Майкл Ридпат - The Predator

Chris sighed. Still, Eric was right. It couldn’t be that hard to track down someone with a name like Marcus Lubron. He’d never heard the name Lubron before he’d met Alex. He’d allow himself some time while he was in New York to find him. Perhaps Eric could help.

Chris leaned against the wall by the porter’s lodge and watched the children go by. He remembered how infuriated he had been when he was at Oxford to read an article by a graduate about how young all the undergraduates looked to him. Well, twelve years on he knew it was true. Surely, Chris thought, he had never looked quite like these kids?

Then he saw her, striding across the quad, or whatever they called it in Cambridge, in jeans, jersey and a denim jacket. He was relieved to see that she looked a couple of years older than most of the spotty inhabitants of the college. She brightened when she saw him. He kissed her cheek, already cold in the March air.

‘Hi, it’s great to see you,’ she said.

‘And you. Thanks for inviting me up here.’

‘It seemed the least I could do after your hospitality last week. Do you mind if we just walk? I’d like to explore the town a bit.’

‘That’s fine with me,’ said Chris.

‘Do you know Cambridge?’ Megan asked. ‘You didn’t go here, did you?’

‘I went to the other place,’ said Chris. ‘I spent a couple of drunken evenings here ten years ago seeing friends from school. I’m afraid I don’t remember it very clearly.’

They walked. Chris hadn’t been back to Oxford for years, and he was surprised by how different Cambridge felt from the way he remembered university. There were few tourists around at this time of year. People were walking to and fro with quiet purpose. Although he knew, because he could remember, that students had their own problems, their own worries, their own crises, the atmosphere seemed to be one of calm serenity. Traffic had been banished from the centre of Cambridge and at times the loudest noise he could hear was the sound of footsteps around him, or the rattle of an old bicycle. He felt like a grubby outsider from the materialistic bustle of another world, from the world of pay cheques, commuting on the underground, suits, mortgages.

‘What’s the University of Chicago like?’ he asked Megan.

‘Nothing like this,’ she said. ‘At least, not physically. The oldest buildings are only about a hundred years old. But it’s a good school. There are some good historians there: people even these guys respect.’

‘I’m sure you’re one of them,’ Chris said.

Megan smiled. ‘We’ll see. What I really like about Cambridge is that it seems like a place where history happens. My kind of history.’

‘You mean all the old buildings?’

‘Yes, but it’s more than that. You can imagine people studying here for centuries, reading and writing Latin, arguing about theology. It somehow makes the study of, I don’t know, manuscript illumination in the tenth century, more real. In Chicago, I felt as if I was on a different planet. In fact, Mars seemed to be closer and more real than St Dunstan and his friends.’

‘It seems an awfully long time ago to me.’

‘Not to me,’ said Megan. ‘I remember the first time I became interested in all this stuff. I was an exchange student at a high school in France, in Orléans. The girl I was staying with couldn’t care about anything that happened before about nineteen seventy, but her father was fascinated by history. He took me to this tiny little church in a place called Germigny-des-Prés. There was a blind curate who showed us round. Most of it was standard grey gothic, but one part of it, the apse at one end, was decorated with the most gorgeous frescos. I can still remember the curate describing them from memory. I couldn’t believe that something so beautiful could have been created a thousand years ago, in the so-called “dark ages”. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to understand what it was like to live then, how mysterious and dangerous the world must have seemed, and how people tried to make sense of it.’

‘And I thought all they did in Chicago was trade pork-bellies.’

Megan smiled. ‘I know. I must sound pretty weird to you.’

‘No,’ said Chris. ‘Not at all. You must show me some of this stuff.’

‘I’ll take you to see The Benedictional of St Aethelwold in the British Library. It’s completely beautiful.’

‘Do that.’

‘All right,’ Megan smiled. ‘I will.’ She pointed down a narrow alley. ‘Shall we try this way?’

They wandered down the small road. Along one side was a row of cottages washed in varying shades of pink and grey, along the other was the back of a college, Chris had no idea which one. He was lost.

‘The funeral was pretty grim, wasn’t it?’ he said.

Megan shuddered. ‘Yes. But I’m glad I went.’

‘I’m sorry we didn’t talk much.’

‘It was difficult with Duncan there. Did you get a chance to speak to him?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Chris.

‘And?’

‘Although he wouldn’t admit it at first, he did say Marcus had been to see him. Apparently, you were right: Lenka did tell Marcus what really happened on the boat. Marcus asked Duncan whether this was all true, and threatened him.’

‘Threatened him?’ said Megan in alarm.

‘Yes. Nothing specific. But it seemed to rattle Duncan.’

‘So why didn’t he mention this to you before?’

‘He said he didn’t want to admit that he’d given away what really happened, after all we’d done to keep it quiet.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Megan.

‘I believe him,’ said Chris.

‘Did you ask him where he was the day Lenka was killed?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

Chris took a deep breath. ‘It was the day of her funeral. He was upset. I’m sure that was genuine. I think he would have been pretty angry if I’d suggested he was responsible.’

Megan looked at Chris disapprovingly.

‘He’s my friend. I know him,’ said Chris. ‘And I’m sure he didn’t kill Lenka.’

They had reached the river, swollen by the recent rain. Wisps of fog still hung eerily over the fields towards Grantchester. A solitary, cold-looking student was propelling a punt downstream.

‘What a stupid way to drive a boat,’ said Megan. ‘Can you do that?’

‘Not in March,’ Chris said, shivering.

They walked on. ‘At least we now know what Lenka told Marcus,’ Megan said.

‘Yes,’ said Chris. Then he stopped in his tracks. Wait a moment!’

‘What is it?’

‘We don’t know what Lenka was going to tell Marcus. We don’t know at all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, we know Marcus came to see Lenka on the Tuesday. We also know, because Duncan told us, that that is when Lenka told him that Duncan knocked Alex into the sea. Marcus went straight off to wait for Duncan coming out of work that afternoon.’

‘OK.’

‘But the e-mail Lenka sent to Marcus was written twenty-four hours later.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Hang on, let me check.’ Chris dug the e-mail out of the breast pocket of his leather jacket. ‘Yes, here it is. It was sent on Wednesday the sixteenth of February.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Megan said.

‘It does. It means that there was something else that Marcus had a right to know.’

‘Something else?’

‘Must be.’

‘But what?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

They crossed the river and walked along towards the Backs.

‘There is one possibility,’ Megan said. ‘Did you hear Alex was in trouble over drugs?’

‘No,’ said Chris. He furrowed his brow. ‘I don’t remember anything like that.’

‘Oh, yes. He was very worried about it. There had been some kind of sneaky random drug test and he’d been caught with traces of cocaine in his sample. It was a big deal. Bloomfield Weiss was threatening to make an example of him.’