Death at the Alma Mater (23 page)

Just then, Sebastian cocked his head sharply. It was exactly as if he’d heard his name called. The student by the window muttered something under his breath. But the room was silent. Nonetheless, Sebastian began gathering his things together, to the evident relief of Kurokawa Masaki.

St. Just made a mental note that he’d have to speak with Masaki as well. He seemed nearly oblivious, and tearing him away from his computer would take an effort, but one never knew.

Sebastian, now standing, turned to the Inspector.

“I don’t know anything about your murder. Now, let me be.”

St. Just let him be. For now.

–––

St. Just decided a walk by the river might offer its usual restorative powers. But he wanted to get away from the City proper. Too much traffic, and too many suicidal bicyclists made it less than enjoyable. After sending someone to locate the number, he placed a call to Sebastian’s coach, who told him where he might this day be found. Then St. Just got in his car and headed out to where the college boathouses were lined up along the river.

“During the summer I have a different gig,” the man had explained on the phone. “The regular teams usually aren’t around. The May Bumps are just over, of course. Plenty of other schools and rowing clubs needing a coach, though.”

The Lent or May Bumps races, when the colleges competed against each other—the May Bumps so-called even though held in June—were the payoff to all the training of the previous months. All the going down to the river and hauling the boat in and out of frigid water. All the careful monitoring of the proper intake of protein and fat in the diet. All the single-minded resolve and dedication that could make the difference between exhilarating win or ignominious defeat. St. Just had been a rower for his college, but after twenty years he’d forgotten much of the lingo, and nearly all the pain of training. Only the exhilaration of being on the water, the wind in his hair, and the sun or rain in his eyes, remained in memory.

The coach proved to be a man of indeterminate middle age, his leathery skin criss-crossed with veins and broken blood vessels. He had the permanent squint of a man who’d tried to peer through sheets of downpour far too often.

Their ensuing conversation was punctuated by supportive if ragged cries of “Olly, olly” issuing sporadically from what looked to be a somewhat inebriated group picnicking along the banks. An eight skimmed by, commanded by a tiny cox screaming at top of her lungs: “Come on, you lard-arsed useless buggers! Power ten in two!” St. Just wasn’t sure about the rowers, but that would probably make him row faster.

“You were asking about Sebastian,” said the coach, who had introduced himself as Jason Wright. He paused in his examination of an oar collar. “Now I wondered at that. I wondered a great deal.” Again the squint, as if peering out over fathomless seas, rather than the narrow, snaking River Cam, looking today as placid as a glass of water. “Of course, I know what’s happened over there at St. Mike’s. The whole town is abuzz with it. I will tell you this: Sebastian may not be the most honest kid you’ll ever find, but he’s no killer.”

“All right. But how can you be so sure?”

“I just am. For one thing, he’s not a stupid kid. Spoiled, headstrong, a bit full of himself—yes. But he’ll grow out of those things. Thing is …”

“Yes?”

“It’s a suspicion I’ve had, merely. Things overheard. Young folk, they don’t notice you’re around, so you get to hear things maybe not intended for your ears, right?”

“Go on,” said St. Just.

MAKING A LIST

By early afternoon Monday,
the air had grown muggy, the clouds fat with unshed rain. St. Just and Sergeant Fear were in the CID offices of the police station, slowly recovering from an execrable lunch in the canteen. St. Just thought the police kitchen staff might have something to teach the St. Mike’s chef on how to obtain unusual and nearly inedible cuts of meat.

St. Just had earlier faced down the media, an ordeal he anticipated much like a dental appointment: a necessary and uncomfortable thing to get through so that real life could resume. He had told the reporters as little as he could get away with and then quickly called a halt when questioning wandered into the absurd: “Is it true the police fear a Jack-the-Ripper-type serial killer is on the loose in Cambridge?” (“Absolutely not.”) “Is it true the victim was the love child of the Duke of Edinburgh?” (“You must be joking.”) From where, he wondered, did they get their rubbish? He understood too well the tactic of trying to provoke a reaction so they could fashion a story from his denials. “The detective in charge of the case strongly denies that the victim was pregnant”—thus firmly planting in the public’s mind the idea that she was pregnant and there was a police cover-up afoot.

All was silence now, the members of the media having scuttled off to see what kind of sensation they could create out of no information whatsoever, but as the two policemen had returned from the canteen, a child somewhere in the station’s waiting area had been pitching a tantrum, repeatedly screaming something that sounded to St. Just like “Baba Bear!” He couldn’t see the child, but clearly she had a future in opera. Turning a corner they came upon her, a tiny thing of perhaps three years, crowned with a mop of riotous red curls, living up to her stereotype as a tempestuous redhead. St. Just smiled and the girl, immediately diverted from her sorrows, abandoned the tantrum to eye him closely with a rapt, if moist, regard. Her mother, who had been folded over trying to reason with the child, looked up at St. Just in no little astonishment. Sergeant Fear, who had seen the St. Just effect on children and animals many times, grinned proprietarily. Too bad we can’t clone him and bring him home, he thought.

Now St. Just said to him, “Bring me some coffee, please, Sergeant, and then let’s see what’s turned up here.”

They had retreated to the station to retrieve the reports they’d been told had just come in—reports St. Just wanted to review away from the prying eyes of the college. He had a sense at St. Mike’s of being constantly watched, a sense he attributed partly to the eerie, unblinking gaze of the gargoyles adorning the roofs of the buildings.

He tapped the fingers of one hand against the pile of folders and papers that awaited him on his blotter. St. Just often wondered why he had been issued a blotter, an item normally useful in part to protect the surface of a desk. His desk was so scarred and battered it was hard to imagine what further damage could be done to it, unless someone set it on fire and dropped it from a plane. The same could be said for the station walls, decorated in gray on dark gray, the paint perhaps purchased in a fire sale, and the matching filing cabinets tilted rakishly against one wall.

He grabbed the top item from the stack as Sergeant Fear returned.

“The coffee isn’t ready yet, Sir. I brought you an energy drink for now, instead.”

“Energy drink?”

Cautiously, St. Just accepted the little bottle of drink, as if something so named might explode in his hand. “Pow-Wee,” he saw it was called. Reading the label on the bottle, he noted its contents promised to improve his performance, increase his reaction speed, and enhance his vigilance. Why, he’d have the case solved in no time. He took a tentative sip.

“First things first,” he said. “Ask Brummond to check the call notification settings on Sebastian’s phone. Have Brummond call you right back with his findings. Then I want you to dial Sebastian’s number, while Brummond is still standing there with Sebastian. And I want to hear from Brummond on the result. Got that?”

Fear did as asked. St. Just resumed his reading. Five minutes later, the phone rang. It was Brummond reporting back. St. Just listened, said, “That’s what I thought,” and rang off.

To Sergeant Fear he said, “Next, get William Trinity, the St. Mike’s porter, on the phone for me. I need the results of the locker search.” Once connected, he again listened a few moments, nodding. Again he rang off. Turning to his sergeant, he said:

“Our Sebastian has been funneling booze into the college—one hundred proof or more.”

“He’s a bootlegger?”

“Something like that. He and a few friends have been busy cooking up some kind of hootch in the chemistry lab. I thought something unusual was up with Seb’s cell phone, and I was right. When you dialed Sebastian’s number just now, Brummond couldn’t hear a thing, although the phone was set on ring, not vibrate. You ever hear of the Mosquito, Sergeant?”

Sergeant Fear allowed as he had not.

“It’s a ring tone young people use to put one past the oldies like you and me. It’s a sound that can only be heard by someone under the age of thirty or so. I started to notice how anyone in that age group seemed to be hearing something out of my range, some sudden and irritating noise—Kurokawa Masaki, the kid who was always in the library, for one, as well as some of the kitchen staff. It was how Sebastian and his business associates communicated: the arrival of a shipment, or a customer, or the stage of production—whatever. Sebastian was operating his business mainly out of the boathouse, where there was plenty of storage, and to which he had access at all hours. However, our investigation has been putting a real damper on his trade. Generally, he transported his shipments by boat. It’s extremely good-quality alcohol, says Vice.”

“Well, it is Cambridge, Sir. Think of the kind of equipment he’d have access to.” Fear paused. “Is it really a case for Vice?”

“Not really. I was afraid …” He’d been afraid it was hard drugs. This—this was still not “nice,” it was still dangerous, but … Sergeant Fear seemed to read his mind.

“It’s a little less than hard crime, and a little more than a childish prank. It’s not as if no one ever died from acute alcohol poisoning.”

“Exactly. More or less befitting the supreme lack of judgment you might expect to find in this age group. We can’t ignore it, nor shall we. But right now … ”

St. Just turned his attention again to the stack before him.

“Let’s see,” he said. “Appeals to the public for information have thus far proven fruitless, it would seem—once again, we only seem to attract the deeply insane but it’s too vital a step to skip over. But—” and he pulled out a thick folder, “—this is just in from our stunningly efficient colleagues across the pond. Let’s have a look.” St. Just flipped through the pages for several minutes. “Well, well. Our Texan friend has a little violence in his past, it seems. Something about a shooting … yes, he was out hunting and managed to nip one of his fellow hunters in the earlobe. This sounds familiar, somehow. Didn’t one of their vice-presidents suffer from a similar bad aim? Anyway, the wounded fellow was angry enough about it to press charges. Claimed Augie Cramb aimed for him on purpose. Boundary dispute … something about cows … fences. Looks like Cramb bought his way out of it. Yes, well, it was years ago but something to keep in mind, eh, Sergeant? He might have a hair-trigger temper, as well.”

He reached for the next collection of stapled papers.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dunning, now. Nothing criminal here, unless you count having more money than God criminal, which some do. His seems to be a classic rags-to-riches story. Might be worth making sure the riches part is all above board. She has two children of a seemingly monumental dullness from a previous marriage—both doing something on Wall Street. Hedge funds. Good God. Always makes me think of topiary. Still, if it’s criminal, that’s probably par for the course these days. Not our onion, I shouldn’t think.

“Next up … Ah. Geraldo Valentiano.” He paused, scanning several pages, then said, “This is interesting. He was at Cambridge but at a different college: Selwyn. I wonder why he didn’t think to mention that? Again, pots of money, but he seems to have been born to it. A parent in the shipping business who makes Aristotle Onassis look like a tuna boat captain. In fact, I’d say there’s considerably less money now than when Geraldo was born to it. What do you think, Sergeant? Recreational drug use? Gambling debts? He’s certainly the louche type to be found haunting the casinos, and he admits being in debt to Lexy. Have an ask-around, will you, to see how far in debt he really is? As to drugs … well, I saw no signs of anything like addiction.”

“I’d say he’s too mindful of his own skin to let himself get hooked,” said Sergeant Fear.

“And I would agree with you. Still, if he’s in the trade, it’s easy to end up on the wrong end of a drug deal, and lose money where the idea was to make money. God knows there’s a market for that kind of thing around the University. It helps keep Vice in business.”

Sergeant Fear’s mobile erupted just then in a blast of Ride of the Valkyries.

St. Just looked over at his flustered Sergeant, who appeared to be trying to pat his heart back into place.

“Emma?” St. Just asked mildly. One of Emma’s many talents was for programming her father’s mobile until all the combined forces of the police IT department could not de-program it. Her parents suspected their preternaturally precocious child was using nursery school as a cover for replicating the Manhattan Project.

“It’s my wife. She’ll be wanting to know when I’m coming home tonight.” St. Just shrugged at the implied question; Sergeant Fear sent the call into voicemail as St. Just drew another sheaf of papers towards him. It was a thin sheaf this time.

“Tell your family I’m sorry,” said St. Just, “but needs must.” His forehead creased in a distracted frown. “Wasn’t there something about a disguise in the Ride of the Valkyries?”

Sergeant Fear shrugged: Beats me. St. Just was not an opera fan, either, but something about the song triggered a memory of impersonations or substitutions. He’d have to look it up.

In need of a pencil, he began tugging at the left drawer of his desk. It always behaved as if it were permanently welded shut; St. Just had learned through trial and error it could only be opened by using an initial sharp downward pressure followed by a mighty tug, all this combined with a great deal of swearing. Sergeant Fear, used to this performance and knowing better than to intervene, stood by quietly observing. The curses, it seemed, had to be in a certain order, like an incantation. Eventually the drawer, with a screech and a groan, flew out of its opening, flipped out of St. Just’s hands, and landed with a resounding thud on the floor, spilling most of its contents. An exasperated St. Just decided to leave it for now. At least he had his pencil.

“Now here we have Sebastian Burrows,” he continued. “Not a lot here, but of course, he hasn’t been with us on the planet all that long, either.” St. Just unfolded a piece of paper that proved to be a news clipping in which Sebastian was identified as James’ son. “Now, we know that’s not precisely true. A little more digging called for there.” He held up an official document. “Birth certificate. He was born Sebastian Augustus Windwell Burrows. The date on the certificate fits with what we know of India’s adventures at the college.”

He pulled a foolscap folder towards him and peeked inside.

“Sir James Bassett and his lady wife, India.” He riffled through the papers. “Member of the Hawks’ Club, et cetera. That’s right—as I recall he was wearing the Club tie. Captained the University’s Hare and Hounds Club.”