Dying to Write (17 page)

‘Morning, Mark. Nice to see you doing some deep academic work!'

He threw a book at me. Then he came down, and we spent a few depressing minutes reviewing our holidays and the prospects for the next term. Eventually I asked where he'd put all our old papers.

‘Out there,' he said, pointing to the window.

I peered out. Seven floors down were two skips.

‘Mark! I needed – Hell, I'll have to go off to the Central Ref.'

‘They've only got microfiche there,' he said smugly.

‘Only got –'

‘And I've just got a CD-ROM system.'

‘Congratulations. What does it play?'

‘Sophie, I thought you were supposed to have been on all the computer courses going. Come over here and sit down.'

I followed him to a quiet corner with a new computer. He inserted a compact disc.

‘There! All the
Guardians
for the last two years. Up till the end of June, anyway. We'll get the update for the summer round about mid-October. What do you want to look up?'

‘You mean all the news for two years is on that one disc?'

‘Everything the
Guardian
covered, anyway. There are other papers available, but we could only afford one. Go on, tell it what to look up.'

I typed in ‘Japan'. Pages of references appeared on the screen. I accessed one idly. Whale meat. Not much help. But not disappointing – not on this twentieth-century miracle toy.

‘Give it some more factors,' said Mark, grinning. ‘Or try something different. You can browse or look up specific stories. Go on. Poke it. See what it does.'

He stayed with me for ten minutes or so, as we pursued increasingly unlikely references. But the library assistants threatened mutiny if he didn't return to the spring-cleaning, and so he left me to it.

In the next hour or so I concentrated so hard I forgot my asthma. I knew a great deal about Japan, about Vietnam and about Nyree's husband. But eventually I had to admit that there was absolutely bloody nothing that helped. I learned that apart from his idiosyncratic politics, Nyree's husband might have been an exemplary capitalist. Nyree had been, in fact, not Mrs but Lady Compton. Her husband was Sir Magnus Compton. He was a keen yachtsman. He liked opera. He'd played in a pro-am golf tournament alongside some professional golfer I'd never heard of. He'd been on several company boards. He'd never been ambassador to any of the Western states. He'd fled to Vietnam. Period.

I told myself that there might be something in the last two months, but of course for the next thrilling instalment I'd have to resort to leafing through the Clover Index.

By now the book-banging had reached the next aisle. The dust was reaching me. I started to wheeze. And I had no Ventolin.

You can't buy that sort of asthma spray. It's available on prescription only. So I had to hope I'd got a spare at home, or talk my way into the doctor's for an emergency appointment. Home then. Maybe what I jokingly call the fresh air of Birmingham's Inner Ring Road would clear my chest.

I was actually beginning to feel better by the time I reached Five Ways, a fiendish traffic junction. On Broad Street, one of the roads off it, is the 103 bus stop; the 103 would take me home. First, howeve, I popped into Boots to buy some antihistamine tablets. They would help my asthma, as they'd helped Agnes's. I'd left my tablets back at Eyre House, of course. The change from my five would help get me on the bus – you had to give the driver the exact fare.

I was out on Broad Street, at the bus stop, counting it out, when a voice called my name. At first I took no notice; then, as the voice got nearer, I looked up. And smiled in disbelief. Hugh!

The Mondiale, a big hotel among other big hotels on Broad Street, would not have been my choice for morning coffee. But to demur when Hugh suggested it would have been to engage in all sorts of explanations that would have embarrassed me at this stage in what appeared to be a nicely developing relationship. The place had bad memories, of sexual humiliation and what I now suspected was an attempt to kill me. But there are times when bad memories can be replaced with good ones, and I hoped Hugh might work this sort of magic.

The omens weren't entirely good. He drank his coffee black, and gestured away the cream cakes with a shudder that suggested his liver was still resentful after last night's alcohol. I was now on good terms with mine, however, and consumed more than my share. Hard work always makes me hungry, and my stomach insisted it was lunchtime.

‘What time – what time did you …?' Hugh hesitated charmingly.

‘About six. I had an early breakfast – that's why I'm so hungry. What brings you into Brum, anyway?'

‘The car. One of the warning lights keeps flickering on and off. I don't believe this theory that alarm lights are there just to alarm. I don't want to find I've run out of brake fluid or something. So I've dropped it off at Rydale's for a check-up.'

Rydale's suggested an up-market car, but I didn't want to appear inquisitive.

‘They say it'll be ready mid-afternoon. So I've got some time to kill. Maybe we could kill it over some lunch?'

‘That would be lovely. But I have to get home first.' I patted my chest. ‘Agnes still has my asthma spray, and I daren't be without one when I run.'

‘You run, do you?'

It sounded as if I might have acquired a brownie point. But there was something else in his voice that might have been – no, it was too fleeting for me to allow my expectations to be raised.

My asthma rattled again, and he earned several points. Why hadn't I thought of a taxi?

George's van was sitting patiently in front of my hosue. The taxi pulled up behind it. Hugh paid. The neighbourhood curtains shimmied.

It should be made clear at this point that though I found Hugh increasingly attractive, and though I had every reason to believe he reciprocated, not a caress, not a kiss had been exchanged. Sooner or later I hoped to remedy this. But later might well have to do: I needed my spray quite badly now.

I left Hugh in the living room and walked slowly upstairs. I knew I had a Becotide spray, but that works more as a preventive. I needed a quick spurt of Ventolin to clear the tubes. If I started to panic and throw things around in my efforts to find a spray, the asthma would get worse.

There was nothing on the dressing table, nor in the bathroom cupboard. But I'd taken a new one away. I remembered taking it out of its packet at Eyre House. I sat down on the bed. I hadn't stripped it before I went away.

So there was the old one, tucked under the pillow. Two long sucks. And then two at the Becotide. I was a new woman. Shoving them both in my pockets, I ran down lightly to Hugh.

It seemed quite natural to squat beside him on the floor. He was picking his way through my tapes, commenting occasionally on a particular interpretation. A man who liked Brahms in my living room. Life might be looking up.

We had more coffee and he looked at my books. My asthma had cleared completely. My stomach was ready for a proper lunch, although the rest of me would infinitely have preferred an improper one. What I had to do was work at maintaining without break the tension between us. On one level we might have known one another for years, on another we both seemed shy enough to suggest a sexual interest. As we sat at my kitchen table, we were mirroring each other nicely. Eye contact was being made. From personal tastes we were beginning to talk about each other.

‘It's amazing,' he was saying, ‘how much someone's house, someone's home, shows about them.'

‘What does mine tell you about me, then?' I leaned forward, my chin in my right hand.

He responded by leaning forward, chin in hand too.

‘Oh, apart from the obvious things like music and the nineteenth-century novel, there's your paintings.'

‘Not mine. I'm no artist. They're all by friends, though. I used to collect china until an enterprising burglar smashed the lot last spring. Perhaps these will be less vulnerable.'

‘Unless your burglar slashes them,' he said.

Suddenly I felt cold. ‘What about some lunch?' I said, just to make my mouth move again.

We decided to go out for our meal, the contents of my freezer being generally unlabelled. One of these days I'd get a proper system, I said. I knew what most things were, but there was always an element of serendipity in my frozen meals.

He grinned. ‘I'll bet your whole life is serendipity.'

‘I wonder how the other people on the course live. Agnes, for instance – she'll have a clock in every room, and probably a timetable. An organised woman.'

‘What about Matt?'

‘A man of good intentions, surely. Bottle banks, that sort of thing.'

‘And?'

‘No. He's a friend of yours, isn't he? I won't be lured into discussing friends.'

‘Not a close friend, but I take your point. What about some of the others?'

‘Your turn,' I said. I leaned against the front door. That was as far as we'd got.

‘All right. That publisher woman. Loud paintings, loud music and a loud car. And a wardrobe full of short skirts that are really quite embarrassing with those thighs. Why don't you wear a skirt, Sophie? I suspect you're covering things that deserve a greater public exposure.'

My smile was meant to be enigmatic, but it probably looked smug. I thought I'd better change the subject. ‘OK: how about Mr Woodhouse?'

‘The elderly man? He'd have slippers, a cupboard full of vitamin tablets and a pile of gardening magazines. Come on – we can shred your colleagues over lunch. Where shall we eat?'

‘Somewhere local?' I opened the front door and held it for him. ‘How about Valentino's? That's pleasant enough and literally just down the road. And there's a car park just behind it.'

Shyness seemed to return while we waited for our order. We drank Perrier sip for sip; half a bottle only of the house red with our meal. What we ought to do was let our fingers touch, not quite by chance. But neither was ready to make the move. My voice sounded, to my ears, a little strained. He stuttered occasionally. How fortunate that teachers are used to plugging conversational gaps. In I plunged again.

‘We never finished speculating about people's houses,' I said. ‘I've been trying to work out what sort of place you'd occupy.'

It was the wrong thing to say. I could sense him fending me off.

‘Oh, it's very ordinary. Victorian. High ceilings, huge heating bills. Untidy.' He stopped. What on earth had he been about to say? ‘Now, there was a surgeon on the course – modern luxurious or period luxurious?'

‘Expensive spartan, I'd say. Those knobbly Jacobean chairs that are wonderfully carved but fiendish to sit on. A big, big bathroom with black and white tiles. But something surprising. Like his smoking's out of character. A huge tank of tropical fish – big enough to occupy a whole wall, perhaps.'

‘I'll tell you who'd keep fish,' said Hugh, relaxing again. ‘That man who sat opposite me last night. He'd keep piranhas, and enjoy watching them eat live goldfish. Or snakes that consumed mice. God, he gave me the creeps. He went on and on about Madame Tussaud's. About Nielsen and Neilson and how odd it was two criminals should have nearly the same unusual name. Over and over.'

‘He's supposed to be keen on animal rights. Would that square with nasty pets?'

And then our first course appeared.

He'd chosen a minestrone so thick he could nearly stand his spoon up in it. I'd remembered the plentiful food at Eyre House and been virtuous with a Galia melon. Swordfish
pizzaiola
for his main course, a succulent and surprisingly large breast of chicken in lemon sauce for me. Then a wonderful sweet, the name of which I never caught, but which came with cream cheese and liqueur and chocolate and more calories than I cared to contemplate.

Over the coffee, I brought the conversation back to Toad. An idea had been growing, burgeoning throughout the meal. It blossomed as we simultaneously produced our credit cards.

‘The DCI in charge of the Eyre House case,' I said carefully, ‘is convinced that someone broke into my room using one of these. Have you ever done anything like that?'

‘Good God, no. I'm a respectable – poet.'

‘The last thing a poet should be is respectable,' I said. ‘Poets should have adventures. Think of Byron.'

‘I don't want to go and fight anywhere,' he said. ‘Or be pursued by a latter-day Lady Caroline Lamb.'

‘There are other sorts of adventures,' I said. And I flexed my flexible friend.

It was raining heavily by the time we left Valentino's at about three, and my enthusiasm for burglary was appropriately dampened. Perhaps I had meant it as a joke and certainly Hugh took it that way – or perhaps it was an offbeat substitute for what I really wanted, which was an afternoon in bed with Hugh. I was destined not to get that, either.

Lunch, which we took late, of course, had been a leisurely affair, if that is not a misnomer. Hugh said his car would be ready by three thirty. I offered to run him into the city centre on my way back to Eyre House. I'd resolved to take George's van back there. If I couldn't do any burglary, I might do some spying. It was scarcely an unobtrusive vehicle, but it would provide shelter in a stakeout: that was the term my TV heroines Cagney and Lacey would use. I had a vision of myself huddled in the van drinking coffee – though I'd forgotten, of course, to provide myself with a flask – watching a villain lead me to Kate. It was quite a pleasant scenario. Unfortunately it led to my hopping across the lights at the Green Man when I could have just stopped, and I soon found a flashing blue light in my rear-view mirror.

I pulled over immediately and got out of the van, looking suitably apologetic. I was prepared for a bollocking, and for a charge of careless driving if the fates were against me.