Babel

by Barry Maitland

  ‘You look like a policeman,’ the man said. He was short, balding, chin thrust forward in an expression that mixed belligerence and amusement, and he spoke with a strong Welsh accent.

  ‘You’re right,’ Brock replied, peeling off his gloves as he stepped carefully through the obstacles towards him, and showed him his warrant card. ‘And you look like an academic.’

  ‘Yes, I do, don’t I?’ the man said, looking down at the leather elbow patches on his cardigan, his baggy corduroy trousers, his old brogues, as if considering them for the first time. ‘At least, a sort of academic. The sort that’s practically extinct. Nowadays my colleagues mostly wear suits and look like used car salesmen, so that they’re ready to go out and do a spot of marketing at a moment’s notice, I suppose. Desmond Pettifer’s the name. Classics.’

  As he got closer to the man to shake hands Brock caught the whiff of whisky on his breath.

  ‘What do you make of poor old Max’s room, then, eh?’

  ‘Chaotic.’

  ‘Ha!’ A speck of spittle hit Brock’s face. ‘No room to swing a bloody cat, is there? There’s a wonderful description somewhere by Bertrand Russell, of his impression of American universities where he taught in the 1930s. He was amazed at the way the professors were crammed into tiny holes like this, while the presidents of the colleges lorded it in huge offices and behaved like the executives of big business corporations. Frightfully droll the Americans, he thought. But we’re not bloody laughing now. Stultitiam patiuntur opes, as Horace would say; wealth sanctions folly. Russell was a philosopher too, like Max, but of course you’d know that. You went to the same university didn’t you? Same college, in fact.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Saw your picture in the morning papers, didn’t I? Looked you up. Then I saw Max’s door open and there you were.’

  ‘When did you hear the news about Max?’

  ‘Last night, in the pub. Noticed pictures of our noble institution on the TV news and got the landlord to turn up the volume. What a shock that was, eh? Bloody hell! It took a couple of stiff ones to calm me down, I can tell you.’

  Brock thought Pettifer made the news of his friend’s death sound like a bit of a lark. ‘Did you have any ideas?’

  ‘About who did it? Not a clue. It must have been some madman, mustn’t it? Have you found the gun?’

  ‘Not yet. Max didn’t say anything to you about threats? An angry student? Someone he’d upset? Perhaps some extremist, opposed to his views?’

  ‘Max? No, no. Good grief, he wasn’t exactly Salman Rushdie. And our students are a tame lot—not a radical among them. All they want is a fast degree and off to the City to earn their first million.’

  ‘I believe he was interviewed on Radio East London a few months ago and made some controversial comments, do you remember that? Were they about the situation in the Middle East?’

  Pettifer looked puzzled. ‘I did listen to that, but I don’t remember anything about the Middle East. I think he made some general comments about fundamentalism and people with closed minds, but he was talking more about science than politics. And he was fairly scathing about the direction universities are heading. Oh, there are a few people on the campus here who would have liked to shut Max up, but even they wouldn’t go so far as to do it that way. At least, I don’t think so.’ He gave a little chuckle.

  ‘What sort of people?’

  An expression of malevolent mischief slipped over Pettifer’s face. ‘Have you met our great leader yet, over in the Führer bunker?’

  ‘You mean Professor Young? Yes, I met him yesterday. He was full of praise for Professor Springer. Said he’d be sorely missed.’

  ‘Hah! Hypocritical bastard! He’s been trying to get rid of Max ever since he took over this place. Me too for that matter. We don’t fit into his vision of a university for the new century, you see. Our day has passed. He reorganised the university structure when he came, disbanded the departments and lumped everybody into three divisions, two of which—the Division of Business and the Division of Science and Technology—make lots of money and are important, while the remainder, all the bits they don’t really want but can’t get rid of, were put in the Division of Humanities, Art, Society and Health, or HASH would you believe, which is what they’ve basically made of it.’

  All this was said at an accelerating pace of invective. Then he stopped suddenly ‘You don’t want to know about all that, do you? Why should you?’

  ‘And Max was a thorn in their flesh, was he?’ Brock prompted patiently.

  ‘Oh, yes. Not like me, exactly—I’m the bolshie little know-it-all bastard in the back row at the President’s open staff briefings who asks the questions about where the money’s going and how come they can recruit so many bloody administrative assistants when we can’t afford tutors and library books. Max’s approach was more philosophical.’ Pettifer said the word with a hint of a sneer, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to talk of anyone, even his friend Springer, without having a dig at them. ‘Max attacked the principles rather than the practices. Especially those principles enshrined in the Division of Science and Technology.’

  ‘Why them?’

  ‘Max had a bee in his bonnet about the scientists. He thought they were dragging us willy-nilly towards a world where everything would be predetermined by technology, free will abolished. Especially here, where all their research is driven by money . . . And they make lots of that,’ he added with a snarl.

  ‘So he made enemies. Anyone in particular?’

  ‘Richard Haygill for a start. Professor of Medical Genetics and Director of the Centre of Advanced Biotechnology. Max once described him as a latter-day Dr Mengele . . .’ he smiled at the memory, ‘. . . in public, in the University Senate, before the Senate was abolished.’

  ‘That was rather strong, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes. And what made it even stronger was that Max’s parents both died at Auschwitz. Mengele might even have murdered them, for all we know. And Max was dead serious, it wasn’t just a bit of abusive hyperbole. Haygill blew his top, naturally, threatened to sue, but let it go in the end.’

  ‘Was this very recent?’

  ‘About a year ago, I think. I’m not aware of anything very recent. Since then our Great Leader has abolished the Senate and put in his own man to control the campus magazine, and generally adopted a policy of pretending that pests like Max and myself don’t exist. And by and large he’s been pretty successful, I must say. We rot away in this slum, deprived of funds and students and gratefully accept the package, when it’s finally offered to us by some smooth little human resource consultant shit with a BMW. probably sound very bitter to you.’

  Brock smiled. ‘You do rather.’

  ‘Ah well.’ Pettifer waved his hand airily. ‘We all find our own forms of consolation. I might go and replenish mine now, I think, unless I can be of any further assistance.’

  ‘No, that’s fine. Do you know where I could find Max’s student, Briony Kidd?’

  ‘She shares a room just down the corridor. It’s not far, I’ll show you. She’s usually there.’

  Pettifer led him down the deserted corridor and tapped on a door marked ‘Postgraduates’, then stepped in. Four workspaces had been crammed into the little room, two down each side, but only one was occupied. Brock recognised the slight figure dressed all in black, the gamine looks, the large dark-ringed eyes made more dramatic now by tears and the red rims of crying. She hurriedly grabbed a tissue from a box on the little table in front of her and wiped her nose.

  ‘All right, love?’ Pettifer said breezily, not appearing to notice her distress. ‘Got a visitor for you. ’Bye now,’ and he left, closing the door behind him.

  Brock felt immediately uncomfortable, waiting to speak while the woman drew more tissues and rubbed vigorously at her eyes and nose.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Briony,’ he said when she finally turned in her seat to half face him. ‘I’m so
rry to intrude. I wanted to speak to you about Professor Springer, but I could come back.’

  ‘No, it’s OK,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just very upset about it, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course. It was very shocking.’

  ‘I should have got used to the idea of it, but I was just . . .’ She looked at a sheaf of paper in front of her. ‘I was just . . .’ Her shoulders began to shake beneath the thick black sweater, and she began to sob.

  Brock wondered if perhaps this was the only person who was really upset by Springer’s death. Everyone else seemed rather enthralled by it. As he stood waiting, he wished again that Kathy were here. He wondered what another student would make of it if they walked in now and saw him, a big bear of a man standing over the weeping girl.

  ‘I was reading his comments, you see,’ she blurted out suddenly. ‘What he’d written on my text. He only gave it back to me yesterday morning. With what happened, I hadn’t looked at it until now.’ She sobbed and wiped. ‘Seeing his words . . . so normal, as if nothing has happened.’

  ‘Of course. Look, would it be better if we went and got a cup of coffee somewhere? A bit of fresh air, you know . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s all right. I’m OK. What did you want to ask me?’ There was a green Bic cigarette lighter beside her papers, and she turned it over and over in her fingers as she spoke.

  ‘The same thing I’m asking anyone else I can find who was in contact with Professor Springer recently. Is there anything you can tell me to help us find whoever did this? Can you think of any reason why someone would do it? Did he tell you of any threats to his life?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. The only thing . . . the thing that keeps coming back to me was something he said in his tutorial yesterday, about how it was up to “us” now. It was like Martin Luther King’s last speech, do you remember, “I have a dream”? About how his people would reach the Promised Land, but he wouldn’t be with them, as if he knew that he would soon be murdered. That was how Max sounded, although at the time I didn’t realise. But afterwards, last night, his words came back, it was up to us now, my generation, as if he knew he wouldn’t be with us much longer. I guessed he was sort of rehearsing what he was going to say later, in his lecture.’

  ‘But nothing specific, then or earlier, about a threatening phone call, or note?’

  ‘No.’ Briony shook her head firmly and turned back to her papers, putting down the lighter and running her fingers over the pages as if wanting to feel the substance of Max Springer in his scribbled notes.

  ‘The lecture yesterday, was it a regular thing? Only I got the impression from others I spoke to that he didn’t do much lecturing.’

  ‘No, that’s right. He didn’t give any undergraduate courses any more. They wanted him to teach business ethics to commerce students, but he refused. He said he didn’t come here to teach budding entrepreneurs how to cheat their customers without getting caught.’ She smiled wanly.

  ‘Yesterday’s lecture was a one-off, a public lecture open to everyone. The title was “The Tyranny of Faith and Science”.’

  ‘That sounds challenging. I shouldn’t think the scientists would like that, or the Islamic students.’

  She looked at him, puzzled for a moment, then nodded. ‘They boycotted it. The theme of the lecture was to be that . . .’ She pointed to one of a number of printed quotations, which she had stuck to the pinboard above her workspace.

  ‘Where unanimity exists, some form of coercion is at work, whether of the tyrant or of logic.’

  ‘Hannah Arendt wrote that. I’m studying her for my Ph.D.’

  Brock looked at some of the other quotes on the wall. Another said, ‘The poor man’s conscience is clear; yet he is ashamed . . . He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is only not seen . . . To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.’

  ‘Arendt again?’

  ‘She quoted it in one of her books, but it was originally said by John Adams, the second American President, the one after George Washington. It was one of Max’s favourite quotations. He said that every politician should have that pinned up over their desk.’

  ‘About the lecture, were there many people there?’

  ‘Not many,’ she said, defensive. ‘There were a dozen, twenty maybe, waiting, when we heard that something had happened outside.’

  ‘What about on your way into the theatre? Did you notice anyone then? Any strangers you didn’t recognise? Maybe wearing a dark anorak, jeans, light coloured trainers.’

  ‘That’s what they were asking us after it happened, but I didn’t see anyone like that.’ She stared glumly at the pinboard.

  ‘And did Max mention Islam at all in his tutorials?’

  ‘Yes. He drew parallels between scientific methods, Nazism and fundamentalist religions, like Islam. He said he was going to discuss this in his lecture. He said it would be a revelation to some people.’

  ‘Sounds as if he intended to upset a few people.’

  She shrugged. ‘It was a favourite theme of his. He was fearless in expressing his opinions.’

  ‘OK, well I won’t disturb you any longer just now, Briony. If you do think of anything, here’s my phone number.’

  Briony seemed preoccupied with some thought and didn’t reply. Brock turned to go. As he reached the door she suddenly spoke again.

  ‘I just remembered. At our last tutorial he said something else a bit odd. He used a phrase, “the people of the book”, and said something about it being a lottery which people of the book would shut him up first, something like that.’

  ‘People of the book? What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I don’t think he meant they were going to take away his library card or something. I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t explain. He would do that, say something mysterious and leave you to think about it.’

  ‘You didn’t take it to mean that someone might want to kill him?’

  ‘Not at the time, no. But now . . . well, I don’t know.’

  On the way back to his office in Queen Anne’s Gate, an annexe of New Scotland Yard a couple of blocks away from the Victoria Street headquarters building, Brock phoned the laboratory liaison officer, Sergeant Leon Desai, and arranged for him to meet him there.

  ‘Anything for us yet, Leon?’ Brock asked when they met.

  ‘They should be ready for a screening of the enhanced video film later this afternoon, Brock. And firearms has made a preliminary assessment of the cartridge, but verbal only at this stage, being a bit careful.’ He said it approvingly, being himself a stickler for accuracy.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘7.62 millimetre, probably of Warsaw Pact origin, maybe to go with something like the Russian Tokarev automatic pistol. Doesn’t mean to say that’s what we’re looking for, of course. Could have been fired from something else.’

  ‘Availability in London?’

  ‘Yes, there’s quite a bit of old Soviet stuff floating around. The Tokarev and its ammunition was also sold to a number of countries outside the Warsaw Pact.’

  He handed Brock a list. Brock’s frown deepened as he scanned it. ‘Syria, Somalia, Libya, People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen . . .’

  He put the paper down and reached into his pocket, handing Leon the green pamphlet from Springer’s desk. ‘What do you make of that?’

  Leon read, then said, ‘It’s the Qur’an.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. You’re not a Muslim are you, Leon?’

  Leon gave him a sharp look to see if the question was serious.

  ‘No, I’m not actually, but my family used to be. They were originally Muslims from Gujarat in India who went out to Kenya, where they began to get lazy about their faith. They lost it altogether when we were kicked out of Kenya. Many of the East African Gujarati went up north to Bradford, where there already was a community of Gujarati from India who’d built their own mosques and schools, but we settled in London and never took up with Musl
ims here. But I was brought up on the Qur’an when I was a kid.’

  It was the longest speech Brock had ever heard from Leon, normally so economical with words, on any subject other than forensics.

  ‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of the Qur’an handy, would you?’

  ‘’Fraid not.’

  ‘Actually I’m beginning to think we may need the help of an expert on this. Does the phrase “people of the book” mean anything to you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a phrase that’s used in the Qur’an.’

  Brock rubbed at the side of his beard thoughtfully. ‘This is beginning to get worrying, Leon.’ He handed him the other packet with the pieces of envelope. ‘See if the lab can get anything from these. Especially the postmark. It’s smudged, see? I could only get the date.’

  ‘Is this what the green note came in?’

  ‘That’s one of the things I’d like you to find out, if you can. They were in different places, but this was the only envelope I could find. We’re doing a proper search now.’

  As he turned to go, Leon said, keeping his voice neutral, ‘Heard from Kathy at all, Brock? Is she OK?’

  ‘Not too bad, I think, Leon. Taking it easy, I hope.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t know how I could contact her, do you?’

  ‘Anything urgent?’

  ‘No, no. Just thought I’d get in touch. See how she’s doing.’

  ‘I think I’d leave it for now. Give her a bit of breathing space. All right?’

  Leon nodded and left.

  5

  The officer from the Islamic Desk of Special Branch had dark curly hair and a cheerful grin. He was wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans and had an easy, relaxed manner and an unobtrusive way about him that would suit him well, Brock thought, to the role of intelligence gatherer, which the Special Branch played. They shook hands.

  ‘Sergeant O’Brien, sir.’

  ‘You don’t bother with ranks and sirs over there, do you? Neither do we. What do they call you?’