‘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.
22
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?