Trying to prise information out of Griff was predictably tough. He insisted that Andy – he referred to him only as ‘our friend’ – would be where he was supposed to be. When I floated as the merest possibility a journey south, he tried very hard not to tell me to be a fool; while he censored his words, he couldn’t quite control his voice. Since I could scarcely spell out exactly whom I had seen and where, lest there be any unwanted listeners, I tried hard not to blame him. At the end I wrung from him a grudging promise to talk to ‘another friend’ – his contact, presumably – and call me back.
It naturally became one of those evenings when all your friends phone expecting a long natter. I’d never quite got round to having BT signal another caller, and so my enjoyment was spoilt by the constant suspicion that someone with vital information was being denied access to me.
So I heard all about the problems Aberlene was having with her new bloke, who seemed to resent her being the leader of the Midshires Symphony Orchestra while he was only a back-desk second violin. All about them. I managed after half an hour to suggest we should meet to discuss it – a girls’ evening at a nice restaurant. There was a little, hurt pause.
Then I remembered that itinerant musicians saw more restaurants than the rest of us.
‘Or how about a meal here?’ I suggested.
We found a date and wrote solemnly in our diaries.
Carl next: why he hadn’t contacted me at work goodness knows. His wife had suspected that we were lovers years before we actually were, and presumably still regarded me with suspicion, though I’d given her no grounds for nearly two years now. So why should he take the risk of phoning me? Was it simply to enrage a not-very-nice woman? All he wanted to talk about was our ‘expedition’ – his word, not mine – up the River Severn. He read out the instruction leaflet he’d prepared, asked me what I thought of his checklist of essential items, speculated on the likely state of the weather, and generally irritated the socks off me.
My hand was poised to phone Griff when another call came through, this time from college. College? One of my colleagues, an historian, had found this student in tears outside the staffroom …
It had to be Karen. Surely she hadn’t been waiting there all that time … No, don’t be silly, Sophie.
‘She says she has to talk to you. She says – I’ll put her on, shall I?’
‘OK, Mags – but don’t tell her my number!’
‘Sophie? Sophie? I’ve got to talk to you, I really have. Sophie, it’s about Andy … Have you sent him my letters?’
‘No. You asked me to destroy them.’ I didn’t mention that I hadn’t yet got round to it.
‘But Sophie – I need – he must –’
She must be deadly serious: she’d dropped that interogation.
‘Must what, Karen?’ Keep the voice calm – that’s what they taught on counselling courses.
‘Talk to him! Sophie, I must.’
‘That’s not possible at the moment, love. He’s not in Birmingham.’
‘He is, he is! I saw him!’
Where? Where? No – mustn’t scream down the phone at a student. I said nothing.
‘I saw him,’ she insisted.
‘Are you sure? When did you think you saw him?’
‘This afternoon. I saw him. Why won’t you let me speak to him?’
‘Because –’ I might as well tell her the simple truth – ‘he’s on holiday with Ruth and I don’t have a clue where.’
‘You’re lying! You don’t want him to know how much I love him! You’re jealous!’
She cut the line abruptly. The phone rang again almost immediately.
Mags again. ‘Wow! Something seems to have upset her, Sophie. What d’you want me to do? Apart from wring her neck, that is?’
‘Would you be an absolute angel and get out her personal file? Oh, hell, you can’t, can you?’ One of the recent funding changes meant that all the students’ files now had to be kept centrally: I wasn’t quite sure how, or why, except that the change was accompanied by an inordinate amount of form-filling. Everything we did for our students was now documented, allegedly so we could claim money for it, but somewhere along the way the notion of instant access had been lost. And it is a truth inadequately acknowledged, that every single tutee in possession of a problem must be in want of comfort outside college hours. ‘I just wanted her phone number, to let her mother know she’s in a state.’
‘Are you sure she isn’t eighteen?’
‘Doesn’t behave like it!’
‘Maybe not, but you can only contact parents if they’re sixteen or seventeen. Rules is rules.’
‘Yes, Mags. But it’s all a bit academic, isn’t it, if we can’t find her telephone number anyway?’
What was the girl’s surname? Harris? There were an awful lot of Harrises in the phone book, and since I’d no more than the vaguest idea of her address – somewhere in Acocks Green, wasn’t it? – that was that. The best I could do was go chasing tomorrow, first thing.
Next came ActionAid, asking me to do a door-to-door collection. Then a couple of wrong numbers. Ten o’clock – and still no news from Griff.
At five past I was startled out of the ITN News by a strident ring at my front door. A peep through the spy-hole showed Inspector Stephenson, with Ian two paces behind.
She said, without preamble, as soon as she set foot in the hall, ‘I have to talk to your cousin. Sergeant Dale tells me you’re not co-operating.’
‘Hang on a sec,’ I said, literally scratching my head. ‘Surely you people must know where he’s staying. You had the name and address of everyone connected with the – the incident, didn’t you? You can’t have let us all go swanning off our separate ways without knowing where to find us if things developed.’ I shut the door, and gestured less than politely to the living room.
Ian stood aside to let her pass. Catching a gust of whisky, I asked brightly, ‘Coffee, everyone?’
‘Too late for me, love. Ta all the same.’
‘Black, please.’
Too late for me, too. But I find it’s never too late for a chocolate biscuit.
By the time I’d made coffee – instant, it has to be admitted – I had given her enough time to work out a response to my question.
You’re sure,’ she said, taking the mug carefully, ‘that you’ve had no contact with your cousin?’
‘Only via John Griffiths. As I’m sure he told you, Griff thought the fewer people who knew Andy’s whereabouts the better. And that included me. What’s the problem?’
‘Peter Hughes fell to his death after consuming enough helleborin to cause significant visual and auditory disturbance. Not enough to kill him: it was the fall that did that. We have found no trace of helleborin anywhere other than in your cousin’s flask. We need to establish when and why the helleborin entered the flask. Especially why.’
‘So that it would have the same effect on Andy, surely!’
‘I’m not sure I understand you, Ms Rivers.’
‘Sophie, please. So that he would experience the same symptoms as Pete Hughes. Except – hang on – Andy never goes anywhere near a gantry, does he? He’d have fallen over on stage. It would have looked as if he was –’
‘I’m not convinced,’ she cut in. ‘I suspect Mr Rivers may have used illegal substances to energise himself for the concert: herbal ones, rather than the more obvious substances he publicly denounces.’
‘Inspector Stephenson,’ I said, with a creditable attempt at patience, ‘do you not recall our telling you about all the other little incidents? The obituary, the vandalism, and so on? You even offered to increase security on the night of the concert. Can’t we return to the theory you appeared to espouse then – that someone is trying to kill – or at very least damage – a man whose sole aim in life now is to improve the lot of countless Africans?’
The rhetoric wasn’t entirely spurious. I wanted to return her to her mood of Saturday afternoon.
‘Remember,’ I urged, ‘that call from the Press Association. Someone had obviously tipped them the wink that Andy was dead.’
Ian got up and thoughtfully nipped a dying leaf from my winter cherry plant.
‘Whatever the reason, I need to speak to him and I need to speak to him now,’ Stephenson said.
‘I suggest you try your contact number for him, then.’
At this point the phone rang; I snatched it up.
‘Sophie? Griff.’
What a moment to choose!
‘Any news of our friend?’ I asked.
‘Plenty. All bad. Only sodding well slipped his leash, hasn’t he?’
‘Leash!’
‘Flit the coop. Had a phone call, kissed Miss Jean Roadie goodbye, and said he’d got to see a man about a dog – be back for tea on Saturday. This being Wednesday, he has enough time to see a hell of a lot of dogs.’
‘What does Ruth say?’
‘Nothing. Voice still out of use. She writes nothing, either. So where does that leave us, eh, Sophie?’
‘Helping,’ I said grimly, trying desperately not to cry, ‘the police with their enquiries.’