Babel (8 page)

‘That sounds more like it. And that would mean that we’re looking for someone who speaks Arabic.’

‘Interesting,’ Wayne said. ‘Very interesting. I guess you want what I can give you on London activists, then, Brock?’

‘I believe we do, Wayne. And let’s keep this to ourselves for the moment. If we’re right, this is going to be explosive.’

That afternoon Brock returned to the university campus to check on the progress of the more rigorous search of Springer’s room which was going on, in parallel with a similar search of the philosopher’s home, a modest semi in the Essex suburbs. While he was talking to the searchers, warning them to inform him immediately they came across anything with an Islamic connotation, there was a discreet cough at his back and he turned to see the University President’s Executive Officer standing in the corridor, regarding them with a quiet smile. Brock wondered how long the young man had been there.

‘Pardon me, but Professor Young heard that you were on campus, Chief Inspector, and wondered if he might have a word, when you’re free.’

‘I’m busy here at the moment.’

‘Of course. Shall I say an hour?’

‘All right.’ Brock turned back to a pile of papers he had been studying. They were handwritten notes, in Springer’s almost indecipherable scrawl, for lectures or essays.

An hour later he was shown into the President’s office. Young sat in shirtsleeves in front of the broad window, the view even more distracting in daylight, studying a single document on his otherwise paperless desk. The impression given was that a vast support apparatus of filing systems and office drones must exist in order to sustain this emptiness and space, leaving the great man uncluttered, free to take decisive action. Brock thought of the contrast with Springer’s tip, or, come to that, his own untidy office. Against the bright panorama it was difficult to make out Young’s expression as he raised his eyes, a significant few seconds after Brock had entered the room.

‘Take a seat, Chief Inspector. Thanks for coming up. I thought I’d better take the opportunity to be briefed on current progress. I’m told that you’re pursuing an interesting line of inquiry.’

‘Are you?’

‘You’re looking for Islamic connections, I understand.’

Brock didn’t try to hide his annoyance. ‘That’s just one of a number of things we’re checking on.’

‘But what on earth leads you in that direction, may I ask?’ he said smoothly, unfazed by Brock’s obvious reluctance.

Brock began to frame a suitable phrase to mind his own damn business, then thought better of it. The man might, after all, be aware of something relevant. ‘If I could have your assurance that this won’t go beyond this room for the moment, Professor Young. The inquiry is speculative at this stage.’

Young waved a hand dismissively, as if the demand were insulting. ‘Of course.’

‘It seems that Professor Springer may have received a threatening message of some kind during the past month, possibly from someone of extreme Islamic views. And in the lecture he was about to give when he was killed, he apparently intended to attack religious fundamentalists in uncompromising terms.’

‘Oh, dear. Max was prone to that sort of thing, I have to say. His lecture, eh? Yes, I’ve been told about that. That is very unfortunate. He didn’t inform us beforehand about it.’

Brock was surprised. ‘Do the professors have to get clearance for their lectures?’

Young smiled. ‘Not clearance. But it was a public lecture, I understand, and they are expected to inform the administration about any public utterances they intend to make. It’s a matter of the university speaking with one voice, and protecting its reputation. Max gave an interview on local radio a few months back, and some of his remarks then were intemperate. The feedback we got from the local ethnic communities was not positive.’

‘Really? What form did the feedback take? Were there specific complaints?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Only our media people keep their ears open, and that was the impression they got. We have to be sensitive to our neighbours beyond the DLR, you see. I mean, we’re the newest immigrants around here.’ He chuckled. ‘But there’s never been any question of our staff being threatened. That does concern me.’

‘We don’t know where the threat, if it really existed, came from. Do you have many Muslim students at the university?’

‘Ah, the deranged student theory again, eh? Well, yes, we have quite a number, certainly—Malaysians, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Egyptians . . . We depend considerably on our fee-paying international students for our funding base. But no militancy, that I’m aware of. Do you want me to inquire?’

Brock thought about that. He would have preferred to do his own investigation, but a direct police approach to student representatives might set off alarm bells around the campus. ‘You must have some staff who work with student organisations, do you?’

‘Several. The student ombudsman, the inter-faith chaplain, the international student counsellors. Shall I put out feelers? See if we’ve got any firebrands I don’t know about?’

‘Please. But very discreetly. Perhaps it could be done without making any connection with the Springer case.’

‘Good idea. Though I’m almost sure it’s a waste of time, to be frank. The more I think about it, if there is some young hothead out there, affronted by some of Max’s remarks, wanting to make a name for himself and taking the law into his own hands, he’s much more likely to be outside the university entirely . . . And of course, Max was a Jew. Ironic though. Max, a Jew by birth, was actually very sympathetic to the Arab cause.’

‘Was he?’

‘Oh, yes. He travelled there, and I’m told he’s written quite passionately about their predicament. I tried to get him involved in our marketing effort in the Arab countries on the strength of it, but he wasn’t interested. Well now . . .’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Good hunting, Chief Inspector. Do keep in touch, won’t you?’ His attention returned to the document on his desk, as if Brock had already left.

As Brock got to his feet he decided that he hadn’t been unfair in his first assessment of the man. He thought he knew the type, the little boy who discovered a craving for dominance in the primary school playground, and had changed only in developing more subtle and effective techniques than fists. He had met versions of Young among businessmen, lawyers in the courtroom, and in the police force, but never, until now, in a university. But then, it had been a very long time since he had been in a university, and why should it be any different from the rest of the world?

On his return to the lower concourse he thought he should get a better picture of the whole place, and began to walk along the waterfront towards the part of the campus that lay beyond the administration tower. Buildings that he hadn’t seen before appeared, like gigantic versions of the simple primary coloured blocks their designer might have played with at nursery school—a red cube, two yellow cylinders, a green pyramid and, most spectacular of all, a circular tiered ziggurat, stepping skyward in blue mirrored glass. He followed a cluster of students towards doors in the stone wall that formed a giant podium for some of these toy shapes, and stepped into a huge cafeteria. He bought a cup of tea and a Chelsea bun at the counter and sat at one of the hundreds of tables, eyeing the other customers, and was surprised by their variety, young people of every shade of skin and hair colour and dress. Listening carefully he was able to pick up many languages too, Swedish from a group of enormous blonde youths at one table, Spanish from a passing cluster of beautiful black-haired girls. Two wiry black women were clearing and wiping the adjoining tables and were talking in some dialect that sounded even more exotic, until he realised that it was broad Scouse, from Liverpool.

His stomach felt vaguely queasy, and he knew it wasn’t just the Chelsea bun. He felt unsettled, adrift, unexpectedly indecisive, although he knew that time was short. If the Islamic line was a false trail then he was wasting valuable time in a case whose notoriety and public interest seemed to be ballooning with every newscast. If it was true, on the other hand, he wouldn’t be able to keep it from public knowledge for long, and the killer, if he hadn’t already done so, would be on the first flight back to whichever state would shelter him. And soon now there would be the inevitable call to share this with the Anti-terrorist Branch, SO13, or, more likely, hand the whole thing over to MI5.

But the problem was more personal than that. Something vital was missing, and he recognised, reluctantly, what it was. Kathy. He wanted her here, covering the parts of the ground that he couldn’t, making him think more clearly, giving him energy. Bren and the rest of the team were completely dedicated, of course, and highly competent, but somehow they didn’t fill the gap. And he didn’t like the notion that he might, over the years, have come to rely on her too much. Suzanne hadn’t said anything directly, but she’d dropped a couple of hints, as if preparing him for the possibility of losing Kathy. Well, one thing you learned in an institution like the Met was that everyone was dispensable and everyone, at some point, moved on. Whatever relationship he had built up with her had arisen from the work, that was all. The idea that the reverse might have become true, that his taste for the job might now be dependent on her, was more than a little disconcerting.

6

T
he smell comes from the bucket in the corner of the room, that and the all-pervading reek of cold concrete. Her right wrist is handcuffed to the bed frame and she has begun to give up hope. He is bending over her, silent, and she realises that something she has said has made him angry. She watches his doped smile fade and black fury flare in his eyes. He bends down and grabs her left arm and leg, lifting her up and throwing her bodily across the bed. Her right arm jerks taut and twists on the handcuff, and she screams as she feels the muscles in her shoulder tear.

Kathy sat up, gasping for breath, fumbling for the bedside light switch. ‘He’s dead,’ she said out loud. Dead, but he keeps coming back to her, night after night, at about the same time, when the effect of the sleeping pill begins to wear off. She reached for a small notebook and pencil and wrote the date, 23 January, the time, 2:36 a.m., and the words, ‘Silvermeadow, again’.

Later that morning she sat in a pool of unexpected sunshine in the conservatory at the back of Suzanne’s house, leafing through the Sunday papers. She poured herself another cup of coffee and opened one of the news review sections. They were all full of the Springer murder, as if everyone recognised in it some special public significance or dramatic quality that made it irresistible. In retrospect it had been absurd for Brock to try to hide it from her, for it dominated every news report, and Brock himself could be seen on TV, his voice punctuating radio reports. She felt remote, watching their activity as from a great distance, no longer a viable member of the team. That at least was clear to her, and probably to the rest of them by now. She had no choice but to move on.

She was alone, Suzanne having taken her grandchildren off to her sister’s for Sunday lunch, and Kathy was glad of the solitude. She’d been grateful for the distraction of the children and the company of Suzanne, but she knew she must soon leave. She had spent Saturday morning in the travel agency watching, and occasionally trying to help, Suzanne’s friend, and had been amazed at her patience. Customers changing their travel plans for the umpteenth time, airlines in confusion over their special fares, hotels double-booking, computers crashing, none of it ruffled Tina. And Kathy had come to realise how sheltered she had been working in a big organisation with specialists to back up on everything. Tina had to do it all herself, looking after her staff, getting the computers fixed, negotiating with her bastard of a landlord, working out the cash flow, getting the weekly ad in the local paper. On Monday Kathy was to help her with the next quarter’s VAT returns, but more importantly she was to meet a rep for a tour operator who would tell her about their tour guides and put her in touch with a London agency that specialised in travel jobs.

She turned the page of the newspaper. Despite the number of column inches, the actual information contained in the reports was thin, and she could imagine the pressure on the Met press office to give more. The editorials and commentaries went on about freedom of speech, or violence on campuses, or the inadequacies of gun controls, but in the absence of hard facts about either motive or culprit, they were diffuse and unsatisfying. The most informative article, she thought, was an obituary of the victim printed in the
Observer
.

Max Springer was born in 1933 into a prosperous German-Jewish merchant family in Hamburg. In 1939, following the Kristallnacht riots, he was sent to stay with distant relatives in England. He never saw his family again, all of whom perished in the concentration camps. From 1952 to 1956 he studied philosophy at the University of London under Sir Karl Popper, then Professor of Logic and Scientific Method, and went on to the University of Chicago as a doctoral student and then lecturer, where he came under the influence of the philosopher Hannah Arendt. It was there also that he met and married the classical pianist Charlotte Pickering. In 1965 he returned to England to a lecturer position at Oxford, there working under Sir Isaiah Berlin, who was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory. In 1978 Springer published his book
The Poverty of Science
, in which he questioned the assumptions underlying the principles of scientific logic and method. This work established his reputation as a radical and independent thinker, and he was elected to the Wyatt Chair of Modern Philosophy at Oxford.

As an extension of his studies of scientific method, Springer investigated what he termed ‘blinkered thinking systems’ and became interested in fundamentalist religious and political modes of thought. This theoretical interest was transformed by ‘the electric shock of reality’ as he later described it, during a visit to the Middle East in 1982, when he personally witnessed the atrocities committed at the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. He subsequently gave help to Palestinian relief organisations, especially for the support of orphaned children, and wrote of his experiences in his 1985 work
The Origins of Fundamentalism
, which aroused much controversy, especially among apologists of the state of Israel, much as his mentor Hannah Arendt had provoked outrage by her work
Eichmann in Jerusalem
, debate about which was at its height when Springer worked with her in Chicago in 1963.