The Marx Sisters bak-1

by Barry Maitland

  On the other hand, she thought as she shook herself, shivering from head to toe, Martin may just have wanted to warn me that we are making a mistake. It was an unsettling thought. And unsettling that it was so difficult to think straight where he was concerned.

  She picked out the figure of Danny Finn in one of the photographs, and returned to the question that must have passed momentarily through the minds of everyone at the funeral. What treasures was Peg burying along with her sister’s ashes? What would fill an oak box two feet by two feet by one foot six? What did a scientific socialist want to take with her to the other side? Her childhood teddy bears? Her postcards of Moscow? Or the manuscript of the genuine fourth volume of Das Capital? But why would she do that? ‘Look what I’ve brought for you, Great-grandad. We kept it safe for you all those years.’

  But perhaps it didn’t really matter what was in the box. What mattered was what someone who had murdered once, or even twice, for the Endziel might imagine was there. And perhaps it was a message from Peg to that person, an irresistible message, that she was getting rid of the thing they were after, and they must now leave her alone. And if that were the case, tonight would be the only opportunity for that person to retrieve it before it disappeared beneath twenty-five storeys of concrete office block.

  She didn’t really believe it. But there was nevertheless a reason why she must act upon it, as an act of good faith with herself that, despite the fact that Winter had Martin as his solicitor, she would still pursue any reasonable possibility that he was innocent, and that someone else was responsible for Eleanor’s death.

  She sighed, hesitated for a moment over whether to have a mug of coffee before deciding against it. She buttoned up her coat again and went downstairs. In the general office she found a heavy torch which she stuffed into a pocket of her coat before locking up the building and stepping out into the cold darkness.

  She first walked north up the Lane to the spot where the Kowalskis’ bookshop had been, with its plaque commemorating its famous former resident. Here she found a viewing hole in the plywood panels that screened the site. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she was able to make out a tower crane rising on the far side of the site, and a light in the street beyond it. As a double check she counted the number of viewing holes along from the corner at the top of Jerusalem Lane, so that she could count back from the other side of the hoarding to establish this spot.

  There was no break in the screens, and, short of trying to climb over them, she could see no way into the site from here. She walked down to the south end of the Lane, where the synagogue was now almost entirely demolished, and where a site entrance for vehicles opened on to Marquis Street. Lights which had been rigged up on poles overhead formed a pool of brilliance in the surrounding darkness. The chain-link gates were secured by a large padlock, and a printed sign warned that the site was patrolled by guard dogs and security personnel.

  She returned to have another look at what was left of the synagogue. In one corner she recognized the battered remains of Sam’s cardboard box. Her eyes were again adjusting to the dark after the lights of the entrance gates, and she could make out the name of the German dishwasher manufacturer on its side. She checked to make sure it was no longer inhabited. Behind the box the demolition team had fixed up a temporary site fence using chain-link panels attached to a timber framework with loops of twisted wire. Kathy untwisted two of the loops and eased the panels apart. She slipped through and reattached the wire loosely. It was only when she had done all this and felt her fingers numb with cold that she realized that she had left her gloves behind in Brock’s office. She swore and hesitated for a moment, then turned and moved on into the site.

  She passed slowly through a forest of scaffolding poles decorated with icy stalactites, and had to take her hands out of her pockets in order not to slide on the furrows of ice which traced the vehicle tracks across the frozen ground. On the other side she found a path of scaffolding boards which appeared to follow the site boundary northward towards the area she wanted. After twenty metres or so she felt a springiness in the boards beneath her feet and guessed that she had left the ground, but it was only when she stopped and stared into the darkness beyond the scaffold rail and made out the dim outline of a dumper truck a long way below her that she realized that she was now five or six storeys in the air above the excavated pit.

  Her fingers were aching with cold now, but she had to keep reaching to the freezing steel scaffolding tubes to steady herself on the treacherously slippery boards, upon which her shoes seemed to have very little grip. Over to her right she could make out the silhouette of the tower crane and the street light gradually shifting position behind it as she worked her way closer to the spot, until at last they seemed to be aligned pretty much as she had seen them from the other side of the screen.

  She stopped and breathed deeply, lifting her painfully stiff hands to her mouth and blowing into them, willing her pounding heart to slow down. The walk across the icy scaffolding in the dark had been much more difficult than she had anticipated, her eyes and hands and feet straining to pick up every subtle, threatening shift in the shades of darkness all around. Now she just stood still and listened, letting the adrenalin subside, her frozen hands thrust under her armpits.

  Silence. So far so good. Now what?

  Somewhere on the ground below was the place where the box would have been left, but it was clear that she was too high up to see anything down there. Further along she saw the top of a wooden ladder projecting above the edge of the scaffold platform. She shivered and began to move carefully towards it. Crouching down, with her left arm hooked around the scaffolding rail, she swung herself under it and round on to the ladder, her right foot making contact with one of its rungs as her right hand grabbed its side. As she shifted her weight over so as to move her left foot and hand across, the right foot abruptly slipped off its perch. With a shock that jarred her whole body it slammed down on to the rung below, slipped again and then caught on the one below that.

  She found herself muttering, choking, ‘Dear God, dear God,’ over and over through chattering teeth as she clung to the ladder, recovering her grip. Then, finding that her arms and legs were aching with the tension of her rigid hold, she eased one foot out, and with infinite care began a slow descent. She reached the next scaffolding platform but kept on going down, step by painful step, clinging to the ladder, her cheek brushing each icy metal rung, until she reached its foot on a third level below. Rolling on to the safety of the boards she crept back from the edge, breathing hard. Her arms and legs were trembling with the effort and her heart was in overdrive again.

  After a while she stood up, walked gingerly back to the rail and looked down. Clearer, but not clear enough. She could make out a white form in the centre of a dark hollow below her, surrounded by a grid of grey lines.

  Try the same again.

  She repeated her earlier manoeuvre on the next ladder, with painstaking caution, feeling like one of the counters on her favourite childhood board game of snakes and ladders, praying that she didn’t come upon a snake. Two more levels, twenty-six treacherous steps, then in to the comparative safety of another scaffold platform. Piece of cake.

  She sank on to her heels, leaning her back against the wall of steel-sheet piles which were retaining the sides of the pit. Gradually her breathing returned to a more normal rate, but she was in no hurry to move. She waited like that, her head tilted up towards the sky hidden above by the layers of dark scaffolding, until she was shaking so much with the cold that she just had to move.

  She tilted forward on to her knees. She felt agonizingly stiff, and, reluctant to get back up on to her feet, she crawled forward to the scaffolding edge and looked down.

  There were another two levels below her to the base of the pit, but she could make out its features quite clearly now. The pale grey grid which she had seen before was now apparent as a network of concrete beams, and when she focused carefully she could s
ee the carpets of steel reinforcing mesh laid between them. There was something else. Sprouting from the top edges of the beams, and also through the intervening areas of mesh, were hundreds of steel rods sticking vertically into the air, like sprouting shoots of some nightmarish metallic rice paddy. These were the starter bars which would tie the foundations into the next layers of reinforced concrete which would form the base of the lift shaft core.

  In the middle of this ferociously spiked floor was a square hollow, shrouded in black shadow except for a pile of milky white plastic sheeting at its centre. Kathy guessed that this must be Eleanor’s box, wrapped ready to receive its concrete burial in the morning.

  Suddenly she heard a soft rustle from the white plastic shape, and the black shadow around its edge began to move. Her breathing stopped and she strained forward to see what was happening. A figure was detaching itself from the surrounding darkness. For a moment she saw its form against the pale bundle. She heard the soft ripping of a blade through plastic sheet.

  She fumbled in her coat pocket for the torch, tugging its clumsy rubber body with her frozen fingers. She had it out now, groping with unfeeling fingertips for the button. She squeezed. Light burst out of the wrong end and the torch jumped out of her hands like a live thing. It dropped away into the void, its beam spinning round through the darkness for a few brief moments before it hit the ground with a crash and the light extinguished.

  Oh, terrific.

  The torch beam had blinded her. She stumbled to her feet. Another blaze of light hit her, coming up from the centre of the pit below. Too late she jumped back out of the line of sight, slipping as she went and slamming hard against the steel wall.

  Someone moved quickly down below. Now the metallic ring of feet on a ladder. Her brain worked fast. No weapon, and the other had at least a knife. Coming up which ladder? She couldn’t see. Try to get up to the surface first? She thought of that long series of rungs, and of someone coming up below her, grabbing her ankle. She turned to the right and moved as quickly as she could, skipping and slithering across the icy planks, hoping to find the ringing ladder. Nothing. The platform came to an end. The ringing had stopped. The other must be behind her. Now she was cut off.

  If only there were a weapon. She looked desperately around. Across a five- or six-metre gap she could see the scaffold structure forming the opposite side of the core, and on the same level as her a stack of something-steel tubes or short lengths of timber-piled near the edge. Spanning the gap was a single timber beam, as narrow as the one Bob Jones had described in his story about Danny Finn and Herbert Lowell. She felt a sudden rush of empathy with the pompous architect.

  She put her left foot tentatively out on to the beam. It would only be ten or a dozen short careful steps. She put out of her mind the possibility that the beam might be slippery with ice. Two… Three… Four… She kept her eyes fixed carefully on the beam just in front of her feet, and definitely not looking past it to the steel rice-paddy on the ground below. Eight… Nine… Ten. Must be nearly there. She lifted her head, and saw the hooded figure just an arm’s length in front of her.

  She yelped.

  The dark figure was standing on the edge of the scaffold platform, waiting for her, a length of timber in its hands. As it swung the weapon up to shoulder height the hood of its anorak pulled back and she saw the face of Felix Kowalski, snarling with rage. She automatically put up her left arm to deflect the blow as it came, smashing across her forearm and bouncing up to slam into the side of her head. She saw a flash of light and half turned, stunned, feeling her right foot slide away. Then her other foot gave way. She went down, arms and legs flailing, and hit the beam hard with her left shoulder. Instinctively her arms went round the beam like a baby round its mother’s neck. She could hear herself snuffling like a baby. She looked up, past the beam from which she hung, and saw him raising his timber club again. The blow came on her right hand, although she didn’t feel it. She just knew that she was flying.

  29

  Felix Kowalski was led into the basement interview room shortly after midnight. Despite the events of the previous hours, he held his bandaged head high, and appeared alert. His eyes took in the room, the metal office desk and chairs, the flask of water, the tape recorder, with interest. He sat in the chair which Gurney pulled out for him, clasped his hands loosely on his lap, and looked around confidently.

  Alerted by Kathy’s scream, the two security guards hired especially by Danny Finn had come upon Kowalski, peering over the edge of his platform at her body sprawled down below. He had reacted by leaping to his feet, swinging the length of timber, so that they had felt no compunction in using their sticks to beat him into a more co-operative state, with the result that he now had a heavily bandaged crown, one purple, swollen eye and a bandaged hand. The security men had radioed for the emergency services, as well as for Danny Finn, who arrived on the scene shortly after Brock. By that stage the rescue team had managed to extricate Kathy, badly injured, from the pit, and sent her off in an ambulance. Kowalski too had been taken to hospital, with Bren and another detective, to have his injuries X-rayed and dressed before he was pronounced fit for questioning.

  It was Finn who explained to Brock about Peg’s box in the foundations of the building, and her announcement at Eleanor’s funeral. Together they went down to see where Felix Kowalski had been disturbed as he sliced away the polythene sheeting which had been wrapped around the box. Grunting with effort, Finn pulled the sheeting away to reveal a shiny black cube.

  ‘I thought you said it was a wooden box?’

  ‘Aye, it is. But it’s covered with bituminous paint-that black stuff. It’s used for waterproofing.’ He poked gingerly at a corner of the dark shape and his finger came away covered with black goo. ‘You’d get in a real mess trying tae get it off now tae get at the screw heads holding the lid down. Do ye really need tae get into it?’ Finn looked doubtfully at Brock. He was panting with his exertions, his breath steaming white in the glare of the arc lights which had been set up overhead for Kathy’s rescue, and were now being dismantled.

  ‘What did Peg put inside?’

  Finn shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She came down tae the site office about 6 this evening with this big handbag she carries, and I left her alone for a couple of minutes. I offered her plastic bags tae put the canister of ashes and whatever else she had in, but she preferred tae wrap them in newspaper. I suppose suggesting plastic bags was a bit tactless under the circumstances. Then I screwed down the lid, and the two men from the security firm carried it down here with me. I had a drum of the bitumen paint, and I more or less poured it all over the box tae seal it. It won’t set in this cold. Does it really matter what’s inside?’

  ‘Probably not. When will it get concreted in?’

  ‘Depends on the weather. Supposed tae be tomorrow, but with this cold, and more snow forecast tonight… We’ll just have tae see.’

  ‘Will you keep the security men on?’

  ‘Aye. I promised Peg they’d stay till the concrete’s poured. I want tae find out where the hell they were when Kathy and that bastard were down here. By the time I’ve finished with them, they’ll never move from this spot again, I can promise ye that.’

  Kowalski was talking in a calm, almost amused tone when Brock entered the interview room. Bren stopped him, and had him repeat the earlier part of his story for Brock’s benefit. He had been on his way home from the conference he had been attending at the University of Nottingham, he said. When he arrived back in London, he decided to go to Eleanor’s funeral before catching the train home to Enfield. He had read the announcement in The Times while he was away, and the arrival of his train at Euston just gave him time to catch a taxi out to the crematorium for the service. He wasn’t really sure why he had bothered, apart from curiosity. When he heard Peg’s strange announcement about her sister’s remains, he recalled something his father had once mentioned, about the sisters owning valuable family papers which they were unwilli
ng to part with. He wondered if this was their way to hide them, and thought it at least worth investigating. It was a stupid thing to do, he now acknowledged-he was guilty of trespassing on the building site-but then it had seemed a fortuitous way in which the sisters might repay his parents for the trouble and distress they had suffered through Meredith’s meddling. The beauty of it was that, though technically a theft, no one would know that the papers had been removed, and so no one would be the worse for his actions. He paused briefly to look over his shoulder and smile with satisfaction at Brock, then continued his story. The accident with the woman police officer was very distressing. While he was trying to get at the box, he heard her on the scaffolding. The noise alarmed him, and he began to leave. However, when he saw her walk across the plank, then slip and fall, he tried to go to her assistance, but had been prevented by the security men, who without provocation had assaulted him.

  Felix Kowalski related these details in a normal voice, and when Gurney probed and questioned his account, responded quickly with an air of confident reasonableness. Nevertheless, Brock, from the other side of the room, thought he detected the unnatural glitter of shock and adrenalin in the man’s eyes. And something else. Whenever his interrogator looked away, Kowalski would flick up his eyes and glare at him, only softening his gaze once Gurney returned his attention to him. Brock recalled this vividly from the interview which he and Kathy had had with Kowalski the previous September in his father’s empty shop. It was the flicker of an intense anger. Why anger? It seemed an odd, almost involuntary response, as if anger had rooted itself so deeply in the man that it had taken the place of fear, shame and guilt.

  For half an hour Brock watched silently as Gurney tried to shake Kowalski, then he got up quietly and left.

  There were endless waves of nausea. Each time the brain struggled through the nightmare dark into consciousness it was only to achieve a few moments of agonized retching, hot with curry and bile, and then to slide back into the foul dark again. The eyes wouldn’t open, and the struggle went on with her unaware that Brock was there, frustrated at his inability to help her.