I entered, then waited for him to pass me because there was more than one room. He pushed a door open and said: "In here, please."
It was every grown-up small boy's dream. Windows on three sides gave a view of the hills, as if from a ship's bridge. Behind me, the wall was lined with bookcases and framed old Ordnance Survey maps. "What a gorgeous view," I stated.
"Mmm, it is," he agreed. "Goat Fell. We try to walk over it three times a week."
"Both of you?"
"Of course. Just the thing to raise your, er, spirits."
"It's beautiful. I envy you."
"Do you know the Lake District at all?" he asked.
"Yes, I've done most of it," I boasted.
"Really? Good for you."
Leaning in a corner I noticed a high-powered air gun with a telescopic sight, and one of the windows was wide open. "Shooting?" I asked, nodding towards the gun.
"Squirrels," he replied. "Grey ones, of course. Bloody menace they are." Thirty yards away, hanging from a branch, were several bird-feeders filled with peanuts.
"Sit down, Inspector," he invited, 'and tell me how I can help you.
Francesca didn't catch your name…"
"Priest," I told him, settling into a studded leather chair that matched the captain's he pulled out for himself. "From Heckley CID. I believe you were a lecturer at Essex University back in 1969."
"Good God!" he exclaimed, throwing his head back and guffawing. "I knew I should have paid that parking ticket! You've taken your time, Inspector, if you don't mind me saying so."
I didn't mind at all. My day would come. In some ways he was a bit like me. Tallish, skinny, with all his own hair worn a little too long. The years had treated us differently, though. My features have been etched by alternating stress and laughter into an attractive pattern of wrinkles and laugh-lines. Well, I think so. He'd grown flabby-cheeked and dew lapped from a dangerous combination of dissolute living and half-hearted exercise. He wasn't wearing well, in spite of his efforts.
I aid: "You lectured in psychology, sir, I believe."
"That's right, Inspector. You are to be commended for your diligence;
I can see you've done your homework."
"Can I ask… why psychology?" There was no table between us and I carefully watched his reactions. He might have the book learning, but my knowledge of human behaviour was honed on the streets and in the interview rooms, with some of the toughest nutters and craftiest crooks in society.
He smiled and shrugged, saying: "I've never been asked that before, Inspector. Is it part of your enquiry?" i' "No," I replied. "I just wondered how a person goes from school into a subject like that. It's not as if it was on the curriculum in those days is it?"
"No, I suppose you're right." He thought for a few seconds, then said:
"Girls.";
"Girls?" I repeated.
"Mmm. Girls. I'm a Freudian, Inspector. I think I went into psychology because: a) I would meet lots of girls, and b) I'd learn how to deal with them after I'd met them. Does that answer your question?"
"Did it live up to expectations?"
He bit his lower lip and nodded his head, very slowly. "I think I can safely say that it did. It bloody well did. After all," he continued, 'we're talking about Essex in the sixties. What more could a man want?
What was it that poet said? Sexual intercourse was invented in 1962, or whenever?"
"Philip Larkin," I told him. "It was 1963, after the something-something and the Beatles' first LP."
"That was it. Bloody wonderful time, it was. Did you go to university, Inspector?"
"Art college, about the same time."
"Well then, you'll know all about it, eh?"
"Can you remember any names from that period?" I asked.
He pulled his feet in, just for a moment, then relaxed again.
"Students, you mean?" he queried.
"Mm'
His right hand brushed his nose. "No, 'fraid not," he replied.
"None at all?"
He did an impression of a thinking man before shaking his head.
"I have a list of names," I told him, taking my notebook from |y jacket pocket and opening it. "I'm supposed to ask if you volunteer any, and if you can't I've to prompt you with a few. Is that OK?" "Fire away, Inspector."
"Right." I glanced down at the notebook. "Have you ever known a girl called… let me see… Melissa Youngman?"
His hand went to his mouth in a pensive gesture and he said: "No."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
I put a cross next to carrots on last week's shopping list. "How about Janet Wilson?"
This time there was no reaction. "No."
"Mo… Dlamini, would it be?"
He pulled his feet under the chair and said: "No."
"You never heard of any of them?"
"No." He relaxed, stretching his legs again, and said: "I'm sorry, Inspector, but it was a long time ago, and to be honest, sometimes I couldn't remember their names the next morning. Are you allowed to tell me what it's all about? It must be serious after all these years."
"Something about a fire, I believe, in an area of Leeds called Chapeltown. It's the red-light district. A witness has recently made a death-bed statement that has led us to this woman called Youngman, but we can't find her. One of my chiefs has decided I haven't enough to do already and has given me the job of looking into her background and associates. We've got to look as if we're doing something, I suppose. I'm told that she went to Essex University and one of her classmates thought she'd had an affair with a psychology lecturer. That led me to you. Believe me, Mr. Kingston, I've enough on my plate that happened last week, never mind twenty-three years ago.
I suspect that it's to do with drugs, it usually is, but nobody tells me anything." I closed my notebook and asked if there'd been much drug-taking at Essex.
It was there, he told me, for those who took the trouble to look for it. And if you were at a party the odd reefer might be passed round.
He'd dabbled, of course who hadn't? but only with pot. Nowadays he didn't know what made young people tick. He sympathised with the dilemma the police and the government were in. Legalisation wasn't the answer; that would just make a fortune for the tobacco companies.
Perhaps the new Drugs Tsar would make a difference? I stifled a smile.
We call him Twinkle, as in Twinkle, twinkle, little Tsar.
"Well," I said, 'if you've never heard of her or the others I don't think I need trouble you any longer. Thanks for your time, sir."
"Not at all," he replied. "I'm only sorry I couldn't be of more assistance."
I stood up as if to take my leave and glanced around. "Is this where you do your studying?" I asked.
"Yes. This is my little den."
I turned towards the bookcase. "May I look?"
"Of course."
They were the sort of books that are referred to by the names of the authors rather than title. Get out your Weber, Umlaut and Schnorkel rather than your The Perceived Differences Between Alternative Analytical Approaches to Clinical Investigations of Stress-Induced Syndromes in Western and Oriental Societies. They made Stone's Justices Manual sound kid's play. I let my eyes flick over them, not paying much attention, until a familiar title caught my eye.
"Read one!" I announced triumphantly, pointing to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which had been a cult read book in the seventies.
"Ah, the Pirsig," he said. "Did you enjoy it?"
"Mmm. Dabbled with Zen for a while afterwards. And caught up on my Plato."
"Really?"
Further along I saw some more I had read. I was definitely down among the beer-drinkers now. "And these," I told him. "The Carlos Castanedas."
"I'm impressed, Inspector," he replied. "What did you think of them?"
We had something in common. I decided to milk it for every drop. "I thought they were interesting," I told him. "Only last week I was walking in the Dales when the weather changed. I could feel it coming, long before it reached me. It was probably only a temperature drop, or the wind rustling the heather, but I thought of Castaneda and wondered about it. And I always look for a power spot before I sit down to eat my sandwiches."