They have a six-foot wingspan and can pick up a sheep. Well, a lamb.’
‘What sort of noise does it make? Sort of too-wit too-woo-shriek ?’
‘No. They just hoot.’
‘It’s a myth that owls say too-wit too-woo ,’ Maggie assured us. ‘They just make a hooting sound.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to remember that. Now how about collecting a few witnesses to this murder and seeing what sort of noise they make when we apply the bastinado to the soles of their feet, eh?’
As soon as they’d gone I picked up my internal phone and dialled Jeff Caton, one of my sergeants, who was busy at his desk in the outer office. ‘Did you see a programme on TV last night about eagle owls?’ I asked him.
Jeff hadn’t seen it, either, so I told him all about it.
Leeds College of Art and Design is on the northern edge of the city centre, divided between two sites. One is a swish Eighties construction, allegedly designed by Lego but no doubt a joy to work in, and the other the hundred-year-old building of my student days. I abandoned the car outside the parking zone and walked back towards town, looking for the familiar façade with its fake classical mosaic that was the college’s emblem. I found it hidden in a corner, surrounded by structures that were either shining new or waiting for the wrecking ball. The city was evolving around it.
Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth are the college’s most famous luminaries. From the outside it could have been a bank or the offices of an ancient firm of lawyers, with only the mosaic high on the wall to indicate otherwise. I trotted up the steps to the front door, hidden apologetically round the corner, and pulled it open.
Inside it was smaller and dingier than I remembered, like a careworn friend you haven’t seen for years. No smell of turpentine or linseed oil delighted my nostrils to bring the memories flooding back; no chattering throng of students in flowing chiffon and tie-dyed shirts came flip-flopping down the corridor. A couple of girls in semi-Goth outfits clumped by and I wondered what they were studying. Tattooing and body piercing? We’d had the best of it, no doubt about it, in those golden years post the Pill and pre-Aids. I walked over to the front desk and showed the receptionist my warrant card.
The vice principal saw me. I’d hoped that his eyes would light up when I asked him about Magdalena, as he remembered hasty fondles in her changing room or the stolen brush of his fingers against her skin as he arranged her pose, but unfortunately he was far too young. He would barely have been born when Magdalena sat on her high stool, legs crossed, as a dozen dry-mouthed students struggled to capture her likeness.
He doubted very much if there would be any record of her on the files. Nude models were casual labour, paid for out of the petty cash, and most of the records were destroyed in the various moves. He could give me a list of all the teaching staff going back to about 1970, and he knew of one tutor who was still active and living not too far away: JKL Mackintosh RA RP.
‘Old Mack,’ I said. ‘I remember him. He took us for life classes occasionally. He was a portrait painter.’
‘He graces us with a visit, now and again,’ the vice principal said, in a tone that implied that the visits were far too frequent and time consuming. I knew the feeling well. When I leave the station with my yellow metal Timex in one hand and the troops’ bottle of Bell’s in the other, I’ll never make the return journey. Not ever.
‘Do you have an address for him?’ I asked.
He didn’t, but he had a phone number and he allowed me to use his phone. JKL, as he was more formally known, was in and said I could call round. I thanked the vice principal and was soon heading past Hyde Park Corner – that’s the Leeds Hyde Park Corner – out through Headingley towards Lawnswood.
Old Mack was waiting for me with a freshly boiled kettle and a plate of digestive
‘What sort of noise does it make? Sort of too-wit too-woo-shriek ?’
‘No. They just hoot.’
‘It’s a myth that owls say too-wit too-woo ,’ Maggie assured us. ‘They just make a hooting sound.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to remember that. Now how about collecting a few witnesses to this murder and seeing what sort of noise they make when we apply the bastinado to the soles of their feet, eh?’
As soon as they’d gone I picked up my internal phone and dialled Jeff Caton, one of my sergeants, who was busy at his desk in the outer office. ‘Did you see a programme on TV last night about eagle owls?’ I asked him.
Jeff hadn’t seen it, either, so I told him all about it.
Leeds College of Art and Design is on the northern edge of the city centre, divided between two sites. One is a swish Eighties construction, allegedly designed by Lego but no doubt a joy to work in, and the other the hundred-year-old building of my student days. I abandoned the car outside the parking zone and walked back towards town, looking for the familiar façade with its fake classical mosaic that was the college’s emblem. I found it hidden in a corner, surrounded by structures that were either shining new or waiting for the wrecking ball. The city was evolving around it.
Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth are the college’s most famous luminaries. From the outside it could have been a bank or the offices of an ancient firm of lawyers, with only the mosaic high on the wall to indicate otherwise. I trotted up the steps to the front door, hidden apologetically round the corner, and pulled it open.
Inside it was smaller and dingier than I remembered, like a careworn friend you haven’t seen for years. No smell of turpentine or linseed oil delighted my nostrils to bring the memories flooding back; no chattering throng of students in flowing chiffon and tie-dyed shirts came flip-flopping down the corridor. A couple of girls in semi-Goth outfits clumped by and I wondered what they were studying. Tattooing and body piercing? We’d had the best of it, no doubt about it, in those golden years post the Pill and pre-Aids. I walked over to the front desk and showed the receptionist my warrant card.
The vice principal saw me. I’d hoped that his eyes would light up when I asked him about Magdalena, as he remembered hasty fondles in her changing room or the stolen brush of his fingers against her skin as he arranged her pose, but unfortunately he was far too young. He would barely have been born when Magdalena sat on her high stool, legs crossed, as a dozen dry-mouthed students struggled to capture her likeness.
He doubted very much if there would be any record of her on the files. Nude models were casual labour, paid for out of the petty cash, and most of the records were destroyed in the various moves. He could give me a list of all the teaching staff going back to about 1970, and he knew of one tutor who was still active and living not too far away: JKL Mackintosh RA RP.
‘Old Mack,’ I said. ‘I remember him. He took us for life classes occasionally. He was a portrait painter.’
‘He graces us with a visit, now and again,’ the vice principal said, in a tone that implied that the visits were far too frequent and time consuming. I knew the feeling well. When I leave the station with my yellow metal Timex in one hand and the troops’ bottle of Bell’s in the other, I’ll never make the return journey. Not ever.
‘Do you have an address for him?’ I asked.
He didn’t, but he had a phone number and he allowed me to use his phone. JKL, as he was more formally known, was in and said I could call round. I thanked the vice principal and was soon heading past Hyde Park Corner – that’s the Leeds Hyde Park Corner – out through Headingley towards Lawnswood.
Old Mack was waiting for me with a freshly boiled kettle and a plate of digestive
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