I take a sip of my gin and tonic, and think about which of the dozen business cards I carry around in my bag I will use today.

  There’s a good reason for the business cards. One of the first things that I learned about this job of mine is that people are sometimes reluctant to talk candidly to private investigators.

  I don’t blame them for that. Putting myself in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to open up to a person I don’t know, for reasons I haven’t been given (and, because of the confidential nature of the work, can’t be given). So what I provide them with – via the business cards – is a person who they can see some purpose in talking to.

  As I cross the room to the corner table, I’ve narrowed it down to two – Cynthia Joan Lee for the University of Oxford’s Psychology Department, and Maggie Jones from Radio Oxford. My final choice will be made when I get a look at Harry Garstead’s face, and decide whether he will be more susceptible to the public spiritedness offered to him by the earnest Cynthia, or to the money dangled in front of his eyes by the bubbly Maggie.

  I reach the corner table.

  ‘Are you Mr Garstead?’ I say.

  He looks up from his paper, and makes a quick assessment of me through bloodshot eyes which are both cunning and suspicious.

  ‘I might be Harry Garstead,’ he says. ‘What’s it to you?’

  Looks like it’s going to be money, then!

  I reach into my handbag, take out the Maggie card, and hand it to him. He glances at it, then drops it carelessly on the table. To be honest, he does not seem overly impressed.

  ‘It’s always such a treat for me to meet one of our listeners,’ I say, in an enthusiastically girlish voice.

  He picks up his cigarette, which had been smouldering away in the ashtray, and takes a drag.

  ‘Well, if that’s how you get your jollies, you’re right out of luck today, ain’t you?’ he says.

  I look appropriately shocked – and perhaps a little distressed.

  ‘Don’t you listen to Radio Oxford?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. ‘Nah, I’ve got better things to do with me time than listen to all you idiots blathering away.’

  ‘Oh, that is such a pity,’ I say, ‘because, you see, only our regular listeners are entitled to compete for the big cash prize.’

  His bloodshot eyes are suddenly a deep, swirling sea of avarice.

  ‘How big?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘How big is the big cash prize?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I say? It’s five hundred pounds.’

  ‘Then I hope my little joke won’t have disqualified me.’

  ‘Your little joke?’

  ‘People don’t always get my sense of humour, and you must be one of them. When I said I didn’t listen to Radio Oxford, I was only joking. I tune into it all the time.’

  I look relieved – but still a little uncertain.

  ‘Honestly?’ I say.

  ‘Honestly,’ he reassures me.

  ‘Well, in that case, there’s nothing to stop us proceeding with the first stage of the competition. Do you mind if I sit down?’

  He gestures to the chair opposite him with all the style and grace of a syphilitic warthog, and I sit down.

  ‘You’re a porter at Oxford Railway Station, and you were on duty last Friday night,’ I say. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asks, suspiciously.

  I giggle. ‘Oh, you surely don’t expect me to reveal all the tricks of my trade, do you, Mr Garstead?’ I ask him. ‘Let’s just say that we in the media have our ways and means.’

  The ways and means in this case being to go to the station and ask who was on duty on Friday night and where I’d be likely to find him.

  ‘Yes, I was there,’ he admits.

  ‘Now, as you know, the competition we’re running is called “Don’t Miss a Trick”. As a regular listener, you’ll already be familiar with the rules, won’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, uncomfortably.

  ‘Unfortunately, I’m obliged by the sponsors to explain the whole procedure before we begin. I know that will be boring, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’ I smile. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he says, relieved.

  ‘The aim of the competition is to test just how observant ordinary members of the public like yourself really are,’ I continue, ‘and what we’re entering now is what we call the knockout stage. If you get through it successfully – and having met you, I think there’s a very good chance you will – then the next round will take place at the radio station and will be broadcast live. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says, with the impatience of a man who wants the money and doesn’t really see why I don’t just give it to him.

  I take out the pictures of the members of the Shivering Turn, plus those of several other students from St Luke’s College – all of which were given to me, albeit somewhat reluctantly, by Charlie Swift – and spread them evenly across the table.

  ‘One – or several – of the people in these photographs were at the railway station on Friday night,’ I say. ‘To qualify for the next round, you must pick that person or those persons out. If you fail to select one who was there, or alternatively select one who wasn’t, you will be automatically disqualified. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Garstead glanced down at the photographs, and then looks up at me.

  ‘I don’t suppose that you could give me a bit of a hint, could you?’ he asks me.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  He licks his lips. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’d like the five hundred quid all to myself, but four hundred is better than nothing, and if you was to, you know sort of help me out a bit …’

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ I say sternly.

  Slightly disappointed, he turns his attention back to the pictures, and – since he’s clearly going to have to do this on his own – studies them carefully.

  ‘Him, him and him,’ he says finally.

  I look at the three he’s chosen. Only two of them are members of the Shivering Turn.

  ‘Are you sure, Mr Garstead?’ I ask. ‘Because, as I explained earlier, if you get even one wrong …’

  ‘On second thoughts,’ he says hastily, ‘it was just him and him.’

  He has eliminated the non-member. I give him my bubbly Maggie Jones smile, to indicate to him that, though the competition rules mean I can’t tell him that he’s right, right is what he is.

  ‘What time was it when you saw them?’ I ask.

  ‘It would be about eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yeah, it was just before the London mail train pulled in.’

  ‘And what were they doing?’

  ‘Doing?’

  ‘Were they meeting someone from a train? Or did they get on a train themselves.’

  ‘Is this part of the quiz?’

  ‘Oh yes, very much so. It’s about observation, remember.’

  ‘They wasn’t meeting the train, and they wasn’t waiting to get on it themselves, neither. They was just walking up and down – as if they was looking for somebody.’

  Or making sure that somebody wasn’t there!

  Because this is my latest theory – Linda Corbet asked two members of the Shivering Turn to help her run away. Part of that will have involved driving her to her house (I’m sure that at least one of them will have a car), where she will have packed her bag and picked up her money. But the second part will have been to make sure that no one stopped her from leaving – and here, the person I’m thinking of is her over-protective father.

  So while Linda hides away somewhere – probably in the ladies’ toilets, which are a no-go zone for her dad – these two lads patrol the platform to see if Inspector Corbet does, in fact, turn up.

  ‘Did you see this girl?’ I ask, showing Garstead a photograph that Mary Corbet has given me of Linda.

  ‘No,’ he says firmly.

  ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In my mind, I can picture the whole scene – as the train pulls into the station, Linda comes out of wherever it is she’s been hiding. But she is not exposed, because the moment she’s out in the open, she is flanked by Hugo Johnson and Gideon Duffy (the two members of the Shivering Turn who the porter has picked out as being present on the platform on Friday night) and they stay by her side, giving her cover, until she is safely in the train.

  ‘How about her?’ I ask, sliding a photo of Linda’s friend Janet across the table.

  Why do I show him Janet’s photograph, when I have already decided she played no part in Linda’s disappearance?

  I do it because you can be sure of nothing in my game, and when you’re presented with the opportunity to cross-reference, you’d be a bloody fool not to jump at it.

  ‘Ugly bitch, ain’t she?’ Garstead asks, looking at the photograph. ‘I wouldn’t fancy the idea of having to shag that when I got home from work.’

  I imagine the feeling would be entirely reciprocated, I think.

  ‘Did you see her on Friday night?’ I ask, resisting the urge to poke him in both eyes – but only just.

  ‘No, I didn’t see her,’ Garstead says.

  I collect up the photographs, slide them into the envelope from whence they came, and put the envelope back in my handbag.

  ‘Is that it?’ Garstead asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And am I through to the next round of the competition?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, I’m sorry, but you’re not.’

  He looks gobsmacked at the news.

  ‘Why the bloody hell not?’ he demands.

  ‘Because you missed one,’ I tell him. And then, because I’m feeling particularly malicious, I add, ‘You remember you picked out three photographs at first, and then rejected one of them?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, the one you rejected was also there.’

  ‘Since I was so close, can I try again?’ he pleads.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I reply. ‘The rules of the competition are very strict on the question of second chances.’

  I stand up. I had been planning to slip him thirty or forty quid of Mary Corbet’s money as a consolation prize, but my dislike for him has been growing and growing over the interview, and now I have reached the point at which I would rather pull my own head off than give him a penny.

  ‘Sorry it didn’t work out, Mr Garstead,’ I say.

  ‘It was a complete waste of my drinking time,’ he growls. ‘And I’ll tell you something else for nothing – that radio station you work for is nothing but a pile of absolute shit.’

  ‘I’ll pass your message on to my station manager,’ I say. ‘I’m sure he’ll be devastated to learn that a gentleman of your refinement and intelligence has such a low opinion of him.’

  ‘Are you taking the piss out of me?’ he says, almost spitting the words out.

  ‘Oh, Mr Garstead, whatever could make you think that?’ I ask, in my normal – non-Maggie – voice.

  I am sitting in the very seminar room in which I once defended my views on Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale to an increasingly annoyed tutor who had written a book on the play, and had clearly expected me to slavishly follow his interpretation of it. I am sitting, in other words, in the room in which my chances of ever being awarded a first-class honours degree flew out of the window.

  This time, however, I am not here to get up the nose of a man on whom my academic future depends, but rather to question the members of the Shivering Turn Society whom the dean, in return for thirty pieces of silver (or rather, a case of Château Margaux) has decided to deliver up unto me.

  The dean has not produced all six, as Charlie requested. In fact, there are only four of them waiting outside (does that mean he only gets two-thirds of a case of wine?), but that does not bother me, because the ‘boyfriend’ is there, as are the two I really need to speak to – Hugo Johnson and Gideon Duffy.

  The investigation is all but over. Of course I would like to know why Johnson and Duffy helped Linda to run away, and I would like to know what made her decide to run away on that particular night, but that is just because I am a nosey parker by nature. All I actually need to close the case is a signed statement that they put Linda on the train.

  I open the door, and look at the four young men waiting outside.

  ‘I’ll see you first, Mr Johnson,’ I say.

  Hugo Johnson is around six feet one inches tall. His body is well muscled (he, like the rest of the Shivering Turn, is a rower, I remember), but his face has still not quite lost its puppy fat. He moves with assurance. And why shouldn’t he – he has been to a top public school, he is attending one of the best universities in the country, and when he graduates he will probably slip effortlessly into a comfortable job in a merchant bank, marry an appropriate young lady, have two appropriate children, and buy himself a country retreat where the shooting is good.

  ‘Tell me about Linda Corbet, Mr Johnson,’ I say.

  ‘Who?’ he asks, looking puzzled. ‘Oh, you mean Jeff’s Linda.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She’s a pleasant enough girl, I suppose, though I can’t say she’s really my type.’

  ‘You mean she’s nowhere near posh enough for you, don’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, she’s certainly not a girl you would want to take home to meet the mater and pater,’ he replies.

  ‘But you were perfectly happy to have her knocking around with the Shivering Turn Society?’

  ‘Knocking around with the Shivering Turn Society? Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘She’d begun embroidering part of Cudlip’s poem on her blouse.’

  Johnson shrugs. ‘I didn’t know she was doing that – but I imagine there’s no law against it.’

  ‘So you’re saying she never attended any of your meetings?’

  ‘She most certainly did not attend. The Shivering Turn Society is strictly men only.’

  ‘Why should a society dedicated to studying the work of a Metaphysical poet be for men only?’

  ‘Well, there’s a good deal of drinking goes on – and the language can become rather ripe.’

  ‘She was with you when you were arrested,’ I point out.

  ‘That’s not strictly true. She and Jeff only joined us a few minutes before the pigs arrived. I think they’d been to the cinema.’

  ‘So they played no part in vandalizing the cars?’

  ‘No, but neither did the rest of us. The pigs—’

  ‘Do you think you could call them the police?’

  ‘Oh, all right. The police fitted us up for that. Anyway, I can’t see what all the fuss was about. The cars that were damaged were only tin boxes – there wasn’t a Roller or Jag amongst them.’

  ‘Tell me about Friday night,’ I suggest.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You took Linda Corbet down to the railway station.’

  ‘What an extraordinary idea! I did no such thing.’

  ‘You were seen on the platform.’

  ‘Can’t have been me. I was in my rooms, playing Monopoly with a couple of the other chaps.’

  ‘Look, Linda is old enough to leave home if she wants to,’ I tell him, ‘and there was nothing illegal about taking her down to the railway station.’

  ‘Didn’t do it,’ Johnson says firmly. ‘Playing Monopoly. Made a fortune out of rent on my hotel on Mayfair.’

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to have gone at all.

  ‘I’m doing all this mainly for Linda’s mother’s benefit,’ I explain. ‘Her father knows what’s happened, and has pretty much learned to accept it, so you have absolutely no reason to be afraid of him.’

  ‘Not afraid of anybody,’ Hugo Johnson tells me. ‘Don’t see why I should say I was at the railway station if I wasn’t – and I wasn’t.’

  I push him for another five minutes, but it is clear that he is not going to budge. And the thing is, I don’t really understand why he won’t budge – what possible reason he could have for denying the truth.

  In the end, I give up, tell him he can go, and ask him to send in Gideon Duffy on his way out.

  Duffy has been cast in the same mould as Johnson – public school, big, muscular, self assured – and he is as adamant as Johnson that he was nowhere near the railway station on Friday night so, after a while, I am forced to give up on him, too.

  I have decided to interview Jeff Meade next, but when I step out into the corridor, I find that there is only one person sitting there – and he’s nowhere near handsome enough to have been Linda’s boyfriend.

  ‘You’re Crispin Hetherington, aren’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, I most certainly am.’

  ‘And where’s Jeff Meade?’

  ‘Gone off for a crap. It’s the third time he’s been since we were all told we were going to have a cosy little chat with you. Must be something in the water, don’t you think?’

  A real smart-arse, even by Oxford standards.

  Great – that’s just what I need.

  ‘Well, since he isn’t here, I’ll see you next,’ I say.

  ‘Do you know, you sound just like a pox doctor,’ he tells me.

  See what I mean?

  NINE

  Crispin Hetherington is much smaller and lighter than his friends – but he compensates for that with an air of arrogance which makes Hugo Johnson and Gideon Duffy look like understudies for Uriah Heep.

  His hair is a wispy blond, his nose is relatively inconspicuous (he has somehow managed to avoid being born with the large aristocratic hooter that some of his companions are forced to carry round in the centre of their faces), his lips are thin, and his chin only just misses being a girlish oval. But none of this is of any real importance, because it is his eyes – his pale emotionless eyes – that, despite my best efforts, I keep being drawn to.