Scarred for Life Read Online Free PDF

the other lecturers who taught Damon. At some point they would need to be spoken to, but someone else could do that. As they were standing to leave, the professor stood too. ‘Do you think you’ll find out what happened to him?’ he asked.
    She began to answer but was interrupted as Archie sent a pile of papers tumbling from the desk. ‘Shite, oops, sorry mate,’ he said, hunching to help pick things up. Together, they tidied everything back into a stack but Jessica couldn’t help but notice the metal hip flask which had previously been hidden. Still, if she had to spend every day surrounded by hormone-riddled teenagers, she’d probably have a sly drink every now and then too.
    Jessica told Bob that they’d do their best to find out why Damon had died – as if she could say anything else – and then they headed along the student-filled corridors in silence, following signs to the cafe.
    ‘You’re buying,’ she told Archie, sitting in a low-backed wooden chair, taking in the room. Compared to the greasy spoon places round her way and most of the cafes in the surrounding Salford area, the university one could have been built for a king. Clean tables were a start but there was also a spiral staircase linking two floors of the teaching building, with bright stainless steel coffee machines behind the counter whooshing intermittently as a line of students queued for their skinny lattes. Archie might well have fitted in with the locals but he couldn’t stop himself standing out among the student population. His posturing and pigeon chest made him look like a particularly short students’ union bouncer.
    He arrived at the table with two cups of tea and a scowl. ‘Fooking students,’ he complained. ‘Girl behind the counter tried to serve me some shite with peppermint in it.’
    Jessica sipped from her cup. ‘Is camomile more your thing?’
    Archie was about to spit out a ‘no’ when he caught Jessica’s eye and grinned instead. ‘Aye, and that green shite.’
    ‘What was going on upstairs with you whispering to me behind your hand?’
    He shrugged slightly. ‘Dunno, he seemed a bit iffy. I was seeing how he’d react. Did you see the flask on his desk?’
    Jessica was surprised Archie had spotted it. ‘Yes.’
    ‘I saw it early on but thought I’d knock those papers off in case you hadn’t. Then there’s the books.’
    ‘I was afraid to move in case they came tumbling down.’
    Archie blew into his cup. ‘Not that; there were all these textbooks but then he had these general poetry books at the back.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘He’s a business professor – not even English professors read poetry.’
    ‘Perhaps he likes poetry?’
    ‘Leave it out – there’s no way he’s read everything in there. It’s all bobbins – all for show. Give me Cooper Clarke any day.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘John Cooper Clarke – punk and poet. Manc lad – well, Salford, but you can forgive him that.’
    ‘You’re into poetry?’
    Archie finished swilling tea in his mouth and swallowed. ‘Not really, but I know someone trying it on when I see it. Takes one to know one.’
    Jessica took a mouthful of her own drink, wondering if he was right. In her younger days she might have been the one storming in to put the proverbial up people just to see how they’d react. Now she was supposed to be sensible and clamping down on it. The hip flask was likely doing no harm; still, if Archie had spotted it before her and had bothered to scan the spines of the books – something she hadn’t done – then perhaps he wasn’t just the Manc loudmouth everyone thought.

5
    Tea drunk and students slagged off, Jessica double-checked the address with Izzy at the station and then headed half a mile down the road to a bright red-bricked student accommodation block. When Jessica’s friend Caroline had been a student in Manchester, it was all rundown houses covered in blankets and bean bags, reeking of stale cigarette smoke and spilled alcohol; now