‘On the foil?’ Bannerman looked up. ‘Don’t know.’
‘’Cause, know how ye go straight to one bit of the lab for residue, eh? Don’t want to dust for prints in case they mess that up, understandable but see they check inside for prints, eh?’
‘Right?’
‘Oh aye,’ said Kevin, looking at his empty hands, turning an invisible bit of foil around and around. ‘’Cause if there’s prints they’ll be good ones, man.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘They’ll be fuck-off good y’uns.’
26
University Avenue felt like part of a different city. The buildings were pretty architectural statements. The gothic main building with its high tower and quadrangles, the circular Reading Room, the new medical building. The students were well fed, tanned and tall, wearing clothes that were cleaner and better fitting than most of the people Morrow came into contact with.
As they locked up the car on the steep approach to the university gates Morrow overheard a girl who looked all of seventeen tell another that it was just impossible to get a parking space around here. These people weren’t just better than the population they nicked, they were better than them: better starts in life, better homes, knew better people.
Morrow had brought Gobby with her, just for peace, but was regretting it already. He was so quiet it was creepy, as if he’d been jinxed. His defensive swagger was exaggerated, his expression sullen and intimidated by the strange poshness of the university students. Alex wasn’t bothered; she spent her childhood being banned from friends’ houses. Single parent families were frowned upon then, her mother was half mad with depression and the reputation of a connection to the McGraths never left her. She grew up knowing that everyone was better than her.
They got to the gate house and walked in, passing the porter’s box, entering the uni grounds. The Law School was separate from the main building, around the side to the right, across a grassy square. A long terrace of thin town houses, high narrow windows and small black front doors emphasised the stern look of the place. The houses must have been university accommodation at one time: a blue plaque on a wall notified disinterested passersby about a long-dead famous resident.
The main entrance to Law was through one of the small front doors. They followed the numbers down and took the steps. The hallway was inauspicious. Electric blue carpet, blue wood-chip walls and white paint on the woodwork. Cork notice boards with bits of paper pinned to them, the same notice on all of them warning all students to check their email regularly. Morrow wasn’t the only idiot, it seemed. The town houses were joined together through passages punched into the adjoining walls.
The hour must be turning: from the stairs and the door behind them students began to filter into the building.
On the right-hand side, just inside the front door, a glass cubicle was marked ‘Enquiries’ and a man in a blue shirt looked out at them expectantly.
‘Hello, we’re looking for the tutor of one of your students,’ said Morrow amiably.
‘And who might that be, young lady?’ His eyes twinkled playfully, as if Morrow was in on the joke and knew she was neither a lady nor young.
‘Omar Anwar.’ She sounded cold. ‘Graduated last June.’
The security guard took a deep breath, ready to reciprocate the rebuff. She pulled out her warrant card and slapped it on the window. He looked at it, nodding as he emptied his lungs, and turned back to the computer, asking her for spellings and telling her that Tormod MacLeòid was her man. He’d call up and see if he was in.
Professor Tormod MacLeòid fancied the arse off himself. His office and personal appearance spoke of a man who lived for pretentious obfuscation and all things dusty. He kept them waiting for ten minutes in his secretary’s office and then came in, ordered the secretary to bring him Omar’s student file before they began the interview. Once in his office he made them sit in a passive silence while he read the file. Happily it wasn’t more than five paragraphs long but it gave Morrow a chance to look around the office.
Like the building itself the room was tall and narrow. Every bit of wall space was weighed down with books, most of which were old, battered and looked out of print. Layered in front of the books and on top of them were busts with missing noses, bits of stone and brick, mini reproduction Greek vases. On top of one of the shelves, rolled up into a cylinder, was a time-faded Fettes brown and pink tie. Morrow was sure that every single object had a story attached to it, and that every story would be long and ponderous.
She had taken the single seat in front of his messy desk, leaving Gobby to sit on a chair near the door, perching in front of a precarious stack of essays, silently wringing his hands and contemplating the nuances of his discomfort.
Finally the professor leaned back in his wooden throne, stroking his beard, adjusted his sports jacket and smiled a patronising yellow smile. ‘I do recall him, certainly, yes. Where was he from?’
‘Pollockshields,’ said Morrow.
‘Ah.’ His eyes widened at the implied correction. ‘Yes, the old colony of Pollockshields,’ he smirked. ‘Quite.’
‘He did honours in your class and got a first.’ Morrow thickened her scummy southsider accent to challenge his Fettes drawl. ‘So I kinda though you’d mibbi remember more about him than the shade of his tan.’
Tormod’s face snapped into a mean squint. ‘I did not mention his skin colour.’
She waited for a beat, letting him squirm. ‘What sort of student was he?’
He cleared his throat testily and looked again at the file. ‘Very good, able, hard working.’
‘And your subject is…?’
He blinked long and hard. ‘Civil Law. Roman Law.’
‘Why would he study Roman Law?’
Tormod drew a long breath, tipped his beard at them and launched into a stale speech he had given many times: ‘Civil Law is studied at honours level for one of two reasons. Either the student is hoping to become an advocate and, potentially, a judge, or else they have an abiding interest in the history of Law. It is, as it were, a more arts-based approach to the study of Law. Less black letter Law, more interpretative. In…’ he glanced at the file again, ‘Omar’s case, he wished to study with a view to advocacy. At least that was my understanding at the time of accepting him at the commencement of the course.’
‘And yet he decided not to go into practice. Not even to be a solicitor.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Why?’
‘No idea. You’d have to ask him.’
‘Did you help organise any of the extra-curricular activities Omar was involved in?’
He looked blank and glanced at his sheet for a prompt. ‘The mooting competition?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The mooting competition is just a debating society really, but with a legal emphasis. Role play.’ He sounded dismissive.
‘Omar was involved in that?’
‘Says so here.’
‘You’re not involved in it?’
‘No.’
‘Do they get credits for it?’
‘Certainly not. Time consuming though.’
‘Suggests he was keen when he started the course, doesn’t it?’ She kept her face neutral but he heared the veiled reproach. Slowly his lip curled with disdain.
Morrow stood up abruptly. ‘Thank you very much,’ and pulled her coat from the back of the chair. Gobby leapt to his feet.
Tormod almost stood up to see them out but then thought better of it and sat down again. ‘I trust you can see yourselves out,’ he said briskly.
Morrow pointed to the door Gobby was halfway through. ‘D’ye mean ye trust us to find the door here, in the wall?’
He looked sulky and she realised he was just the sort to complain to someone senior at a golf club dinner, so she thanked him for his time and all the help he had been and then slammed the door behind her. If she had been an Asian kid studying under Tormod MacLeòid she’d have thought twice about going into practice too.