‘Yes,’ Kathy said firmly. ‘That was a figment of Brock’s imagination, I’m afraid.’
‘Well…’ Suzanne smiled quietly to herself. ‘Figments can be fun sometimes.’
21
D espite newspaper reports that he was helping police with their inquiries, Haygill had been released on the evening of the Thursday on which he had first been interviewed following the discovery of the gun, pending further investigations. The searches of his premises had yielded plenty of documentary material, including bank statements and correspondence with backers in the Middle East, but nothing immediately incriminating. On the following Monday he was reinterviewed, this time by Bren and Kathy, with Brock observing from the adjoining room. Kathy’s role was to look sceptical but say little, Bren’s to be actively hostile and disbelieving. Brock was pleased to see that Haygill looked as if the weekend had not raised his spirits. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his speech had lost its former confidence and had become hesitant. Throughout the interview he looked frequently to his solicitor for guidance and, perhaps, reassurance.
‘Tell us how you recruited Abu Khadra?’ Bren asked, feeling more confident that Haygill’s decline might throw up some mistake or inconsistency.
‘It would have been about eighteen months ago, I think… umm, I can check the exact date…’ Bren waved a hand dismissively and Haygill continued. ‘I was on a visit to the University of Qatar. We’d recently lost our computer programmer, and the university provider wasn’t giving us the sort of service we needed, so I was on the lookout for someone.’
‘An Arab?’
‘Well, not necessarily, but we’re happy to recruit suitably qualified people from the region. Our sponsors like it, and we see it as part of our educational role. I think I explained to your Chief Inspector…’
‘Yes, yes. Go on.’
‘Well, Abu approached me. He’d heard of our project, and was very interested. He was just finishing a master’s degree at Qatar, as it happened, and was looking for opportunities. He was highly recommended by his supervisor, and after meeting him a couple of times during my visit I offered him a job.’
‘Just like that? No advertisements, interviews?’
‘His position is funded by our external research income, so I have discretion.’
‘So he owed his advancement entirely to you and to no one else.’
‘If you like…’
‘And this was the reason why he regarded you as a sort of father figure, is it? Or was there more to it?’
‘Your Chief Inspector used that phrase, but really, that’s putting it far too strongly. He was respectful, but no more than others.’
‘Oh, come on, Professor! He hero-worshipped you! That’s certainly the impression we’ve been getting.’
‘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.