He shrugged as he poured the drinks and gestured to one of the sofas. “Need a versatile space for the kind of stuff I do.”
Jude wondered if the ambiguity was deliberate, and decided it probably was. She sat down on the sofa and he slumped beside her, passing across a glass of Scotch.
“Cheers.”
She echoed the toast and took a long swallow. The whisky burned its comfort down her throat. “So…are you going to have a look through the admissions files…to see if Tadeusz Jankowski ever applied for a place here?”
“I’ll do that in a little while,” he replied. “Let’s just enjoy a drink first. I’ve had a hard day. I need a break.”
They both took a long swallow.
“Workshopping, were you?”
“Yes. Right here. We were doing some role-playing about broken relationships.”
“Which no doubt involved a lot of rolling about on the bed over there?”
“A certain amount, yes.” He read the potential censure in her eye. “Nothing inappropriate, I can assure you. This generation of kids are very hot on what’s appropriate and inappropriate. What they get up to in their own time is not my problem; here on the campus they’re quite sophisticated in their approach to gender politics.”
“And you have a position of trust with them?”
“Very definitely. A duty of responsibility. Which I take very seriously. I wouldn’t last long here if I didn’t.”
“Which could bring us back to the mysterious Joan.”
“It could, but it needn’t.” His hand was now resting gently on Jude’s shoulder. She could have told him to remove it, but she didn’t want a scene. Not yet, not before she’d got some more information out of him. Besides, she was a grown woman. She could look after herself. And having his hand on her shoulder was not a wholly unpleasant sensation.
“So you deny that you’re having a relationship with her?”
“I’ve told you. It’d be more than my job’s worth. And it’d be far too public for me to do such a thing. A campus like this is a breeding ground for gossip. Everyone would immediately know all the details. How could I possibly manage it?”
“This place seems quite private. We didn’t see anyone when we came in here this evening, did we?”
“The CCTV cameras would have clocked us.”
“Yes, and the security people might be interested in me. Because I have nothing to do with the university. But you…it’s part of your job to come and go as you please. And presumably Joan’s enrolled as a student here, so there’s nothing odd about her wandering around. If she’s studying Drama, why shouldn’t she come into the Drama Studio?”
“Jude, might I say that you do have rather a one-track mind?”
“Maybe.”
His hand was now holding her shoulder rather than just resting on it. And he was moving his face closer, as if to kiss her.
Jude, tempted but strong, held up a hand. “I came here because you said you kept the admission files here.”
“Yes, they’re on my laptop.” Recognizing that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with her at that moment, he raised himself out of the sofa’s depths. “I’ll get it.” He went back to the lighting box.
Jude swallowed the rest of her whisky. She topped up her grubby glass from the bottle on the floor. She looked around the room. Andy Constant’s convenient little seduction venue. Against the walls were racks of costumes, rifles, banners, swords, kitchen equipment, stepladders. All the impedimenta of the fantasies worked out by the students in the space. The fantasies which were engendered and controlled by Andy Constant during workshop sessions. And others that he realized out of academic hours.
He returned, holding his laptop open and already keying instructions into it. “What period were you talking about?”
“He came over to England round the end of last September. Any time since then, I imagine.”
“University term starts at the end of September. He’d have had to apply much earlier than that if he wanted to enrol as a full-time student…”
“Are there part-time courses?”
“Some.”
“Could you check those too, please?”
“Jude, I would be within my rights to ask you why the hell you want to know all this stuff?”
“If you did, I’d reply that I want to know why Tadeusz Jankowski was murdered.”
“Whatever the reason for his death, I can assure you it had nothing to do with Clincham College.”
“The information I’m asking you to check could maybe prove that. You do have it there, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied tartly. “The main records are over in the Admin block, but I keep copies of everything here. It is my job, you know.” He seemed to resent Jude’s insinuation that he might be less than diligent in his duties. Looking at the laptop screen, he said, “No, the name’s not here.”
“May I have a look?”
He sighed at her suspicion, but obediently sat down and placed the laptop on her plump knees. “OK, we’re in the file ‘ALLAPP’, short for ‘All Applications’. As you see, the dates are on different tabs. Check along the period you are interested in. The applicants’ names, you’ll see, are in alphabetical order.”
Jude went through the files for the previous nine months. The name ‘Tadeusz Jankowski’ did not appear. She handed the laptop back.
“So now do you believe me?”
“About that,” said Jude, “yes.”
He deliberately closed the laptop and placed it down on the floor. Then he put his hand on her shoulder and moved it quickly round to her neck. He drew her face towards his.
He had cleaned his teeth. He had at least made that effort to meet her. She could smell the fresh mint from his mouth. She could feel the strength of his eyes as they locked with hers. And he did have very kissable lips.
Jude had no puritan instincts in sexual matters. She tended to let her actions be dictated by the promptings of instinct. Such an attitude had frequently led to disaster, but the way to that disaster had sometimes been a pretty one.
Their mouths engaged. It was pleasant. He seemed in no hurry. His lips teased and nibbled at hers, his tongue flicking against her teeth.
Their eyes had disengaged, and over Andy’s shoulder Jude could see the contours of the room, the black walls washed by honey-coloured light, the jumble of stage equipment against the wall. She felt his hand slip over the curves of her shoulder towards the more rewarding curves of her breast. She liked the feeling. She didn’t like the man, but she liked what he was doing to her.
Suddenly her eye was caught by a flash of colour amongst the black of the props. She saw the outline of a face, red, with two black and white eyes over a circular mouth.
Propped up against the wall of the Drama Studio was a red-painted guitar.
? Blood at the Bookies ?
Twenty-Nine
“He said he had no idea where it came from,” Jude announced. “He’d asked the students to bring in musical instruments for some workshop they were doing. One of them brought in that guitar.”
“Which one?”
“He claimed he couldn’t remember, Carole. He didn’t notice. A lot of them brought stuff in.”
“Do you think he was telling the truth?”
“From what I know of Andy Constant, I’d think it was unlikely.”
“Hm.” Carole looked at her neighbour curiously. “And how did you actually come to be in the Drama Studio with him?”
For the first time in their acquaintance, she saw Jude look embarrassed. “Oh, I was just checking out with
