Authors: Barry Maitland
‘Important?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The meeting. Is it important?’
‘Ah. Well.’ He looked doubtfully at the papers on his desk, about two inches thick. ‘A meeting of the Academic Board sub-committee to decide the composition of the Committee on Gender Equity in Selection and Promotion Procedures.’
‘Well, ours is a murder inquiry, and I really don’t want to take up much of your time, but I’d like to do it now.’ Dr Endicott’s eyes widened at the word ‘murder’. Brock pressed on before he could frame a question. ‘Have you been aware of any difficulties Mr Kowalski might have been having lately?’
‘Not really.’
‘I have the impression that he’s not happy in his work. Would that be fair?’
‘Not happy? Well. Like many of us, he has had to adjust to changing circumstances. Funding cuts, new priorities, and so on. I think he has found it rather difficult. He was in a particularly hard-hit area.’
‘Has he been looking for some alternative?’
‘I really feel he should be telling you this himself. But I suppose I can say that I did write one or two references for
him some three or four years back. Nothing recently, though. I rather thought he’d, er, become reconciled.’
‘Is he a popular member of staff?’
‘Ah . . .’ Dr Endicott swept some lank hair back from his lined forehead and frowned at his papers as he thought about that. ‘He is a challenging colleague, one might say. Abrasive, even.’
‘Yes, that was rather our impression. And is that the result of his work frustrations, would you say, or is there some other reason?’
‘Oh, I really couldn’t say. I always felt there was something . . . fiery in his make-up. Central European, you know.’
‘You’ve sent him to conferences, I believe. One just last week.’
‘Really?’ Endicott looked vague.
‘The University of Nottingham?’
‘Ah yes. Not really a conference. More a staff development course, really. “Communication under Conditions of Stress” or something like that. Quite appropriate given our staff–student ratios.’
‘And last September?’
‘I can’t recall him being away last September. I could, get the file. Maureen will remember, I’m sure.’
‘Scarborough?’
‘Oh yes. That was a conference. Not really his field if I recall, but the Departmental Conferences Committee felt rather sorry for him, I think.’
‘So he went to Canada?’
‘Canada? Good heavens no! Scarborough in Yorkshire! There would have been no way of sending him to an overseas conference with our budget in the state it was!’
‘Yet we have reason to believe he went to Canada during the first week of last September.’
‘Really? Skipped off to Canada when he was supposed to be at the conference in Yorkshire? Are you sure?’ Dr Endicott seemed rather taken with the idea.
‘Are you aware of any connection he might have had with North America—friends, relatives, academic connections?’
‘Well, no.’ He hesitated, then shook his head as if dismissing an absurd idea.
‘Something?’
‘Well, the only “connection” that springs to mind is that we had an exchange student from Canada in the department last year. Rather personable young woman. But that hardly seems relevant.’
‘Felix taught her?’
‘Emm, I couldn’t say. Maureen would know, our departmental secretary. We might ask her.’ Dr Endicott seemed to have forgotten about his committee meeting as he led them out to the departmental office, where Maureen was briskly giving orders to a group of confused students. She turned to deal with the Head of Department with the same determined look on her face.
‘These gentlemen are from the Metropolitan Police, Maureen.’
‘I know. I told them you wouldn’t be able to see them. You were supposed to be at that committee meeting five minutes ago.’
Dr Endicott cleared his throat. ‘Yes, well, they need some assistance regarding that Canadian girl who was here last year. Do you remember?’
Maureen ignored his question and turned on Brock. ‘Are you the same lot that have been searching Felix Kowalski’s office?’
‘Searching?’ Endicott looked startled.
‘We have a search warrant, sir. Look, if you want to go to your meeting now, that will be fine. You’ve been most helpful. If we can just have a few moments of Maureen’s time.’
Maureen rolled her eyes and broke off to give instructions to the photocopier repair man who had just appeared.
Dr Endicott hesitated, then regretfully sighed and turned back to his room to collect his papers.
‘Well?’ Maureen returned her attention to Brock and Gurney.
‘Do you recall the Canadian student Dr Endicott mentioned, Maureen?’ Brock asked amiably.
She looked suspiciously at him for a moment. ‘What is this all about?’
‘We’re conducting a murder investigation. We’d appreciate your co-operation.’
Maureen’s eyes lit up with curiosity. ‘You think Felix has murdered someone?’
‘He’s helping us with our inquiries,’ Brock said. ‘Do you remember her?’
‘Of course I do. She’s been writing to him every week since she went back.’
‘To him here?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose he wants her to write to him at home!’ She smiled grimly.
‘Did you know he went over there last September?’
‘No, I didn’t know that.’ She shook her head. ‘But, I do remember a call from a travel agent for him, which I thought was a bit funny. Sometime in the middle of last year.’ Her eyes wandered away in the direction of the corridor leading to Felix’s room. ‘What exactly are you looking for?’
‘Some old books. Are there other places we should look?’
‘Only . . .’ She hesitated, then shrugged. ‘He left a box in my store cupboard last year. Just before Christmas term started. I told him to move it somewhere else because I’ve got little enough space as it is to keep the stationery and departmental records and so on, but he never did.’
She showed him a door in the corner of the office, opening into a small storeroom with shelves crammed with boxes, files and papers. On the floor at the back they found an old box for photocopy paper, sealed with brown plastic
tape. Bren lifted it out on to Maureen’s table and took the scissors she offered him. From the look of the tape the box had been opened and resealed several times. He folded back the flaps of the box and brought out a wad of Canadian airmail envelopes held together with a rubber band. Then he began carefully to pull out the books. Brock reached for one with a frayed black leather spine. ‘Proudhon’s
Confessions
,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘We seem to have found our dealer, Bren.’
‘Will he be away long?’ Maureen called after them as they left, Bren carrying the box under his arm. ‘Only we’ll have to rearrange his classes.’
They called in at the hospital on the way back. Kathy was conscious, gazing through half-open, bruised eyelids at the snow falling past the window against the grey of the morning sky. A tube was in her nose. She creased her eyes in a smile, the unbruised parts of her face as pale as the pillow and the bandages around her head.
‘A little better?’
She nodded and wiggled the fingers of her left hand, which Brock, sitting beside her, took in his own. Bren remained standing at the end of the bed, unable to keep the concern out of his eyes. She looked towards the plaster cast on her right arm.
‘Haven’t told me,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘What’s the damage?’
Brock cleared his throat. ‘Three fingers of your right hand are broken,’ he said.
‘Anything else?’ she asked faintly.
‘One of the reinforcing bars went through your right side. Hell of a job to get you out of there. You’d appreciate it, having been in Traffic. Seems some of the bars down there were high tensile steel, and the steel cutters couldn’t get through them without making too much of a mess of
you. Eventually had to lift you straight off. Lost a lot of blood. Missed the vital organs, though. They operated and stitched you up. It’ll be all right.’
She drifted away for a while, then suddenly lurched back into consciousness. ‘And?’
‘Another bar scraped your left knee. No great problem, but it’ll be sore for a while. You were very lucky.’
‘How?’ she whispered.
‘Lucky you weren’t a man, that is. The middle bar, in between those two, would have been very unpleasant.’
‘Ugh.’
‘Your left shoulder was dislocated and badly bruised.’
‘Oh.’
‘And you banged your head. Possible concussion.’
‘Mmm.’
‘That’s about it, really. Pretty good under the circumstances. You could have been killed.’
She closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.
Felix Kowalski did not seem to have benefited by the break and a hot breakfast. On the contrary, he crouched in his seat with the air of someone suffering from a very bad hangover. He eyed them truculently as they took their seats, Brock in front of him, Gurney to the side.
‘You must release my mother,’ he said, before they could speak. ‘At once. She is not in any way responsible for the death of Meredith Winterbottom. She has only confessed in order to protect me.’
‘Really?’ Brock said noncommittally, turning the pages of one of the two files he had brought in with him. ‘Are you confessing to that murder, then?’
‘No, of course not. But my mother obviously thinks I had something to do with it. Her
confession
, as you call it, is absurd.’ He was struggling with impatience and seemed slightly feverish.
Brock flicked the file shut and sat back. He stared at Kowalski and then nodded. ‘Go on, then.’
‘When . . .’ Kowalski hesitated and gave a little groan.
‘Are you all right? Would you like a doctor to have another look at you?’
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘When my father and I returned from delivering the last of his books to Notting Hill, my mother was waiting for us in the shop. It was about 2.30. She was upset. She told us what that old crone Mrs Rosenfeldt had said to her, and said she’d gone round to see Meredith Winterbottom. She was on her bed asleep, she said, and the thought had gone through my mother’s head, upset as she was, to strangle the woman. She even imagined putting on the rubber washing-up gloves she saw in the kitchen, so she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. That’s what she told us. Of course she did no such thing. My father was shocked at the idea, and we calmed her down and gave her a cup of tea from the flask we’d brought. Then I left to return the van. When she heard later that someone had killed Mrs Winterbottom, she must have naturally been worried that I might have done it while I was away, to save them further distress. Of course I didn’t, but the idea will have been preying on her mind. She’s not been well lately. Neither of them have.’
By the time he got to the end of this his voice had sunk to a monotone. There was silence.
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes.’
Gurney snorted contemptuously from across the room. Kowalski looked from one man to the other. ‘What else should there be?’
‘What about the books, Felix?’ Brock spoke very quietly.
Kowalski kept his face blank, his eyes unblinking.
‘Books?’
‘Mmm, books. Your mother had quite a bit to say about books.’
He appeared to rack his brains, then said slowly, ‘I think . . . she did mention something about some books. Under Mrs Winterbottom’s bed, I think it was, in a plastic carrier bag. My mother looked inside and saw that it contained some old books. When she mentioned them, I seem to remember that my father said something about them probably being ones that he had valued for her.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s about all I can remember.’
‘So your mother didn’t have the books with her when she returned to the shop?’
‘With her?’ He looked startled. He stared at Brock for a moment, searching rapidly for clues in his expressionless face, then groaned and covered his eyes with his hand. ‘She said that? She said she took them?’
‘Felix,’ Brock said, his voice still deadly quiet, ‘you don’t seem to have taken in what I told you last night.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘I will not be lied to. I will discover the truth. You are just making things a hundred times worse for yourself and your mother.’
Kowalski lowered his head. His shoulders rose and fell with his breathing. When he began to speak again, his head still down, his voice came deep, from the back of his throat.
‘When I left them, I drove the van round the block to the lower end of Jerusalem Lane. I went in to number 22. I wanted to tell Meredith to lay off my parents, but she was asleep. Lying peacefully on her bed. So I looked at the carrier bag with the books. There were about a dozen of them. The ones I looked in had inscriptions from Karl Marx, just as my father had described. He had said they were worth four or five thousand each. So I quietly put them back in the bag and walked out with them. I took them for my parents’ sake. I reckoned she owed them at least that.’ A note of anger infiltrated the resignation in his voice. ‘I had a duffle bag at the shop to carry the sandwiches my wife had made us, and I slipped the carrier bag into that when I got back. I suppose my mother must have seen.
That’s why she thinks I killed Meredith Winterbottom. But I didn’t.’ He looked up to face Brock. ‘I swear to God I didn’t.’
‘Yes,’ Brock replied flatly. ‘Go on.’
‘What?’
‘Tell us about what you did with the books.’
‘Oh . . . I waited for a while till I thought things would be quieter. Then I told my father a friend of mine had some old architectural books to sell, and asked for the name of the architect he’d mentioned in connection with Meredith Winterbottom’s books. I remember now how my mother looked at me when I raised it. He still had the man’s business card, and I copied the phone number and rang it later. The architect said it was really a friend of his who was interested, an academic in the States. I contacted her, and it was she who told me about the other documents.’
He looked up at Brock, and for the first time there was a note of supplication in his voice. ‘I only stole the books for my parents. That’s all I wanted the other papers for. For them.’
‘No.’ Brock shook his head. ‘You needed money, didn’t you, Felix? For yourself. To escape. Isn’t that it?’