between the final two, and then tore at the seal of the agent’s letter.
Dear Dr Watson
Ms Graves has asked me to advise you that she has given your request serious consideration, but has regretfully decided to decline. Ms Graves has strong views on the privacy of artists, and while she wishes you every success in your critical analysis of Archie Lunan’s poetry, she does not see what a discussion of their time together would achieve. She now considers this correspondence closed and has asked me to bring to your attention the government’s recent anti-stalking legislation.
Yours sincerely
Foster James
Niles, James and Worthing
Murray swore and crumpled the letter into a ball.
The airwaves were full of people talking. Child-murderers and drugs casualties, people who had once sat next to someone famous on the bus, even the dead were in on the act, revealing scandals from beyond the grave. Everywhere people were blogging, Twittering and confessing; TV shows ran late into the night detailing private lives that would have been better kept private; but Archie’s old love would consider a second approach grounds for prosecution.
He smoothed the letter out and re-read it. The trick would be to bump into Christie casually, at a poetry reading perhaps. Somewhere with wine and easy company where he could lay on the charm, get her talking about old times before he admitted that yes, it was he who was writing Archie’s biography.
Some chance.
He smoothed the paper again, knowing it had to become part of his file. Did it tell him anything beyond what was said?
Murray whispered. ‘You never left, never got any distance. That’s why you care so much.’
He slit open the second envelope with his thumb, wondering what the penalties for stalking were and if stalkers were still allowed to teach. The green paper inside had been carefully folded in half. The type suggested that the sender had only recently come into possession of a word processor. Fonts battled for prominence, but boldest of all was the heading: God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Service times were detailed beneath.
Murray crumpled the page and balled it into the recycling bag, trying to smile at the thought that – Rachel aside – it was the best offer he’d had in a while.
Chapter Eight
MURRAY SEEMED TO have been waiting a long time. He decided to count to a hundred then ring the doorbell again. He’d reached eighty-five when a shadow appeared, advancing slowly towards him beyond the thickened safety glass.
‘Aye, aye, just a minute.’
Professor James’s voice was cracked with age and sharp with irritation. Murray thought of Macbeth’s porter, provoked by the knock at the castle door, comic in his anger, the moment of calm before the discovery of horror.
James fumbled with a set of keys and his sigh was audible through the locked door, but it was only when the professor pushed it wide that Murray realised how badly he’d aged. It was almost twenty years since they’d met, but somehow he’d still expected to see the stern-faced lecturer who had approached the lectern like a United Free Church of Scotland minister about to deliver a sermon to a congregation set on damnation. Pipe-smoking, bespectacled and bad-tempered, his stocky body packed into an old tweed jacket, James had been everything that Murray, fresh from a comprehensive school staffed by corduroy-clad progressives, had desired in a university professor.
James shook his hand. ‘Come away through.’
The professor had never been handsome, but he’d been a vigorous presence, with the barrel chest and bullet head of a pugilist. Old age had shrunk his body and bent his spine, rendering his face oversized and jutting. The edge of his skull was decorated with a patina of freckles and grave spots. The effect was grotesque, an ancient, nodding toddler with an eager grin.
‘This is a rare treat. Two names from the past in one day.’
Murray followed James down a small hallway decorated with photographs of the professor’s children and grandchildren. The glass front door had presumably been designed to let in light, but perhaps the house faced the wrong way, or maybe the day was too dull to extract any brightness from, because the hall was dark, the smiles in the pictures cast in shadows.
‘Two names?’
‘You and Lunan, outstanding students the pair of you.’
It was strange, hearing himself coupled with the poet.
‘My student years certainly feel a long time past.’
‘You’ll be part of a million pasts by the time you’re finished. Teaching confers its own brand of celebrity. You get hailed by folk you’ve no memory of. My tip is allow them do the talking and don’t let on you’ve not got a clue who they are.’ James led Murray into a burgled-looking sitting room. He lowered himself gently into a high-backed armchair and nodded towards a chintz couch. ‘Shift those papers and make yourself comfortable. As you can see, I’ve reverted to a bachelor state.’
Murray lifted a pile of handwritten notes and placed them on top of a stack of library books.
‘Ah, maybe not there. Helen’s coming round later to return those for me and if they’re hidden she’ll miss them.’ James scanned the room looking for a suitable berth amongst the books and documents crowding the room. ‘Why not put them . . .’ He hesitated while Murray hovered uncertainly, papers in hand. ‘Why not put them here?’ He nodded to the floor in front of him. ‘That way if I forget about them they’ll trip me up and the problem will be redundant.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It would be a suitable ending for an aged academic, tumbled by words.’
Traces of James’s dead wife clung to the house. Professor James would surely never have chosen the floral curtains that screened the small window in the hall, nor the sets of figurines gazing unadored from behind the dull glass of the china cabinet, but the tone of the place had shifted from a respectable family home with a feminine bent to an old bachelor’s bed-sit.
The kettle was in the sitting room, where it could be easily reached. An open packet of sugar, a cardboard box spilling tea bags and a carton of suspect milk stood next to it. The coffee table was stacked with books, each of the piles tiled together with the precision of a Roman mosaic. A smaller occasional table at James’s side held a glass of water, a selection of medication and yet more books. Murray noted a copy of Lunan’s Moontide on top of the pile, within easy reach of James’s right hand.
They parleyed a little about the department, but Murray sensed that the older man’s questions were merely form. The part of himself he had given to the university now occupied the books and papers that scattered the room. Murray’s presence was a brief distraction, a meeting on the shore before the tide of words dragged him back.
Murray reached into his rucksack, placed his tape recorder on top of one of the piles between them and pressed Record. James cleared his throat and his voice slowed to lecture-theatre pace.
‘I’ve only ever kept an appointments diary, so I’m afraid you won’t get any great insights from me, but I
