Babel

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Oh, we’re all busy. You were ready to go back, weren’t you? I thought it was too soon, but you must have felt it was right.’

  ‘I didn’t think so at first, but, you know, you get caught up . . .’

  ‘Mm. And David, he’s very caught up at present too, I gather.’

  ‘Yes. We’ve reached a point . . . it’s hard to describe, where we seem to have most of the bits we need to wrap the thing up, but somehow it refuses to gel.’

  ‘Sounds like my attempts to make plum jelly. And of course, this is David’s moment, isn’t it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The stage in the investigation where the great detective discovers the truth that’s eluded everybody else.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘I’m not being sarcastic, but it is something like that, isn’t it? The enlightenment. It’s what David lives for, that moment . . . if you don’t get there first.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. He described you once as quick on your feet. I think that’s what he meant. You’ve beaten him to it once or twice, haven’t you?’

  Kathy suddenly felt herself under examination, Suzanne looking at her over the rim of her coffee cup.

  ‘You mean he resents it?’

  ‘No, no. I’m sure he doesn’t. I just think he’s been surprised. That’s good. You keep him on his toes. I know he was very worried that you might want to quit.’

  All the same, Kathy had a vague sense that Suzanne was giving her a warning.

  ‘I feel bad about letting Tina down after she went to all that trouble for me. Is she annoyed?’

  ‘I honestly don’t think she ever really saw you escorting old ladies round the pyramids, but give her a call. And how’s your lovely Art Malik friend?’

  ‘Leon?’ Kathy laughed. ‘He doesn’t look like Art Malik, does he?’

  ‘Brock says he does, a younger version. I’m dying to meet him. Did he contribute to your recovery?’

  ‘He was part of the problem. You know we were, well, quite close, before Christmas.’

  ‘I got that impression, yes. I never learned what went wrong.’

  ‘A misunderstanding . . . no, a mistake, on my part. I missed an appointment. Only it was more complicated than that. There was a woman I was jealous about . . .’

  ‘Freud said we don’t really make mistakes like that. Maybe you missed the appointment on purpose, without realising it. Was he cross?’

  ‘Yes. Everything fell apart after that. Probably just as well. Having a relationship with someone at work only complicates things.’

  ‘Really? Only David happened to mention a Special Branch officer—oh, he didn’t say anything, but it was the way he didn’t say anything that made my ears prick up. Was I wrong?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kathy said firmly. ‘That was a figment of Brock’s imagination, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Suzanne smiled quietly to herself. ‘Figments can be fun sometimes.’

  21

  Despite newspaper reports that he was helping police with their inquiries, Haygill had been released on the evening of the Thursday on which he had first been interviewed following the discovery of the gun, pending further investigations. The searches of his premises had yielded plenty of documentary material, including bank statements and correspondence with backers in the Middle East, but nothing immediately incriminating. On the following Monday he was reinterviewed, this time by Bren and Kathy, with Brock observing from the adjoining room. Kathy’s role was to look sceptical but say little, Bren’s to be actively hostile and disbelieving. Brock was pleased to see that Haygill looked as if the weekend had not raised his spirits. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his speech had lost its former confidence and had become hesitant. Throughout the interview he looked frequently to his solicitor for guidance and, perhaps, reassurance.

  ‘Tell us how you recruited Abu Khadra?’ Bren asked, feeling more confident that Haygill’s decline might throw up some mistake or inconsistency.

  ‘It would have been about eighteen months ago, I think . . . umm, I can check the exact date . . .’ Bren waved a hand dismissively and Haygill continued. ‘I was on a visit to the University of Qatar. We’d recently lost our computer programmer, and the university provider wasn’t giving us the sort of service we needed, so I was on the lookout for someone.’

  ‘An Arab?’

  ‘Well, not necessarily, but we’re happy to recruit suitably qualified people from the region. Our sponsors like it, and we see it as part of our educational role. I think I explained to your Chief Inspector . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes. Go on.’

  ‘Well, Abu approached me. He’d heard of our project, and was very interested. He was just finishing a master’s degree at Qatar, as it happened, and was looking for opportunities. He was highly recommended by his supervisor, and after meeting him a couple of times during my visit I offered him a job.’

  ‘Just like that? No advertisements, interviews?’

  ‘His position is funded by our external research income, so I have discretion.’

  ‘So he owed his advancement entirely to you and to no one else.’

  ‘If you like . . .’

  ‘And this was the reason why he regarded you as a sort of father figure, is it? Or was there more to it?’

  ‘Your Chief Inspector used that phrase, but really, that’s putting it far too strongly. He was respectful, but no more than others.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Professor! He hero-worshipped you! That’s certainly the impression we’ve been getting.’

  ‘Well, I don’t—’

  ‘You know his personal history, do you? He lost both his parents at an early age, and was taken in by a family in which, from all accounts, the father was a petty crook.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘So when a man like you came along and changed his life, offering him a chance to work under you in Europe on a glamorous leading-edge research project, he obviously felt more beholden than an employee would normally do to his boss, don’t you think?’

  ‘I never was aware of any special sense of indebtedness,’ Haygill said with a kind of tired persistence, sounding as if his stamina was giving out. ‘He planned to do a Ph.D. at UCLE part-time while he was working for us, but . . . I don’t think he ever enrolled. Probably we kept him too busy. He was very good at his work. We soon began to realise what an asset he was.’

  ‘And naturally you praised him . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And rewarded him. I see from his employment records that his salary was increased three times during the past fifteen months.’

  ‘Yes. We didn’t want to lose him, and salaries for such people have been going through the roof recently. Darr recommended, I agreed . . .’

  This went on for some hours, Bren aggressively probing, Haygill fending him off with declining but stubborn energy. When they finally let him go he had given them nothing that changed anything.

  On the following day Brock received two early phone calls. The first came from Haygill’s solicitor, to say that his client was satisfied that he had done all that he reasonably could to assist the police, and that he had nothing more to say. If the police felt that they had grounds to charge him, they should go ahead and do so.

  The second was from Mrs Haygill, requesting another meeting. When she arrived, she was wearing a new limegreen suit, her hair curled in a different style, and Brock guessed that the salons and boutiques of Cheadle Hulme had had a good weekend, for the purposes of morale. She sat very straight in her chair, holding an expensive new handbag in front of her like a shield.

  Brock said, ‘I thought you were up in Manchester, Mrs Haygill.’

  ‘I decided to come back. I thought things over, and I decided that my place is by my husband’s side. You should understand that we met yesterday afternoon, and we are reconciled.’

  ‘Reconciled, I see.’

  ‘And therefore I will refuse to give evidence against my husband, if he is charged with
anything. My solicitor says you can’t make me.’

  ‘Well, that is true. But you did give us a voluntary statement before, which was properly witnessed and recorded. And we found the gun you spoke of, exactly where you told us we would.’

  She flushed, pursed her lips. ‘For which my husband has a perfectly reasonable explanation, which he has now related to me. He was trying to protect his staff out of loyalty. It was a mistake, but an understandable one.’

  ‘To attempt to conceal a murder weapon, Mrs Haygill?’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Tell me, what brought about this change of heart?’

  ‘I . . . I was too hasty. I reacted in anger to what I was told, when in fact it was incorrect. There was a misunderstanding.’ ‘About what?’

  ‘It’s really none of your business,’ she snapped, then hesitated and seemed to decide that she shouldn’t appear uncooperative. ‘I mentioned the last time that I was led to believe that my husband had hired a private detective to spy on me. Well, it appears that was incorrect. The man who was mistaken for the detective heard what had happened and got in touch with me. He said it was all a misunderstanding and my informant had got it all wrong.’

  ‘That was very decent of him. Did he say what his occupation really was?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but I guessed, from something he said, that he was a reporter, sniffing around for a story about my husband and Max Springer. When he was confronted, he let it be understood that he was a private detective.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Tah . . . My informant accused him of being that, and he thought it simplest to agree.’

  ‘And you’re now convinced that your husband had no part in the murder of Max Springer?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Despite Springer coming to see you to warn you that he intended to ruin him?’

  ‘I . . . I may have been mistaken about that.’

  ‘About him coming to see you?’

  ‘No, I mean, about him saying that he planned to ruin Richard. It may not have been as strong as that. Maybe . . . maybe it was more like, he wanted to have Richard and his research centre kicked out of the university.’

  ‘Maybe . . . ?’ Brock looked at her with disbelief, and she lowered her eyes, embarrassed, but pressed on with the story she’d rehearsed, or been coached in.

  ‘Though, of course, he’d have had no chance of doing that. So it was all nonsense really.’

  Brock sat back in his chair and gave a deep sigh. ‘And you’ve now told your husband about Springer’s visit to you that day?’

  ‘Yes. And I realise that I made too much of it when I talked to you. I’m sorry, but I was feeling quite . . . emotional, that day. Because of the story of the private detective, you see.’

  After she left Brock sat alone in the room for a while, frowning, doodling a diagram of a ziggurat. He could imagine the regrouping that would have gone on in Haygill’s camp after Bren had finished grilling him the previous afternoon, and with the return of his wife. He imagined the schooling of Mrs Haygill, the plans for damage limitation, and the dawning realisation that there might yet be a way out of what must have seemed an impossible situation. And Leon had played his part in Haygill’s recovery, just as he had in his collapse. He reached for the phone and dialled Leon’s number.

  ‘I’ve just had a visit from Professor Haygill’s wife, Leon,’ he said, keeping his voice level. ‘I would have appreciated hearing from you before you spoke to her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Brock.’ Leon sounded suitably penitent. ‘I just felt I had to do it on my own, without getting you involved, in case this ever comes out. After I heard about Mrs Haygill leaving her husband, I felt I had to do something to put things right with her. Apart from anything else, suppose I’d been called in court and Darr had recognised me?’

  Brock had also thought of that. The whole thing had been misconceived from the beginning.

  ‘I just thought this was the best way to get out of it.’ Leon added, sounding very unhappy. ‘Will it affect your case, her coming to see you?’

  Somewhat mollified, Brock said, ‘We’ll have to wait and see. Don’t worry about it. But Leon, the next time you decide to go undercover, speak to me first, will you?’

  Brock’s morning was made complete by a call from Reggie Grice to say that he had now read the document provided by Haygill, describing the BRCA4 protocol, and he thought it was brilliant.

  ‘That wasn’t the word I was hoping for, Reggie.’

  ‘No, I know. I’m sorry.’

  Everyone, it seemed, wanted to apologise this morning. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘It seems I may have misled you over this project. The whispers I’d heard aren’t borne out by the document at all. There’s nothing here that my committees would be likely to object to if the experiments were to be carried out in this country.’

  ‘Nothing ethically dubious?’

  ‘Not that I could see.’

  ‘Could the document you’ve got have been sanitised, Reggie? It’s easy enough to excise a few paragraphs or chapters on the word processor.’

  ‘I took your warning to look out for that, but I honestly couldn’t find any gaps in the process that’s described here. It stands complete, and I have to say, it’s bloody impressive. If they can get it to work the way it’s set out here, it’s potentially Nobel laureate standard. As good as that.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ It seemed that Haygill’s prospects were recovering as rapidly as they had earlier collapsed.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Reggie, if Springer had got hold of a copy of that document, could he have misinterpreted it, do you think?’

  ‘Did he have any scientific training? Biochemistry?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then I don’t think he could have understood a word of it. It’s a highly technical report, not written for the layman, or even for publication in a scientific journal. It’s very specific to the discipline. More likely Springer got wind of the same misleading rumours that I’d heard, thought “no smoke without fire” and tried to fan the flames.’

  Brock called a team conference later that day and they discussed their options. Bren was all for persisting with Haygill or failing that Darr, but, in the absence of any evidence of the source of Abu’s money, it became clear that he was in a minority. Brock reported to Superintendent Russell that evening with his recommendation that Abu Khadra had acted alone, out of misguided loyalty, and without the knowledge of Richard Haygill. He also recommended that no charges be brought against Haygill for attempting to hide the murder weapon, in view of the fact that his wife had disclosed its whereabouts.

  Russell read the single sheet of recommendations, then eyed Brock shrewdly. ‘You’re not satisfied, are you?’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  Russell smiled. ‘What’s bothering you?’

  ‘Well, the money . . . But more than that . . . intangibles. The way Springer was murdered, so public, so theatrical. It doesn’t seem to fit Khadra’s purpose, or his character. Why not do it in some dark lane, miles away from the university, where there’d be nothing to immediately connect it with university politics?’

  ‘But isn’t that the way of the fanatic, Brock, to make a big public statement? To teach people a lesson? And Khadra was a fanatic, wasn’t he? That passage in the Qur’an he left for you as good as said it.’

  Brock shrugged.

  ‘A negative result always seems less satisfactory, Brock, I know, but it is a result, nevertheless. I’m satisfied you couldn’t come to any other conclusion. I’m sure the Crown Prosecution Service wouldn’t support us pressing any further charges on the basis of what we’ve come up with.’

  The following morning they gave a press conference at which they stated that the police had completed their investigations into the murder of Max Springer, and no further charges were being considered. This was widely reported in the news media that evening and on the following, Thursday, morning, when
the Herald also carried an interview with Professor Roderick Young expressing his own and the university’s complete confidence in Professor Richard Haygill and the hope that the tragic events of the previous weeks could now be laid to rest.

  On Friday morning, while the team was dismantling the room they had been using for the Springer inquiry, Dot brought in a letter for Brock. It had been marked ‘Personal’ and addressed to him at New Scotland Yard. Inside he found a green printed pamphlet with an illustration of a clenched fist and a message in Arabic and English.

  ‘Ruined are the liars who flounder about in ignorance. They ask: When will the Day of Judgement be? It will be on the day when they are afflicted with the Fire, and are told: Suffer your torment.’

  Sura 51 : 9

  It caused a stir of concern, which Brock promptly dismissed. It was probably the tearaway Ahmed Sharif, not letting the opportunity for a bit of tub-thumping pass, he said. And in a way it seemed a rather appropriate footnote to the whole sorry business, which had begun with just such a letter to Max Springer.

  They had a bit of a laugh about it in the office. Bren’s theory was that it had been sent by the Inland Revenue. But Kathy didn’t laugh. She remembered Leon’s warning about Darr and the Iraqis, and when she could get Brock on his own she said as much to him. He shrugged, an impassive, untroubled look on his face, and told her not to worry.

  22

  Brock woke suddenly, starting from the armchair in which he’d nodded off. A sound had woken him. He heard the plaintive horn of a train passing through the fog-bound cutting beyond his window, the bang of a fogwarning cap on the line. The warmth of the gas fire, the whisky at his elbow, the heavy book he’d been trying to read, the exhaustion of Friday night, had all sent him into a torpor. But he woke now clear-headed and alert, his mind filling with a conviction of remarkable clarity. His leg was aching and he stretched it slowly as if afraid of shattering the thought. In some odd way it seemed almost as if the pain in his injured knee and the idea in his head were connected, both equally sharp.