The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [22]
‘Was?’ Somers had noted the use of the past tense. He pulled himself up in his chair but did not stand to shake Gaddis’s hand, as if by doing so he might undermine an idea he possessed of his own innate authority. Gaddis noticed that his right hand was spinning a ballpoint pen nervously around the surface of his desk.
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news,’ he said.
‘And what’s that?’
The manner was artificially confident, even supercilious. Gaddis watched Somers’s face carefully.
‘Charlotte had a heart attack. Suddenly. Last week. I think you may have been one of the last people to see her alive.’
‘She what?’
The reaction was one of annoyance, rather than shock. Somers was looking at Gaddis in the way that you might look at a person who has just fired you.
‘She’s dead,’ Gaddis felt obliged to repeat, though he was angered by the callous response. ‘And she was a friend of mine.’
Somers stood up in the narrow office, walked past Gaddis and double-checked that the door was properly closed. A man with a secret. He carried with him a strange, mingled smell of cheap aftershave and hospital disinfectant.
‘And you’ve come to give me the three grand, have you?’ It was a completely unexpected remark. Why was Charlotte in debt to this prick by £3000? Gaddis frowned and said: ‘What’s that?’ as he took a small, disbelieving step backwards.
‘I said have you brought the three grand?’ Somers sat at the edge of his desk. ‘You say you were a friend of hers, she obviously told you about our arrangement or you wouldn’t be here. Were you working on the story together?’
‘What story?’ It was an instinctive tactic, a means of protecting his scoop, but Gaddis saw that it was the wrong move. Somers shot him a withering glance that developed into a smile which bared surprisingly polished teeth.
‘Probably best if you don’t play the innocent,’ he sneered. Two sheets of paper slid off the desk beside him, undermining the remark’s dramatic impact. Somers was obliged to stoop down and pick them up as they floated to the ground.
‘Nobody’s playing the innocent, Calvin. I’m just trying to ascertain who you are and what your relationship was with my friend. If it helps, I can tell you that I’m a senior lecturer in Russian History at UCL. In other words, I am not a journalist. I’m just an interested party. I am not a threat to you.’
‘Who said anything about a threat?’
Somers was back in his chair again, swivelling, trying to regain control. Gaddis saw now that this embittered, hostile man had probably felt threatened for most of his adult life; men like Calvin Somers could not afford to display a moment’s self-doubt. The room had grown hot, central heating pumping out of a radiator beneath a locked window. Gaddis removed his jacket and hooked it on the door.
‘Let’s start again,’ he said. He was used to awkward conversations in cramped rooms. Students complaining. Students crying. Every week at UCL brought a fresh crisis to his office: illness, bereavement, poverty. Students and colleagues alike came to Sam Gaddis with their problems.
‘Why did Charlotte owe you money?’ he asked. He set his voice low, trying to offload any inference from the question. ‘Why hadn’t she paid you?’
A laugh. Not from the belly but from the throat. Somers shook his head.
‘I’ll tell you what, Professor. Cough up the money and I’ll talk to you. Get me three thousand quid in the next six hours and I’ll tell you what your friend Charlotte was paying me to tell her. If not, then can I politely ask you to get the fuck out of my office? I’m not sure I appreciate strangers coming to my place of work and—’
‘Fine.’ Gaddis took the sting out of the attack by raising his hand in a gesture of conciliation. It was a moment of considerable self-control on his part, because he would rather have grabbed Somers by the narrow lapels of his cheap polyester nurse’s uniform and flung him against the radiator.