The Raven's Eye

by Barry Maitland

  Kathy went after him and found him standing in the hall with his back to her. She could hear his breathing, like the laboured gasping of old bellows, and he was shaking his head.

  ‘Professor, please, let me get you something . . .’ she began, but he lifted his hands up as if to cast her away and strode into a room opposite, slamming the door behind him.

  Kathy returned to the study and waited. There seemed to be no one else in the house, which was completely silent. After a while she got to her feet again and went to his door and knocked and tried the handle, but it was locked. There was no response to her appeal to open it, and she began to get worried. Standing there in the hallway she noticed signs of neglect everywhere: dust, wallpaper peeling from a damp patch near the ceiling, a jumble of notes and lists around the telephone, some lying screwed up on the floor. Above the phone, taped roughly to the wallpaper, was a note with a pencilled name, Harris, and a telephone number and address in Harvey Road. A neighbour, she assumed. Kathy dialled the number and a woman answered, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mrs Harris?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m a police officer, and I’m with Professor Kite at his home in Harvey Road at the moment. Are you a friend of his?’

  ‘Well, yes, you could say that. We’ve known Desmond for some time. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘He’s had some bad news and I’d like to contact a friend or relative who could be with him. Do you know how I might get hold of his daughter Freyja?’

  Kathy heard an intake of breath at the other end, then the woman said, ‘Freyja died a year ago.’

  Kathy groaned under her breath. This just got worse. Mrs Harris was going on, ‘He has another daughter, in London . . .’

  ‘Gudrun, yes. I’m afraid that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Oh no, don’t tell me something’s happened to Gudrun too?’

  ‘She died last night, Mrs Harris. Professor Kite is very distraught.’

  ‘Dear heaven. Wait . . .’

  Kathy heard a muffled conversation, then a man’s voice, brisk.

  ‘Hello? I’m Andrew Harris. I don’t think Desmond has any other near relatives, not that we know of anyway. And I suppose we’re the closest friends that he has. I’ll be right over.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Kathy went to the front door and saw a figure emerge from a house further along the street, pulling on a coat, and come hurrying across. They shook hands.

  ‘This is terrible,’ Harris said. ‘What happened exactly?’

  Kathy told him and he shook his head. From his few brief questions Kathy guessed he had some medical knowledge.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said, ‘at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.’ He gave Kathy a card, Dr Andrew Harris, MB ChB FRCA, Anaesthetist. ‘I was on duty the night Freyja was brought in. I gather you didn’t know about that? She was knocked off her bike here in Cambridge one evening earlier this year. Hit-and-run, the driver was never caught.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Desmond?’

  ‘He locked himself in there when I told him what had happened. There’s been no sound.’

  Dr Harris rapped his knuckles on the door. ‘Desmond? It’s Andrew. Open the door, there’s a good chap.’

  After a moment they heard a shuffle of feet and the click of the lock. The door opened slowly and Kite stood there, sagging on his feet. ‘Andrew,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s Gudrun . . .’

  ‘I know, the inspector’s explained. You’re coming back to stay with us tonight, old son, so get your coat on.’

  ‘No,’ Kite protested, but Harris took him firmly by the arm and led him out into the hall. Kite looked befuddled, unable to resist the doctor’s grip.

  ‘It’s a cold night,’ Harris said, looking up and down the hall. ‘Where’s your coat, Desmond?’

  ‘Study,’ Kite muttered, and shambled off in that direction.

  Dr Harris watched him go with a physician’s assessing eye. ‘Poor chap. God, this place is freezing. Such a change from when Sigrid was alive.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘We should talk.’

  ‘Yes, I’d appreciate that.’

  ‘London? You’re with the Met? Went to university with a Met detective—well, that’s what he became, wouldn’t have guessed it then. See his name in the papers from time to time: David Brock. Maybe you’ve heard of him?’

  Kathy nodded. ‘Oh yes. He’s my boss.’

  ‘Really? How fascinating. We were great friends. Small world.’

  He turned at the sound of Professor Kite returning, wearing a scarf and a heavy old tweed coat.

  ‘That’s the way. Got your keys?’

  They waited while Kite rummaged through the papers beside the telephone and found a wallet and a bunch of keys, then they set off.

  Mrs Harris met them at her front door, taking Kite’s coat with a look of concern on her face, and leading him through to the kitchen from which a rich smell of cooking pervaded the house. They gathered around the kitchen table and commiserated with Kite, who sat, ashen-faced, saying little. Dr Harris poured a glass of whisky for him, and he had some difficulty raising it with both trembling hands to his mouth. When Harris offered Kathy a glass she said no, that she had to drive back to London.

  ‘Do you really have to?’ he said. ‘There are things we should discuss, and you’ll have to sample Deb’s wonderful steak and kidney pie. Why not stay here the night and return tomorrow? Right, Deb?’

  His wife gave Kathy an encouraging smile. ‘Of course.’

  Kathy thought about it. She’d already spent too long on the mystery of Gudrun Kite, but the offer was tempting and the next day was Saturday, and theoretically her day off. ‘That’s very kind of you. If you’re quite sure it’s not an inconvenience.’

  It was settled, and Harris opened a bottle of wine, saying, ‘I want to persuade Inspector Kolla—may we use first names? Kathy then—I want to persuade Kathy to bring her boss up to see us, Deb. David Brock and I were on the same staircase in New Court, Trinity, in our third year. You never met him, did you, darling? Great fellow, splendid cricketer, solid batsman, eye for the girls.’

  It was the first Kathy had heard of it. She wondered what else Harris could come up with about Brock’s youth.

  ‘Will you set the table next door, Andrew?’ his wife asked, but he said they should stay in the kitchen, which was warm and comfortable, and he cleared spaces and set out cutlery and Deb produced plates of steaming comfort food. Kite seemed barely conscious of them, gulping the pie down as soon as it was placed in front of him, as if he hadn’t seen hot food for a long time. What with the meal and the whisky and, Kathy suspected, something that Dr Harris might have given him, his eyes were closing as he finished wiping up the last traces of gravy.

  When Harris led him away to bed, Kathy helped Deb clear the dishes.

  ‘I can’t believe this has happened to Desmond,’ she said. ‘These last few years have been a nightmare for him.’

  ‘He said his wife died not long ago.’

  ‘Yes, Sigrid was ill for over a year, and Freyja came back from America to look after her. They were such a close family, the three women so bright, so full of life, and Desmond quietly in the background. But since Sigrid died he’s turned in on himself and then Freyja had her accident and they couldn’t find anyone to blame, and he became more and more bitter. I don’t know how he’ll survive this.’

  Kathy imagined what he must have thought when she’d phoned him and said she wanted to talk to him about his daughter. He must have expected news of a breakthrough, and instead she’d brought him the worst news of all.

  Andrew Harris returned. ‘He’s settled down, for now at least. I really think he may be losing his mind. He seems to think that he’s living in one of his sagas—he mumbled some unpronounceable name—about a man whose two daughters were taken by a monster.’

  ‘That’s his field,’ Deb explained to Kathy. ‘The Norse sagas. He met Sigrid in Sweden when he was doing his research.’

  Andrew poured himself another glass of
wine. ‘When he was only thirty-four he was appointed Scheving Professor of Old Norse Literature and History, the youngest ever. For thirty years, sheltered by the university and his family, he’s been able to immerse himself in a world utterly divorced from reality. Now reality has given him three hard blows, and I don’t know that he’ll be able to cope. Maybe his college will take him in, and he’ll become one of those old dons we used to see pottering about with a pair of secateurs, pruning the roses.’

  ‘What’s made it harder for him is that he’s never accepted that Freyja’s death was accidental,’ Deb said.

  ‘I’m afraid that was partly my fault,’ Andrew said. ‘When I first saw her in A&E she was so badly battered that I thought she must have been beaten up, and I said something to that effect. A nurse heard me, and when Desmond arrived she unfortunately told him that his daughter had been attacked. Later we realised that it was a hit-and-run road accident, but Desmond had the idea of an assault fixed in his mind. When the police couldn’t find those responsible he began to talk about a conspiracy.’

  ‘And then there was the witness,’ Deb added.

  ‘Yes. It happened late at night, Freyja cycling back into town from the Cambridge Science Park where she was working. An old man living in one of the houses along Milton Road heard the squeal of tyres and looked out of his bedroom window. He saw a car and two men bending over a bundle on the street, and a bicycle. Then the men got into the car and drove off and he went outside and found Freyja and called an ambulance.

  ‘The thing is, in his first statement to the police he said that one of the men was holding a club in his hand. Then later he changed his mind.’

  ‘There was a post-mortem?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Of course. I know the pathologist well, sound chap. He considered the injuries consistent with a bad smash. She’d gone under the car and was probably trapped beneath, and they’d reversed off her—that was his interpretation, which was consistent with the police examination of marks on the road. Don’t worry, it was all looked at very carefully. And of course there was no motive for anyone to want Freyja dead. But it was Desmond’s second family tragedy within a couple of years, and his head was full of dark Viking sagas of murder and revenge, and he couldn’t be persuaded to accept the coroner’s finding.

  ‘And now . . .’ Harris fixed Kathy with a glint in his eye, ‘his second daughter is found dead, and Scotland Yard send a detective from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command.’ He saw Kathy’s raised eyebrow, and smiled. ‘I just looked Brock up on the web after I tucked Desmond in. So Brock sends a detective inspector, no less, up to Cambridge to inform the grieving parent. Something’s up, isn’t it?’

  Kathy said, ‘Actually, the local CID got their wires crossed and called us out by mistake. I just agreed to follow up with tracing next of kin.’

  Harris chuckled and topped up Kathy’s glass. ‘Come on, Kathy, you’ll have to do better than that.’

  Kathy was silent for a moment, considering, then she said, ‘There is something you may be able to help me with, but I haven’t mentioned it to Professor Kite yet, so this must be in confidence.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘It seems that Gudrun was living under an assumed name in London, in fact using the identity of someone else, a girl she was at school with here in Cambridge by the name of Vicky Hawke. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘That’s very strange. The other girl didn’t know?’

  ‘No, she’s living overseas now and had no idea. So I’m wondering if Gudrun was trying to hide from someone—a former boyfriend perhaps?’

  ‘Ah yes, I see. And he may have had a hand in her death.’

  ‘No,’ Kathy said firmly. ‘We don’t know that such a person even exists, and I don’t want Professor Kite or anyone else getting hold of an idea like that.’

  ‘No, no,’ Harris said quickly. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So are you aware of her friends?’

  ‘Freyja was the one who always attracted the boys,’ Deb Harris said. ‘She had very striking looks, and she was extremely bright—too bright for them, they never lasted long. Gudrun was rather plain, and not as outgoing as her sister, and I can’t really remember her friends. Desmond never mentioned a boyfriend in London, but he probably wouldn’t have known anyway. After Freyja died he became obsessed. It was all he thought about. Poor Gudrun didn’t get a look-in.’

  They talked on into the evening, Dr Harris liberal with the wine, explaining that since he was not on call that night he was therefore free to anaesthetise himself. They spoke about Cambridge and London, briefly about Brock, a little about Deb’s job at the botanic garden, but inevitably the conversation returned to the Kites’ tragedy and, somehow central to it, because of her great promise, Freyja’s unresolved death.

  ‘She was a magician,’ Harris said grandly, and his wife gave him an odd look.

  ‘A what? She was a mathematician, Andrew.’

  ‘A mathematician, that’s what I said,’ and it was true that his words were now becoming slurred. ‘That was the funny thing. Brilliant father, brilliant daughter, but he couldn’t understand a bloody thing she did.’

  ‘And what did she do?’ Kathy asked. ‘You said she worked at the Cambridge Science Park?’

  ‘Yes. One of those high-tech companies out there. She told me once what it was—something very obscure and scientific, can’t remember what.’

  They showed Kathy upstairs to a spare bedroom, and when Deb went to find her a towel Andrew Harris suddenly turned on her, eyes bright, and Kathy had the awful thought that he was going to try to kiss her good night. But instead he said triumphantly, ‘Quantum mechanics. I knew it’d come back to me. That was Freyja’s field.’

  Kathy was none the wiser.

  6

  The following morning Professor Kite appeared at the breakfast table wrapped in a dressing gown that was too small for his gangling frame, his grey hair sticking up at odd angles. He mumbled a reply to Deb Harris’s concerned ‘How are you, Desmond?’ and immediately began eating the bowl of porridge she put in front of him. In the middle of this he paused suddenly, spoon pointed accusingly at Kathy, and said, ‘You’re wrong about the boat. She must have been visiting a friend. Gudrun lived in a flat not a boat, in Crouch End.’

  ‘Did you ever visit her there, Professor?’

  He frowned, resumed eating his porridge, and when he finished shook his head. ‘No. Very pleasant flat, she told me. Lucky to get it at such a reasonable rent. I’ve got the address here.’

  He pulled his wallet from the dressing gown pocket and opened it to show Kathy the address of the mail holding service. Next to it was a mobile phone number.

  ‘Is this Gudrun’s number?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You spoke to her on it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Kathy found it hard to gauge his mood. He seemed strangely unaffected now, talking about Gudrun. ‘What about her work, did she speak to you about that?’

  ‘Some computer business. Boring, she said, but it paid the rent. She was looking for something more challenging. Now look, while you’re investigating this accident of hers it’s imperative that you reopen the case of her sister Freyja’s murder.’

  ‘Do you have any reason to think they might be connected?’

  He looked puzzled, as if it hadn’t occurred to him. ‘No, no, of course not, but now you can bring a fresh pair of eyes to Freyja’s case. Andrew tells me you specialise in that sort of thing—murder investigations.’

  ‘Only in London, Professor. Cambridge is a separate jurisdiction. But if anything occurs to you that might link the two cases, you should let me know.’ As she said it and watched his mind working, she realised that she’d made a mistake, offering him a way to try to get her involved in investigating Freyja’s death.

  She rose from the table, thanking the Harrises and making ready to leave. There had been rain during the night, washing away the fog and leaving the trees dripping, and whe
n she reached the motorway it began again, and she drove through heavy traffic back to London with wipers beating. On the way she phoned Brock and gave him an outline of what she’d learned.

  ‘Not much then,’ he said. ‘Where did you stay?’

  ‘His friends across the street offered to put me up. Thanks to you, I think. He knows you, says you were friends at Cambridge together—Andrew Harris, an anaesthetist.’

  ‘Andy . . . oh yes, I remember Andy. Cocky little bastard. Useful spin bowler, eye for the girls.’

  Kathy laughed. ‘That’s him.’

  She stopped at her flat in Finchley for a change of clothes, then continued in to Central London. The offices in Queen Anne’s Gate were quiet, and she settled down to work through a backlog of paperwork that had come in on one of her other cases, a three-year-old murder for which new evidence had just surfaced. In part it related to the use of a mobile phone, and as she worked through the old phone records it occurred to Kathy to check on the number that she’d got from Desmond Kite. She found that it had been registered three months before to Vicky Hawke, at the Crouch End address, and she put in a request for the record of calls, wondering as she did it whether she was making too much of the missing phone. It was probably tucked away in some cubbyhole on the boat that she and Mickey Schaeffer had missed. If it was switched on they could get a fix on it, but that would involve a paper trail which, with the task auditor breathing down their necks, might not be a good idea. It would be easier to go to the boat and call the number on her own phone and listen for the ring.

  And so, when she left the office in the late afternoon, she decided to drive over to Paddington. It was raining again, the afternoon sky dark with heavy rainclouds as she pulled up the collar of her coat and hurried down the steps to the towpath beside the canal, where the stone of the quay and the steel hull of Gudrun’s boat both shone slippery and wet. She put one foot carefully onto the boat’s stern and made to transfer her weight on board when suddenly Grace’s rear doors flew open in front of her and a man burst out. As she stepped back he barged past her and jumped down onto the towpath and turned to run off, but she reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his coat, spinning him around so that his momentum swung him back against the side of the boat.