Authors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Rutwell College Chronicles: The Bookmaker
Introduction:
Welcome to Rutwell College.
A place of learning. A steppingstone for all who enter its halls in the great journey of life.
For over two centuries, students at Rutwell have found themselves growing, stretching their limits, encouraged to try new experiences, to embark on paths they never considered before.
In these lecture halls and libraries, this haven of scholarship, the faculty find fresh minds to mold, empty vessels looking to be filled. Youth and experience coming together in creative and unexpected ways with astonishing results.
As the motto of the college says, 'Mens Aperta, Corpus Saturatum'... 'Open Mind, Sated Body'.
Prologue:
Calvin Weeks, the newly installed head of the campus police pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut as he fought off the blurring of his vision from staring at mounds of paperwork.
The campus, much like any other, had its fair share of crime between petty theft all the way up the ladder to assaults of all types. That said, he and the other members of the campus police did a good job keeping things in check. A number of his team were ex law enforcement. Veterans who, having served their twenty years, had opted to pad out their retirement packages with a cushy number at the local university. Calvin for one was glad so many of them had, their experience and knowledge off-set the inexperience of many of the other men working at the University as security. These others were better suited to working malls as security, not having the training, intelligence or people skills to deal with the thousands of smart mouthed, privileged and just plain moronic young men and women who made up the student body here at Rutwell.
It was one particular crime, or rather a slew of unreported crimes that currently occupied Calvin's attention. A fair number of faculty members had approached him due to concerns with visible injuries seen on many young men attending their lectures. Attempting to be discreet, Calvin had walked the hallways himself, looking for evidence of injuries. He found a lot. Blackened eyes, split lips, bruised faces and fists, even the odd broken nose. His first thought was that these young men had formed some sort of 'fight club' and were beating on each other for laughs.
That theory didn't sit right with him however, there was something else that these men had in common, he could feel it. It was a simple matter to request their files from Ms. Thompson, one of the college Administrators. She was a formidable woman, gorgeous with a body that was created to make any man's head turn. She was also fiercely protective of Rutwell, seeing both the institution, its faculty and its student body as almost her children and like any good mother Ms Thompson was receptive to those whom she felt had her family's best intentions at heart. That meant she not only sent over the files but she informed Calvin that she was at his disposal should anything else be needed. From a shaky start, Calvin and Ms. Thompson had become, if not friends, then at least allies. She regarded his tenure as head of security as a positive for the University, while Calvin had been grateful for the care and attention she had given his daughter Jo on her return to the campus.
All that meant though was that his failure with this 'case' was all his own. The files had shown two other links between the injured students. The first was that they were all athletes, spread out among track, football, baseball, basketball... almost every part of the colleges athletic spectrum represented. Calvin had approached their coaches, looking for links between the students, any trouble they might be having. There was nothing, well there was the added pressure to resolve the issue as now the coaches didn't want their best players receiving anymore injuries.
The second link was that almost all of the students were attending Rutwell on scholarship. The majority of them coming from working class backgrounds, a small minority from middle class families. This indicated a lack of funds.
Evidence of fighting, a motive to make money. It hadn't been a massive leap to conclude that it wasn't 'fight club' that was happening here, it was organised bouts, fighting for money. That put things in a new light. To put a halt to anymore injuries, Calvin, Ms. Thompson and the heads of the Athletic department made it very clear that anyone participating further in this criminal enterprise would, for a start, lose their scholarships and places at Rutwell. They might also face criminal charges although for these young men, losing their futures was a far worse fate.
The injuries stopped, so far as Calvin could tell, but still not one of the students involved had been prepared to admit to any wrong doing or to provide a name for the person behind the whole caper. These were some tough young men, strong, well capable of defending themselves. In Calvin's mind, it would have to be a serious criminal, or more likely a criminal organisation, that was capable of frightening so many men into keeping their mouths closed.
Which was why Calvin was getting nowhere with the files. There was no chance that someone among the student body could put this thing together, keep it running as long as they had and even when the money dried up, still put the fear of God into all the participants. He tidied up the files on his desk and switched off the light. He was going back to his apartment to sleep. If the person behind this wasn't a student, then it wasn't a concern of his, not anymore.
Chapter One:
Carolina DiNazti strode out of the lecture hall, the almost four-inch black lacquered heels of her Balmain knit ankle boots made a clipping sound as she powered her way down the hallway. She was pissed off and each clip-clip of her boots seemed to be a drum beat of danger, the other students in the hall veering out of her way, happier to stumble in the wake of her passage than risk her displeasure by impeding her progress. A casual but uninformed observer might think that Carolina was a professor, despite her obvious youth, given the way the crowd parted around her like the red sea flowing under the direction of Moses's staff. Yet she wasn't. Carolina was a student, a business student, and had been for over three years now. With just two semesters left to her, it should be the case that her only concerns were her upcoming exams... and how she wished that was the case.
Her real concerns, and the source of her anger, were linked as problems often were and based on money as problems tend to be. Her father, Aldo DiNazti, was a criminal. Carolina took no real pride in this fact however she neither hide it or feel shame in it either. It was a fact of life and she loved her father, end of story.
