No Birds Sing

by Jo Bannister

  Liz said, ‘I don’t need to tell you that I understand how you feel. I’m glad you agreed to see me. Any way you want to handle this, that’s what we do.’

  Mrs Urquhart twitched a smile. ‘However it’ll do most good. I’m only sorry I couldn’t get up the nerve to do it sooner. If it turns out the attack on you, or anyone else, could have been prevented—’

  Liz interrupted. ‘Don’t even wonder, there’s no way we’ll ever know. If you help us find him now, that’s the most we can ask for. Even if you can’t help it’s still the best you can do.’

  Mrs Urquhart was a partner in the firm responsible for the Mere Basin redevelopment which had recycled the old warehouses as apartments, offices and cafés. Donovan called it ‘yuppification’and threatened to cut his boat’s warps if it got as far as Broad Wharf. But any such project would have been doomed to failure: with The Jubilee only a spit away across Brick Lane the bulldozers would have been stolen. They didn’t have bird-baths at all in The Jubilee, and at night they took the washing-lines inside.

  She was attacked in the hallway as she left work late one evening. The arm had its offices in The Barbican. Like the other converted warehouses it was shops at ground level, offices on the first and second storeys and flats above that. Electronic access kept kids and drunks from wandering in but it wouldn’t have stopped a professional burglar and anyone with business elsewhere in the building could have found his way to that corridor.

  Mrs Urquhart finished about midnight, locked up and headed for the lift. Aware that she’d be late she’d deliberately parked her car beside the lifts in the basement garage.

  She never reached the lift. A gloved hand reached over her shoulder and closed on her mouth, swinging her like a pendulum into the wall. ‘I don’t know now where he came from.’ A slight tremor disturbed the even rhythm of her voice from time to time, and the toe of one court-shoe was tapping a beat of which she seemed unaware, but that was all. It was as if she was explaining why a flat roof she’d designed kept leaking rather than how her life flew apart one night. ‘I must have walked right past him, but the first thing I knew was his hand over my face.’

  ‘Could he have come from one of the offices?’ asked Liz.

  ‘I don’t see how. There are two doors on my way to the lift, one on each side. But I know one of them was locked – it’s the door to our back office but it isn’t used, everyone goes through reception. The other office has never been let so it’s locked, too. He must have squeezed into the doorway, but with the corridor light on I don’t know how I missed him.’

  ‘Could he have broken into the empty office?’

  ‘I asked afterwards.’ She gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘Carefully, I’d already decided I wasn’t going to report this, but I was confused and scared. I didn’t know how it happened so I didn’t know if it could happen again. I wanted to know how he’d surprised me like that. But there were no signs of a break-in.’

  ‘Then he must have had a key.’

  ‘Apparently not. I told the caretaker I’d heard someone in there late at night, and he checked and said there was no sign of a forced entry and, apart from the one at the estate agents, he had the only key. He obviously thought I’d imagined it. You know: hysterical middle-aged woman alone in the office late at night, frightening herself over nothing. I couldn’t put him straight without saying more than I wanted to.’

  ‘Could it have been the caretaker?’ Liz asked.

  Mrs Urquhart was sure. ‘No. He’s a tall man, particularly tall. The man who attacked me wasn’t.’

  ‘You got a good look at him?’

  ‘Good enough, through the shooting stars. Not his face: he had a scarf over it. Absurd as it sounds, I think it was a white silk evening scarf. And soft leather gloves. A grey track-suit, the sort with a hood which he had pulled down. He was about my height, average build.’

  ‘A young man, would you say?’

  ‘He was fit enough: he went at it like going for a record. But—’ She hesitated, thinking. ‘Not very young. I don’t know how I know that. My impression was of someone about my own age. Perhaps it was his voice.’

  Liz’s pulse skipped a beat. ‘He spoke to you?’

  ‘Yes; just a few words. But it wasn’t a youngster’s voice. He was an educated man, too.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Amanda Urquhart’s brow crinkled. ‘It was something he said. What was it? You’d think it’d be branded in my memory, wouldn’t you, but it was something – silly. It made no sense. And I was dizzy.’

  ‘It could be important,’ said Liz. She didn’t want to put it any stronger than that for fear of scaring the memory away. ‘Try and remember.’

  Mrs Urquhart squeezed her eyes shut, trying to get it back. ‘He bounced me off the wall, I banged my head; I staggered and he kicked the feet from under me. I went down on my hip. He grabbed my hands, pulled me on to my back and – did it. He didn’t hurt me. If I’d been anymore dazed I mightn’t have noticed. I mean, we’re not talking Guy the Gorilla here, all right?’

  Liz grinned. ‘Bit like a Chinese meal? – half an hour later you’re ready for another?’ They chuckled together, a conspiracy of women not diminishing the wrong done them so much as absorbing it, grinding the edges off in some emotional gizzard. The things that made them vulnerable also made them strong, and they felt that strength stir in their veins like the first twitch of a waking volcano.

  Mrs Urquhart went back to what she was struggling with. ‘I think he knew me. Well, he was waiting outside my office door, it was no great feat to read what was written on it; but it was more than that. Because he said—’ Her eyes came up, startled, as the key finally found the right lock. ‘He said, “That’s what I call Deconstruction.” Like that: as if it were the last word in an argument we’d had.’

  Liz ran the words round her head but they didn’t connect with anything. ‘Do you know what he meant?’

  ‘I know what Deconstruction is. I’ve no idea what he meant by it.’

  ‘Um – what is Deconstruction?’

  ‘Syncopated architecture,’ said Mrs Urquhart with a terse grin. ‘Deconstructionists like to pull the bits of a building apart and make them do something different. They think it’s challenging. It never occurs to them that buildings evolved the way they did because that’s what the people using them find most convenient.’

  ‘You’re not a Deconstructionist yourself, then.’

  The architect shook her head. ‘I’m a sort of Ante-Post-Modernist – I bet on certainties.’

  ‘Then what was he saying?’

  ‘I can’t imagine. It’s pretty esoteric stuff, and while people do get hot under the collar about modern architecture it’s a hell of a distance from there to rape.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t architecture he was talking about,’ hazarded Liz. A ghost of a possibility hovered at the edge of her vision. ‘He’s an educated man, he knows what it means, he knows that as an architect it means something specific to you. What? – paradox? Turning things on their heads? Was he saying that when you met before you had the upper hand and this time it was different?’

  Mrs Urquhart shrugged helplessly. ‘It’s possible.’

  They were coming to the end of what the interview could usefully yield. Liz nodded slowly. ‘All right. You know, you’ve told me quite a lot about this man that we didn’t know before. That I didn’t know. He’s educated, he’s probably quite well-off – the silk scarf, the leather gloves – and he’s someone you’ve met and maybe slighted. Think about that. Try to picture a man of that type that you got the better of in some way. A competitor? That’d explain him knowing about Deconstruction. A dissatisfied client? If you start getting any feelings about who it could be, call me. It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong: we can check him out so discreetly he’ll never know. If someone comes to mind, let me look into it.’

  Liz rose to leave, and was about to do her usual parting speech about the courage of rape victims putting other
women’s interests first when the sheer fatuity of it hit her. She must have made it a dozen times and it had never struck her how bloody impertinent it was. Mumbling, she went to make her escape.

  But something else occurred to Amanda Urquhart ‘I don’t know if this’ll be any help, but there was something odd about how he used his voice. He’d just committed rape in a building where people lived and worked: he should have been whispering – better still, he shouldn’t have said anything at all. But he was so anxious for me to know how clever he was, how much cleverer than me, that he didn’t just say it, he declaimed it. Do you know what I mean? He wasn’t shouting, more – projecting. Like an actor. I even thought at the time: “This man’s putting on a show.” I half expected him to take a bow as the lift doors closed.’

  ‘But he didn’t?’

  ‘No. He looked back up the corridor, and his eyes went through me as if I wasn’t there.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  ‘An actor?’ exclaimed Shapiro. ‘We’re looking for a stage-struck rapist?’ He’d been persuaded to adopt a couple of hyacinths for his desk. He peered between them like a startled badger.

  It didn’t sound too likely. Maybe in London or Cambridge, but Castlemere didn’t have a great theatre tradition; hence the paucity of travellers on the Luwies Train.

  ‘Perhaps not an actor as such,’ allowed Liz. ‘How about an amateur? There’s the Castlemere Players and the Gilbert & Sullivan Society; and some of the churches have drama groups.’ Brian had helped out with the scenery.

  Shapiro remained scathing. ‘A church-going amateur Thespian rapist, then? Oh, yes, that’s a question I can just see myself asking. “Tell me, vicar, that Wise Man in the Nativity Play – show any tendency to jump the angels, did he?”’ Then he remembered who he was talking to and his broad face softened with regret. ‘I’m sorry, Liz. I keep forgetting—’

  ‘Good,’ she said briskly. ‘Once we have the sod we can all forget.’ Thinking about Brian set her on another track. ‘He might not be an actor at all. What about a teacher or lecturer – someone who’s used to addressing large groups of people? Or—’ Running out of suggestions she sighed dispiritedly. ‘We’re really not making much progress, are we?’

  Immediately Shapiro was contrite. He hadn’t much to offer her, he could at least avoid undermining her hope. ‘Yes we are: we know a lot about him that we didn’t four days ago. Perhaps the most important thing is that he knew Amanda Urquhart before he attacked her. That makes it likely that he knew the other victims, too. Well enough to know where you lived and that you’d be out alone first thing in the morning. Well enough to know Mrs Andrews would be walking home late at night past Castle Mount.’

  Liz hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought that her attacker could be more than just a pervert with patience and an eye for detail: could be a man she knew, perhaps knew well. Before she could stop it the camera in her head began to reel fast-forward all the men she could think of – friends and colleagues and friends of colleagues and colleagues of friends and men who served in the greengrocer’s and the butcher’s – who fitted even part of the description. When she found herself contemplating Dick Morgan, who though he was not big as policemen go was still bigger than the man who raped her, she yanked herself up short with an audible gasp.

  ‘What?’ asked Shapiro, concerned.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said quickly. Then, slower, ‘I hadn’t thought that I might know this man. It’s a bit of a shock, that’s all. But it could help. If the three of us get together and discuss acquaintances we have in common—’

  ‘It’ll amount to most of the male population of Castlemere,’ said Shapiro wearily. ‘You’ll use the same shops, tradesmen, restaurants, pubs and sports clubs – there are only so many to go round, you’re bound to use the same ones some of the time. Even your social circles will overlap. Damn it, he chose the three of you because you were of a type.’

  Liz moved the hyacinths to one side of his desk to give her somewhere to rest her elbow. Her chin cupped in her hand, she thought.

  Watching her, Shapiro saw the moment that the seed of an idea germinated and took root. Her eyes sharpened and narrowed as she scrutinized it, not in every detail but enough to decide that it was worth planting. When her gaze snapped up to meet his, he saw the old battle-light, that compound of determination, intelligence and hope, that put him in mind of a she-panther shaking out her serviette.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If Mrs Urquhart’s right and she’s not only met this man but argued with him on a professional matter, there should be some record of it. Maybe it goes back years, maybe he’s nursed the grudge and it’s only now he’s turned to sexual violence that he saw the chance to avenge himself. But somewhere in a filing cabinet at Brewster & Urquhart there’s an exchange of letters referring to Deconstruction. I’m going to call Mrs Urquhart and agree some cover-story so I can look through those files.’

  Shapiro swivelled his chair to and fro, his gaze travelling between Liz and the view of the canal from his window. He pursed his lips. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something? This isn’t your case. For very good reasons, this is definitely not your case.’

  ‘I know that, Frank. But for the same very good reasons it had to be me who saw Mrs Urquhart and it has to be me who follows this up. I can’t ask her to start dealing with someone else now.’ She gave an apologetic shrug. ‘You could tackle the caretaker at The Barbican. The attacker must have come from that empty office, and if there was no break-in he had a key.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Shapiro, standing up, ‘I’ll go and see him. And you can start your paper-chase. But if it looks like leading anywhere, Liz, call me. I don’t want you dealing with this man. For your sake – I know, you’re fine, you don’t need molly-coddling, but still – and also for the sake of the case. I don’t want this man getting off on a technicality.’

  ‘Like, being unable to plead on account of having had his head kicked in by a Detective Inspector?’ She grinned tightly, though it may not have been a joke. ‘Don’t worry, Frank, I’ll keep the secateurs out of sight.’

  Shapiro went to Mere Basin. He’d been here often enough before, couldn’t think why he suddenly felt so ill at ease. Then he understood. This was Donovan’s backyard, he knew every cobble and stanchion on the waterfront. Shapiro couldn’t remember the last time he was here without him.

  Though in fact the bistros, boutiques, offices and apartments of the redevelopment were not his sergeant’s natural habitat in the way the derelict wharves and crumbling warehouses further down the tow-path were. When Donovan died he’d come back as an alleycat. Unless he’d been the cat first.

  The caretaker was as Mrs Urquhart described him – tall and unhelpful. He gave his name as Bibby: Shapiro assumed it was a surname and his first name was even sillier. He showed the way to the vacant office on the first floor, pointedly marking time while Shapiro looked round. He was a man of about thirty with the manners of an adolescent.

  Shapiro fixed him with a cold eye. ‘You said nobody was in here.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A fortnight ago, when Mrs Urquhart told you she heard someone in this office late at night.’ Bibby didn’t ask why a detective superintendent was asking about so trivial a matter and Shapiro didn’t offer a reason. He was ready to lie to protect the victim’s privacy but for the moment it wasn’t necessary. Bibby showed no curiosity about his presence, only a continuing resentment and the desire to see the back of him. ‘You said she couldn’t have, that no one had been in here.’

  Bibby shrugged, unconcerned. ‘That’s right. I checked the door: there wasn’t a mark on it’

  ‘Then you must have let him in.’

  The caretaker regarded him with vulpine eyes. ‘Get real, squire! I’m here to keep the burglars out, not to let them into the offices of their choice.’

  ‘But you do have a key. You let people in here from time to time.’

  ‘Sure I’ve let people in. The place is to re
nt, people come to see it, sometimes the estate agents show them round and sometimes I do. Then I show them out and lock up behind me.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  Bibby had to think. ‘A month maybe? There hasn’t been much interest – it’s too small for most people who want to spend serious rent on an office.’

  ‘And when did you last clean the place? I suppose you are meant to clean it occasionally?’

  He was; but it wasn’t a part of his job that he gave high priority to. He shrugged again. ‘Probably about then.’

  Shapiro crooked a forefinger and beckoned him. ‘Then who’s been perching his backside on this windowsill in the meantime?’

  It wasn’t a recent mark, fresh dust had fallen on the sill since it was made, but there was a definite bottom-sized depression where the older layers had been disturbed.

  ‘I wouldn’t claim to be a dust expert,’ said Shapiro, ‘but I don’t think that’s a month old. I’d guess it was made about the time Mrs Urquhart heard someone in here. He wasn’t viewing the place, not that late at night. If you didn’t let him in and he didn’t break in then he had a key.’

  Bibby shook his head. ‘Not mine. These keys go nowhere without me.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Damn sure.’

  ‘You never lend them to anyone?’

  ‘More than my job’s worth, squire.’

  Reluctantly Shapiro accepted his word. He didn’t like the man but he doubted Bibby was hiding anything. Too casual for a bad liar, not quite casual enough for a good one.

  ‘The agents have their own keys?’ Bibby nodded. ‘Could they have shown someone round recently enough to make that mark?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Do they ever show people round without you knowing?’

  Bibby scowled with justifiable irritation. ‘You’d need to ask them, squire, wouldn’t you?’