Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘If it will help. I’ve sent Arthur to fetch a key.’

At that moment a stooped white-haired man in a brown overall came towards them. For some reason he reminded Kate of an ancient zookeeper. Thinking of some of the students under her tutelage she wasn’t altogether surprised at the thought. He handed the Dean the key with a jerky deferential nod.

‘Thanks, Arthur,’ she said.

Arthur grunted almost inaudibly and turned, walking away slowly.

‘He’s long past retirement age but we couldn’t bear to see him go,’ the Dean explained although no one had made a comment. She held the key aloft and pointed to the buildings on her right. ‘Jamil’s on the first floor.’

The turfed area in the centre of the building was circular rather than the traditional quadrangle of older colleges and in the centre of it there was a tall sycamore tree, some leaves still just about clinging to its branches.

A youth of eighteen or nineteen, dressed in a workman’s overall with a black baseball cap on his head and a scarf wrapped around his neck, was raking the fallen multicoloured leaves into a large pile. Or was trying to. The wind was gusting, sending swirls of the leaves dancing around the grass like animated creatures of myth. She didn’t envy him his job, a Sisyphean task if ever there was one — not that he would probably get the reference, she thought.

A young woman’s laugh echoed across the grounds and Kate looked over to the main hall where the laughing woman was emerging, duffel-coated and wearing a bright red scarf, flanked on each side by two young men who were hanging onto her every word. All of them clutching textbooks like badges of honour, their eyes bright with the possibilities of their future. She looked back at the man raking the leaves, wondering if he wished he had studied harder at school, or whether he relished the fact that he never had to study again and could work outdoors in the open, fresh and healing air.

Kate snapped out of her thoughts as she realised that the Dean had said something. She smiled apologetically back at her as the woman briskly led the way, skirting around the grass and continuing along to one of the blocks of student accommodation through a pair of wire-meshed glass doors that opened onto a concrete stairwell. She walked briskly up the stairs to the first floor. The stairs opened out into a corridor with a small kitchen area with a red plastic-covered sofa, a small table and some chairs around it. Leading left and right from the kitchen was a small corridor with rooms either side. Each corridor led to double doors at the end.

‘The rooms are arranged in groups of twenty,’ the Dean explained. ‘Each group has its own kitchen area. With a toaster and a fridge, et cetera.’ She pointed to the kitchen as they passed and turned to the right-hand set of rooms, fitting the key into the lock of the second room. ‘This is Jamil’s one.’

She opened the door and led them in. It was a small room. A window directly opposite the door with a bed lengthwise underneath. The walls were brick and painted white. Against the wall to their right was a medium-sized pine wardrobe with the doors closed. There was a small rug on the floor and to the left of the door was a desk and chair with bookshelves above. On the desk was a laptop computer and some stacking files that looked to Kate as though they were filled with paper and correspondence. The books on the shelves were arranged neatly. She looked at the titles. All textbooks, law-related. No fiction, she thought. She looked again and corrected herself: one novel, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye . The walls were bare, everything was neatly arranged, not a spot of dust in sight.

‘You sure a student lives here?’ Kate asked dryly.

‘I know what you mean.’ Sheila Anderson said, looking around the room. ‘Like I say, Jamil is a model student. I’ve never once had a complaint about him or any hint of trouble. Some students, their first time away from home and they see it as a chance to really let their hair down.’

‘But not Jamil?’

‘Never.’

‘He’s a second-year student. Isn’t it unusual to still be in a hall of residence?’ Kate asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, when I was at uni, after the first year a group of us on the same course rented a house together. Most second-years seemed to.’

‘I’m not sure Jamil has a lot of friends. There’s Malik, of course.’

Bennett took a book from the shelves. ‘The lad who reported him missing?’

The Dean nodded. ‘His cousin. Malik Hussein. From Iraq, studying chemistry.’

‘Can we speak to him?’

‘I already checked. He has lectures until four o’clock.’

DI Bennett put back on the shelf the textbook that he had been flicking through and turned to her.

‘You can think of no reason why anyone would want to hurt him?’

‘No, he was a beautiful man.’

Kate reacted. ‘Odd choice of expression.’

‘I meant he had a very spiritual quality. There was something about him.’ The Dean smiled apologetically.

‘He is very handsome,’ Kate conceded.

‘Like I say, it’s not just that. “Jamil” means charming, you know.’

Kate shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

Bennett’s phone rang, the strident ring tone echoing loudly in the small bare-walled room. He pulled it out of his pocket and quickly flipped it open. ‘DI Bennett.’ He listened for a few moments. ‘Okay, I’m on it.’

He closed the phone and nodded to Kate and the Dean. ‘Good news. Jamil has just regained consciousness.’

Sheila Anderson sighed audibly. ‘Is he going to be all right?’

Bennett shrugged sympathetically. ‘They don’t know, I’m afraid. He’s still in a very critical condition. They’re keeping a close eye on him. I am sure he is in the best of hands.’

Kate nodded to the Dean. ‘Thanks for your time.’

‘Not at all, if I can be of any more help at all, just let me know.’

‘Sure.’

*

Bennett fished his car keys out of his jacket pocket and beeped the locks open. ‘What did you make of her — the Dean?’ he asked Kate as they climbed into the front seats.

‘Pleasant enough. Seemed genuinely concerned about Jamil.’

Bennett looked across at her. ‘Your university?’ he asked. ‘Some posh Oxbridge college, no doubt?’

‘No doubt at all.’

‘Hall of residence during your first year, you said?’

‘I did.’

‘Same here. Did you socialise with the Dean of your halls of residence much?’

Kate shook her head. ‘I don’t think I even talked to him.’

‘Nor me. Saw him make a speech on arrivals day as we sipped cheap sherry. And saw him about the place here and there, but never had any occasion to speak to him.’

‘So your point would be?’

Bennett shrugged as he turned the key in the ignition. ‘I don’t know. Something seemed a little hinky about her, is all.’

‘Hinky?’

‘Yeah, something not right. A little off. She called him a beautiful man.’

Kate smiled. ‘It’s not a crime for a woman to notice an attractive man. Not since the 1970s, at least.’

‘ Beautiful , she said — not attractive.’

‘So maybe she has a crush on him. Wouldn’t be the first time in a university, would it? Male lecturers have been banging their female students for centuries.’

Bennett looked at her with raised eyebrows and pretended to be shocked. ‘ Banging their students. Do you kiss Jack Delaney with that mouth, doctor?’

Kate looked across at him coolly. ‘There’s a talent night coming up at the local pub on Wednesday. Maybe you should enter.’

‘Nah. I may be called Tony Bennett but I can’t sing for toffee.’