Murder in Hampstead

by Sabina Manea

  It was hardly a smoking gun, Lucia thought quickly. ‘Was there any DNA?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘It must have come straight out of the container, in that case,’ she deduced. ‘Mrs Byrne doesn’t wear any foundation, and neither does Margaret Walker. That leaves only one other.’

  ‘But how do we prove it’s Emilia’s?’ asked Nina. ‘Hold on, I know that look, Lulu. You’ve got a plan.’

  ‘I do. There’s no time to lose. We need to get to Beatrice Hall.’

  Lucia desperately hoped that Emilia would be there now that the police had finished. She still had the house key in her handbag and was grateful she had resisted the impulse to hand it back to Mrs Byrne. This was probably the only chance they had to catch the bold murderer responsible for the deaths of Olga Galina and Adam Corcoran.

  ‘Oh, and make sure you bring the tin of 1080 with you,’ she instructed Carliss. ‘I’ll explain when we get there.’

  * * *

  As Lucia unlocked the door, they were met with the dull noise of the hoover – it was coming from the kitchen.

  The policeman hesitated. ‘This could go disastrously wrong, Lucia. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘I know you want me to say yes, but, in truth, I’m not. Have you got a better idea?’ She knew he didn’t.

  The inspector followed Lucia to the library, while Nina hid under the staircase. He knocked and didn’t wait for an answer before entering.

  ‘Inspector. What are you doing here?’ This time Emilia had genuinely been caught unaware. She was emptying the desk drawers, and the floor was covered in sheets of paper. She looked like she had been caught in the act. Her usually mellow eyes flashed with ill-concealed hostility.

  ‘Miss Poole. There was something I wanted to follow up on if you have a minute.’ He hesitated and coughed. This was the sign to Lucia, stationed outside, who in turn would wave to Nina and then run for cover.

  Mrs Byrne’s voice resonated from downstairs. ‘Emilia! Emilia!’

  Well done, Nina, that’s a very good impression of the housekeeper, Lucia thought admiringly from her hiding place.

  ‘Excuse me for a moment, Inspector. That sounds like Mrs Byrne. I shouldn’t be too long,’ Emilia excused herself.

  As soon as Emilia disappeared down the kitchen stairs, Lucia bolted out of the nearest spare room and searched around the library for Emilia’s bag. The detective kept watch at the door, his blood pressure through the roof. Nina stayed put under the stairs, her mission accomplished for now.

  ‘Aha, see?’ Lucia pulled out a tube of foundation. The corner was slightly ripped, and a trickle of the stuff had emerged and run dry. ‘This explains it. Now for part two of the plan.’

  As Lucia disappeared back down the corridor, Emilia made her way back up. Carliss picked up his phone and pretended to be engrossed in conversation. When he was sure he was in her line of sight, he put it down and affected an air of intense agitation. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Poole. I’ve just had an urgent call from the station, and I need to be on my way. I’ll catch up with you later if that’s OK.’

  Emilia looked both bemused and relieved as he ran down the stairs and out of the front door.

  Lucia emerged silently into the corridor and stood at the top of the stairs, where she was sure that Emilia would hear her through the closed library doors. She was so nervous, she felt she might be sick. The plan was reckless, with a high probability of failure.

  ‘Yes, Inspector, good afternoon. I won’t keep you long, it’s just that you said I should call if I remember anything out of the ordinary. Well, it’s not exactly remembering – I found something. You know the tin of rat poison from under the kitchen sink at Beatrice Hall? Yes, the one that your constable returned just the other day. Well, I happened to be needing some wipes – I’d smudged some paint, you see – and I lifted up the tin to look behind it. That’s when I noticed it. A long, dried up streak running down the side. I’m pretty sure it’s foundation.’ She pretended to listen to the response of her imaginary interlocutor. ‘Yes, I understand what you’re saying, that they found no DNA on the tin. But this is really important. There’s only one woman in this household who wears foundation, and it’s not Mrs Byrne. OK, OK, please call me back as soon as you can. I’ve got the tin. I’ll leave it on the windowsill by the front door until someone gets here to collect it.’

  She huffed noisily and swore under her breath, though sufficiently loudly to make herself heard, and headed downstairs, taking care to make the steps creak as much as possible. She placed the tin carefully where she said she would and joined Nina under the stairs. They held their breath.

  The few minutes that went by felt like hours. At last, the staircase creaked tentatively under soft steps. Once at the bottom, Emilia scanned her surroundings and spotted her target. She breathed, visibly relieved, and headed for the windowsill. They could see she was wearing disposable gloves. She lifted the tin gingerly and held it up to the light.

  ‘What are you doing, Emilia?’ said Lucia as she and Nina emerged into full view.

  At the sound of Lucia’s voice, Carliss, who had been waiting outside the front door, walked back into the house and fixed Emilia with an icy stare.

  Emilia froze, and time suddenly stood very still.

  ‘Come to recover the incriminating evidence, have we?’ continued the policeman. ‘You fell for it hook, line and sinker. For all your brains, you lost, Miss Poole. Or should I say, Miss Polyakova?’

  Up until his last comment, there had been nothing but surprise and fear in Emilia’s eyes. As she heard her old name, the colour rose sharply in her cheeks. Out of the blue, the shapely mouth was distorted into a bloodcurdling scream as she charged with all her strength at Lucia. Before the others could intervene, Emilia slammed her into the wall and grabbed her by the neck. Lucia felt the shock of the impact as if everything around her had gone quiet. She heard her own skull crack against the hard surface – then, darkness.

  Chapter 34

  Lucia was conscious, even though she couldn’t feel her limbs. The pressure of her weight against a flat, moderately soft surface was the only indication that she was still alive. All she could hear was a monotonous beep. She desperately wanted to open her eyes, but they were wilfully oblivious to the signals from the brain. At last, the darkness lifted to unveil a scenery of flashing machinery and the kind face of a young woman in scrubs looking down at her. The reassuring presence smelt of soap and disinfectant.

  ‘You alright, sweetheart? Didn’t want to interrupt your rest. You’ve got some visitors waiting if you’re feeling up to it.’ The nurse pointed to the door.

  Lucia nodded groggily.

  ‘Don’t tire her out, or you’ll have me to reckon with,’ the nurse half-joked.

  DCI Carliss and Nina sat down by her bedside.

  ‘Hi, stranger. Welcome back.’ Nina smiled through uncontrollable tears.

  ‘What’s with the long faces?’ joked Lucia. ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily.’ She knew Nina wasn’t a crier, so it had to be serious.

  ‘It’s not funny, Lulu. You scared the living daylights out of us.’ Her friend leaned forward, her face pale with worry and lack of sleep. ‘The doctors couldn’t find a brain injury, but they didn’t know when you’d wake up, or what state you’d be in. We’ve been here day and night, waiting for you to come back to the land of the living.’

  Lucia winced. Despite the industrial-strength painkillers, the throbbing pain in the back of her head blurred her vision. ‘You don’t know how happy I am to see you both.’

  The inspector stared at her with his sad blue eyes. ‘The consultant said we should be prepared for the worst – anything from memory loss, speech difficulties, depression to even personality changes.’ His lips spread into a tentative smile. ‘You look much the same as before. Mind you, you haven’t told me off yet, so maybe you’ve had a personality change after all,’ he joked feebly.

  ‘What happened to Emilia?’ Lucia su
ddenly gasped. As she gradually came to her senses, the recent events began to unfurl in her mind.

  ‘I called for back-up, and she was arrested. She was completely beside herself with rage – it’s a while since I’ve seen anything like it. Uniform had to handcuff her and practically drag her kicking and screaming into the car. You can imagine the circus – apparently the whole street was out watching,’ replied the detective.

  ‘Apparently? You weren’t there?’

  ‘No, I came in the ambulance with you. We both did.’ Carliss gestured to Nina.

  Lucia was taken aback and touched at the thought that he cared enough not to leave her side.

  The policeman continued. ‘The DS had an easy time of it in the interview room. She confessed to both murders straightaway, not that they could get much sense out of her beyond that. Kept mumbling the same thing over and over again. I’ve jotted it down somewhere.’ He raked furiously through his coat pockets and extracted a crumpled piece of paper, clearly ripped out of his meticulously kept book. ‘“Child no longer required. Does not fit in with my new position.” Who would be callous enough to do that? Abandon a child like you’d return an unwanted pair of shoes?’

  ‘You’re right, and that’s why Emilia killed her almost-adoptive mother,’ Lucia said quietly. ‘The first adoption attempt failed because the Professor, or Olga Galina, or whatever you want to call her, no longer wanted the baby. A job promotion comes along and suddenly, a child turns from a desire into a burden.’

  Lucia felt her concentration waning at times, but her thought processes were as sharp as ever. At the same time, she was acutely aware of her own physical frailty. She needed to speak before the medication lulled her back into senselessness.

  ‘I’d like to tell the whole story from the beginning, if I may, now that all the pieces finally fit together. If Emilia’s had a nervous breakdown, as I suspect she would have done, it may be a while till you get any sense out of her.’ Lucia fixed Carliss with a determined look and struggled to pull herself upright. She had pins and needles in her legs from having been sedentary for so long.

  Nina rushed over and propped her up with a couple of pillows. She stroked her bedridden friend’s hair affectionately. ‘We want to hear it, Lulu. This way we can all have closure on this agonizing affair.’

  Lucia proceeded in a steady, measured voice, the kind she employed when there were uncomfortable matters to present. ‘To understand why Olga Galina died, we must first understand how she lived. Inevitably, I’ve had to fill in the gaps with my own suppositions, though I believe the principal facts to be accurate as they happened. She was born of humble stock, most likely in or around Brest, on the Soviet-Polish border, in present-day Belarus. She worked her way out of poverty, left for Minsk, went to university and made a name for herself there. A tenured position in the Faculty of Applied Mathematics at the Belarusian State University is a coveted goal. Then, one day, like many others before her, she’s approached by the secret services – the Belarusian KGB, if you will. She’s certainly in the right line of work – cybernetics in the former Soviet Union was, after all, the precursor to cyber warfare.’

  ‘Impressive knowledge,’ said DCI Carliss.

  ‘I’ve done my basic reading, as you can see. Olga Galina is smart and ruthless, and she rises quickly through the ranks. We’ve all quipped about the meaning of Clytemnestra…’ Lucia paused for breath and shook her head in a futile attempt to dispel the mounting pain.

  ‘Shall I get the nurse?’ the policeman fussed with concern.

  ‘No, I’m fine. They’ll only give me more painkillers, and I want to get to the end of my account before I lose the plot.’ Despite the discomfort, she steeled herself to plough on. ‘One day, Olga Galina takes on the job to flush out the mole at the ministry of health, who also happens to be Dr Glover’s fiancée. He’s spirited away back to the UK, and spends years wondering what really happened out there.’

  ‘Why do you think she comes from a humble background?’ the detective stopped her in mid-flow.

  ‘Ah, yes. The errors in her Russian. You’ll probably jump in to correct my pronunciation, Nina, but I believe it’s called trasianka.’

  ‘It literally means low quality hay,’ Nina took over. ‘In linguistic terms, it means a mixture of Belarusian and Russian spoken primarily by the lower orders. It goes to show that despite her extensive education, Olga couldn’t erase all traces of her origins – at least not in the shrewd eyes of a native speaker of literary Russian such as her former colleague, Dr Ivanov.’

  Lucia stroked the bedcovers absently for a few moments, then raised her head with renewed determination. ‘In the midst of her life of violence and intrigue, Olga is only human. She’s at the age when most women have settled down and are raising a family – you must remember this was a relatively traditional society – and she desperately hankers for a child of her own. She doesn’t want a husband, nor does she want to bear children herself, which makes adoption her best bet. Sentimentality, nostalgia, call it what you like, draws her back to Brest, her place of birth. She comes across Emilia at the orphanage, and the stage is set. But then Olga gets promoted at work – perhaps unexpectedly. Maybe it’s genuine, or maybe it’s a ploy by the KGB to lull her into a false sense of security. Either way, I doubt we’ll ever know. She might have become a liability, or it could just be pure jealousy at her success. The powers that be decide she needs to be disposed of. She gets wind of the plot against her and defects to the UK, where she swaps valuable information for a new identity and a quiet life – and Professor Alla Kiseleva is born. No wonder your MI5 contacts couldn’t track her down.’

  ‘Home Office,’ the inspector swiftly intervened to correct her.

  ‘Sorry – slip of the tongue.’ Lucia’s half-smile indicated she would let this one pass. ‘The Professor’s existence in this country is prosaic by comparison with her former life. She marries, her husband dies and leaves her a sizeable house and a nice amount of money, and she spends the rest of her career at the Collaborative Mathematical Society. Her life becomes accidentally intertwined with Adam Corcoran’s – the orphaned son of her beloved friend, whom she takes in.’

  ‘Adam’s effective adoption could have been some sort of misplaced maternal instinct, to make up for Emilia’s abandonment all those years ago,’ said Nina.

  ‘Is amateur psychology another one of your talents, along with speaking Russian?’ joked Carliss.

  ‘One day, the Professor, now retired, advertises for an assistant to help with her latest book.’ Lucia laughed. ‘My maths might be in the gutter, but even I can work out that a tome discussing Soviet versus American cybernetics smells a little fishy. On the Soviet front, she wouldn’t have had access to any information worth publishing unless she was extremely well connected. Along with her creaky Russian, that’s what led me to think she wasn’t the person in her passport. Then Nina dug up her MI6 file, and I knew I was on the right track.’

  ‘The words Emilia was repeating down at the station. How did she discover Olga didn’t want her anymore?’

  ‘Patience, David,’ snapped back Lucia, rather more sharply than intended. It was the first time she had called the inspector by his first name since their evening together in Kentish Town. She liked the way it sounded. ‘I’m coming on to that. Separately, Emilia is faced with yet another personal tragedy. Perhaps her parents told her she was adopted, perhaps they didn’t. I’d venture to guess she found out while sorting through their estate after their death. She finds the doll, possibly her birth certificate, and finds out her true identity. Just like we did, she contacts the Belarusian authorities. It takes months, years even, and they finally get back to her with the records we saw for ourselves. What’s to say the paperwork she got sent didn’t contain the reason for the aborted adoption?’

  ‘It wasn’t in the papers we got sent,’ retorted the inspector.

  ‘Consider yourself lucky that the public functionaries of Brest deigned to send you anything at all,’
said Nina. ‘You know how slowly these Eastern European bureaucracies work.’

  ‘OK, what next?’ said Carliss.

  ‘Emilia tracks down the university photo of Olga and realizes it’s her employer.’ There was a natural break in Lucia’s monologue as she sighed with sadness. ‘I feel for the poor girl. Her behaviour in the aftermath of her parents’ death and the ensuing scandal has clinical depression written all over it – not being able to hold down her job, flitting around purposelessly. And, just as she thinks she’s got her life back on track with the Professor, the bombshell is dropped. It would be enough to tip a more mentally stable person over the edge. So, she plots and waits. The opportunity presents itself at the impromptu tea party – given the knack for making enemies that the victim had, it’s a rare event, not to be missed. There’s a sufficiently large number of possible suspects, some with potential motive, some without. It’s the perfect set up for Emilia to disappear in.’

  ‘The way she did it was nothing short of masterful,’ said Nina admiringly. ‘So simple, yet so effective.’

  ‘Wasn’t it just.’ Lucia felt she needed to expound the method again, so as to persuade herself that a human being had actually been cruel and devious enough to put it into practice. ‘It was the tiny speck of plastic stuck to the rim of the Professor’s champagne coupe that gave it away. A not quite perfect murder.’ Lucia remembered, not without pride, how Carliss’s jaw visibly dropped when she explained her theory. ‘The inside of the glass was covered in transparent spray-on film, the kind you can buy in any hardware shop. It’s normally used to protect the paint on cars, and it peels off in seconds without leaving any marks. I’ve got some in my van, which is why I thought of it. Besides, the glass was ornately decorated, so any imperfections or suspicious opacity would have been masked by the pattern. Emilia knew she only had seconds to dispose of the evidence after the Professor collapsed. To remove the glass any earlier would have risked insufficient ingestion of the poison or could have drawn unwanted attention to the item. Once the desired effect was achieved, there wouldn’t have been enough time to remove the glass and wash it out, but Emilia could dab the remaining champagne with a tissue, whip the film clean off and pour a little fresh drink back in to fool the police. Except not all the film came off. The speck must have got stuck on a portion of the rim that didn’t touch the Professor’s mouth. Since the rim wasn’t contaminated with the 1080, forensics consequently found nothing.’