"Yeah? He"s a porter, I saw him at the college the other day. Smells of talc and peaches."
Manish nodded. "Funny. I saw him in here on Sat.u.r.day morning. And before you say it, no, I don"t think all white guys look alike. You couldn"t forget that wig if you tried."
"He was in here?" I was genuinely surprised. "Doing what? Measuring up for curtains?"
I had a quick look around. Simon was still learning how to double-click. Geoff was staring at his laptop screen and rubbing his chin, sending ripples around his face.
"I don"t know," said Manish. "He was dressed as maintenance. With some woman. I thought at the time she was the too-posh-to-push type, know what I mean? She was probably one of them too."
"A lesbian?"
"At the college, in those mugshots. But yeah, probably. They were messing around by the window. She was up on the table at one point, and he was on his knees. And- yes! And the network blinked off for a couple of seconds. The internet disappeared."
"Cross my heart, Twiglet, I had no idea," I said. "Maybe they just... moonlight?"
"Moonlight my chuddies. You know what"s going on, don"t you? We"re being tapped by them because we"re investigating them. Doesn"t that make you feel uneasy?"
It did, and I nodded slowly. It made me very uneasy. But I knew why they were doing it, a.s.suming they were actually doing it. It made perfect sense from their point of view at the top of their pink ivory tower.
"Forget your race and your s.e.x scandal," said Manish. "College hacks newspaper? There"s your story right there. I could go to Geoff right now-"
"Don"t!" I hissed and pleaded. "Don"t even think it. Please. BFFs for ever, I promise. Remember, this is about justice for Seb and his family."
"Yeah, and the rest."
"It is! Fundamentally. Just- please don"t say anything. Why the h.e.l.l were you in here on a Sat.u.r.day morning anyway?"
He shrugged and shook his head. "Why do you think? Checking out Seb"s story. Like you did."
"Oh, jeez," I said. "We"re f.u.c.ked. Royally and doubly."
"What? How?"
"Simon knew, he found out I"d been sniffing around the story, and he warned me off. If he spots that you"ve been looking too..."
seventeen.
The Surveillance In her chair in the Bandolinum conference room in Top Court Amanda glowered and sulked, a wrinkled child-beast about to receive a spanking for smearing herself top to toe in purple make-up. Beside her sat Helen, bolt upright in a pale green trouser-suit. And beside me around the corner of the table was Dennis, bolt asleep in his usual suit and gown. It was the second SPAIN committee meeting. This time I, as chair, had been graciously allowed to chair it. The Master still awaited my fake decision over my fake resignation and, I suspected, was reluctant to overly irritate.
I was delivering a status report. "I am exceedingly pleased to announce that the saintly Beatles images projected upon front Bottom and St John"s were a great success in all the places that matter - and also outside Cambridge. The enabled communication pathways begin positively to glow and hum with activity." I referred to my notes. "At my last check an hour or so ago prior to the mush designated as lunch, we were closing on five hundred registrations for the race. Registration closes on Friday: four weekdays of further publicity - agreeable publicity - should hike the total significantly."
"Splendid, splendid," said Dennis, though I was unconvinced he was not nattering in his sleep.
"Dr Flowers," squeaked the Bursar, "I am a little concerned - and I can hardly believe I am saying this - at the sheer amount of money that might literally flow into college on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. It must be secured and dealt with in an efficient manner. Do we have a process? Some form of handling procedure that I might examine?"
It was a fair point. "We shall of course merely be counting the money rather than banking it," I said. "I should imagine a group of feisty young undergraduates and some hara.s.sed auditors would suffice."
Amanda harrumphed, and slouched fractionally further. "I would suggest incapacity," she grumbled.
"I think perhaps I rather agree with the Master," said Helen, failing to conceal her surprise. "How long does it take to count a bucket of coins? Do we know? Is there a website?"
Dennis perked up. "Is there not some device we could hire, hire?"
I had been rather preoccupied and I must confess I had not given much consideration to these critical matters. I begged forgiveness and wondered whether Helen might perhaps volunteer to investigate further. She agreed. I hoped this would not mean a late-night raid on a local bank or 24-7 video surveillance of a car park ticket machine.
In this fresh week I was seeing St Paul"s in fresh eyes. Of course I had been aware of the Archivist and his netherworld, but in one"s general day-to-night activities they tended to fade away, obscured and obfuscated by the ever-present bureaucratic niceties and personal jollities or lack thereof of college life. As we sat uncomfortably around that conference table listening to the hooting and beeping of the buses and of Amanda it was easy to forget that the room held one, two or more cameras watching over us, cold dark silicon eyes and ears at the Archivist"s call and beck. Our utterances would be transmitted and interpreted and retained in some underground electronic guise for- how long? I pitied the elf responsible for backups.
Other matters in the meeting were dealt with more competently. I had continued to mentally ma.s.sage the local police, and promised them a decision in two days, on Wednesday, regarding the two subst.i.tute colleges. I would deliver them a firm, immutable race route, which would also go to our anonymous donor - still unnamed, of course - for sourcing and installation of barriers where deemed necessary for crowd kettling purposes. There would be a form of dais by the front gate to college, upon which speeches and coronations would take place. I had dispensed with one early notion of a large screen to display a running count of the total raised, in case Amanda claimed it hungrily as a mechanism for the dissemination of exotic Powerpoint presentations to the ma.s.sed runners.
There being no other AOB business, or at least none to discuss in Amanda"s particular company, the meeting closed and scheduled to reconvene two days later for a further update and for college selection. Dennis and Helen hurried off at their respective paces, perhaps to further whichever tasks the Archivist had given them.
I felt the meeting had pa.s.sed exceptionally reasonably. It was not a feeling I usually a.s.sociated with meetings, especially those I chaired, and especially those attended by Amanda. I tried not to strut or preen, as I was well aware of the Master"s ability to leech away any feeling of satisfaction or pride: some called it the tumble in the jumble.
But she had been quiet, by her usual decibellic standards. When we were alone, as I gathered my papers, she leaned forward and stared blankly down at the table, her arms stretched out before her, her nails dotting out two purple arcs across the wooden surface. The words came slowly. "Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed upon?"
"I beg your pardon, Amanda?" Upon which we were all agreed? Was this a reference to the Archivist and his team? Had she more access to his data than I knew?
"Regarding your proposed vacancy. Am I to recruit, or to not recruit? That is the question." Her voice was low, soft, almost vulnerable.
Perhaps a mere verbal tic, then: a running away of the mouth, a cascade of word a.s.sociation football. I hoped the Archivist"s systems were sufficiently hardened to prevent unauthorised ingress. Perhaps she was extrapolating: reaching mentally as well as physically. I wondered whether she knew, if not the detail, then that something was afoot over which she had no control.
"Master," I said plainly and quietly, papers in hand. "I have no desire to leave St Paul"s. Despite the hardships and troubles, I believe we work for a common good, for the students, as our founder wished it. I may from time to time inadvertently topple from the wagon into a flowerbed, not necessarily unaccompanied, but these are mere unfortunate lapses."
"Lapses, Dr Flowers? Lapses? I a.s.sure you they are geraniums." Even this had no bite, no spat venom.
She was in a curious mood, one I had never seen. It unsettled me, like the mechanical clanking as you are hauled to a localised maximum of a roller coaster knowing but not knowing what is to follow. Had the fight entirely left her?
Her reign as Master had always been turbulent and, as it were, event-filled. There were protests at her appointment, from a certain subset of the Old Paulines - all gentlemen, naturally - who declared her genetically unsuitable. I had supported her then. I was less in favour when two fellows whose friendship had grown beyond friendship broke up apocalyptically, and she proclaimed that we must thenceforth no longer mix pleasure with business. That struck me as too unnecessarily strict a rule, too black and white, and I said so vigorously. In retrospect it was perhaps not so odd that I soon found myself in the regular company of our then-and-now-69-year-old Praelector, Dennis. Perhaps he had been grooming me.
I stood to leave, and Amanda did so too.
"May we walk?" she asked.
She was silent as we descended the staircase together, her clog-like shoes thumping on the worn stone like a mason"s blunt mallet. Through a tall gla.s.s door into the fresh air of Top Court she became invigorated somewhat, more animated. She took my arm, a most unnerving experience: cracked old purple-tipped fingers slithering past my inner elbow, locking me to her. I had, I noted disturbingly, left my pen-knife in my flat and would be unable to slice off my own arm should the situation make that necessary.
"How are things?" she asked in attempted friendliness as we began to walk anticlockwise around the court. I could think of no worse - or, indeed, unlikely - question to emerge from her lips. Its openendedness and breadth rendered any answer either uninformatively brief or liable to continue via a mix of subordinate clauses, subparagraphs and weeping until we were both desiccated corpses lying, entwined forever, in the ditch we had carved around the lawn of Top Court with our endlessly circling feet.
"Well, you know," I said, opting for the former variant of answer.
"Might there be anything with which I can help you with?"
I could think of many things, none of them pleasant.
She continued: "Perhaps in respect of our- friends at the Bugle?"
I laughed. "If you could arrange for them to drop this week"s stories, that would be simply magnificent."
"Is not that, as it were, in hand?"
"We are having a good stab, Master. A thrust here, a slice there, the occasional pirouette."
A hesitation. More quietly: "We, Dr Flowers? We?"
"In the royal sense. I am-"
"I have the eyes, Spencer."
I had slipped, and she knew it.
Perhaps this was the source of her apparent malaise, I thought. She still retained her limited access to the Archivist"s systems to view cameras around college: a simple monitoring, a broad overview, with none of the Archivist"s whistles and bells. She had undoubtedly seen me visiting him. I hoped she had not seen Seb, or at least not connected him to the growing conspiracy.
"The Archivist and his team are a.s.sisting in their usual capacity," I said, saying nothing.
"In regard of which?"
"In regard of... it is perhaps best I say no more. For pl-"
"In regard of which, Dr Flowers?" Her voice hardened. Her grip tightened.
"I should not say. There are aspects-"
"Aspects? Which aspects?" The gentle stroll changed up to a march.
I began to worry. "You know better than I how the Archivist works, Master. Please- would you mind awfully excusing yourself from my limb?"
Her elbow stiffened closer to her body, pinning me. I smiled and wrenched as pleasantly as I could given our location, in full view of chunks of college. An undergraduate dawdled a few paces ahead, another across the court. There would be faces within glancing distance of windows. She parried my wrench with an inverse wriggle and an unladylike jiggle.
"This is requiring of utmost discussion, Dr Flowers." Her volume rose with her temper. "Please, tell me your actions. This I do here command a response."
I stopped, whether she wanted to or not. She tried to pull me along. I resisted. "I am not a child, Amanda."
"Then why so do you act? I ask of you one item."
"Why?"
"I need to know."
"Why?"
"I am the Master. Of further "why" there is no need, let me say simply. My request demands an immediacy of response."
"I refuse to tell you."
"Why?" It was her turn.
"You do not need to know."
"Why?"
All my instincts clamoured for me to say because you are a part of all this, but I resisted. In that brief moment of thought, I heard something: a quiet, strange, familiar warbling on the air.
Uh-meh-meh-onna-OW-puh-yuh-air-onna-OW.
What was it? Where was it coming from?
She heard it too, and scrambled in her jacket pocket with her free arm.
OW-um-on-aah-OW.
"Oh," she said, confused.
OW-um-on-aah-OW.
"Is that you? It"s coming from- Is that- Is that Lulu?"
"Nothing. No matter. The singer, having sung, moves on." She fumbled with something, and it went silent.
"Show me that," I said firmly. "What is it? What are you doing?"
"Inconsequential."
Proprieties be d.a.m.ned, I thought, and broke free with a most impolite wrench that left her staggering. I grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face me, looking angrily into her eyes. Then I plunged my hand outrageously into her pocket.
I pulled out an ancient recording device with a miniature tape within: a dictating machine from the stone age.
"Were you recording me?" I demanded.
"No, I-"
"Let us see, shall we?" I inspected the device quickly. "Well. a.s.suming I can make it rewind. Ah."
I hefted the appropriate b.u.t.tons. Very shortly I heard the latter part of our conversation, ending at her imperial command to tell me my actions - when I presumed the jolt of my stopping had disrupted its function and inflicted an ancient, younger Lulu upon us.
I thought rapidly. I could only a.s.sume she had intended to take whatever I had revealed to the Bugle as incriminating evidence. But to what end? To sacrifice me to save the college? The newspaper could not be allowed to hear what I had said, of course. That much was easy to achieve. Less trivial: how to deal with Little Miss Scattershot herself.
I took her arm and contrived a smile. "Come with me," I said, with a degree of force and two degrees of butch.
The Archivist was waiting for us underground at his outer door. He was mid-shift and his hair showed signs of biscuits - perhaps he had been napping. He told us his elves had quickly alerted him to the unsightly fracas.
He took us through hurriedly to the plain room in which Dennis and I had met him a week before: the room with no secrets proudly on display, no plush carpet. A worried elf brought sufficient chairs and met n.o.body"s gaze before scurrying away.