Death at the Alma Mater Read Online Free PDF Page B

particular designer’s dress spelt triumph for the designer and steady employment for the knock-off designers.
    Sebastian, reading the longing in Saffron’s eyes—she was the most transparent of creatures, Saffy—laughed, with a mockery that was not quite gentle in his voice. “She’s famous for her hairstyle, isn’t she? Why on earth would you care about that?”
    Ruefully, Saffron ran a hand through her own tousled, multi-colored mop—a mop she styled herself, often with a straight razor.
    “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.
    “Anyway, the parents aren’t half in a twist about her being there. What’s odd is, I guess I’m sort of related to her. What do you call your stepfather’s ex-wife?”
    “I don’t think there’s a name for it.”
    “My mother has a few names for it,” said Sebastian. “None of them suitable for printing in a family newspaper. She hates Lexy’s being here.”
    “It is jolly odd.”
    “I wonder if Lexy thinks there’s a chance of breaking the pair of them up?”
    Saffron shook her head solemnly: Dunno. What the oldies got up to in the name of amor was beyond her ken.
    Sebastian had his own reasons Lexy, and the other visitors, made him uncomfortable. Just one was the unhappiness Lexy caused his mother, and James—although Sebastian cared less about the happiness of his stepfather. But he liked James, really. For a stepfather, James was all right. Like all old people, James tried too hard to get Sebastian to like him, asking about his studies and his professors and trying to show an interest. But James, had he but known it, didn’t have to try quite so hard. He seemed to make his mother happy. That was good enough for Seb.
    Besides, James wasn’t stingy. Sebastian had to give him that. All Seb ever had to do was ask, and money would flow into his bank account. If he asked for a fiver, James would hand over a hundred-pound note. It drove Sebastian mad, actually—he didn’t want handouts, although sometimes he had no choice. It was bribery, besides. Seb knew that: Here’s a hundred, now go away. But like most young people, Sebastian wanted to be independent, not relying on money from the wrinklies. Money like that always came with strings attached. He was hoping very much at this moment his independence day wouldn’t be far off.
    “… It’s brilliant,” Saffron was saying. “You’re a genius, Seb.”
    Sebastian hoisted his pint, acknowledging the compliment.
    “Working like a charm so far.”
    Saffron’s attention was distracted just then by a new customer. She hadn’t seen or heard him come in, treading lightly in an expensive pair of trainers. Now he sat patiently at a far corner table, some old guy wearing a weird shirt with pointed pockets and mother-of-pearl buttons—the kind of pockets that snapped shut instead of buttoning in the normal way. A cowboy shirt, like she’d seen on the telly. Howdy! He wore an enormous belt with a buckle the size of a tea saucer. This had to be an American. Jeez, they grew them big over there. He was taller than Seb, who was well over six feet.
    “Shhh,” she said to Sebastian.
    She walked over to see what Matt Dillon wanted.

BLOCKED

    Portia De’Ath was working on her thesis. At least she sat, pen in hand, surrounded by books, notebooks, papers, and other tools of the academic trade. On one side of her desk sat a laptop, its cursor blinking balefully, like the countdown-to-doomsday screen in an old science-fiction movie.
    “Psychopathy,” she read aloud portentously from her notebook, “as a predictor of violent criminal recidivism among the various age groups of a prison population has been shown to be … Shown to be correlated with a tendency … A tendency towards and documented history of …”
    She threw her head down on the desk and, after a moment, tilted it slowly to glare at the clock on the wall.
    Oh bugger, bugger, bugger it. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Her thesis topic—basically,