Guilty Conscious, Oliver Davies [small books to read TXT] 📗

we often were. I couldn’t say the same for other sergeants I’d worked with in the past. Naming no names, of course.

We strode along towards the old building Professor Altman was situated in, a cold breeze blowing against our faces. Rain was due at some point this morning, had been hovering around the sky waiting for the right moment when someone hung their washing out or left their umbrella in the car. A student walked out from the door to the building, and I jogged forward to take it, holding it open for her and then for Mills, who gave me a dashing smile as he walked past. We began the tedious climb up and up and up to the attic and the office inside, my legs aching as we went.

I needed to work out again properly. Something with lunges before I shrivelled up into an old man and groaned every time I got up from a chair. It was already happening sometimes, early in the morning, and I was just glad nobody was ever really around to hear it apart from Liene, who slept like the dead, anyway.

Professor Altman’s office door was slightly ajar, two low voices murmuring through the gap as we approached. I knocked, making sure I didn’t push the door fully open with the force of it and took a second to catch my breath. The voices stopped, someone inside moved, and then Altman’s voice called out.

“Enter!”

I pushed the door aside, Mills on my heel, surprised to find Professor Greenberg also in the room, sat on a stool against the bookshelves. Professor Altman sat at his desk, leaning back in his chair, watching as we walked in.

“Inspector,” he stood up and offered me his hand. “And sergeant. This is a surprise. How can I help?”

“We wondered if we might run a few things by you,” I said, holding my hand out to Mills. He passed me the bag, and I carefully placed the contents on Professor Altman’s desk. “We borrowed a few of these things from Edward Vinson’s room, and most of these materials are more your expertise than ours.”

Professor Altman cleaned his glasses before shoving them back on his face, and Professor Greenberg slipped from her chair.

“I’ll leave you to it, shall I?” she said, heading for the door.

“That’s quite alright, Professor. You might be able to help as well. Unless you have a student waiting for you?”

She shook her head and drifted over to the desk, standing beside Yosef Altman as he peered over the things from Edward’s room.

“None of this was his assigned readings,” he told me, “but I did suggest a few to further broaden his research.”

“What exactly was he working on, Professor?” Mills asked.

“Forgiveness, for the most part. Looking into the different ways and opinions people have on the matter. From cultural standpoints, philosophical, moral, all of those things. Was quite fixated with it, actually. How much a person can forgive and whether forgiveness itself is a moral thing to do.”

“A curious thing for a young man to be fixated on,” Professor Greenberg muttered. The two of them glared at each other for a second, then turned back to the books. She picked up the journal, opening it up to let the loose pages fall onto the desk. As she flicked through Edward’s sketches, Professor Altman picked up the pages of notes.

“Talking through the lectures,” he clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “The cheek.”

Professor Greenberg was staring at a page, but she looked over when he spoke and frowned, taking the pages from him.

“Do you recognise the handwriting, Professor Greenberg?” I asked her.

“Angela, please. And I do. It’s Billie’s.”

“Belinda Helman?” Professor Altman asked, surprised, pushing his glasses back up his hooked nose.

Angela glowered at him. “Her name is Billie, and you’d go by that too if someone named you Belinda. And it’s hers,” she added, looking at me. “Always had such lovely handwriting.”

“They took a few classes together then?”

“Definitely one of mine,” Angela said, putting the pages down. “Another one, history.” She tapped the sheet in question. “Not sure which professor they had, though.”

“That’s alright. The two of you know them both well enough,” Mills assured her.

I watched Professor Altman as he looked through some of the books, things Edward had circled and underlined, quotes he had copied down, his expression clear that he was familiar with a lot of the works and authors Edward had been interested in.

“Professor Altman?” I prompted him.

He looked up at me and sighed, lowering himself into his chair.

Angela touched his shoulder, “Yosef?”

“The morality of forgiveness,” he said, “has been argued about for centuries. Can we forgive a murderer? Should we? And does that make us better people or worse people? Edward wanted there to be an answer. Yes, we can forgive this person. Yes, they deserve forgiveness.”

“Guilt,” Professor Greenberg said clearly. “He wanted to know if he would be forgiven and was happy to punish himself if he couldn’t.”

“Punish himself?” Mills inquired, though I knew he understood her meaning.

She looked at the notes between Edward and Billie, looked at the drawings he’d done over time. “Your expertise is the same as mine,” she said to us, meeting my stare. “Better, perhaps. You know the way people think and act when they feel guilty. Edward’s obsession was with forgiveness, what sort of person he was.”

“He wanted to know if he would be forgiven for what he did,” I said stoically. “For what he did to Stella.”

The words hung in the air for a while, broken by Professor Altman, who took his glasses off, placed them on the desk and rubbed at his face with a groan.

“And what he did to Billie,” Mills added, nodding to the notes.

“I should have seen it/” Professor Altman sighed. “Should have trusted you,” he added to Angela.

“You deal in the hypothetical,” she said comfortingly. “This,” she gestured to myself and Mills, “this is not your area of expertise.”

“Thank god for that,” he muttered. “I’d be awful at it.”

“It’s a learning curve,” I told