I looked out towards the peonies, where the greys were darkening to night, and debated whether or not to tell her what had befallen Chris Norwood. Decided against, because hearing of the murder of someone one knew, even someone one disliked, could be incalculably shattering. To thrust an old lady living alone in a big house into a state of shock and fear couldn't do any possible good.
'Do you read newspapers?' I said.
She raised her eyebrows over the oddness of the question but answered simply enough. 'Not often. The print's too small. I've good eyes, but I like big-print books.' She indicated the fat red-and-white volume on her table. 'I read nothing else, now.' She looked vaguely round the dusk-filled room. 'Even the racing pages. I've stopped reading those. I just watch the results on television.'
'Just the results? Not the races?'
'Liam said watching the races was the mug's way of betting. Watch the results, he said, and add them to statistical probabilities. I do watch the races, but the results are more of a habit.'
She stretched out a stick-thin arm and switched on the table-light beside her, shutting the peonies instantly into blackness and banishing the far corners of the room into deep shadow. On herself the instant effect was to enhance her physical degeneration, putting skin-folds cruelly back where the dusk had softened them, anchoring the ageless mind into the old, old body.
I looked at the thin, wizened yellow face, at the huge eyes that might once have been beautiful, at the white unstyled hair of Liam O'Rorke's widow, and I suggested that maybe, if I gave her the computer tapes, she could still sell the knowledge that was on them to her friend Mr Gilbert.
'It did cross my mind,' she said, nodding, 'when you said you had them. I don't really understand what they are, though. I don't know anything about computers.'
She'd been married to one, in a way. I said, 'They are just cassettes – like for a cassette player.'
She thought for a while, looking down at her hands. Then she said, 'If I pay you a commission, will you do the deal for me? I'm not so good at dealing as Liam, do you see? And I don't think I have the strength to haggle.'
'But wouldn't Mr Gilbert pay the agreed price?'
She shook her head doubtfully. 'I don't know. That deal was struck three months ago, and now it isn't the papers themselves I'm selling, but something else. I don't know. I think he might twist me into corners. But you know about these tapes, or whatever they are. You could talk to him better than me.' She smiled faintly. 'A proper commission, young man. Ten per cent.'
It took me about five seconds to agree. She gave me Harry Gilbert's address and telephone number, and said she would leave it all to me. I could come back and tell her when it was done. I could bring her all the money, she said, and she would pay me my share, and everything would be fine.
'You trust me?' I said.
'If you steal from me, I'll be no worse off than I am at present.'
She came with me to the lilac-shrouded front door to let me out, and I shook her thistledown, hand and drove away.
The Red Sea parted for Moses, and he walked across.
CHAPTER 7
On Thursday I trundled blearily round school, ineffective from lack of the sleep I'd forfeited in favour of correcting the Upper V's exercise books. They too, like William, had decisive exams ahead. One of the most boring things about myself, I'd discovered, was this sense of commitment to the kids.
Ted Pitts didn't turn up. Jenkins, when directly asked, said scratchily that Pitts had laryngitis, which was disgraceful as it put the whole Maths department's timetable out of order.
'When will he be back?'
Jenkins gave me a sour sneer, not for any particular reason but because it was an ingrained mannerism.
'His wife telephoned,' he said. 'Pitts has lost his voice. When he regains it, doubtless he will return.'
'Could you give me his number.'
'He isn't on the telephone,' Jenkins said repressively. 'He says he can't afford it.'
'His address, then?'
'You should ask in the office.' Jenkins said. 'I can't be expected to remember where my assistant masters live.'
The school secretary was not in his office when I went to look for him during morning break, and I spent the last two periods before lunch (Five C, magnetism; Four D, electrical power) fully realising that if I didn't send computer tapes to Cambridge on that very day they would not arrive by Saturday: and if no computer tapes arrived at Cambridge main post office by Saturday I could expect another and much nastier visit from the man behind the Walther.
At lunchtime, food came low on the priorities. Instead I first went out of school along to the nearest row of shops and bought three blank sixty-minute cassettes. They weren't of the quality beloved by Ted Pitts, but for my purpose they were fine. Then I sought out one of Ted Pitts's colleagues and begged a little help with the computer.
'Well,' he said hesitantly. 'OK, if it's only for ten minutes. Straight after school. And don't tell Jenkins, will you?'
'Never.'
His laugh floated after me as I hurried down the passage towards the coin-box telephone in the main entrance hall. I rang up Newmarket police station (via Directory Enquiries) and asked for whoever was in charge of the investigation into the murder of Chris Norwood.
That would be Detective Chief Superintendent Irestone, I was told. He wasn't in. Would I care to talk to Detective Sergeant Smith? I said I supposed so, and after a few clicks and silences a comfortable Suffolk voice asked me what he could do for me.
I had mentally rehearsed what to say, but it was still difficult to begin. I said tentatively, 'I might know a bit about why Chris Norwood was murdered and I might know perhaps roughly who did it, but I also might easily be wrong, it's just that…'
'Name, sir?' he said, interrupting. 'Address? Can you be reached there, sir? At what time can you be reached there, sir? Detective Chief Superintendent Irestone will get in touch with you, sir. Thank you for calling.'
I put the receiver down not knowing whether he had paid extra-fast attention to what I'd said, or whether he had merely given the stock reply handed out to every crackpot who rang up with his/her pet theory. In either case, it left me with just enough time to catch the last of the hamburgers in the school canteen and to get back to class on the dot.
At four, I was held up by Louise's latest grudge (apparatus left out all over the benches- Martin would never do that) and I was fearful as I raced along the corridors the boys were not allowed to run in, and slid down the stairs with both hands on the bannisters and my feet touching only about every sixth tread (a trick I had learned in my far-back youth), that Ted Pitts's colleague would have tired of waiting, and gone home.
To my relief, he hadn't. He was sitting in front of the familiar screen shooting down little random targets with the zest of a seven-year-old.
'What's that?' I said, pointing at the game.
'"Starstrike". Want a go?'
'Is it yours?'
'Something Ted made up to amuse and teach the kids.'
'Is it in BASIC?' I asked.
'Sure. BASIC, graphics and special characters.'
'Can you List it?'
'Bound to be able to. He'd never stuff it into ROM if he wanted to teach from it.'
'What exactly,' I said frustratedly, 'is ROM?'
'Read Only Memory. If a program is in ROM you can only Run it, you can't List it.'
He typed LIST, and Ted's game scrolled up the screen to seemingly endless flickering rows.
'There you are,' Ted's colleague said.
I looked at part of the last section of the program, which was now at rest on the screen:
410 RESET (RX, RY): RX = RX-RA: RY: RY-8