‘So your mother didn’t have the books with her when she returned to the shop?’
‘With her?’ He looked startled. He stared at Brock for a moment, searching rapidly for clues in his expressionless face, then groaned and covered his eyes with his hand. ‘She said that? She said she took them?’
‘Felix,’ Brock said, his voice still deadly quiet, ‘you don’t seem to have taken in what I told you last night.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘I will not be lied to. I will discover the truth. You are just making things a hundred times worse for yourself and your mother.’
Kowalski lowered his head. His shoulders rose and fell with his breathing. When he began to speak again, his head still down, his voice came deep, from the back of his throat.
‘When I left them, I drove the van round the block to the lower end of Jerusalem Lane. I went in to number 22. I wanted to tell Meredith to lay off my parents, but she was asleep. Lying peacefully on her bed. So I looked at the carrier bag with the books. There were about a dozen of them. The ones I looked in had inscriptions from Karl Marx, just as my father had described. He had said they were worth four or five thousand each. So I quietly put them back in the bag and walked out with them. I took them for my parents’ sake. I reckoned she owed them at least that.’ A note of anger infiltrated the resignation in his voice. ‘I had a duffle bag at the shop to carry the sandwiches my wife had made us, and I slipped the carrier bag into that when I got back. I suppose my mother must have seen. That’s why she thinks I killed Meredith Winterbottom. But I didn’t.’ He looked up to face Brock. ‘I swear to God I didn’t.’
‘Yes,’ Brock replied flatly. ‘Go on.’
‘What?’
‘Tell us about what you did with the books.’
‘Oh… I waited for a while till I thought things would be quieter. Then I told my father a friend of mine had some old architectural books to sell, and asked for the name of the architect he’d mentioned in connection with Meredith Winterbottom’s books. I remember now how my mother looked at me when I raised it. He still had the man’s business card, and I copied the phone number and rang it later. The architect said it was really a friend of his who was interested, an academic in the States. I contacted her, and it was she who told me about the other documents.’
He looked up at Brock, and for the first time there was a note of supplication in his voice. ‘I only stole the books for my parents. That’s all I wanted the other papers for. For them.’
‘No.’ Brock shook his head. ‘You needed money, didn’t you, Felix? For yourself. To escape. Isn’t that it?’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I’d call it a kind of escape. Someone else might just call it a fantasy. Running away. Digging a tunnel out of the prison, to freedom. To Canada. A fantasy.’
A look of panic formed on Kowalski’s face.
Brock leaned forward and spoke intently to him. ‘I’d like you to appreciate just how impossible that fantasy now is, Felix. I’d like you to acknowledge the truth of the matter with me. There’s really nothing left to be angry about. It’s not a matter of other people stopping you any more. You’ve stopped yourself.’
Brock fished his half-lens spectacles out of his jacket pocket and made a bit of a play of examining a page of the file while he let that sink in.
‘What about her family, Felix? What’s her name? Jenny, that’s it, isn’t it, the girl in Toronto? What about her parents, her friends? What do they think of her infatuation for a bad-tempered, frustrated, middle-aged, married Englishman, twice her age, who has no funds and no prospects? Pretty daunting for them, I should think. Or do they think it’s laughable, that it will all blow over with time? Or do they not even know yet?’
Felix’s face had become blotched red.
‘She…’ he began, then stopped himself, clenching his jaw tight shut.
‘She what?’ Brock prompted mildly. ‘She loves you? She’s pregnant? I found it rather difficult to decide about that from her letters-whether she was just fantasizing, or whether she really was pregnant. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because you were so taken with your fantasy, Felix, so hungry for it, for the money you needed to make it happen, that you killed two old ladies and nearly killed a police officer. And I don’t think that even Jenny’s love can survive the knowledge of that.’
‘I…’ He seemed to have difficulty forcing the words through his throat. ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’
‘Really? Hard on your wife. And your little boy. How long will they bother to come to see you inside, I wonder? Not the full twenty years, that’s for sure. Probably better if there’s a clean break now.’
Then, as if changing the subject completely, ‘She’s a meticulous woman, your wife, isn’t she? I noticed that when I visited your house last night. Everything in its place. Obsessively so. Is that part of the cause or the effect, I wonder? Is she so obsessive about the little things because she knows the big things are so askew, or was her obsessiveness one of the things that made you come to hate her so much? She’s the sort of woman, I’d say, who would insist that a man lower the seat of the toilet after he’s had a pee. Some women are like that, I believe. They find a raised toilet seat offensive because it signifies something about the male member. That’s what they say in women’s magazines, I’m told. Does your wife do that?’
Felix stared at him as if he were mad.
‘Humour me, Felix. I’m all you have now. Does your wife do that?’
He swallowed with difficulty. Finally he nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Yes, I guessed that. Because when you broke into the Winters’ house in Chislehurst and needed the toilet-nerves, I suppose, and you had been drinking beforehand, hadn’t you?-you naturally took off your gloves to undo yourself, and when you finished you automatically lowered the seat, as your wife had drummed into you, before you put the gloves back on. You left a beautiful set of prints’-Brock peered at the second file he had brought in-‘which until today we had been unable to identify.’
Felix’s shoulders gave a little convulsive jerk. A sob came from his bowed head. And then he let go. The tears started to stream down his face and his whole body began to shake.
30
He was there, reading, when she looked up.
‘What time is it?’
‘Two in the afternoon. You’ve been here thirty-six hours.’
‘God, I’m beginning to hurt now.’
‘You will. At least they’ve removed the tube and the drip.’
‘Yes. They did that this morning. I just seem to keep dropping off. Could I have some water, please?’
He helped her, and now she was able to keep it down.
‘Did you get him, then?’
‘Kowalski? Yes. Danny Finn had arranged with two men from the security firm to keep an eye on Eleanor’s box through the night. They turned up just after Felix attacked you. Lucky for you they got the medics to you so quickly. They held him and handed him over to us. He’s been charged with the attempted murder of you, and the murder of Meredith and Eleanor. You know, you were crazy to go in there unarmed and without telling anyone.’
‘I know. I only meant to observe. It wasn’t until I got in there that I realized it wasn’t going to be so easy.’
‘Well, it had the desired effect. Flushed him out. Funny, I hadn’t really got my sights on him. Should have spotted his anger, I suppose. And the evasiveness of his parents.’ He scratched his beard.
‘He was at the funeral apparently, wrapped up in a scarf. Drew the same conclusion you did from Peg’s announcement. So did Judith. She’s been going berserk trying to stop them pouring the concrete.’
‘Did she have any luck?’
Brock shook his head. ‘Danny Finn wouldn’t hear of it. If Peg wants it buried unopened then he will make sure that’s exactly what will happen. I think he sees it as a sort of obligation to his class roots. If the manuscript is down there, it’s due to be buried under a hundred tons of wet concrete any moment now. They couldn’t do it yesterday because of the cold and snow, but with the mild change today they said they’d probably go ahead this afternoon. When asked, Peg smiles vaguely and says she doesn’t understand what everyone’s going on about. As far as we’re concerned, what’s important isn’t what actually is in the box, so much as what Kowalski thought was there. I couldn’t see us getting a warrant to open it up if Peg didn’t want us to. She’s returned home to Jerusalem Lane now that Kowalski’s been charged.’