* * *
At St Aldate’s, Sergeant Paul Woods is spending the afternoon on reception, and is very far from happy about it. He works the giddy heights of the custody suite these days but the civilian desk officer is on holiday and the PC covering her has food poisoning, and Woods drew the short straw. And along with it, a short fuse. It’s far too bloody hot for a start. BBC Oxford said it might hit 30 degrees today. 30 degrees. It’s bloody indecent, that’s what that is. He’s propped open the main street door but all it’s allowing in is fumes. And more people. A good half of them are just looking for some respite from the sun – there’s never been so much interest in the leaflet stand, that’s for sure. It can go weeks without needing to be refilled, but suddenly they’re all out of How To Protect Your Home From Thieves and Things To Look Out For When You Shop Online. There’s a group milling around it right now – tourists clearly, and mostly Chinese.
Woods glances up at the clock. Another twenty minutes before he can take a break. The tourists around the leaflet stand are talking eagerly among themselves now. One is gesturing towards Woods; she appears to be trying to get up the courage to come and talk to him. He draws himself up to his full authority, and at six foot two and sixteen stone that’s a lot of gravitas in every sense. It’s not that he’s trying to discourage her as such, it’s just that he knows from dreary experience that these sorts of questions can almost always be answered by any half-decent map. He really has had his fill of unofficial trip-advising over the years.
He’s saved, as it turns out, by the bell. Just as the Chinese woman starts to approach the desk, the phone goes. It’s the woman on the switchboard – another civilian, Marjorie something. She must have got the short straw too.
‘Sergeant Woods – can you take this one, please? I’ve tried CID but there’s no one in. It’s Edith Launceleve.’
He picks up his pen, momentarily irritated that he never has known the correct way to write that bloody place. Whose bright idea was it to call a college after someone nobody can spell?
‘OK,’ he says heavily. ‘Put them through.’
He raises his hand grandly to the Chinese tourist as if he has the Chief Constable on the line.
‘Is that Sergeant Woods? Jancis Appleby here, Edith Launceleve College.’
It’s the sort of voice that makes you sit up straight.
‘How can I help you, Miss Appleby?’
‘I have Professor Hilary Reynolds on the line.’
She says it as if even a minion like Woods will have heard that name. And actually, he has, but right this minute he can’t for the life of him remember when –
‘The Principal,’ she says briskly. ‘In case you may have forgotten. Hold on, please.’
Now that does bring him up short. The bloody Principal? What could possibly be so important that the Principal gets on the blower? What is she even doing in the office at the weekend?
The line clicks into life again.
‘Sergeant Woods?’
Not the female voice he was expecting and he loses the first few words remembering Hilary can be a bloke’s name too.
‘I’m sorry, sir, could you say that again?’
‘I said I’m afraid I need to report an incident involving a student at the college.’
Woods’ eyes narrow; ‘incident’ can cover a multitude of sins, from the mortal to the extremely mundane.
‘What sort of incident would that be, sir?’
An intake of cultured, well-educated but slightly irritated breath. ‘A serious incident, Sergeant. I’m afraid that’s all I’m prepared to say at this stage. Could you put me through to Detective Inspector Fawley?’
* * *
It’s hot in Boars Hill too, but somehow it seems a lot more bearable up here. No doubt some of that comes with the altitude, but the thirty-foot swimming pool and well-stocked poolside bar are definitely helping. Those come with the altitude too, though that’s an elevation of a rather different kind. Given the address, you don’t need to be a fully paid-up member of CID to make some shrewd deductions about the sort of house this was likely to be, but Gareth Quinn was, all the same, quietly impressed when he saw what lay behind the wrought-iron gates that swung silently open for his Audi A4, newly valeted for the occasion. A good acre of lawns (also valeted for the occasion, though he wasn’t to know that), a parterre and orange trees, and a scatter of what estate agents probably call ‘useful outbuildings’, shunted discreetly out of sight of the chiselled neo-Palladian pile and its uninterrupted prospect of ‘That View’. The bristle of construction cranes is unfortunate but in all other respects the spires lie dreaming down there this afternoon in the shimmering heat, just as Matthew Arnold once saw them.
Quinn had no idea how loaded Maisie’s parents were when he met her. At first glance, she was just another of those pony-tailed French-nailed girls with their soft smiles and their crisp vowels. Avocados, he calls them: ripe, ready and green. Though not quite so green, in this case, that she was prepared to go to bed with him on the first date, and in the almost unprecedented ten days it took for that to happen he realized she had rather more to her than most of her identikit predecessors. She made him laugh and she listened, but she didn’t give him an easy ride, and he found himself having to articulate why he believed what he did, some of which surprised even him. He also realized – and this was fairly unprecedented too – that he actually liked her, as much out of bed as in it. Which is why, even though he’s always had an almost anaphylactic reaction to the idea of meeting his girlfriends’ parents, he’s not only here but still here, long after he’d agreed with Maisie that they would leave. The beef was rare, the wine likewise, and Ted and Irene Ingram are decidedly not what it said on the tin. Yes, they have a lot of money, but they’re not shy of showing it, which was never going to be a problem with Quinn. The two men edged around the Brexit bear trap for a good half-hour before Ingram let slip which side he was on, whereupon they fell on each other with all the relief of oppressed fellow devotees. In Oxford, at least, theirs is most definitely the Leave that dare not speak its name.
So all in all, Quinn has been enjoying himself royally. By the time the phone call comes through there’s even an imp in the back of his brain whispering that Maisie is the Ingrams’ only child, and if in-laws are inevitable then these two might not be such a bad option. There’s a bottle of 1996 Sauternes on the table now, and a box of Havana cigars, and Quinn has slid Maisie his car keys. Which, as the look on her face makes clear, is also pretty much unprecedented. She glances at him now, as his mobile goes: it’s the ringtone he uses for calls from work.
As he reaches for the phone, Quinn glances round the table, smiling his contrition. ‘I’m really sorry – they wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t important.’
Ingram waves the apology away. ‘Of course. Maisie explained this might happen. I completely understand. It’s an important job, what you do.’
Irene Ingram pushes back her chair tactfully and Maisie gets to her feet. They start clearing the plates, and Quinn walks away down the garden. Perhaps he’s doing it to get a better signal, but then again, perhaps he’d rather Maisie’s father didn’t hear him answering with his current rank.
A few yards further on he finally takes the call.
‘DC Quinn.’
‘Woods here.’ Quinn can hear the traffic in the background; Woods must be at the front desk. He makes a perfunctory apology for ruining Quinn’s Saturday but it’s clear from his tone that he’s not getting a bloody weekend so why the hell should CID.