards, she wished she’d said yes. She watched the taxi’s tail lights shrink to dots. And she desperately wanted to be somewhere else.

She felt in her bag, to check for her purse and phone. Both there. What the hell, she had the money, and it made sense to spend the night in a hotel.

Fuck Bryn, she thought, and she pictured getting warm and clean in the bath, then sliding between smooth cotton hotel sheets and drifting off to sleep, while he was condemned to sleep upright in that aging piece of scrap.

She turned and strode back towards the city centre, intending to check in at the Doubletree Hotel. She’d stayed there once after being taken to Grantchester and back by punt. Before Bryn and Lorna, and all of this mess. She’d had a romantic night, they’d ordered dinner in their room and watched the last punts return just before sunset. Then they’d cuddled in bed and watched
Sleepless in Seattle
on the TV.

A night of escapism was what she needed now. Just forget about Bryn and Lorna, and all but one of the Morans.

She reached the traffic lights on the junction of Castle Hill and Magdalene Street and she hurried back towards the bridge. This time it was a welcome sight. She had a plan, and she didn’t care what any late-night bystanders thought of her.

On her right was a row of matching shops, painted a sombre battleship grey, with the window and door frames picked out in black.

On her left, the soot-covered wall of Benson Hall rose high and dark. It was sooted and glassless, with bricked panels in stone window frames. In daylight it simply appeared old and genteel, and never seemed the slightest bit threatening.

So Victoria continued down the dark conduit that whisked her towards the centre.

The lights were mostly out on Magdalene Bridge, but two lofty streetlamps still operated, diffusing light across its span. Shops and restaurants left small courtesy lights glowing, but nothing more. The last diners and drinkers had long since dispersed and the only sounds were the rippling of the Cam as it slithered beneath her, and her heels clacking on the pavement.

She didn’t realize that she had stopped shivering; her next small victory was in sight and all her thoughts were by now on the hotel, not on the chilly night air licking at her bare ankles, or her fingers stiffening with cold.

And, worst of all, she hadn’t felt the goosebumps climbing her scalp, trying to tell her she was being watched. Ahead the road narrowed and a shadow moved. But Victoria didn’t notice.

THIRTY-FOUR

The Round Church stood at the top of Trinity Street, like a sentry marking the next precinct of the city. As she hurried towards it, a nervous little butterfly darted around in her stomach. For the first time she noticed how the gateposts were topped with stone figures of eagles with books under their feet. She glanced up at them, and they glared back down, looking ready to fly off and scatter loose pages into the streets of Cambridge.

The walk seemed further through these empty streets than it did during the average hectic lunch hour. She wished again that she’d stopped that cab, but she wouldn’t find one now in this deserted pedestrian quarter. She followed the parameter of grounds of St John’s round to the right, before turning into Trinity Street.

Somewhere close by, running footsteps suddenly echoed.

Victoria hurried on, skipping into a trot every few paces, past the lower levels of St John’s College Chapel. The way in front of her darkened and she struggled to remind herself of the same street in daytime. The ornate railings were just as pretty. The blackened stone-work was just as old. She drifted towards the kerbside, narrowly side-stepping a low bollard. What a stupid decision to paint them black.

Another entrance to St John’s College came and went, and for a fleeting moment she considered finding the porter’s lodge and demanding assistance. But she didn’t need the night to continue any longer and, in just another five minutes, she’d reach the safety of the hotel.

Ahead of her, her route became darker still. As she passed a little park, for a few yards the only illumination came from the moon and the eerie glow it cast on the white blossom of the chestnut trees. Their branches waved at her from over the railings.

She passed Trinity College next, and forced herself not to look up at its medieval elevations, remembering all the gargoyles and grotesque stonework. Instead, she fixed her sights further ahead at where all the shops commenced, and began to feel relief that she was soon getting back into safer territory.

The street now made a slow curve to the right. A cashpoint machine flashed, winking at the pink-and-blue display in Jaeger’s window opposite. Even in the dark, the shops here were designed to appeal. But the diversion they offered her was to be short-lived.

She slowed again when she saw a figure ahead: a shadow slipping out of a doorway. Seeing one person was worse than seeing none. But she kept walking, because she had no choice. There was nowhere else to run.

She was feet from passing by, when she risked a glance, and instantly her sense of apprehension vanished.

‘Oh, hi,’ she beamed.

‘Victoria?’

She exhaled in relief. ‘Yes.’

‘Why are you walking around on your own?’

‘I’ve just had a row with a boyfriend, and I don’t want to go home, so I was walking to the Doubletree to spend the night there. To be honest, I was getting a bit spooked out here in the dark. I’m so glad it’s you.’ She knew she’d never been this friendly before, but suddenly hoped it sounded genuine. ‘And what are you doing here?’

‘I just needed to get out for some fresh air. Is he still hanging around your flat?’

Victoria lit another cigarette. ‘Waiting outside.’

‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’

‘It’s a casual thing.’

‘Still not ready for anything more serious?’

‘Something like that.’

‘But it’s been several months since . . .’ The sentence died and they both gave it a moment’s silence to be laid to rest. ‘Do you want me to go back with you?’

Victoria puffed out a thin stream of smoke as she reflected on that. Then she sighed and tried to sound weary. ‘I can’t face him right now.’

She made a few half-hearted steps in the direction of the hotel. ‘He scares me,’ she moaned.

‘Scares you? How? He’s only sitting outside your flat. He can’t do anything from there.’

Victoria lowered her voice, like she was confiding a secret.

‘He’s really angry with me. He’s convinced I’m coming back tonight and he’s waiting for me.’

‘But you’re leaving him to rot there just to teach him a lesson?’

‘That was the idea,’ she said, ‘but I’ve gone off it now.’

‘Well, I think you should. I’ll help you.’

Victoria shrugged. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘You have your mobile, don’t you?’

Victoria reached in her bag, pulled out her phone and unlocked the keypad.

‘But he’ll know it’s my phone.’

‘Yes, but he won’t know the text is from me, and I know how to make him squirm. Remember it’s because of him that you’re stuck out here, cold and vulnerable.’

Victoria nodded. ‘OK.’

‘So it’s a good idea?’

Victoria shrugged, then nodded again. ‘Why not?’

‘Text this . . .’ The words were recited slowly to give her enough time to spell them properly. “‘You’ll be sorry in the morning and . . .”’

Victoria prodded the keypad with both thumbs. ‘And what?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Send?’

‘Yes.’

She pressed the send button and watched until the message icon had flown from the screen. ‘Do I send him the next bit later?’

‘Why not?’

‘And how’s that going to work?’

Her companion sighed and stared skywards, and Victoria looked up too. The moon was a cold yellow, and the small clouds were racing by fast enough to give the impression that the chimney tops themselves were moving. A few yards further down Trinity Street, a building stood on the corner of Trinity Lane, with carvings protruding from both sides of the roofline. They appeared to be ships’ figureheads, sticking out about two feet under the guttering, and gave the impression of tugging the main structure in two different directions at once.

‘Why will that message scare him?’ she persisted.

Her companion sighed, exhaling breath in a deep hiss of theatrical exasperation, then looking down again, gaze dropping in a straight line, like it had fallen from the roof. ‘When I first found out you were seeing our father I felt a bit uncomfortable, but I didn’t begrudge him some company. After all, we all know what it’s like to be lonely. You weren’t what I expected, at first, but you deserve our thanks for sticking with him right until the end. In fact, I thought it showed a kind and generous side to your nature.’

They began walking again, slowly this time, but within yards they’d stopped once more. Victoria shifted her weight from foot to foot, feeling the cold more accutely, and the conversation had slid into more difficult territory. It was uncomfortable to stand still, but neither was it the right time to walk away. ‘I wanted to be with him,’ she said.