by Carla Banks
‘Kovacs.’ It was an abrupt snap.
‘Daniel, it’s Faith. I just heard about Helen.’
There was a moment of silence, then he said, ‘Faith. Yeah, it’s…I’m kind of, you know…’
She didn’t know, but she could imagine. No matter what anger there had been between him and Helen, he hadn’t wanted the marriage to end. For all the problems they’d had, Helen had felt bad about leaving him. ‘What happened? I don’t know anything. I just came into work and there were police everywhere.’
‘Work.’ His laugh was edgy and hostile. ‘Well, that’s what happened. Work. She’s out on a wild-goose chase, something for what d’you call him–Yevanov.’ He spat the name. ‘She’s on her own in some old house, and there just happens to be a pervert on the premises.’
A pervert. Did he mean that Helen had been…‘Oh, God,’ she said.
‘I talked to her,’ Daniel said. His voice sounded raw. ‘Not long before it happened. She wanted to talk to the kids. I was pissed off. I wouldn’t let her. And then this…animal…strangled her.’
Faith closed her eyes. She felt sick. ‘How are they? Hannah and Finn?’
He was suddenly angry. ‘They’ve just lost their mum. How do you think they are?’ And then the anger faded as fast as it had come. ‘It’s too much, kids that age.’
‘Daniel, I’d really like to see them. Can I come round?’
‘It’s not a good…’ He began his refusal, then stopped. ‘Look, you could help me out–if you want. I’m a bit stuck. I’ve got a job on this afternoon and I can’t leave it. The kids aren’t in school–if you want to see them, you could come round and sit with them.’
‘Of course. Give me the address and I’ll be there.’
He gave her the street name and number. ‘Get here for two,’ he said, and rang off.
The door into the yard where Faith was sitting opened suddenly. ‘Oh. There you are. They’re waiting for you.’ It was Trish, looking outwardly composed, but there was a suppressed excitement about her and her eyes were bright.
Faith stood up slowly. ‘The police?’
‘They want to talk to everyone Helen knew,’ Trish said. ‘Professor Yevanov has promised them full co-operation.’
Yevanov would have little choice but full cooperation. ‘Where is he?’ Faith asked as she walked back into the lobby. She didn’t want to talk about Helen with Trish. She could remember the satisfaction in Trish’s voice the day before when she had reported Helen’s absence. She isn’t in. Again.
‘He came in with them first thing. Then he went back into town to talk to them.’
Yevanov, with the police? She looked quickly at Trish, but she didn’t seem disturbed. ‘Why didn’t they talk to him here?’
‘They need him to look at the archive materials Helen was working on. They want to know if anything’s missing.’
That made sense, but she remembered Yevanov telling her the collection was undocumented, and wondered how anyone would be able to tell.
‘Miss Lange?’ It was the policewoman she’d spoken to earlier. ‘We’d like to talk to you now.’ She dismissed Trish with a cool smile and directed Faith into one of the small offices that were used by the admin staff.
A young police officer was waiting for her. He apologized for keeping her waiting, then asked, ‘Helen Kovacs was a friend of yours?’
Was…‘I’ve known her most of my life.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I need to ask you some questions, okay?’
Faith nodded. ‘Okay.’
At first, his questions were general–Helen’s routine, her daily contacts–but gradually they began to focus on her marriage. ‘What caused the break-up?’ he said.
Faith shook her head. ‘I don’t think it was any one thing.’ She explained that Helen had given up a secure job to become an academic. ‘Daniel never really understood that, and Helen’s work was the most important thing in her life, apart from the kids.’
‘He resented it?’
‘Yes.’ Daniel had resented it a lot. He had never been able to understand Helen’s involvement in her work, and she had never been able to compromise. Faith could remember Helen telling her of a massive row with Dan after a weekend with his parents: ‘All because I found a trunk of old papers in the attic that had belonged to his grandparents.’
Faith knew about attics full of junk. Grandpapa’s was crammed high. ‘What kind of papers?’
‘His grandparents were Lithuanian. They came over after the war. All this stuff they’d brought with them–it was just mouldering up there. I want to get it translated–I’m learning, but I don’t read Lithuanian very well.’
‘Couldn’t Dan, or his parents…?’
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Helen said, ‘but they don’t speak the language. Not at all. And Dan–he was furious. We came to visit, he said. Came to do family things. He said I just vanished all weekend.’ She shrugged. ‘It didn’t bother him until Dinah started complaining. She was just stirring it up. She’d had the kids to herself all weekend–that’s what she wants. I swear, Faith, I don’t understand that family. We’re talking about the kids’ history. It’s part of who they are. It’s important. Anyway, Dinah said I could go back next weekend and go through it all “If it matters so much to you, Helen.”’ Her voice had parodied her mother-in-law.
A few weeks later, Faith had asked Helen about the papers. Helen’s voice had been carefully neutral. ‘Dan told his parents to burn the lot. And they did.’
It was shortly after that that Helen and Daniel had split up.
Faith looked at the officer. ‘You don’t think that Daniel…’
He shook his head. ‘Mr Kovacs was at home with the children. Tell me about the break-up. Was there anyone else involved? Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘I don’t think so. Not at the time. She didn’t say anything to me.’
‘Would she tell you?’
‘I don’t see why she wouldn’t. We talked about most things.’
‘And what about later? Did she get involved with anyone after the break-up?’
Faith thought about the shopping trips, the care with her appearance, the secret glow Helen sometimes had. ‘I think she did, yes. It was a recent thing.’ She forestalled his question. ‘But I don’t know who it was. She didn’t tell me.’
‘You didn’t ask her? You’ve been friends for a long time.’
It was hard to explain the almost mischievous secrecy that Helen had maintained. ‘It was just–it was like she had a secret, and she wanted me to know she had a secret, but she didn’t want to tell me what it was.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it was just fun. Maybe she enjoyed having a secret lover.’ Helen’s life with Daniel had always seemed short of fun and frivolity.
‘Could she have been involved with someone here?’
‘I don’t know.’ But Faith had wondered about that.
It was as if he had read her mind. ‘Did you have any reason to believe she might be involved with your boss? With the professor?’
Antoni Yevanov and Helen. She remembered the conversation they’d had about Trish, and Helen’s certainty that Trish’s romance was all in her own mind. She remembered Daniel’s recent hostility when Yevanov’s name was mentioned. But Daniel had always been jealous of any men that Helen came into contact with. ‘That’s what Daniel thought,’ she said.
He nodded. He already knew this. ‘And you?’
‘I’m not aware of anything.’
He asked her a few more questions about Helen’s relationships with men, then, apparently convinced she’d told him all she could, he moved on.
He showed her a photocopy of some notes in Helen’s loose, scrawly hand. She must have written them that evening, the evening that someone…Faith studied them closely. There was very little there, just a reference number 120.43 PEKBM and some initials:
P. E.
Ma_y_ro__ene__.
She
shook her head. They didn’t mean anything to her.
‘Professor Yevanov said that you were helping Helen with her research.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t recognize this?’
She stared at the page as if the meanings of the jottings would suddenly become clear. There was something…no, it had gone. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘Maybe you need a bit of time to think about it,’ he said, handing her a photocopied sheet.
He waited as she slipped the piece of paper into her bag. Then he asked her about her own activities on Tuesday evening, and she wondered if she was a suspect. ‘I was at home,’ she said. ‘Working.’ He didn’t follow that up.
‘One last thing. Does the name Nicholas Garrick mean anything to you?’
She tried the name out in her mind, but she didn’t recognize it. ‘No.’
‘Did Helen ever talk about Nick, or Nicholas?’
She thought again, and shook her head. ‘No.’
He asked her a few more questions about Helen’s routine, then told her she could go.
She left the building quickly, not wanting to talk to anyone else. It was almost noon. She went straight to the car park and got into her car. She needed to find her way to Daniel’s. She needed to see the children.
Jake was now working to a tight schedule. He had his column to finish, he had his interview with Marek Lange to write up, he was leaving for Minsk after the weekend and still had preparations for the trip, and now he’d made a promise to Sophia Yevanova to look into the police investigation, as far as it affected the young man she had taken under her wing, Nicholas Garrick.
The photos he’d taken from Lange’s were on his desk. He picked up the one that showed the young soldier. It was a rare photo of pre-war Minsk. He remembered the way Miss Yevanova’s face had tensed when she saw it. Was it just a reaction to the image of the city she had left so long ago, or was it something else?
He studied the picture.
The soldier was standing outside a building with a stone façade. There was a plate on the door post, but it was impossible to see what it said. Jake got out a magnifying glass, but the writing was too blurred to read. He needed to scan the image and enhance it–something else to do before he left. He tossed the pictures into his in-tray and went back to his notes about the murder.
A few phone calls to his contacts the night before had given him the basic facts. The victim, Helen Kovacs, had been an academic in her thirties, an employee, interestingly, of Antoni Yevanov’s Centre for European Studies. The husband had an alibi, so that left Garrick. Jake’s contacts were unanimous in their opinion that Garrick was the killer, the motive no doubt sexual, and it was all, basically, routine.
There was an anomaly that interested him. Apparently, Garrick had not only been alone in the house with the victim, he’d been covered in her blood when the police had arrived. But according to another report, she had been strangled. So where had the blood come from?
He leaned back in his chair and thought about it. Who would have done the post-mortem? It would have been done over in Derbyshire. He went back to his notes, then checked his directory. Paul Norris. Okay, that worked.
Jake had encountered Norris before. The pathologist liked to see himself as a larger-than-life character who added some colour to the general tedium of disease and death. His colleagues thought he was pompous and self-aggrandizing, and his subordinates generally loathed him. He liked to grandstand, and Jake had found that useful in the past.
He picked up the phone.
‘Denbigh,’ Norris said, when Jake finally succeeded in working his way through the barriers of the switchboard, Norris’s secretary, and a dose of ‘on-hold’ music. He didn’t sound too pleased. ‘What can I do for you?’
Jake got straight to the point. ‘I’m doing a story about the murder up by the dams.’
‘Oh, that one. The body in the library.’ Norris’s laugh was an explosive bark.
‘That one,’ Jake agreed, making a quick note. He hadn’t known exactly where the body had been found. ‘It’s one of yours, I assume?’
‘Yes, I did the PM last night. I can’t talk to you about it. You’ll have to wait for the police to do a press release.’
‘I heard you’d got your knuckles rapped,’ Jake said.
‘Nothing of the sort. I make my own decisions. And my professional judgement is that I don’t talk to the press about the post-mortem.’ Norris might be vain, but he wasn’t stupid.
‘I’m not working on a news story.’ Jake knew that Norris would talk eventually. That was why he had taken the call. ‘You know the kind of thing I write. It’s background for something else. But the police reckon they’ve got the killer. It’s just your job to confirm it, right?’
‘Au contraire, dear boy. Post-mortems reveal. It isn’t my job to confirm the conclusions some little PC has jumped to.’
‘The way I heard it, they didn’t jump. The conclusion was right there in front of them. This Garrick guy had the victim’s blood all over him.’
‘And the blood belonged to Kovacs, yes. Bad move to be caught with the stiff. Worse move to have her blood on your hands.’ Norris laughed. ‘Still, there’s more tests to be done.’
‘When did she die?’ Jake’s notes said Tuesday evening.
‘Time of death, time of death–why do people think we can work miracles? She died on Tuesday night after seven thirty. That’s when she died.’
That was interesting. ‘Why seven thirty?’
‘We determined that by the highly scientific method of talking to her ex-husband, who spoke to her on the phone at seven thirty.’
Some time after seven thirty…‘According to the information I’ve got,’ Jake said, ‘Helen Kovacs was strangled…’
Norris gave his barking laugh again. ‘Newspaper sources. They never get it right. No, the killer used a garrotte.’
A garrotte? That just meant a ligature. ‘You mean rather than manual strangulation?’ That still didn’t explain the blood.
‘Ah, no, there’s more to it than that, dear boy. Imagine you’re going about your business, you don’t know there’s anyone else there. Next minute, there’s something round your neck and your air supply is cut off. You see how it works? I’m the killer and I’m behind you. You’re off balance. Your instinct is to grab for the ligature, not for me. But anyway, I can hold you at arm’s length. You can’t reach me. And you can’t shout, because I’ve shut off your air supply. It’s a favourite stealth weapon, a garrotte. And there’s no blood.’
‘Except…?’ Jake said. This time, there had been blood.
‘Ah well, it’s the best-laid schemes, isn’t it?’ Norris said. ‘Kovacs’ killer used a wire. It cut into her throat.’
‘A wire? Any old bit of wire?’
‘This one had wooden handles–nicely constructed for the job, otherwise whoever did it would have sliced his own hands off.’
A readily constructed weapon. The killing was pre-meditated. ‘So the blood on Garrick came from the cuts to her neck.’ Jake thought about it. Even with the botch-up, in the scenario Norris had described the killer wouldn’t have much blood on him–maybe none. The blood on Garrick could, as he apparently claimed, have come from his futile attempts to help a dead woman. Could have…
After he’d finished talking to Norris, he made a few quick notes, then picked up the phone again. This time he called Cass. She was surprised to hear from him. ‘What’s this? Phoning before you said you would? Got the date wrong or something?’
‘I always phone,’ he said. ‘When did I ever let you down?’
‘Have you got a week? Okay, what do you want?’
The trouble with Cass was she knew him too well. ‘Just a couple of names.’
There was a pointed silence on the other end of the phone, then she sighed. ‘Which case?’
‘The woman who was killed over by the dams–I’m working on something that might be linked.’
‘
It’s not ours,’ Cass said.
‘I know. But they’ve been interviewing over here–I just want to know who’s been involved.’
‘Hang on…’ Her voice faded away, then came back. ‘They’ve had some guys over at the university, and one or two others…’ He could hear the sound of paper rustling. ‘Okay–try Mick Burnley or David Haines.’
Both were detective sergeants, and Jake had had good stuff from Burnley before now. ‘Thanks, Cass,’ he said. ‘You’re great. I’ll be in touch when I get back, okay?’
‘Not so fast,’ she said. ‘You promised we’d get together before you go.’
‘We did, the other night.’
‘That doesn’t count,’ she said. ‘I want to see you this weekend.’
‘Cass, I can’t. I’m off on Monday, and I’ve got a pile of stuff to finish. I haven’t got a minute. It’ll have to wait until I get back.’
The silence lengthened and he suppressed a sigh. This thing with Cass had started out as fun. They’d met when he was working on an article about civilian workers in the Manchester police. She had been an interesting interviewee, excluded from the camaraderie of the canteen culture as a civilian, included in the group as the live-in girlfriend of a detective constable.
Jake had found her an attractive and a witty companion for a drink, someone who was resolutely uninterested in the serious side of the work she did, or the serious side of anything much. The Juris Ziverts debacle had just ended, and he was in the mood for frivolity. Their occasional meetings had drifted into longer evenings, and eventually into his bed. It had been an easy, no-pressure thing at first. But now she was starting to want more.
He waited her silence out. After a minute, she said, ‘You’re no fun any more. It’s always work.’
He kept his voice level. ‘The work comes first with me, Cass. It always has.’
‘Only when it suits you.’ She hung up.
He banged the phone down and went back to his notes, letting his irritation with her, and with himself, distract him. He wanted to be distracted. He had no good news for Miss Yevanova. Everything he’d read, and everyone he’d talked to, said the same thing. Nicholas Garrick was guilty.
