The Company of Fellows by Dan Holloway Read Free Book Online

Walton Street was only a few hundred yards from Tommy’s
house. It was a favourite hang-out for bohemian students and north
Oxford’s melange of environmentalists, artists, and thinkers.
People in baggy jumpers and berets spun out coffees whilst they
read scripts, committee papers, and paperback philosophy. The small
deck-floored room at street level slipped down to a large dimly-lit
cellar.
    Tommy picked
Becky out at once as he carried two espressi downstairs. She was
sitting with her right foot pulled up onto the chair, fiddling with
the frayed fabric of her jeans. A flop of dyed red hair fell over
her pale skin. The moment he saw her he shivered, just as he had
done standing over John’s dead body. Something was pushing at a
trapdoor in his head but he had no idea what.
    Becky stood up
when she saw him coming. She was wearing a white T-shirt pulled
tight over her wiry frame with the slogan Tag Slag splashed across
her chest in pink.
    “ Hey, Tommy.”
He put the coffees down in case she was going to shake his hand but
she kept her hands in her pockets and sat back down. Then she took
them out and began playing with her hems again.
    “ Hey.”
    “ Look, Tommy.
Fuck the lot of this. Someone killed my dad. I know that.” She
paused “And I know you know that, too.” She paused again. “That’s
what you called about, isn’t it? Or did you want to meet up with a
stranger for small talk?”
    “ I don’t do
small talk.” Tommy looked around, holding the smell of his
espresso.
    “ Nor do I.”
She smiled. Tommy smiled back. “The day before he died,” she said,
“dad said he was going to get in touch with you.”
    Tommy said
nothing.
    “ He said you’d
go straight to see him.”
    Tommy raised
an eyebrow.
    “‘ He couldn’t
wait for a rare steak,’ is what he actually said.”
    Tommy grinned,
then he checked himself. It felt wrong to be laughing with someone
who’d just lost her father. Maybe it was just her way of
coping.
    “ So if he
didn’t get in touch with you, you probably wouldn’t have called me.
And if you went round and had a nice little chat, and it happened
to be mentioned in passing that you might look me up, I’m pretty
sure you’d have got my mobile number from him, not called me at
home where you could just as easily have got hold of my
mother.”
    “ Hmm.”
    “ So I reckon
that means you went round and he was dead.”
    “ And that
would make me a suspect in a murder case.” He supposed he’d known
this was true from the start, but it was only as he said the words
out loud that he really understood them. It was the kind of
dissociation from the reality of risks and consequences that he
knew all too well. Intuition was fine, but he still had to tread
very carefully until he knew more about Becky, and about her
father. Besides, right now his intuition told him it was OK to be
nervous.
    Becky laughed.
“Dad knew someone was after him. He thought you were his best
chance of finding them. You might be a suspect to the police, but
not to me.”
    Which wasn’t
much of a comfort. “Unfortunately,” said Tommy, “if he was dead
when I went to see him, he didn’t get to tell me any of this. Or
anything about you.”
    “ You know me
already, Tommy. You can read people as quickly as you can read
books. Dad told me all about the way your mind works.”
    He wondered
exactly how much the Professor had told her about the way his mind
worked; and the times when it hadn’t worked. “Great.”
    “ Heh heh. Go
on, Tommy. Tell me what you can see.” She bent her shoulders over
the table and eyeballed him like she was waiting for a Tarot
reading at a fair. “Should I cross your palm with silver?” she
laughed. “Or just buy you a coffee some time?”
    “ OK,” said
Tommy. “Here’s my best reading of the text.” He paused. This wasn’t
comfortable. He had always been able to empathise with people. He
couldn’t explain it but he knew it was nothing preternatural. He
guessed it was