The Mathematical Bridge

Home > Other > The Mathematical Bridge > Page 24
The Mathematical Bridge Page 24

by Jim Kelly


  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  The act of killing a man in cold blood had left Brooke in a state of subliminal shock, in that he was able to deal efficiently with the duties of the next two hours, but only as an observer of his own actions: an out-of-body experience occasioned by death, but not his own. One persistent thought disturbed him even in this odd, dispassionate state: that he would one day know Joe Smith’s story, his real name, his place of birth, the events which had made him a violent rebel. Fleetingly, it occurred to Brooke that there might be a sweetheart, or even a wife. The thought of children was not allowed to impinge.

  Smith’s body had dropped where he stood and lay in the boat looking up into the sky as Brooke brought the punt alongside. This moment might have proved to be a fulcrum of his life: had he shot the right man? Anxiety made his eyes swim, and for a second, he didn’t recognise the face, but then death acts instantly to wipe away the life in the eyes, the tautness of the skin, the set of the jaw. It was Smith, but his spirit had fled. On his back he exhibited the exit wound of the pistol shot, in his chest, slightly left of centre.

  On the Mathematical Bridge a crowd watched in absolute silence, while distantly the sound came of a police whistle, and then a radio car bell. Edison arrived on the left bank with the college porter. Brooke, his ears ringing from the single shot, tested the man’s pulse and found perhaps a slight echo of the moving, pulsing blood, then it too was gone.

  Standing on the platform of the punt he cupped his hands at his mouth and addressed the watching students. ‘Clear the bridge. Do it slowly. A bomb has been planted and will still be live.’ The figures melted away to the east and the west. The bridge stood revealed in all its geometric beauty, a graceful arc comprised of brutally straight lines. Now, up close, Brooke could see the package, secured to the wooden beams below by the tears of Chios. An electric fuse wire had been thrown clear by the dead man in the second after the bullet had struck. The other end was still secured, falling into the brown, peaty water from the package of explosives.

  Edison stood awaiting orders.

  ‘Meet me at the Michaelhouse wharf,’ called Brooke. ‘Downriver, the east bank. The door’s open.’

  In the silence, and the soft air of dusk, he was astonished to hear the calm tone of his own voice.

  Brooke attached the rowboat to his punt and let the current take them both downstream. Drifting, at an elegiac pace, it felt like a floating funeral cortège. The water-drawn hearse, slipping between the river’s banks, edged round the slow bend to the wharf. A few minutes later Edison arrived with two constables, and they were able to get the body ashore.

  Smith looked up into the evening sky: his eyes, open, registered a puzzled shock; the boots on his feet, robbed from the reed-cutter, hung loose despite the tied laces, and round his neck was knotted an old woollen scarf in blue and white hoops, the embroidered badge representing a pouncing lion, its paws wide and splayed like a kitten playing. The image struck a chord, but Brooke brushed the idea aside.

  An ambulance arrived and the medics, in an unhurried but well-choreographed ritual, gently lifted the corpse onto a stretcher. The university anatomy building and Dr Comfort’s cold morgue was less than half a mile away. Quickly, before he was taken away, Brooke checked the dead man’s pockets, retrieving a pistol, a wallet containing nearly £50 in one-pound and five-pound notes and an ignition key – possibly to the three-wheeler parked in the School of Pythagoras.

  Edison went with the body while Brooke walked to the porters’ lodge at Queens’, commandeering the phone line in the back office to ring the Spinning House. It took five calls to track down an ordnance expert at the RAF base at Witchford, north of Cambridge. He could be on-site within an hour. Meanwhile, Brooke rang the Conservators, stopping all vessels on the Cam, and set uniform branch to block the river with boats at Mill Pond and the Great Bridge. The range of buildings overlooking the river beside the Mathematical Bridge was evacuated. The dinner of welcome for Prince Henry would go ahead an hour later than planned, in the Great Hall, which lay two courts away to the east.

  Putting the phone down, Brooke heard a voice call his name from the outer office. Here he found Prince Henry, still in mud-spattered kit, sitting by a small coke fire, cradling a large glass of what looked like whisky. He had a second glass on the hearth, warming, and he offered it to Brooke and indicated the spare chair.

  The porter hovered.

  ‘I think I mentioned that I felt my life was in good hands,’ Prince Henry said, the lightly toned voice again jarring with the barrel chest. ‘I owe you an apology. The change of plan, the game of horse and hounds, was childish. Frankly, I underestimated the enemy. It’s a deep-rooted systemic prejudice, Brooke. We respect uniforms and history, chivalry and the agreements of gentlemen – the rules of engagement. Why should I, a member of the imperial royal family, worry about a peasant skulking in the shadows.’

  He raised his glass and they both drank.

  ‘We’re fine,’ said the prince, dismissing the porter from his own lodge. ‘What I don’t understand is how the devil did he know I was going to run over the bridge? I didn’t know until half an hour before I set out with the rest.’

  Brooke let the whisky hit the back of his throat. A malt, certainly, of fine quality.

  ‘I’ve just discovered the answer to that myself. There’s a large map of the college buildings hanging in the back office. The Fisher Building, which you are due to officially open tonight, is on the far side of the river. So you see, you would have had to cross the bridge. He was in place early, and then he saw the students gathering to form a guard of honour, no doubt loudly proclaiming the change of plan. So he took his chance.’

  ‘Had he killed before?’ asked the prince.

  ‘I think so, possibly to keep his identity secret until he was able to carry out his mission. A child, I’m afraid. It’s a complicated case, and not entirely resolved. There has been an unexpected development.’

  Prince Henry stared into the coals. ‘It’s an uncomfortable thought, Brooke, but coming so close to death is an invigorating experience if you survive. I always wanted to be a soldier, but they won’t let me near the front line, although I try to fob them off. So all this is oddly exhilarating. But history will not record the moment, I’m afraid. My people have been on the phone too. Downing Street’s view is that the attack demonstrates that the IRA have improved their capabilities and widened their ambitions. The Republicans would love the headlines, and they’d know the Germans would read them with interest. So a D-notice has been slapped on the entire episode. It never happened.’

  Brooke shrugged. A sudden memory of the gunshot made his hand jump.

  Prince Henry looked away. ‘Doesn’t mean there won’t be credit where credit’s due. You saved my life. I’ll mention it to my brother when I see him. It’s a good story, no doubt it will even grow in the telling. There may be a medal, Brooke. But then you’ve got one of those already.’

  He threw the whisky back, stood up and shook Brooke’s hand.

  At the door he turned back. ‘And thank you for letting the football go ahead. It was terrific fun. The soldiers won, you know, which I greatly enjoyed. Goodbye, Brooke.’

  The image of the muddied players on Parker’s Piece seemed to meld into that of Smith, lying dead in the rowboat, the blue and white scarf around his neck. Looking into the crinkling coke fire, Brooke sensed a revelation. He let his mind float free. The pale hand of the dead child had haunted him, but now he recalled slitting open the hessian sack, and the light catching the cheap tin lapel badge of the golden cannon on the red background. And then there was the victim’s new-found friend John McQuillan, a scruffy child, his hands disfigured by ink blots, but just above the frayed cuff an expertly rendered motif in filigree lettering: QPR.

  A thrill of enlightenment made Brooke smile.

  He finished the malt and went back out into the office to use the phone. He caught Edison passing the duty desk at the Spinning House. Brooke tol
d him the hunt for Sean Flynn was progressing well. He would meet Mr and Mrs Flynn at nine o’clock the next morning by the main door of St Alban’s Church, Upper Town.

  But first, immediate business called. His detective sergeant was required at the morgue.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Brooke walked to the Galen Anatomy Building and took the steps steadily to the fifth floor. His body was exhausted, even if his mind felt oddly clear. Dr Comfort’s morgue was cold, the windows open on three sides. Outside, across the city, night was rising. Joe Smith lay naked on one of the steel tables; the bloody wound in his chest had darkened to a deep ruby brown, in contrast to the young man’s skin, which had taken on the translucent tone of lard.

  ‘Fine specimen,’ said Comfort. ‘An athlete, certainly.’

  The pathologist’s servants hovered at the far end of the room, ready to help him manhandle the body and wield the tools of his trade, the bone saws and the drills.

  The dying light outside and the electric light inside were playing tricks with the shadows. Smith’s body seemed to shimmer, as if fidgeting on its cold metallic couch. The young man’s extraordinary vitality in life seemed to have secured him a strange afterlife, an impatience for the grave.

  ‘I can’t witness the autopsy,’ said Brooke, looking out the window. ‘Given I fired the fatal shot. I’ve asked Edison to attend, he’s on his way. I’ll leave this too.’ He placed his pistol on an empty dissection table. ‘One bullet fired. I’ll be placing a written statement on the chief constable’s desk overnight.’

  Comfort nodded, cradling a cup of tea. ‘I don’t think there’ll be much doubt here, do you, Brooke? There were fifty witnesses on the bridge. The bomb was in place, stuck to the underside of the bridge with some kind of adhesive. And the fuse line was attached. County’s organising the chemistry on the explosives. No doubt the Home Office will want chapter and verse.’

  Brooke walked back to Smith’s body.

  ‘The cause of death is pretty clear, Brooke.’ He put a hand on Brooke’s shoulder. ‘You did the right thing, Eden. Go home, rest if you can’t sleep. Talk to Claire.’

  ‘I didn’t warn him,’ said Brooke.

  ‘You couldn’t take the chance. Imagine if it wasn’t his body on that table, but the prince’s. And you with a full chamber of bullets in your pistol.’

  Edison’s heavy footsteps announced his ascent of the stairs.

  He pushed open the double doors but didn’t bother taking a further step.

  ‘Sir. Call from a police box by the Great Bridge. Someone turned up at the School of Pythagoras half an hour ago – with a key. She’s still inside too. Looks like she’s waiting.’

  Brooke grabbed his hat. ‘She?’

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  For one hour they waited outside in the radio car parked at the turn in the lane, the old building visible in the half-light. Frost began to make patterns on the narrow windows of the School of Pythagoras as night took hold. A lingering drift of snow, caught in the shadows between the building’s cold buttresses, had frozen into a glassy slope. The woman, whoever she was, must be sitting in the dark waiting. Was a meeting planned, of accomplices, or fellow travellers? Candlelight bloomed at one of the arrow-slit windows, flickering, which only made the old building look bleaker and colder.

  On the stroke of eight Brooke lost patience, left the sentry in the lane and approached with Edison. The distant traffic must have masked their footfall because, once they’d pushed the double doors open, she looked startled, rising from a bench where she’d been wrapped in a shawl. The candle, in a jam jar on a high shelf, cast her in sharp contrast, her face half-lost.

  It was Marie Aitken. Her eyes flitted beyond them, as if looking for someone else. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sat, gathering the shawl again about her shoulders. The animation of her face, of her manner, which had made her look younger than her years, fled now, and she looked beaten and defeated. The red hair was captive to a headscarf. One corner of her mouth hung down as if afflicted with palsy. Her eyes, normally green and bright, looked bloodshot and oddly blank.

  ‘I thought that if I waited he’d come,’ she said. ‘He wanted money, clothes, and I said no. Then I thought: who else can he turn to? So I came back.’

  ‘Mrs Aitken …’ said Brooke.

  ‘He’s fled, hasn’t he? I won’t see him again. That’s what he threatened when I said I wouldn’t help, that he’d go north, that they’d get him a boat across the sea. He’ll be gone then, a new man, with a name I’ll never know.’

  Brooke sat beside her. ‘Why did he ask you for help? Was it blackmail?’

  She shook her head. ‘He asked for help, demanded help, because I’m his mother,’ she said.

  It seemed that St Alban’s held many secrets. Brooke wondered if there were more waiting to be discovered even now. It was a kindness, he would tell himself later, that he didn’t tell her then that her son was lying naked, broken, in the morgue. That Brooke had put a bullet in his back.

  Edison found several candles, all in jars, and began to light them methodically. Brooke took off his overcoat and swung it round her shoulders, and sent his sergeant to get the Wasp, which they’d left up at the school.

  She needed warmth, food.

  ‘Joe Smith was your son?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Yes. My only son.’ She clasped Brooke’s overcoat to her shoulders. ‘And it’s come to this …’

  She wept then, fat tears washing down her face.

  After a minute she seemed to recover herself. ‘He was two when his father died. That’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. We lived in Belfast. The mobs were out. The mobs were always out, cos it’s a way of life. The south was fighting for independence. The north must fight too. My Declan was a patriot, but never a fighter. I don’t know why he went out that day. The violence, the hate, and the drink of course – it never appealed. He was a gentle man who loved his books, and the Gaelic.’

  She hauled air into her lungs. ‘Shot in the back,’ she said, almost spitting it out. ‘A soldier’s bullet, perhaps. But a soldier from which side? We never knew. He bled to death in the gutter and left me with the boy.’

  Brooke’s mouth ran dry at the appalling symmetry of the moment: Shot in the back.

  She held her hand against her lips, the coloured bangles on her arm catching the light.

  ‘So we left for London, and my sister. That’s where Joe grew up. I wanted away from it all. A new start for the boy.’

  After a minute, in which she seemed lost in a reverie, Brooke broke the silence. ‘But Joe didn’t stay in London?’

  ‘No. We’d be there now, but for Declan’s brother. Rory came with us, you see. Rory was full of stories, and he liked to tell them. Rory was all talk. Made out Declan was a hero, fighting for the cause, struck down by the hated British.

  ‘I’d kept the truth from Joe. So that’s my mistake. And a lie took its place. But there we are, he had a right to his own history. He missed Declan, even though he never knew him. A boy needs a father. I should have given him a new one. So that’s my second mistake.

  ‘Look where it’s led. Rory was with the IRA from the start. He recruited Joe: a godsend of course, an Irishman with no accent. And he gave him a story to follow, in which he had a hero’s role, just like his father. Most of all Rory taught him to hate, and to enjoy the hate. That’s a touch of evil.

  ‘They took him to Dublin. Then to the far west, to train with a gun. The plan was that he’d go to London and stay with me, help when the bombing began. But I didn’t want any of it. I’d done housekeeping for the church, in Poplar and Mile End. So I got the job here.

  ‘He found me. He found my secret. I’d lost one man, I thought I had a right to find another. It’s not my fault if he’s a priest.

  ‘Joe said it was perfect. He needed a place, a niche, a base. Ireland called, Ireland expected. He talked like that, brainwashed I’d say. I was to keep my mouth shut and help where I could. Joe said that he was in deep,
that if I didn’t help he’d end up on the end of a rope. He didn’t want to be a martyr. Not yet.’

  She shook her head.

  Brooke found an edge to his voice. ‘He killed the child?’

  ‘We both …’ Her voice broke and she pressed her hands to her lips. ‘We all killed the child. They were going to get him on the way from the station, get him away for a day – maybe two – hide him in the cellar, and then, when they’d done what they had to with the bombs, they’d put him back on the doorstep. Good as new. But Colm couldn’t get to the boy, there was such a crowd. So I put some laudanum in his drink that night, sent him off to sleep. When I handed him down to Joe, through the grille, he was fast away.

  ‘Joe said he left him asleep in the cellar while he went and told Colm to get the van. They were going to keep him here. But when he went back to the cellar there was no sign of the boy. The cellar was locked, so he knew he was hiding. There’s a bottle store, and that’s where he found him, but he made a bolt for it, and Joe had a wrench to frighten him. One blow, and he went down. Joe said he’d seen dead men, and he knew it when he saw it. It wasn’t cold-blooded. That’s what he said.’

  She glared at Brooke. ‘He was lying. I know that. He killed him alright. Is that what I gave him at birth? Cold blood? Joe said he died in action. That he was a little martyr.’ She buried her head, weeping. ‘Colm said he’d put him in the river quick. So they used the van. Joe went too.’

  They heard the Wasp creeping down the alley over the ice and snow.

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t forgive him. To think the child was still alive … He’s flesh and blood, but I can’t forgive him. He’s not his father’s son. He’s dead to me now.’

  Brooke saw the white naked body of Joe Smith laid out on the morgue table.

 

‹ Prev