Babel (37 page)
‘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.
B
rock 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.
He gave a little shiver of excitement. Sometimes, rarely but sometimes, it happened this way. You have dug up all the information you’re likely to get; you have struggled without success for a convincing solution; exhaustion sets in; you put it aside, have a bath, fall asleep, then, bang, it comes. The answer—complete, clear, inevitable, obvious.
He had fallen asleep thinking of Haygill and his wife, reconciled, tucked up now in bed together, but with what lingering doubts? And he knew that his own doubts about Haygill’s guilt had been there from the start, and for the same reasons that he had expressed to Russell, that the extravagance of the assassination on the university steps would have been as out of character for the cautious Haygill as for the gentle Abu. But someone had choreographed the event, someone with an eye for theatre, who wanted to make a public statement. He thought of Darr again, the resentful lieutenant; might he have wanted to discredit Haygill in order to take over his position? Or the two Iraqis, jealous of Abu’s standing with their boss. But what hold did any of them have over Abu to make him do such a desperate thing?
Brock had been trying to read Springer’s autobiography,
A Man in Dark Times
, and had been finding it heavy going. The book was saturated with a mood of pessimism and despair, with mankind and its injustices, with fate and the death of his wife, and most of all, Brock suspected, with the author himself and his failure to quite fulfil the golden promise which his famous teachers had seen in him. On the whole, Brock felt, he could do without a bombastic midlifecrisis confession masquerading as a humanist manifesto, especially at this stage of the week.
There was one chapter however which he had found gripping. It described a period when Springer had been caught up in events so powerful that his own ego had little chance to take over the story. In September of 1982 he had accompanied his wife Charlotte to Beirut, where she had been invited to perform in a series of concerts in aid of refugees. The timing could hardly have been worse, for on the morning after their arrival Israeli shells began to rain down on the city. Nevertheless Charlotte insisted on fulfilling her engagements, and they remained in Beirut under extremely difficult conditions. Their hotel was frequently hit by shell and sniper fire, and travelling to the concert venues, many of them changed at the last minute, was a nightmare.