The Raven's Eye

by Barry Maitland

  Paddington Security Services, PSS, was registered as an approved contractor by the Security Industry Authority, and offered a range of services, from the installation of CCTV and other security systems to ‘information protection, storage and retrieval, image processing and data mining’. Zack had identified a list of clients, from retail chains and transport companies to government agencies, including the Home Office and Ministry of Defence, and noted that they were backed by the financial resources of the Harvest Group, a private equity investment company in the City.

  Penney Solutions sounded equally impressive, if less glossily commercial. With eighty employees and specialist consultants, it was one of the high-tech companies that had spun off academic research at Cambridge University to offer research and development services to corporate and government organisations, and had also carried out joint projects with a similar American company at MIT. Their areas of expertise included the development of innovative biomedical engineering, solar energy devices and wireless communication technology.

  ‘It doesn’t say that Penney Solutions works in security.’

  ‘No, but according to Dr Chandramouli, Freyja was working on new ways to encrypt information for data security, which I suppose could be relevant in any of those areas they mention.’

  Kathy read on. Zack had drawn up a list of Penney Solutions’ clients, but there were none that had appeared on the Paddington list. She closed the file. ‘It’s all rather inconclusive, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. And of course we’ve been warned off wasting our time on other people’s cases when we have so much more urgent business of our own to attend to, like catching Jack Bragg. Even if we aren’t permitted to interview our own suspects.’

  ‘Ashur Najjar?’

  ‘Yes. They’ve let him go.’ He gave her the details and she told him about her conversation with Zack concerning the Richmond clinic. Lynch’s assistant had said nothing about a clinic, and as he sipped his coffee Brock became increasingly angry. How was it possible to run an investigation when the process was being compartmentalised, information withheld? The truth was that he wasn’t running it, Commander Lynch’s office was.

  Kathy interrupted his brooding thoughts. ‘I still feel uncomfortable about Gudrun Kite’s death. It bothers me, leaving it unresolved. Why was she hiding her identity? Why was she working at Paddington Security Services? I’ve been thinking . . . I may take another trip up to Cambridge this weekend. Nothing official, just to see how Professor Kite is coping.’

  Brock felt his frustration fade. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I was thinking exactly the same thing. Would you mind a fellow traveller?’

  Kathy smiled. ‘No. Of course not.’

  12

  They met at King’s Cross in time to catch the nine fifteen to Cambridge. Kathy had removed the dressings and her hair covered the bruised area on her temple. Brock seemed subdued, and as the express sped northward across the flat country he said nothing while Kathy reread the material that Dr Chandramouli had provided. After a while she looked up.

  ‘I expect you’ll want to meet Andy Harris?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘He said you were great friends.’

  Brock raised a sceptical eyebrow.

  ‘He said you were a great fellow, a splendid cricketer and a solid batsman . . .’

  ‘Did he now.’

  ‘. . . with an eye for the girls.’

  Brock made a choking noise. Eventually, after a long pause, he said, ‘I did have a girlfriend for a while. Nice girl, a nurse. Then Andy Harris whispered in her ear that I preferred boys and took her off my hands. Sneaky little bastard.’

  Three-quarters of an hour after leaving London they stepped out onto the station platform on a bright crisp morning, very different from the fog-shrouded evening of her last visit.

  They caught a cab into the city, the driver obviously eager for conversation.

  ‘Trinity, is it? Regular visitors are we?’

  ‘No,’ Brock said shortly, then added, ‘It’s been a long time.’

  The driver glanced at him in the rear-view mirror and said with a knowing gleam, ‘A student here, were we?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I dare say you’ll notice a few changes.’

  One of these became apparent when they approached the narrow streets of the city centre, where stainless-steel bollards blocked the route. An electronic tag in the taxi signalled for them to sink into the roadway and the car moved on. ‘Your digital revolution,’ the driver ruminated. ‘It’s everywhere now, innit? When you were here the students probably climbed into college over revolving spikes after the gates were locked for the night; now they get in with a swipe card. Makes the world seem not quite real, know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brock said, ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  He was staring out of the window with a puzzled frown, and Kathy said, ‘Different from what you remember?’

  ‘Yes, he’s right, it doesn’t seem quite real. The buildings are familiar, but not the same. I remember them as a bit scruffy, knocked about by time, but now they seem so immaculate and clean, almost artificial.’ Then, under his breath, he murmured, ‘A mistake to come back.’

  The cab stopped outside the Great Gate of Trinity and they paid the driver and walked towards the door beneath the statue of the founder, King Henry the Eighth, and in to the window of the porters’ lodge inside. Brock, so it seemed to Kathy, had something of the same air of trepidation he might have felt when he first arrived there at age nineteen.

  The porter came out, adjusting his bowler hat. ‘Welcome back, Mr Brock. Dr Chandramouli told me to expect you and Ms Kolla. I’ll take you to his room.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Nevile’s Court, sir.’

  ‘Let’s go by way of New Court.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They emerged from the gate house into the broad expanse of Great Court, where the porter chatted to Kathy, pointing out its features—the Tudor fountain in the centre where the students had once washed, the chapel and dining hall, the Master’s Lodge—and continued through an archway into another court, with gothic gables and a large tree in its centre on a circular lawn. Brock paused for a moment, staring up at a window.

  ‘Memories, sir?’ the porter said.

  ‘Ghosts,’ Brock replied.

  They crossed this court into a cloister leading through to Nevile’s Court. The porter continued his commentary—Christopher Wren’s Library, the room where Lord Byron lived with his pet bear—and brought them at last to staircase L, where Dr Chandramouli had his room, a pleasant study with a large window overlooking the court. Kathy took in the shelves of books, the computer, the whiteboard covered with incomprehensible symbols, and came to a framed photograph hanging over the fireplace, of two men standing together in front of the fountain which they had just passed in Great Court. One of the men looked Indian, and Kathy peered closer, to see if it was Chandramouli.

  ‘That’s my inspiration,’ he said to her. ‘Srinivasa Ramanujan, from Tamil Nadu like myself. He was almost entirely self-taught, yet by the age of seventeen he had arrived at a host of new results in number theory and other areas of advanced mathematics, and in 1912 sent some of them to three academics here at Cambridge. One of them was the other man in the picture, the great G.H. Hardy of this college. He invited Ramanujan to Cambridge, where he astonished the other mathematicians, was made a fellow of Trinity, contracted something deadly—probably tuberculosis—and in 1920 died at the age of thirty-two, leaving behind a mass of extraordinary results.’

  Chandramouli wasn’t what Kathy had expected of a mathematician. With his flowing leonine locks and smooth charm she could imagine him hosting a popular-science series on Channel 4. He sat them down and poured coffee, and said how much he and his colleagues appreciated their visit and were looking forward to joining them at high table for dinner that evening.

  ‘Well, to business then,’ the mathematician said. ‘I
’ve arranged for you to meet Philip Penney out at the Science Park, as you suggested, David, and then lunch with Desmond Kite. And Professor Bronikowski would like to show you their new facilities at the Institute of Criminology this afternoon. Is there anything else you’d like to do?’

  ‘That sounds fine.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you about the two women,’ Kathy said. ‘I know their academic records, but I don’t feel I know their characters. How did they get on together, and with their father?’

  Chandramouli thought for a moment, then said, ‘Let me tell you a little story. The first time I met Gudrun she was still at school, while Freyja was my student here. One day Gudrun came knocking on my door, demanding to see me. It transpired that Freyja had mentioned to her that another student was plagiarising her work, but she wasn’t particularly bothered and didn’t intend to report it. Gudrun, however, was incensed, and so came storming in here in her school uniform to demand that I do something about it.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘You see? Freyja was so confident in her own talent that she wasn’t troubled by someone else’s cheating, whereas Gudrun, the younger, plainer and less gifted of the two, was ferocious in defence of her sister. That was the way they were—unusual, I thought. I have two children of my own, and their relationship is very different.’ He gave a rueful smile.

  ‘I see,’ Kathy said. ‘And interesting that Gudrun came to you, someone she didn’t know, to complain, rather than to her father.’

  He frowned. ‘Perhaps. What’s your point?’

  ‘I’m wondering why Gudrun hid her life in London from her father—her address, the name she was going under, where she worked. I’m wondering if she was hiding from him.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Chandramouli looked mildly shocked, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him. ‘Surely not. I assumed that there might have been an abusive boyfriend somewhere in the background, something like that?’

  ‘Or an abusive father? I must say, Professor Kite came across as a fairly intimidating figure when I met him.’

  ‘He was in a state of shock . . .’ The tutor looked uncomfortable, shooting a glance at Brock as if for support, but Brock said nothing, listening impassively. ‘He’s much calmer now, and you’ll have the chance to make a clearer judgement today, but I must say that I’ve never heard any suggestion of such a thing. They always seemed to be a rather harmonious family, at least until Desmond’s wife Sigrid died.’

  They finished their coffee and Chandramouli led them out to the river meadows on the Backs behind the college to where he had parked his car. They set off around the north of the city towards Milton Road, where they pulled in at the place where Freyja had died. It was a straight stretch of two-lane road, with a line of solid semi-detached houses set back on either side. Chandramouli pointed out the witness’s house, its upper-floor bedroom windows visible over a front hedge.

  ‘It was three o’clock in the morning. Apparently the man suffers from insomnia. He was lying awake in bed when he heard the sound of a crash and got up to look.’

  ‘I wonder if he’s in,’ Kathy said. ‘What was his name?’ She checked through their documents. ‘William Copley—Bill.’

  They knocked on the front door and after an interval heard the shuffling of feet from inside. An elderly man wearing a cardigan and slippers opened the door, peered out at them, said, ‘Not today, thank you,’ and began to close it again.

  ‘Mr Copley?’ Kathy said quickly. ‘We’re from the police. Can you spare us a few minutes?’

  He looked dubious, asked to see her identification, and reluctantly let them in.

  ‘It’s about the accident you witnessed out in the street last February.’

  ‘What, again?’ He sighed. ‘I’m almost sorry I reported it now, the amount of my time it’s taken up. We even had a re-enactment out there, held up the traffic, actors, everything. They didn’t take this amount of trouble when our Paul was killed on his motorbike. But I haven’t seen you lot before. What’s this in aid of now? Have you found them, the ones that did it?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. We weren’t involved in the original investigation and it would really help us to picture what happened if we could see the view you had from your bedroom window.’

  He gave another exaggerated sigh of forbearance. ‘I suppose so.’

  He led the way upstairs and along a small landing to a doorway, through which he peered, then said, ‘Wait here,’ and disappeared inside. Chandramouli edged forward and took a quick look through the narrow opening, then turned back and whispered with a chuckle, ‘He’s making the bed.’

  ‘Come in then,’ Copley called to them, and they filed in.

  ‘Bed . . . window . . . view . . .’ He pointed to each in turn, and they crossed the room to look down into the street.

  ‘Over there. The front hedge is a bit higher now than it was then.’

  ‘You’re absolutely certain there were two people in the car?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Oh yes. That’s what the re-enactment was all about, to make sure I could have seen them both, and I did, one on each side at the front, big blokes, moving about in the light of their headlights.’

  ‘When you first described what you saw you thought that one of the men was holding a weapon in his hand, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, the one on this side of the car. But when they made me think about it I realised it was probably a torch. There was a kind of glint, you see.’

  ‘A glint?’

  ‘Yes, of light. Probably he switched it on.’

  ‘But the car headlights were still on?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Could the glint have been something else, maybe the light from the headlights reflecting off something shiny?’

  Copley puffed out his cheeks and frowned, pondering. Then he shook his head. ‘No, no, we went over this so many times. I’m not going to change my story now. It’d make me out to be a fool.’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Copley. We all know how hard it is to be quite sure what we remember seeing, especially at night. But just for the sake of argument, is it remotely possible that the man was holding a knife?’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘A knife? First I’ve heard of that one. Where did that come from? Was she stabbed?’

  ‘It’s just something we needed to check with you. Is it possible?’

  ‘Well, he was definitely holding something. Yes, I suppose it’s possible it was a knife. The idea never came up before.’

  When they returned to the car Chandramouli was bursting to know what was on her mind, but Kathy refused to be drawn.

  Soon the entrance to the Cambridge Science Park came up on their left. As he turned in, Chandramouli explained its history: set up by Trinity College in 1970 as the first science park in the UK, and now perhaps the most successful. They passed landscaped parking areas surrounding modern buildings with names that ended in hi-tech-sounding syllables like ‘sys’ and ‘synx’ and ‘pharma’. At one of these, a two-storey glass and steel pavilion, they pulled into a visitors’ parking space and followed the mathematician to doors emblazoned with Penney Solutions’ logo.

  Dr Philip Penney was exactly what Kathy imagined a middle-aged geek to be—big glasses, long hair, dressed in jeans and desert boots and rolled-up shirtsleeves, and with an infectiously enthusiastic light in his eyes.

  ‘Come,’ he beamed, leading them into a conference room with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall looking out across parkland to other similar buildings tucked among the trees, people strolling and jogging along a winding path beside a small lake. They took seats around a glass-topped table supported on a spidery metal structure that might have come from a Mars probe.

  ‘Chinmay explained that you wanted to talk to me about Freyja Kite,’ Penney said. ‘I was very sorry to hear about her sister. Must be hell for their old man. But does this mean that Freyja’s death is still being investigated?’

  Brock answered, ‘With a second tragic accident coming on top of the first, we want to be absolutely cert
ain that there’s nothing more to it. The Cambridge police did a very thorough job investigating Freyja’s death, but we’d like to be clear about one or two things. Could you tell us what Freyja was working on at the time of her death?’

  ‘Simply, new ways of keeping digital communications secure. It’s an absolutely critical field at the moment, whether we’re talking about hackers breaking into confidential government databases, or cybercriminals trying to steal from your bank accounts, or hostile governments accessing military and commercial secrets.’ His eyes shone with the light of a prophet.

  ‘Most people aren’t aware of it, but there’s a silent war going on out there, with tens of thousands of crooks, spies and mischief-makers intent on disrupting the flow of information upon which our whole way of life depends.

  ‘At present, messages on the internet, for example, are secured by a process called public key encryption, which scrambles them through a mathematical function that is easy to run forward but difficult to reverse. It’s reasonably secure, but given enough computing power, a determined hacker can crack it. Freyja was working on an alternative system, called quantum key distribution, QKD, which guarantees absolute security.’

  ‘That sounds pretty important.’

  ‘Oh, it’s huge. Of course, we’re not the only ones working on this. There are teams beavering away all around the world. Freyja was working on a specialised commercial application that looks promising.’

  ‘So when you heard that she’d been killed, weren’t you concerned that it might have had something to do with her work?’

  ‘I’ve got to confess, that was the first thing that came into my head. But when I thought about it, it made no sense. A rival, a competitor, would want to steal her work, not bump her off. We checked all her computer files, her work records, and they were intact. Believe me, we are very security-conscious here—we have to be.’

  ‘Perhaps the people who knocked her down were hoping she was carrying her work with her?’

  ‘Well, they would have been disappointed. We have strict policies on that sort of thing, and when we checked we found no missing or unauthorised copies of her files. And I just don’t believe it. To murder someone on the off-chance that they’d be carrying a saddlebag full of secrets? It would be far too clumsy and dangerous. Easier to have waited until she got home and went to sleep, and then break in and rob her, don’t you think? And anyway, they’d be far more interested in what was going on inside her head. They’d have tried to bribe her or entice her away to a far better-paying job with them.’