The woman’s face shut down immediately. “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to give out information about the students at the university.”
Jude thought she’d see whether charm might succeed where Carole’s confrontational approach had failed. “No, I’m sure that’s the rule, but all we wanted to know – ”
“I’m sorry,” the woman interrupted. “I cannot let you have any information about the students.”
“Is there someone else we could speak to?” asked Carole frostily.
“You could write to the Principal with your enquiry, and it’s possible that he might reply to you.” The woman didn’t make that sound a very likely scenario.
“Look,” Jude persisted, “all we want to know is the answer to one very simple question.” There was no point in pretence. Everyone in the locality knew the name of the recent murder victim. “We want to know whether Tadeusz Jankowski, the man who was stabbed in Fethering last week, was ever actually enrolled in the college here.”
The woman went into automaton mode. “I am not allowed to give out any information about any of the students in – ”
“Ah, so you’re admitting he was a student here?”
“I am not doing – ”
She was interrupted by a voice from behind her.
Tadek’s name had distracted the man from his spreadsheets. “It’s all right, Isobel, I’ll deal with this.”
Leaving his papers, he emerged through the door from Reception and approached the two women. “My name’s Andy Constant. Lecturer in Drama Studies. Also Admissions Tutor.” Carole and Jude gave their names. “Would you like to come and have a cup of coffee?”
They agreed that they would and, without further words, he led them to an adjacent snack bar. “Don’t worry, the coffee’s all right.” He gestured to a well-known logo over the door. “Outside franchise. Like everything else in this place. The academic life has ceased to be about learning. It’s now all about raising funds and doing deals. I’ll get the coffees. What would you like?”
As he went to the counter, Carole and Jude found a table and studied him. Long and gangly, Andy Constant moved with a laid-back swagger. His face receded from a beak of a nose and surprisingly full lips. His grey hair was worn long, rather in the style of Charles I. He had on black jeans, Timberland boots and a grey denim blouson over a white T·shirt. His voice was as languid as his manner.
He brought over the coffees, a cappuccino for Jude, the ‘ordinary black’ Carole had ordered, a tiny cup of espresso for himself, and sat down opposite them.
“Bit of excitement in a little place like Fethering, a murder, isn’t it?” His tone was joshing, sending up the intensity of their interest. But he was at the same time alert, apparently trying to deduce the agenda that had brought them to the college.
“Bound to be,” said Jude easily.
For the first time he seemed to take her in, and he liked what he saw. “Yes. And everyone’s got their own theory about what happened.”
“The students too?”
“And how. Big excitement for them. Also rather frightening. A young man killed, possibly murdered, only a few miles away in Fethering. Comes a bit near home for them. Current crop of students have been brought up to be afraid of everything. The Health and Safety Generation, I call the poor saps. All afraid of being attacked, the girls afraid of being raped…Whatever happened to the innocence of youth?”
“Did it ever exist?” asked Carole.
“Maybe not, but I think when I was their age I did at least have the illusion of innocence. I kind of trusted the world, was prepared to give it a chance. I wasn’t afraid of everything.”
“You say they’re afraid of everything,” said Jude, “but you’re talking about a generation who think nothing of shooting off round the world on their gap years.”
“True. Except that’s just become another form of package tourism these days. For me it takes the excitement out of far-flung places, knowing there’ll be a nice familiar Macdonald’s waiting when you get there.”
“Maybe.” He had taken over the conversation so effortlessly that Jude wanted to find out more about Andy Constant. “You said you lecture in Drama. Does that mean you used to be an actor?” A theatricality about him made this quite a possibility.
“Very early in my career. Moved into directing for a while. Since then, teaching. Mind you, that involves a certain amount of directing too. And acting, come to think of it.”
He had considerable charm, and a strong sexual magnetism. The latter got through to Jude at an instinctive, visceral level, and she wondered whether Carole was aware of it too.
“Anyway,” Andy went on, “I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to Isobel at Reception. Sorry, I’m afraid she’s not the most imaginative of women. Whatever the question, she always comes up with the party line. But I heard you mentioning the name of Tadeusz Jankowski. I wondered why you were interested. Are you just another pair of Fethering residents fascinated by their proximity to a murder?”
Carole and Jude exchanged a look. The true answer was probably a yes, but they needed to come up with something a bit better than that. Jude thought of a solution which certainly had elements of truth in it. “The sister of the dead man came to see me. Naturally enough, she’s trying to find out everything she can about her brother. I just thought Carole and I could possibly help her.”
He nodded, as if he accepted this justification for their presence. “But why have you come here? What reason do you have for connecting the young man with Clincham College?”
Quickly Jude recounted what she had heard from Harold Peskett, about the young Pole’s earlier visit to the betting shop.
“Ah. That would explain something else.”
“What?”
“The police have been here too.”
“Asking about Tadeusz Jankowski?”
“Yes, Carole. Maybe they got the lead from the same source as you did.”
“When were they here?” asked Jude.
“Monday.”
“Then it wasn’t the same source as mine. I only suggested they should contact Harold yesterday – and up to then he said they hadn’t had any contact with him. So they must have heard about the Clincham College connection from someone else.”
“Not necessarily,” said Andy Constant. Apparently they didn’t seem very focused when they came here, more like it was just a routine enquiry.” Yes, thought Jude, “unfocused’ is a pretty good description of the approach Baines and Yelland had used when they interviewed her.
“I mean, I suppose it makes sense,” Andy went on. “Young people tend to congregate together. The dead man was young and had been living round here, so there’s quite a reasonable chance that he would have hooked up with some of the students from the college.” Carole noticed he didn’t use the word ‘university’ and wondered whether this was because he hadn’t yet got used to the idea or whether he was as cynical about the place’s status as she was.
The lecturer took a sip of his espresso and then continued in a different tone. “Anyway, one thing the police did say was that we on the staff here should keep our eyes and ears open for anyone who came here expressing interest in the murder victim…”
“Oh.”
“I thought I should warn you.”
“Why warn us?”
“Well, I’m sure you don’t want to be questioned by the police, do you? It’s very time-consuming and can, I believe, be quite unpleasant. I mean, you’re fine now. Isobel at Reception won’t say anything – that would involve her using her initiative and she doesn’t do that. And you can rely on me to keep quiet, but I can’t guarantee that the rest of the staff here would be so accommodating.”
“So what are you actually saying?” asked Carole.
“I’m saying that we’ve been told to let the police know if anyone comes here enquiring about Tadeusz Jankowski, and so I think there might be an argument for you not taking your investigations at Clincham College
