Dying Fall

by Judith Cutler

Overview

Sophie Rivers, inner-city college lecturer and amateur singer, has a satisfying life in Birmingham: a job she enjoys, a close circle of friends. Then, suddenly, things go badly wrong. One of her students is murdered on college premises; worse still, her best friend George meets a tragic end on the site of the newly built Music Centre.

Everyone believes his death was an accident – everyone except Sophie. Determined to find his killer, she starts asking questions. And soon she knows they must be the right questions, because now someone is trying to murder her…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448301065
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	08/12/2013
Series:	A Sophie Rivers Mystery , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	246
File size:	352 KB

About the Author

A former secretary of the Crime Writers' Association, Judith Cutler has taught Creative Writing at universities and colleges for over thirty years, and has run occasional writing courses elsewhere (from a maximum security prison to an idyllic Greek island). She has written over thirty crime novels, all renowned for their feisty and intriguing heroines, including Josie Welford, DS Kate Power, DCS Fran Harman and antiques dealer Lina Townend.

Read an Excerpt

Dying Fall

A Sophie Rivers Mystery

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By Judith Cutler

Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 1995 Judith Cutler
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4483-0106-5

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CHAPTER 1

Seven-thirty on a Tuesday night. The wind's slashing rain across the ill-fitting windows and rocking the whole tower block.

I have a rotten day at college. I stay late for my evening class and to finish a tedious batch of marking. And I get into a lift to escape and find I'm sharing it with a body.

I didn't notice, of course, till I'd pressed the pad for down and was plunging fifteen floors.

The boy – he looked eighteen, maybe a young nineteen – was slumped in the corner furthest from the control panel, leaning against the lift wall. His face was half turned from me. His left hand rested loosely on a ring file marked WAJID AKHTAR: INORGANIC.

I thought he'd passed out: I'd better help.

I tipped him forward – to put his head between his knees. Then I saw five inches of polished wood sticking out from the back of his leather jacket.

Round the knife there was no blood to speak of.

But an ugly splattering told me there was blood elsewhere. It poured from his nose and mouth, flooding across the worn lino floor, lapping towards my shoes.

At last the lift doors opened. But when I opened my mouth to call for help, no sound emerged. Fortunately Winston, one of the college porters, happened to look up from his desk and see me. I pointed, trying to hold the doors open so that the lift wouldn't carry us relentlessly up and down the building.

Winston reached behind his desk.

'It's OK, Sophie,' he said, 'I've immobilised the lift. What's the trouble? Jesus!' he said, as he looked.

I forced myself to touch Wajid's neck. He was still warm but there was no pulse. Winston was stripping off his jacket, as if to wrap the boy in it.

'No,' I said. 'There's no point. Just call the police, Winston. I'll stay here with him.'

At last the police came. Just a couple of kids in a panda at first: I'd taught them both, as it happens, but they were too busy trying to be professionally insouciant to notice me. Then more cars, with men and women in plain clothes.

A middle-aged man singled me out. Detective Sergeant Dale, his ID said. But he introduced himself as Ian, and mentioned other officers by their first names. The team was working like a machine, cordoning off the area and taking pictures of what lay within it. He left them to it, ushering me gently outside.

The night air smelt very good.

'Look,' I said, 'I can't just walk away. Someone's got to tell his parents. And I ought to tell my boss. And Winston's only a kid. You can't leave him in there.'

'No one's going to leave him in there. But if you could tell us who's in charge it'd help.'

I shrugged helplessly. Who'd want that sort of responsibility?

'Maybe you ought to contact the Principal,' I said eventually. 'But God knows how you'll find him. He's bound to be ex-directory.'

'If you can give us his name –'

'James Worral,' I said. 'And I think he lives somewhere in Four Oaks. But what about Wajid? Who'll tell his parents?'

'Our people are trained to do that,' he said. 'I'll just get one of my colleagues to take care of the Principal, and then we'll take you off to make a statement.'

When he got back I was being sick in the gutter. He didn't say anything – just passed me a packet of extra strong mints after I'd finished.

'D'you want one of my colleagues to take your car back to the station?' he asked, opening his passenger door for me.

I shook my head.

'No car? That's unusual these days.'

'Used to have. They worked their way through two sets of hubcaps, then started on the wheels. Came out at nine one night to find the poor thing sitting on four neat piles of bricks. So I cycle or catch the bus, depending on the weather. And today,' I added, raising my voice against the wind, 'it was the bus.'

The college is on Birmingham's inner ring road, five minutes away from Ladywood police station. But Dale turned the car through Edgbaston and followed my daily route towards Harborne.

'I thought you said something about a statement?'

'That's right. At Rose Road nick. We've got all the facilities there. You can have a bit of a wash and brush-up, and maybe a cup of tea, and then we'll sort out your statement.'

I sat back and let myself be taken. Suddenly I couldn't stop shaking, and every time I let myself think about Wajid I wanted to vomit again.

The room they showed me into was functional but clean and not unpleasant. Ian Dale organised some coffee for me, and spooned extra sugar into it. He might have been a favourite uncle, in his worn sports jacket with archetypal leather patches. Then another man appeared, younger and altogether brisker.

'DCI Chris Groom,' he said, shaking hands with me. 'And you must be Sophie Rivers.'

Nothing seemed to be as I'd expected it. The relaxed atmosphere, for example, informal but courteous; all these first names, not an old-fashioned 'Miss' in earshot. Perhaps I'd been reading too much pulp detective fiction. At least they left some mistakes on my statement for me to correct; I certainly wasn't going to put my name to a document which accused a lift of being stationery. But they'd got everything else right: I'd been working on my own in a big, communal office. I'd heard nothing unusual – there'd been the noise of the lifts at the far end of the corridor, but that had mostly been drowned by the wind and the rain. Colleagues had popped in briefly to collect their belongings at the end of their classes or to make coffee. No one had reported seeing anything unusual. They'd all looked tired and strained, as you'd expect halfway through the winter term when flu was decimating the staff and we were all having to take on extra work. No one looked as if they'd just committed a murder. 'Most of us would like to from time to time,' I said, looking up. Everyone grinned politely.

No, I'd never taught Wajid.

'I know him by reputation, that's all,' I said. 'Knew.'

'What sort of reputation?' asked the DCI, delicately.

'It's only hearsay. And I don't like to speak ill of the dead.'

'If speaking ill will help us find his killer –?'

I shook my head. 'It's not that easy, is it? You know what the college is like – ten thousand students use it, all from different backgrounds. Class, culture, race – I don't want to say anything that'll spark off friction.'

Perhaps I was being disingenuous. There had been an ugly incident only this afternoon, when a gang of white lads from Meat Three – trainee butchers – had hurled plates from the canteen windows at a group of Asian girls. I'd had the job of sorting out the ringleaders.

'There'll be more friction if we don't find the killer,' Dale added.

I nodded.

'Could you talk to us off the record, as it were?' asked the DCI.

'OK. But I'd like to use the loo first. All this coffee ... '

The interview became a conversation. We moved to Groom's office, an unnaturally tidy room with a Monet print on the wall. What kind of policeman has a Monet, for goodness' sake? The sort that has hand-sewn Barker shoes, no doubt, and whose books include the Shorter Oxford Dictionary.

There was more coffee, in cups with a back-up supply in a Thermos jug, on his desk, and some film-wrapped sandwiches.

'Nice to see you're looking a bit better,' said Dale, passing me a plate.

'Thanks,' I said to both. I was beginning to feel myself again.

Groom smiled. 'I can have my colleagues swarm all over William Murdock College for the rest of the week and they'll pick up nothing. Oh, lots of facts, I don't doubt that, but I want nuances. Like the rumours you hinted at about Wajid.'

Ian Dale nodded agreement, and flicked open his notebook.

I looked at it. So did Groom. Dale flicked it shut again.

'Look, a lot of our kids are deprived. They come from rough backgrounds. Inner-city estates, inner-city schools. A lot are poor. They can't get grants, and there's no point saying they should go and get a decent job because there aren't any decent jobs. So some dabble where they shouldn't.'

Groom and Dale nodded, though not necessarily in sympathy.

'There was a rumour that Wajid had –' I stopped. 'He never did anything they'd throw him out of college for. There are kids who wreck the loos or the drinks machines. Wajid wasn't one of those. Not a ringleader. When you reach the scene of crime.'

'Macavity's not there!' said Groom, straight-faced.

'Why couldn't you throw him out?' asked Dale, unmoved.

'Because, apart from anything else, he wasn't "a monster of depravity".' I flicked an eye at Groom, whose eyes flickered back. 'He was actually a very good student. Look, we keep files on all our students – I could show you where we keep them tomorrow.'

'So I seem to have become a copper's nark,' I told George's answering machine half an hour later.

George was my friend. I was fond of him. Fond fond, not sexy fond. He played the bassoon in the Midshires Symphony Orchestra, and was the person I needed to confide in. George was much older than I was – fifty-six to my thirty-four. We got to know each other because in my spare time I sing in the Midlands Choral Society, which works with the MSO whenever a choir is needed. I suppose we hadn't all that much in common – but we loved and trusted each other implicitly. He and the orchestra had been in Lichfield that evening. They'd probably be back already, but George hadn't been sleeping well recently and the last thing I wanted to do was ruin a night's rest for him by asking him to come over and comfort me. Wednesday would be Derby, then on Thursday it'd be Sheffield. They wouldn't be back till early Friday morning. We'd meet after Friday's concert – hence the phone message. If he woke late he'd leave one on my machine in reply. It was nearly as good as being properly in touch. But I rather hoped he'd get up early and phone me before I went into work.

CHAPTER 2

It was only drizzling when I set out for work the following morning, but by the time I'd got through Harborne into Edgbaston it was raining properly. Rain's bad news if you cycle. Apart from getting you thoroughly wet, it enhances your chance of being mown down by a motorist who is apparently too busy counting raindrops on his precious polished paintwork to notice other people on the road. But it was too late to go back, and no one's yet devised a way of folding a cycle small enough to take on a bus, so I toiled on.

The college buildings are dismal examples of cheap sixties architecture. There is a persistent rumour that they were intended as factories another that they should have become low-cost flats. Perhaps both are correct: we have, after all, a low, dumpy building and a fifteen-storey tower block, neither of which is appetising. Naturally the staff based in either prefer the ambience of the other. Those who were in the tower block the day of the Birmingham earth tremor, which left cracks horribly visible in the south-facing wall, know they are right.

The buildings stand side by side but have separate entrances, and open on to a big but inadequate car park. This morning the car park was full of wet students, in large queues meandering from both entrances. As I chained the parts of my cycle I leave outside, a police car joined the others near the tower-block entrance. Ian Dale emerged and joined me. We walked towards the head of the queue, which magically parted. It must have been for him, not me.

Then I saw what was causing the delays. They were checking students' IDs. Some egalitarian soul had pointed out that the staff should have IDs too, and that they should be subjected to the same scrutiny as everyone else. Quite right, except that the card tended to drift inexorably towards the bottom of my marking. I retrieved it eventually from a set of notes I thought I'd lost – an idiot's guide to the apostrophe.

There was no sign of Winston in the group of porters checking IDs; I'd ask his mother how he was when I saw her. I left a wheel and my handlebars in the caretaker's cubbyhole and rejoined the maelstrom in the foyer.

One of the lifts – the lift – was still taped off, and a chalk message on one of the classroom doors declared it was for the use of POLICE PERSONAL only. The handiwork of another of my ex-students, no doubt.

The grumbling which had been simmering outside was bubbling over in the foyer. None of the other lifts was working properly. I grinned at Ian and headed straight for the stairs.

'We're not going all the way up there – not fifteen floors!'

'How about stopping off at the canteen for a coffee?' asked another voice. Groom's. I hadn't noticed him before. Presumably he'd been lurking as invisibly as six foot something of policeman can hope to lurk. 'I must say I was surprised to see you here so bright and early,' he continued, falling into step with me and leaving Ian a pace behind.

'You are,' I said. 'And I do have classes to teach. If the students ever get to them.'

'How much further?' came Ian's voice from behind.

'Only another couple of floors. Canteen's on the fifth.'

'Is that for everyone or just teachers?'

'Lecturers,' I said.

I pressed on up the stairs.

The high-rise part of the college is built around a core of lifts and stairs, with a band of corridors separating them from the classrooms on the outside of the building. The stairs have, of course, no natural light, and are further isolated by fire doors, which cut off both smoke and noise. The students, especially the women, dislike them intensely, preferring to wait hours for the overcrowded lifts to risking the endless series of ninety-degree bends.

Ian Dale would obviously have preferred a lift, but Groom kept pace with irritating ease. But he didn't seem inclined to talk. It is one of my foibles that I eschew the lifts in order to keep fit – the fact that I had used one last night was attributable to a sudden realisation that I had buses to catch. Perhaps I should have engaged him in conversation to prove that I at least had enough breath to talk, but I couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted to say. And what I ought to be doing was running a mental review of the day's classes and what I should need for them. If indeed there were to be classes. A murder on the premises might well disturb the daily pattern.

'Did the Principal mention closing classes or anything?' I asked.

'I've only spoken to him over the phone. I'll be seeing him at nine-fifteen, actually.'

'How did he take the news?'

'Without enthusiasm, shall we say. But I managed to convince him that people would be more interested in the actual murder than where it was committed.'

'There was one years ago in a college,' Ian put in. 'A man cut his uncle's head off. Put it in a locker. Aston University now. And the body. An old building in Suffolk Street. Pulled down. Long since. Lift shaft. If I recall.'

'Next floor, Ian,' I said kindly.

He nodded. Groom paused between landings and looked about him.

'There don't seem to be many other people using these stairs,' he said. 'Any particular reason? Laziness apart, that is?'

I looked round, guiding his eyes.

'You can see the only rooms on the landings are loos. There's been a series of petty little – incidents, I suppose you people would call them. The last flasher who tried waving his silly little prick at me ended up in tears. And I got him thrown out of college. If not from a fifteenth-floor window.'

'Never thought of calling in your friendly neighbourhood constable?'

'Loads of times. But the college has its reputation to think of. Which makes me wonder how they'll deal with this business.'

It was fortunate that they wanted refreshment this week, not next. Soon the canteen would be commandeered to house a new suite for the administrators, and we would have either to share with the students – who emphatically did not want us – or to eat sandwiches in our offices. But management had statistics on their side: few people ever patronised the canteen anyway.

'Bit of a hole, isn't it?' said Ian, on cue, surveying through heavy breaths the cracked Rexine benches and cigarette-pitted floor.

I nodded, but then concentrated on cajoling water out of Vesuvius, the ancient urn, into the thick green cups that Noah had used in the Ark. I threw some money into the empty honesty box, carried two of the cups to the table they'd chosen and went back to collect the third. A pallid sun had emerged and lit the men's faces side on. Ian Dale, with his long, lined face, reminded me of Eyore, but Groom had little in common with Pooh apart from the colour of his hair. Even that was thinning. His complexion was a delicate pinky white that probably burnt to brick red in summer. Unlike Dale, who still wore that sports jacket, he looked very sleek in a suit, remarkably like one my last boyfriend paid an indecent amount for in the Aquascutum sale. It looked better on Groom, possibly because Kenji never made it above five foot six.

'Right,' I said purposefully. 'How can I help you? I only ask because I'm teaching GCSE English in thirteen minutes, and I have to make it to the fifteenth floor to collect the register and then get back to the eighth. I think I can deduce that you don't need to be shown the scene of the crime –'

Groom permitted himself a wispy smile. Dale jumped in. 'Been reading too much Agatha Christie, eh? There was a whole team of people here overnight, dear, going over the place with a fine-tooth comb. SOCOs.'

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Dying Fall by Judith Cutler. Copyright © 1995 Judith Cutler. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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