The Turning Tide (20 page)
Erykah looked up from the pavement on the Euston Road to the brutal slabs of the British Library. It would do as well as anywhere. Better, even.
She put her handbag into a locker and slipped the files from Schofield’s office into a clear plastic bag with a fresh notebook and pencil bought in the gift shop. The plastic bag was meant to prevent thieves making off with any priceless books – and it was also a subtle badge of honour that marked out cardholding users of the Library from mere tourists.
Erykah gazed up at the vast column of books encased in panels of glass that rose like a spine from the lower basements through the atrium and onward to the highest floors. Its reassuring solidity seemed to bear up the whole building, and everything that took place within it.
She loved to watch the hushed scholars meandering thoughtfully from reading room to reading room. Her own reader’s card, gleaned from the Library back when she was a student, was dutifully renewed every year. There hadn’t been many times in the last two decades that she had a need for the Library, but it was comforting to know it was still there.
She winkled the card out of her wallet as she approached the reading room. It reminded her of the time Rab had seen one of the renewal notices in the post and laughed at her. ‘What’s that, for reading your women’s magazines?’ he had said. He said it in that way where it was impossible to react correctly: if she pointed out he had been mean, he would laugh and tell her he was only kidding. Banter. So she said nothing, but knew that he really meant it.
As far as she could tell, Seminole Billy and Buster hadn’t come back to follow her, nor had they tailed her here. And even if they had, well, so what? She doubted they would be able to get in the building, much less find her inside.
Erykah entered the Humanities II room. It was a large room with row upon row of old wooden desks. Users who needed a book from the counter could submit requests on computer terminals, along with the number of the desk they were at, and a little light would pop on there when the order was ready to collect. It was a wonderfully antique system, crashing up against modern designs, much like the building itself.
Erykah found a desk in a quiet corner and spread out the files and Schofield’s notebooks and her own in front of her. She took a deep breath and tried to compose her thoughts. First, the questions: why was the Major so interested in this Schofield person’s disappearance? Maybe he held the key to who was behind the
SLU
. If she could figure out what the connection was, maybe she could turn the tables firmly in her favour.
The notebooks from Schofield’s office were bound in heavy, glued canvas and card. Inside, each page had a number stamped in the upper corner – the kind of lab notebooks that were once commonplace in university departments. These days students and staff alike avoided them in favour of computer records. With notebooks like these ones, though, you couldn’t just rip out a page or delete an email and pretend nothing had happened. She flipped through to check; no pages seemed to be missing.
Erykah carefully dated the upper right corner of the first page of her fresh notebook. Job one: find out what he had been working on when he disappeared.
Professor Schofield had been a thorough and careful note taker, but the contents of his notebooks were as dry as a lecture: summaries of papers he was reading, notes from meetings with postgrads – and nothing dated past when he disappeared.
There were scratches in the margin that looked as if he’d been trying out missing letters from crossword clues. She smiled at the familiar habit and even recognised one or two from the Christmas papers. She noted with satisfaction that he was also a pen user, rather than scribbling tentatively in pencil. There were little grids of letters that seemed to spell nothing, maybe trying out other clues, or anagrams? He was someone who was good at puzzles. Better even than she was.
As she flipped through one of Schofield’s magazines, a single paper floated out.
Erykah snatched it up from the floor. It was a solid grid of letters, carefully written in neat capitals, covering one side of an A4 sheet. Another word search? But no obvious phrases or patterns jumped out – maybe something he was working on in his spare time, a challenge to himself.
The rest of the papers were free of any useful details. Three notebooks, and all she had found so far was a phone number and that the guy liked crosswords. It wasn’t much to go on. It was hardly anything.
Fresh air. She needed something to clear her mind. She collected her bag from the locker room and went out to the courtyard, where other readers took their breaks.
The brick quadrangle was marked up with pale stone grid lines like a sheet of graph paper, like a crossword square. She paced back and forth and tried to think of what to do next.
Erykah switched her phone on and browsed the news.
Media Mouse Unmasked!
shouted a headline. She tapped to read more. According to a commentator, a ‘linguistic analysis’ of Media Mouse’s tweets proved it was not run by a single person, but was a group account – most likely shared between staffers of the
SLU
, he claimed.
Erykah looked at the black-and-white photo of the writer. The long face and designer stubble of a middle-aged man wearing an incongruous leather bomber scowled back. She laughed out loud. Now here was a public schoolboy trying to act the tough man, probably with visions of James Bond dancing in his head. According to his bio he was a writer as well. She scrolled down to find out what books he had written, but none of the names were familiar. She couldn’t have said whether his so-called linguistic analysis was legit or not. But she knew enough about his kind by now to spot a fake a mile away. Leather jacket or no leather jacket, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes where she grew up.
It didn’t matter whether he was right, anyway. The papers didn’t care. Something had to fill the news cycle. Comment writers weren’t reporters; they could fill their columns with half-baked opinions and pure speculation. She recognised the formula from when Grayson was on trial. If they had no new leads, they would run old ones. If they didn’t have old leads, they would just make it up. If the press were ever proved wrong all they would have to do – at most – was print a tiny apology on a back page months later.
And it was a reassuring theory for the media class – that the anonymous person they sought was a prank, and possibly even one of their own. If this guy’s Media Mouse theory was right, well, no big deal. But if it was wrong, then there was probably a person somewhere, reading the same made-up claim. A person who was possibly just starting to realise how opportunistic and venal the press could be once they got their claws into a story.
Her hunch, though, was that he was wrong, and that the press were following the wrong strand of the story entirely. She thought about the number from Schofield’s phone. Was that LL’s number? Or someone else’s? She did a quick reverse search on the number but nothing came up in the listings. Probably best not to ring it until she knew more. She would leave that until she was more certain of who – or what – might be waiting on the other end.
Erykah tried a quick Internet search for the words Livia, journalist, and
LCC
but came up blank. No sign of her on social media anywhere, either. Bit unusual for a journalist these days. Especially if, as Peter had said, she was young. Maybe she should call the station and probe gently?
A man answered the call. ‘London Chat Central,’ he said.
‘Hello, could you put me through to Livia’s department please?’ She put on her most harassed voice and hoped that would make the absence of a surname less obvious.
‘No one by that name here,’ the man said.
‘Are you sure?’ Erykah said. ‘She’s a journalist with
LCC
.’
The man on the other end chuckled. ‘I’ve been head of security for ten years,’ he said. ‘If there was anyone by that name in the building, I’d know ’em.’
‘Ah. I’m sorry. Just . . . are you sure? Maybe a freelancer?’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sounds to me like someone’s given you a fake name as a wind-up.’
‘Oh. Sorry to bother you, then.’
‘No problem,’ the man said, and Erykah rang off.
There was a coffee kiosk at the far side of the quadrangle. Maybe a drink would help. It was frustrating – so far, she could see no connection to Scotland Liberal Unionists or the Major, and in fact no connection between Schofield and anything important at all. The papers he was reading contained a few titbits on Scottish oil field exploration but nothing to suggest an ongoing or significant interest on Schofield’s part. As far as Erykah could see the man had nothing else of interest going in in his life. Nothing to hide, apart from the harassment allegations. But she knew there was no point trying to chase that up; no amount of sweet-talking in the world should be able to prise the name of the alleged victim out of the university offices. The phone number, the one piece of information she had, came to nothing. And the Major would want the files off her as soon as possible.
The barista behind the counter looked up from her notebook and nodded at Erykah. ‘Coffee?’ she said. A nametag said the barista’s name was Chloe.
‘Mmm, maybe something a little lighter on the caffeine,’ Erykah said. ‘How about a pot of tea? Earl Grey.’
‘Coming right up,’ Chloe said. The whoosh, whoosh of a rapid-boil tap pierced the hush of the library courtyard. Erykah watched her sprinkle out a careful measure of loose leaves into a strainer, balance it on a ceramic pot, and pour the hot water. The citrus scent of bergamot wafted over. The barista carefully arranged the pot and teacup on a small tray, with a little cup of heated milk. Erykah paid and dropped her change into the tip jar.
‘What are you working on?’ she asked Chloe, who had been poring over what looked like a Valentine card.
‘Oh, this,’ she said and rolled her eyes. ‘My girlfriend sent me a card on Valentine’s Day. Only she’s written it in a language I don’t understand and I’ve checked out every book on languages I can find but it’s in none of them.’
‘Let me see,’ Erykah said, and Chloe turned the card and notebook towards her and squinted at the squiggly script. ‘I bet that’s not a different language at all,’ she said. ‘It’s not a real alphabet.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It looks like it’s written in English, but she’s made up her own symbols instead of letters,’ she said. ‘Each one of these corresponds to a letter of the alphabet, so all you have to do is replace symbols with the appropriate letters.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Chloe smiled. ‘I’ve been trying to figure it out for days and so far nothing.’
‘Well, you try to find a word that you think could be something you recognise. That should get you started decoding it.’ Erykah scanned the content of the card inscription. ‘Like here,’ she said, and pointed to two words written in code right at the end. ‘There’s a four-letter word, a comma, and then a six-letter word. She’s probably signed the message, so the four-letter word could be “love”, and the six-letter word – is your girlfriend’s name six letters long?’
Chloe paused a moment then nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, it’s Alicia,’ she said.
‘A-L-I-C-I-A?’ Erykah asked. Chloe nodded. ‘Then look – on the six-letter word, the symbol for the third and fifth letters is the same.’
‘That means it must be an I,’ Chloe said. ‘So if the first position in the four-letter word and the second in the six-letter word are the same . . .’
‘Which they are,’ Erykah nodded.
‘That means that symbol is an L! Cool! Now I get it. Thank you.’ She grinned and started subbing in the letters I and L elsewhere in the message. ‘Here, have a ginger biscuit,’ she said. Erykah started to refuse, but Chloe insisted she have it for free.
‘Happy to help,’ Erykah said and started walking off with the tea. Suddenly, she stopped. A Valentine in code? That was it! How could she have missed it?
If you had secrets to keep and didn’t want to get your family involved, you would keep everything at your office.
If you thought someone might go looking for those secrets, you would write them in a code.
If you were the sort of person who preferred notebooks to computers, you would write it on paper.
And if you were the sort of person who enjoyed figuring out puzzles – you would make the code yourself.
That was why there had been nothing on his computer. It wasn’t wiped at all. There was nothing there because there never had been. She hurried back to the reading room. At the desk she snatched the handwritten block of text off the top of the papers. These were no random letters, no idle pastime lurking among more important work notes and papers. It was a message in code. Only there were no word breaks, so there were no obvious keys to use. Still, this was a breakthrough. Now she had her way in.
Erykah checked her watch. Damn. It had been three hours already. No doubt Billy would have reported her disappearance to the Major. She decided to walk: it wasn’t raining, and anyway, she needed some time in the fresh air. The solid rhythm of mornings on the river at Molesey had once provided the ideal metronome for getting into a flow. Without it, she needed something else to stretch her legs and gather her thoughts.
She arrived at the Major’s door and was buzzed up. Heart pounding, she mounted the stairs two at a time, ready to make excuses for her late arrival. Erykah burst into the front room of the tiny office where she was curtly informed by his secretary that he wasn’t there. ‘He’s out all afternoon on business,’ Wilma said, clattering away on her typewriter.
‘What kind of business?’
‘Personal business.’ The contempt dripping from her voice told Erykah all she needed to know.
‘
Personal
business?’ Erykah smiled. This was better than she had expected. Perfect, in fact.
‘I can leave him a message if you like,’ Wilma said. ‘Mrs Macdonald.’
‘Do you know what? It’s fine, I don’t need to see him. Just be sure to let him know I came by to drop off a few things,’ Erykah said, and indicated her bag. ‘You know . . . personal things.’
