He dropped her off outside Charing Cross Station and continued on down Whitehall towards the Yard. Kathy went into the entrance to the station and took the stairs down to the tube. They had got back into town earlier than she had expected, and the corridors were crowded with home-going commuters. She took the Northern Line northbound, but instead of continuing all the way to her home stop at Finchley Central, suddenly changed her mind after Tottenham Court Road and got off the train at the next stop. It was dark when she reached the street, the shop lights reflecting from wet pavements. By the entrance to the Underground a news vendor was pulling a clear plastic sheet down over one end of his stall to protect it from the cold drizzle which was beginning to blow in earnest from the east.
Jerusalem Lane was deserted. The two lamps which served as street lighting for its length had just switched on, giving an ineffectual dim white light as they struggled to warm up. The shop fronts at this north end of the Lane were all in darkness, and any lights in occupied upstairs rooms were heavily curtained against the night. Kathy thought of the Doré etching in Hepple’s office, with its teeming mass of humanity seething down this street. All ghosts now.
She walked towards the door of Hepple’s office, and was rewarded by the reflected glow of the windows of the Balaton Café, facing into the little square ahead, and the smell of cooking. There were two front doors beside the brass plate, one for the solicitor’s office, and the other for Sylvia Pemberton’s flat. Kathy pressed the buzzer beside the second. After a moment an unrecognizable squawk came from a small speaker on the wall.
‘It’s Kathy Kolla, Miss Pemberton, from the police. We met this morning. Could I trouble you again for a minute?’
Another squawk came from the box and the front door gave a click. Kathy pushed and went in. The stairs rose in front of her in two straight flights to the second floor, where Sylvia Pemberton stood waiting for her.
She left her wet coat in the hall and they went into a snug sitting room, filled with furniture as ample as their owner.
‘I’d just settled down with my usual G and T, wondering whether to chance the Balaton’s goulash or put up with frozen chicken in front of the TV, so I’m very pleased to be intruded upon. I’ll call you Kathy, shall I? Sergeant seems rather formal in front of your own gas fire, don’t you think? And I’m Sylvia. Let me pour you one. It doesn’t taste the same if you’re with someone who isn’t drinking, and you’re not going to arrest me, are you? Not yet, anyway.’ She roared with laughter. Relaxed, her cheeks rosy with the heat of the fire and the gin, she seemed larger than life.
‘It was something you started to say this morning, Sylvia,’ Kathy began, easing back into the plump cushions carefully so as not to spill anything from the generously filled glass. ‘Just as Mr Hepple arrived. Something about the way the neighbourhood was going downhill or something. I just wondered what you meant.’
‘Ah, yes. It’s been in the back of my mind for months, and poor Meredith Winterbottom going like that just seemed to bring it all into focus. The place is changing, and the weird thing is that nobody seems to have noticed it. I mean normally the slightest thing happening in the Lane would go round like wildfire. But over the past year things have been going on that seemed . . . well, reasonable enough on their own, but taken together . . .’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Well, the most obvious were the Kowalskis selling up and moving away, and then Mr Hepple deciding to sell this place too. They both have long connections with the Lane, and two of them closing down is a big change for this area, which has really been very stable in the past. Then there’s Konrad Witz going too, and on top of all that, lots of smaller things I noticed. I do the books for several businesses around here, so I get to know how things are going, and everyone has been doing reasonably well lately, certainly no worse than before. But I noticed odd things.
‘First, Brunhilde Capek cancelled her plans to renovate her flower shop. Now she’d been going on about it for so long, and at last had actually got a builder ready, that I couldn’t believe she’d changed her mind. She said she’d run into some problems with the council over the drains, but I didn’t see how that would stop the whole thing.
‘A bit later I noticed that a couple of places seemed to be running down their stock. And then when I did Stwosz’s books last year I saw he’d started paying rent, even though he owned the place before. When I asked him, it turned out he’d sold his shop, and was leasing it back. But he didn’t really want to discuss it. Like Mr Hepple or Adam Kowalski, when you ask why, they explain it in terms which make sense for them, which is fair enough, because they’re all getting older. But so many, all at once . . .’
‘I see. Yes, that is odd. Mr Hepple did mention that he was closing down here, but he didn’t say anything about the others.’
‘No, well . . .’ Sylvia Pemberton hesitated, then said, ‘Actually, he’s not all that keen to talk about it, I’ve found. He even told me at one point not to discuss the matter with anyone in the Lane. But they’re all the same. Everyone’s been so secretive, keeping it all to themselves, and even more peculiar, they’re not much concerned at what the others are up to, and that just isn’t like the Lane at all. It’s almost as if everyone had just suddenly lost interest in the place.’
‘What about Mrs Winterbottom, was she considering selling?’
‘Not as far as I know. I didn’t do her books—she still goes to the accountant her husband had when he was alive. But she often used to have a chat to me about things she was considering, and ask my opinion.’
‘What would have been the most recent things she talked to you about?’
Sylvia Pemberton sipped her drink, thinking, and then suddenly chuckled.
‘Oh well, I remember one day, maybe six months ago, or perhaps longer, we stopped and had a chat in the street. I asked how her son and his family were. She was ever so proud of them. The older granddaughter, Alex, was doing very well at university, and Louise getting ready for her O levels. And Terry, her son—oh, he was doing so well, running five hairdressing salons in South London, and he and his wife were going off for a wonderful holiday to some place in the Indian Ocean, or something. Only Terry has cash-flow problems, Meredith explains, like all successful businessmen do, because they’re maximizing their resources. This is what she tells me, and it’s obvious they’re Terry’s words. So Terry has suggested to his old mother that it would be an excellent idea all round if she would mortgage her house in the Lane, and lend him the money so as to ease these temporary cash-flow problems.’
Sylvia roared with laughter.
‘She looks at me carefully after she’s told me this, and says what do I think? Well, I told her. Let Terry look after his own cash-flow problems, and keep the house free of debt, the way her husband left it to her. She seemed quite relieved, I think. It had been worrying her.’
‘Someone else said that Meredith had seemed worried about something lately. Would that be the reason, do you think?’
‘I don’t know, Kathy. I hadn’t really seen so much of her lately, to speak to. She seemed to keep a bit more to herself.’
‘Did everyone like her really, Sylvia? I mean, after someone dies, everyone says nice things about them, but no one gets through a lifetime without falling out with a few people. Particularly in a close-knit street like this, I should think.’
‘Well, Meredith was a very gregarious sort of person, and couldn’t help herself getting involved in other people’s lives, especially if they were in trouble and needed a helping hand. I suppose sometimes people like that are a bit annoying. I mean, when you’re not in trouble they still like to come round and organize you. I can still remember one day ages ago when Mr Hepple offered to take Meredith and me out to the new shopping centre at Brent Cross for the afternoon. As soon as we drove off she started, “Oh, you’d go this way to Euston Road, would you, Mr Hepple?” and “Turn left here, George” and “I always think the Edgware Road is better than the Finchley Road,
but you know best, I suppose”. Mr Hepple didn’t say a word, but when we got home, he said to me, “She’s a wonderful woman in many ways, Sylvia, but that is the first and last time that I will ever have her in my car.” ’
Kathy joined Sylvia’s laughter. ‘Yes, I have an uncle like that.’
‘Top you up, Kathy? Yes, come on, you’re not driving and you’re off duty now. As I said, I don’t mind drinking alone, but it feels bad to drink with someone who isn’t.’
‘All right.’ It had been a long day, and more of a strain doing it with Brock alongside her than she’d realized. ‘Just a small one, though, Sylvia. I have to go out tonight.’
‘Oh. Someone nice?’
‘I think so.’
‘Lucky you. Maybe he’s got a nice older brother going spare. Actually, I don’t think I’d know what to do with one any more.’ They laughed again. ‘No, I’m looking forward to moving down to Tonbridge when Hepple, Tyas & Turton closes down. I’ve got friends down there who play eighteen holes every day, 365 days a year, rain, hail or shine.’
Kathy smiled, visualizing four ladies of Sylvia’s build ploughing round the fairways, year after year.
‘You won’t miss this place?’
‘Oh yes, but time for a change.’
‘Did Meredith ever have a more serious tiff with anyone, though?’
Sylvia thought. ‘I suppose the thing with Adam Kowalski did get a bit tense. Have you met him? No. Well, they’ve gone now, although I did see him up here at the weekend, come to think of it. Still clearing things from his shop, I suppose.
‘Anyway, it was a day when some royalty or other was getting married or something, and there was a street party in Jerusalem Lane. The bunting was out, and there was music and they were doing their polkas and mazurkas out there in the square. Meredith was talking to Marie Kowalski, Adam’s wife, who I think might have had one or two vodkas. Anyway, Meredith was going on about how wonderful her granddaughters were, with Alex going to university, and Marie comes out with the fact that at one time Adam had been the youngest and most brilliant professor in the University of Cracow, which was the second-oldest university in Europe, or something like that. So Meredith says, why is he selling second-hand books now then, and Marie says that he had been made professor just before the war, but during the war terrible things happened, and afterwards things were such a mess, he never got back to the university, he had enemies in the new government, and eventually they left and came over here.’
‘Well, of course Meredith wouldn’t leave it at that. She says, well, if he’s such a brilliant scientist or whatever he was, he should have been in a university here, and his talents should have been recognized. She started talking about writing to the newspapers about it. Well, Marie started to get worried at this point apparently, and tried to get Meredith to let it alone, but Meredith starts saying how she’ll get Mr Hepple to have a word with a judge he knows who’s the chancellor of some university or other.
‘Well, eventually, when Marie can see that things are getting out of hand, she confesses to Meredith that the reason Adam was kicked out of the university was that during the war he’d been forced to collaborate with the Germans. Apparently they had told him that either he collaborate with them or else Marie would be taken away to the camps, and so all through the war he had been reporting to the Gestapo on his students.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Yes. After the war the Poles didn’t punish him, but he found he couldn’t get work, and the whole family was completely ostracized. It’s a very sad story. But the terrible thing was that Meredith still wouldn’t leave it alone. She thought it was shocking that they should go on being punished for something that had happened so long ago. She wanted to get him the recognition he deserved for his early genius, and started telling the story to other people. Adam was appalled. I mean, it might seem like it happened a long time ago to us, but to some of the people here, it’s still very fresh. Mrs Rosenfeldt, for instance, she was in Auschwitz. She lost all her family there. The Kowalskis had come here to escape from everyone who knew their story, and now Meredith was opening it all up again. It must have seemed like a nightmare. Adam was devastated. He pleaded with her to be quiet. I believe he threatened her, too. Her sisters came to her defence, and then his friends pitched in.’
‘The Croatia Club?’
‘Yes, Konrad Witz mainly, who had the camera shop on the corner up by the tube station, and other old drinking mates. They were a bit abusive to the sisters for a while, I believe.’
‘Mrs Rosenfeldt called them Nazis.’
‘Oh, no. I mean most of the people who have come here since the war have been running away from communist countries, so they don’t like Peg and Eleanor’s politics, but they don’t go around painting swastikas on the synagogue or anything like that! But they are a funny lot, you know, so intense. They’d give each other their last pound, and then have a raging argument over some crown prince or general or something who died fifty years ago. They forget nothing. Did Mrs Rosenfeldt tell you about her dog?’
‘No, I didn’t know she has one.’
‘She hasn’t, not for twenty years. But the story of Mrs Rosenfeldt’s dog is one of the sagas of the Lane. Are you sure you want to hear it?’
Kathy smiled. ‘Go on.’
‘Mrs Rosenfeldt has been here longer than anyone. She met her husband in one of those refugee camps after the war and they came over here soon after, so by the time the others arrived, the ones escaping from the communists, she’d already been here a good few years. I can remember her quite well when I first started to work here for Mr Hepple, in 1969. She was a widow by that stage, and she used to walk up and down the Lane, chatting to everyone, pretty much as if she owned the place, and with her she would take her dog. He was one of those little pugs, you know? The kind that looks as if it’s walked into a brick wall.
‘It was a snappy little beast, and it seemed to have a knack of sharing its owner’s prejudices about people, giving the ones that Mrs Rosenfeldt didn’t like a hard time. It would bark at them and bite their heels, and leave little messages on their doorsteps. Mr Witz especially. It used to drive him mad, stepping out of his shop and straight into one of the dog’s little messages. Well, one day someone left a message for Mrs Rosenfeldt. She opened the shop door one morning, and there was the dog, dead. It might have been run over, but Mr Stwosz next door saw it, and he said it looked more like as if someone had whacked it, here’—she pointed to her forehead—‘with a hammer. Poor Mrs Rosenfeldt. Everyone felt terrible for her, although there weren’t many people sorry to see the back of the dog.’
‘Who did it?’
‘No one knows. Mrs Rosenfeldt didn’t make a fuss or anything. She didn’t accuse anyone, and she didn’t let anyone see that she was upset. But she was much quieter after that, and stayed indoors more.’
Kathy nodded. ‘Nasty. What about the other problem, Sylvia, between Meredith and the Kowalskis? How long ago did that happen?’
‘Last year, I think. When Prince whatsisname got married. The time goes by so quickly now.’
Kathy left soon after, and made her way back to the tube feeling considerably more relaxed than when she had arrived. When she stepped through the front door of her flat, the light on the answering machine was blinking. She replayed the message, swore, stomped into the kitchen and slammed a frozen chicken dinner into the microwave.
7
Brock’s home phone rang just after 7 the next morning. It was Kathy.
‘Sir, I’m sorry but I just looked in my diary and realized I’m supposed to be giving evidence in court this morning. With everything going on yesterday I just forgot all about it. I should be through by 11.’
‘Not to worry. I’ve got some things I could be doing at the Yard. Anything you want me to follow up for you?’
‘Well, I went back and spoke to Sylvia Pemberton, the solicitor’s secretary, on the way home last night, and there are a couple of things we could follow up.
’
She outlined Sylvia’s account of property changes in the Lane, and of Meredith Winterbottom’s falling out with the Kowalskis and their friends.
‘All right, I’ll see what I can find out. Get an officer to ring me at the Yard when you’re called, and I’ll come over and pick you up.’
When he arrived in the office at 9, Brock phoned George Hepple at his Croydon office, leaving a message for him to return the call when he arrived. He rang back shortly before 10.
‘Sorry to bother you again, Mr Hepple. It occurred to us that with you and the Kowalskis selling up, there might be other property movements going on in Jerusalem Lane. Are you aware of any?’
There was a pause.
‘Yes. I don’t think it’s any secret that there is, in point of fact, a proposal for some redevelopment in the Jerusalem Lane area before the council planning committee at this moment.’
‘A council development?’
‘No, it is a commercial project, by a private development company. Do you want their name?’
‘Yes please.’
Again a pause.
‘First City Properties.’
‘How many properties in the block have changed hands over the past few years, would you say, Mr Hepple?’
‘I really couldn’t say, Chief Inspector.’
The solicitor seemed considerably less loquacious this morning.
‘An estimate. Ten per cent?’ Silence. ‘Fifty?’ More silence. ‘Ninety?’
‘I’m sorry, I really can’t say,’ the solicitor said at last. ‘I think you will find that quite a few residents of the area, getting older, have decided to take advantage of a buoyant property market to retire elsewhere.’
‘I see. And Mrs Winterbottom? Had she considered such a move?’
The solicitor’s conversational speed seemed stuck in its slowest gear. There was another pause while he considered the question.
‘She had considered it, yes.’
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