‘Here.’ He indicated to Kathy to sit on the bed, and pulled a picture from the pile. ‘This is Dora. When she was sixteen. You see how she hated to wear shoes? It was the next spring that the soldiers took her.’
He handed it to Kathy, his eyes full of tears, and reached for another.
Depressed and no wiser, Kathy returned to Jerusalem Lane. It was past noon, and a steady stream of building workers and police were filing into Mrs Rosenfeldt’s shop with lunch orders. At least the old lady’s mind was entirely in the present, Kathy thought, even if she didn’t welcome the interruption.
‘This is coming up to my busy time,’ she grumbled. ‘Can’t you come back later?’
‘No, I can’t,’ Kathy said, making little attempt to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘Let the girls cope with it for ten minutes. I need to speak to you now, in private.’
Mrs Rosenfeldt shrugged and led her through to a small storeroom at the back of the shop, in which there was a scrubbed wooden table and two chairs. They sat down facing each other across a pile of invoices and receipts.
‘I’ve told you all I know about the vandals. There’s nothing else I can say about Eleanor’s death.’
‘Not Eleanor. I want to talk to you about Meredith.’
Mrs Rosenfeldt raised her eyebrows. ‘Six months, and suddenly it’s so urgent?’
Kathy hardly knew how to begin. After Dr Botev’s ramblings, and surrounded now by the bustle of a changing present, the ghosts of the past seemed increasingly irrelevant.
‘Do you know anyone called Becky?’
‘Becky?’ Mrs Rosenfeldt’s eyes glittered suspiciously through her steel-rimmed glasses.
‘Yes. A friend of Meredith.’
‘Of course. I am Becky.’
‘You? Ah.’ Kathy smiled. She would never have associated the name with this severe little woman.
‘Why?’
‘We heard she had a friend called Becky, but didn’t know who it was. It doesn’t matter.’
It does, Kathy thought, but how? What thing from Mrs Rosenfeldt’s past could have touched Meredith?
‘When you first spoke to us, you said we should look out for Nazis. Did you really mean that? Surely all that was far in the past?’
‘Really?’ Mrs Rosenfeldt snapped. ‘You think Nazis disappeared because the war came to an end? They never disappear. Don’t you read the papers?’ She rubbed a stick-like thumb angrily on her bony wrist.
‘But not in Jerusalem Lane, surely. I mean, I know Meredith discovered that business about the Kowalskis’ past during the war, but that was, well, a tragedy. They were victims too, weren’t they?’
‘Oh, you think so?’ Kathy could see that Mrs Rosenfeldt was holding herself tight as a spring.
‘Don’t you?’ She smiled innocently at the rigid face. She thought for a moment that the old lady wouldn’t respond, then she saw the thin lips open.
‘Don’t tell me about victims, young woman!’ She spoke with an intensity that made her frail body shake. ‘I have seen victims! Adam Kowalski was never one. His students were victims. He was one of them . I know. I can smell them, the way you can smell dog shit.’
Her vehemence unnerved Kathy. ‘He’s a frail old man,’ she protested.
‘So? Even Nazi murderers get old.’
‘And you told Meredith this? That Adam Kowalski was a murderer?’
Mrs Rosenfeldt bowed her head in a gesture which Kathy thought rather evasive.
‘What has this got to do with Meredith’s death, really, Mrs Rosenfeldt? What did Adam Kowalski do to Meredith?’
Kathy saw from the woman’s dismissive shrug that this was not the right question.
‘Marie Kowalski, then?’
Warmer. Mrs Rosenfeldt’s fingers had developed a sudden interest in the paperwork on the table.
‘What do you know about Marie Kowalski?’
The gaunt figure didn’t respond, and Kathy felt herself become angry. She got abruptly to her feet and leaned forward across the table. ‘What about Marie Kowalski, Mrs Rosenfeldt?’ She was aware that her voice was loud, almost shouting. ‘Did you see something?’
When the old woman looked up to meet her eyes, Kathy saw, somewhat to her shame, that they were filled with fear.
‘She came…’ Mrs Rosenfeldt began, and then hesitated.
‘To see you?’
She nodded, lowered her eyes.
‘Marie Kowalski came to see you. Yes?’ Come on.
With a small effort at bluster, Mrs Rosenfeldt tossed her head. ‘And I told her. Of course I told her. They couldn’t escape just by running away to the seaside!’
Kathy sat down slowly and stared at her. Is that it? ‘You told her that Meredith would go on telling people about them?’
Mrs Rosenfeldt’s head dropped low so that Kathy found herself staring at the silver bun of her hair. It was a nod of acknowledgement.
‘When was this?’
‘That afternoon.’ The voice was a whisper. ‘The afternoon she died.’
‘Marie Kowalski called on Mrs Rosenfeldt shortly after 2 that afternoon.’
Brock put down the draft report he had been reading to listen to Kathy, who was slightly out of breath from the speed with which she’d taken the stairs.
‘She came to say goodbye,’ Kathy continued. ‘She had never realized that it was Mrs Rosenfeldt who had been stirring the pot over Meredith’s discovery. For months Mrs Rosenfeldt had been telling Meredith she should do something about it, to unmask the Kowalskis. I think that’s what had been getting Meredith down. She didn’t know what to do for the best. Mrs Rosenfeldt was pretty formidable once she got an idea in her head.
‘That afternoon she just couldn’t let Marie get away without putting the knife in. She told her that she could expect big trouble. Their names would be in the papers. Meredith would see to it. Marie left at around 2.15 in a state. Three hours later Mrs Rosenfeldt heard that Meredith was dead, and drew her own conclusions. But she couldn’t tell us directly without revealing that she had inflamed the problem. I think she feels as guilty now as if she’d killed Meredith with her own hands.’
‘The past is a jealous mother.’ Brock repeated the phrase and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t sound like Dr Botev.’
‘I think he was quoting. An old Bulgarian proverb probably.’
‘Well, we’d better find out PDQ exactly what the Kowalskis’ movements were that afternoon.’
‘I think we know, sir.’ Kathy frowned. ‘I’m sorry. It’s in the file and I never realized. DC Mollineaux was still checking when the investigation was closed. His report was added to the file later, and I didn’t know it was there. I phoned him just a moment ago, and he told me.’
She opened the file she was carrying. ‘The book dealer in Notting Hill where Adam Kowalski and his son Felix went to dispose of the final load of books confirmed to Mollineaux that they arrived around 1.45 p.m., and were there for about thirty minutes. Then the van rental place in Camden Town turned up their records which showed the van was returned at 3.05 p.m. Marie must have been on her own in the Lane from about 1.30 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. or a bit later.’
‘That was what Adam Kowalski told us, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. It was Felix who said they were back around 2.00 p.m.’
Brock looked at his watch. ‘Looks like another trip to the seaside, Kathy. Let’s grab one of Mrs Rosenfeldt’s meat pies before we go. Bren says they’re excellent.’
26
It seemed that each time they drove down to the coast the weather became more threatening. Now the sky was filled with oppressive dark snow clouds, and the sun, when it did manage to break through, was a baleful red disk, the eye of Lucifer observing their progress across the frozen grey countryside.
They had phoned ahead to make sure the Kowalskis were at home, and when they arrived at the doorstep they could see the two of them through the window, sitting in the front lounge, dressed in their Sunday best like a pair of refugees waiting stoically for their deportation orders. Marie opened the front door and led them without a word into the room, where they all sat formally facing each other. There was an indistinct, unpleasantly sweet odour in the air, and Kathy loosened her coat, feeling suddenly nauseous. She looked at Adam, who sat to attention beside his wife on the settee, his watery eyes fixed on a framed photograph hanging on the opposite wall, of the two of them on their wedding day. His suit, and the starched collar and cuffs of his shirt, hung absurdly loose about his gaunt frame. Brock began by trying to separate the two old people, and take statements in different rooms, but Marie refused to say a word if they were split up, and Brock relented.