Dying on Principle (16 page)

‘Had one last year. By the way, d'you need any jabs for Australia?'

‘They may be descendants of the riff-raff, dear, but they're quite civilised now. I understand they even have running water.'

‘Nothing at all?'

‘Yellow fever. That's if
you
come from a country where yellow fever is endemic. Haven't had too many outbreaks in Birmingham recently so you should be safe. Australia, eh? I thought you teachers were supposed to be hard up. I'll fix you an appointment for that leg – about four fifteen? Shouldn't miss any classes at this time of the year, eh?'

I set off across Balden Road again.

This time the car that stopped was entirely familiar, and Chris slowed it quietly and undramatically, pulling up about three inches from the kerb. If he stood arms akimbo, it was momentarily.

‘OK,' I said. ‘Coffee for two.'

While he made it, I made a couple of phone calls to explain why I'd be in late. When I called la Cavendish I didn't mention the knee. Just that I was helping the police with their inquiries. The expression on Chris's face when he returned suggested he might have overheard.

‘What I can't believe,' he said, ‘is that you can't remember anything. You, of all people. Go on, you should keep that leg supported. All the way along.'

I reclined on the sofa and pulled a face. ‘It was my fault, Chris. Just carelessness. I suppose I don't like remembering being a fool. What's the matter? What nasty little thought is polluting your mind?'

He shrugged. He looked round for something I could use as a table, but failed. He compromised eventually by reaching for a dining chair and plonking my coffee mug on that, just out of reach. He noticed immediately and shifted it closer.

‘Biscuit?' he said, heading for the kitchen.

‘Not for me. I'm not going to be able to exercise off extra calories for a bit.' But I took one when he brought them.

‘What make of car was it?' he asked casually.

‘It must have been an old one,' I said, ‘mustn't it? After all, most modern ones have lowish bonnets, and this was high enough for me to vault on. Probably still got my hand print on it.

‘Would it show?'

‘Probably. On dark-blue paint – Chris, what are you up to?'

He shook his head. ‘So, was it particularly dirty?'

‘Dusty. And the idiot had those go-faster stripes down the side. And Escort in large letters. As if he needed to announce the fact … Mark Two Escorts are pretty easy to identify. Easier than the bloke, Chris. Truly I don't remember anything about him, except he was one of those irritating types who need to hold their roof on. Drive with the left hand, beat devil's tattoos on the roof through the open driver's window,' I explained.

‘So you saw his hands. What about his fingernails? Rings?'

I shook my head. ‘I'm trying too hard now. Let it simmer a little longer. Why the interest, Chris?'

He looked embarrassed.

‘There was a cycle accident I never told you about,' I said. ‘I got knocked on to a load of refuse sacks. Full, smelly refuse sacks.'

‘All the better for bouncing on.'

‘Lots of bad drivers in Brum,' I said hopefully.

‘Oh, the place is renowned for them,' he agreed. ‘But I suspect that, despite your well-known charm and tact, you may have annoyed someone, Sophie.'

I certainly annoyed Mrs Cavendish. Not because I had missed any classes but because I inhabited the same planet. She summoned me to her desk as soon as I got in, and I stood before her, just as I'd once stood in front of my secondary-school head teacher accused of the awful crime of playing cricket with the lads. Girls were supposed to stick to rounders, you see. Now, as then, I found I could keep my temper by thinking about something else. And the cricket season was just beginning.

‘The
police
, Miss Rivers? It seems to me that you spend an unreasonable amount of your time with the police.'

‘How infinitely superior to spending it with criminals,' I said, dead-pan.

I'd meant simply to be madly insolent, but I was rewarded by the expression on her face.

‘What are you implying?' she asked at last.

‘No more, Mrs Cavendish, than
you
were implying.' I smiled with implausible sweetness. ‘Now, how can I help you?'

‘I wish to remind you that you are not allowed simply to appear at whatever time seems to suit you. You are extremely late.'

‘I telephoned my principal to explain,' I said. Mr Worrall had been only vaguely sympathetic; he probably realised I was calling him to protect my back.

I think she missed the pronoun.

‘I took no call from you. And Mr Blake is not in his office this morning.'

‘Another conference? Tell me, Mrs Cavendish, with a convenient centre just next door, why do Muntz's staff keep waltzing off to the Mondiale to chat? Must be pretty expensive.'

‘We are able to negotiate preferential rates.'

I was enjoying this. It was a long time since I'd been able to bait anyone into betraying far more than they wanted.

‘Oh, is Muntz like that Welsh water company, buying shares in hotels? This must be a benefit of incorporation the FEFC hadn't anticipated.' Thank goodness for William Murdock's principal and his useful acronyms.

Mrs Cavendish went pale. What on earth had I hit on?

The phone saved her. While she picked it up, I looked around me, apparently casual. I'd left my stick outside, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of seeing me limp. After these few minutes on my feet the throbbing was becoming more insistent, but I soon found an excellent analgesic: two or three files stamped
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
. They all bore the new George Muntz logo. I couldn't, of course, pick them up and read through them, but I couldn't resist reading the neatly printed headings. ‘College without Walls' – that was quite a thick one. Then there was ‘Newtown Site'. The top two almost obscured the third, but I could still make out the word ‘
Provence
'. If Mrs Cavendish would turn only an inch further from me, I could shift them to one side. ‘Provence'? Not the sort of thing I'd expect to see as a file heading in a traditional further-education college.

I glanced at her; dare I risk it? But her eyes were already on me.

‘I assure you,' she was saying, ‘that resting a throat with tonsillitis will only make it worse.'

At the other end of the line someone expostulated.

‘There are several proprietary treatments, and failing that you should be able to obtain an antibiotic from your general practitioner.'

The distant voice interrupted her, but she soon overrode it. ‘All the classrooms have overhead projectors: I suggest you occupy your lunchtime making appropriate transparencies.'

She put down the receiver and, putting her fingertips together in an unbelievably complacent gesture, smiled up at me. ‘I don't believe I need detain you any longer, Miss Rivers: I understand you have a great deal of work to do on a project that is already behind schedule.'

She contrived to make it sound as if it was my fault that my colleagues had been absent and thus, in her book, slacking. This time I did not bite, but smiled in what I hoped was a disturbingly enigmatic way. ‘Don't worry, Mrs Cavendish. I'm way ahead on most of my other work.'

I always liked neat Parthian shots. But I've often been forced to regret them.

Someone had been in my office. I was sure of it. I told myself it must have been the cleaners, that to suppose anything else was mere fantasy, and settled to the more pressing problem of how to arrange my office to accommodate the game leg. Using my inverted stick as a hook, I manoeuvred the waste bin alongside the desk, and was just arranging the phone book and Yellow Pages across the top, knowing they would fall in if I shifted them a fraction off line, when someone scratched at the door.

Before I could answer, Phil pushed his head round and raised his finger ostentatiously to his lips. Then he beckoned me into the corridor.

‘Have you found anything?' I whispered.

‘Like I was saying, just you follow me.'

I hopped back for my stick, and then followed him down the corridor. I'd have loved to use the lift, but Phil legged it briskly down the stairs, so I had perforce to follow. He led me out into the car park. It was becoming a pleasant day, with the clouds beginning to thin.

‘Walls have ears,' he said tersely. Then, as if noticing my limp for the first time, he grabbed my elbow to help propel me towards a bench. This was another reminder of the differences between George Muntz and poor William Murdock: if we'd ever had any benches they'd long since been vandalised into extinction. George Muntz had the sort of teak benches with wide, slatted seats that I associated with National Trust gardens. Phil had chosen to grab my left arm, so he was no use at all as support and the pace he set made me fear for the other leg too. I arrived at the bench with more haste than dignity.

‘You should keep that up,' he said. ‘If you let it sag, it'll swell up worse.'

So I had to recline like an overdressed Cleopatra while Phil first paced before me like a humble suitor, then, gathering his courage, perched on what space was left by my legs. ‘Like I was saying, can't be too careful. You never know, do you?'

‘Know what?'

‘I was telling you, you can't trust people. Not these days. Electronics,' he said darkly.

I nodded. Then shook my head for good measure. ‘You found something, then?'

‘Could be something, could be nothing. Got past the password, into the list of suppliers, anyway.'

‘Anything interesting?'

‘Well, like I said Sunday, ever since I've been here, and that wasn't yesterday, I don't mind telling you, we've been to the same firm for our computers. Them dear old BBCs, your Amstrads, everything. And now we don't. Since Christmas or thereabouts. And you'll recall I said I thought the name of the new suppliers would be on Her Nibs's files.'

I nodded.

‘Well, it was. So now we know where we've been getting them since Christmas.'

‘And where do we get them from now?'

‘Firm I've never heard of. PRT Computers.'

‘You wouldn't have their address?'

‘Only for e-mail.' He passed me a slip of paper.

Resisting the urge to memorise the message and swallow the paper, I thrust it instead deep into my jeans' front pocket.

‘Like I was saying, doesn't do to hang around,' he said, scrambling to his feet. He hovered awkwardly, ready, no doubt, to hoist me to the vertical. I preferred to do it under my own steam.

We walked less urgently back to the main entrance. The sun was now fully out, and was giving everything a summer's glow of wellbeing. The cars in the management spaces were sleek, newly cleaned and polished, and someone with a sense of humour had parked them with consecutive numbers side by side.

I stopped. ‘Tell me, Phil, am I seeing things?'

He shook his head. ‘What sort of things?'

‘Things like four Saabs in a row.'

‘They're company cars, Sophie. Now we're a corporation we have to have proper cars.'

I glanced at him; I couldn't tell from his tone whether he was being ironic.

‘Quite an investment in corporate identity,' I said. These weren't bottom-of-the-range models, either.

‘Chief Executive; Deputy Chief Executive; Assistant Principal, Support Services; Assistant Principal, Financial Services,' Phil read off the newly painted boards over each parking space.

‘Are they really doing enough mileage to justify communal cars?'

‘Bless you, they're not communal. They've got one each.'

‘They take them home each night?'

‘You wouldn't expect them to walk, now would you? Not to Knowle and Lichfield and Stratford.'

‘No. But I'd expect them to use their own cars! Unless they plan to buy me a bike,' I added, to lighten Phil's frown.

Before I returned to my room, I called in to Polly's. The door was closed, but she opened it to my knock. The sunlight flooding into the room behind her made it impossible to see her face until we were both in the room. And then I was afraid I might know the answer to my question: ‘Any news of Tom Hendry, Polly?'

She nodded. ‘Another attack last night. He's still alive. May pull through. But it'll be a long job, and he was one of those who signed the new contract.'

‘The one the Trevelyan woman signed?' To my shame I couldn't remember her first name. Or had I ever known it? ‘The one with limited sick leave?'

‘That's the one. A bugger, isn't it?' she said, slamming her fist hard on her filing cabinet.

‘Have you heard anything about her? Is she still bad?'

‘Ena?' She covered her mouth, guiltily. ‘You know, I'd completely forgotten about her. I know there was a collection, and I've an idea she's still in the Queen Elizabeth. Jesus, fancy forgetting that!'

I pointed to the filing cabinet. ‘You've had enough to worry about. There's no sign of the missing files, I suppose?'

‘As it happens, yes. I found them in a pile at the top of the stairs. Weird. Very weird.'

Despite a lingering sense of unease, I worked hard for the rest of the day. I managed to din some ideas into my GCSE class, who were clearly as tired of me as I was of them, and then dug into the project, making the sort of progress that leaves you pleasantly tired. I was in fact enjoying myself so much I almost forgot my physio appointment. I looked at my watch: four already. There was no way I could walk into Harborne that briskly, not in my present condition. I blushed at the thought of catching a bus for only four stops, but headed for the 103 bus stop anyway. This time the driver waited for me with great courtesy, and waited for me to clutch the grab handles before pulling gently away.