Tony Black - Long Time Dead

‘This is some stuff, Stevo.’ Say what you will about students, they know good gear.

‘Oh yes… good toke, eh.’

I could see this helping me ease off the sauce. I’d tried speed once, but it had only made me even more jumpy. ‘Any more where that came from?’

He seemed to lose some colour from his cheeks, got antsy: ‘Erm, no… ‘

‘It’s okay, I’m not going to raid your stash there.’

He calmed. ‘No, it’s not that. Had some trouble with my dealer, that’s all.’

I could feel the hit taking hold, laughed out, ‘Oh, gotcha – he get turned over?’

Stevo stood up. He didn’t seem to see the funny side. ‘Something like that. Look, I should get off. You’re the night-man, and I don’t get any OT from that prick Calder.’

I waved away the hash smoke, said, ‘That Calder fellow’s a bit of a stuck-up old git, is he not?’

‘Calder!’ He spat the name out. ‘Total bastard more like.’

It didn’t take much to press him for more: ‘Oh aye?’

‘Got me kicked off the course. Could have swept it under the carpet but wouldn’t have been the thing to do for a mere pleb like me.’

It seemed to me Stevo had done okay. ‘What do you mean, mere pleb ?’

He took another heavy blast on the joint. ‘Calder is part of, you might say, a cabal… I didn’t really notice until, well, recently, but there are some people in here could get away with murder and not even get their wrist slapped.’

I kept calm, slid the word out slowly: ‘Murder?’

He looked rattled, turned away and stubbed the joint. He didn’t say it, but I knew he wished he could retract his last statement. ‘I don’t mean literally. I just mean there’s a few in here more equal than others.’

This wasn’t the time to press him. ‘You going Orwell on me, Stevo?’

He came back to himself, laughed. ‘Oh, God no…’

‘Glad to hear it.’

I watched him put on his jacket, retrieve his rucksack from the ground. ‘Right, you cool with the rounds and what have you?’

I nodded. ‘Check the windows and doors… after X Factor , right?’

A smile. ‘Aye, then again before you knock off.’ He looked as if he was about to say something else but stopped himself.

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, nothing…’

I took a chance, played it dumb as, letting the query sound casual, mere interest. ‘That hanging… the actress’s boy… were you in that night?’

He gripped the strap of his rucksack tighter, his knuckles turning white, his lower lip curling over his teeth. His eyes shifted left to right in search of some kind of answer. ‘You heard about that?’

‘Only what I read in the paper.’

He brought his other hand up to the strap and gripped just as tightly. ‘Yeah, I was here… It was me that found him.’

Jackpot. I thought young Stevo might turn out to be a mine of information. He did look genuinely upset at the recollection, though, and I didn’t want to press him, but knew I must. ‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing. I mean… I phoned Calder, that was it.’

‘You didn’t call the police?’

His lips parted. Slowly the words came: ‘Oh, no…’

‘Why?’

Stevo’s face widened in a rictus smile. ‘I should think that’ll be obvious once you’ve been in here a wee while.’

I wasn’t following him. Wanted to press for more answers but he was gone, out the door and off to his room with his store of information largely intact. I was left alone with the smell of turps and disinfectant. The place was eerily quiet. I didn’t fancy staying until after midnight, but had no choice. I decided to take a stroll around the campus, get the fumes out of my head. I played over what I’d just witnessed – seemed to me everyone with a connection to the uni got more than a wee bit jumpy at the merest mention of Ben Laird’s death. There couldn’t be a conspiracy – would be way too Dan Brown – but maybe there was something at the back of it. Fear, perhaps. But who or what were they afraid of?

I was emptying some bins when I caught sight of a group of students heading for the staff block. They looked to be on a mission. I remembered their sort from my own failed attempt at academia – all piss and wind: read a few books, memorised a few quotes and thought they were Oscar Wilde. I shook my head.

‘You missed one!’ I turned to see a University Challenge escapee in a flannel shirt pointing to a bin at the far side of the square; it was overflowing. A crowd of his mates arked up beside him. They looked hyper… fucking rugger buggers probably just back from drinking beer out of each others’ cracks.

‘Excuse me?’ As I watched the lad approach I got a closer look, clocked the ginger hair, the coat-hanger shoulders: it was Paul, Ben’s old mate whom I’d met earlier at Gillian’s place. He hadn’t recognised me in janny garb.

‘Isn’t it your job to empty the bins? Well, you missed one.’ He pointed again.

‘Y’wha’?’

He looked shocked now; the watery eyes thinned. He obviously wasn’t used to back chat from the help.

Some indignation played on his quivering lips. ‘I think you’ll find it’s your job!’

I stepped towards him. ‘Now, this is a different Paul to the last time we met. This how you talk to the working classes?’

He backed off. Gave me a few glances up and down. The penny dropped; made quite a clang. ‘What are you doing here?’

I let him figure that out himself for a few moments, but he looked as though he needed help, said, ‘Calder appointed me.’

Paul’s powdery-blue eyes widened. ‘Oh, I see.’ He either didn’t approve, or was genuinely terrified at the prospect of what I might find. Both options got stored away.

‘Is that all right with you, Paul?’

The lad stumbled, a carrier bag he’d had pressed to his hip dropped to the ground. He seemed to have a habit of dropping things when he was rattled. ‘Yes, of course.’ His brain-dead mates started to get antsy, grouped around him and tried to look threatening; he sent them on ahead.

‘We need to have a little chat, Paul.’

He picked up the bag. ‘Do we?’

‘I think it might be a good idea… don’t you?’

He straightened up, looked towards the road. His friends were a fair distance away now; he was ready to either smack me or bolt. It was pure fight-or-flight instinct. ‘I have to go.’

He shrugged past me, walking at first but soon dipping into a jog. ‘See you around, Paul.’

He turned, started to run, looking over his shoulder as he went.

Back in the doocot I played over what I’d just seen. Wasn’t happening: I needed to let some time pass before I could look at it with any sense of detachment. I dipped into some Hemingway, True at First Light , that Stevo had left behind. It was a newish edition, but the book was published posthumously and had been edited by Hem’s son Patrick. I had read the book once, but never was able to find the story. Perhaps it needed more editing, or should have stayed locked away in the bottom drawer. I wondered what other lost laundry lists of Papa’s his family was planning to publish.

I smoked the last of Stevo’s reefer; took a few pelts on a bottle of Grouse I had in my hip pocket and settled down to watch the snooker. There didn’t seem to be much to this job, if you could call it that. Before long I was knocking out the Zs. I dreamt of Debs and happier times for what seemed like an age until I was woken by a loud clanging.

‘The fuck’s that?’

It sounded like a window banging. I got up and grabbed the flashlight. Had a thought to fashion a chib from one of the broom handles, but there was enough weight in the torch to be effective if it came to that. As I went out the door, I checked my watch. It had gone 1 a.m. The campus was desolate, not a murmur, except for that banging. I followed it, checking windows as I went.