just me. That was my favourite course,’ he lied. ‘I dropped out of university after second year.’ They were nearly together again, and slightly excited by the exchange.
The ‘Reuben, Reuben’ arrived and she began to eat while he sipped another beer. Nothing was said until she had made some progress with the sandwich.
Then, ‘Good sandwich?’ he asked.
‘Here,’ she said, offering him a bite. He leaned forward to take the corner of the sandwich between his teeth. If anyone is watching this, he thought, they will think we are doing a Tom Jones.
‘Nice,’ he said, chewing, and taking a sip of beer. ‘So. I’ve learned about English professors, and I know a little bit more about Professor Summers. Tell me some more.’
She considered. ‘He was enthusiastic—have I said that? Sometimes he went pretty far and got worked up about what he was saying.’
‘Very emotional?’
‘I thought he kind of looked for highs in class.’
‘How?’
‘He liked the room to turn on to what was happening. If we just sat there, he wasn’t much good. He didn’t seem to have many notes to fall back on. If he didn’t get much response you had the feeling he would just wrap up what he was saying and go on to something else. On a bad day he could do Paradise Lost in twenty-five minutes.’
‘All twelve books?’ Salter asked smugly. In his university course only the first two books were assigned, but it was well known that there were ten more.
‘Yes. It didn’t always work, though.’
‘What about outside the class?’
‘What do you mean?’
Salter took a deep breath. Most of all he wanted to avoid sounding like a dirty old man, but one part of him continued to conduct a police investigation. ‘Students sometimes know what is going on outside the room,’ he said. ‘Was there any gossip about Summers?’
‘Here we go again.’
But Salter had considered his question. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I would like to know if you thought he had any close friends or enemies in the college.’
‘Or lovers.’
‘Or lovers.’
‘We wondered about one of his colleagues. This isn’t any fun, Charlie.’
‘Nor for me. Which one?’
‘Marika Tils. They kissed each other hello and goodbye a lot.’
‘Everybody does that now. It’s called the Elizabethan kiss of greeting,’ said Salter, who had read about it in Saturday’s paper.
‘Yes, well. That’s it. She was an Elizabethan friend, then.’
‘But no students.’
‘I don’t think so. He probably had someone like me in every class. But, as I said, it was all poetry.’
‘No enemies?’
‘Not that I could see.’ She finished her sandwich and picked up the check. ‘Movie starts in twenty minutes, Charlie. Want to come?’
He took the check from her. ‘No, But I’d like to see you again.’
She looked bewildered, and then she laughed. ‘Do you think we ought to go on meeting like this?’
Grateful, he said, ‘Sometimes new questions crop up and you like to be able to come back.’
‘Any time, Charlie,’ she said. She looked at the clock. ‘My turn?’
‘What?’
‘My turn. One. Why did you become a policeman?’
Tell her the truth. So he did, just as if he were talking to a stranger in a foreign country, someone he would never see again.
‘I was fed up,’ he said. ‘I’d dropped out of university . . .’
‘Why?’
‘I found myself counting the number of bricks in the classroom wall while the lecturer was explaining why some poem I hadn’t read was so witty. It wasn’t his fault. I hadn’t tried to read the poem, because it seemed to be in code. To understand the jokes you had to know the Bible. But I was doing the same thing in History, Economics, and Sociology, especially Sociology. I was about to fail the lot, so I quit.’
‘Then what?’
‘I looked for some action. I tried to get on a ship, but you have to be a member of the Union; if there had been a war on I would have joined the army. I was bored stiff, but everything I thought of trying took five years’ training.’
‘It sounds a bit adolescent.’
Salter nodded. Strangers were allowed to say things like that. ‘Childish,’ he agreed. ‘I wasn’t ready to settle down so I guess I hadn’t grown up.’
‘So why the police?’
‘I met a guy. I played hockey on the weekend pickup team—you know, the only ice time you can get is twelve o’clock on Sunday night—and one of the guys on the team was a detective. I’d just been rejected for a job I didn’t want anyway, selling insurance, and he said why didn’t I try out for the police? So here I am.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘I loved it. I was lucky. I did a little bit of everything at first, before I got into administration.’
‘That sounds dull.’
‘It wasn’t. I was full of ideas and I lived and breathed the job. I got sent on study tours to look at other police forces; I got to say what I thought we should change—I had a terrific time. The three stripes came early, and then I got to be an inspector. That was five years ago.’
‘Then?’
‘Then the man who was looking after me all this time, who I thought would become deputy, didn’t, and he retired and I found I had made a lot of enemies, so I was out in the cold.’
‘Sounds like General Motors.’
‘I guess so. Anyway, I got shifted out of the centre of things and I’ve been doing errand work ever since.’
‘Is it all over?’
‘I thought it was. Now, I’m not so sure. I’m enjoying myself this week.’
‘Are you married?’
‘Yes, twice.’
‘What happened the first time.’
‘It lasted
