Later that morning she sat in a pool of unexpected sunshine in the conservatory at the back of Suzanne’s house, leafing through the Sunday papers. She poured herself another cup of coffee and opened one of the news review sections. They were all full of the Springer murder, as if everyone recognised in it some special public significance or dramatic quality that made it irresistible. In retrospect it had been absurd for Brock to try to hide it from her, for it dominated every news report, and Brock himself could be seen on TV, his voice punctuating radio reports. She felt remote, watching their activity as from a great distance, no longer a viable member of the team. That at least was clear to her, and probably to the rest of them by now. She had no choice but to move on.
She was alone, Suzanne having taken her grandchildren off to her sister’s for Sunday lunch, and Kathy was glad of the solitude. She’d been grateful for the distraction of the children and the company of Suzanne, but she knew she must soon leave. She had spent Saturday morning in the travel agency watching, and occasionally trying to help, Suzanne’s friend, and had been amazed at her patience. Customers changing their travel plans for the umpteenth time, airlines in confusion over their special fares, hotels double-booking, computers crashing, none of it ruffled Tina. And Kathy had come to realise how sheltered she had been working in a big organisation with specialists to back up on everything. Tina had to do it all herself, looking after her staff, getting the computers fixed, negotiating with her bastard of a landlord, working out the cash flow, getting the weekly ad in the local paper. On Monday Kathy was to help her with the next quarter’s VAT returns, but more importantly she was to meet a rep for a tour operator who would tell her about their tour guides and put her in touch with a London agency that specialised in travel jobs.
She turned the page of the newspaper. Despite the number of column inches, the actual information contained in the reports was thin, and she could imagine the pressure on the Met press office to give more. The editorials and commentaries went on about freedom of speech, or violence on campuses, or the inadequacies of gun controls, but in the absence of hard facts about either motive or culprit, they were diffuse and unsatisfying. The most informative article, she thought, was an obituary of the victim printed in the Observer. Max Springer was born in 1933 into a prosperous German-Jewish merchant family in Hamburg. In 1939, following the Kristallnacht riots, he was sent to stay with distant relatives in England. He never saw his family again, all of whom perished in the concentration camps. From 1952 to 1956 he studied philosophy at the University of London under Sir Karl Popper, then Professor of Logic and Scientific Method, and went on to the University of Chicago as a doctoral student and then lecturer, where he came under the influence of the philosopher Hannah Arendt. It was there also that he met and married the classical pianist Charlotte Pickering. In 1965 he returned to England to a lecturer position at Oxford, there working under Sir Isaiah Berlin, who was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory. In 1978 Springer published his book The Poverty of Science, in which he questioned the assumptions underlying the principles of scientific logic and method. This work established his reputation as a radical and independent thinker, and he was elected to the Wyatt Chair of Modern Philosophy at Oxford. As an extension of his studies of scientific method, Springer investigated what he termed ‘blinkered thinking systems’ and became interested in fundamentalist religious and political modes of thought. This theoretical interest was transformed by ‘the electric shock of reality’ as he later described it, during a visit to the Middle East in 1982, when he personally witnessed the atrocities committed at the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. He subsequently gave help to Palestinian relief organisations, especially for the support of orphaned children, and wrote of his experiences in his 1985 work The Origins of Fundamentalism, which aroused much controversy, especially among apologists of the state of Israel, much as his mentor Hannah Arendt had provoked outrage by her work Eichmann in Jerusalem, debate about which was at its height when Springer worked with her in Chicago in 1963. In 1990 Charlotte Pickering, Max Springer’s wife of thirty-two years, died, and in the following year he published an autobiography A Man in Dark Times, which was marked by passages of extreme pessimism. Upon its publication, stating that he wished to renew his life with fresh challenges, he resigned his chair at Oxford and accepted the position of Professor of Philosophy at the recently established University of Central London East. However, and despite a hopeful beginning, this move failed to fulfil its initial promise. His book Totalitarian Science (1996), which took up his earlier themes questioning current scientific thinking, was poorly received, and was widely condemned for the way it drew parallels between what he saw as the authoritarianism of science on the one hand and of fundamentalist religion on the other. In recent years he was perceived to be out of step with current movements in philosophy, and with the policies of his own university, which he publicly criticised. While Max Springer’s life may have appeared to have lost its relevance, his death has transformed that assessment, by demonstrating in the most dramatic and tragic way the significance of the principles for which he stood. He died a martyr to those principles, steadfast in his opposition to extremism, totalitarianism and authoritarianism of all kinds.
The following morning, while Kathy was adding up strings of Tina’s VAT figures on a calculator, her mobile rang. A female voice said, ‘Hello? Is that DS Kolla?’ Kathy’s heart gave an involuntary thump of panic. It was almost a month since anyone had addressed her by her rank. She didn’t recognise the voice, and she tried to remember who at Headquarters had her mobile phone number.
‘My name’s Clare Hancock. We’ve met a couple of times and you gave me your number. I’m a crime reporter for the Herald.’
Kathy could place her now, an intelligent, deceptively mild-looking woman, whom Kathy had once seen reduce a Chief Superintendent to a trembling jelly at a press conference with a few very well-researched questions. But that wasn’t her problem. With relief she got ready to deliver the magic phrase, ‘I’m not working on that case’.
‘I wondered if we could meet. It’s about the Springer case, as you might expect. I have some information I think you’d be interested in. Frankly, I want to trade. Are you at UCLE? Where would suit you? It is rather urgent.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Clare. I’ve got nothing to do with that case.’
There was a moment’s hesitation, then the voice doubtful, as if not sure to believe Kathy. ‘Really? I understood that Brock has you with him on all his big cases now.’
‘Not this one. I’m on leave, as it happens. I’m not even in London.’
‘Oh, dear. Bad timing. I’ll bet you’re kicking yourself.’
‘You’d better ring him instead. Do you have his number?’
‘I don’t want to do that. Brock gave me a hard time once, when I was new to the job. Grumpy old bastard he was. I’m hoping I can work with you, Kathy. Can’t you drop everything and get back here? You won’t be sorry. Brock will thank you for it, believe me.’
Kathy felt a jab of resentment. The rep from the tour operator was due in any minute and she didn’t want anything to do with this.
‘I take it you’ve seen our coverage this morning?’ the reporter said suddenly.
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Well, go out and buy a copy. The Yard’s busting a gut about it. They’ve been hammering my editor all morning, wanting to know where we got our information. Well, what I’ve got for you may be better than that. Have a look, go on, and ring me back in half an hour.’