Babel

by Barry Maitland

  She stopped her imagination running away with her.

  ‘Briony, we all feel terrible about what happened, but I can tell you that neither you nor I am responsible for Abu’s death. The people who are will be caught and punished.’

  Briony swung back at her. ‘You are responsible!’ she cried. ‘You killed him!’

  The force of her accusation was almost physical, and Kathy felt herself backing away, shaking her head. She found herself outside in the corridor, and realised that she was trembling. She turned and walked slowly away and almost stumbled at the next corner of the corridor into a man whose breath smelled strongly of whisky.

  ‘Oh, easy there!’ he breathed and squinted at her. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Fine, yes.’

  ‘Lost?’

  ‘A bit, yes.’

  He gave her a roguish leer. ‘Well, let me give you a helping hand. Pettifer’s the name. Desmond.’

  Kathy remembered Brock mentioning him. ‘Oh. You were a friend of Max Springer’s, weren’t you? I work with DCI Brock.’

  Dr Pettifer checked himself. ‘Ah. Interesting developments, eh? Anything you need?’

  ‘Well, maybe there is something you could help me with. I’m trying to get hold of some of Professor Springer’s books.’

  ‘What, short of door-stops at the Yard, are you?’ He tried out a wink and a chuckle. ‘Don’t intend to try reading them, do you?’

  ‘That was the plan. Only the university library say I can’t borrow them without a proper pass. I was hoping to find a friendly academic who would borrow them for me.’

  ‘What about Max’s own copies, from his room?’

  ‘The room’s sealed. We’re not supposed to remove anything.’

  ‘Well, I can do better than the library. I can lend you my own copies. Don’t normally do that, mind. I’ve lost too many of my books to students to ever lend to them any more. But a police woman should be beyond reproach, or am I being naïve?’ He twinkled at her boozily.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I’d be most grateful. Just for a week or two.’

  ‘No hurry. And in return, you can slake my curiosity. Curiosis fabricavit inferos, eh?’ He led the way down the narrow corridor, speaking back at her over his shoulder. At his door he drew a ring of keys on a chain from his pocket and let her in. There was an unpleasant sweetness in the musty air of the room.

  ‘What I wondered,’ he said, pulling books down from his crowded shelves, ‘was whether this Abu chap had the weapon on him when you caught him. I’m having a bet with a fellow in Sociology. He reckons that they always throw the thing away down a drain or something after they’ve done the deed, but I feel he would keep it as a kind of security. So which of us is right?’

  ‘I’d say that usually your friend is right, Desmond, but in this case I couldn’t comment.’

  Pettifer looked put out. ‘Oh, come on,’ he wheedled. ‘Just a hint. Which of us would you put your money on?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘Oh, well.’ He turned away in a huff, and after a moment’s search found the last of the books. ‘Was it a big gun? Heavy to carry around?’

  Kathy took the books and handed him her card. ‘I don’t think so. Many thanks for these.’

  He looked vaguely cheated as she turned and left, wondering why people were so fascinated by the gory details.

  She crossed the river, stopping on the way to buy some sandwiches for lunch and a few other supplies that Brock needed. In Matcham High Street she turned through the familiar archway into Warren Lane and parked in a space between other cars in the yard behind the shops. The wind picked at the skirt of her coat as she carried her bags under the dark skeleton of the horse chestnut tree towards the irregular terrace of houses that faced the lane that ran along the top of the railway cutting. She glanced up at the bay window that projected from an upper floor, and thought she recognised the shadow of Brock in the window seat in which he now spent most of his time. She fitted the key he’d given her into the front door, and stepped into the warmth of the small hallway calling out ‘Hello’. There was no reply, but as she climbed up the stairway she thought she caught the sound of a murmur of voices. Perhaps the radio, she thought, and turned from the landing towards the kitchen that overlooked the small courtyard at the back of the house, setting her bags down on the table.

  Kathy recognised Suzanne’s perfume a moment before she heard her step on the wooden kitchen floor behind her. She turned and smiled, ‘Suzanne, hello,’ and immediately took in two very strong impressions. The first was that Suzanne had gone to some trouble to look good for her visit; her hair looked recently styled, in a slightly darker shade of her natural auburn, and her clothes had been selected from the more expensive and classy side of her wardrobe. The second was that she was very angry and upset.

  ‘You OK?’ Kathy said carefully.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was like this?’ Suzanne’s voice was low and tight. ‘I had no idea, no idea at all that he was in such a state.’

  ‘He’s coping pretty well.’

  ‘He’s a wreck,’ Suzanne’s voice rose. ‘He could barely get down the stairs to let me in.’

  ‘We didn’t want to worry you,’ Kathy said, and immediately knew that the ‘we’ was exactly wrong. She saw the look of betrayal on the other woman’s face, and thought of the phone calls she’d meant to make to her. ‘He looks worse than he is,’ she added unconvincingly.

  Suzanne took a step nearer, angry. ‘Don’t patronise me, Kathy. I thought you were a friend. How could you have kept me in the dark?’

  Kathy hung her head, feeling defeated by Suzanne’s passion. ‘I’m sorry. He felt he had to stay here for the time being, so then it seemed better not to alarm you. His leg’s the main problem. The doctors say the rest will mend quickly.’

  Suzanne shook her head in exasperation. ‘It’s ridiculous! He’s too old to be fighting in the street like a twenty-year-old.’

  ‘It just came out of the blue. No one expected something like that. He and Bren were caught. It could have happened to anyone. He was rather heroic, actually. You’d have been proud of him.’

  But Suzanne wasn’t ready to listen to that. ‘He should never have been in that situation. He shouldn’t be in that job at all.’

  Kathy looked at her in surprise. She hadn’t heard this from her before, but she remembered the oddly stilted conversations she had had with Suzanne about her own career choices, and guessed that this was a long-running issue.

  ‘He should have moved on like everyone else, into senior management. Or if he doesn’t want that, he should get out completely.’ She wasn’t offering a point for discussion. She said it with absolute certainty, as a fact that would be obvious to any right-thinking person, and Kathy felt she was seeing for the first time the underlying tension in the strangely on-off relationship between the two of them.

  She imagined them at some point putting their cards on the table, two people of determined views, and, finding that they couldn’t agree, settling on a kind of mutual half-life together. It made her feel vaguely stupid, as if she ought to know how to help, but couldn’t. She’d lived with Suzanne for a couple of weeks, after all, during which time Brock had stayed overnight two or three times, and yet she still didn’t know for sure if they were sleeping together.

  ‘You don’t agree, of course.’ Suzanne said it flatly, a demand to know if Kathy was an ally or an enemy.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say what’s best for him, Suzanne,’ Kathy said cautiously. ‘I don’t think he would be happy in senior management, to be honest. As for doing something else . . . I don’t know.’

  Suzanne turned away, as if Kathy had confirmed her suspicions. ‘Why does he have to stay here, exactly?’ she asked coolly. ‘Someone else has taken over the case, surely? He’s invalided out, isn’t he?’ There was a note of suspicion in Suzanne’s voice now, as if she suspected Kathy of some duplicity, or felt threatened by her professional relationship
with Brock.

  ‘Yes, but the new people have been consulting him—’

  ‘There’s an invention called a telephone, I believe.’

  Kathy hadn’t heard this sharpness from Suzanne before. She was obviously very hurt, and not stupid. ‘There’s also an internal inquiry been set up into what happened. Brock hasn’t said to me, but I think he’s worried about it. It wasn’t his fault, but he’s taken it badly, that the man they had arrested was killed in their charge.’

  ‘All the more reason he shouldn’t lie around here moping while he waits for things to happen.’ Suzanne turned back to face Kathy. ‘And what about you?’

  Kathy felt herself flush, suddenly aware that all this time she’d been holding Brock’s front door key in her hand. ‘Me? I’ve just been looking in from time to time, and doing a bit of shopping for him.’

  ‘I meant, what are your plans these days? I’ve hardly heard from you since the weekend. Tina wanted to speak to you, but she couldn’t get you at your flat. She had some news about your interview. You should contact her.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Since I came back up to town, everything’s moved so fast . . . I’m sorry, I’ll do it straight away. Look, Suzanne, I think you’re right about Brock getting away from here for a while. I can keep my ears open for him here, and there’s Bren and the others. Why don’t you have another go at persuading him to go back with you to Battle?’

  ‘So you’re staying in London, are you?’

  ‘I think I will. I’ve got so much to catch up on here,’ she lied. ‘The break with you was fantastic, just what I needed, but I feel OK now.’

  Suzanne sighed. ‘Maybe you should tell him. I don’t seem to be having much success at telling him anything at the moment.’

  The tension had ebbed from her voice, and Kathy said, hanging the key on a hook above the worktop, ‘Let’s have some lunch. We can both work on him.’

  13

  Kathy’s sense of detachment intensified in the days following Brock’s departure to Battle. Over lunch he had bowed to the inevitable and accepted Suzanne’s invitation to stay with her for a while with good grace and even, Kathy thought she detected, some relief. When he asked how the two grandchildren, who had on a previous occasion found his presence around Suzanne threatening, would deal with it, Suzanne had said grimly that everyone would have to cooperate and make compromises. He didn’t try to argue. She added that his crutch and bandages would probably do the trick, and if not he could try a parrot on his shoulder. So they had packed a couple of bags of clothes, books and Brock’s laptop and set off for the coast, leaving Kathy to return alone to her flat in Finchley.

  In her mail was a letter reminding her that, under the terms of her sick leave, she was required to attend a further session with the staff psychologist before she could obtain clearance to return to work. Kathy had come to regard her reluctance to make arrangements for these sessions as symptomatic of her disillusionment with her job, and again she hesitated, put the letter aside and opened the next. This one was from the agency in the West End, informing her that she had been accepted as a client subject to completion of the enclosed contracts.

  She thought about that for a while, then rang Tina the travel agent in Hastings, who told her that she had herself spoken to the woman who had interviewed Kathy.

  ‘But I thought it went so badly,’ Kathy said. ‘I turned up late and had no languages.’

  Actually the woman had been impressed, Tina said, but made a habit of never showing it. She should do something about the languages, and there were some other courses she should do, but yes, they thought she could make a go of it.

  Kathy replaced the receiver and stared out of the window for a while. ‘Hell,’ she said at last, and dialled the number on her first letter and made the appointment with the psychologist. She was told it would be at least a week before she could report back to duty. Another week of limbo.

  She thought often of Leon Desai over the following days, but didn’t ring him, nor did he try to contact her. But in a moment of weakness she did ring Wayne O’Brien and suggested they try another Indian. He sounded regretful. That would be magic, he said, and he’d like nothing better, but things were a bit dodgy. His girlfriend had miraculously recovered from her imagined infatuation with the third member of their household, who had now departed. And despite his earlier doubts, Wayne had found it in his heart to forgive and make up, so it didn’t look as if he’d be able to manage a return match with Kathy. Much to his regret, incidentally, but he wasn’t that sort of guy. Kathy said that was fine, in a tone that suggested she had so many competing claims on her time that she hardly knew which way to turn. And was he still involved with the Springer/ Khadra case?

  He hesitated, the way an undercover man might, weighing up how much to say. ‘The case is dead as a dodo is what I hear, Kathy,’ he said finally. ‘No conspiracy, no terrorist plots. It was never really one for Special Branch, as it turned out. Shame really. I understand there’s been some new forensic evidence. Your lab liaison, Desai, has been working on it. You should talk to him.’

  Kathy didn’t, but she did ring Battle. Suzanne answered, sounding out of breath and happy. Everything was going well, she said. As she had predicted, Brock’s bandages and crutch had given him an heroic status with the grandchildren. In the background Kathy heard the cry of children and felt a twinge of regret.

  ‘But how are you, Kathy?’

  ‘Oh, busy, busy.’

  ‘Good! That’s the way to be. You are coping all right on your own? I’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘I’m not an invalid,’ Kathy laughed. ‘I was in your last batch of lame ducks, remember? All patched up and ready to fly again.’

  ‘Tina said she’d been talking to you. Sounds promising?’

  ‘Yes. I’m learning Spanish.’

  ‘Terrific! Well, you know you’re always welcome here, any time. Did you want to speak to David?’ Suzanne’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Only he’s got someone with him at the moment. A policeman. He came down from London specially. They’ve been talking for almost an hour now. Shall I get him to ring you when he’s finished?’

  ‘Thanks. Do you know the man’s name?’

  ‘Russell, it was. Superintendent Russell. I just hope he’s offering David a nice job off the streets. Doing research into police methods in warm and sunny locations, or something. Then you could do the travel arrangements for our extended overseas trips.’

  Kathy didn’t spoil Suzanne’s fantasy by telling her who Russell was. If the man who’d taken over Brock’s case was interviewing him at length now, he probably needed a lawyer more than a travel agent. Instead she asked to say hello to the children, then rang off and made a cup of coffee.

  The phone rang before she had finished it. She heard Brock’s voice and quickly said, ‘How did it go with Russell? Is it a problem?’

  He said, sounding relaxed, ‘No, no. He came down to go through his conclusions for his report to the coroner, partly out of courtesy, he said, but mainly to check that I couldn’t see any obvious holes. I’ll tell you if you promise to keep it to yourself.

  ‘It seems his faith in a forensic outcome has been justified by three new pieces of evidence that weren’t available to us. First, and most important, they found traces of gunshot residue on Khadra’s coat and gloves that matches that on Springer’s clothes, so there’s little doubt that Abu was the gunman. So then there’s the question of whether he acted alone.

  ‘The second forensic success concerns the bullet. They’ve been able to match it with another that was used in a drug-related shooting in North London eighteen months ago. Both were fired from the same gun, and there seems to be no connection between the two crimes. In other words the gun appears to be just one of those floating around the underworld black market, and Abu probably bought it from a bent dealer. Therefore no indication of the involvement of foreigners or of some larger organisation.

  ‘And thirdly, the three kids we picked up,
Ahmed Sharif and his mates, appear to be in the clear. The saliva used to lick the stamp and the gum on the torn envelope I found in Springer’s study doesn’t give a DNA match with any of them, nor with Abu. In fact it was Springer’s own saliva, presumably from a self-addressed envelope used for something else entirely. Springer could have picked up the green leaflet at any time—we know he went to Shadwell Road, and the three kids were handing them out to passers-by. So that was all irrelevant.’

  Brock paused as if skimming notes. ‘So, three bits of forensic evidence that seem to simplify the picture a good deal, supporting the view that Abu Khadra murdered Max Springer, and acted alone.’

  ‘What was his motive?’

  ‘There we can only speculate. It seems he was a private, serious young man, not socialising much with his colleagues at work, a computer fanatic and very religious. You’ve also got to remember that he grew up in Lebanon at a time when violence was seen as an obvious solution to any problem. The hypothesis is that he regarded Springer as a blasphemer who was attacking a project that aims to alleviate the lot of the faithful. However that won’t go into the report. It smacks too much of religious fundamentalism, which everyone’s keen to avoid mentioning. It’ll be up to the inquest to speculate about motive.’

  ‘You sound unconvinced, Brock,’ Kathy said after a pause.

  ‘No, no, it’s not that. It makes sense, and if I’d been in Russell’s shoes I’d probably have come up with the same answer. Just my natural scepticism, I suppose. Russell made it clear that everyone’s looking for closure on this one, and that’s exactly what he’s offering – no conspiracy, no fatwa, no jihad, just a disturbed loner with no one to speak for him now.’

  Kathy was immediately reminded of Briony Kidd’s outburst at the university about Abu’s innocence, and remembered that she hadn’t had a chance to tell Brock about it. She mentioned it now. Brock wasn’t much impressed.

  ‘That woman seemed very emotional about Springer’s death, Kathy. The forensic evidence looks pretty conclusive, I’d say. Abu killed him all right. I think Briony Kidd needs to put it behind her now and move on. Reading stuff like Springer’s books all day won’t do much to cheer her up, either.’