Dry Bones Read online

  But there weren’t many aristocrats or lawyers at the moment, the bursar thought, because, over the last couple of years, most of them had been sent off to prepare for the task of confronting that jumped up little Austrian who the normally sensible Germans had allowed to take over their country.

  Now, thanks to Hitler, most of the accommodation – and hence most of the tables in the refectory – were occupied by military men. Thus far, the college had housed a Senior Officers’ School, then a Liaison Officers’ School, a Signallers’ School and finally a Junior Officers’ School.

  From the very start, the bursar had been well aware of the mistakes made by the previous bursar in the last war.

  That bursar had been wise enough to negotiate an agreement on the price to be paid for food and accommodation, but had neglected to include clauses covering damages, missing items and general wear-and-tear – including the loss of chamber pots, which, in moments of high spirits, the young officers had removed from their rightful place under the beds (where they performed an invaluable bladder-relieving service in the middle of the night) and placed on the heads of the nearest convenient statues.

  This bursar, keeping in mind normal rents, floor space costings, loss of income from other sources, and the value of some of the furnishings, had hammered out an agreement with the War Office which kept the latter pretty damned tightly nailed down.

  Even so, he had still miscalculated some things, as had soon become evident when the officers in charge of the soldiers started demanding the same quality and quantity of food they had been getting on army rations, from a college which was only supplied with per capita civilian rationing. Still, even this difficulty had gone away when the army had agreed to feed its own staff and – though the bursar had had to swallow hard before accepting the downward adjustment to the deal he had signed with the War Office – he could, at least, have a secret chuckle over the fact that the army was still paying for all the hot water, which meant that members of the college got their baths for free.

  The two to-be-dreaded women arrived at the table, one carrying the wine, the other with the basket of bread. The one with the wine decanter – Lucy Jenkins – was ever-so-slightly plump, and Charlie Swift, who could quite picture her as a medieval serving wench, thought she would probably seem quite attractive to most men. That was, however, mere guesswork on his part, because she did nothing at all for him. The other woman was much thinner, and whilst her face showed character, it also suggested a sour view of life.

  ‘Are you Mrs Jenkins?’ the dean asked the pleasantly plump one, in an I-don’t-have-to-be-polite-to-this-woman-but-because-I’m-a-jolly-fine-chap-I-will-be-just-that voice.

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s me,’ the woman replied nervously, as she started to fill his glass.

  ‘And how is your husband doing in the army?’ the dean asked, in much the same tone.

  ‘He writes he’s doing very well, sir,’ Mrs Jenkins replied.

  ‘Where’s he posted at the moment?’ James Makepeace asked, completely out of the blue.

  ‘Oh, good heavens, sir,’ said Lucy Jenkins, who had finished pouring the dean’s wine, and was now filling Makepeace’s glass, ‘my Harold’s not allowed to tell me where he is.’

  ‘Well, I expect to be posted myself in the next couple of weeks, and wherever I’m sent to, I’ll make it my business to find out if your husband is there. And if he is there, I’ll be sure to tell him that the last time I saw you, you were looking really marvellous.’

  ‘It won’t be necessary to go to all that trouble, sir, because cousin Harold will be home for a short leave in a few days’ time, and then he’ll be able to see for himself, won’t he?’ said the sour-faced woman handing out the bread. Her name was Mildred Drew, Charlie Swift recalled – mildew would been closer to the mark.

  ‘Thank you for your offer anyway, sir,’ Mrs Jenkins, red in the face, said to James Makepeace. And then she put down the decanter, and turned and fled, leaving everyone else to serve themselves.

  ‘You really shouldn’t have talked to her like that,’ Charlie Swift told Makepeace.

  ‘And why is that?’ Makepeace responded, with a total lack of concern in his voice. ‘I didn’t damage her, did I?’

  Yes, in a way, you did, Charlie Swift thought, but not wishing to give the other man the satisfaction, he said, ‘You shouldn’t have done it because you sounded like a fool.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like your tone.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less what you think about my tone. All I’m doing is stating an obvious fact. But you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself,’ he continued, shifting gear and adding to the general confusion. ‘It’s not your fault that you don’t have the dean’s gift of being able to talk to the common people – there are very few people who are blessed with it.’

  The dean heard the exchange, and was not sure whether Lord Swift had complimented him or insulted him. Unable to decide, he turned his attention to the menu.

  Before the war – or even a year or two into it – they would have read something like ‘truite aux amandes’ or ‘ris de veau à la reine’ but now what he saw was ‘saucisse, purée de pommes de terre et petits pois.’

  Even in French, bangers and mashed potato and processed peas sounded disgusting. The American military didn’t have to eat this muck, he thought angrily. He had been invited out to their nearby base, and had dined on steaks which were crudely cooked, but at least had more than a passing acquaintanceship with a cow. It simply wasn’t fair that the soldiers – even the ordinary GIs – were living better than he was, he thought.

  ‘The problem with the Americans is that they’re overpaid, oversexed and over here,’ he said aloud.

  The assembled company laughed, because although they had heard the joke before – many, many times, before – they had never, as far as they could recall, heard it from the dean before.

  But Charlie Swift did not laugh for long, because he had his own bon mot to add to the conversation.

  ‘And what the Americans say about us is that we are underpaid, undersexed and under General Eisenhower,’ he told them. ‘Well, I for one don’t consider myself underpaid or undersexed – but as for being under General Eisenhower, well, given the fact that he’s past fifty and starting to wrinkle in a most unattractive manner, I certainly wouldn’t fancy that. Mind you, he’s got an aide-de-camp whose weight I think I could bear happily enough.’

  If I could have you drummed out of the college I would, the dean’s eyes said. And if, by chance, you survive the war and come back to St Luke’s, I’ll labour night and day to ensure that you never rise above the rank of junior fellow.

  Charlie Swift, for his part, favoured everyone with a happy smile, since he was convinced he had done more than enough to ensure that he would never again be invited to be a bridge between the old fogeys and the young fogeys.

  Then he frowned as he saw James Makepeace so obviously flirting with the now-returned Lucy Jenkins. What was more, Lucy Jenkins herself seemed to be rapidly getting used to it.

  Charlie’s first impulse was to be annoyed with Lucy, because in order to defend her, he had queered the pitch (now there was a Freudian slip if there ever was one!) as far as his own seduction of Makepeace went.

  His second thought was that none of this was making sense anyway, because there was no reason at all why a homo like Makepeace – and he was convinced now that Makepeace was a homosexual – should even want to chat up Lucy Jenkins.

  FIVE

  7 October 1974 – Late Morning

  There are so many ways in which I differ from the private eyes who are so beloved of pulp fiction.

  For a start, I’m not a man – and have the substantial bumps on my chest to prove it.

  And while we might all wake up with hangovers, I do not greet the arrival of the morning with a strong cup of black coffee and a slug of old Kentucky bourbon. I prefer to start my day with a nice reviving cup o
f Twinings English Breakfast tea and a slice of white toast, spread thinly with Frank Cooper’s Vintage Oxford marmalade.

  Then there are our respective backgrounds. If, for example, any of these fictional gumshoes has an upper second in English from St Luke’s College (it should have been a first, damn it!) or from any other institution of higher education for that matter, then all I can say is that they keep very quiet about it. On the other hand, I have a singular lack of experience of fighting in the Korean War and being physically (or mentally) scarred by it, and I haven’t had a mysterious blonde die in my arms (though, I suppose, there’s still time for that).

  I’ve never shot anybody, either and, since I have absolutely no intention of owning a gun between now and the moment I kick off this mortal coil, I think it highly unlikely that I will ever ventilate an opponent with my .44 Magnum.

  That said, there are a few ways in which I do conform to the image of the hard-boiled detective.

  I do swear quite a lot.

  Well, shit, that must have taken you completely by surprise!

  I play poker for more than I can afford to lose – if you’re interested, the game is held on Friday nights, and is run by Dr Roddy McCloud, the current holder of the Pascal Chair of Probability Theory, out of his office in St Jude’s.

  What else? Oh yes, I have a shitbox office at the top of a set of squeaky stairs, and also a buddy in the police force.

  The buddy, in my case, is called Detective Inspector George Hobson (the ‘inspector’ is a recent addition). He did not save my life in South-east Asia (he’s probably never got any closer to that hot and exotic continent than Dover), and, equally unsurprisingly, I did not take a bullet for him in a seedy warehouse on the Jersey Shore.

  We are friends, and we were – for the briefest of periods – lovers, but we’re far too mature to let that latter fact affect the relationship we have now in any way (hah!).

  We agree to meet in the Bulldog, which is located on St Aldate’s, just opposite Christ Church College. It is one of my favourite pubs in the whole of Oxford, and given how much I like pubs in general, that’s no mean achievement.

  After we’ve met and exchanged chaste kisses, I buy George a pint of best bitter (pretty much the standard sweetener when I’m trying to squeeze information out of him) and we take our drinks over to a dinky little corner table with a beaten copper top.

  ‘So what is it that you want this time, Jennie?’ he asks, gulping down his drink with all the abandon of a man who knows that, the second he’s finished it, the beautiful, flame-haired woman who is sitting opposite him will quickly offer to buy another.

  ‘So what is it that I want this time?’ I ask, trying to sound mystified. ‘So what is it that I want this time? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you, George Hobson, that I might just fancy the idea of spending a couple of hours with an old friend?’

  ‘No,’ he says bluntly.

  OK, so there’s no point in pretending that he’s not got my number when he so obviously has. In fact, this is exactly what I want, because I’m like a magician, trying to ensure that of all the cards I offer him, he takes the one I intend him to take, and for that to work, I need him to feel in charge – to imagine he’s controlling the whole conversation.

  ‘All right, I do want a small favour,’ I concede. ‘If you could possibly manage it, I’d like to know the names of any and all the people who went missing in Oxford between 1909 and 1944.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by missing?’ he asks.

  I sigh. ‘Don’t be difficult with me, George,’ I reply.

  ‘What exactly do you mean by missing?’ he repeats, unbending.

  ‘I suppose I haven’t really thought it through,’ I lie. ‘Let’s just say I’m interested in people who were here, and then suddenly – with no explanation – were gone.’

  George leans back in his chair.

  ‘Are you mad, Jennie?’ he asks, conversationally. ‘Are you completely off your head?’

  ‘Yes, I think I am – but probably not certifiably so,’ I reply – making my little joke, you see, to show that I’m perfectly relaxed, and that no one is trying to manipulate anyone into doing something they might (with hindsight) wish that they hadn’t done.

  I smile sweetly. ‘Is there any particular reason that you think I may have gone loopy?’ I ask.

  ‘None at all – except that you seem to be confusing me with James Phelps,’ George says.

  James Phelps?

  Ah, yes!

  ‘That’s the name of the character Peter Graves plays on Mission Impossible,’ I say.

  ‘“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to list the names of all the people who went missing between 1909 and 1944”,’ George parodies. ‘You do realise, Jennie, that that period includes two bloody world wars and the Great Depression, don’t you?’

  ‘So?’ I counter, as if I can’t see why incidents like those could be in any way relevant to my request.

  ‘So they were all times of change and general disruption. Just take the thirties as an example. You had men who drifted into the city from all over the place, looking for work in the motor factory. Except there was no work to be had, and when they eventually realised that however long they stayed, there would never be any work they drifted out again. Are any of these men – or their movements – on record, for any reason? Well, it’s possible that a few might be, I suppose, but that’s all it will be – a very few.’

  ‘I know all that, but …’

  ‘Then we get to 1939. The government thinks that Adolf Hitler is about to send his Luftwaffe over to bomb our cities – which is exactly what he does do – so it decides to evacuate three hundred and fifty thousand people. Three hundred and fifty thousand people! Count them, Jennie!’

  ‘That’s a lot of people,’ I agree.

  ‘But they’re city dwellers, through and through, and a great many of them don’t like living in the countryside and the small towns at all. In fact, they bloody loathe it. So, after the Battle of Britain is finally over in May ’41, and it becomes obvious to them that the Blitz has come to an end, they start to drift back home – and a good many of them don’t even take the time to advise the authorities that they’ve gone.’

  ‘I don’t need a history lesson,’ I say.

  ‘I beg to differ,’ George replies. ‘I very much beg to differ. Then there’s the Second World War itself to take into consideration. According to the authorities, everyone in the country was fully documented, and so the government knew where each and every person was at every minute of the war.’

  ‘And isn’t that true?’ I ask, ever the helpful dupe.

  ‘It’s about as true as the statement that the government always intended the London Underground to serve as a gigantic bomb shelter.’

  ‘Didn’t it?’

  ‘No, it bloody didn’t. At the start of the war, the government posted soldiers and policemen at the entrances to the Underground, specifically to stop people getting in. But then the mob grew so big that it overwhelmed the army, and suddenly, using the underground railway stations as shelters had always been the caring government’s idea – and a jolly good one, too.’

  George is occasionally subject to these rants. It is, I suspect, because deep inside the middle-aged guardian of the law, there lurks a tousle-haired youth longing to be standing on a barricade somewhere, with one hand raised in a gesture of contempt and other clutching a handy brick.

  ‘So not everyone here was documented,’ I say, bringing him back to the topic in hand.

  ‘You’re damn right,’ George agrees. ‘There were American soldiers and camp followers, British and American deserters, crooks from the big cities making their grand robbery tour of the under-policed smaller ones, refugees from Poland, Greece, Latvia …’

  It’s time to produce my pack of cards and mesmerize him into taking the right one.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better narrow the scope down, then,’ I suggest.

  ‘Narrow it down to wh
at?’

  I purse my brow – I’m pretty good at that – as if I’m trying really hard to find a way out of the dilemma.

  ‘How about if … I don’t know … how about if we concentrate only on the people who have some kind of connection to St Luke’s College?’ I ask, as innocently as I can.

  ‘Here’s another idea – how about if we concentrate only on the people who have some kind of connection with Morris Motors?’ George says, suspiciously.

  You’re about to take the totally wrong card, George – but I really can’t tell you that.

  ‘Yes, let’s look at Morris, if you’d prefer it,’ I say, trying to sound casual.

  ‘So it doesn’t really matter to you which of the two – St Luke’s College or Morris Motors – I choose?’ he asks, the suspicion still there.

  ‘I’d rather you chose St Luke’s, if only because I’m more familiar with it,’ I say, like it doesn’t really matter, ‘but if it’s easier for you to get the information on Morris …’

  Take my card! Take my card!

  ‘Why do you want this information?’ George asks.

  ‘I need it in order to be able to carry out the work that my client wishes me to carry out,’ I say, with just the right amount of prim stiffness.

  ‘Who is he?’ George asks.

  I wag my finger playfully at him. ‘Now you know I can’t tell you that, George.’

  ‘Is he a journalist?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Although Charlie has written a number of articles.

  ‘Then is he an academic?’

  ‘In a way.’