Antman (19 page)

'Sir.'

'Stop farting about, Brill. Either give me real information or don't waste my time.'

'Sir.'

'And stop sirring me.'

'Yes, sir, there's something else. It's the body.'

'Come on, man, where is it? Up a tree, down a sewer?'

'Not so much where is it as what was it, sir?'

'You mean it's too old for identification. It's been in the water too long.'

'Not underwater, sir. More a case of not much left.'

'The killer has dismembered it and scattered the parts.'

'Not scattered, sir, but a lot has gone.'

'Gone?'

'Yes, sir. It looks as though someone, or something, has eaten it.'

'God! As if I haven't enough problems with the staff. Now I've got a bloody anonymous cannibal running round the county. You're telling me our mystery carnivore has struck again.'

'I suppose so. Yes, sir.'

As soon as Bradshaw put his phone down it rang again.

'Bradshaw,' he intoned mechanically.

The voice at the other end was crisp and on the ball. 'ACC here. Is that Bradshaw?'

Bradshaw jumped to it. The last thing he wanted at this moment was a conversation with Assistant Chief Constable Jack Deerbolt.

'Yes, sir. I was intending to ring you.'

'Save your breath. I gather another body has been found.'

'Yes, sir, but everything is under control.'

'Correction, Bradshaw. Everything is bordering on out of control.'

'We're doing everything we can, sir. We have it all in hand. We're close to having a suspect.'

'All this time, all these bodies? You'll soon have half a football team in that mortuary. "Close to having a suspect?" I don't recognise the expression. Either you suspect a person or you don't.'

'We do, sir.' Bradshaw wriggled on his chair.

'Good. That confirms what I picked up on the grapevine. Who is it?'

'We're not revealing the identity of the person at present, sir. Media attention, cock-ups and so forth.
Comprendes
?'

'I'm not the bloody press for God's sake, I'm your line manager. Who the hell is it?'

'Nobody you know, sir. We think he absconded from Cortham RSU, the mental health one, not the children's secure unit at Cortham Grange.'

Deerbolt was irritated. 'I know the bloody difference. What's his name?'

'Er, I don't have the name. We're still checking.'

'I'm a busy man, Bradshaw. Don't play silly buggers. Ring me back ASAP with the details.'

'It will be soon, sir, but not immediate.'

He heard Deerbolt banging the desk. 'Don't split hairs with me. I say ASAP, that's what I mean. Nail this suspect. Another thing, when you make the arrest, make sure you inform me immediately. I don't want half the reporters in the county banging on my door with me unable to tell them a dickie bird. Got that?'

'Will do, sir.' Deerbolt didn't hear him. He had put the phone down.

Bradshaw picked up the phone and dialled. Morrison answered.

'I must have an ID done on that body. You had it sussed. Any confirmation? I need it, one way or the other.'

'Forensics say it'll be forty-eight hours, sir.'

'We haven't got forty-eight hours.' Bradshaw was almost shouting with impatience.

'I'll check with them and find out if they can speed it up. We'll be as quick as possible.'

'See you are. Deerbolt'll have our guts for garters if we can't find out today.'

*  *  *

When Brill returned, Morrison briefed him. Brill pulled a face. He knew DCI Winchester would not be back for two or three hours. After a couple of attempts, he was through to Forensics.

'Hi, it's me.'

'Who's me?'

'Don't play with me. You buggers don't answer the phone.'

'It's a bit difficult when you're up to your elbows in it.'

'Any luck on that ID?'

'Haven't the least idea, lad.'

'Stop arsing about.'

'We've a good set of dentures, but no other distinguishing features.'

'You could start by checking the records of all the dental surgeons in the district – say, within ten miles of Hull in every direction.'

'And you could start by appreciating we've no staff, not like you lot in CID, mob-handed.'

'Don't take your frustrations out on me, mate.'

The other man was unabashed. The banter was normal. 'Anyway, we're hoping for a stroke of luck with the prints, provided nobody interrupts us for the next couple of hours.'

'I'll see what I can do to restrain myself.'

*  *  *

Chris had made space to visit the University. The phone rang as Tom was preparing to go for some lunch. He was surprised to find how pleased he was to hear Chris Winchester's voice.

'I'm ringing partly to thank you for the list of names your secretary faxed me. I'd like to take up your offer to go through them with me, some time soon.'

'I'm about to have a bite to eat,' said Tom. 'How soon is soon?'

'Is that an invitation?'

'It could be. It depends how far away you are.'

'Not too far.'

'I could drive halfway.'

'Don't put yourself to any trouble. I'm the one causing the inconvenience. I'll be with you in ten minutes.'

'I'll wait in my office.'

*  *  *

Chris was a further half hour, but Tom didn't notice the time.

'We can pop across to the restaurant for a hot meal. Or I can ask Jean to bring us a sandwich from the senior common room.'

They walked into the University restaurant. Tom guided her to a table on the terrace overlooking the lake at the heart of the campus, where Chris sat and scanned the extensive menu. A thought occurred to her. She flashed a quick appraising glance at him and was almost relieved to confirm her initial judgement. He wasn't her type. Not only were academics bad news; she could quote numerous scare stories from Oxford about their oddities. More immediately, he was so incredibly scruffy. His hair was too long, his clothes were a disgrace. He looked as though he could do with a good valet to go through his wardrobe and smarten up his –

Stop it, she said to herself. That's a dangerous road.

After the meal, they moved to an area of easy chairs, down steps near the water's edge.

'Why are university campuses so much more civilised than Police Force headquarters?' Chris asked.

'It's a veneer. It enables the academics to behave like animals without anyone noticing.'

She smiled. 'Give me a veneer any day, rather than crude reality. Is this how you eat all the time?'

'It's my main meal on days like this.'

'No meal waiting on the table at home.'

'Those days are over,' he replied cryptically.

Chris broke the awkwardness of the silence.

'First things first,' she said, with pen poised over the pad. 'What are you professor of?'

'Don't even ask. I have no desire to be pinned down on paper before I even start.'

'This isn't about pride or conceit. It's for the record. If you make a statement, you have to provide these details.'

*  *  *

Chris had worked through the preliminaries. She was warming to Tom, now that he was talking in a more relaxed way and less like the walking brains she was so prejudiced against.

'As a researcher I haven't found it easy to fit into a university environment. I'm not into the culture of the new universities, all those strange rituals and preoccupations, giving people who are basically administrators high academic titles like Dean and Professor.'

The political context Tom worked in was unexciting, with some fairly predictable personalities. He told her about his particularly abrasive relationship with Apthorpe, the rat professor as Tom called him, whose behaviourist inclinations clashed predictably with the entire trajectory of Tom's own work. As for Hugh Mackintosh, the Dean of Studies, he took the line of least resistance, being near retirement and a political appointment himself from after the late 1970s, when some genuflections towards the New Right seemed appropriate. So they offered the chair – he later became Dean – to an established economist with a preference for free markets. He'd outlasted his usefulness after 1997, when Labour swept into power with a huge majority, and pretty well everyone awaited his replacement. The new culture of devolved budgets for departments and research units brought with it a new vulnerability to the exigencies of the competition to win research grants. This made for an enhanced mutual dependence between academics in the department and emphasised the value of good administrative support.

Tom would have spent hours wandering through this territory. Chris moved him on.

'Okay, let's begin with the list of students. Do any of them stand out?'

'In what way?'

'Have any of them, for whatever reason, caused the University or the staff any trouble? Have you had any altercations with them? Have they failed because of your marking of exams or assignments?'

'We do have assessments of that kind. But the crunch point is the assessment of the student's research. It's the dissertation or thesis which decides pass or fail. We rely heavily on the supervisor and the external examiner to judge that, although technically the Examination Board, and ultimately the Board of Studies make the final decision.'

'And all academic staff supervise students?'

'To a greater or lesser extent. We aren't part of the little club of old universities. In an institution like this, the rule of thumb is you have to possess a PhD to supervise a PhD student. We draw in staff from the department as a whole to supervise. This is necessary, given the range of research topics.'

'Do you personally come into contact with any students, as their supervisor?'

'Only to a limited extent, in my specialist area of ant predation. But I do less than I used to, because of my other responsibilities – liaising with research bodies outside the University, pursuing my own research and running the Centre, of course.'

'I suggest you go down the list and comment on anything that comes to mind.'

'Right. Gemma Balkan – she's away doing fieldwork in Africa for the rest of the year.'

'You seem to have a significant pattern of overseas work.'

'It's one of our principles, to devote a proportion of our resources to projects which contribute to overseas development. For a couple of centuries Britain took everything and gave little back. Entomology is a key area for agricultural development.'

'Sounds altruistic and very noble.'

'Unfortunately, the University doesn't see it that way. Third world countries haven't the money to pay for expensive research. Here's another – Dalkeith, an interesting student. He's trying to establish an alternative to the behavioural paradigm as a way of understanding how the nests, particularly the larger nests, of social insects function.'

'Do you have any contact with him?'

'No, I've hardly seen him. Luis Deakin is the supervisor.'

Tom ran his finger down the remaining names on the list.

'No others here I have anything to say about.'

'Really?'

'You must understand I haven't had the contact with students, what with being away from that side of the work so much.'