For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(78)

Lynley wondered if Gareth Randolph was as powerful a fighter in his own weight class. He considered this question on the way to DeaStu. Anthony Weaver had made allegations about the boy that he could not avoid coupling with Havers’ report from the Cambridge police: Whatever Elena had been beaten with, it had left no trace.

DeaStu was housed in the basement of the Peterhouse Library not far from the University Graduate Centre, just at the bottom of Little St. Mary’s Lane, little more than two blocks from Queens’ College where Gareth Randolph lived. Its offices were tucked at the end of a low-ceilinged corridor illuminated by bright round globes of light. They had two means of access, one through the Lubbock Room on the ground floor of the library, and the other directly from the street at the rear of the building, not fifty yards away from the Mill Lane footbridge across which Elena Weaver had to have run on the morning of her death. The main office door of opaque glass bore the words Deaf Students of Cambridge University and beneath that the less formal DeaStu was superimposed over two hands crossed, fingers extended, palms outward.

Lynley had given lengthy thought to how he was going to communicate with Gareth Randolph. He had played round with the idea of calling Superintendent Sheehan to see if he had an interpreter associated with the Cambridge police. He’d never spoken with anyone deaf before, and from what he had gathered over the last twenty-four hours, Gareth Randolph did not have Elena Weaver’s facility for reading lips. Nor did he have her spoken language.

Once inside the office, however, he saw that things would take care of themselves. For talking to a woman who sat behind a desk piled with pamphlets, papers, and books was a knobby-ankled, bespectacled girl with her hair in plaits and a pencil stuck behind her ear. As she chatted and laughed, she was signing simultaneously. She also turned in his direction at the sound of the door opening. Here, Lynley thought, would be his interpreter.

“Gareth Randolph?” the woman behind the desk said in answer to Lynley’s question and after an inspection of his warrant card. “He’s just in the conference room. Bernadette, will you…?” And then to Lynley, “I assume you don’t sign, Inspector.”

“I don’t.”

Bernadette adjusted the pencil more firmly behind her ear, grinned sheepishly at this momentary display of self-importance, and said, “Right. Come along with me, Inspector. We’ll see what’s what.”

She led him back the way he had come and then down a short corridor whose ceiling was lined with pipes painted white. She said, “Gareth’s been here most of the day. He’s not doing very well.”

“Because of the murder?”

“He had a thing for Elena. Everyone knew it.”

“Did you know Elena yourself?”

“Just to see her. The others”—with a jutting out of her elbows to encompass the area and presumably the membership of DeaStu—“they sometimes like to have an interpreter go with them to their lectures just to make sure they don’t miss anything important. That’s my function, by the way. Interpreting. I make extra money to see me through the term that way. I get to hear some pretty decent lectures as well. I did a special Stephen Hawking lecture last week. What a job that was trying to sign. Astrophysical whatevers. It was like a foreign language.”

“I can well imagine.”

“The lecture hall was so quiet you’d have thought God was putting in an appearance. And after it was over, everyone stood and applauded and—” She rubbed the side of her nose with her index finger. “He’s rather special. I quite felt like crying.”

Lynley smiled, liking her. “But you never interpreted for Elena Weaver?”

“She didn’t use an interpreter. I don’t think she liked to.”

“She wanted people to think she could hear?”

“Not so much that,” Bernadette said. “I think she was proud that she could read lips. It’s difficult to do, especially if someone’s born deaf. My mum and dad—they’re both deaf, you see—they never learned to read much beyond ‘three quid please’ and ‘ta.’ But Elena was amazing.”

“How involved was she with the Deaf Students Union?”

Bernadette wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. “I couldn’t really say. Gareth’ll be able to tell you, though. He’s in here.”

She led him into a conference room that was roughly the size of an academic classroom. It contained little more than a large, rectangular table covered by green linen. At this, a young man was sitting, bent over a notebook. Lank hair the colour of old wet straw fell across his wide brow and into his eyes. As he wrote, he paused to chew at the fingernails of his left hand.

Bernadette said, “Wait a sec,” and from the door she flashed the lights off and on.

Gareth Randolph looked up. He got slowly to his feet, and as he did so, he gathered up from the table a large pile of used tissues, crushing them into a wad in his fist. He was a tall boy, Lynley saw, with a pallid complexion against which the scattered pits of old acne scars stood out in crimson. He wore typical student garb: blue jeans and a sweatshirt onto which had been stencilled the words What’s your sign? superimposed over two hands making a gesture which Lynley couldn’t interpret.

The boy said nothing at all until Bernadette spoke. And even then, since his eyes were on Lynley, he made a rough gesture so that Bernadette had to repeat her first remark.