A Little Learning (2 page)

Paul’s laughter rang loud in that small box of a room. ‘Kill Claptrap Carter! Bloody hell, Gary, you’ve let your imagination run away with you! How much pot did you smoke last night, for God’s sake?’

Gary grinned sheepishly. ‘Well, no, I don’t suppose I ever thought you were proposing to kill off old Claptrap. But what else, then?’

‘A burglary. Swift, efficient, successful. Away with the booty, leaving a baffled police force and a furious Director.’ He beamed his confidence like a sun lamp upon his dubious colleague.

‘But — but what do we pinch? And how do we get into the place? And how can you be so sure that we won’t get caught in the act?’ Gary was obscurely aware as he mounted this battery of questions that he had abandoned his stance of blank refusal. He wasn’t quite sure how that had come about.

Paul Barnes grinned at him and triumphantly unwrapped his package. ‘Play this videotape, and all will be revealed, my friend.’

Gary looked for a moment in puzzlement at the videocassette, then went to the other side of the room and slid it into the video recorder on top of his portable television set. Within thirty seconds, all was indeed revealed — or to be strictly accurate, the situation became a little clearer.

It was a recording of a television interview conducted some eighteen months earlier by Granada, for its north-west news magazine programme. The Director of the new University of East Lancashire had then just been appointed. With his high forehead, his receding hair, his slightly too well-fleshed appearance and his air of satisfaction, Dr Carter looked like one of those archbishops in the early Shakespeare history plays whom you were not meant to trust.

When he spoke, it became obvious why his new students had delightedly nicknamed him Claptrap Carter. He delivered a series of orotund educational clichés earnestly at the camera, as if they were new-minted personal discoveries. His mission, in life and in his new post, was to make sure that the underdog got a fair educational chance (i.e., being at the bottom of the educational pile, his new institution wasn’t going to attract the best A-level grades, so better make the best of it). He had every confidence in the quality of the teaching and administrative staff of his new university, and proposed to give them a free hand (i.e., don’t expect Dr Carter to be much in evidence about the place, and don’t expect him to take responsibility for the cock-ups which will inevitably occur in the early years). The new university was not to be an ivory tower, and the already excellent relationships with the local populace would be a matter of great importance to him (i.e., don’t blame us for the drugs and the graffiti, they were here before we came).

There was much more in the same vein. It was not so much what Carter said but the manner of its saying which caused him to be sent up mercilessly by students who had never even spoken to him. Claptrap Carter combined an oily delivery with a smile which would have caused revulsion in a home for the blind. The interview was conducted in his new home, the house which Paul and Gary had circumnavigated on the previous night. It ended with an obviously prearranged question from the interviewer about the contents of the bookcase against which Carter had carefully set himself.

Claptrap waved his hand airily towards the shelves of books behind him. ‘Tools of the trade, you know! Just a selection of the books gathered over the years of a busy academic life.’ He gave his interviewer his most oleaginous smile and leaned forward. ‘But there is something I would like to say here. When our great new enterprise begins, we shall have some students who have been brought up in an environment where books were not taken for granted, like this. It is those students whom I wish to rescue from a Philistine world! It is those students whom I wish to make our academic bread and butter, in what I am sure will soon come to be known far and wide as the UEL!’

Perhaps because he was tiring of the word ‘academic’, which had been mentioned at least eight times in seven minutes, the interviewer sought to end on a more intimate note, by asking Dr Carter if any of the books had a personal significance for the new Director of the UEL.

Claptrap, delighted to have the initials he had suggested returned to him so promptly, adopted his humble but saintly mode, produced another excruciating smile, and extracted Thomas a Kempis’s
The
Imitation
of
Christ
and a copy of the New Testament from the drawer of the desk where he had placed them in readiness. ‘I don’t have many quiet moments, but when I have, I try to reinforce myself with some of the eternal verities.’

Carter then shut his eyes briefly and gave a little sigh. ‘And in my more venial moments, I indulge myself by collecting books. These, I think, are probably the pride of my collection.’ He then displayed leather-bound versions of each of Jane Austen’s six major novels and tried desperately and unsuccessfully to connect the immortal Jane with the mills of industrial Lancashire. The interview ended abruptly.

Gary Pilkington had joined with Paul Barnes in giggling derision during the more risible moments of it. His hilarity was abruptly dissipated by Paul’s triumphant assertion as he stopped the videotape: ‘There’s our booty! Never could stand Jane Bloody Austen myself, but she must be worth a bob or two in her first editions!’

‘But we can’t just pinch them!’

‘Not for ourselves we can’t, no. But here’s what we do. We hide them for a while. Then, when everyone is assuming that they’ve been lost for ever, we send them to be sold for a children’s charity. At the same time, we make it public where they came from — an anonymous phone call, or something like that. Then old Claptrap Carter will be faced with the dilemma of either helping the deprived children he bleats about or getting his books back!’

Gary smiled. The Director’s unctuous performance on the videotape was still fresh in his mind. ‘Nice one! Where do we hide them, though? There’ll be pigs running about everywhere, once the news of the burglary breaks.’

Paul Barnes knew he had won the argument now. ‘That’s easy. In the theatre store. There’s a big area underneath the stage which no one uses, full of old flats that no one has pulled out for years. I’ll put the books right at the back of there.’

Gary Pilkington took a deep breath. It was on, the Perfect Crime, in spite of all his reservations. He said, ‘What if old Claptrap and his missus come back, while we’re still in there?’

‘We get out quick when we hear the car on the drive. We’re going in at the back of the house anyway. But they won’t come back. They always drive in early on Monday morning, when they go off for the weekend. I’ve seen them.’

Gary wondered for the first time just how long Paul had been planning this thing. He seemed to have done a lot of preliminary research on the subject. Probably, though, that was all to the good, now that they were committed.

Thorough preparation must be part of the recipe for the Perfect Crime.

Three

Twelve hours later, Gary Pilkington stood beneath the massive cedar beside the old mansion at the centre of the campus. He looked up nervously at the moon and willed his companion to return swiftly.

For the skies which had cleared in the afternoon had remained clear, and there was not a cloud visible now in the night sky. The stars shone diamond-bright and the moon was nearly full; in Gary’s heightened imagination, the man in the moon seemed to be regarding these actions so far below him with a knowing smile. Everything was far too clear and bright, for those bent on a burglary. A bomber’s moon, he had heard it called, from those nights sixty years ago when men like his grandfather had flown those creaking old planes over Europe to deliver their destruction.

There was a frost tonight, the first of the winter. It would be a sharp one. The grass was already beginning to sparkle, and Gary caught the flash of white on it as a belated car drove past the place where he waited beneath the tree and turned into the student car park. He stamped his feet on the ground, cautiously, trying to make no noise, and thought inconsequentially that it was not very long now to Christmas and its welter of tinsel.

Gary almost leapt into the air as he sensed rather than saw a presence behind him, in the deep shadow of the cedar. Paul Barnes’s whisper came out of the darkness, ‘Easy! It’s only me. Who were you expecting?’ Even on the attempted joke, he caught the tension in his own voice.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to come from that side.’ Gary peered out nervously from his pool of darkness beneath the canopy of the great cedar. ‘It’s too light, with this moon. Maybe we should leave this for another time, when it’s darker — like it was last night.’

Paul noted the need to put some courage into his companion. It was surprising that a big hulking bloke like Gary should be so edgy. He himself felt only the taut excitement of the moment, making each of his senses more alert, more effective, making his own being seem more alive. It was like that necessary nervousness you felt before going on stage. Except that this was better. This was for real.

He pulled the miniature of whisky from his pocket and unscrewed the top carefully, six inches below Gary’s face, to show his companion how steady his hands were. Gary didn’t wait to be invited. He snatched the little bottle and took a strong pull from it, then stood very still, feeling the spirit coursing hot as molten lead down his throat and outwards into his chest. He smothered the cough the neat spirit induced into a question. ‘Is the coast clear at the house?’

‘Absolutely clear! Not a soul around. I knew there wouldn’t be. I told you, there’ll be no sign of Claptrap Carter until tomorrow morning.’

Gary took a deep breath, knowing he must move whilst the effect of the whisky was still strong within him. ‘Better get on with it, then!’

‘Steady on, old lad. Remember the plan. We wait for the night porter to be off on his rounds before we move in.’

For two minutes, which seemed to Gary like ten, they stood motionless beneath the cedar. A car came up the drive, its headlights seeming to move unnaturally slowly as it came nearer and nearer. It came to within thirty yards of them, until it seemed that it must be the Director, returning after all to his house tonight rather than in the morning. Then it turned off towards one of the hostel blocks and disappeared. Paul Barnes, letting out his own breath slowly, caught the gasp of relief from the heavy shape beside him.

At that moment, the clock on top of the old stables behind the mansion tolled the chimes of midnight. That was a familiar phrase, thought Paul, as he counted them out. Falstaff, wasn’t it, to Justice Shallow? ‘We have heard the chimes at midnight.’ Well, those old rogues would thoroughly approve of this present enterprise. No time for pomposity, old Falstaff hadn’t. He’d have made mincemeat of old Claptrap Carter.

A moment later, they had what they had been waiting for. Each of them shrank back instinctively against the massive trunk of the old cedar as the night porter emerged into the darkness from his cave of warmth in the basement of the house. He stamped on the butt of his cigarette, flapped his arms across his chest a couple of times, and for some reason appeared to look straight at the tree which hid them. Then he switched on his rubber torch and set off towards the library, the first building on his hourly security round.

Paul, keeping a restraining hand upon the arm of his friend, did not move until the porter was three hundred yards away and out of sight. Then they moved cautiously along the path towards the single pale white light in front of the Director’s Residence, and up the drive they had reconnoitred on the previous night.

As Paul had forecast, the light of the moon, dropping into the clearing among the trees which marked the Director’s garden at the back of the house, made visible much more detail than they had been able to see on the previous night. There was a bird table, a garden fork left sticking in the ground, and a small pond, gleaming still as a mirror in the pale white light of the moon. Gary hadn’t thought about how they were going to get into the place; somehow he had always assumed that Paul Barnes would know how to take care of that.

He was right. Paul now produced a large old car tyre lever from beneath his anorak. Gary supposed that it must have been there all the time; certainly he hadn’t been aware of it until now. He wanted to say, even at this stage, that this was a bad idea after all, that they should call it off. But he knew that he wouldn’t be successful; knew also that he couldn’t lose face in front of his friend. How many foolish actions are driven on by that small and ridiculous human reluctance!

Paul whispered, ‘There’s a small window in the utility room on the far side of the house, the only one in the place which isn’t double-glazed. I’m sure the wood’s rotten at the bottom of it!’

Gary caught the excitement in his voice. He wondered just how long Paul had been planning this venture, which for him had grown out of nothing in the last two days. He watched his friend working his improvised jemmy into the damp wood, started in fear as the wood splintered like gunfire in the still, freezing night.

‘We’re in!’ The triumphant whisper came to Gary like a death knell from the wiry figure on his right.

There was no alarm system. Perhaps the position of the house on a normally populous college site had made the occupants careless of security. Perhaps the Carters had relied on their cocker spaniel, which had died a month earlier, to raise the alarm. Paul Barnes removed frame and glass carefully to leave a square hole of darkness, then slid his slender body through it and into the utility room of the big house. A moment later, he eased open the glass-panelled back door and admitted a reluctant Gary Pilkington into the residence of the Director.

Gary looked round at the rows of cupboards in the large modern kitchen, at the beakers left to drain upon the sink, feeling so tense that he feared that he would freeze into inactivity. He had never been in anyone’s house without permission like this before. It already felt like a violation. ‘What now?’ he said hoarsely.

‘Don’t touch anything. We mustn’t leave anything of ourselves around for the police. We get those books, and then we go!’ Paul was filled with an icy calm: the need to quiet the turmoil in his companion seemed to have stilled his own nerves.

‘Where will they be, though? We couldn’t see much in that video, you know. Just Claptrap Carter and the bookcase behind him.’

‘Then it’s his study, isn’t it? That or just possibly one end of his sitting room.’ Paul was suddenly tired of his lumbering, apprehensive companion. Better not let the fuzz get anywhere near him, when this was over. ‘Look, you stay here and keep watch. I’ll find what we want. No need for two of us to go blundering about.’

Gary was only too happy to go no further into the house. He glanced longingly at the kitchen door where he had entered, then set his gaze resolutely on the garden with its pool reflecting the moon. ‘All right. If anyone appears out there, I’ll let you know. Be as quick as you can, for God’s sake!’

Paul moved deliberately slowly, enjoying his companion’s apprehension, relishing his own coolness. He went and relocked the door through which he had let Gary into the house. In the unlikely event of the night porter varying his route around the campus, you didn’t want him trying that and finding it open. The man was unlikely to notice the small window he had forced, which was in the deep shadow round the corner of the house.

He went into the hall before he switched on the small torch he had brought with him. Once he had got his bearings, he switched it off again: a light in a darkened house would be a dead giveaway to any unexpected late-night pedestrians outside. He had left the kitchen door open, so that there was just enough light coming into the hall for him to pick out the dark gleam of the brass handles on the various doors of this central hall. He opened them in turn, finding a large sitting room, with two sofas as well as a three-piece suite, but no bookcases; a dining room, with eight chairs arranged evenly around a long table, whose polished wood gleamed softly in the moonlight; another, smaller, sitting room, with a television set and a hi-fi stack, which an estate agent would no doubt have called a family room.

Paul moved back to the sitting room on silent feet. He called softly to Gary. ‘Study must be upstairs. I’m going up there now. We’ve still a good quarter of an hour before the night porter is due.’

Gary did not turn round from the window. ‘For God’s sake be quick about it! I can’t stand much more of this!’

He couldn’t, either, thought Paul, as he went softly up the wide modern staircase. Not a man to take into the jungle with you, Gary Pilkington, for all his physical strength. You learned a lot about people in situations like this.

The first door he tried at the top of the stairs was a bathroom. Good thing he’d insisted on them wearing gloves, with all these brass handles to turn. It wouldn’t take him more than a minute to try all of these doors, if he needed to. And once he found that elusive study, the books themselves would surely be easy to spot in their old leather bindings.

Then he noticed that one of the doors to the rooms at the back of the house was slightly ajar. Might as well try that first.

The moonlight was very strong in this room, falling in shafts through the twin windows across the coverlet of a kingsize bed, picking out the door of an en suite bathroom. The main bedroom, obviously. He was about to go on in search of the study when he saw something sticking out beyond the foot of the bed. The moonlight glistened softly on a leather toecap.

A pair of shoes, pointing up at the ceiling. And in them, feet. And above the feet, legs. As he moved his reluctant limbs across the room, Paul Barnes knew suddenly what he was about to find. A torso, and a head, in the shadow of the big bed. Wide, sightless eyes, staring unseeing as glass into his face.

Paul Barnes forced his unwilling, suddenly trembling hands into life and switched on his torch. There was a red, unmoving pool beside the dead face of Dr Claptrap Carter, now the late Director of the University of East Lancashire. Half the dead face, to be strictly accurate: the rest had been blown away.

Someone had been more serious than him about the Perfect Crime.