“I understand that, but we can’t proceed with any new installations while people are falling sick, you must see that.”
“We’re not a charity, space is money.” He took his hard hat off and ran his hand over thinning hair.
“I don’t want to be heavy-handed here, Mr Mills, but I must insist you pause the shipment, pause all shipments until the sickness passes. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with your pipes, but we must make sure, mustn’t we? I’ll be telling the media you’ve been very helpful on this.”
He gave a curt nod. “Wetherington won’t like this. Been banging on about time is of the essence.” He did a lousy impression of Stuart.
Eva shrugged. “He doesn’t have to.”
47
Eva followed Professor Louie Steinman from the lecture hall. He walked slowly, less swinging his ancient briefcase with each step, than gripping it tightly so gravity didn’t pull it from his grasp. No strength in those hands with which to strangle her. No resilience in his leg muscles to chase her. She was safe, even if the well-lit campus was only dotted with a few students and people taking shortcuts through the grounds.
She slipped inside the access-controlled building he entered before the door closed after him. His back to her, he seemed focussed on which lift would carry him up to the next floor. When the doors pinged open, she was already in the stairwell.
His puffing and sighing led her along a corridor where he rattled a key in a lock and a door squeaked open. Professor Louie Steinman, the name plaque confirmed. They could have moved him to the ground floor.
A glance inside the office to confirm he was alone and Eva went in after him. The room smelt old, stacks of journals, folders, yellowed papers everywhere.
“Interesting lecture.” She announced herself.
He looked up at her from where he was stacking papers into his briefcase. She had to hide her shudder. The man who’d tried to kill her was all too clearly visible beneath the professor’s crumpled features.
“What’s yours then, your learned prejudice?” his voice was surprisingly strong, his vibrant address hadn’t been just the product of a good sound system. His clipped English accent was very different to the broad London his relative spoke.
“I’ve never really thought about it.” Though that people shouldn’t kill other people probably topped the whole of her belief systems. “I should imagine I have many.”
“A little more of an enlightened view than the normal denial,” he peered at her. She held his gaze while he checked out her healing grazes, bruises and dressing on her forehead. “You’re not a current student.”
“What makes you ask that, because I’m mature?”
“What makes you ask that, a learned prejudice?”
“How do you know Charles Buchanan?”
He snapped his briefcase closed “I’m late, you’ll have to excuse me.”
She followed him out of the messy office, which he locked and checked twice. “I can walk with you. You had dinner with Charles during the symposium in July, it’s odd that he attends every year, it’s not his area of expertise.”
“Academic colleagues collaborate all the time, it’s not geographically or subject specific, there are tangential intersections across all fields.”
“Let me.” Eva held the door to the lift lobby open.
An ancient ring tone warbled from his inside jacket pocket. He fumbled out a phone and listened. “Come up.” He returned it to his pocket, “another student, no rest for the conscientious.”
He dawdled back to his office, Eva with him.
“I’m Charles’ wife. He’s gone missing, I’m trying to find him.”
“You should have said. Charles and I have been colleagues for a lot of years.” He gestured for her to precede him inside. “He interned with me in the States during his PhD. For an engineer, he has some interesting ideas on the psyche.” He did? Eva was beginning to wonder if he was a twin and had switched places with the one she’d never met. “You’re American?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Your accent is misleading.”
“Or a learned prejudice.” The professor looked at the doorway and Eva recognised the back of his head. How had she not noticed it earlier when she’d been following him? His thin halo of white hair, he’d been in the last photo she’d seen of the charm school, talking to Charles.
Footsteps from the corridor stopped outside his office. Eva followed the Professor’s gaze and looked right at the man she never wanted to see again. His face was a mass of angry weals swollen against spider-leg stitches, his expression as stunned as hers probably was.
“Is this her?” the Professor asked.
The killer nodded, took a step inside.
Eva’s insides somersaulted.
She held up a finger, mimicking Mr Mills’ secretary, as though that would stop him tearing her apart. “You look worse than me, I probably should apologise for all that,” she waved her finger in an oval at his face, “but really, what the hell were you doing? Did you not think we’d be watching you?”
“You’re The Society?” Professor Steinman asked. Did she imagine a hoped-for querulous tremor to his voice now? “You said you’re Charles Buchanan’s wife.”
“I can’t be both? Charles is two people, isn’t he.” Her bluffing grabbed at a breadcrumb trail made whole. The Professor’s look confirmed it, him too. And why so worried? Unless. . .trying to reason it out was like trying to knit spaghetti. Instead, Eva took her gamble in both hands, ignoring that she was on a crumbling precipice. “Why do you think I’m so busy looking for Buchanan? You let him get away, your attempt at a gas explosion was pitiful.” Eva sighed. “You see, Professor, I do have a prejudice but it’s hard learned, it’s why I don’t work with amateurs.”
“Brett, deal with her.”
Eva took her second gamble of the last minute. “You want to go again?” She looked at the killer. “I’ll repay the favour better this time, I’m prepared
