Reginald Hill - An Advancement of Learning

Perhaps he should have gone in for the life scholastic after all. These boys knew what they were at, arriving at their (qualified) conclusions after taking the long way round.

Welcome aboard! he told himself.

Down near the shore the wind was stronger than ever, gusting with violence off the land.

Captain Jessup was having difficulty in coping with it. It blew his drives into the rough, his approach shots into bunkers and even his putts he was willing to swear were being steered inches off course by the malevolent blasts.

The captain’s lips pressed together in a tighter and thinner line beneath his sadly ruffled white moustaches.

Douglas Pearl on the other hand had discovered the secret of the perfect golf swing.

Again.

It was a cyclical business this, like the old religions. An endless circle of discovery and loss, death and resurrection. And to be conscious of the gift was often the prelude to losing it. So he viewed the fourteenth fairway uneasily. It ran along the sea shore, separated from the beach by a range of steep-sided dunes, vicious with tangled heather and gorse. The fairway ran round inland in a wide arc; the wise man followed it. The brave and the stupid attempted to carry the broad peninsula of dunes which lay between the tee and the hole.

Pearl stood uncertain. The wind galed forth in new fury. The captain sniffed impatiently. He made his mind a blank, and swung.

It looked good for the first hundred yards. Then like a Spitfire in a dog-fight, it seemed to accelerate upwards and banked violently to the right, finally crashing out of sight beyond the dunes.

“Oh, bother!’ said Douglas, much distressed. But his careful solicitor’s mind took close note of the last-known position of the ball.

The captain sent his shot on a flat trajectory one hundred-and-seventy-five yards down the fairway. It ran on another thirty.

He spoke for the first time since losing two balls at the fifth.

This letter you’ve sent me. You know it can’t be done?”

“It’s not asking much, I feel,’ replied Douglas. ‘ early decision, certainly before the end of the month, is necessary if my client is going to have a chance of finishing her course this year.”

“Naturally we’ll come to a decision before the exams,’ said the captain.

“She can still carry on with her private work now, can’t she?” “Oh, don’t be absurd!’ said Douglas excitedly. Think of the strain she’s under. In any case, while under suspension, she can’t attend lectures, as you well know.”

“Well, these students spend most of their time saying they’re a lot of bloody nonsense anyway, as far as I can see,’ said Jessup unrepentantly.

“And you know what’s holding things up as well as I do. Fallowfield’s protests have brought up a pretty complicated constitutional position.

It’s not at all clear whether “college representatives” means the student members of the governing body as well as the staff. They’ve taken advice, I believe. I thought they might have come to you.” They did,’ said Douglas. ‘ couldn’t help them. It might have conflicted with my client’s interests.”

Jessup pondered the implications of this as they trudged up the fairway together.

“I can understand Fallowfield though. It’s like a court martial with midshipmen sitting in judgment,’ he said finally.

“It’s a college, not one of Her Majesty’s ships,’ observed Douglas ironically. ‘ think he’s deliberately delaying things. The longer he spins things out, the more likely it is the girl will jack everything in.”

“But he’s admitted he slept with her!”

“He’s not a doctor, Captain. She’s over age. No, the real thing here is this question of maliciously trying to get her out of the college. If that’s proved, then he’s had it. Perhaps he’s hoping she’ll have a change of heart.” “And will she?’ asked the captain. ”m not prejudging, mark you.

Nothing’s proved. She may yet turn out a liar. But could she have a change of heart?”

Douglas considered, then shook his head.

“No,’ he said. ‘ haven’t really been able to make her out yet. She’s a very reserved girl in many ways. But, true or not, something very powerful drove her to make these accusations in the first place. And it’s my reckoning that it would take something even more powerful to stop her now. I can’t imagine what. But certainly more powerful than any blandishments of Fallowfield. I reckon it was just about here.”

He turned off at right-angles and began to climb through the heather up the dune.

“Give us a hail if you don’t spot it,’ said the captain. I’ll save my old legs an unnecessary walk.”

“Right,’ said Douglas.

At the top of the dune, he paused. There was a narrow parapet of scant, wiry sea-grass, then the dune fell steeply away in a bank of fine white sand. He stood staring out across the white-flecked sea for a moment. A few gulls wheeled and hung in the turbulent air.

“Any luck?’ shouted the captain.

“Not yet,’ said Douglas. ‘ might be a bit farther. It wasn’t a bad hit.”

On the seaward side of the dunes, wind and waves had scooped out a series of semicircular bays which provided ideal situations for bathing parties. Usually in the summer there were some students around, but the chill edge of the wind seemed to have kept them all away today.

Or nearly all. Douglas walked a little farther along and looked down into the next bay. He drew in his breath sharply. Lying on her side in the white sand was a girl. She had her back to him and seemed to be asleep. She was also naked.

His ball lay gleaming, challenging, a few inches from the smooth curve of her young buttocks.

Absurdly his mind began wrestling with the difficulty his next shot presented. Should he awaken her and ask her to move? Or perhaps he could claim a drop without penalty.

But the non-golfing part of his mind was beginning to notice other things. There was no pile of clothes nearby, for one thing. And there was an awkwardness about the sprawl of her limbs and a strange stillness about the whole body which he did not like.

“Shall I come up and help?’ called the captain.

Douglas did not reply but, laying down his golf-bag, he jumped into the bay, half-falling, and reaching the bottom in a slither of sand. Down here out of the cut of the wind, it was quite warm.

But the coldness of the girl’s skin as he gently touched her shoulder told him she felt nothing of this. He knew at once she was dead.

And as he turned her over and looked down into her stiff contorted face, he knew he had been right.

It had taken something very powerful indeed to stop Anita Sewell from carrying on along her chosen course.

Now there was twice as much work and more than twice as much activity.

Pascoe had visible evidence that he had been right to feel that old bones didn’t produce the same sense of urgency as a fresh corpse. It was Kent’s finest hour. For the second time in a quarter of a century he had been in the right place at the right time. (The first occasion had given him the promotion momentum which had brought him to his present eminence.) He had come across Pearl and Jessup in earnest conference by the fourteenth fairway. By the time Dalziel arrived everything needful had been done, down to a list of those who had played a round that day, and a methodical search of the dunes and the beach was taking place.