The journalist had been his last hope. But now there could be no salvation, for the thunderclouds were already gathering. Professor Roger Britton slammed down the phone and buried his head in his hands; but for the heaving of his lungs he was still.
The minute-hand of his clock moved onwards with a click.
Britton stared at it for precisely three seconds, before leaping to his feet and peering from the window. Black taxis inched along beside the Thames. A white Ford Transit which had been parked in a bus lane awoke and ambled away eastwards. The professor scrutinized the traffic: no green Renault Laguna, no silver Ford Focus, no gunmetal BMW. The list of cars he had to keep track of was increasing.
Was he going mad? He honestly didn’t know.
Britton cancelled the morning’s lectures, flinching at the protest. “Quite unavoidable,” he insisted. “Last-minute preparations for the field trip.”
The usual accusations ensued, but this time they were accompanied by threats of dismissal. Could he expect to find employment at another university as prestigious as King’s College London? When had this become his life? Suddenly Britton realized his boss was no longer talking.
“Thank you,” he said, in the hope she had been saying she understood. “I knew you’d understand.”
He peeped into the common room. Florence Chung was working on her PhD, and he felt a stab of guilt. She had been a first-class assistant. No, more than that – a rock. And she was always willing to listen to his theories, although he kept the most outlandish close to his chest. He had neglected her thesis; she deserved better. But more important things were at hand. He wondered if he would ever see her again.
“Professor?” Florence’s eyes were wide. “Anything I can help with?”
Britton nodded rapidly, exhaling through both nostrils. “Yes please, Florence. I need some books. The Roman historians. Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, Cassius Dio. Anyone else? Ah yes … you’d better bring Caesar too.”
Florence glanced at the bookcase. “The first editions?”
Britton nodded grimly. Bugger them. Bugger them all.
What followed was a sight to make a Charing Cross bookseller weep. Chapters were torn free; cotton binding was ripped away; the room turned musty as dormant fibres took to the air. Britton’s biro trembled as he circled words and underlined sentences. He was aware that his behaviour was demented, but he was past caring.
And it was important the journalist had everything.
Britton blinked twice – as though remembering something vital – and from his desk produced a slim paperback which he added to the pile of eviscerated pages. His fingers lingered on the cover before he remembered himself, urgency returning to his movements. Finally he bundled up the lot in brown paper and scribbled down an address.
The last thing Britton glimpsed before he departed was his wife, Wendy. The snap had been taken at a barbecue in Provence, before all this began. She looked happy. He pulled on his coat and rushed out.
A mature student was malingering on the staircase. Odd place to wait, now Britton thought of it, and he couldn’t resist eye contact as he passed. His stomach slid instantly downward, adrenaline lancing through his thighs. He had seen this character before. Yesterday evening, in fact: at a bus stop near his home in Enfield. That snow-white spot in his hair was unmistakable. Coincidence? Britton fancied not.
Now Britton abandoned pretence and fled, taking the stairs three at a time, heart banging against his ribcage. Two students were coming in the other direction – female, attractive. He jinked past them, an improbable sight in bad tweed with his hair on end. Mirth echoed in his wake. When he reached the third floor he paused, listening as the laughter grew fainter.
It was penetrated by the patter of descending footsteps.
The philosophy department beckoned. Britton knew this place, he was familiar with the lecturers; yet today the department offered no sanctuary. Bored students flickered past his vision as he ran, package clasped to his chest and shoes squeaking on the carpet. The post trolley reared up before him like an iceberg. Britton hit it at full speed; letters and parcels flew across the corridor and a Trinidadian porter roared with indignation.
“Hey! Watch yourself, fool!”
The professor was apologizing and piling the packages back onto the trolley when the inspiration struck. He buried his own bundle with them, and in its place he swiped another, already franked and ready for dispatch.
The door behind him opened. It was the man from the bus stop. There could no longer be any doubt – the call to the journalist must have forced their hand. Britton was on his feet in an instant, offering the stranger a glimpse of brown paper in his arms. Then he was running for his life.
Hundreds of students were pouring out onto the Strand, and the professor found his way blocked by the throng.
“Oh God no,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder. “Please no …”
They meant to kill him.
“You all right there, Professor?” Henry Buckingham was taking his course on ancient religion this year. Britton ignored the student, clawing his way into the press, feeling safer with every pace. He calculated his next move. If they grabbed him now the switch would be exposed. He needed to take the franked package off campus and get it posted – then they would chase the wrong parcel all the way to the sorting office. There was a post-box on the Embankment.
A blast of winter air hit him in the face as he made it onto the street. A big trial was finishing at the Royal Courts of Justice and a phalanx of reporters rushed towards the famous arches. A blessing revealed itself: sightseers walking along the Thames, following their flag-waving leader like goslings behind a goose. Britton mingled with them, closing on the post-box. He was going to make it.
But wait …
A BMW had emerged, a gunmetal BMW, crawling along the opposite side of the street. Britton felt a fresh convulsion of anxiety. The driver was plump and in his late thirties. Glasses, wavy brown hair. Was it that man who’d taken such an interest in him at the staff bar last week?
The shield of tourists parted. The professor slam-dunked the parcel into the post-box. At once the BMW zoomed away in a bark of highly-tuned engine.
Professor Britton considered his options. Temple was close by – he could take the Circle Line to South Kensington and dash for Heathrow. Then he would get the next flight to Istanbul, whatever the price.
Britton stopped dead. “Oh shit!”
Two German tourists gave the professor a wide berth, taken aback at the expletive from the mild figure. Britton didn’t even notice. His mind shot back to the university, to his office, to the second drawer in his desk: where his passport still lay.
“Oh shit, shit, shit!”
There was a rumble overhead. The sky had turned overcast, a wash of grey that stretched from horizon to horizon. Directly above him the coming precipitation had been worked into a knot of black that twisted around itself in the sudden squall like the knuckles of a fist. Dark clouds streaked away to the north-west, their colour murderous. Tourists fumbled for umbrellas, but Britton was unmoved, staring into the heavens. A perplexed expression had come over his face – childlike, almost – and a pair of blueish lips mouthed something unheard. He followed the spoor of darker cloud to where it had emerged somewhere over Hampstead Heath. For several seconds he watched, as if seeking some hidden answer there. Then Professor Roger Britton was struck by lightning and killed instantly.