Chapter 21 #2
Lectures had started this term and hit the ground running, but Cambridge itself still felt a little sleepy.
At least the sun was shining more often these days, gradually melting the thick carpet of snow that had fallen over Christmas.
A few ridges of white still clung to the edges of the pavements, and the barren meadows glinted wetly.
At a few minutes to four o’clock, I entered the building where the professor’s office was located.
As soon as I’d reached the college, I had decided to put what Aspen had told me out of my mind for the time being.
Right now I needed to focus on the conversation ahead: over the last couple of weeks, I’d reread all the professor’s articles in preparation.
I knew he had answers – I just had to ask the right questions.
But I also had to accept that I might not immediately understand them.
Whatever it was he’d been trying to tell me at the Christmas party, I was at least willing to hear him out.
I checked the room number I’d been given, along with the confirmation of the appointment.
As I put my phone away, I noticed I had several missed calls: not from Davie, as I’d expected, but from his friend Cody.
I stared at the notification, brow furrowed, but then dismissed it and went upstairs to the second floor. First things first, I told myself.
The door to his office was unlocked. I knocked on the frame and pushed the door open far enough to see into the room. A blockish desk, positioned in front of a window with dark green velvet curtains. Behind it stood a petite woman, gathering pieces of paper into a pile.
I cleared my throat and stepped inside. ‘Hi, sorry. I’ve got a meeting with Professor Edwards.’
She looked up at me, her hands still busy on the desk.
Her movements seemed nervous, uncontrolled, her eyes darting from me to the cardboard boxed scattered around the room.
I caught glimpses of ring binders, books and desk supplies.
The professor must have asked a department secretary to help him pack.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she said in a hollow voice, tossing a stapler into the box beside her.
Confused, I moved further into the room, stopping next to a round meeting table. ‘My name is Mabel Golding, I have an appointment, he—’
‘Professor Edwards died last night,’ she broke in.
Comprehension descended like icy hands around my throat, squeezing. I clutched the back of a chair reflexively, trying to breathe. To understand. My gaze flitted across the chaos in the room, then back to the secretary. My heart was thudding. ‘What happened?’
‘They found him in the building next door, in the atrium. It seems he fell from one of the balustrades. The police said they found no evidence of foul play.’ Her voice cracked, and she fished a tissue from her trouser pocket to blow her nose.
It was only then I realised she wasn’t emotionless, she was in shock.
And maybe I was, too. Because I knew what she’d just said but it hadn’t sunk in.
Although I was aware of what that last sentence implied, I refused to contemplate the thought.
I knew the building she was referring to: one of Trinity College’s crowning jewels, adorned with intricately carved wooden balustrades that overlooked the foyer below.
A foyer paved with cool grey stone slabs.
Nobody fell over a chest-high railing by accident.
You were either pushed or … you jumped. No foul play.
Presumably that meant the police thought it was suicide.
I was gripping the wooden backrest so tightly that a splinter lodged in my skin. I barely noticed it – all I could think about was Professor Edwards’s voice that night at the Christmas party. June Owens and Paulina Gallagher.
It’s a pattern, isn’t it? I had said.
It’s a pattern. I knew that now, and I felt like throwing up. June Owens and Paulina Gallagher and Garrett Edwards. This was no accident, and it certainly wasn’t a suicide. It was them.
I shook my head vehemently. ‘But that’s … no. He was just on the verge of retirement, he—’
‘That’s all I can tell you,’ she interrupted in a wavering voice. Her eyes glistened with tears, her cheeks trembled. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot to do.’
I was barely aware of the walk back to my room. The faces that passed me blurred into featureless planes of red cheeks and blue-tinged noses, the college to a picture book of winter colours.
I felt numb. How was this possible? How could the only person who might have held some answers die just one day before he was supposed to give them to me?
And … if I was right, and the League really did have something to do with it, did that make it my fault?
What if they’d found out he was planning to talk to me? But how could they…
I stopped halfway up the staircase to my room.
Of course: someone had known. Blake had seen me with him that night, and he’d admitted quite frankly that he knew who Professor Edwards was.
What if he’d told Ashton and the rest? What if they’d decided together to make sure we didn’t get another conversation? What if…
He wouldn’t do that. The thought pressed itself to the surface of my mind, a beacon of hope I clung to because everything else in my head was so dark.
I knew Blake. Not everything about him, but I knew what kind of person he was. He wasn’t like Ashton and the others. He had a good soul.
And if you’re wrong about him? the doubting voice inside me whispered as I fumbled for my key with trembling hands. How can you still believe you really know him after what Aspen told you?
At long last I fit the key into the lock and turned it.
Pressed the heels of my hands against my throbbing eyes.
I didn’t know if I was about to cry, to laugh in despair, or to curl up on the floor and stay there until it all stopped.
Until it wasn’t real anymore – because it just couldn’t be.
I felt too little, I felt too much. This was so crazy.
Resolutely I opened my eyes and took a breath.
I had to pull myself together. First get the facts, then interpret them, as Davie had taught me.
The fact was: Professor Edwards was dead.
That was awful, but it didn’t necessarily mean someone had killed him.
I could never know what had been going through his mind, so I couldn’t rule out the possibility that he had done it deliberately.
Again, Davie’s voice shot through my head: Maybe it’s what you want to believe.
You’re looking for an excuse to like him.
I wished I could deny it, but I knew it was true.
I didn’t want to believe that the League had anything to do with his death.
Not just because the thought itself was sick, or because it would mean they were more dangerous than I had ever imagined, but most of all because it would mean Blake was involved.
He wouldn’t do that.
I had to talk to him. First him, then Davie. As I opened my door, I reached for my phone to call Blake.
It fell to the floor the second I entered my room.
A clatter on the wooden flooring that I barely heeded, because the moment that swept over me was louder.
Paper sailing with a rustle off my desk, scattered by the beating of wings.
The twittering that was not quite drowned out by my hammering heart.
Instinctively I closed the door behind me, although what I really wanted was to run. But I couldn’t. This was my room. My clothes over the chair, my books on the table, my notebooks on the floor. My little home, the place where I had always felt safe. Until this moment.
Because even as I stood pressed against the door, letting the scene sink in, I knew one thing: I would never feel safe or protected here again. Not when somebody had been in here and left it like this.
It was filled with birds. Real, live, flapping, chirruping birds, fifty of them, at least. Birds with black beaks and grey-brown feathers speckled with fine white dots.
I knew this was their winter plumage, and that by summer they would have exchanged it for something much more splendid.
Their feathers would turn black, with a sheen of greens and violets gleaming in the sun.
The white flecks would fade, and their beaks would take on an intense hue.
They would alter their appearance, just as they could alter their song to mimic other species.
Just as they continuously altered the shape of their murmurations in the sky.
I knew this, because they weren’t just any birds.
They were starlings.
* * *
Zoe didn’t respond until my third knock. Her soft ‘yes’ was almost swallowed up by the rushing of my pulse. I opened the door and saw her sitting in bed with her laptop and several books on our reading list.
Under normal circumstances I would have been relieved, because only a few days ago I’d discovered she had missed an essay deadline and had been given a few more days’ grace.
She had refused my offer to help. She was refusing everything I offered her these days.
I’d decided to give her some space, but I couldn’t afford to be tactful right now.
Not when my palms were still chafed and sore from thirty minutes spent scrubbing the floorboards, having taken just as long to shoo several dozen birds out of my window.
I supposed I should have been grateful they were still able to fly.
My stomach turned at the thought of the blood I’d seen on the last starling’s feathers.
Still, it was cold comfort. A dead starling couldn’t hurt me. A flock of live ones could.
‘Did you let anyone borrow my spare key?’ I blurted almost before I’d walked through the door.
Zoe wrinkled her brow. ‘Huh?’
‘Did you give Ashton my spare key?’ I didn’t have the energy to put it in a nicer or more neutral way.
I knew it was them, I just had to know which one.
Whoever it was, they’d obviously gained access somehow, and Zoe was the only person besides me and the college porters who had a key.
My uninvited guest must have got it from her.
Or they bribed a porter. Or they’ve got other ways of getting past locks, like you do.
I narrowed my eyes and focused on Zoe, who was staring at me uncomprehendingly.
‘Why would he want that? It’s over there somewhere, I think, I’m not sure.
’ She glanced at the desk, which was piled high as always with stacks of paper from seminars.
Then she gazed at me. Her face seemed paler again, her eyes lustreless and dry.
‘What’s up, anyway? Is it … you’ve heard, haven’t you? ’
I stopped, taken aback. ‘About Professor Edwards? Yeah, I—’ I broke off.
This made no sense. Even if word had already got round about the professor’s death, it was unlikely to have reached Zoe.
She’d been living in her own little bubble recently, and I could tell by looking at her that she hadn’t left the room all day.
I knew Zoe. She never went anywhere without at least a slick of mascara. ‘Wait, how did you hear about it?’
‘I didn’t,’ she replied, sounding just as baffled. ‘I’ve never even heard that name before.’
‘Then what are you talking about?’
‘Cody rang, he said he’s been trying to get hold of you too.
He’s Davie’s emergency contact.’ Her expression grew more serious, but even the concern in her eyes seemed washed-out.
As if only shadows of emotion were left to her.
The thought frightened me so much I could barely focus on what she was saying.
‘Emergency?’
Zoe nodded, pushing her laptop aside. It felt like an outworn reflex, as if she knew she ought to be with me for the next words – only, she couldn’t quite recall why that was the right thing to do. She stopped at the edge of the bed, just looking at me. ‘Davie’s in hospital.’
My stomach knotted again, this time so hard I tasted bile. A gag reflex in my throat, a stabbing pain in my knees. I staggered. ‘What, why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You didn’t ask?’
‘I don’t think so? I’m not really sure, I’m so tired.’
The words were another kick to the gut. I felt like crumpling. I felt like shaking her. But there was something in her eyes that made it impossible to be angry.
Her face was utterly expressionless. She was the most vibrant, colourful and loyal person I knew, but right now I felt like I was looking at a stranger.
The Zoe I knew would never just be sitting around like this while a friend was in hospital.
She would be doing whatever she could to find out what had happened, she’d be camped out on the ward to make sure she was there if Davie needed her.
She would just … be there. But she wasn’t.
She was sitting in front of me, but she wasn’t there.
Paulina’s words popped into my head. I feel so empty inside.
Like I’ve already … disappeared. At that moment, I understood what she’d meant.
There was a surge of emotion, pitch-black, blazing: fear and helplessness, hatred and rage.
For whoever had done this to Zoe, however they’d done it.
For whoever had put those birds in my room to threaten me.
Without meaning to, they’d made it obvious that Professor Edwards’s death was no accident.
It took all the strength I had to push the thought of Ashton and his friends to the back of my mind. Before I did anything else, I had to find out what had happened to Davie.
‘Which hospital, which ward?’
Zoe blinked and reached for her phone to show me a text from Cody.
She didn’t offer to come with me, and I didn’t ask.
Right now, the person I wanted with me didn’t exist. The thought tasted bitter but true.
Perhaps, in the end, the truth was always bitter.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t bring myself to pick up when Blake called as I was leaving our staircase.
I couldn’t ask every question at once. I couldn’t cope with every answer at once.
Perhaps I couldn’t cope with any answers at all, and I’d cracked under the pressure hours ago.
Part of me was sure I must already be unconscious, because every action I took now felt somehow drained of conscious purpose.
All my movements felt like sleepwalking. Which made sense, frankly, because this whole situation … it was a nightmare. But this time, somehow, I knew there was no waking up. There was only all-consuming darkness, and with every step, every breath, every thought, I waded deeper in.