‘Yes, we’ll arrange something. It must have been difficult for you moving books with your hurt foot.’
‘Fortunately we had nearly loaded the van.’ Kowalski smiled ruefully. ‘Felix was inside, pushing the boxes around to make room, and one of them fell off the back on to my foot. It was very painful, but I thought it was just bruised until I went to the doctor on Monday and he made me get an X-ray and they found one of the little bones was broken. So, I shall be stuck here for a few days.’
‘Weeks more likely, old fool,’ his wife muttered.
Kathy took a deep breath of fresh air when they reached their car. Seagulls wheeled in the sun overhead, the air pungent with salt and seaweed.
‘What a bitch. “Don’t stir it, then”!’
Brock laughed and turned the car to take the road inland to the A27.
‘He must have spent fifty years regretting that he hadn’t handed her over to the Gestapo,’ she went on. ‘In her case at least they probably would have done the right thing.’
‘It’s appalling, isn’t it, how the Kowalskis’ whole life has been controlled by that moment, the decision to protect her. What else could he have done?’ Brock scratched his beard. ‘But then follow the years of betraying his students, losing his career, being forced out of Poland, and now being forced out of Jerusalem Lane. And odd too that it was she who let the secret out to Meredith.’
‘Yes, I must say that if I were Adam Kowalski and I were thinking of bumping somebody off, it would have been Marie Kowalski who wound up with a plastic bag over her head, not Meredith Winterbottom.’
They turned off the main road on the way back and stopped at a pub for lunch. Brock ordered pate, green salad and a tomato juice for Kathy, a pint of bitter and a ploughman’s lunch for himself. He poked at it when it arrived. ‘No ploughman ever survived on these scraps,’ he grumbled, pushing a lettuce leaf to one side. ‘Still, the beer’s quite good.’ He took a big gulp and licked his lips.
‘Yes, and I don’t suppose old Adam’s ever even had the opportunity to get a few brief moments of relief with some lady hairdresser in New Cross or whatever. Wife living over the shop, never letting him out of her sight. They probably developed the siege mentality back in Cracow and have been cultivating it ever since. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was responsible for dropping the box on his foot, to stop him straying out of her sight.’
Kathy spluttered into her tomato juice, laughing. ‘Oh, I thought you were saying yesterday that you couldn’t understand how anyone could be bothered to have an affair. Now you’re conceding that it might be a good idea in some circumstances.’
‘Not really.’ Brock toyed with the pint mug on the beer mat. ‘I believe that things badly begun end badly.’
‘Oh golly.’ Kathy stared at him, still smiling. ‘That’s a bit Old Testament, isn’t it? Do you really believe that?’
‘Yes, I do. But then, first marriages are doomed these days, anyway. And so are people who get tangled up in them.’
‘You really are a cynic, aren’t you, sir?’
‘A realist, I think. Do you know any first marriages you’d want to be in?’
‘Yes… All right, no.’
‘Too inexperienced, taking too much for granted, held together by the kids. Mind you, that can blow up in your face, too.’ He was now gloomily drawing small patterns with beer slops on the shiny table top.
‘Is that what happened to you?’
‘Me?’ He looked up. ‘No… No kids in my case. No, I was thinking of Mr Gregory Thomas North again, my former quarry. Sorry, it’s difficult to forget about old enemies sometimes.’
‘He has children?’
‘One boy. Six years old. North dotes on him. His only redeeming feature. We assumed that he would try to get Mrs N and junior to follow him out, but it seems the wife doesn’t fancy a life on the pampas. Delighted to see the back of him in fact, because she has other arrangements in hand and a homicidal husband doesn’t figure in them. Only the little boy has just been diagnosed as having leukaemia. Three months to live. The missus is keeping it quiet in case North tries to come back to see him.’
‘Oh God, how awful.’
‘Yes. I almost feel sorry for the animal. However, he may find that he gets to see his little boy after all.’
‘Oh?’
‘Mm. We’ve been having unofficial discussions with our friends over there-exchanging information on things generally, you know, the best buy in data banks, thumb screws, flashing blue lights, the things coppers like to talk about when they’re together. I was over there last month, as a matter of fact. Private visit, of course. It seems they don’t like villains who kill coppers any more than we do, whatever their politicians say. The politicians are, however, very sensitive about foreigners who import drugs.’
‘Is North doing that? He must be crazy.’
‘Of course not. He doesn’t need to with all that money in the Swiss bank accounts. However, it’ll be difficult for him to explain that to them when a large stash of heroin is found in his cellar in a couple of weeks’ time, him not even having learnt the language yet.’
‘Wow. And you’ll be waiting for him at the airport.’ ‘ Moi? ’ Brock raised his eyebrows in mock innocence. ‘I know nothing.
‘Anyway,’ he added with a weary sigh, ‘how wonderful to have no part in the whole dreary mess-scheming wives, unfaithful husbands, desperate plans leading nowhere. How wonderful to be like you, Sergeant Kolla, young, beautiful, single and free.’ He raised his empty glass. ‘And if you’re sticking to tomato juice, you can drive us back to Meredith Winterbottom’s funeral, and I can have another pint before we go.’
11
Just as at the end of her remembered childhood holidays, the sky was clouding over and becoming darker as Kathy drove them back towards the familiar urban landscapes. On the way they phoned Felix Kowalski and arranged to meet him at his father’s former bookshop at 4.
Traffic was heavy in central London, and when they reached the crematorium the service for Meredith Winterbottom had already begun. They waited in the car, parked so that they could view the front of the chapel. A faint smell of smoke permeated the air. Heavy drops of rain began to fall.
After five minutes the chapel doors were opened by a man in a dark suit, and people filed out under the portico, forming stiff little groups beneath its shelter. Most were elderly, and Kathy recognized a number from Jerusalem Lane. The members of Meredith’s family remained by the chapel doorway, as mourners came up to offer their condolences. The figure of Eleanor was distinctive, dressed in black, erect and sombre, her face pale against her dark hair. Beside her and a head shorter, Peg struck a considerably brighter note, in a scarlet coat with a pink scarf, matching gloves and wide-brimmed hat. From the car they could see the hat tilt graciously this way and that to acknowledge the sympathetic words of friends. On the other side of the chapel doorway, the Winter family formed an awkward group. Terry looked uncomfortable accepting the condolences of those who approached them, and his wife Caroline’s smiles of acknowledgement seemed thin and unconvincing. Kathy recognized the elder daughter, Alex, hovering in the background, morose, her shoulders stooped. Her teenage sister stood beside her, scuffing her feet impatiently.
No one was wearing a bow tie.
‘Do we go out and ask them?’ Kathy inquired doubtfully. The rain was falling steadily now, and one or two people were beginning to hurry out from the shelter of the portico towards the car park.
‘Not here.’ Brock wrinkled his nose. ‘Let’s try a long shot. Have you got the developer’s number?’
Brock dialled, and was passed from the receptionist to Slade’s secretary and finally to the man himself.
‘Hello, Chief Inspector.’
‘Sorry to bother you again, Mr Slade. A quick one. The architect for your project, does he wear a bow tie?’
‘Herbert Lowell? Never seen him in one. Why?’