Helen Fields - Perfect Remains

‘And Jayne never said that anything was worrying her? Someone paying her too much attention, maybe?’

‘Never,’ Ann replied. ‘If that girl ever had an unkind thought about anyone, she didn’t express it in my presence.’ She picked up her handbag. ‘You’ll find her, won’t you, Inspector? Before anything …’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘I’ll do everything in my power to find her,’ he said. Ann Burt patted his hand, a contact he tolerated for a second before pulling away and standing up to see her out.

By the end of the afternoon they were no further forward. The lab had confirmed that the only fingerprints on the phone belonged to Jayne Magee. Interviews of the immediate neighbours were tributes to the kind-hearted woman living next door and reports of how shocked they were that she was missing. Callanach gave in. He took Jayne Magee’s file and went home, collecting a take-out curry on the way. If that was the missing reverend’s only vice, then it was a good choice.

Back in Albany Street he ate dinner watching television. The evening news brought Ava Turner’s face before him, appealing for witnesses about a newborn baby who’d been left on a park bench and died tragically from exposure before he could be found. Ava looked like he felt. Callanach hadn’t been aware of the case she was investigating, but any incident involving a child was hard to handle.

Without thinking about it, he dialled her number. When the voicemail message clicked in, he considered hanging up then gave himself a mental kick. It was time to find allies.

‘Ava, it’s Callanach. I appreciate you’re tired and busy, but I could do with a second opinion on the case and I’m afraid you’re top of the list. Actually, yours is the only name on the list. So let me apologise and start again, tomorrow night perhaps, if we’re both free? Let me know.’

Too caffeine-buzzed to sleep, he opened Jayne Magee’s daily diary. It was shaping up to be a long night.

The head of the Department of Philosophy had called King in to her office not five minutes after he’d returned to work. She might at least have let him clear his backlog. After three weeks away, the accumulation was frustrating. Could no one have covered his duties while he was away? He may not really have been sick, but his colleagues didn’t know that, did they? Not one call to offer sympathy or concern. And this morning the other administrative staff hadn’t even asked him about it. This was the way it had always been, no reason to expect anything better at this point. Was it intimidation or jealousy, he wondered, as he deliberately delayed by making tea, keeping Natasha, or Professor Forge as she insisted he call her, waiting just a few minutes more.

By the time King opened her door, she was taking a telephone call and raised her forefinger as if he was a wayward student, keeping him still and silent while she finished her business. Natasha was wearing a dark green suit that emphasised her hazel eyes and ash blonde hair. King hated the way she made him feel. Even though he couldn’t bear to be in her company these days, there was no escaping her beauty. He admired her long, slender neck, with skin that would have flattered a woman in her early twenties. Forge’s thirty-sixth birthday had come and gone yet she was remarkably untouched by the signs of ageing. But King wouldn’t let her affect him like she used to – he had a new world waiting at home that she could never conceive. Like some great Vernean adventure, he would travel into his secret inner domain, moulding it until his utopia was complete. He pictured Natasha there – she could insist he call her Professor to her face, but in his head he called her other names, some she wouldn’t like at all – and felt a desire so strong wash over him that the mug in his hand began to shake. Finally she hung up.

‘Sit down, please, Dr King. It’s good that you’re back at work. I’d like you to arrange a speaker for the next evening lecture. It’s only two weeks away so we’re behind with the arrangements. Can you organise it in that time frame?’ She raised her eyebrows at him. There had been a time when he’d loved that expression, her pensiveness. He’d been wrong. It was irritating. He hadn’t noticed then how it created tiny frown wrinkles across her brow, or her patronising habit of tipping her head to the side as she waited for a response.

‘Easily,’ was his reply.

She breathed in as if about to say something more, changed her mind and flipped her diary shut.

‘All right. The speaker should address one of our listed titles for the term and we’ll need an outline of their lecture seven days beforehand, so time’s tight.’

‘I know the format,’ he said, enjoying her tension. She had her arms crossed defensively over her chest. Little did she know how appropriate it was, he thought. If she could only see what he’d done; all that he’d become. The tailored suits and high heels, her immaculate hair kept short and businesslike, wouldn’t be so intimidating on his home territory.

‘Right, you’ll have a lot to catch up on from your leave, so that’ll be all.’ She turned her face to the computer monitor. He had been dismissed. All she’d ever done was dismiss him. King had once put forward a paper he’d spent months researching and writing, offering it for inclusion in the department’s journal, only to have it rejected out of hand. Three times he’d applied for academic posts in the department. Twice he’d been discounted at the first stage. The third time, he’d been selected for interview. He remembered his elation upon receiving the notification letter with something close to shame. He’d worked hour after hour, consuming every volume on philosophy he could find, studying teaching plans, the history of the department, everything and anything that would impress the board. He was finally going to receive the recognition he was owed. He wouldn’t let himself down.

On the day of his interview, he’d been calming his nerves in the gents’ toilets, splashing cold water on his face. That was when he’d heard those imbeciles giggling together, thinking they couldn’t be overheard in the ladies’ next door.

‘What are they doing interviewing him? He gives me the creeps and he’s horrible to the students, won’t give them the time of day. Can you imagine him teaching? I’m not staying here if he’s on the faculty, doing his typing, organising his diary. He’ll probably make us all address him as sir,’ the ugly bleached-blonde receptionist had said. He’d always loathed her. She embodied the worst of young women, concerned only with their grooming and social lives, handing themselves out to the lowest bidder, couldn’t write a sentence without a spelling mistake.

‘He’ll probably make us curtsy when we go in his room,’ said another. This was an older voice. Deirdre, King thought. That was worse. She’d always been polite to his face, friendly, even. How quickly women betrayed. Throwing a paper towel in the bin he told himself to stop listening, knowing it was stupid, damaging his confidence before the most important thirty minutes of his life and a chance at the academic career he’d always desired. But he’d stayed. It was the human condition: the need to know the worst, the destructive desire to see how it feels when you hit rock bottom. He’d inched closer to the wall to hear better. The voices were hushed and he’d held his breath to catch the words.