The Raven's Eye

by Barry Maitland

  ‘I, er, I’m hoping that I can beg a few moments of your time, sir.’ The voice was weaker and more hesitant than Brock remembered, and the ‘sir’ at the end seemed uncharacteristically humble.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes today or tomorrow for a brief meeting? I’m on my way to London now.’

  ‘By train?’

  ‘Yes. We’re due into King’s Cross in half an hour. I could get a taxi to your office . . .’

  Not a good idea, Brock thought. ‘I’m on the road at the moment. What if I meet you at King’s Cross?’

  ‘Well, yes, that would be excellent.’

  ‘Get yourself a cup of tea in the café by the Euston Road exit, and I should be with you not long after you get there, traffic allowing.’

  ‘Very kind of you, sir.’

  When Brock walked into the café he saw Kite, looking very elderly now, a grey muffler wrapped around his neck, hunched over a cup and saucer. They shook hands and Brock sat down opposite him.

  ‘Can I get you something, Chief Inspector?’ Kite looked around vaguely.

  ‘I’m fine. How can I help you, Desmond?’

  Kite lowered his head, as if having to summon all his strength to begin. ‘Concerning Gudrun . . . I’ve been feeling very guilty about her. Is it really true that she gave me a false address in London?’

  Brock nodded.

  ‘She must have hated me.’ He said it in a hollow, desolate voice, then took a deep breath as if to pull himself together. ‘I’ve been very slow on the uptake—Gudrun’s death, living on a boat under a false name—I just refused to take it all in. I always favoured Freyja, you see, and I realise now how hurtful that must have been to poor Gudrun. And I suppose it was even worse after Freyja died. I mourned her too fiercely, and pushed Gudrun away.’ He nodded his head slowly. ‘She must have hated me.’

  ‘No, I think Gudrun was hiding for a different reason. I think she may have been trying to find out what had happened to her sister, and preferred to keep her identity secret.’

  ‘So you do think there was something suspicious about their deaths?’

  Brock hesitated. ‘I honestly don’t know. Officially both cases are closed, but I am keeping an open mind. I know you need some resolution in this, and I’ll do what I can.’ Brock thought of Lynch and felt how inadequate his words were.

  Kite nodded. ‘Thank you. There were two things that I wanted to do in London, apart from seeing you. I wanted to visit Gudrun’s boat.’

  ‘Of course. You will be her next of kin, I assume?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s still at the same mooring, and I have a key.’ Brock handed it over and described where the boat was. ‘And the other thing?’

  ‘At Gudrun’s funeral a woman spoke to me briefly after the service. She said that she wanted me to know that Freyja and Gudrun were brave girls, that I should be very proud of them, and that they had died for what they believed in. At the time, my mind in turmoil, I didn’t really take it in, but I was struck by the strength of her feeling. I didn’t know who she was, but afterwards the funeral director identified her from the book that people signed at the door of the chapel. Her name was Anne Downey.’

  ‘I see. And she mentioned Freyja as well as Gudrun?’

  ‘Yes, as if she knew them both well. And then I wondered if she had been at Freyja’s funeral too, and when I looked in Freyja’s book of mourners, sure enough, there was Anne Downey’s name. Now I want to find her and ask her what on earth she meant, what she knows. Have you any idea how I can contact her?’

  ‘I’d be interested to hear her answers too,’ Brock said, thinking this over. ‘I don’t know where she is, but if she’s still with her boat, there’s somewhere we might try.’

  They went out to Brock’s car and headed east, out through Finsbury and Shoreditch to join the Old Ford Road. They stopped at its bridge over the Regent’s Canal, and looked along its length in both directions, and along the Hertford Union Canal where it ran into the Regent’s. It was around here, Brock thought, that Downey had put Kathy in a taxi to the Pewsey Clinic, wearing her jacket. There were a few boats to be seen, mostly small pleasure craft, but the only narrowboat wasn’t Anne Downey’s. All the same, they knocked on its window and asked its skipper if he’d seen the Aquarius, but he couldn’t recall it.

  Old Ford Road continued east, roughly parallel to the Hertford Union, and Brock worked his way along, turning off from time to time down the side streets that led to the canal. Streetlights were coming on now, the afternoon light fading and the damp air seeming to thicken, as if ready to condense into fog. They crossed under the A12 into Hackney Wick and an area of factory and warehouse sheds, beyond which they caught glimpses of cranes and the glow of high-intensity lights at the Olympics site. After several wrong turns they came to the canal, on its final stretch before it ran into the Lee Navigation waterway. Halfway along its length was a lock, taking boats down to the lower level of the Lee, with an assortment of small boats on this side of it, but no narrowboats. Brock parked the car and they found a flight of steps leading down to the towpath, and began to walk into the gathering mist.

  They reached the lock, and Kite pointed at the small boats. ‘These aren’t the right type, are they?’

  ‘No.’ Brock stared along the canal bank towards the Lee, seeing nothing resembling a narrowboat. ‘Looks as if my guess was wrong.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Kite said, pointing to the glimmer of a light in a dark hole in the canal bank opposite, beyond the lock, overgrown by trees and hemmed in by old brick industrial buildings.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ The only immediate way across was the beam on top of the lock gates, or else to return to the car and find a bridge further back, but by then it would be dark.

  Brock said, ‘Wait here, Desmond. I’ll take a look.’

  The beam was about a foot wide, split in the middle where the two gates came together. Brock stepped up onto it and began to walk steadily across. He jumped down on the far side and turned to look back at Kite, and was startled to see him standing unsteadily on the first gate, arms outstretched like a high-wire acrobat. Brock held his breath as Kite reached the middle, and stopped. Brock saw his eyes stray to the long drop on the downstream side, and the lanky figure began to sway. Now his arms were windmilling and Brock could see exactly what was going to happen, the figure toppling down and disappearing under the dark waters of the Lee. He jumped back onto the beam and ran to Kite, grabbing hold of an arm and hauling him along the gate by sheer force of will.

  ‘Ah,’ Kite said, as he staggered onto dry land. ‘That was rather exciting.’

  The remains of an old towpath ran along this side of the canal, its concrete slab broken and overgrown with weeds, the smell of decay and stagnant water heavy in the air. They picked their way around bits of rusty metal guttering and broken timber pallets, and came to the area of dark shadow they’d seen from the other side. It appeared to be a short quay, a length of canal dug back into the bank to provide access to an industrial building from which a broad canopy extended out over the water to provide for covered loading. And beneath the canopy, moored against the abandoned factory wharf, lay a narrowboat, hidden from both the air and the land, a light glowing from a porthole. They made their way carefully towards it.

  It was the Aquarius, the name picked out in ornate blue and silver letters. Brock saw the sudden doubt appear on Kite’s face as he made out the name, as if having second thoughts about what Anne Downey might have to tell him about his daughters.

  ‘Come on,’ he said gently, and took Kite’s elbow to help him up onto the stern. They heard music, the faint jangle of a harpsichord, Bach perhaps, or Scarlatti. The older man gripped the tiller to steady himself as Brock tapped on the door.

  The music fell silent, then Anne Downey’s face, cautious, appeared at the door. Recognising Brock, she looked hostile, then surprised as she recognised Kite.

  ‘Dr Downey,’ Br
ock said, ‘you know Desmond Kite, I think. May we come in?’

  She looked at Brock coldly. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

  ‘Please . . .’ Kite said hesitantly, as if he hadn’t had much practice at begging. ‘For a grieving father’s sake, would you give us a few minutes of your time, Doctor?’

  She frowned reluctantly. ‘I’ll speak to you alone, Professor.’

  ‘David is my friend,’ Kite said, putting his hand on Brock’s arm. ‘We were at university together.’ Brock tried not to show his surprise, but he supposed it might almost be true. Kite continued, ‘I know that he’s as determined as I am to see justice done for Gudrun and Freyja. I really would like him to hear what you have to tell me.’

  Anne Downey gave a sigh of resignation and reluctantly opened the door to them. As he straightened at the foot of the steps, Brock saw that Ned Tisdell was further down the boat, sitting tensely at the dining table where it looked as if they had been preparing an evening meal together.

  ‘I’ve never been in one of these,’ Kite said, looking around wonderingly. ‘It’s very snug, isn’t it? A great deal more comfortably appointed than a Viking longship, and yet of similar proportions, one might say. I wonder if Gudrun . . .’

  His voice tailed away, and Anne Downey answered his unspoken question. ‘Yes, she used to refer to her boat as her “longship”. I think she liked to think of herself as a Viking maiden from the sagas you used to read to her and Freyja.’

  ‘She told you about that?’ He looked wistful.

  ‘Yes, and about taking them to the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, to see the Gokstad ship.’

  ‘Ah . . . So you knew all the time, did you, that she was Gudrun Kite, not Vicky Hawke?’

  Downey looked at him sharply, as if she’d misjudged him. ‘Um, come and sit here at the table, Professor. This is Ned Tisdell.’

  Tisdell was staring at Brock, then turned to Downey. ‘You shouldn’t have let them in, Anne. You know what Oll—’

  ‘They won’t be here long, Ned,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘What was it you wanted to ask me, Professor?’

  ‘At Gudrun’s funeral you told me that both of my girls had died doing what they believed in. I want to know what you meant by that. What were they mixed up in?’

  Downey took a deep breath. ‘What I meant,’ she said slowly, ‘was that their lives, although cut short, had been useful and productive.’

  ‘No,’ Kite insisted, with a sudden decisiveness that took them all by surprise. ‘No, you meant more than that. Why did Gudrun have to take on somebody else’s identity and not tell me, her own father? She even hid where she was living from me.’

  ‘Perhaps she just needed time to be alone, and anonymous.’

  ‘But why? Why would she hide from me? What had she got herself involved in?’

  Downey shook her head and turned away. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

  Brock, who had kept silent up to now, said, ‘Come on, Anne, it’s not that difficult. Gudrun took someone else’s name because she didn’t want certain people to know that she was Freyja’s sister. Isn’t that it?’

  Downey said nothing, so Brock continued, ‘And she didn’t want them to know that because she was trying to find out who was responsible for her sister’s death. Yes? Am I right?’

  Still Downey refused to speak, Ned Tisdell staring at her all the while as if willing her to silence.

  ‘Well, let me suggest a possibility, then. Perhaps she suspected that one or both of the men in the car that knocked Freyja down worked in London for Paddington Security Services, and she came down here to try to get some evidence against them. Could that be it? Was that what she was doing? Hacking into their personnel files? Pumping their colleagues for proof that they’d been in Cambridge that night?’

  Anne Downey gave an impatient shake of her head, and Brock wondered which bit he might have got wrong. He decided there was nothing he could do but press on. ‘Did they find out and threaten her? She told you all about it, didn’t she? So why the hell didn’t she—or you, for that matter—go to the police?’

  Downey gave an exasperated sigh, as if she couldn’t believe this.

  Brock, casting around in his mind for leverage, said, ‘How did she make the connection to the Paddington company? Were they involved with one of the other firms at the Cambridge Science Park? I know they’re not involved with Penney Solutions.’

  Downey raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yes, we checked. There’s no connection.’

  Downey gave a bitter snort. ‘Oh, brother, you lot really are pathetic.’ She stared at his puzzled expression and said, ‘You don’t know that Penney Solutions and Paddington Security Services have the same owner?’

  ‘No, that’s not possible. I had a high-level check done on the two companies.’

  She laughed. ‘High-level check! Then they’re keeping you out of the loop, aren’t they? Paddington is wholly owned by the Harvest Group, who also own a controlling fifty-five per cent of Penney.’

  Brock blinked. Why hadn’t Suzy Russell mentioned this? ‘The Harvest Group?’

  ‘Venture capitalists. They invest money in speculative new technologies.’

  ‘All right . . .’ Brock was trying to make sense of this. ‘So there is a connection. But why would Gudrun have suspected the Paddington people of being involved in her sister’s death?’

  Downey shrugged, looking as if she regretted saying what she had. ‘I’ve no idea. What about you, Ned? Did she say anything to you?’

  Tisdell shook his head.

  ‘No,’ Brock growled. ‘You know more than this. You both knew Freyja, didn’t you? You went to her funeral, Anne, and you, Ned, took your boat up to Cambridge and met her in the grounds of the Plough at Fen Ditton, near the science park. You two have been involved in this from the beginning. Hell, they tried to kill you too, Ned, setting fire to your boat. Come on, you’ll have to do better than that. What’s really going on?’

  Downey and Tisdell exchanged a look, but said nothing.

  ‘Very well, I’ll have to arrest the pair of you as accessories both before and after the fact, concealing evidence relating to the deaths of Freyja and Gudrun Kite.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Tisdell groaned, cradling his face in his hands.

  Anne Downey looked at him anxiously, then turned to Brock. ‘You work with Kathy Kolla, don’t you? Let me speak to her. I trust her, she saved Ned’s life.’

  ‘All right.’ Brock took out his phone and dialled Kathy’s new mobile number, then handed the phone to Downey. She listened for a moment, then frowned. ‘There’s no reply.’

  Brock tried again without success, then rang Suzanne’s home number. When Suzanne answered he asked for Kathy.

  ‘She’s not here, David. She left me a note to say that she had to go up to town this morning. I would have expected her to be back by now. I tried to ring her, but had to leave a message.’

  Brock rang off. He turned to Anne Downey. ‘That night she rescued Ned, you called a cab to take her to the Pewsey Clinic. Why did she decide to go there?’

  ‘It was her idea. She had damaged her broken collarbone again getting Ned out of his boat and she needed more help than I could give her. She thought they would be the best people, since they set the bone originally. Also . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I hoped she might be able to find out more about the clinic. But when I couldn’t contact her afterwards I assumed she hadn’t been able to.’

  ‘I don’t understand. She’d already spent several days there before. How did you expect her to find anything out this time?’

  ‘I . . . I gave her a pass card so she could access the secure area.’

  ‘You what!’ Brock stared at her in disbelief. ‘A pass card . . . Is that how Ned got into the clinic that night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So Kathy was right, he was there.’

  Anne Downey nodded.

  ‘How did you get h
old of a pass card?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said, a note of her earlier defiance creeping back.

  ‘Listen, Anne. They kept Kathy in that clinic for three nights, and when she came out she was drugged to the eyeballs and couldn’t remember a thing. She still can’t—they wiped her memory with drugs.’

  Downey looked shocked.

  ‘So what the hell’s going on in there? What were you trying to find out?’

  ‘I . . . Oh God . . .’ The doctor put a hand to her mouth. ‘The clinic is also owned by the Harvest Group. I worked there for a couple of months in the general ward the year before last. That’s how I got involved in this. I was doing routine work with patients on rehab, but I became aware of some odd things going on. There was a secure area that only a few staff could access, and they just said there were patients with special needs in there. But they also kept animals at that end of the clinic—we never saw them, but there was a smell sometimes, and occasionally you’d hear something, pigs, I think, screaming.’

  ‘They were doing animal experiments?’

  ‘I assumed so, maybe organ transplants—liver, kidney and spleen transplants have been successfully carried out from pigs, and pancreas cells for diabetics. Xenotransplantation, it’s called. There were rumours among the staff, but nobody really knew. Then I met Ned by chance, because of our boats. We had moorings next to each other out at Alperton on the Grand Union. When I told him I was working at Pewsey he told me he knew about the place from his friends in animal liberation, who believed that unlicensed experiments with animals had been going on there for some time.’

  She stopped as Ned suddenly jumped to his feet. ‘Did you hear something?’

  They listened, then Anne smiled sadly at her friend. ‘Poor Ned. After the attack on his boat he’s been a bag of nerves. I’m surprised he can even stand being cooped up inside here.’

  ‘About Pewsey,’ Brock said.

  ‘Yes. Ned’s friends had a blog about animal rights issues, and Ned wrote a piece about Pewsey based on what I’d told him. Then Freyja Kite got in touch with him, and said she was interested in what was going on there too, and could we meet. So Ned and I went up to Cambridge in his boat, and Freyja told us about her research.’