‘We have to trace everyone who was in the area when Mrs Winterbottom died. Someone thought they’d seen a man in a bow tie, possibly an architect, youngish man.’
‘Not Lowell. Sounds more like Bob Jones. He used to work for The Lowell Partnership, on this project actually. But they parted company a couple of months ago, so I don’t know why he’d have been around the place.’
‘Probably not him, then, but we may check. Do you know where we could reach him?’
‘He set up on his own. You could try Lowell’s, or the Institute of Architects would have his address.’
‘Yes, fine. Thanks for your help.’
‘No problem. And thanks again for the autograph. My boy was over the moon. Goodbye.’
Kathy smiled. ‘He’ll be even more delighted when he sees your picture on the front page arresting North. You should start a fan club, sir.’
‘Thank you, Kathy. Just concentrate on getting us to Jerusalem Lane, would you, while I track down our phantom in the bow tie.’
He placed three more calls-one to directory inquiries, one to the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the third to the office of Concept Design, off Tottenham Court Road, less than half a mile west of Jerusalem Lane. Bob Jones agreed to meet them at his office at 5.30 that evening.
Through the empty shop window they could make out a light at the back of the bookshop. Eventually Felix Kowalski answered their knock, but not before they had become thoroughly wet waiting at the door. He led them through a succession of cramped rooms, their walls lined with empty shelves, the pages from old books scattered on the floor like the detritus of autumn. The musty smell of the departed books permeated the place. Without them the building looked forlorn, like the old lady’s body on the mortuary slab, a form abandoned by its content.
At the back of the shop was a tiny kitchen, with a small table and three rickety bentwood chairs. A green plastic shade hung over the light bulb suspended above the table, the electric light a welcome contrast to the dim greyness of the sky beyond the kitchen window, through which a small walled yard was visible.
At first Felix Kowalski was civil in his offers to take their wet coats and make them comfortable, but beneath the words Kathy soon began to feel the same bristling antagonism that had surprised her in his mother. His references to the meagre facilities of his father’s shop were scornful, and soon this bitter edge to his voice hardened into a constrained anger. He had, it seemed, a number of things to complain about, and it wasn’t long before he began to air them.
‘Yes, I work at the Polytechnic, for what it’s worth these days. Although it’s difficult to see the point sometimes when a lecturer with seven years’ fulltime study and a PhD behind him is paid little more than an eighteen-year-old police constable on his first day on the beat.’
He glared at Kathy, as if challenging her to provoke him further. His eyes, disconcertingly, didn’t quite look in the same direction, so that it was difficult to be sure whether the intensity of his stare was due to aggression or an attempt to focus. He was about forty. Damp black hair was pushed back from his forehead, his face puffy and flushed. She thought she caught the sweet smell of whisky on his breath.
‘Do you work in the same field as your father did when he was a professor?’
His lips pursed and he twitched his head back and forward in a gesture that might have been meant to indicate scorn.
‘Yes, I rather thought it might come round to that. My father isn’t well, you know. It’s a pity you found it necessary to bother him the way you did this morning. He found it very stressful.’
‘Really? That wasn’t the impression we got. He seemed quite happy to help us.’
‘And I resent you raking up things from his past that have nothing whatsoever to do with the case you’re supposed to be solving. Your approach just seems to be to charge in and stir up the mud and then grab at whatever comes up. Hardly scientific method, I should have thought.’
Kathy found his angry sarcasm all the more irksome because there was an element of truth in what he said. She imagined how devastating it would be to be one of his students faced with this choleric venom.
‘I take it,’ she said, as icily calm as she could make herself sound, ‘you’re referring to the dispute which your family had recently with Mrs Winterbottom, who, in case your mother didn’t mention it, we believe may have been murdered on Sunday afternoon last.’
‘If you’re suggesting that I or either of my parents had anything to do with Mrs Winterbottom’s death,’ he exploded, ‘you’d better come right out and say it now, so that I can get a solicitor down here straight away.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ Brock, who had taken no notice of this exchange, was stooping in a corner of the room. He straightened with a grunt and turned toward the table, adjusting the glasses on the end of his nose and squinting at the spine of a small red-covered book which he’d picked up from the floor.
‘A Baedeker!’ He opened the cover. ‘Southern France and Corsica, 1914.’ He flicked through the pages. ‘Maps still there, quite good condition. You don’t want to lose this, Mr Kowalski. They’re worth a few bob these days, aren’t they?’
‘What?’ Kowalski turned to Brock, a look of irritation on his face, as if he was having to deal with some imbecilic first-year student who had lost track of the argument. ‘I wouldn’t know. Second-hand books aren’t my field.’
‘So you’re not in the business with your father? We rather thought, when you were helping him to sell his stock, that you might have been involved.’
‘No… I was simply giving him and my mother a hand. Look-’
‘Tell us exactly what your movements were on Sunday, would you, Mr Kowalski?’
With bad grace he began to do as Brock asked. The three of them had left Enfield after breakfast, catching the train into central London-‘because my wife decided at the last possible minute that she needed the car’. Once in London, his parents went to the shop, while he took a bus to Camden Town, where he had arranged to rent a van for a few hours. He drove it to Jerusalem Lane, into the yard behind the bookshop, and helped his mother and father pack and load the last of the books into the van. They finished soon after 1, and ate a packed lunch his wife had made for them.
‘That was after your father had the accident with his foot?’
‘Yes. We were nearly finished when that happened. My mother knocked the box off the back of the van on to his foot.’ He shook his head. ‘Typical. Anyway, after that I drove to the dealer in Notting Hill who had bought the last of the stock.’
‘You drove alone?’
‘No. My father had to come too, to conclude the sale with the man, but there wasn’t room for my mother. She stayed at the shop.’
‘And you returned when?’ Kathy asked.
Kowalski looked her in the eyes and answered calmly, ‘2 o’clock, I should think. Yes, 2.’
‘Was your father not in pain with his foot? It seemed pretty bad when we saw him.’
‘It wasn’t so bad at first, after he got over the initial shock. The corner of the box seemed to land on the ground, taking most of the impact, and then the edge caught him. When we set off he said he was all right, but by the time we got back he was pretty uncomfortable.’
‘What did you do then?’
Kowalski shrugged impatiently, ‘My mother was doing some last-minute sweeping, and I helped for a bit. Then I took the van back.’
Kathy opened her mouth, but he anticipated her question, ‘Mum came with me. We left Dad to rest his foot. He could hardly walk by this stage.’
‘Times?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, I don’t know. We weren’t away long. We got the tube back from Camden Town on the Northern Line to the station round the corner. We stayed a bit, to finish up. Then I went back to the tube station to call a cab for my parents from the phones there, and when it arrived we all left. I walked back to my station. It must have been around 4.’
They put on their coats and went outside briefly to see the yard in the failing light. By the time they came back inside, Kowalski had stoked up his anger once more.