Charles Cumming - The Trinity Six

‘I’m looking for one of the nurses here. Calvin.’ He had assumed that the use of Somers’s Christian name might generate an effect of familiarity. ‘Is he around?’

The doctor was wearing a stethoscope around her neck, like a gesture to Central Casting. She took a good long look at his shoes. Gaddis never gave much thought to his appearance and wondered what it was that people thought they could discern from analysing a stranger’s footwear. Today, he was wearing a pair of scuffed desert boots. In the eyes of a pretty twenty-five-year-old doctor, was that a good or a bad thing?

‘Calvin? Sure,’ she said, her face suddenly opening up to him. It was as if he had passed some unspecified test. ‘I’ve seen him around this morning. He has an office on the second floor, just beyond Pathology. Do you know it?’

‘It’s my first time,’ Gaddis replied. He was not a natural liar and there seemed no point in misleading her. The doctor duly gave him directions, all the while touching her stethoscope. Two minutes later, Gaddis was standing at the door of Somers’s office, knocking on chipped paint.

‘Enter.’

The voice was reedy and slightly strangulated. Gaddis put an age and appearance to it before he had even turned the handle. Sure enough, Calvin Somers was mid-forties, slightly built, with the stubborn, defensive features of a man who has spent the bulk of his life wrestling a corrosive insecurity. He was wearing a pale green nurse’s uniform and there was gel in his thinning black hair. Sam Gaddis had good instincts about people and he disliked Calvin Somers on sight.

‘Mr Somers?’

‘Who wants to know?’

It was a smartarse line from a second-rate American cop show. Gaddis almost laughed.

‘I was a friend of Charlotte Berg’s,’ he said. ‘My name is Sam Gaddis. I’m an academic. I wondered if you might have time for a quick chat?’

He had closed the door behind him as he asked the question and Somers looked grateful for the privacy. The mention of Charlotte’s name had caught him off-guard; there was perhaps some shameful or calculating element to their relationship which he was keen to obscure.

‘ Was?’ Somers had noted the use of the past tense. He pulled himself up in his chair but did not stand to shake Gaddis’s hand, as if by doing so he might undermine an idea he possessed of his own innate authority. Gaddis noticed that his right hand was spinning a ballpoint pen nervously around the surface of his desk.

‘I’m afraid I have some bad news,’ he said.

‘And what’s that?’

The manner was artificially confident, even supercilious. Gaddis watched Somers’s face carefully.

‘Charlotte had a heart attack. Suddenly. Last week. I think you may have been one of the last people to see her alive.’

‘She what?’

The reaction was one of annoyance, rather than shock. Somers was looking at Gaddis in the way that you might look at a person who has just fired you.

‘She’s dead,’ Gaddis felt obliged to repeat, though he was angered by the callous response. ‘And she was a friend of mine.’

Somers stood up in the narrow office, walked past Gaddis and double-checked that the door was properly closed. A man with a secret. He carried with him a strange, mingled smell of cheap aftershave and hospital disinfectant.

‘And you’ve come to give me the three grand, have you?’ It was a completely unexpected remark. Why was Charlotte in debt to this prick by?3000? Gaddis frowned and said: ‘What’s that?’ as he took a small, disbelieving step backwards.

‘I said have you brought the three grand?’ Somers sat at the edge of his desk. ‘You say you were a friend of hers, she obviously told you about our arrangement or you wouldn’t be here. Were you working on the story together?’

‘What story?’ It was an instinctive tactic, a means of protecting his scoop, but Gaddis saw that it was the wrong move. Somers shot him a withering glance that developed into a smile which bared surprisingly polished teeth.

‘Probably best if you don’t play the innocent,’ he sneered. Two sheets of paper slid off the desk beside him, undermining the remark’s dramatic impact. Somers was obliged to stoop down and pick them up as they floated to the ground.

‘Nobody’s playing the innocent, Calvin. I’m just trying to ascertain who you are and what your relationship was with my friend. If it helps, I can tell you that I’m a senior lecturer in Russian History at UCL. In other words, I am not a journalist. I’m just an interested party. I am not a threat to you.’

‘Who said anything about a threat?’

Somers was back in his chair again, swivelling, trying to regain control. Gaddis saw now that this embittered, hostile man had probably felt threatened for most of his adult life; men like Calvin Somers could not afford to display a moment’s self-doubt. The room had grown hot, central heating pumping out of a radiator beneath a locked window. Gaddis removed his jacket and hooked it on the door.

‘Let’s start again,’ he said. He was used to awkward conversations in cramped rooms. Students complaining. Students crying. Every week at UCL brought a fresh crisis to his office: illness, bereavement, poverty. Students and colleagues alike came to Sam Gaddis with their problems.

‘Why did Charlotte owe you money?’ he asked. He set his voice low, trying to offload any inference from the question. ‘Why hadn’t she paid you?’

A laugh. Not from the belly but from the throat. Somers shook his head.

‘I’ll tell you what, Professor. Cough up the money and I’ll talk to you. Get me three thousand quid in the next six hours and I’ll tell you what your friend Charlotte was paying me to tell her. If not, then can I politely ask you to get the fuck out of my office? I’m not sure I appreciate strangers coming to my place of work and-’

‘Fine.’ Gaddis took the sting out of the attack by raising his hand in a gesture of conciliation. It was a moment of considerable self-control on his part, because he would rather have grabbed Somers by the narrow lapels of his cheap polyester nurse’s uniform and flung him against the radiator. He would prefer to have coaxed even the smallest gesture of respect for Charlotte out of this shiftless parasite, but he needed to keep Calvin Somers onside. The nurse was the link to Neame. Without him, there was no Edward Crane. ‘I’ll get the money,’ he said, with no idea how he would find?3000 before sunset.

‘You will?’ Somers seemed almost to wilt at the prospect of it.

‘Sure. I won’t be able to get more than a thousand out on my cards today, but if you’ll accept a cheque as a guarantee of good faith, I’m sure we can come to some kind of an arrangement.’

Somers looked shocked, but Gaddis could see that a promise of immediate payment had done the trick. The nurse was ready to spill his guts.

‘I get off shift later this afternoon,’ he said. His earlier antagonism had entirely evaporated. ‘Do you know Batchworth Lake?’

Gaddis said that he did not.

‘It’s in a stretch of parkland. Runs beside the Grand Union Canal. Follow signs to the Three Rivers District Council and you’ll find it.’ Gaddis was astonished by how rapidly Somers was making arrangements for delivery of the cash. ‘Meet me in the car park there at five o’clock. If you’ve got the money, I’ll talk. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said Gaddis, though the deal had been struck so quickly that he wondered if he was being played. Why hadn’t Charlotte paid this man? Was the information he possessed even worthwhile? Somers could have accomplices, engaged in a simple con. It was quite possible that Gaddis would now go back to Rickmansworth, withdraw a large sum of money from his bank accounts, hand it to Calvin Somers and be told only that the Earth was round and that there were seven days in the week.