Second Violin

by John Lawton

  Spinetti said, ‘He don’t actually eat the stuff, y’know.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I share a room with him. He won’t eat it. He won’t eat any of it.’

  ‘What does he do with it then?’

  Before Spinetti could answer, the eager face of Arthur Kornfeld appeared. He sat next to Spinetti, opposite Rod, Hummel and Billy, a notebook and pencil in hand.

  ‘I was hoping to catch you,’ he said. ‘All of you. But you in particular, Herr Troy. We will be rehearsing later today, I wondered if you might join us.’

  ‘I didn’t actually pack a violin, you know. My mind was on more mundane things – like socks.’

  ‘This used to be a girls’ school. We have a room full of hockey sticks and lacrosse racquets and another full of instruments. If any of you play the tuba, we have six going begging. To say nothing of a sousaphone, a harpsichord and what appears to be a bass saxophone, if Herr Sax ever invented such a thing. Would any of you . . .?’

  Nobody would. They munched burnt bread and swilled stewed leaves and left Rod and Kornfeld to it.

  ‘No matter. We rehearse in the music room on the ground floor at two.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Rod. ‘I’d be happy to. Do you have a piece in mind? Come to think of it, do you have a performance in mind?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kornfeid. ‘Yes in both cases. We are aiming for a . . . how would you say? . . . concert party? . . . in a week or two, and we have chosen the Elgar “Quartet in E minor”.’

  Rod’s heart sank a little. He was partial to Elgar. It had been the music of his childhood when new. It had nursed in the Edwardian era. Those few short years of long summers. The peace that could not last. He was about the same age as Elgar’s two symphonies. He’d heard them all his life. Elgar had died only a couple of years back, but in Rod’s mind his music would always be associated with the years just before the Great War. However, the string quartet was a dreary piece. Elgar firing on two cylinders with carburettor trouble. Playing it would be a bore. Listening to it had been a bore when his dad had taken him to the work’s premiere at the Wigmore Hall just after the War.

  ‘Anything else in mind?’ he said, meaning ‘any other music’.

  Kornfeld misunderstood and said, ‘Oh, Ja. Most evenings we have Heaven’s Gate University. Lectures and discussions. On Monday Professor Drax will speak. His field is politics and history. Next Thursday I make my own modest contribution. I was a theoretical physicist in the old country. Perhaps one of you would care to speak? We always have room for more.’

  To no one’s amazement this was greeted with silence.

  Then to everyone’s amazement, Hummel spoke.

  ‘Ja. I will speak. Put me down for . . . for Man and God.’

  Kornfeld scribbled, muttering to himself, ‘Man and God. Man and God. Ah . . . you were a theologian, Herr Hummel?’

  ‘No, a tailor.’

  Then, ‘Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. At two, Herr Troy?’

  And he left.

  Billy had turned to stare at Hummel.

  ‘Are you quite sure about this, Joe?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’

  § 114

  Early the same day Troy drove out to Hendon. To the Metropolitan Police Laboratory. The brainchild of the eminent forensic scientist Sir Bernard Spilsbury. On occasion Troy had dealt directly with the great man; more often than not, and certainly out of choice, he dealt with one Ladislaw Kolankiewicz, a Polish exile of undoubted qualification and talent – one of those talents being an ability to swing between the tender and the obstreperous in a matter of seconds. He had been, at necessary moments in Troy’s life, the best listener in the world, avuncular in the positive sense of the word. On other occasions Troy would arrive to find him mid-dissection, hunched over a corpse, swearing with all the power of the many languages available to him. His oaths were the stuff of legend at Scotland Yard – there were those who saw only the funny side, the man who called Chief Inspectors of the Yard ‘Dog-wankers’ to their face – and there were those who could not abide him – Onions was one – and there was Troy for whom Kolankiewicz seemed to hold an abiding, if abusive, affection.

  ‘What you want at this time of day, smartyarse?’

  ‘Rabbi Borg.’

  ‘Oh, he was one of yours, was he?’

  ‘Found him myself. I was in the car that ran over him.’

  ‘You drive?’

  ‘No. Stilton drove. But, to be accurate, I was in the second car. It was the first killed him, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘8.58.’

  ‘So precise?’

  ‘The impact broke his pocket watch . . . so unless he carried a stopped watch in his waistcoat pocket . . . and it fits in fairly well with the onset of rigor . . . but tell me . . . you think he was murdered. Or you wouldn’t be here at a time when you are usually in bed. Why?’

  ‘Two things. I found his bible a hundred yards or so from the body. From thereon I think he was running. I think he ran until the car following hit him . . . caught him round about the backside or thighs, I should think . . .’

  ‘Correct. Broke the right hip, then ran over the torso crushing the ribcage. Both lungs pierced. Poor bastard drowned in his own blood in less than a minute. Still warm when you got there, when . . .?’

  ‘About an hour later. Still warm . . . and . . . the other thing – still sweaty. I could feel it on his wrist as I tried for a pulse. Dead men don’t sweat.’

  Kolankiewicz could argue for a continent and two countries, but he didn’t.

  ‘So far, smartyarse, ten out of ten. Yes, he was soaked in sweat. I’d say he’d run more than a hundred yards. Even allowing for his age, and he was sixty-ish, his weight, and he was stout, and the preponderant weight of traditional Jewish clothing on an August night, he had sweated . . . shall we say . . . unnaturally. He had, as you deduce, been running. Not a habit among rabbis, I think. Can’t remember when I saw a rabbi so much as dash for a bus. As for the annual rabbis egg and spoon race . . .’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I could probably come up with a tyre print off the back of the suit. But they’re not fingerprints. One car has the pattern, so do a thousand. And you and Stilton somewhat queered the pitch when you ran over him a second time.’

  ‘Any marks on the body not consistent with hit and run?’

  ‘He was trussed for a hernia. Not a device ever used as a murder weapon, as I recall. He was immaculate in his habits. Clean fingernails, clean underwear, clean hanky, trimmed beard. He’d eaten around five in the afternoon, and he’d pissed in his pants before he died. I conclude . . . a dignified man whose death had anything but dignity.’

  It seemed to Troy that that simple statement said something timely about the condition of Europe at that moment, to sum up things that had happened in Berlin or Vienna or Warsaw. But to say so was to risk a discussion that might last all morning.

  ‘You’re right . . . that was Izzy Borg as I remember him. Dignity. A dignity he didn’t stand on. A nice guy.’

  ‘A mensh.’

  ‘Quite. So who would want to . . . ?’

  Kolankiewicz handed Troy a paper bag containing the contents of Rabbi Borg’s pockets – two pencils, a fountain pen, a pocket diary, two mint humbugs in wrappers, the stub of a railway ticker from Liverpool Street to Cambridge and three shillings and sixpence halfpenny in change.

  ‘There’s almost nothing of any use to you. What you need is an eyewitness.’

  Fat chance, thought Troy. That was the thing about life in the blackout. Witness, if they saw anything at all, saw only shadows. He had no high hope of solving his one, but that was no reason not to try.

  § 115

  They stood in Troy’s old office once again that lunchtime. Drinking tea. Stilton’s stomach rumbling.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.

  Troy said, ‘How many names on our list? Half a dozen?’

 
‘’Bout that.’

  ‘Would you mind handling them on your own? I could look into Borg’s death today.’

  Stilton paused, thought, set his teacup back on the saucer.

  ‘You’re still saying it was murder?’

  ‘Yes, and so is Kolankiewicz.’

  ‘And Mr Onions?’

  ‘I haven’t told him yet. But I will.’

  ‘And I’ll have to tell Steerforth.’

  ‘Do you really have to?

  ‘You’re being naïve, Mr Troy. O’course I have to tell him. And there’ll be consequences. Ructions.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘He’ll be mad as hell with both of us. Spittin’ feathers. I can hear him now. “It’s none of your business . . . make your statements and get on with the job in hand.” And then his spook mode’ll cut in. I can hear that too . . . “Murdered rabbi? . . . just as we’re rounding up Jews? Keep it to yourself.” He’ll tell us it’s Branch business and want it kept a secret. Politically sensitive that’s what he’ll say. And if you don’t think the spooks in M15’ll back him up then you really are naïve. They’ll sit on this. Penny to a quid they’ll not want this getting out now.’

  ‘Then would you mind waiting until I’ve talked to Onions?’

  ‘I think I can manage that, but why?’

  ‘If I make this Scotland Yard business, Murder Squad business, it won’t be Branch business and the only man who can tell me not to investigate is Onions. Steerforth can rant and rave, but short of M15 going to the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary leaning on the Met Commissioner, the buck will stop with Onions.’

  ‘Onions lets you investigate anything you deem to be murder?’

  ‘Has so far.’

  ‘You know, for a young un you’ve got an awful lot of power. Most of us just do what we’re told.’

  Troy had never been much good at that.

  § 116

  It had been an agonisingly scratchy, scrapey couple of hours in the music room. He was the least practised of the quartet and the least accomplished, but that was nothing compared to the dullness inherent in the piece Kornfeld had chosen. There was nothing of Nimrod about it. There was nothing hummable about it. You didn’t listen to, let alone attempt to play, Elgar’s only string quartet and come away humming anything. It was, to use the parlance of the palais-de-dance, anything but ‘catchy’, Rod thought. Lady Elgar had supposedly referred to some aspect of the piece as ‘captured sunshine’. But it was bottled boredom.

  Rod asked ‘why the Elgar?’

  Kornfeld said, to the eager smiles of Herr Lippmann, his viola player, and Herr Schnitzler, his cellist, ‘It is England, the epitome of England. We were keen to do something that showed England, that showed our willingness to be of England, to be English. We intend, of course, to invite all the British in the camp and some of the villagers on the island. This piece has . . . a quality of light . . .’

  ‘Captured sunshine?’ Rod said, only to find the quotation and the sarcasm wasted and returned with more smiles.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Y’know,’ Rod said slowly and carefully. ‘I’m pretty keen on Elgar myself. Saw the young Menuhin boy play the violin concerto a few years back, listened to the symphonies all my life . . . or so it seems . . . but I can’t help feeling that we should be . . .’

  Oh God, he couldn’t say it.

  ‘Yes?’ Kornfeld urged him on.

  ‘Well. We’re all from Vienna, aren’t we?’

  ‘Herr Lippmann is from Salzburg.’

  ‘Fine . . . I think my point will withstand the geography . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why not something by Haydn or Schubert?’

  Kornfeld looked at Lippmann and Schnitzler, Lippmann and Schnitzler looked at one another.

  ‘What does that prove?’ Kornfeld said eventually.

  ‘Nothing you can prove by playing a piece of second-rate Elgar. None of it makes us English, it’s merely playing politics. We should be playing music, music that means something to us – we can at least give the English something of ourselves and as Vienna has so much to give that is first rate . . .?’

  Rod let the sentence trail off.

  Shrugs all round.

  ‘You think our guards will like Haydn or Schubert more?’

  Time to lie. Rod didn’t think they’d give a damn about music at all.

  ‘I haven’t a clue. But we will. Let us be true to the name they’ve landed us with.’

  More shrugs. They hadn’t heard.

  ‘You didn’t know they call this place Little Vienna?’

  ‘No.’

  Kornfeld led Rod across to a huge cupboard built into the alcove formed by the chimney breast. He swung back the door to reveal a dozen shelves of alphabetised sheet music from floor to high, high ceiling. Thomas Arne to Richard Wagner. You’d need a ladder to reach Arne and anyone ahead of Chopin. There were dozens of them, hundreds of them. Rod began to regret ever having spoken.

  ‘Perhaps you could find the right piece for us?’

  Rod stared. There might even be thousands here.

  ‘That’s very good, you know – “playing music not politics”. Ja, very good.’

  Behind him Rod could hear Schnitzler muttering ‘something of ourselves’ over and over again – the sound of him getting nearer. Then he shuffled between the two of them and reached into the heart of the cupboard, to the section labelled M.

  ‘Mozart,’ Schnitzler said pulling out a dozen folders of bound sheets and dropping as many more on the floor. What was left in his hand he seemed to regard as the product of serendipity. He stared down at the top sheet and read out the title to them all.

  ‘The 23rd in F. Hmmm. I played it first as a boy. It is as you say . . . something of myself.’

  He handed the music to Kornfeld.

  ‘You will find it livelier than the Elgar. I would even venture to say it is spritely. Not quite jazz, but spritely.’

  § 117

  He’d talked to the caretaker at Borg’s synagogue. He’d gone to Borg’s home and he’d talked to two surviving sisters – grief-stricken women not bothering to restrain their tears, easily deceived by Troy’s reassurance that his questions were the stuff of routine. There had been a crime committed – it was illegal to drive away after being involved in an accident. But it was no more than that. He fended off questions about the autopsy about the release of the body assuming that the truth could only worsen their grief.

  Rabbi Borg’s diary showed a 7.30 appointment in a community hall, less than a mile from where his body was found. Borg had spent an hour with six thirteen-year-old boys, and a further half hour chatting with the father of one of them. He’d set off home in daylight, he’d been run down in daylight. And no one had seen a thing. As ever . . . he was ‘a man with no enemies’ and ‘who would ever want to do a thing like that to nice man like . . .’ – their voices echoed those of Borg’s caretaker and sisters.

  Troy arrived back at the Yard, not much wiser.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Stilton,’ the voice on the other end said.

  ‘Are we done?’

  ‘We’re done with refugees, fifth columnists, pastry chefs, professors of physics and little Hitlers. Are you done with dead rabbis?’

  ‘’Fraid not.’

  ‘Then we’d best meet.’

  Troy looked at his watch. 6.05 p.m.

  ‘I could come over to you by seven.’

  ‘No. This is off the record and off the manor. I don’t want flapping lug’oles. Do you know the Hand & Shears in Cloth Fair, between Smithfield and Barts Hospital?’

  ‘No, but I can find it.’

  ‘Seven it is then.’

  Troy liked the streets behind Barts. It was as though they’d been deliberately hidden from the rest of the city, tucked into the shadow of Smithfield and forgotten about. Streets as narrow as Goodwin’s Court, built for a very different London. Public houses no bigger than the front room of a terraced hou
se. The etching on the street door read ‘Snug’ – it was. The Hand & Shears was tiny – a spit-and-sawdust pub that probably catered to porters from the meat-market at nearby Smithfield. It was empty but for a fat-faced, walrus-moustached copper seated at a corner table, just about big enough for four pints and an ash tray. This was why Stilton had chosen it – a pub that was full to bursting or empty because it relied for its trade on men working shifts – all in or all out. He was on his first pint, a fringe of white froth on the end of his moustache.

  ‘I didn’t order for you. I get the feeling you don’t much like ale anyway.’

  Troy ordered a ginger beer. Sotto voce. It seemed unmanly not to like beer.

  Stilton said, ‘I thought there were a couple of things we should get straight before I set off back to Burnham.’

  ‘Say hello to Charlie.’

  ‘I will. Now . . . this Izzy Borg business . . . I’ll say it one more time . . . it couldn’t just be an accident?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s pitch dark in that alley. I could see bugger all. Maybe the bloke who ran him down couldn’t see either.’

  ‘I have a precise time of death. It was light when Borg died there. We’re on British Double Summertime, remember?’

  ‘OK . . . OK . . . cut me some slack for being sceptical. I’ve never been on a murder in all my years on the force. And I’ll never get used to double summertime. But I wanted to be sure, to be sure you’re sure.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘’Cos if you go on with this, you’ll go up against Steerforth sooner or later. And he is a vindictive little sod.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ Troy said, remembering two vicious encounters with the man.

  ‘And that incident at the Russian Tea Rooms didn’t help.’

  ‘Ah . . . I didn’t know you knew. Kitty?’

  ‘No, our Kit’s got some discretion. Steerforth told me himself. And that’s another thing. He’s not well liked in the Branch . . . always looking for the main chance . . . can’t resist a bit of bragging . . . not good in a Branch copper . . . out to make a name for himself.’