‘Is that possible?’
‘He was taking Temazepam for insomnia. Traces were found in his blood the next morning. It’s a benzodiazepine, with a possible side effect of anterograde amnesia. Of course it’s possible. But the rest is fantasy—there was no Orwell photograph or letter or other manuscript pages in that house. He’s either imagined it or made it up to make his story sound more plausible. So you can tell John not to waste his time.’
Brock nodded, but she could see he wasn’t done yet.
‘Uzma was living with the two Romanians, Elena Vasile and her boyfriend who beat me up, right?’ he said. ‘Suppose they were part of it. Seems likely they would be, doesn’t it? So suppose the plan was for Uzma to put something in Pettigrew’s drink—Rohypnol, for example, which is also a benzodiazepine. Something to knock him out, then let the Romanian bloke into the house with the idea of robbing Pettigrew.’
‘There were no traces of a third party in the house, Brock.’
‘Still, with the right clothing, gloves and mask, we go onto crime scenes all the time without leaving traces. It could be done.’
‘But they didn’t rob Pettigrew! The ten thousand in cash he’d withdrawn from the bank to pay for the manuscript was left in the bedroom where we found Uzma. Are you saying Marku Constantin, the Romanian, killed her? Why?’
‘Maybe he’s the Hampstead killer.’
‘What?’ Kathy stared at him in disbelief.
‘Maybe he wanted to frame Pettigrew so you’d stop looking for him. So he killed Uzma and planted Caroline Jarvis’s necklace in Pettigrew’s house.’
‘And the dog hair? How did that come to be on Caroline’s body?’
Brock sighed and shook his head. ‘Right,’ he said wearily. ‘I didn’t know about that.’
Kathy suddenly felt very sorry for him. Her closest friend, the mentor who had shaped her own career and helped her through its crises, was obviously now going through a major crisis of his own, of withdrawal from his old life.
‘No,’ he said finally. ‘You’re absolutely right, Kathy. It doesn’t make sense.’
There was a buzz from the intercom. Kathy went over and saw Suzanne’s face on the screen. ‘Hello, Kathy.’ The metallic voice sounded tentative. ‘Is it all right for me to come up now?’
‘Yes, I’ve cleaned up most of the blood. Twelfth floor.’
She opened the door, waited in the lobby for the lift to arrive.
Suzanne stepped out and said, ‘Oh dear, is he in big trouble?’
Kathy said, ‘I think we’d better open that bottle he brought.’
By the time they’d finished it and Brock had reluctantly elaborated on his attempt to be a private eye, they decided to go down to the pub on the waterfront nearby for lunch. They found a quiet corner, snug and warm, and they relaxed, talking about other things—Suzanne’s business, her grandchildren, plans for Christmas.
‘Nothing much.’ Kathy shrugged. ‘I used to try to get to Sheffield to see my aunt and uncle up there. Remember them? But they both died early this year. It was their unexpected legacy that made it possible for me to buy my new flat.’
Suzanne said, ‘Well, if you’re not doing anything special, come down and have Christmas dinner with us.’
‘Yes!’ Brock cried. ‘Brilliant idea. Why not?’
Kathy looked at them and smiled, realising how much she’d missed them both, but Brock especially—the way they could read each other’s thoughts without a word spoken. ‘Actually, that would be really nice.’
‘Good,’ Suzanne said, like a diplomat pleased at having negotiated a tricky peace treaty. ‘You know there’s the spare room, Kathy. Stay as long as you can manage.’
And then, turning to Brock, Suzanne said, ‘And no more working for Maggie Ferguson, right?’
Though he gave a rueful nod, Kathy recognised a certain nuance in his look. ‘But?’ she prompted.
He began to raise his eyebrows in feigned innocence, then smiled, realising he’d been caught out. ‘It’s just something that’s been nagging at me, something that Tariq Jamali said to me: “I used to tell her: Uzma, Uzma, London is not the promised land!”’
Kathy nodded. ‘Exactly. That’s probably where she got the idea from. You’ve got to remember how desperate she was. All her hopes dashed and no one to turn to—her husband, her family back in Pakistan. She was living with people who were probably trying to force her into prostitution. The Promised Land was her dream of a way out.’ Then Kathy reached across and took his hand. ‘Forget it, Brock. It’s my problem now.’
11
Christmas came and went, a great success. The weather stayed unseasonably mild—according to the weather reports, Kent was warmer than Athens—and Kathy stayed five nights. They ate and drank too much and went out for country walks, watching gulls flashing white against the dark clouds of passing showers above the ruins of Battle Abbey. The atmosphere in the house was warm and companionable, the Christmas spirit contagious, spoiled only by Suzanne’s grandson Stewart’s air of moody teenage truculence. At one point this had flared into a rage when Brock had scolded him for not helping his grandmother with chores and refusing to take part in the family activities. Stewart turned on him and told him he didn’t belong there and had no right to criticise him, then stormed away and locked himself in his room for the rest of the day. Kathy remembered an incident from years before, when the two grandchildren, recently abandoned by their mother and with no one but Suzanne to depend on, had felt threatened by her friendship with Brock. She wondered if that insecurity still bothered Stewart, although Miranda now seemed untroubled by it. Apart from that, Kathy went home feeling refreshed and happy to have re-established contact with the people who had been such a large part of her life.
This positive mood didn’t last long when she got back to work. People were clustered around a computer screen, reading the online edition of one of the tabloids. As she approached she caught sight of the headline, suicide judge cover-up. Alfarsi saw her and said, ‘Justice Walcott, remember him? Seems he was a raving nonce.’
Kathy said, ‘Oh yes? Who says?’
‘They’ve got hold of an internal police report. Apparently the computer found in his hotel room was full of kiddie porn. They’re saying we hushed it up.’
When she was alone at her desk, Kathy rang West End Central and asked for DI O’Hare.
‘He’s gone,’ the desk sergeant said.
‘Gone?’
‘Retired.’
‘When?’
‘December twentieth. He had a hell of a leaving party.’
‘Was this sudden?’
‘No, no. He’s been waiting for the day as long as I’ve known him. Forty years exactly since he signed on.’
‘Do you have a contact number for him?’
‘No. Made a point of it. He didn’t want to know. He’s on a ship somewhere in the Atlantic, on his way to family in New Zealand, I understand, via Miami, Rio and who knows where. Can anyone else help you?’
‘No, thanks.’ She rang off, wondering; she’d spoken to him just four days before his retirement and he hadn’t mentioned leaving. No reason why he should, she told herself, but still.
The call she was dreading came in towards midday, a message left on her phone by Selwyn Jarvis in a low, urgent tone, demanding a meeting. She called him back later in the afternoon, and he insisted on seeing her that evening at his club in Mayfair.
The Harris Club occupied a small but well-proportioned Victorian palazzo, and had no identifying sign at the entrance; Kathy had to check the number to be sure she’d got the right place. Inside she found Jarvis buried in a deep leather armchair in a room bulging with dark oak features.
‘So they let women in here, do they?’ she asked him.
‘Oh yes, but they’re not so sure about lawyers. Too many of us have been joining and there are rumblings that our numbers should be restricted. What’ll you have to drink?’ He waved to a steward.
‘Look, thanks for coming,
’ he went on. ‘I didn’t want to talk on the phone, and I don’t want to embarrass you in any way, but you are the senior investigating officer for my wife’s murder, and I felt I had to speak to you. You’ve read today’s reports about Roger Walcott?’
‘Yes.’
‘It seems plain to me now that this is a campaign, a conspiracy. Roger heard a number of paedophile trials and always came down hard on those found guilty. So did I. Now we are being punished. Someone is taking their revenge and attempting to undermine our verdicts.’
Kathy frowned. ‘You think this has a bearing on Caroline’s murder?’
‘I’m sure of it. It’s too much of a coincidence. What do you really know about the suspect, this Pettigrew character? Could he be a paedophile? Part of a ring?’
‘There’s been absolutely no indication of that.’
‘Then perhaps he’s a victim too, like Roger and me.’
Jarvis was leaning forward across the arm of his chair as if he might reach out and grab her, his eyes staring, willing her to believe. But it made little sense to Kathy; if Walcott was framed and murdered shouldn’t Jarvis himself have been the victim rather than his wife? And how did Andrea Giannopoulos fit in? Trying to keep the doubt out of her voice she said, ‘I could check his past associations, friends …’
‘Yes! It’s there, Kathy, something. And if not him, then the answer lies in one of the paedophile cases that Roger or I heard.’
Brock’s New Year’s resolution was to make more of an effort to sort out his papers and books at Warren Lane, to act ruthlessly to unclutter his life. After procrastinating for a few days, he pulled himself together and caught the 8.07 am up to town. When he reached his front door, fumbling with his keys, he felt a cold drip run down the back of his neck. He looked up and saw that a section of the roof gutter was broken. In another place grass was growing out of the gutter. He groaned, trying to remember how long it was since he’d had anyone up there to check the roof. And now that he really looked, he saw how shabby the external paintwork was too. All the same, he loved the house, the oriel window jutting out over the lane like an elevated sentry box, the rumble of electric trains from the cutting on the other side of the lane. It had once been a shoemaker’s workshop with house above, and he was convinced that the smell of leather still seeped from its bricks and timber.
He stepped inside. The house felt cold, neglected. He sniffed for any hint of damp and thought he detected something else, neither damp nor leather. As he picked up his mail and climbed the stairs he tried to work out what it was. A bit like peppermint. He switched on the central heating to try to dispel the chill, brewed a mug of coffee and sat at the kitchen table to open his mail. Then the phone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr Brock?’
A female voice, foreign, and he was about to hang up when it added, ‘I am Elena Vasile.’
‘Are you indeed?’ He felt an itch of excitement. He was still in the game.
‘Yes. I would like to apologise for my friend. I hope you are not badly hurt.’
‘I’ll survive.’
‘He wanted to protect me, after Uzma disappeared. I have seen her picture in the newspaper. Poor Uzma.’
‘Yes, poor Uzma.’
‘I have something of hers that you might be interested in, a document.’
‘What kind of document?’
‘Many pages, in a folder. Uzma said she brought it to England when she came from Pakistan. It is called The Promised Land.’
‘I see.’
‘I think you would be interested in it, yes?’
‘I might be. If I could believe that you really had it.’
You have seen the first page, I think?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I will send you the second page. Wait …’
Brock waited, and after a moment his phone pinged and a document appeared. He scrolled through it:
This visionary’s name was Ulisses Topaz, a big soldierly man of indeterminate age and powerful personality, who walked unaccompanied into Halliday’s camp one afternoon. He accepted Halliday’s hospitality and spent the evening talking about his adventurous life. He was of mixed Portuguese and native ancestry, his family being members of the Topass people of Batavia and Timor, and he had served as a sepoy in the Portuguese garrison of Goa, and later with distinction in the administration of the Portuguese State of India, and then in the service of several Indian princely states. From these experiences he determined to found a community based upon those principles of justice which he had identified as essential for the fulfilment of human society. For some years he wandered through South-East Asia searching for a suitable location for his experiment, until at last he came upon the remote village of Toruama on the Burmese–Chinese border.
Toruama was in a piteous state when he came upon it, the people racked by poverty, malnutrition and disease, and terrorised by a brutal overlord. However it was ideally located on an island, secure in the middle of a great lake, on which he believed that the inhabitants might build floating islands on reed mats to cultivate plentiful crops. Accordingly he led the people in a revolt against the overlord, and established his own ideal republic, A Terra Prometida, The Promised Land.
Brock spoke to Elena again. ‘Yes, I’ve read it.’
‘And now you believe me, yes?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Uzma told me it is precious, very valuable.’
‘Where did she get it from?’
‘It’s a complicated story. It will take time to explain it. We should meet to talk.’
‘I don’t deal in books, Elena.’
‘Uzma told me that many people would be interested in owning this document, but look what happened to her. I need a partner, someone I can trust, who will protect me. Will you be my partner, Mr Brock?’
‘I would have to see the rest of it.’
‘Of course. I can meet you tomorrow morning.’
‘All right. Where?’
‘On Hampstead Heath, the bridge on Viaduct Pond, at ten o’clock.’
‘Very well. How did you get this numb—?’ But she had hung up. He assumed her friend had traced it from the details on his driver’s licence.
He took a note of the number from which she’d called him, then phoned Kathy. It went to messages and he asked her to ring him.
He was wading through documents from a box file labelled Cases Jan–Jun 1984 when she rang back.
‘Sorry, meeting.’ She sounded rushed.
‘Kathy, I’ve just had a phone call from Elena Vasile.’
‘Elena? The Romanian girl?’
‘Yes.’ He described their conversation.
Silence, then Kathy said slowly, ‘Sounds like what Uzma tried on Pettigrew.’
‘It does, doesn’t it? I assume you’d like to talk to her?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘So you want me to go ahead?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘If you’re up to it.’
‘Oh yes, very much so,’ Brock growled. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with Elena Vasile and her friend.’
They made arrangements and then Brock tried to get back to his documents, but couldn’t concentrate on them. He printed a copy of Elena’s page, read it again, then emailed a copy to his son John in Montreal. The reply came back almost immediately.
That’s great, Brock. The more pages the better. Without doing a lot more reading I didn’t feel confident about identifying features of Orwell’s writing style, so I’ve made contact with a colleague in the English department here who’s an Orwell specialist. She was very interested in that first page, got quite excited in fact. Wants to know more of the context of course, but I had to tell her that was confidential at this stage. I’ll show her this page and get back to you.
Love to Suzanne and Kathy,
John
Brock returned to culling his old files for another couple of hours before breaking for lunch, a pie and a pint at the nearby Bishop’s Mitre. After lunch, mo
re files until his eyes glazed over. He collected a few books to read and then, as he was about to leave, thought for a moment and went to a drawer of oddments in the spare room. From the back he drew out a brass knuckleduster. He smiled, tried it on for size, then slipped it into his pocket.
Kathy didn’t have time to dwell on Brock’s call because a new revelation in the Walcott case had just appeared on her screen. The newspaper reported that a key piece of incriminating evidence from the police investigation had come into their hands. This was an extract from the forensic analysis of Walcott’s computer, which implicated another judge, as yet unnamed, as having been involved in a paedophile ring with Walcott.
Kathy phoned the office of her boss, Commander Torrens, requesting an urgent appointment. It was late afternoon when she got to see him. He seemed distracted, his mind elsewhere as he asked what she wanted to see him about.
‘It’s about Judge Jarvis, sir,’ Kathy said, and watched his head snap up, attention focused.
‘What about him?’
She explained about his preoccupation with Sir Roger Walcott’s death, his suspicion of a conspiracy targeting judges.
Torrens groaned. ‘You’ve read the newspaper reports about Walcott, I take it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the latest report about another judge?’
Kathy nodded.
Torrens leaned forward, lowering his voice. ‘What I’m about to say doesn’t leave this room, Kathy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We understand this second man is Jarvis.’
Kathy was startled. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. And between them, Walcott and Jarvis heard over a dozen paedophile cases. This is going to be ugly. You’d better set down everything Jarvis said to you about Walcott in a report for my eyes only.’
The Promised Land Page 12
