That prompted another grimace. ‘I worry about that. With Uncle Pawel, the dependency is so strong, he is quite capable of stealing from an off-licence, or stealing money to buy alcohol. And so, to stop him from doing this, I give him money, though I know exactly what he will spend it on.’
‘I see your problem.’
‘And the terrible thing is, Uncle Pawel is bad for the Polish community here on the South Coast. We are mostly hard-working people, and we have managed to put up with the prejudice and live alongside the locals in a friendly way. Then someone like Uncle Pawel comes along, and all the lines about “bone-idle immigrants, taking advantage of our welfare system” – well, they become true. And Uncle Pawel is not alone. There are a few – very few, I am glad to say – like him. And they gravitate together. He finds other Polish layabouts to drink with. They hang about in the shelters on the seafront, drinking together. People see them, hear they are speaking a foreign language. It is not good for the image of the Poles.
‘And then some of the men Uncle Pawel drinks with are into drugs, too. It is easy to get drugs round here – Littlehampton, Bognor; you don’t even have to go to Brighton.’
‘And does your uncle use drugs?’
‘I do not know for sure, but I think it is likely,’ came the bleak response.
‘Hm. Zosia, you spoke of “taking advantage of our welfare system”. Does that mean you’ve consulted health professionals, alcohol recovery programmes, about your uncle’s problems?’ If not, Jude could certainly help. She had a comprehensive list of such services at her fingertips. It was surprising how many of her clients, even in nice, middle-class Fethering, had dependency issues.
Zosia blushed. ‘No, it is … I do not want to ask for outside help. Uncle Pawel is family. My mother would not like me to make his shame public.’
Jude was beginning to realize the extent of the girl’s troubles. It was more than someone of her age should have to cope with. Then suddenly she had another thought, a memory of her walk earlier that week to Fethering Library.
‘Zosia, you said your uncle and his drinking mates often got together in seafront shelters?’
‘Yes?’
‘You wouldn’t remember whether he was out drinking last Tuesday evening?’
The girl’s brow wrinkled. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘It was the evening that ended up with the writer’s body being found in the library car park … well, no, it was actually the following morning that the body was found, but—’
‘I know what you are talking about. It’s been the main topic of conversation in the pub all week.’
‘I bet it has. Anyway, as I was walking along the front last Tuesday, on my way to the library, about half-past six I suppose it would have been, I heard some people carousing in one of the shelters on—’
‘No, that would not have been Uncle Pawel,’ said Zosia firmly. ‘Tuesday is my day off at the pub. So that Tuesday evening I cook for him. Good Polish food. Kopytka he likes very much, like my mother cooks, like their mother cooked for them when they were children. That night he does not drink. And he is the Uncle Pawel I have always known and loved.’
‘And then on Wednesday he’s back to his drinking ways.’
‘Usually, yes.’
‘But not this week?’
‘I do not know. That is why I am so worried, so upset. Uncle Pawel has disappeared.’
EIGHTEEN
Carole, who hadn’t expected any contact to be made till Monday at the earliest, was surprised to get a call back from Nessa Perks on the Sunday morning. The Professor was in her office at the University of Clincham. ‘Research is an ongoing project,’ said the American. ‘It doesn’t stop just because of a weekend. The weekdays get so cluttered up with teaching, often the weekends are the only time I can concentrate.’
Carole explained that she would like to talk about the events of the Tuesday evening, ‘because I gather you were present then at Fethering Library.’
‘Yes, I was,’ Nessa confirmed.
‘Have the police talked to you about anything you might have seen?’
‘No, they haven’t.’ The Professor was clearly piqued by this official shortcoming. ‘You would have thought they would have done, knowing that I am an internationally recognized expert on crime.’
Carole didn’t raise the question of how the police might have been expected to know that. Instead she said, ‘I thought your expertise was in fictional rather than real-life crime.’
‘You’d be surprised how frequently the two correlate,’ Nessa Perks replied. ‘They are, not to put too fine a point on it, inseparable. In fact, that is the basis of the research I am currently doing for a new book.’
‘That sounds very interesting,’ said Carole, though something in the Professor’s manner suggested to her that it wouldn’t be. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if we could meet to talk about Burton St Clair’s death?
Professor Vanessa Perks was very keen on the idea. Miffed by the apparent lack of interest from the official enquiry, she was more than ready to share her theories with anyone who’d listen.
The agreed time was four o’clock, by which time the day was colder than ever. The lethargic gatekeeper at the university’s main entrance had been alerted to Carole’s arrival and directed her towards the English and Creative Writing Department. Then he returned to his electric fire and Fast and Furious DVD. Drawing close, as instructed, she rang the Professor’s mobile to announce her arrival, and was admitted through a door protected from intruders by a keypad code.
The willowy Nessa Perks said little until she was actually in her office, and when they got there, Carole could see why. The Professor wanted to impress all visitors with the magnificent contents of her shelves. For there, in serried ranks, stood a huge array of old books. All crime novels. The hardbacks looked to date from the Twenties and Thirties, and Carole recognized the green and white livery of the Penguin paperbacks.
She was obviously expected to say something on the lines of ‘You’ve got quite a collection there’, so that was exactly what she said.
‘Yes, fairly comprehensive. Probably as good a collection as there is in this country, outside of specialist libraries.’
‘And are they all yours?’
‘Well, technically the university purchased them, but I curated the collection.’
Carole had noticed that in contemporary life more and more people seemed to be ‘curating’ all kinds of things, but she supposed curating a collection of books was closer to the original meaning of the word than some other of its many current usages. She also got the firm impression that if the University of Clincham ever wanted to claim back the books they had bought for Professor Vanessa Perks, they might encounter a problem. When she looked at her shelves it was with a proprietorial air.
Though Carole didn’t realize it, the Professor represented a relatively new trend in academia, whereby genre fiction was given serious intellectual scrutiny. Thirty years before, the idea of university students studying crime or science fiction would have been laughable, but they had both become serious academic disciplines. Like many, the trend had started in America, but quickly been embraced by British universities. (There were even course notes available, which summarized the plots of Agatha Christie novels for students who found the effort of reading them too challenging.) And people like Professor Vanessa Perks were riding the crest of this new wave.
The academic was dressed that morning in an over-frilly cream blouse, a thin black skirt that came down to mid-thigh and Victorian buttoned boots. Her make-up was so immaculate that it looked almost as if there were a transparent shell over her face. The china in which she served tea from a silver pot was crinkled around the edges. Carole got the impression that the Professor was one of those Americans who was a little too fervently in favour of all things British. The tea, inevitably, was Earl Grey.