The Pursuit of Truth Read online

  ARTHUR HUGHES

  Copyright © 2011 Arthur Hughes

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Matador

  5 Weir Road

  Kibworth Beauchamp

  Leicester LE8 0LQ, UK

  Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299

  Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  ISBN 978 1848767 232

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Typeset in 11pt Garamond by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

  Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  In memory of Agnes Marianna Hughes

  1915-2004

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SATURDAY

  SUNDAY

  MONDAY

  TUESDAY

  WEDNESDAY

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY

  SATURDAY

  SUNDAY

  AFTERWORD

  The warm summer night was filled with the throb of disco music. The old woman paused as her dog stopped to pee against the wheel of a sports car. She did not hear the body hit the ground.

  SATURDAY

  ‘So you see we return to the point where we began. It is through a formal analysis of the modal verbs that we can best structure, and so most clearly see, their semantic properties. This must always be the basis of linguistic description. And such descriptions in turn provide you, the teachers of English as a foreign language, with the best information on which to base your pedagogical decisions.’

  The speaker, who was wearing a pale yellow long-sleeved shirt and baggy beige trousers, paused, glanced at his watch, then pulled back from the lectern. He smiled thinly at his audience, who, realising that the lecture had ended, began to clap loudly.

  He was a tall, slim man in his thirties with curly brown hair, a straggly beard and horn-rimmed glasses. As he gathered his papers together, he looked again at his watch.

  ‘I think we have a couple of minutes for questions.’ He looked down towards a man of about the same age sitting in the front row between two attractive young women.

  ‘If the course director agrees,’ he added. ‘Is that all right, Peter?’ The course director nodded his assent.

  ‘So, do we have any questions?’ asked the lecturer.

  In the few moments of silence that followed he looked round the faces in front of him. Most of them belonged to women, the majority of whom were young. His gaze settled finally on one of the two sitting beside the man who had nodded. She was particularly pretty, he thought, her ash blond hair and striking blue eyes suggesting that she might be Swedish, or maybe German. She stared back up at him with what might have seemed a look of admiration, but which could equally have been one of wonder at the dark stains below his armpits.

  A hand went up at the back.

  ‘Yes?’ said the lecturer, woken from his reverie.

  ‘Professor, thank you for a most interesting and illuminating lecture. I am sure we are all very grateful.’ The corpulent, middle-aged man who offered these thanks was of Middle Eastern appearance and spoke with an unmistakably Arabic accent. He stood up.

  ‘I would like to put to you a question. You have told us about all of the model verbs, but can you tell me please which of them you believe is the most important? This is a very great question in our profession.’

  ‘I take it that you are speaking of modal verbs and not model verbs?’ There was a slow nod from the questioner accompanied by transparent incomprehension. There were sniggers from others in the audience.

  ‘Even so, I’m afraid that I don’t know what kind of answer to give you. Do you really mean which modal verb, or do you mean which use of a modal verb? And what do you mean by important? I may be able to tell you which was most frequent in our corpus, but I can hardly tell you which is most important. I’m sorry, but your question doesn’t really make sense to me. I’m afraid I can’t give you an answer.’

  Everyone in the room turned to look at the questioner, who remained standing. ‘I think you know what important means, professor. We cannot teach everything at the same time. So we must teach the most important first. And in order to do that, first we must know which is the most important. That is why I seek the opinion of a learned scholar as yourself.’

  The lecturer gave a derisive snort. ‘Ah, the mighty must! Well it is you who must do these things. As a linguist and not a language teacher, I needn’t … and indeed I mustn’t!’ Amidst much laughter, some of which it might be thought was at his expense, the questioner sat down.

  There were two more questions, which the lecturer answered to everyone’s satisfaction, including his own. The man in the front row then uttered a few words of thanks, joined in the brief applause that followed, and then reminded everyone that they would now be meeting in groups with their tutors to analyse the use of modal verbs in recorded conversations. Eventually he was left alone with the lecturer, who was wiping what he had written from the blackboard. ‘That was excellent, Chris. Thanks. I’m sure they got a lot out of it.’

  ‘Even our friend?’

  ‘There’s always one like that.’

  ‘Makes you wonder.’

  ‘Certainly makes me wonder. Till I remember that it pays for our holidays.’

  ‘Or goes into the pension fund. Well, Peter, I’ll be getting along. See you tonight. In the meantime, back to the book.’ He clapped his hands together and a cloud of chalk dust was caught in the slanting sunlight. He stepped towards the door, then turned back. ‘By the way, who was the cutie sitting next to you, on your right?’

  ‘You noticed! That’s Silvia.’

  ‘Swedish?’

  ‘Italian actually.’

  ‘Another reason for doing summer schools, eh, Peter? Droit du seigneur and all that.’ The lecturer grinned and scratched his beard. Before the course director could respond, the door opened and the woman that they had just been talking about came in.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but Dr Crouch is not there. What should we do? We don’t have the recordings.’

  ‘Really? All right, Silvia.’ The director put his hand lightly on the woman’s shoulder and motioned her towards the door. ‘I’ll come and see what’s happening.’

  No longer grinning, the lecturer followed them out.

  have they found him yet?

  did I leave anything? … no I’m sure I didn’t … but I have to get rid of

  them

  that’s good … that’s easy

  Detective Chief Inspector Healey signalled a right turn, slowed down almost to a stop, and then swung into the drive of his house. As he did so, he noticed with a feeling of guilt the dead cypress that he had still done nothing about except learn that the disease which had killed it was probably already at work at
the roots of the next one in the line that separated the garden from the road. He stopped the car in front of the door, which was immediately opened by his thirteen-year-old daughter.

  ‘Dad. Telephone for you.’

  ‘Okay, love. I’ll get it.’

  He walked round the car and into the house, where he picked up the receiver from the wicker table beside the door.

  ‘Richard Healey.’ He listened in silence, his eyes fixed on a framed photograph of Liverpool Pierhead on the wall. The clock on the Liver Building showed three o’clock. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘Yeah … yeah … okay … I’ll go straight there. Who’ve I got with me? … Teague? Yeah. Okay.’ He put the phone down and walked through to the kitchen.

  His wife turned from the sink. ‘You’ve got to go out again?’

  ‘Sorry. No choice.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They’ve found a body at one of the University halls.’ As ever, it pained him to tell his wife anything about his work, though he would have found it difficult to say why. He’d only said this much because he was taking the car and she would have to walk to collect their son from the judo lesson where he had just left him.

  When he told her this, she stared at him. ‘Couldn’t they have sent a car to pick you up?’

  ‘It would have been difficult.’

  ‘Difficult? Don’t you think it’s difficult for me to walk to Whiteknights to get Jamie, with everything I’ve got to do? God! It’s always the same with you. Whatever happens, your work has to come first.’

  ‘You know it’s not always.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘It’s not always. How can you say it’s always when you know it isn’t?’

  ‘Always.’

  Healey had already turned away. He squeezed the shoulder of his daughter, who stood thumb in mouth in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Bye, Dad.’

  ‘Bye, love.’

  As he drove out onto the road, Chief Inspector Healey did not see the dead cypress. Nor did he think about the shopping that he’d bought before he dropped Jamie at his judo class and which was still in the boot of the car.

  ‘Miss Colgan will see you shortly, Inspector.’

  Healey had already seen the body. It lay spread-eagled on its back on the band of paving stones that ran along the foot of the six-storey wing of the red brick building that was a university hall of residence. It was of a short, stout, middle-aged man, dressed in an open necked lime-green shirt, beige cotton trousers, and solid brown shoes, lying in the shadow of the wall. Dead at least nine hours, according to the pathologist, who was still there when Healey arrived. That meant not later than one o’clock that morning.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I can’t say yet, of course, but …,’ the pathologist looked up towards the top of the building and then down to the body, ‘that would have to be most likely.’ He leaned forward and put his plastic-gloved hand to the side of the head, where blood had caked in the thinning hair. ‘And the skull’s obviously taken a tremendous blow. Anyhow, I’ll let you know when I can examine it properly.’

  In the open top floor window directly above them a head and shoulders appeared. ‘Morning, sir.’

  Healey looked up to see the fair hair and round, pink, moustachioed face of his sergeant. ‘Morning, Teague.’

  ‘This was his room, sir.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll be with you. I’m going to see the Warden first.’

  As Healey sat waiting in the Hall Warden’s outer office, a small, scruffy, sandy-haired terrier emerged from behind the secretary’s desk. It looked at him and wagged its tail.

  ‘Yours?’ he asked the secretary.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Is it yours? The dog.’

  ‘Oh! I didn’t see her. No, she’s not mine. She belongs to Miss Woods, the lady with Miss Colgan. Come here, Daisy.’ The dog hesitated.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Healey. ‘Come here, girl.’ The dog, clearly not young, waddled forward and put its paws on Healey’s seat. He scratched the back of its neck. ‘You’re a friendly thing, aren’t you? Aren’t you just?’ He looked up at the secretary. ‘Does Miss Woods work here?’

  ‘Oh no. She lives just around the corner. She’s always popping in about one thing or another. Usually to complain. To tell you the truth, I think she comes for the company as much as anything. She hasn’t got anyone at home. And most of the people around here are young. They’ve got their own lives.’

  Healey tried to guess the secretary’s age. Middle fifties, probably, but well preserved.

  ‘Is she here to complain this time?’

  The secretary nodded. ‘Noise. The summer school had a disco last night. It went on later than it should have done. And it was so hot they had the windows wide open. I’m surprised there haven’t been more complaints.’

  ‘What time did it finish?’

  ‘Well it should have finished at twelve-thirty, but I think it was gone one before Mr Bird managed to close it down.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Bird?’

  ‘Our senior porter. He was on duty last night.’

  Her pronunciation of ‘last’ was the first indication that she was from the north. He wondered where she came from.

  ‘You haven’t always lived in the south?’

  ‘No. I’m from Manchester. Well, Poynton actually. Cheshire. But I’ve been here nearly twenty years.’ As she said this, the door of the Warden’s office slowly opened. A small old lady appeared, presumably Miss Woods. Behind her loomed a much larger female figure.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Chief Inspector. Do come in.’ Healey waited while Miss Woods edged past him, her dog already in the corridor outside.

  ‘Do come in,’ repeated the Warden, a broad smile revealing a set of large yellow teeth. ‘Tea, please, Enid, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  She followed Healey into her office, gestured to him to take a seat, and sat down behind a desk covered with what looked like architectural drawings. ‘An extension,’ she explained, ‘and something of a headache.’ At this Healey couldn’t help thinking of the head of the body he had seen lying outside.

  ‘It must be quite a job looking after a large hall like this.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as some people think, including members of the University, I’m sorry to say.’ She paused as if to give greater emphasis to the words she was about to utter. She pulled herself upright in her chair. Healey was reminded that she was a magistrate. She carefully folded her hands, as if in prayer, her elbows resting on the desk.

  ‘Let me first tell you what I know and then I can arrange for you to see anyone else who may be able to help.’ Healey nodded. ‘The body is that of Neville Crouch, as I’m sure you are already aware.’ Healey did not contradict her. ‘He was a lecturer at the University of Berkshire.’ This was the former technical college on the King’s Road, still known as the ‘Tech’ by most people in the town, as opposed to the ‘real’, long established university.

  ‘He wasn’t from here then?’ By ‘here’ Healey meant the original university.

  ‘No. The summer school is organised by people from their Communications Studies Department. They use this hall of residence because they don’t have one of their own.’

  ‘How long does the summer school last?’

  ‘Three weeks. It ends on Saturday morning. A week today.’

  ‘How many people teach on the course?’

  ‘Three full-time and the course director. Then there are various occasional lecturers.’

  ‘Who’s the course director?’ Healey took out a notebook.

  ‘Dr Peter Farrell.’

  ‘Is he here now?’

  ‘I doubt it. They have classes on Saturday morning, over on the main campus. Our campus, that is. Here, Chief Inspector, you should have this.’ She handed Healey a booklet, on the cover of which he read ‘British Council Course 936: Communicative English Language Teaching’.

  He flipped over the pages until he came to the course pro
gramme. There, sure enough, was the disco scheduled for the previous evening. This morning there was a lecture on ‘Modals and Modality’ by Professor Christopher Carter in the Sutton lecture theatre, followed by workshops with tutors. After lunch at twelve-thirty there was to be a coach trip to London.

  Inside the front cover he found the names of the tutors:

  Dr Peter Farrell University of Berkshire (Course Director)

  Dr Neville Crouch University of Berkshire

  Mary Walters University of London

  Tim Wright University of Berkshire

  At the back was a list of the course participants and the countries they came from. He counted. Forty-six, coming from at least ten different countries. Healey put the booklet down.

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘Mr Bird.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Just after half past nine.’ The Warden peered at her watch. ‘Nearly an hour ago.’

  ‘Who else knows about it?’

  ‘I should imagine just about all the Hall staff, Chief Inspector. Though I don’t think anyone else has been to the body. Your people were here within ten minutes of my telephoning, and Bird was still with me.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Yes, I went to look. I wanted to be sure that it really was Dr Crouch. Bird might have made a mistake.’

  ‘But he hadn’t.’ The Warden looked at him without responding. ‘And what did you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Think?’

  ‘When you saw the body. What was your first thought?’

  ‘I thought, poor man.’ Healey waited for her to continue but she said nothing.

  ‘That was all?’

  ‘You asked about my first thought. That was it.’

  ‘And your second?’

  ‘I thought … how unfortunate that this should have happened in the Hall. It may not sound very pleasant, Chief Inspector, but that was my second thought.’ Healey had in the past often seen Miss Colgan on the bench. He had always been struck by the apparent lack of doubt with which she made judgements. He could never be sure in that way himself. He was reminded of this now, as she answered his questions directly and without any apparent temptation to go beyond what was required of her. Despite himself, he found himself looking fixedly at the strings of large amber beads that hung from her broad pink wrinkled neck and lay across her outsize paisley blouse.