The Company of Fellows (2 page)

Tommy tried to
shake his head clear, tried to pump some kind of urgency into his
brain, but nothing would come. That’s what happens when you spend
twelve years without ever leaving your comfort zone, he thought.
Now John was having a heart attack and his pathetic attempts to
protect himself from the outside world would cost a man his
life.

Already John
was lying flat on the soaking gravel. Tommy crouched down and
finally the autopilot kicked in. Help. He needed help.

He pulled open
John’s saturated tweed jacket to look for a mobile. He dipped his
hand in the inside left pocket, but couldn’t feel past an enormous
envelope. He struggled to fish it out. The manila flap drew back to
reveal the vast wad of used £50 notes.

Without
noticing it, another feeling, one he couldn’t place, had slipped
into his head and taken the place of the urgency. He went through
John’s pockets hurriedly, but he was no longer desperate to get
help. By the time he’d cleared all the pockets there was still no
sign of a phone; just ten envelopes each as fat as the lawyer lying
dead outside his door.

How do you
react when someone dies in front of you? Is there a right way? Does
the way you react define the kind of person you are? God, he hoped
not. Is the way we behave at a moment like this just one of those
uncontrollable idiosyncrasies, he wondered, like fancying redheads,
or whether we’re allergic to shell fish? His head shot in a hundred
different directions, and he struggled to pull the threads of his
thoughts back together. He was sure it was too late for John. His
first aid impulses had turned off. For the first time, he knew what
the feeling was that had crept inside him. It was something he
hadn’t felt in a long time: curiosity.

Life was here
if he grabbed it now. There was no time to weigh things up. There
was no time to consider whether his head could cope. Someone he had
once known, not well but well enough to have admired and respected,
was dead. John had died in front of him and he knew there were a
hundred things he should be thinking, but he wasn’t. All he knew
was that he had a choice. Call the ambulance, give some policeman
his statement, hand over the money and the papers, let them take
John away, and carry on as before; or find out what on earth the
former supervisor he hadn’t seen in over a decade was doing sending
a lawyer round with thousands of pounds, before anyone else knew
John was dead and took over.

For the moment
that he allowed himself to make the decision, Tommy watched the
rain bouncing off John, hitting fabric and skin with indiscriminate
force. He thought of the man he’d known with his deep, friendly
laugh and his courteous but driven manner; who always had a minute
to say hello to his staff, but never two. He tried to connect the
old animated face with the ball of sopping skin that was still and
uncomplaining as it took its pummelling like a punchball. For a
second he thought of the rivulets running down the pathway washing
away John’s soul, and tasted the salt of a tear mixed with the
water pouring into his mouth. Then he thought of the water washing
away any forensic evidence that there had ever been a box full of
goodness knows what, and a pile of envelopes stuffed with
money.

The decision
was made. John was dead. Tommy couldn’t help him; he’d call an
ambulance later, but there were things he needed to do
now.

He took the
stairs 3 at a time, cradling the cardboard box. He laid it down in
the bath and rinsed off both his arms before he took off his shirt
and went to the kitchen. He fetched two large black bin-liners and
laid one on the black marble of the bathroom floor. He paused to
think for a moment. John had clearly run to get here like he was
being chased by a frenzy of real or imagined demons. That was good.
If fibres from his jacket were anywhere they were only on the
outside of the box, not whatever was inside. There was nothing to
connect him to its contents if anyone did start asking
questions.

Tommy fetched
his sharpest filleting knife, slit down what was left of the four
vertical corners of the box, and spread out the sides. The mush
slopped its bowels out with a sigh. There was no time to be nosy.
He brought an empty R-Kive box and scooped the mix of papers,
disks, files, flash drives into it, along with the envelopes full
of money. Luckily everything on the inside appeared to be dry. He
rinsed off his arms, and the knife, bundled the maché into the
bin-liner, put it all into the other liner, and rinsed his arms
again.

His heart was
jumping in his throat. He took a breath and closed his eyes.
Cold marble against his feet, soothing under a
cloudless Andalucian sky. Paganini playing on a single violin
behind olive trees. The scent of jasmine
.
His heart was back somewhere near its usual 42 beats a minute and
his brain slipped into the slow rhythm needed to input information.
He reached into the R-Kive box, to where his memory said there
would be a padded ivory envelope with his name on it. The crisp
fibres fuzzed as he ran the filleting knife along the edge and he
enjoyed the sharp crack as he opened out the thick folds of woven
paper.

He stopped for
a moment, sitting cross-legged on the fine velvet carpet in the
hallway. He patted the point of the knife on his front teeth and
then placed it on the middle of the letter, and ran it quickly down
the page as a guide for his eyes, without making a tear. He turned
the paper and did the same on the reverse. In a single movement he
went into the kitchen, took a cook’s match, and lit the corner over
the stainless steel sink. He made sure that every piece was ash
before he washed it away, and lit an incense cone to mask the
smell.

With a
sandwich bag over his hand, he went back to the R-Kive box and took
out the second thick ivory envelope, the one he remembered was
addressed in Professor Shaw’s handwriting to “Thomas West”. Shaw
had always called him Tommy. The Professor even spelt it Tommi with
an “i” when he used that as the name for his interior design
company, so this had to be a hint. Opening it up to take a look
wasn’t an option. He thought about calling the Professor, but ruled
it out straightaway. It wasn’t a number he wanted on his billing
records, pinning down the time of the call to the second. No,
somehow he knew exactly what this envelope was for. He was sliding
into the rhythm of adventure with barely a jolt. Adrenalin had shot
his heart rate back up. He could almost feel the Professor, his old
mentor, laying out clues like gingerbread crumbs, leading him out
of a forest he’d been hiding in for years, and had long forgotten
how he’d gotten into. The white noise of the rain outside roared in
his ears.

He put the
bin-liner in his Gladstone bag and went out of the door with his
umbrella in his pocket at the ready. He was pleased to see the rain
looked like it would continue for some time. No-one would be out
for a while yet. It was less than ten minutes since he had heard
the bell.

Tommy stepped
over John’s body, stopping to slide the unopened envelope into an
empty jacket pocket. He took off the sandwich bag and slung it into
the liner, along with the other soaking detritus, which he tied
tightly inside his bag. At the end of the overgrown path, he looked
back over his shoulder. Even straining hard, and knowing what he
was looking for, he could see nothing of John except the shine of
his patent shoes. He stopped and bit his lip. It wasn’t too late to
change his mind. But there was no choice to make. He’d made it
already.

Leaving his
umbrella down for the time being, he let the water flatten his
hair. Walking briskly into town, he looked just like any other
sodden figure scurrying for shelter in the rain. If anyone had been
watching through the curtains of water they would never have
recognized the person dumping yet another black liner into the
overripe belly of the skips outside the old Lucy’s
factory.

As he
approached Professor Shaw’s college house on Bane’s Avenue, Tommy
put the umbrella up to cover his face, just in case someone else
was looking out of the window on a damp afternoon like he had been
a few minutes ago, wondering why life always happened
outside.

He slipped on
his gloves. There was no need to knock. The door was always open
when Shaw was at home. He was the University’s Professor of Ethics.
In particular he worked on pleasure. In his private life as well as
his books if one believed the stories. He wrote about the delight
of anticipation, about how to increase pleasure by waiting for it.
It was his joke that he devoted his life to the joy of waiting but
that he didn’t extend the pleasure to waiting on his
students.

He was inside
Professor Shaw’s intricately ordered world for the first time in
over a decade. The standard issue cord carpet on the floor was the
only thing in the house the Professor hadn’t chosen himself; but
Shaw had covered most of the hallway with Aubusson weaves and
exquisite silk rugs in the intricately detailed Ispahan style.
Tommy wiped the claggy Oxford rain from his nose and the smell of
game overwhelmed him. Venison, exquisitely larded with goose fat
and speck; mutton and caper forcemeat; fierce groundnotes of
juniper and mace. He didn’t have to follow the smell
far.

Typical of
grand town houses, the dining room was one of the two large,
high-ceilinged spaces at the front of the house saved for formal
entertaining. A walnut veneer table, running almost its whole
length, dominated the room. Against the wall a linen drape
converted a mahogany chest into a serving board. On it was a vast
silver platter. From the uncongealed gloss on the glistening meat,
the Professor’s body must still have been as warm as the
food.

____

2

Tommy put his
phone down and waited for the ambulance. At last he had the time to
go over the Professor’s letter that he’d filed away in his head
earlier. Like many speed readers, his recall was almost
perfect.

Dear
Tommy,

How is poor
portly John? He really should take more care of himself. These
things come back at one in old age, if one makes it that far.
Still, you will find, I am sure, that he is able to provide all you
need to help you.

You were
never going to make an academic, you know. You shouldn’t give it
another thought. You should enjoy the time your well-paid dabblings
give you and let go of the guilt I’ll wager still holds you back. I
wouldn’t ask you to put the time to good use, but I would hope that
you put it to use of some kind. I believe that I have found a way
to help you do that.

Tommy,
someone is trying to kill me, and I want you to find out who it is.
I think the key to the answer is in this box.

I want to ask
you one more thing. Take care of my daughter. She is my whole
life’s work, the only work of which I am proud. Finally, let me
offer you a word of advice that you won’t listen to now. Keep it
filed somewhere inside that recalcitrant mind of yours. Do not
become one of life’s meanderers. It is not a terrible thing to
snake through life accreting pleasures, but you are still young
enough to learn how much greater those pleasures are for which you
have had to wait. My advice is this. Learn the value of
projects.

Regards as
ever,

Charles
Shaw

There was no
time to go through the letter in his head; not consciously, anyway.
Looking out of the windows he could already see the pulses of
cobalt from the emergency vehicles playing against the storm
clouds. There was a police car as well as an ambulance.

He shook his
head. There was no time to look, but he was sure he’d tucked the
R-Kive box safely inside the wardrobe. The bell chimed. Tommy went
down the main stairs to the front door. He never used it on a day
to day basis, only when he was showing clients around the rest of
the house that he used as showrooms. The white carpet on the stairs
was immaculate. What was he doing worrying about dirt at a time
like this? he chided himself. Just how caught up in his own tiny
world had he become?

He opened the
door and looked at the warrant card. “Hello, Off…” He looked up at
the DCI’s face. His precious white carpet sucked the blood out
through his feet. “Em?” he said. He was looking straight at Emily
Harris, the first woman he had ever loved; no, the only woman he
had ever loved.

“
Hello,
Tommy.” Laughter lines opened up around her eyes. Tommy guessed she
must have known where she was coming, and enjoyed the element of
surprise she had on him.

“
How are you?”
he said, at a loss for anything better

“
Happy. I’m
happy.” Emily smiled, politely this time, not spontaneously. She
hadn’t changed at all. Short for a police officer, she had the same
cropped blonde hair she’d had as a student. Tommy wondered if she
still gelled it into spikes when she wasn’t on duty. He looked down
and saw the wedding ring just before she put her hand in her
pocket.

“
Come in.” He
took her up to the top floor and into the sitting room. He pointed
her to one of the Barcelona chairs but she stayed
standing.

“
Tommy, was
the gentleman dead when you found him?”

“
Charteris,”
he said, stalling his answer. “His name’s John Charteris. He was a
solicitor. I used to do some reception work for him. Yes, he was
dead.”