The Company of Fellows by Dan Holloway Read Free Book Online Page B

caught
something she didn’t often see in Emily’s eye. Maybe it was too
much coffee, but Rosie would have sworn it was something akin to
malevolence. It was something she rarely saw in her devoutly
Christian boss, and she didn’t know if it made Emily seem more
human or whether it scared the bejesus out of her.
    “ Sorry,
boss.”
    “ Never mind.”
Her face was hopeful, but Emily’s body language was resigned. It
was certainly a coincidence that the man’s lawyer should turn up
dead the same day he did, and the guy’s home life clearly wasn’t
all sweetness and Norman Rockwell, but the house they’d visited
last night didn’t feel like a murder scene. Yes, the banquet for
one was eccentric, staged even, but so was the rest of the house.
There was no sign of forced entry, or an argument; no one else’s
fingerprints, no sign that another person had been in the house for
a long time. No, this reeked of the pointless banality of
suicide.
    “ So do we
carry on looking?” asked Rosie.
    “ Yes we carry
on looking.” There was steel in Emily’s voice. “The letter Shaw
sent to Tommy West said he was heading to the States. That doesn’t
fit with suicide.”
    “ Want me to
check on it?”
    “ Later. I
don’t think our American friends would appreciate a call just yet.
I’d like you to go back to his house, look through his study, see
if you can find anything about his plans. I’m going to speak to the
Warden of St Saviour’s to see what he knew about his colleague’s
career progression.”
    Emily got up
from her desk and began walking to the coffee machine. She didn’t
make eye contact once. Rosie knew exactly what that meant, and why
Emily was sending her to do the donkey work in the Professor’s
house. It meant she wanted to be alone; and that meant she was
going to go and see her ex, Tommy West. Tommy was the great
unspoken in Emily’s past. What Rosie knew about him from Emily was
that he’d been her first love, and that he’d dumped her. What she’d
inferred from Emily’s all too Christian silence about the details
was that he’d acted like a total shit, and royally screwed her
up.
    For all that
she was nearly ten years younger than Emily and a grade her junior,
Emily’s religion and generosity gave her an unworldliness that
brought out the maternal in Rosie; and perhaps the fact that Emily
had never been able to have kids of her own meant that she’d never
lost her own childish vulnerability. For years Rosie’s protective
side had fostered the image of Tommy as some kind of monster, but
the lonely, rather ordinary man she’d met last night didn’t match
the image. Then again, they’d hardly met under the most normal
circumstances.
    “ What are you
waiting for,” said Emily sharply, returning with another coffee
that was already half empty. This wasn’t the time to push
things.
    “ On my
way.”
    “ SOCOs have
long since finished. You’d better pick up some spare keys from the
college porters.”
     
    *
     
    Rosie loved
old Oxford houses that seemed to leak books from the cracks in
their decaying plaster. She’d never been to university. There had
been no need. She’d always known she wanted to be in the police,
like her father and grandfather had been in Hong Kong. But the mix
of books and solitude made her feel totally at home.
    Professor
Shaw’s was a typical academic’s study, a cross between a bombsite
and a fly tip. It might look like it’s a
mess, but I know where everything is, and that’s what
matters . That’s what people who lived like
this always said. From the number of times she’d watched them
foraging for a vital piece of paper with all the desperation of a
bear emerging from hibernation and finding its larder still buried
under snow, she knew this was a lie.
    Somehow she
had a feeling that Professor Shaw would be different. It was true
that everything looked a mess; but the dinner he’d laid out for
himself had been beautifully ordered. She had a feeling he