by Reah, Danuta
It had to be the second option: coercion. Ania had information someone wanted, so that person had twisted her fingers out of their joints one by one until she told him. It was as simple as that. And then? The window. A fall was a good way of concealing pre-mortem injuries. If it hadn’t been for the sharp eyes of a doctor at Łódź Hospital, the anomaly of those injuries would have gone unnoticed.
Ania’s attacker had killed her, which meant he thought he had the information he needed. She had kept her wits about her even in extremis, and she had misled him. He remembered the frustrated anger of the man standing over her body in his dream. Her killer must have realised what she had done almost immediately after he had – somehow – forced her out of the window.
Small Bear has a secret.
The secret she had died for was in the cassette tape and later that day, he was going to find out what that secret was.
Chapter 61
The School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures was housed on the main university campus. The buildings were elegant, their Victorian facades and neo-Gothic architecture reminiscent of medieval Prague. It was an Arcadian retreat in the middle of the urban sprawl.
He had to drive round until he found a car park. He made his way back onto the campus, and orienting himself, cut his way across to the building he wanted. It was just on twelve as he came through the door, and saw Sarah waiting in the entrance lobby for him.
She looked the way he remembered her from St Abbs, her hair loose and tied back with a scarf, younger and more relaxed than she had appeared yesterday. She smiled when she saw him, then tilted her head in query at his guarded response. ‘Problem?’
‘No. I’m fine.’ He wasn’t going to share his doubts with her. If he had cause to worry, he didn’t want her to know he was concerned.
‘OK. I had a long talk with Martin yesterday. Now I understand what Ania meant when she said to get the tape authenticated. I’m not sure how far it gets us, but Martin can tell us which machine was used to record it. It’s like guns – each recorder leaves a distinctive trace on the tape. I talked to the Senior Investigating Officer on the case and he sent the recorder he used to me. I got it to Martin last night. He’s been working on it since then, and he’s got some results for us. If it’s the copy Cathcart made, if it’s the actual tape, we can prove it. Come on.’
That must be what Ania had meant when she asked for the tape to be authenticated. They would be able to prove that this was the one, extant copy of the original recording. He wondered what it contained, to make it so dangerous.
The building reminded him of the university in Łódź. There were the same high ceilings, the same long corridors. Sarah led him along one corridor, down another until she stopped at a door. The plate read Professor Martin York. She knocked and a voice said, ‘Come in.’
Martin York stood up as they entered the room. He was a tall man, thin with a slight scholarly stoop. His hair was so fair it looked grey and his eyes were colourless behind gold rimmed glasses. He held out his arms to Sarah who greeted him with a kiss. ‘Martin. You don’t know how grateful we are. This is Will Gillen.’
York nodded in a way that suggested he had recognised Will before Sarah spoke. ‘I did some work with your daughter a couple of years ago. She was a very talented woman.’
‘Yes. She was.’
The two men studied each other, then York turned back to Sarah. ‘It’s an interesting problem. I didn’t get the recorder until late last night.’
‘I had to be very tactful,’ Sarah said.
‘Mm. Tiger by the tail country, take my word for it.’ His gaze met Will’s again. Behind the nondescript exterior, there was a shrewd mind. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
Will shook his head. He didn’t want to go through the social negotiations. He tried not to let the impatience show on his face, but Sarah said quickly, ‘Maybe later. Perhaps if you tell us what you found?’
‘Of course. Of course. Well, I worked on it last night.’ Another quick glance at Will. ‘Our Ms Ludlow can be very persuasive. I started by checking the machine. This cassette…’ He held up the audio tape. ‘This cassette was recorded on this machine, and nothing has been done to the tape since then. I take it the recorder has been in police possession since the recording was made?’
‘I asked Cathcart to check, and preserve it as evidence when I called him. It’s been in the supplies store and no one has used it since the Haynes investigation.’
‘Good. Good. So what we have here is a copy of the original sound file the police took from Derek Haynes’ computer. You’re with me so far?’
‘Yes. It’s the copy of the recording that Cathcart’s team made.’
‘Exactly. Now the next stage was to compare it with this one. He gestured to a sound file on his computer screen. ‘This is the one that Ania returned to the police, the one that was used in court. I wanted to see what she’d done to it, OK?’
Will nodded, trying to conceal his impatience.
Martin York looked at them. ‘This is where it starts to get interesting. The two recordings are identical.’
Chapter 62
Will stared at York blankly. He tried to account for what he had just heard. It had to be the wrong tape. Someone had got to it before Ania posted it. It…
Sarah’s voice cut into his confusion. ‘So you’re saying there never was a fabrication – the tape was authentic all along?’
‘No. Not at all. The original recording is the fabrication. It was done long before Ania got her hands on it.’
Jesus Christ Almighty. It hit Will like a physical blow. All this time he’d believed – he had accepted without question that his daughter, that Ania, had fabricated evidence that had sent a man to jail. He had built up a whole story to account for it, to justify her actions and all he had needed from the beginning was to have faith in her.
She’d told him. She’d warned him. Occam’s razor, Dad. The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually the right one.
‘She never did it.’ His lips felt frozen. He was aware of Sarah watching him, and he couldn’t bear to see the compassion on her face. He’d rather face Erland’s contempt: so now you know your daughter again
Maybe I never knew her. Maybe I never knew her at all.
Martin York was speaking again. ‘The only difference is that on this one, on the one she used in court, she’s smoothed out some fuzz, some glitches. I’ve enhanced it – it’s almost unnoticeable. Listen.’ He pressed a key and a voice spoke:
Not... Over here. Like that.
I can’t…
Great. Great. You’re a star.
He pressed another key and it played again. This time there was a faint, barely audible click between the words that and I. He looked at them to check if they’d heard it, then played it again. ‘She must have smoothed it out for the court.’
Will could remember Oz Karzac saying, she got Shaun to complete the last bit of the fabrication and now I’m going to have to work hard to convince the police he wasn’t in on it.
‘What sent the defence team back to it?’
‘Oh, that’s simple enough. Even with Ania’s evidence, the case against Haynes was never that strong. If Haynes managed to convince them he was innocent, hers was the evidence they had to attack. It isn’t obvious, but if you look at the acoustics closely, there’s just a trace of glitches here and there, and then you know, of course. It’s one of the best fabrications I’ve come across. Even so, I would have expected Ania to spot it. I don’t know why she didn’t.’
She hadn’t spotted it because she was too close to it. He could remember the time they’d argued about the case.
You shouldn’t get personally involved. You have to be dispassionate. The best expert witnesses are impartial.
I am impartial. I’ll do the analysis and tell them what I find.
And she had done, but her partiality had made her miss one vital thing: the recording she was working with was a fake.
‘So Derek Haynes…’
‘May well be innocent. The voice is almost certainly his. Ania knew her stuff. She wasn’t wrong. But this recording has been pieced together – what from, I don’t know. I’ll have to take this to the police, you understand?’
‘Of course.’
Half an hour later, Will stood in the courtyard outside the building. The campus spread out around him. The sun was low in the sky, casting the early glow of the sunset on the sides of the buildings. He could feel its warmth on his back. Sarah was beside him. She turned her face to the light and shook out her hair. It gleamed gold in the brightness. It was an irony that a city with a name for grey skies and rain should shine on them with such promise and such optimism. She looked at him. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ania’s death – it doesn’t look like suicide any more.’
‘I don’t think it ever did.’ Only he hadn’t seen it. I know you again, he reassured her silently.
‘This changes everything. I have to talk to Nadifa. I have to find out what was going on.’
‘And I need to talk to Cathcart.’
‘Are you sure? Don’t you want to wait?’
‘For what?’
‘I don’t know. I work for the defence. I’m always leery of sharing with the police.’
‘I am the police.’
She grinned. ‘I know. I’m consorting with the enemy. Do what you think best. Shall we meet later, compare notes?’
He arranged to come to her flat later that evening, and they parted. He thought about what they had found as he walked back to the car. The tape, the fabrication – Martin York’s findings had felt like a breakthrough, but now he realised he only had half the story.
Ania had been accused of fabricating the Haynes recording. Her response to this, when she had spent some time revisiting her work, had been to run. That made no sense. She’d had the proof all the time that she had worked with the material Cathcart had given her, that she had done nothing wrong. The worst she could be accused of was making an error in her analysis. She hadn’t tried to falsify anything. So why run away?
He unlocked the car door and sat in the driver’s seat, thinking. He took out the note Ania had sent him and read it again.
I’ve got a better idea of what’s going on now. I can’t get this done here – my mistake. If it goes through official channels, I’m afraid it might disappear.
He was struck again by the sense of coming into a conversation half way through. She wrote as though he knew what was going on. The only reason she would assume that was if she had told him. Somewhere there had to be an earlier communication.
And there was something else he’d lost sight of. A child was dead. The body had been well hidden, and hidden in a way that would have destroyed any forensic evidence. This was why the police case against Haynes had been so weak. Martin York’s analysis showed that someone – presumably the killer – had fabricated evidence that pointed to someone else.
That was dangerous and it was also stupid. There was no obvious killer on the scene, no helpful uncle, no released paedophile with access to the centre. An anonymous abductor was almost impossible to identify. There had been no need to frame anyone. An intelligent killer would have sat tight.
He tried calling Dariusz Erland. Now that the tape was in the public domain, now that it had been analysed by an expert witness, he felt safe letting Erland know about it. Frustratingly, Erland’s phone was switched off. Will left a message: Will Gillen here. That thing of Ania’s you were looking for, it’s turned up.
Now all he had to do was contact Cathcart. He keyed in the number. He wasn’t looking forward to this.
Chapter 63
It was late afternoon before Dariusz was released from the police station. He had been kept waiting, questioned, kept waiting and questioned again. They didn’t have the power to keep him there – he could have insisted on his rights and left, but that might have pushed them into arresting him if they thought they had enough evidence.
He needed to know how much they had against him, so he sat it out through a process that seemed designed to wear him down. The focus was constant: why hadn’t he found the files on his hard drive sooner – why had he only claimed to find them now, just before the police were planning to raid him? Why hadn’t he reported the break in at the time?
This time, he was more honest. He told them about the locked computer, and about the signs that something had been moved in the wardrobe. He admitted it was very slight evidence. ‘That’s why I didn’t come to you. I thought someone had searched my flat. Nothing was missing. What would you have done?’
He was aware of the door opening. Król came into the room and stood in silence, watching.
Why did he assume someone had searched his flat? Why would anyone want to search his flat?
I thought it was you, he told them. Because of Ania, because she’d been murdered and someone was trying to hush it up.
Why hadn’t he told them about this before?
He hadn’t said anything because he had been alarmed and angry about his treatment and hadn’t felt like cooperating. He’d had time to think about it now and realised he should have told them the first time.
That was his story and he stuck to it. Most of it was true so it was easy enough to keep up. He just had to remind himself not to elaborate, not to explain. He was sitting in the interview room towards the end of the day. The two men who had been questioning him had left with a promise to be back, but that had been an hour ago. He checked his watch. It was after four. He’d been here for over seven hours, and he was just about done with cooperating.
He stood up and stretched. The man waiting at the door stirred restlessly. ‘OK,’ Dariusz said to him, ‘I’m ready to go. How about you get onto your bosses and tell them that if they need to keep me any longer, they’d better get back here now and give me a good reason.’
The man studied him in silence, then gave an abrupt nod. He used the phone on the wall, and after a slow fifteen minutes, they came back, just as Dariusz was about to assert himself again.
‘Mr Erland,’ the first man said. Dariusz was pleased to hear he was Mr Erland again. If they were being polite to him, they were unlikely to throw him in a cell for the night. ‘You are free to go. Thank you for your cooperation. This matter might have been settled sooner if you had been more frank with us two days ago.’
Dariusz nodded. He wanted to know what, if anything, they knew. ‘My computer and my phone – when can I have them back?’
‘They’re in our laboratory. They aren’t available now but you can have them back tomorrow. Mr Erland, one last question: is there someone who doesn’t like you?’
It took Dariusz by surprise. If he could take the question at face value, it meant they believed him. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Your hand…’
‘I fell. I was walking in the cemetery at night and I slipped.’
‘It’s odd to be walking there in the dark.’
It was ironic that something truthful – if not the whole truth – should sound so fabricated. ‘Ania, my… Ania. That’s where we met.’
There was a moment of silence, then the man said, ‘I’m sorry. You’re free to go.’
Dariusz found himself on the street with some loose change in his pockets and his pen drive still tucked into his hand. It looked as though the police had accepted his story.
The streets were busy enough. The working day was coming to an end and people were heading for home. The light was fading and soon the streets would be empty. He looked round. All he could see were groups, or individuals walking alone, everyone apparently intent on their own business. Was there someone in that crowd watching him – from a shop doorway, from a corner, walking casually past with no detectable glance – someone who had unfinished business with Dariusz?
He checked the time to disguise his indecision. He had almost no money on him. He could get a taxi – the driver
would be pissed off when Dariusz had to go into the flat to get the cash to pay, but there wouldn’t be much he could do about it. And then what? Hide behind his locked door for the night? And the next night and the next night? He couldn’t live like that.
He started walking as he thought, lighting a cigarette, keeping a surreptitious watch on the road around him. He had enough cash to go to a café where he could get a sandwich and some coffee. He needed time to think.
What he had to do was to flush his attacker out. He needed to present an opportunity that was too good to miss. The idea that had come to him a couple of days ago was now formed clearly in his mind. He knew what he was going to do.
Chapter 64
Sarah Ludlow’s flat was in Hale, south of Manchester. Will drove through the quiet roads, past houses set back behind trees and hedges. The address she had given him was for an apartment in a development called The Oaks. He pulled up at the gates, wound down his window and pushed the intercom for Apartment 3. After a few seconds, the gates swung inwards and he found himself driving towards a Victorian mansion with oak trees shading it on two sides.
One wing had a cupola, there were pointed dormers in the roof, and huge bays on the front. It was very different from the apartment where Ania had lived. He remembered Cathcart’s words about Sarah Ludlow. Being a human rights lawyer clearly did not mean living from hand to mouth. He followed the driveway round until he found the parking bays. He parked in a space marked visitors, and walked to the front door.
She must have been watching him, because she buzzed him in before he rang the bell. He went up a flight of stairs, and she was waiting for him at the entrance to her flat. An image of Ania leaning in a doorway waiting for him flickered across his vision and he had to stop and wait until it cleared.
‘Will. Are you all right?’
‘Fine. I’m fine. This is a beautiful place.’
‘Isn’t it? I bought it two years ago, at the top of the market.’ She made a rueful face. ‘It’s a good thing I have no plans to move. Now, come in and let me get you a drink.’
