'I'll give you five minutes and then I'm out of here. I've got to lock up and post my keys through the warden's door. And anyway, you won't see anything. I went in with the police. There's nothing there. Not a drop of blood that I could see, and the police didn't look too hard once they'd found the acid. I've begun to wonder myself, now, whether I actually saw anything. Maybe it was like my subconscious or something.'
'Do I need a ladder?'
'No. Just go up the stairs. Then go through the fire door and turn right. It's at the end of the hall.'
Hart leaves Jason to his packing and makes his way up to the attic. After he has opened the loft door, he has to fumble for the light switch. With the light on, he moves into the narrow storage space and crouches down on the dusty floorboards. Peering under the boxes scattered about, he notices several dark patches on the wooden boards and fragments of carpet. Could be oil, and the stains look old. Maybe there is something for forensics, but Hart is relieved the police have not taken samples. They would immediately start looking for a serial killer or something – wasting their time and getting in his way. When the time comes to act, the police will be useless. Hart shudders. Then it will be time to forget a rational approach. If he's learned anything from South America, it will be a time to act quickly and to go somewhere insane. Can he?
Hart lifts his face and squints at the low ceiling. 'Who are you?' he whispers. 'Why are you here?'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
South Street is deserted. The disintegrating cathedral at the top of the street surveys all of which it once was master. And at such a quiet hour, the sight of so many blackened chimneystacks above the houses, shops and college halls, with their attic gables ominous atop worn stone fronts, makes Dante's neck tingle with excitement. He checks his watch under a streetlight and realises he is five minutes early.
From a tourist-office map he located St Mary's College, and walked from the flat on the Scores to find it tucked behind the walls of upper South Street. An arch leads to the college buildings and the court they surround. It has been burrowed into a plain stretch of stone wall, obscuring the actual court from the street outside. One of the iron gates in the arch is unlocked. Dante steps into a narrow brick annexe and the courtyard opens out before him. Dim globes light the paths, and subdued nightlights glow within the ancient buildings to create an enticing gloom in the court.
Hesitantly, he makes his way forward, until he stands before the oak tree at the head of the main lawn. Around the wings of the court, like a smaller version of the Quad, a ring of academic halls creates shade and protects the hush of the garden. There are cupolas and decorative turrets, worn plaques and coats of arms above the archways and broad windows, whose panes of glass are divided into little squares. Dante thinks of his guitar. He would like to sit down on a bench in the stillness and dark, to allow the impressions and contours of history to press in on him. He wonders what he could find on a fretboard to capture the atmosphere of the court. Blues scales were not cold enough. He'd have to brush up on classical arrangements.
'Dante.' Beth's voice startles him. It drifts from out of the shadows in a corner untouched by the orange lights that create a tarnished sheen on the black grass. Dante walks toward the belltower, its walls blanketed with ivy, from where the voice has risen. He peers into the murk around the tower but can't see Beth. 'Beth, where are you?'
He hears a giggle and stops walking. Squinting, he peers through the fountain of spiky tree branches that falls away from a skeletal thorn tree, next to the belltower. From behind the blackened tree trunk, Beth unwraps herself, smiling. Swathed in her dark coat, she approaches him, slowly, and seems to glide and pour through the gnarled branches and twigs until she reaches the edge of the lawn. Her feet never make a sound. She laughs again and wrinkles her nose with delight. 'This is my favourite tree. Mary Queen of Scots planted the little shoot in the soil.'