Deep breath. In the bottom of her bag was a multitool for rigging rowing boats. She had never picked a lock before, but it couldn’t be that hard, surely?
Erykah flicked out the mini nail file on the multitool and jammed it in the slot. It turned slightly, but the tumblers were still stuck fast. She needed something to tease them out. She reached into her hair and extracted a slender hairpin. Straightened, it slid in above the mini file. The tip of the hairpin raked across a series of what felt like bumps. Now what? She was trying to figure out what to do next when she heard footsteps coming round the corner.
‘Hello?’ the man asked as he approached. ‘Can I help you?’ He pushed a pair of wire frame glasses up his nose.
Erykah spun round and backed up against the doorknob. She smiled widely, hoping to distract him while getting her tools out of the lock behind her back. ‘Hi! I’m here to meet Professor Schofield,’ she trilled. The file was stuck fast in there now – she pried at the multitool, but the angle was awkward and it wouldn’t pull free.
‘Schofield?’ the man said with an odd look on his face. He might have been mid-thirties, possibly, but dressed like a pensioner. His sloped shoulders and squinted eyes spoke of someone who had spent most hours of his adult life staring at a computer screen. The sort of man who, if a book fell off a shelf and landed on him, would have apologised to the book.
She put on her most cooperative smile. ‘This is his office, right? It says he’s out? Maybe I could . . . harummmccckkkkk . . .’ Erykah coughed to try to cover the noise, tugging rather hard now on the file. ‘. . . leave him a message?’
‘You have an appointment with him?’
‘I’m an old colleague . . . Hraaaackkkk . . .’ She coughed again, a deep, alveoli-wracking rattle to cover the sound of shaking the handle as hard as she could. To her great relief, the file slid free. She palmed the multitool and hairpin with one hand and smoothed her hair with the other. ‘I mean, an old friend. I’m an old friend.’
‘And you didn’t hear? About his disappearance.’
Erykah held a hand to her chest in mock surprise. ‘What? Damian?’ she said. ‘God, I hope Sheila and the kids are OK.’
The man gulped. ‘I’m Peter Graves. Interim head of the department since – since the incident.’ His hand fluttered out in the direction of her shoulder, failed to land, and retreated back his pocket. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Oh my God,’ Erykah said and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. ‘I was in town for the day and thought I might drop in, that’s all. It’s been years . . .’ She took a deep breath. ‘When did it happen?’
‘Last month,’ Peter said. ‘It was all over the papers.’
‘I was away,’ Erykah said. ‘At the Weybridge Head.’ It was a pointless lie, but she felt she had to say something.
Peter nodded. He had no idea what the Weybridge Head was. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘I didn’t say. It’s – it’s Sarah,’ she said and held out her hand. ‘Sarah Miller.’ His handshake was limp and clammy.
‘I’ll be sure to pass on your regards, Mrs Miller.’
‘Thank you so much,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t suppose . . . I mean, do you mind telling me what happened?’
‘He just disappeared, according to his family,’ Peter lowered his voice. ‘Met police are speculating it was a suicide. Been in all the papers.’
Erykah clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘But why?’
‘The pressure, maybe,’ Peter said. ‘There had been a sexual harassment accusation.’ His low voice and shrug told Erykah that Peter did not believe that to be a serious claim. ‘Or maybe it was that he hadn’t had anything published in years. He had been hinting he was working on something big, and then . . . well, nothing. You’re only as good as your last work, you know.’
‘How dreadful,’ Erykah said. If the press had already been and gone, though, there might not be anything in the office left worth finding. ‘You must have had reporters all over.’
‘They tried,’ Peter said. ‘We had one girl from the
Mail
removed from the premises by police. They caught her trying to crawl in a window. Unfortunately for her, it was the window of the building’s security director.’
‘Horrors!’ She was aware of how fake her expressions were now, but Peter didn’t seem to have caught on. ‘How dare they. What a pack of jackals.’
‘Some of them, sure,’ Peter said. ‘Although, there was a radio journalist I used to see around the department quite a bit, but she didn’t come by after he disappeared and I think she was working on something with Damian. Livvy, Livia, something like that. She knew how to keep respectful limits. London Chat, I think it was? Can’t say the same of her profession in general.’
‘And the police have already been?’
Peter nodded. ‘They interviewed everyone in the department. None of us had much to tell them.’
‘Wow, how terrible for you,’ she simpered. ‘I bet they turned the place upside down.’
‘Oh no, they only took a few interviews then left,’ Peter said. ‘Schofield was very secretive about his work, and had been working from home after the accusations surfaced. That was how they found the suicide note a few days later.’
‘This must be a difficult time for you as well.’
‘A little,’ Peter said. ‘Though I wouldn’t have said we were close. We’re poles apart, really; Schofield is an applied geology man whereas I run with the planetary soil composition crew.’ He cleared his throat. ‘None of the department is involved, naturally.’
‘No, of course not,’ Erykah said. She checked her watch. What would be perfect now was a distraction, some pretext for moving Dr Dull out of her way. She might not have another chance to get in the office. ‘Anyway, I should go. I’m so sorry. Sorry to bother you.’
Peter nodded. ‘No, I’m sorry, you couldn’t have known.’
She spun on her heel and took a step. She slipped her phone out of a pocket and dialled the department number, then turned back. Down the hall, a muffled phone started ringing. Erykah snuck her mobile back in her bag and smiled, turning back to Peter. ‘You know, this may sound awkward but I loaned Damian a book ages ago. Could I just pop my head in and have a look?’
Peter’s eyes, panicked, looked down the hall towards the sound of the ringing phone and back at Erykah. ‘Ah, that’s my office phone,’ he said.
‘You should get that before they hang up.’ She snuck a look down into her bag where her phone, set to silent, kept dialling the number.
He looked panicked. ‘Sorry, yes,’ Peter said. ‘I’ll be a minute.’
‘Can I just grab the book while you do that? It’ll only take a moment and I have a train to catch,’ Erykah said.
‘Yes, yes.’ Peter pulled a keychain from his pocket. He tried a couple of keys before jiggling the handle open. ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ he said. Erykah smiled and watched as he disappeared down the hallway.
The office smelled of dust and old paper, a warm and not unpleasant odour, like a library. As far as she could see it looked untouched, only the slight disorganisation of someone in their own office, not the massive mess that surely would have been left if the police had been in searching for clues.
She poked around the shelves and tables. There were a few framed photographs of Professor Schofield in decades past, when he was a keen mountain climber. He didn’t look the kind to prey on young students – but then, it was always the ones you least suspected, wasn’t it? Odd that detail hadn’t made it into the press. One photo was much more recent, of Schofield receiving an award from Lionel Brant. And a map of an offshore region of Argentina, where Schofield had started his career in oil exploration.
The desk was a jumble of papers. Stacks of folders and notes were piled up and in disarray. There were a couple of word-search puzzle books, the kind you picked up in train stations to pass the time, turned over to mark the page he had been working on. Erykah smiled as she recognised a fellow puzzle fiend.
If Schofield had an appointment book, there was no sign of one. But on a whiteboard next to the door she spotted a fresh-looking scribble. There was a date and a time, next to the initials LL. Could that be Lady Livia, the name the Major had accidentally revealed? Peter had mentioned Schofield was working with a journalist on a project, so maybe this was the same person. If they kept that meeting, she had been to see him only two days before he disappeared. During the winter break when the building would have been deserted. So Peter was wrong – Schofield had been in his office, but was probably trying to avoid others in the department knowing that he was there. There was no way to take the board with her, so she snapped a photo of it with her phone. Good. It was a start.
There was also an ancient computer – one of those big cream-coloured boxes from the ’90s. Sitting on top of the keyboard were three red notebooks and a folder stuffed with printouts. Was this the last thing he had been writing? A pencil rested on top of the papers and a thin film of dust had settled over the lot.
She shook the computer mouse a couple of times and was surprised to see the monitor flicker back on. It went straight to a password screen. Might as well try and guess it, right? She typed in ‘password’. No luck. Then ‘Schofield’. Nothing.
She looked around the room. What would be memorable to this man? His wife’s name? A child? Did he have a dog, or a favourite band? Her eyes alighted on a silver-framed photo collage. Pictures of llamas on rocky outcrops, the broad bay of some unknown city with jagged mountains behind. One photo tucked in the corner. Schofield smiled into the camera from a snowy mountain path in Argentina. The summit ridge behind him was steep with bare rock showing through. Coils of rope hung over one shoulder and an ice axe rested on the ground next to his boots and crampons. At the bottom was a caption picked out in white lettering: Guanaco.
Erykah tapped it in and watched the screen kick back to life.
The Internet browser window was still on the department’s homepage. She clicked down the menu and found the browsing history – completely empty. Odd. As if it had been emptied, in fact. There was no time to go through his locally stored files, but the dates showed nothing being accessed in the month before his disappearance. Which meant either what she was after had never been here, or someone else had been in weeks ago and already cleaned it out.
She had the strangest feeling, as if she was standing in someone’s tomb. Nothing she had seen explained why the Major would be interested in this man, or why he would need to get into this office. Was Schofield someone who also tried to make a deal with the SLU somehow, and then . . . Erykah swallowed uncomfortably. Would someone else be doing this to her, in a few weeks’ time? She needed to know what it was she was getting for the Major before she handed anything over to him. The recording she had made in the coffee shop was some insurance, but not enough. And if he wouldn’t tell her what was really going on she would have to figure it out herself.
She shook her head. There was no time to think about that, not right now.
Erykah’s gaze settled on the desk phone. If no one had been in, could his last call be connected to the disappearance? She picked up the receiver and dialled 1471 to find out what the last incoming number was. An outside number – she scribbled it on the top of the papers before stuffing the whole lot into her handbag. An unopened bottle of water was next to it. She grabbed that for later. Spying was thirsty work.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway behind her. She switched off the monitor so it wouldn’t be obvious she had just been using the computer.
‘Was it anything important?’ she said when Peter reappeared with a coffee cup in his hand.
‘Was what important?’ he said, a bit confused. ‘Oh, the phone! No one there. Must have seen one of those telesales calls,’ he said. ‘Find what you needed?’ Peter tried to casually lean against the doorway, but his stiffly affected manner was of someone who never leaned against anything, casually or otherwise.
She grabbed a volume off the nearest shelf. ‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘I’ll be heading off now.’
‘You read Russian?’ he asked.
Erykah looked at the paperback she had grabbed. ‘Oh, uh, yes,’ she said. The writing was entirely in Cyrillic script. Great. It looked like some sort of conference proceedings, though for all she knew it could have been the Book of Mormon. ‘I mean, da. I mean I have to go now,’ she smiled, and squeezed past him in the doorway.
‘Do svidaniya!’ Peter said. ‘Goodbye!’
Erykah looked back and half waved. ‘Yeah, sure. I mean, da! I mean byeeeee!’ she trilled. She headed straight downstairs and out of the building as fast as she could.
At the bottom of the stairs she turned and walked out of the double glass doors. She paused. There was an old Mercedes, engine running, in a bay clearly marked
LOADING AND TAXIS ONLY
. She should have figured the Major would put those two goons on her tail.
Erykah fingered the edge of the files stashed in her bag. If she was going to try to figure out what was going on herself, she needed some time to look through the papers. But how?
Erykah hung back on the edge of a group of students milling by the doors and pretended to peruse flyers and announcements pinned to a notice board outside. She stole glances over to where the car was standing. Seminole Billy’s lips were moving but she was too far away to hear what was going on. Probably talking to Buster in the boot. He didn’t seem to have seen her, not yet.
The building had to have a back exit somewhere. Erykah followed a group of students back inside where the friendly security guard waved her through again. She stopped and put a hand gently on his forearm. ‘Is there a loo on this floor?’ she asked.
‘Through the fire doors, by the stairwell,’ he smiled.
‘Thank you.’ Erykah walked away as quickly as she could. Through the double doors a corridor went two ways. One side to the men’s and women’s toilets, another to a door marked
Deliveries: Authorised Personnel Only
. She was relieved to see that no lock picking would be required; someone had left it propped open.
Erykah walked through and found herself in a bare concrete room strewn with trolleys and pallets. The doors on the far side exited out into a loading bay. She broke into a run, clutching the bag to her chest. If she crossed the university quad and out the other side, she could be on the Tube before Billy and Buster realised she was gone.