The Company of Fellows (7 page)

She headed
back to the study, yawning as she got into character. Without
thinking she found herself heading across the floor, stepping over
some heaps of journals, and sitting herself down in a Windsor chair
with arms worn smooth and dark, placing her imaginary folder on the
table to her left. The papers on it lay flat. Her folder wouldn’t
fall off. They were a little beyond her comfortable reach – perfect
for someone five or six inches taller than her, like the
Professor.

The chair felt
good. God, she needed a drink. Instinctively she moved her hand to
the right, felt rounded glass, a bottle of Glengoyne and a tumbler
waiting on a mahogany tray. This was where he lived when he was in
this room, she thought.

She scanned
her immediate surroundings. To her right was an ottoman, complete
with the tray of malt. To her left was the table with the
flat-topped stack of papers. They weren’t what he was working on.
He used them only as a flat surface to put things on. What did he
do when he’d finished whatever it was he did? She imagined him
sitting down with his whisky. He’d put everything on the table –
his notes from the day, his post, printouts of his e-mails. He
didn’t keep them on his lap as he looked through them. That’s where
he cradled his drink. He took them off the pile one by one, read
them over. What did he do with them? There was no sign of a diary
or a jotter.
I bet you had a
notebook
, she said to herself.

Carefully she
retraced her steps to the door and repeated the routine. As she
stepped back inside it struck her.
You’ve
had enough of this heavy tweed. You want to make yourself
comfortable.
She took off her make-believe
jacket and hung it on the back of his door. Sure enough, there was
a tweed jacket on the back of the door, a fat mechanical pencil
sticking out of the top pocket.
I bet you
used that pencil to take notes in the library
. And, bingo! On the peg next to it was a fine silk smoking
jacket. She put it on and padded the pockets. She reached inside.
There was the notebook, a small Mont Blanc Mozart biro clipped over
its front cover.

Rosie went
back to the chair and opened up the notebook. She was right. The
entries were all dated. She started from the most recent, September
3
^rd
,
and worked back. Unfortunately it appeared to be nothing but a
series of references from books he’d been reading during the day.
Strange that he should have bothered taking notes the day before he
killed himself. Maybe he hadn’t been intending to kill himself at
the time; maybe something sudden happened. She put it on the arm of
the chair. It was small enough to balance. She went back to the
Professor’s routine. He’d read his papers, taken whatever notes he
needed and then put them down one by one. That was it.

She looked
underneath the table. There was a sprawl of envelopes and letters a
foot or so back. Clearly once he’d dealt with something he didn’t
care what happened to it. She sat on the floor and gathered the
pile of papers and correspondence, careful to keep things in order.
The top few letters were unopened. A bill, some junk mail, one from
college that was handwritten – why would he have left
that?

She got to the
first opened letter – the last Professor Shaw had read. It was a
strange size – she recognised it as US paper. There it was. Exactly
what she’d been looking for. It was a letter from the Divinity
Faculty at Harvard. And there were the words that explained the
Professor’s death, his sudden decision –
we are sorry but after lengthy deliberation the Faculty has
decided to appoint another candidate to the post of Professor of
Social Ethics.
So he had been planning to
go to the States, but his plans had fallen apart.

Why get in
touch with Tommy, a student he hadn’t seen in years, and ask him to
come round if the Professor was going to kill himself before he got
there? Maybe he’d wanted Tommy to get to him just in time. Who
knows? she thought. One thing was certain, though. The Professor
hadn’t bargained on his messenger dropping dead before he could
deliver the message.

____

9

“
Em, hi.”
Tommy was already on his way upstairs to get a better signal. Becky
put her feet back on the chair, and plugged her earphones
in.

Jericho was at
the northwest corner of Oxford’s city centre. For a time it was
Oxford’s red light district. Now it was home to a rolling stream of
designer dress shops, gadget boutiques, wine bars, organic delis,
and luxury interior design showrooms. Its name was an irresistible
draw for wannabe designers and bright young chefs; but the rates
value were so high most of them went bust after six months. Its
swanky eateries appealed to the readers of glossy design porn like
Wallpaper and idFX, places like the Big Bang, a restaurant devoted
solely to locally made organic sausages. Some of them would last
the course. Most of them wouldn’t. But one venue that had
relentlessly resisted the march of fashion since Tommy and Emily
were first together was Café Rouge, a grimois repository of shabby
chic in the middle of the all the glass and chrome.

The inside of
Café Rouge was dark, and the furniture and floors were tired. It
was the perfect place for the burnt-out and the broken-up to drink
infusions that had seemed exciting and fresh in the 1980s. With
their puffy faces and waxy skin, to anyone who looked, the couple
could have been either.

They sat with
two cups of Earl Grey, pretending that because there was added
bergamot they weren’t just after another caffeine hit.

“
Twice in two
days?” said Tommy. “I’m guessing that means it wasn’t a heart
attack. So what was it?”

Emily paused
for a moment. “John Charteris died of a heart attack, yes. That and
however many years of cigarettes and fat. That’s not what I want to
talk to you about.”

Tommy leant
back in the maroon velour wall seat and smiled. His near-black eyes
seemed to suck in the blackness around them, and draw her with
them.

“
Tommy.” It
was probably the three double espresso shots she’d had already. “I
don’t know why you think I want to talk to you, but this isn’t what
you think it is.”

“
This isn’t
what you think it is, Em.” He could see the expectation as her hand
hovered by the hot chocolate. He thought he could see the effort in
her tendons to hold her ring finger in. Her friends had told her
coffee at Café Rouge was special. They were used to sweet tea at
Littlewoods or the Nose Bag.

He wondered if
she remembered. He thought that she didn’t, that the glassy grey
sleepless skin looked real, and that she hadn’t wanted to meet him
here in order to get him off guard.

“
Em, this is
killing us.” He made himself hold his eyes up to her the whole
time. He hadn’t been able to eyeball anyone for the next year. She
hadn’t looked at him once. Just at the steam coming off her
chocolate less and less until it stopped cold. When she looked up
he was gone. Tommy watched her through the window from the other
side of the road. She couldn’t find the arms on her coat. Then she
stumbled on the table. Tommy slipped across Bane’s Avenue, down
Keble Road, into the Parks and over the bridge. He sat in the
middle of one of the fields, picked a thistle, rolled up his
trouser leg and with the points carved a circle into his shin and
tore away at the skin inside it. He made it a fetish for his
self-loathing, a sore he wouldn’t let close over for a
year.

“
Did you go
to see Professor Shaw yesterday to collect your wine?” she
asked.

“
No,” said
Tommy, “I called and left a message.” Which was true, “But he
hasn’t got back to me yet.” Which was also true.

“
He won’t be
getting back to you, Tommy. Charles Shaw is dead.” She waited for a
few seconds, as if inviting his curiosity. He said
nothing

“
It looks as
though he may have killed himself.”

“
Killed
himself? He wanted to see me. You read his letter, Em. He said he
was going to America. He sounded excited. Why would he ask to see
me then kill himself before he had?”

Emily looked
at him. “Is it possible he could have wanted you to talk him out of
it?” she asked.

“
I hope not,”
he said. “Why do you think he killed himself?” Did he sound too
interested? No, it was the obvious question.

“
Well, we
found a note. And the door was locked. There was no sign of forced
entry, no fingerprints other than those of his
students.”

Locked? Tommy
didn’t think he had actually raised his eyebrow. “How?”

“
He took an
overdose of something. We don’t know what yet, we’re still waiting
for the tests.”

“
Poison?”

“
Yeah. It was
probably in a glass of wine.”

This time he
was sure he had raised his eyebrow. “He really must have been
depressed to let his last ever sensation be a glass of spoilt wine.
Of course if someone wanted to subject him to a final
irony.”

“
Like I said,
we’re still waiting for tests.”

It sounded
like the beginning of an out. “So who did you marry?” It was a
stupid question, and he didn’t really want to know the answer. But
he didn’t want her to go.

“
Not
appropriate, Tommy.”

“
What about
lunch sometime? Would that be appropriate?”

“
No.”

“
OK.” He
wouldn’t push it. Not yet. Just give it time. He was sure this
wouldn’t be the last time he saw her. “When can I pick up the
wine?”

“
Any time.
We’ve gone through it and made an inventory. Just in case it’s
important. Call my sergeant.”

Tommy winced
at the thought of policemen rifling through fine wine. Charles
would have been better off shipping it all to the
States.

“
Goodbye,
Tommy. Don’t leave town without calling us. Here’s Sergeant Lu’s
number.” She handed him one of Rosie’s cards and left.

____

10

Emily crossed
over the road. She stopped for a moment outside the University
Admissions Office, which had previously been a minimalist furniture
store, and watched him through the window. She watched him knock
his cup as he put it down, and wipe his leather jacket with a paper
napkin. She’d never seen him do anything clumsy before.

For some
reason she felt guilty for keeping him at arm’s length. He still
had a gift for making her feel bad. She could feel anger building.
How dare he come back into her life after all this time and carry
on where he left off with the guilt trip? She knew it was unfair,
and knowing it made her feel bad again. In the end she had to
laugh. That was how the cycle of guilt and anger ate away at you
until it had taken up every inch of you and shut out everything
else.

She clenched
her hands and told herself to get over it. She had her job; she had
David; she had her faith. Every part of her life was full; she was
happy; there was no space left for Tommy or his mind
games.

Emily arrived
at Martyr’s Gate, the main entrance to St Saviour’s, and went into
the Porter’s Lodge. She knew better than to flash her warrant card
and walk straight in. Colleges were very twitchy about the police.
In reality, of course, she could go where she wanted, but Oxford
colleges were harder to open up than an oyster. One false move and
they would clam shut for good. So the police carried on playing a
game of tug-the-forelock with them.

The porter
smiled at her. He obviously remembered her face from her days as a
student. “What are you up to these days?” he asked
cheerily.

“
I’m afraid,”
she said, “that I’ve gone over to the dark side.”

“
You’re at
Cambridge?” He smiled.

“
Worse than
that.” Sometimes, when she was a student and in a hurry to get to
lectures, the banter had drive her nuts, but now it had a familiar
homeliness to it.

“
Worse than
Cambridge?”

“
I’m afraid
so. I’m with the police.” She took out her warrant card.

“
Ouch. Still,”
he said, looking at her credentials. “DCI; you’ve done well for
yourself.”

“
Thanks. I’m
here to see the Warden. He’s expecting me.”

“
You’d better
go on over.”

He seemed
exactly the same as he had done fifteen years before. People often
said that college porters were part of the Oxford furniture, and
Emily thought that was right, in a comfortable old armchair kind of
way. Only they seemed to age better than any furniture she’d ever
owned. “Thanks. It’s good to see you again.”

Despite its
unassuming door, the Warden’s Lodge occupied half a side of one of
the largest quadrangles in Oxford. Each of its hallways and
corridors was the size of an average house.

She didn’t
recognise the middle-aged man who showed her through into his vast
study. As a law student, she’d had little to do with tutors from
other subjects. And as an active member of the Christian Union
she’d had nothing at all to do with the Chapel, whose regulars the
zealous young students viewed with as much suspicion as if they’d
actually carried pitchforks or broomsticks with them around
college. Fortunately Dr Sansom didn’t seem to recognise her either.
She wouldn’t have to go through all the tedious chitter chatter
about how much she’d enjoyed her time there, how invaluable a
grounding it had provided her for later life. More to the point, he
wouldn’t expect any special favours.