Friday morning saw me peering out at the world with an inexplicable apprehension. And yet, come to think of it, it was quite explicable. OK, I didn’t have a vulnerable car sitting waiting to be vandalised, not this morning. But the very fact that it was confined to a garage with that sort of damage made me shiver. I thought when I parted company with William Murdock I would have a year free not just from student and management hassle, but from all the other irritations that had come my way in recent years. Now UWM seemed to be bringing other problems. And someone had attacked my car. One of a row it might have been, but that didn’t stop me feeling paranoid.
This was the evening I was due to have supper with Carla, and her thesis, or rather, the lack of her thesis, hardly seemed the sort of topic to introduce over the coffee.
I told myself, as I picked up a dark blue Fiesta from the nearest hire centre, that Carla’s thesis was none of my business anyway. None. I’d do far better to worry about adjusting seats and sorting out gear positions than to worry about how and when I should tackle her.
And I couldn’t possibly tackle her anyway, not until I’d seen with my own eyes her claim that she’d been at university in Melbourne. After all, any one of us could have misremembered, or there could have been a slip-up when the course booklet was put together. And perhaps Mike hadn’t located them all: they’d probably proliferated like UK ones.
Kathryn: she was the open sesame to everything. The students’ files with their photos, definitely, and the staff files, with their CVs, possibly. Or should I talk to Carla first?
Round and round it went.
Halfway down Bearwood Road, I had a quick rush of common sense to the brain. Mike and I were the only people who knew. And maybe there was just an outside chance that I might be on safer ground if someone else knew: yes, the seven o’clock paranoia was back. What if there were something fishy? The obvious person to share my fears with was, of course, Chris. And there was no reason why I shouldn’t briefly divert down to Piddock Road nick to leave him a message. I didn’t even need to name any names. Did I? Grim experience had taught me in the past that if people had something hidden, they sometimes went to unreasonable lengths to keep it that way.
The young woman on the reception desk might have raised overplucked eyebrows when I trundled in and asked for writing paper and an envelope, but she found both quite quickly when DS Harvinder Mann came in.
‘What’s up with you, Sophie?’ he began.
‘Been sticking her nose into something,’ came Peter Kirby’s voice, over Harvinder’s shoulder.
Though it was clear they’d been about to leave the building, they turned round with me and I found myself sitting in Kirby’s room. I scribbled the note to Chris in the time it took Harvinder to brew herbal tea all round.
‘Any progress on your Pacific Rim deaths?’ I asked, since presumably that was what they wanted to discuss.
Peter shook his head. ‘It’s just that I never like coincidences,’ he said.
‘Particularly unidentified coincidences,’ Harvinder agreed.
I had to admit that I didn’t either. Then I took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got another coincidence here. Nothing to do with the Pacific Rim, but a strange coincidence. That’s what this note to Chris is about.’ Pulling it from the envelope I shoved it at Peter. He came as near to blushing as I’d ever seen.
‘But I mean – isn’t it – private?’
‘See for yourself.’ Hell. Yet another person putting Chris and me together and making a relationship. ‘Strictly business. It’s just I’m supposed to be going to supper with this woman tonight and I’d rather – if I happened to end up trapped by my wrists in the cut – that someone knew why.’ Now it came out in words, it sounded so bloody melodramatic!
The men stood side by side to read the note. ‘Looks like a specialist fraud job,’ Harvinder said, tapping it.
‘You leave Fraud out of this,’ Peter said. ‘Or we’ll all disappear forever in their bloody paperwork.’
‘Of course,’ I said, back-tracking, ‘it may be a simple case of changed names or a misprint at work. Let’s leave it at that till I’ve checked the records. We don’t really want Fraud diving in, do we?’
Kathryn greeted my arrival in her office without apparent enthusiasm. When I told her I wanted to see the students’ files, she flung her hands in horror.
‘They’re in this locked store,’ she said. ‘And while you’re quite entitled to see them, I have to remain with you for security. And don’t play the innocent with me, Sophie: I’ve heard it all before. “I just want to check on X. Y’s gone missing and I want to tell his parents. And it’s not worth your while staying here, Kathryn. I’ll lock up carefully and give you the key!” Oh, yes. Really locked up they’d be, then.’ Her voice dripped disbelief. ‘And not even for you am I going to break the rules.’
‘It sounds as if you’re already broken them for someone else and regretted it.’
She looked at me but said nothing. At last she said, ‘The earliest I can help you is Monday afternoon. A great pile of stuff came in yesterday while I was on that training course—’
‘Was the lunch any good?’
‘Even worse than the course.’ She sat down and picked up a pile of forms.
I didn’t take the hint. ‘What if I wanted to look at my own file – check out the form I filled in when they asked me to take that language class? Not my application form to join the course.’
‘Oh yes, you’re entitled to see that. No problems. Except staff records are kept in the main building. Oldbury Campus.’ Her smiled failed to convey sympathy. ‘And,’ she added, ‘I think you’ll find they’re catching up with yesterday’s work, too. What they might do is fax you a copy through to here.’
That didn’t suit me at all. After all, it wasn’t a record beginning with R I wanted to check but one beginning with P. I just wanted to let my fingers stray a little and fish out Pentowski’s file entirely by mistake.
‘The problem is, Kathryn,’ I said, sighing heavily, ‘that – oh dear, this makes me sound really racist, and perhaps I am … You see, I can’t tell my students apart. They all look alike! No, of course they don’t, but—’
‘You never had a problem with students back at William Murdock.’
‘Easy there. You got to know the troublemakers’ and the good students’ names straight away and filled in the rest as you went along. But there aren’t any handles like that here. They’re uniformly polite and hard-working and—’
‘Wearing those Muslim headscarf things,’ she supplied.
‘No! No, they’re not! But they’ve all got Muslim names!
‘Well, they would, if they’re Malays. OK,’ she flicked up her hands in a gesture I hoped was surrender, ‘how about three this afternoon?’
‘Two?’
‘Two thirty’s the earliest I can manage. You can photocopy the front pages and scarper.’ She bent to her paperwork. She looked up again. ‘Oh, Sophie, now what is it?’
I also wanted another copy of her list of test results, didn’t I? But now was clearly not the time to ask. ‘I’ll talk to Carla about it,’ I said. ‘See you at two thirty.’
Carla’s door was locked. There was nothing pinned to her door to indicate where she might be, as there was on Tom Bowen’s. He informed the world that he had disappeared under a pile of marking but could be contacted by e-mail if the emergency were truly dire. So what was I to do about supper tonight? Simply turn up? And how did one gain admittance to a boat? Knock? Or stand on the towpath and holler, hoping that she’d pop up out of her boat – after all, I didn’t know which one it was! – and holler back.
Given the pressure I’d already put on Kathryn, I was reluctant to pester her for further help. I’d try the front-desk receptionist, who’d always struck me as suitably approachable, even if I’d never had to approach her before.
I knew from both her name tag and the name block that sat on her desk that she was called Kulvinder. I’d also heard her talking to other people, with, to everyone’s obvious surprise, a thick Devon burr. At the moment she was talking at the phone, but she smiled as I hove into view, pointing apologetically at the handset and then at her watch.
I listened while she extricated herself from a long-winded caller. Her calendar was up-to-date, her filing tray was neat. And she was strikingly attractive by anyone’s standards. I wondered how long it would be before someone lured her to more profitable pastures. And then I thought of Chris, and Bridget’s retirement … No, I must stamp firmly on any such ideas before they became even embryonic.
Putting down the phone, she beamed at me.
I introduced myself and explained I was supposed to be having supper with Carla. ‘And I don’t know whether the invitation’s still open, and if it is, exactly where she lives,’ I concluded. ‘What I was wondering was if you’d be kind enough to call her and pass back any message. Or ask her to phone me. Whatever.’
The expression on her face had passed through concerned to firm to amused.
‘I thought you were going to ask me for her number,’ she said.
‘Against all the rules I’ve ever worked under.’
‘That doesn’t stop people.’ She brought a list of names forward on her computer. Had she not run her finger along the line I’d never have been able to distinguish Carla’s number. I scribbled it on to my palm even as Kulvinder dialled for me.
‘Answerphone,’ she mouthed.
‘Ask her to ring me on my home number – I’ve got an answerphone too. Here.’ I wrote it down on her message pad. ‘And this is my name. Oh, and here’s my e-mail address, too.’
Now for my lunchtime detective work. The more I thought about it, the more reluctant I was to do it. Why should I, who tended to keep myself to myself, suddenly bother to schmooze up to a group of students who only knew me from the class or tutorial room and start asking one of them about her eating habits?
Because I wanted to save her from detection and possible deportation, that’s why. Come on, Sophie, where’s your milk of human kindness?
Into the refectory then, and a bright determined smile as I looked around.
Grabbing a tuna mayo baked potato, I headed for the knot of Singaporean and Malaysian students gathered in their usual corner. There were polite if puzzled smiles from most of them, and they made room for me. Most but not all of my group were there; all were tucking into warm food like mine. Not an M and S wrapper in sight. Blast Lola and her sense of honour! How can you help someone if you don’t know whom to help? If indeed there was anyone in trouble: maybe Lola was making what she might call a mountain out of a molehill.
After a few minutes’ conversation – friendly but stilted – I excused myself and headed back to the work-room.
I did some perfunctory reading but couldn’t engage myself properly. So I gave up and headed off to Kulvinder again. Perhaps she’d have Lola’s phone numbers including the one at the Embassy or High Commission or whatever. This time I was unlucky: she had no access to student phone numbers. She only had the staff ones, she explained, so she could phone through when visitors arrived for them. I’d have to get hold of it from Kathryn, if she were still on speaking terms with me when I’d taken her time. No point in bowling off to Oldbury in the interim. And then it struck me: UWM no doubt had a Website with all the information the heart could desire. And a bit more. My heart leapt. Details of staff and their publications should be on there!
The computers were down this afternoon.
‘Sophie? Are you all right?’
Jago!
‘Miles away,’ I said, stating the obvious. ‘Oh, no news yet from Melbourne, I’m afraid.’
‘Your bloke too busy pulling Australian Sheilas, no doubt.’
Just the sort of joke I’d find really amusing. I produced a bland smile. And my chest tightened. What a moment to have to huff an asthma spray. I needn’t have worried: he didn’t seem to connect his words with my deed.
‘And bloody Pentowski’s taken it into her head to do some research! At this stage! I ask you!’
‘Research?’
‘According to the note on her door. The academic equivalent of “Gone Fishing”, I suppose.’
Note! It hadn’t been there half an hour ago. Drat. Carla must have popped in while I was busy pestering Kulvinder to leave an answerphone message.
‘Does it say she’ll be back in half an hour?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Just gives her e-mail number – like Bowen’s does. Whatever did they do in the old days?’
‘Phone? Fax? Carrier pigeon? Or simply assume students were such a low form of life they didn’t need to know.’ Why had the usually thoughtful Carla left it so late to put the note on her door? It would certainly have been better for us to know right at the start of her absence.
‘Hmph.’ He started to sit, but thought better of it. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of the woman since Wednesday. No professionalism. Damn it, they’re paid to teach us.’
I trotted out what Seb had said, as if the wisdom were my own. I even dug in my drawer for the photocopied sheet of salary scales he’d sent me and waved it under Jago’s nose. ‘Whatever they’re supposed to do, they aren’t paid all that much to do it.’
He took the paper, running a figure down the depressing columns. His eyes widened. ‘Well, I had thought of applying for a job somewhere like this – oh, a bit more prestigious, maybe – but not for that sort of money. I’d do better to go back into a school—’
‘And battle with OFSTED and National Curriculum?’
‘Oh, it’s all right for you! I suppose when your man gets back you’ll be giving up work and settling down to raise a family. Before the biological clock stops. Mind you, I wouldn’t blame you.’
‘I’m very glad to hear that. Because it would be none of your business what I did!’ Better to add more rationally, however: ‘For God’s sake, Jago, get real! What year are we in? Because attitudes like that went out thirty years ago. At least. I’m in the same employment situation as you.’
‘Worse, I suppose,’ he agreed, sitting down at last. ‘Because the word is that your old place is going bust.’
‘What?’ I was on my feet. It was one thing to know the worst in your unspeaking bones, quite another to have the information tossed across like that.
‘Just a rumour – it’s in the lunchtime edition of the Evening Mail. But you must know about it. They’re making all the senior staff redundant, it says. I suppose that means you too.’
I reached for the pay phone. Not surprising, perhaps, that all William Murdock’s lines were engaged.
Defeated, ready to retreat to the loo so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes, I remembered I was supposed to be checking student faces against photos. Keep Kathryn waiting? Not on your life! I shot off.
‘There is just one more thing, Kathryn,’ I said, as I shoved the last of the application forms back into the filing cabinet. I’d photocopied not just the front pages of the forms but the back ones too: I was after those signatures. ‘Could I have another print-out of their test results on entry?’
‘Don’t say you’ve lost the one I gave you!’ She looked at her watch ostentatiously.
‘Would I dare? No, it’s just that it differs from the one someone else gave me. There are some names that aren’t on yours.’
‘It was the latest version,’ she said.
‘I suppose there could be some late enrolments still in an in-tray somewhere?’
‘To get their ID, they have to be in computer. To get through the door, they need an ID.’
‘So how come Bowen’s list is different from yours?’
‘Just to shut you up, I’ll give you the absolutely latest version. On Monday.’
‘Kathryn – just one more thing?’
She turned, arms akimbo. ‘No!’
‘Tell me, what time does the Oldbury Campus shut down?’