Emotionally Weird(24)

‘Yeah, well, I don’t care,’ Terri said, ‘I want out.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Chick shrugged, ‘on you go,’ and he reached over behind to open the rear door, temporarily losing control of the car as he did so.

‘Fucking creep,’ Terri snarled at him and bit his arm. (Which is definitely how accidents happen.)

Chick seemed unperturbed, he had the air of a man who was used to being physically and verbally abused on a regular basis. He simply accelerated even more, patting the dashboard affectionately. ‘The good old Mark 1,’ he said, ‘standard model, 1200ccs of effort, top speed seventy-six miles an hour.’

We reached the other end of the road bridge. ‘The Kingdom of Fife,’ Professor Cousins announced, as if we were entering a fairy-tale country.

‘Heuchter-teuchter land,’ Chick sneered.

‘St Andrews,’ Professor Cousins carried on dreamily, ‘my old alma mater.’

‘I thought you said that was Cambridge,’ I puzzled. It was only a couple of hours ago that he had been deliriously describing May Balls and punting and porters and all those other remote activities of academia that were unknown in Dundee.

‘Did I?’ he said.

‘We’re not going to St Andrews,’ Chick said hastily. ‘I’m not a taxi. And I’m bloody late.’

‘Late for what?’ I asked.

‘Surveillance,’ he said, enunciating the word with a certain distaste.

‘Surveillance?’ I queried.

‘Watching people.’

‘I know what it means,’ I said. ‘I just can’t imagine you doing it.’

He took a card from an inside pocket and handed it to me. Grubby and badly printed, it read ‘ Premier Investigations – all work undertaken, no questions asked’. Chick, it turned out, was (of all unlikely things) a private detective.

‘A private eye,’ Professor Cousins said thoughtfully.

Chick ignored him and looked at his watch agitatedly. ‘I’m going to bloody miss her.’

‘Who exactly are you watching?’ Professor Cousins asked.

‘Some woman,’ Chick said, ‘jealous spouse, usual thing.’ He lit a cigarette (terrifying to observe at speed). ‘Husband’s a nutter, of course,’ he said; ‘they always are.’

‘You don’t have any qualms then,’ Professor Cousins asked Chick, ‘about doing this sort of work, I mean, ethical qualms.’

‘Qualms?’ Chick echoed. ‘Qualms? How?’

Professor Cousins laughed. ‘The more you say it the more ridiculous it sounds. It’s often the way with words, isn’t it? Qualms comes from the Old English, Chick – murder, torment, death.’

‘Fascinating, Gabriel,’ Chick said in such a neutral tone that I couldn’t tell whether he meant it or not.

I leant forward to speak to him and got a whiff of his middle-aged aroma – Old Spice, sweat and stale eighty-shilling ale. Professor Cousins, I couldn’t help but notice, smelt vaguely of attar of roses.

‘Are you following me ?’ I asked Chick.

He raised a pair of amazed eyebrows so that his forehead made a rubbery concertina and said dismissively, ‘Why on earth would I be following you ?’

‘The poor girl thinks someone’s following her,’ Professor Cousins said helpfully.

Chick cast a speculative glance at me in his rear-view mirror and said, ‘Do you?’

‘I’m just imagining it,’ I said because I really didn’t want to think otherwise.

‘Poor Christopher – Dr Pike – thought he was being followed,’ Professor Cousins sighed, ‘and look what happened to him.’

‘What happened to him?’ Chick asked after a while when Professor Cousins didn’t elaborate.

‘He had an accident, like our friend here,’ Professor Cousins said, indicating the dog in the back seat who cocked an ear to show he knew he was being talked about.

‘And you don’t think it was an accident?’ Chick said; and Professor Cousins laughed and said, ‘Oh, I’m sure it was , the members of my department are notoriously accident-prone. At any one time half of them are in hospital. There won’t be anyone left in the actual university soon.’

‘Professor Cousins thinks someone is trying to kill him,’ I told Chick.

‘You make a great pair,’ Chick said sarcastically, ‘the man who thinks someone’s trying to kill him and the girl who thinks someone’s watching her. And as for Little Miss Sunshine back there . . . You know what they say, don’t you?’ he said to Professor Cousins.

‘No, what do they say, Chick?’