where I fitted in life’s big picture and reflect on the nature of the universe immediately before the Big Bang. Some professor of radio astronomy had been on PM talking about waves – ripples in space – that he had detected. He said they were vibrations from the Big Bang, still travelling outwards fifteen billion years later. In which case, I thought, how come we arrived here first? Maybe I’d write to him and ask. Everybody was in tears as we left the cinema, so it must have all worked out in the end. I hadn’t expected it to still be light outside, but it was. We strolled hand-in-hand through the town centre, which was nice, and had a pizza, which wasn’t. Pizza isn’t on my menu. If the Romans had taken the recipe for Yorkshire pudding back with them we’d never have heard of pizza. Jacquie invited me in for a coffee and introduced meto the kitten she’d acquired. I tickled its ears while we listened to Neil Diamond and Jacquie fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I used to like Neil Diamond, years ago. Now, I feel like throwing up. I sat through ‘Sweet Caroline’, for old times’ sake, and said I’d better go. We had a short but torrid necking session behind her front door and I left. Another day over.
Leeds became a university city early in the twentieth century. The colleges upon which it was built rose out of necessity, not from the beneficence of a monarch with aspirations beyond his intellect and a weather eye on his place in history. The textile industry required chemists and the mines and railways needed engineers. Then, as the north burgeoned with industrial growth, all the incidental needs of the population grew apace with it. Doctors and priests; bankers and businessmen; entrepreneurs and charlatans: they were swept in as if by a spring flood, dragged along on the coat tails of steam, iron, coal and wool. The Parkinson Tower is a Portland stone monolith that dominates the skyline to the north of the city and marks the epicentre of the rambling campus. I drove by it and looked for a parking place.
The University Registrar and Secretary was called Hugh Roper-Jones and he’d been at his desk when I rang him. Unfortunately he was about to attend abriefing of potential undergraduates, but he told me he had to be free before twelve for a lunch appointment. I said it wouldn’t take long and I’d be waiting outside his door.
I walked down the road past the departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electronics and Electrical Engineering and there it was – Chemistry. Duncan Roberts had been studying chemistry. I ran up the steps and through the wood and glass doors. Inside was a lobby but no reception desk. I scanned the notice-boards that lined the walls and decided that students hadn’t changed much since my day. They still needed cheap accommodation and sold bicycles and went to concerts and piss-ups. A series of glossy posters advertised the department and listed some of its achievements. It reminded me that this was where they invented DFO. We use it to develop latent fingerprints, and I felt I was among friends. The next door led into a corridor with a lecture theatre facing me. A sign on the wall indicated that SOMS was on the fourth floor and LHASAUK on the second. Now I was way out of my depth. One thing I did know was that Roper-Jones’s office was not in this block, so I left.
He was in the E. C. Stoner Building, and waiting for me. I told him about the phone call from Duncan and suggested that he’d possibly witnessed someone starting a fire, back in 1975, in which there had beena fatality. Perhaps, I was wondering, he had confided in a fellow student. If Mr Roper-Jones could furnish me with the names and last-known addresses of Duncan’s classmates I could be on my way and leave him to lunch in peace.
‘Ah!’ he said ominously, fingering a cuff.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid, Inspector, that our computerised records only go back as
Leeds became a university city early in the twentieth century. The colleges upon which it was built rose out of necessity, not from the beneficence of a monarch with aspirations beyond his intellect and a weather eye on his place in history. The textile industry required chemists and the mines and railways needed engineers. Then, as the north burgeoned with industrial growth, all the incidental needs of the population grew apace with it. Doctors and priests; bankers and businessmen; entrepreneurs and charlatans: they were swept in as if by a spring flood, dragged along on the coat tails of steam, iron, coal and wool. The Parkinson Tower is a Portland stone monolith that dominates the skyline to the north of the city and marks the epicentre of the rambling campus. I drove by it and looked for a parking place.
The University Registrar and Secretary was called Hugh Roper-Jones and he’d been at his desk when I rang him. Unfortunately he was about to attend abriefing of potential undergraduates, but he told me he had to be free before twelve for a lunch appointment. I said it wouldn’t take long and I’d be waiting outside his door.
I walked down the road past the departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electronics and Electrical Engineering and there it was – Chemistry. Duncan Roberts had been studying chemistry. I ran up the steps and through the wood and glass doors. Inside was a lobby but no reception desk. I scanned the notice-boards that lined the walls and decided that students hadn’t changed much since my day. They still needed cheap accommodation and sold bicycles and went to concerts and piss-ups. A series of glossy posters advertised the department and listed some of its achievements. It reminded me that this was where they invented DFO. We use it to develop latent fingerprints, and I felt I was among friends. The next door led into a corridor with a lecture theatre facing me. A sign on the wall indicated that SOMS was on the fourth floor and LHASAUK on the second. Now I was way out of my depth. One thing I did know was that Roper-Jones’s office was not in this block, so I left.
He was in the E. C. Stoner Building, and waiting for me. I told him about the phone call from Duncan and suggested that he’d possibly witnessed someone starting a fire, back in 1975, in which there had beena fatality. Perhaps, I was wondering, he had confided in a fellow student. If Mr Roper-Jones could furnish me with the names and last-known addresses of Duncan’s classmates I could be on my way and leave him to lunch in peace.
‘Ah!’ he said ominously, fingering a cuff.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid, Inspector, that our computerised records only go back as
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