‘Very bright, very bright,’ was the professor’s first assessment after being asked what he thought of the dead student.

‘How long have you been teaching here?’ Jessica asked, taking a seat but being careful not to move too much in case it brought the nearby tower of books crashing down upon her. Death by hardback would be one unforgettable way to go.

Call Me Bob sucked on his teeth and glanced up to the ceiling. ‘Let me think . . . I was at City, then I did two years at John Moores, then I came here, so that’s eight, nine, twelve years here; a bit over twenty in total.’

The printer in the corner finally stopped spitting pages out, leaving a moment of silence before Jessica filled it: ‘Roughly how many students do you teach a year?’

Apparently unaware of the meaning of ‘roughly’, Call Me Bob started hunting through the papers on the keyboard, holding up the lists of students before giving Jessica an exact number, then explaining that he didn’t teach all of them, simply that he was head of department. Jessica could feel Archie tensing next to her; she didn’t think down-to-earth Mancunians and erratic university lecturers would ever be the best of bed-fellows.

As she glanced across to him, Archie caught Jessica’s eye, leaning in and whispering into her ear behind the back of his hand. ‘Who the fook’s called Bob nowadays?’

Jessica nodded knowingly, as if he’d raised a good point. In many ways he had but she still wondered what he was up to.

Call Me Bob’s eyes flickered between the two of them, wondering what had been said.

‘If you don’t teach all of the students,’ Jessica said, peering back at the professor, ‘how come you know who Damon is?’

Leaning back into his chair, Call Me Bob stroked his chin. ‘When you’re head of course, you tend to know the students at the very top and very bottom. Those who do exceptionally are the ones the staff always talk about, of course, but there are also the students who miss classes, deadlines, or end up dropping out. The others, who turn up regularly and get middle-of-the-range grades, are the ones you tend to gloss over and perhaps don’t know the details of.’

‘Was Damon at the top or the bottom?’

The professor nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh, the top, definitely. His father is well known in business circles around the city, so it was a name that jumped out when I saw this year’s admissions list. He was immediately one of the exceptional students, though. I was getting reports back straight away to say he was one to watch. I teach the introduction module – something to keep my eye in each year. All the students take a test in their first fortnight. It’s nothing too serious and has no bearing on their final mark; it’s more to assess their initial knowledge. He had one of the highest scores since we brought the test in.’

‘And Damon continued in the same vein?’

‘Yes. I don’t think he missed a class in the couple of months he was here. His work was always on time and the marks were consistently in the top two or three in the year. In the introductory class, whenever I asked a question, his hand would usually be in the air.’

‘Did you notice any changes in him in recent weeks?’

Call Me Bob shook his head, hair flapping wildly in a breeze Jessica couldn’t feel. ‘I took a class with him on Tuesday and he was the same as ever – hand in the air, taking notes and so on. If anything, he seemed more enthusiastic than usual.’

Archie leant in again, whispering into Jessica’s ear behind his hand. ‘Is it me or is this guy’s head on upside down?’

Jessica’s eyes flickered up towards the professor. Now Archie had mentioned it, the flapping strands of hair on his head would have made more sense as a beard. She nodded thoughtfully and made a ‘hmm’ sound as Archie leant back. Call Me Bob peered from one officer to the other but said nothing.

‘Is that attentiveness unusual?’ Jessica asked.

Call Me Bob tried to flatten his hair but only succeeded in making it more static, then he scratched his shoulder. ‘When I first got into teaching, all the students were interested and wanted to learn. Now everyone goes to university. Tuition fees slowed things down a little but there was a period where courses were accepting any old body – people with Ds and Es at A-level, just to make the numbers up and keep government funding. Then you have all these offshoot, new-fangled courses – herbology, hairdressing and who knows what else. It’s not like the old days, so it’s nice when you have students who want to learn.’

Jessica clarified a few further points, taking the names of 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.