Error of Judgment

by Roy Lewis

  ‘Now draw off! Get away from this corridor! Get away, or he’s dead!’

  Crow hesitated, but he knew he really had no choice. There was the chance that if he rushed on Sadruddin the man could be overpowered quickly, but it would take only one thrust of the knee and one jerk of the wrist to snap the constable’s neck. He thought of the woman who had pleaded with him below.

  ‘Mrs Lambert said that—’

  ‘That stupid whore!’

  There was no point in further conversation about her; Sadruddin’s feelings for the woman were obvious. But if he could be kept talking . . .

  ‘You’re being stupid yourself, Sadruddin. There’s nothing proved against you yet, we just want to question you, and to behave in this fashion can only—’

  ‘Question me, nothing! I’m not handing myself over! You’re trying to pin the Harland thing on me, you’re trying to make me a scapegoat for your own inefficiency and you’ll make me pay for it because I’m an Arab, a foreigner, and—’

  He stopped.

  He and the victim of his attack were on a small square landing at the end of the corridor and directly in front of the paternosters. This was the route by which he had come up, and he must have been surprised by the constable who had followed him. He had quickly overcome the officer, and while he had been here with Crow the paternosters had not been in motion. Now, suddenly, they were whining upwards again and the noise thrust Sadruddin into hysteria.

  ‘Get away from here!’ he screamed at Crow. ‘Get away, or he’s dead!’

  Hurriedly Crow gestured to the constable behind him and then himself turned away and moved back into the corridor. He began to walk away, looking back over his shoulder, but as soon as he heard the scurrying sound he turned again and ran back. The policeman lay groaning on the floor; there was no sign of Sadruddin. He’d entered the paternosters again.

  ‘Look to this man,’ Crow said quickly, and as the next open door of the paternoster came up he stepped in. There’d be other policemen below, also coming up, and they’d see the two constables, but Crow was out to maintain contact with Sadruddin.

  The paternoster stopped on the fifth floor and Crow stepped out. He glanced to his left and saw the bridge running across to the Business block; the doors were closed, and he tested them. They were locked. Sadruddin was on this floor. He couldn’t get down the stairs, or the paternoster now. His exits were sealed.

  ‘Sadruddin!’

  His voice splintered the eerie silence that had descended on the floor, but when the sound died away there was only the silence again. Crow walked slowly down the corridor and opened each door as he came to it. They were all classrooms, quiet, empty.

  There was no sound.

  He prowled forward and faintly in the background he heard the whirr of the paternosters in motion again. They’d be taking the injured man down to the ground floor, and sending support up for Crow. He moved on, carefully.

  The last door but one led into a recording studio. It was a large room, equipped with modern television apparatus and backed by a soundproof booth. He opened the door of the booth but there was only a mass of electronic apparatus, including some videotape recorders as yet unpacked from their cases. Another door faced him.

  It led into a language laboratory, stepped in serried rows of blankly shining glass-sided booths, all empty, starkly neat, and new. He walked quietly past them towards the door at the far end of the laboratory.

  Slowly he put out his hand and opened the door. A room used by technicians, obviously stacked high with shelving that carried tapes for the recording apparatus and the language laboratory. And facing him was a trolley of solid construction, bearing a television set.

  It was moving towards him.

  Only at the last second did he see the muscled arm behind it and he couldn’t get out of the way in time. The violent thrust had sent the trolley rushing towards him; the rubber wheels whispered across the cork tiling at a rush and the edge of the trolley caught Crow painfully across the shins. The force of the blow shook the television set off balance and the whole thing, set and trolley, turned over sideways, slowly, like a great tree falling, reluctant to bow its head to ground. As the set fell, thunderously, Crow lurched sideways, and caught a glimpse of Sadruddin, leaping from behind the shelved tapes.

  Crow might even then have saved himself, but the blow and the collapsing trolley had made him stagger sideways; he came up against the raised dais of the laboratory and tripped, to fall against the console used by the teaching staff. Before he could recover his balance Sadruddin was out of the technicians’ room and across the intervening space. He headed not for the door, but for Crow.

  And this time there was murder in his eyes.

  Before Crow could raise his arms the short length of cable was thrust against his throat, twisted around his neck and Crow’s hands came up to grip the hard muscles of Sadruddin’s arms. The muscles stiffened as the cable cut into Crow’s neck, a surcingle that effectively cut off his breath as he struggled and tried to lurch up from the console past which Sadruddin bent him. He could see the man’s dark face, twisted with fear and hate, and everything was drifting into a dream of pain and blood as he scrabbled ineffectively at the cable and the thrusting arms and he felt himself falling backwards as his legs weakened and the pounding in his ears increased. His tongue was thick in his mouth, thrusting between his teeth . . .

  Then he was lurching forward, coughing violently and the air surged back into his lungs like a knife. Sadruddin was yelling and screaming and twisting but there were three blue-uniformed men there now and they handled him none too gently. Wilson was assisting Crow to his feet.

  ‘You all right, sir?’

  After a few minutes Crow’s head cleared and the labouring of his lungs began to ease. He focused his eyes on Sadruddin and nodded wearily, caressing his throat. ‘Let’s get him down.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come up alone, sir.’

  Crow looked quizzically at Wilson.

  ‘I’m inclined to believe you’re right, Sergeant. Is it clear down below?’

  ‘There’s a crowd outside, sir, but everyone else is out of the building.’

  ‘Let’s go, then.’

  They walked down the stairs, a silent, tight group, hurrying, with Sadruddin still twisting between two burly police constables, but his vigour and strength seemed to have failed him now and his head was hanging low, his long black hair falling forward. His spirit seemed to have deserted him.

  They came down the stairs and into the hallway and there were a few policemen standing there. Crow told them to get the message around to the others that they could now leave their posts, since Sadruddin was captured. Peters was standing just inside the doors. Crow noted the expression on the rector’s face; it was a mingled dislike, anxiety and shock. He said nothing, but stood aside as Crow led the way out into the sunshine.

  It stopped the small group, stopped them dead. The sunshine was bright in Crow’s eyes and the students were there in their hundreds and Crow had the student leader in custody. A murmur arose as they came out into the sunshine and it was an ugly swelling sound like a murderous tide on an empty beach. Sadruddin raised his head and Crow looked back at him; when he saw the fear in the Arab’s eyes he knew that Sadruddin interpreted that sound as hostile, not supporting; he was seeing an inimical sea of white, savage faces turned up to the suspected killer of Rosemary Harland; perhaps he saw himself standing in an alien circus with the savage animals waiting to rend him if he moved away from the steps. So he stood, petrified, and there was a white ooze of saliva on his lips, a debouching stain of terror.

  There was a sudden surge at the edge of the crowd and a woman screamed Sadruddin’s name. Crow looked across and saw it was Joan Lambert, struggling with a policeman. Crow turned to wave his small group forward and the cortege moved. As it did so someone came out of the crowd, swaying slightly, leaning forward. A heavy man who came up the steps with legs of lead, a man whose pouched eyes were ravage
d with pain, whose left hand plucked at his throat, whose right hand was extended stiffly like a ramrod. Crow was shouting suddenly, on the echoing steps.

  ‘Get back, get back, damn you!’

  It seemed not to reach the man on the concrete apron; it hung, an emasculated echoing murmur in front of the glass doors as Vernon West struggled forward towards Sadruddin.

  Sadruddin seemed turned to stone, his jaw dropping loosely as he stared at the oncoming man. Then he seemed to straighten and he struggled violently in a sudden burst of energy, throwing off the restraining arms of his two captors to thrust forward against Crow. The inspector turned, grabbing at the student and they swayed, locked together, until the others grabbed him again. Then Sadruddin was on his knees, and the great surging sound from the students bayed up to the glass front of the Administration building. Crow shouted to Wilson to get Sadruddin to the car, but as he turned he saw the small knot of people rushing towards the man kneeling on the steps in front of Crow, kneeling and falling sideways.

  It was Vernon West.

  Sadruddin was being rushed past; Crow hesitated, then joined the small group clustered on the steps.

  Vernon West lay on his back, on the concrete apron. He was twisting his head desperately, and his face was strained and stiff. Crow recalled the words of Dr Martin. Myocardial infarct. At least. Crow bent over West. The man’s breathing was shallow.

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  The student on Crow’s left shrugged. His face was white, his boyish eyes wide in his shocked face.

  ‘Not really. Well, he said something, but I didn’t quite catch it.’

  ‘I did.’

  This other student had patent-leather hair, thin lips and a cratered skin.

  ‘I heard what he said. It was a girl’s name.’ He paused, as though weighing his words for their import. ‘Valerie.’

  * * *

  He had seen himself as a hawk, soaring to the high cold peaks, or as a young lion, pacing slow and arrogantly among the quivering inhabitants of the red plains. He had seen himself as a man of destiny, a man who held power in his fist and whose words could sweep mobs to unreason and violence and anarchy. He had seen himself as an orator, and a leader, and he had been aware of the sexuality he exerted, gloried in it, used it, and despised those women who had succumbed so willingly and come back again and again to be bloodied and humiliated. He had cultivated an image, groomed the lean Arab face and the whipcord body into a casual, sexual grace, and his glossy black hair had been tied back smoothly to accentuate the clean lines of his face and the dark, flashing qualities of his eyes. Pale worn pastel shades for his jeans, faded shirts, leather jackets, they had all contributed to the image that was Sadruddin, the external manifestation of a dream, and an ambition, an urgent, desperate searching for identity and recognition and power.

  Adversity had shattered it like a flint-starred windscreen, fragmenting the smooth hardness into a crazy unmotivated pattern, running everywhere, going nowhere, never arriving. The casual grace had gone, the lean arrogance had disappeared to be replaced by a cold, uncomprehending stillness. The mouth moved slackly, the eyes were hooded and shifting, incapable of meeting and holding another glance, and the narrow shoulders drooped under the weight of a prejudice that had pressed him into this subservience, this incarceration, this probing and questioning along the same lines, over the same track, again, and again and again.

  He was broken and defeated by the injustice and unbelievability of it all and he was no longer the hawk, no longer the arrogant male lion. But it did Crow no good. For the fifth time he insisted.

  ‘Again. Give it to me again.’

  ‘I’ve told you. Over and over.’

  ‘Again.’

  It was symptomatic of the submissive fatality in the man that he complied once more, in the flat monotone that defeat had visited upon him. The black moustache draggled above his blue-shaded chin as he stared at his hands and repeated himself once more.

  ‘I called Sally Woods. I wanted company. We went to Boldini’s and it was eight-fifteen. I was already blocked, then, and I’d been given the push from my digs. But I had the keys in my pocket — the keys that we’d pinched from the caretakers weeks ago and had duplicated, the keys I used when I lifted that letter from the rector’s files. The keys would have been used for the takeover of the Administration building. Sally took me to Burton. It was about nine. I don’t remember a great deal about it but I think Rosemary Harland saw us, maybe met us, I don’t know. We were together a little while and the next thing I remember it was morning and I was in a storeroom on the fourth floor and it was past time for the demonstration. I came down in the paternoster and there wasn’t a soul around and I didn’t know what was happening. I grabbed a girl typist in the hallway — I remember her face was all tied up as though she’d been crying and then she told me about Rosemary Harland being killed. I went to the main doors and there was a lot of yelling going on and then I saw you charging towards the doors. I stood there until you arrived and I was still shaking from the needle. I got out, then; called off the demo. That’s all. I know nothing about the way she died. And this Fanshaw character . . . all right, I saw him in the hall the other night and I thought he might be a spy, and I told some of the committee to get him but I wasn’t there. I didn’t touch him. They went too far, but it was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘As Rosemary’s death was nothing to do with you?’

  ‘I’ve told you!’

  ‘You’ve left out a lot. Such as what happened after Sally Woods left you at nine-thirty.’

  ‘I don’t remember her leaving. I was out cold.’

  ‘Not too cold to push Rosemary Harland down those stairs.’

  ‘Cold. Dead. Gone. I couldn’t have pushed a pinball.’

  ‘You pushed Rosemary Harland. Dead.’

  ‘No.’

  Unsatisfactory. Useless. It was getting Crow nowhere. He had Sadruddin taken back to the cells and he pondered savagely upon the waywardness of women. Sally Woods had come to the station that morning with her lips tighter than a zip fastener. She was saying nothing, over and above the story he already had from Sadruddin. She had taken the Arab, high as he said, to Burton. Rosemary had helped get him up to the fourth floor. No one had seen them when they dumped him in the storeroom; lecturers and students had mostly gone. Sally had left at nine forty-five; Rosemary had said she still had some clearing up to do. As Sally had walked across the car park the only lights left burning had been on the ground floor. Then they’d gone out too and she’d assumed Rosemary had left.

  But she hadn’t, Crow thought angrily. She’d been murdered and dragged into the lift for no reason he could comprehend. Sadruddin wasn’t talking, not beyond the little piece he’d already churned out over and over again. And even the Woods girl was saying no more than that; she’d refused to talk more about the coat and the drugs she’d picked up that night at Boldini’s and Crow was angry.

  Wilson came in and informed him that Lambert had been released on bail, against the filed charge of assault and dangerous driving.

  ‘Mrs Lambert put up the bail?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Crow shook his head, uncomprehendingly. ‘Don’t tell me they’re affecting a reconciliation! ‘

  ‘It may be the first step. But he just walked past her when he went out — she looked a bit upset and then went off in the other direction.’

  Crow pursed his lips. As Wilson said, Joan Lambert had taken the first step, and he guessed that they might yet get together again. It was a marriage that had staggered along from the beginning, but both Joan and William Lambert needed the security that marriage provided — even if they then put it to risk by extra-marital activity.

  Wilson waited and Crow looked up. ‘While you were with Sadruddin,’ Wilson said, ‘there was a call from the hospital. Mr West wants to see you.’

  ‘Vernon West?’

  ‘The doctor said it was extremely urgent. He said it was important that you
come, that West is failing, and that he wants to see you about the Harland investigation.’

  Crow’s thoughts swept back to the previous day and the student with the cratered skin, the one who had overheard West’s last word. He stood up slowly. Sadruddin was in the cells, Sadruddin could keep. He walked slowly towards the door.

  ‘Get a squad car laid on, and come with me.’

  The drive down through Sedleigh to the hospital gave Crow time to think. Time to allow his mind to drift back over events and suspicions and situations. The dead girl, sprawled in the lift; Peters’s angry, frightened face when he was faced by the shades of his past conduct; the noise the man had made when he lurched across the desk, spitting out the capsule; William Lambert’s anguished eyes, denying complicity in Rosemary Harland’s death; the pompous Joseph Woods and Peter Rhodes’s jutting chin, arguing he had been with Sally the night Rosemary Harland had died. Sadruddin.

  And now West. A new line, a new conclusion, a new suggestIon.

  Vernon West.

  The doctor was young, with excited eyes in a cool controlled face. He played with a pencil in the top pocket of his white coat as he came out to meet them, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Inspector Crow?’

  ‘Yes. This is Sergeant Wilson. I had a message.’

  ‘That’s right. Mr West has been in some agitation. He wants to speak to you.’ The doctor paused. ‘Have you ever read The Count of Monte Cristo?’

  Crow eyed the doctor curiously.

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘There’s a useful system described in that book which we’ll have to use here. You see, Vernon West is paralysed.’

  ‘Myocardial infarct.’

  ‘That, initially, and then complete paralysis — or almost complete.’ The doctor seemed surprised at Crow’s appreciation of medical terminology. ‘He can’t speak, of course.’

  ‘Then what’s the point of my coming here?’ Crow asked.

  ‘The Monte Cristo thing. There’s a man who was paralysed there. Mr West may have read the book. He soon caught on to it, anyway.’