‘Yes?’ she said, as if she expected the effort to earn her a blow.
‘Er… Briony, hi,’ Kathy said, suddenly uncertain. ‘How are you?’
The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’
‘You look… tired.’
‘Oh, I wonder why?’ The sarcasm was heavy, too forced to be anything but painful.
Kathy was at a loss, but Briony saved her the problem of finding appropriate words.
‘How could you have been so stupid!’ she said, spitting her despair. ‘Of all the unlikely people in the world, you had to pick on Abu! God!’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kathy said cautiously.
‘Well, I don’t think that will surprise anyone!’ Briony wailed and turned away.
Kathy took a deep breath and tried again. ‘Briony, you were the one who told me we should be talking to the Muslim members of Professor Haygill’s staff.’
‘But not Abu!’ the woman spun back, tears pouring from her eyes. ‘Not Abu!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he would never, never have hurt Max!’
The intensity of her conviction was baffling. Kathy took another deep breath. ‘You knew Abu?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘You didn’t tell me that, Briony. How well did you know him?’
‘Oh…’ She made a wild gesture with her arm. ‘We met… in the cafeteria, and places. He was a gentle, caring man. I can’t believe what’s happened. First Max and now Abu! I think I’m going mad.’
‘Did he and Max know each other?’
‘Yes… Maybe… I don’t know…’
‘Which?’ Kathy insisted. ‘Yes or no? Did they know each other?’
‘I… I…’ Briony seemed caught in some kind of confusion. ‘I don’t know. But that’s not the point, is it? The point is that you charged in with your great jackboots and arrested him and dragged him out into the street and let those Nazis kill him!’
Kathy remembered the expression on Abu’s face when she had first seen him, the look of recognition and acceptance. Could it have meant something else? Had she completely misjudged him? She felt a chill of panic and defensiveness and guilt as the possibility occurred to her that she might have engineered Abu’s arrest and murder on the strength of some misread signs from Briony and Abu himself. And then it occurred to her that the source of Briony’s distress was precisely the same as this, the guilt of having inadvertently betrayed her… her what? Friend? Lover even? She tried to picture the two of them together, and found it difficult, but certainly not impossible. The over-serious, lonely, passionate English girl and the Arab with the shining eyes. Both slender, fragile, ready to be broken by life…
She stopped her imagination running away with her.
‘Briony, we all feel terrible about what happened, but I can tell you that neither you nor I am responsible for Abu’s death. The people who are will be caught and punished.’
Briony swung back at her. ‘You are responsible!’ she cried. ‘You killed him!’
The force of her accusation was almost physical, and Kathy felt herself backing away, shaking her head. She found herself outside in the corridor, and realised that she was trembling. She turned and walked slowly away and almost stumbled at the next corner of the corridor into a man whose breath smelled strongly of whisky.
‘Oh, easy there!’ he breathed and squinted at her. ‘You all right?’
‘Fine, yes.’
‘Lost?’
‘A bit, yes.’
He gave her a roguish leer. ‘Well, let me give you a helping hand. Pettifer’s the name. Desmond.’
Kathy remembered Brock mentioning him. ‘Oh. You were a friend of Max Springer’s, weren’t you? I work with DCI Brock.’
Dr Pettifer checked himself. ‘Ah. Interesting developments, eh? Anything you need?’
‘Well, maybe there is something you could help me with. I’m trying to get hold of some of Professor Springer’s books.’
‘What, short of door-stops at the Yard, are you?’ He tried out a wink and a chuckle. ‘Don’t intend to try reading them, do you?’
‘That was the plan. Only the university library say I can’t borrow them without a proper pass. I was hoping to find a friendly academic who would borrow them for me.’
‘What about Max’s own copies, from his room?’
‘The room’s sealed. We’re not supposed to remove anything.’
‘Well, I can do better than the library. I can lend you my own copies. Don’t normally do that, mind. I’ve lost too many of my books to students to ever lend to them any more. But a police woman should be beyond reproach, or am I being naive?’ He twinkled at her boozily.
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I’d be most grateful. Just for a week or two.’
‘No hurry. And in return, you can slake my curiosity. Curiosis fabricavit inferos, eh?’ He led the way down the narrow corridor, speaking back at her over his shoulder. At his door he drew a ring of keys on a chain from his pocket and let her in. There was an unpleasant sweetness in the musty air of the room.
‘What I wondered,’ he said, pulling books down from his crowded shelves, ‘was whether this Abu chap had the weapon on him when you caught him. I’m having a bet with a fellow in Sociology. He reckons that they always throw the thing away down a drain or something after they’ve done the deed, but I feel he would keep it as a kind of security. So which of us is right?’
‘I’d say that usually your friend is right, Desmond, but in this case I couldn’t comment.’
Pettifer looked put out. ‘Oh, come on,’ he wheedled. ‘Just a hint. Which of us would you put your money on?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
‘Oh, well.’ He turned away in a huff, and after a moment’s search found the last of the books. ‘Was it a big gun? Heavy to carry around?’
Kathy took the books and handed him her card. ‘I don’t think so. Many thanks for these.’
He looked vaguely cheated as she turned and left, wondering why people were so fascinated by the gory details.
She crossed the river, stopping on the way to buy some sandwiches for lunch and a few other supplies that Brock needed. In Matcham High Street she turned through the familiar archway into Warren Lane and parked in a space between other cars in the yard behind the shops. The wind picked at the skirt of her coat as she carried her bags under the dark skeleton of the horse chestnut tree towards the irregular terrace of houses that faced the lane that ran along the top of the railway cutting. She glanced up at the bay window that projected from an upper floor, and thought she recognised the shadow of Brock in the window seat in which he now spent most of his time. She fitted the key he’d given her into the front door, and stepped into the warmth of the small hallway calling out ‘Hello’. There was no reply, but as she climbed up the stairway she thought she caught the sound of a murmur of voices. Perhaps the radio, she thought, and turned from the landing towards the kitchen that overlooked the small courtyard at the back of the house, setting her bags down on the table.
Kathy recognised Suzanne’s perfume a moment before she heard her step on the wooden kitchen floor behind her. She turned and smiled, ‘Suzanne, hello,’ and immediately took in two very strong impressions. The first was that Suzanne had gone to some trouble to look good for her visit; her hair looked recently styled, in a slightly darker shade of her natural auburn, and her clothes had been selected from the more expensive and classy side of her wardrobe. The second was that she was very angry and upset.
‘You OK?’ Kathy said carefully.
‘Why didn’t you tell me he was like this?’ Suzanne’s voice was low and tight. ‘I had no idea, no idea at all that he was in such a state.’
‘He’s coping pretty well.’
‘He’s a wreck,’ Suzanne’s voice rose. ‘He could barely get down the stairs to let me in.’
‘We didn’t want to worry you,’ Kathy said, and immediately knew that the ‘we’ was exactly wrong. She saw the look of betrayal on the other woman’s face, and thought of the phone calls she’d meant to make to her. ‘He looks worse than he is,’ she added unconvincingly.
Suzanne took a step nearer, angry. ‘Don’t patronise me, Kathy. I thought you were a friend. How could you have kept me in the dark?’