right: sunshine is the best disinfectant.
His head was in his hands. Normally I would have invited Annette to launch her career with his arrest, but I didn't. 'Peter Mark Handley,'
I began, 'I am arresting you for the possession of material of an obscene nature. You need not say anything…'
I was aware of Mrs. Handley rising to her feet as I droned the caution. 'Oh no,' she sobbed. 'Oh no.'
The three of them took him back while I waited for her to lock up. We rode to the station in the patrol car we'd had standing by and I seated her in reception and told her about the allegations against her husband. It wasn't enough to stop her looking at me with hatred in her eyes, as if it were all my doing. Maggie would interview her, stalling for long enough for the porn squad to lift the stuff we'd found. I trudged upstairs to my office to read the mail and wondered if it was all worthwhile.
The ten ex-chemistry students we'd contacted told us very little, so we pressed on. After another couple of blips I decided to concentrate on the female members of the course, on the doubtful grounds that they'd be more likely to remember a male colleague and, being the more sentimental gender, might possibly have retained any photographs. Also, there were only sixteen of them. Also, if they went to university in 1975 they'd be in their early forties now, which is a dangerous age. I didn't mention that last reason to Sparky.
Four of them remembered Duncan, and confirmed the dropping-out bit. One supplied us with a first-year class photograph and a lady working for the EEC in Belgium said she had some pictures taken at a party. Duncan was there and he might have been with a girl, but not one with purple hair. She wasn't sure if she still had the pictures but would be going home in about six weeks. The others were all doing quite well for themselves: one had just resumed a career as an industrial journalist after rearing three kids, and we had accountants, an advertising executive, a megabyte of computer boffins and, would you believe, several chemists among the rest. All of which was about as much use to us as dog poo on the doorstep.
'How,' I said to Sparky, 'do you fancy going to university?'
'I'd a feeling this was coming,' was his glum reply.
'We're getting nowhere, and we need to know who the girl with purple hair was. So far, all we've established is that Duncan dropped out.
She was probably the reason but almost certainly wasn't on the chemistry course. She's the key to his problems and ours. I'll have a word with Roper-Jones, the registrar, and maybe you could have a day or two over there, going through the records of all the other students.
For Christ's sake, surely someone can remember a girl with purple hair!'
'How many is 'all the other students'?'
'There's twenty-two thousand there at present, but it would be a lot fewer in '75.'
'That's a relief.'
'Are you OK for tomorrow?'
'University, here I come. Wait till I tell Sophie that I've got there before her.'
Sophie is Dave's daughter and my goddaughter. She'll be starting university soon, when she decides where to go. Her results were brilliant and she's spoilt for choice.
'Tell you what,' I said. 'Why don't you take her with you?'
'You mean… to help?'
'I don't see why not, there's nothing confidential about the records.
I'll mention it to Roper-Jones; he didn't strike me as being a job's-worth. If he doesn't agree she could always explore the campus or do some shopping.'
'Great. She'd like that. Do you mind if I tell her it was my idea?'
'Why?' I demanded, suspicious.
'I'm in her bad books. Not enough time to give her driving lessons.'
'Well, pay for them.'
'At twenty quid a throw? I should cocoa!'
When he'd gone I rang Jacquie and arranged to see her that night. I felt ready for another steak, possibly followed by a session of aroma therapy She was telling me that too much could be dangerous for my health and I was clarifying whether she meant steak or pongy massage when my other phone rang. I said a hasty goodbye and picked it up.
'Pop up, please, Charlie, if you don't mind,' Superintendent Wood said.
He had Gareth Adey, my uniformed counterpart, with him, and they both had problems. Gilbert was catching hell from the Chamber of Commerce over the number of street traders who were selling fake jeans and T-shirts, and Gareth had double-booked three teenagers who were coming in to be cautioned. I agreed to do the youths and Gareth promised a blitz on the street traders at the weekend.
The first of the cautions was a young man with low aspirations; he'd been caught shoplifting at Everything a Pound. 'It says here that you are a thief,' I told him, waving his case notes. He was standing in front of Adey's desk in the downstairs office, his mother on a chair to one side. He nodded his agreement.
'Do you know what I normally do?' I asked him. He didn't. 'Well, I'll tell you. I chase murderers, and here I am wasting time because you stole a cheap musical box from a two-bit shop.' He didn't look impressed. 'Yesterday,' I continued, 'we had a meeting about you. Four strangers, round a table, discussing what to do with you. How do you think that makes your mother feel, eh?' He didn't know. 'Don't think you've got away with it,' I told him. 'The reason you are not going before a court, and possibly to a young offenders' institute, is because we decided it wasn't best for you. We decided to give you another chance because we don't want you to waste your life. What do you want to do when you leave school?' He shrugged his shoulders.
'Pardon?' I said.
'Speak to the inspector,' his mother told him.
'Get a job,' he mumbled.
'And what chance do you think you'd have with a criminal record?'
'Dunno.'
'If you had six people apply for a job and one had a record, who would you choose?'
'One of the others.'
'Right.'
I told him that shoplifting cost every man, woman and child in the country about a hundred pounds a year and ranted on until I reached the point where I was boring him. He signed to accept the caution and I kicked him out. His mother apologised and swore he wouldn't be back.
Funny thing is, most of them don't come back.
The other two were much the same. I made a coffee with Adey's fixings and read the contents of his in-tray. That was much the same, too.
There was a canister of a new CS gas in his drawer that he was supposed to be appraising. I gave a bluebottle on his window a quick squirt and it keeled over. Good stuff, I thought as I closed his door behind me, tears running down my cheeks.
Fresh air, that's what I needed. I cleared my desk and went for a wander round the town centre. I have a policeman's eye for detail, the unusual, and girls' legs. The warm weather certainly brings them out.
The new mall has taken a lot of trade from the high street shops, and the place is a ghost town through the week compared to a few years ago.
The only street vendor at work was O'Keefe, at his usual place near the entrance to the market. He'd be tall if he straightened his back, with a craggy complexion eroded by years of neglect and outdoor life. He plays the Old Soldier, unable to work because of the wounds he suffered in Korea and, later, the Falklands. Soon it'll be the Gulf.
His right eye has a wedge of white where it ought to be brown and it points off to the side. O'Keefe sells jeans and football shirts.
'Anything my size, O'Keefe?' I said.
'Ello, Mr. Priest,' he replied warily. 'Didn't recognise you for a minute. All a bit short in the leg for you, I'd say.'
'How much are the Town shirts?'
'Eighteen quid to friends. Cost you forty-two at the club shop.'
