Twelve Red Herrings (9 page)

Cambridge won
the battle of the universities to tempt him with a teaching post, and he became
a fellow of Gonville and Caius in September 199o. In November 991, after the
retirement of Sir Halford Mckay, Balcescu took over the Chair of Eastern
European Studies.

Donald looked
up. “There’s a picture of him taken when he was in Greece, but it’s too blurred
to be of much use.” I studied the black-and-white photograph of a bearded
middleaged man surrounded by students. He wasn’t anything like Jeremy. I
frowned. “Another blind alley,” I said.

“It’s beginning
to look like it,” said Donald.
“Especially after what I found
out yesterday.
According to his secretary, Balcescu delivers his weekly
lecture every Friday morning, from ten o’clock to eleven.”

“But that
wouldn’t stop him from taking a call from Rosemary at midday,” interrupted
Jenny.

“If you’ll allow
me to finish,” said Hackett sharply. Jenny bowed her head, and he continued.
“At twelve o’clock he chairs a full departmental meeting in his office,
attended by all members of staff.

I’m sure you’ll
agree, Jenny, that it would be quite difficult TRIAL

AND
ERROR for him to take a personal call at that time every Friday, given the
circumstances.”
Donald turned to me. “I’m sorry to say we’re back where we started, unless you
can remember where you’ve seen Mrs.

Balcescu.”
I shook my
head. “Perhaps I was mistaken,” I admitted.

Donald and Jenny
spent the next few hours going over the files, even checking every one of the
ten phone numbers a second time.

“Do you remember
Rosemary’s second call, sir,” said Jenny, in desperation.”
“
The
Director’s not in at the moment.” Might that be the clue we’re looking for?”

“Possibly,” said
Donald. “If we could find out who the Director is, we might be a step nearer to
Jeremy Alexander.” I remember Jenny’s last words before I left for my room.

“I wonder how
many directors there are in Britain, chief.” Over breakfast in Donald’s room
the following morning, he reviewed all the intelligence that had been gathered
to date, but none of us felt we were any nearer to a solution.

“What about Mrs.
Balcescu?” I said. “She may be the person taking the call every Friday at
midday,
because that’s the one time she knows exactly where
her husband is.”

“I agree. But is
she simply Rosemary’s messenger, or is she a friend of Jeremy’s?” asked Donald.

“Perhaps we’ll
have to tap her phone to find out,” said Jenny.

Donald ignored
her comment, and checked his watch. “It’s time to go to Balcescu’s lecture.”

“Why are we
bothering?” I asked. “Surely we ought to be concentrating on Mrs. Balcescu.”

“You’re probably
right,’ said Donald. “But we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned, and as
his next lecture won’t be for another week, we may as well get it over with. In
any case, we’ll be out by eleven, and if we find Mrs.

Balcescu’s phone
is engaged between twelve and twelve thirty...”

After Donald had
asked Jenny to bring the car round to the front of the hotel, I slipped back
into my room to pick up something that had been hidden in the bottom of my
suitcase for several weeks. A few minutes later I joined them, and Jenny drove
us out of the hotel carpark, turning right into the main road. Donald glanced
at me suspiciously in the rear-view mirror as I sat silently in the back.

Did I look
guilty ?
I wondered.

Jenny spotted a
parking meter a couple of hundred yards away from the Department of European
Studies, and pulled in. We got out of the car and followed the flow of students
along the pavement and up the steps. No one gave us a second look. Once we had
entered the building, Donald whipped off his tie and slipped it in his jacket
pocket. He looked more like a Marxist revolutionary than most of the people
heading towards the lecture.

The lecture
theatre was clearly signposted, and we entered it by a door on the ground
floor, which turned out to be the only way in or out. Donald immediately walked
up the raked auditorium to the back row of seats. Jenny and I followed, and
Donald instructed me to sit behind a student who looked as if he spent his
Saturday afternoons playing lock forward for his college rugby team.

While we waited
for Balcescu to enter the room, I began to look around. The lecture theatre was
a large semi-circle, not unlike a miniature Greek amphitheatre, and I estimated
that it could hold around three hundred students. By the time the clock on the
front wall read 9.55 there was hardly a seat to be found.

No further proof
was needed of the professor’s reputation.

I felt a light
sweat forming on my forehead as I waited for Balcescu to make his entrance. As
the clock struck ten the door of the lecture theatre opened. I was so
disappointed at the sight that greeted me that I groaned aloud. He couldn’t
have been less like Jeremy. I leaned across to Donald.
“Wrong-coloured
hair, wrong-coloured eyes, about thirty pounds too light.”
The Don
showed no reaction.

“So the
connection has to be with Mrs. Balcescu,” whispered Jenny.

“Agreed,” said
Donald under his breath. “But we’re stuck here for the next hour, because we
certainly can’t risk drawing attention to ourselves by walking out. We’ll just
have to make a dash for it as soon as the lecture is over. We’ll still have
time to see if she’s at home to take the twelve o’clock call.” He paused. “I
should have checked the layout of the building earlier.” Jenny reddened
slightly, because she knew I meant you.

And then I
suddenly remembered where I had seen Mrs. Balcescu. I was about to tell Donald,
but the room fell silent as the professor began delivering his opening words.

“This is the
sixth of eight lectures,” he began, ‘on recent social and economic trends in
Eastern Europe.” In a thick Central European accent he launched into a
discourse that sounded as if he had given it many times before. The
undergraduates began scribbling away on their pads, but I became increasingly
irritated by the continual drone of the professor’s nasal vowels, as I was
impatient to tell Hackett about Mrs.

Balcescu
and to get back to Great Shelford as quickly as possible.
I found myself
glancing up at the clock on the wall every few minutes.

Not unlike my
own schooldays, I thought. I touched my jacket pocket. It was still there, even
though on this occasion it would serve no useful purpose.

Halfway through
the lecture, the lights were dimmed so the professor could illustrate some of
his points with slides. I glanced at the first few graphs as they appeared on
the screen, showing different income groups across Eastern Europe related to
their balance of payments and export figures, but I ended up none the wiser,
and not just because I had missed the first five lectures.

The assistant in
charge of the projector managed to get one of the slides upside down, showing
Germany bottom of the export table and Romania top, which caused a light ripple
of laughter throughout the theatre. The professor scowled, and began to deliver
his lecture at a faster and faster pace, which only caused the assistant more
difficulty in finding the right slides to coincide with the Professor’s
statements.

Once again I
became bored, and I was relieved when, at five to eleven, Balcescu called for
the final graph. The previous one was replaced by a blank screen. Everyone
began looking round at the assistant, who was searching desperately for the
slide.

The professor
became irritable as the minute hand of the clock approached eleven. Still the
assistant failed to locate the missing slide. He flicked the shutter back once
again, but nothing appeared on the screen, leaving the professor brightly
illuminated by a beam of light. Balcescu stepped forward, and began drumming
his fingers impatiently on the wooden lectern. Then he turned sideways, and I caught
his profile for the first time. There was a small scar above his right eye,
which must have faded over the years, but in the bright light of the beam it
was clear to see.

“It’s him!” I
whispered to Donald as the clock struck eleven.

The lights came
up, and the professor quickly left the lecture theatre without another word.

I leapt over the
back of my bench seat, and began charging down the gangway, but my progress was
impeded by students who were already sauntering out into the aisle. I pushed my
way past them until I had reached ground level, and bolted through the door by
which the professor had left so abruptly. I spotted him at the end of the
corridor. He was opening another door, and disappeared out of sight.

I ran after him,
dodging in and out of the chattering students.

When I reached
the door that had just been closed behind him I looked up at the sign:
PROFESSOR BALCESCU Director of European Studies I threw the door open, to
discover a woman sitting behind a desk checking some papers. Another door was
closing behind her.

“I need to see
Professor Balcescu immediately,” I shouted, knowing that if I didn’t get to him
before Hackett caught up with me, I might lose my resolve.

The woman
stopped what she was doing and looked up at me.

“The Director is
expecting an overseas call at any moment, and cannot be disturbed,” she
replied. “I’m sorry, but...”
I
ran straight past her,
pulled open the door and rushed into the room, where I came face to face with
Jeremy Alexander for the first time since I had left him lying on the floor of
my drawing room. He was talking animatedly on the phone, but he looked up, and
recognised me immediately. When I pulled the gun from my pocket, he dropped the
receiver. As I took aim, the blood suddenly drained from his face.

“Are you there,
Jeremy?” asked an agitated voice on the other end of the line. Despite the
passing of time, I had no difficulty in recognising Rosemary’s strident tones.

Jeremy was
shouting, “No, Richard, no! I can
explain !
Believe
me, I can
explain !
” as Donald came running in. He
came to an abrupt halt by the professor’s desk, but showed no interest in
Jeremy.

“Don’t do it,
Richard,” he pleaded. “You’ll only spend the rest of your life regretting it.”
I remember thinking it was the first time he had ever called me Richard.

“Wrong, for a
change, Donald,” I told him. “I won’t regret killing Jeremy Alexander. You see,
he’s already been pronounced dead once. I know, because I was sentenced to life
imprisonment for his murder. I’m sure you’re aware of the meaning of “autrefois
acquit”, and will therefore know that I can’t be charged a second time with a
crime I’ve already been convicted of and sentenced for.

Even
though this time they will have a body.”
I moved the gun a few inches to
the right, and aimed at Jeremy’s heart. I squeezed the trigger just as Jenny
came charging into the room. She dived at my legs.

Jeremy and I
both hit the ground with a thud.

Well, as I
pointed out to you at the beginning of this chronicle, I ought to explain why
I’m in jail – or, to be more accurate, why I’m back in jail.

I was tried a
second time; on this occasion for attempted murder despite the fact that I had
only grazed the bloody man’s shoulder. I still blame Jenny for that.

Mind you, it was
worth it just to hear Matthew’s closing speech, because he certainly understood
the meaning of ‘autrefois acquit’. He surpassed himself with his description of
Rosemary as a calculating, evil Jezebel, and Jeremy as a man motivated by
malice and greed, quite willing to cynically pose as a national hero while his
victim was rotting his life away in jail, put there by a wife’s perjured
testimony of which he had unquestionably been the mastermind. In another four
years, a furious Matthew told the jury, they would have been able to pocket
several more millions between them. This time the jury looked on me with
considerable sympathy.

“Thou shalt not
bear false witness against any man,” were Sir Matthew’s closing words, his
sonorous tones making him sound like an Old Testament prophet.

The tabloids always
need a hero and a villain. This time they had got themselves a hero and two
villains. They seemed to have forgotten everything they had printed during the
previous trial about the oversexed lorry driver, and it would be foolish to
suggest that the page after page devoted to every sordid detail of Jeremy and
Rosemary’s deception didn’t influence the jury.

They found me
guilty, of course, but only because they weren’t given any choice. In his
summing up the judge almost ordered them to do so. But the foreman expressed
his fellow jurors’ hope that, given the circumstances, the judge might consider
a lenient sentence. Mr. Justice Lampton obviously didn’t read the tabloids,
because he lectured me for several minutes, and then said I would be sent down
for five years.

Matthew was on
his feet immediately, appealing for clemency on the grounds that I had already
served a long sentence. “This man looks out on the world through a window of
tears,” he told the judge. “I beseech your lordship not to put bars across that
window a second time.” The applause from the gallery was so thunderous that the
judge had to instruct the bailiffs to clear the court before he could respond
to Sir Matthew’s plea.