Peter Lovesey - Murder on the Short List

Huge controversy surrounded the verdict. The international press made a lot of the incident, pointing out that as recently as 1978 a Bulgarian writer, Georgi Markov, a rebel against his Communist government, had been executed in a London street by a tiny poison pellet forced into his thigh, apparently by the tip of an umbrella. The poison used was ricin, a protein derived from the castor oil seed, deadly and in those days almost undetectable in the human bloodstream. He took four days to die, protesting that he was the victim of political assassination. Nobody except his wife took him seriously until after he died. The presence of the poison was only discovered because the pellet was still embedded in a piece of Markov’s flesh sent for analysis. If ricin could be injected in a public street using an umbrella, was it so fanciful to suggest Jozsef Stansky was targeted by the KGB and poisoned at Wimbledon two years later?

In Poland, the first months of 1981 had been extremely tense. A new Prime Minister, General Jaruzelski, had taken over and a permanent committee was set up to liaise with Solidarity. Moscow was incensed by this outbreak of liberalism and summoned Jaruzelski and his team to the Kremlin. The Politburo made its anger known. Repression followed. Many trade union activists were beaten up.

The papers noted that Stanski’s opponent Voronin had quit Britain by an Aeroflot plane the same evening he had lost. He was unavailable for comment, in spite of strenuous efforts by reporters. The Soviet crackdown on Solidarity was mentioned. It was widely suspected that the KGB had been monitoring Stanski for over a year. He was believed to be acting as a conduit to the free world for Walesa and his organisation. At the end of the year, martial law was imposed in Poland and the leaders of Solidarity were detained and union activity suspended.

Although nothing was announced officially, the press claimed Scotland Yard investigated the assassination theory and kept the file open.

Since the Cold War ended and the Soviet bloc disintegrated, it is hard to think oneself back into the oppression of those days, harder still to believe orders may have been given for one tennis player to execute another at the world’s top tournament.

In the years since, I kept an open mind about the incident, troubled to think murder may have happened so close to me. In my mind’s eye I can still see Stanski rubbing his arm and reaching for the water I poured.

Then, last April, I had a phone call from Eddie Pringle. I hadn’t seen him in almost twenty years. He was coming my way on a trip and wondered if we might meet for a drink.

To be truthful, I wasn’t all that keen. I couldn’t imagine we had much in common these days. Eddie seemed to sense my reluctance, because he went on to say, “I wouldn’t take up your time if it wasn’t important — well, important to me, if not to you. I’m not on the cadge, by the way. I’m asking no favours except for one half-hour of your time.”

How could I refuse?

We arranged to meet in the bar of a local hotel. I told him I have a beard these days and what I would wear, just in case we didn’t recognise each other.

I certainly wouldn’t have known Eddie if he hadn’t come up to me and spoken my name. He was gaunt, hairless and on two sticks.

“Sorry,” he said. “Chemo. Didn’t like to tell you on the phone in case I put you off.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” I said. “Is the treatment doing any good?”

“Not really. I’ll be lucky to see the year out. But I’m allowed to drink in moderation. What’s yours?”

We found a table. He asked what line of work I’d gone into and I told him I was a journalist.

“Sport?”

“No. Showbiz. I know why you asked,” I said. “That stint we did as ball boys would have been a useful grounding. No one ever believes I was on court with McEnroe and Borg, so I rarely mention it.”

“I made a big effort to forget,” Eddie said. “The treatment we got from that Brigadier fellow was shameful.”

“No worse than any military training.”

“Yes, but we were young kids barely into our teens. At that age it amounted to brain-washing.”

“That’s a bit strong, Eddie.”

“Think about it,” he said. “He had us totally under his control. Destroyed any individuality we had. We thought about nothing else but chasing after tennis balls and handing them over in the approved style. It was the peak of everyone’s ambition to be the best ball boy. You were as fixated as I was. Don’t deny it.”

“True. It became my main ambition.”

“Obsession.”

“OK. Have it your way. Obsession.” I smiled, wanting to lighten the mood a bit.

“You were the hotshot ball boy,” he said. “You deserved to win.”

“I doubt it. Anyway, I was too absorbed in it all to see how the other kids shaped up.”

“Believe me, you were the best. I couldn’t match you for speed or stillness. The need to be invisible he was always on about.”

“I remember that.”

“I believed I was as good as anyone, except you.” Eddie took a long sip of beer and was silent for some time.

I waited. It was obvious some boyhood memory was troubling him.

He cleared his throat nervously. “Something has been on my mind all these years. It’s a burden I can’t take with me when I go. I don’t have long, and I want to clear my conscience. You remember the match between the Russian and the Pole?”

“Voronin and, er...?”

“Stanski — the one who died. It should never have happened. You’re the one who should have died.”

Staring at him, I played the last statement over in my head.

He said, “You’ve got to remember the mental state we were in, totally committed to being best boy. It was crazy, but nothing else in the world mattered. I could tell you were better than I was, and you told me yourself that the Brigadier spoke to you after one of your matches on Ladies’ Day.”

“Did I?” I said, amazed he still had such a clear recollection. “He didn’t say anything to me. It was obvious you were booked for the final. While you were on the squad, I stood no chance. It sounds like lunacy now, but I was so fired up I had to stop you.”

“How?”

“With poison.”

“Now come on, Eddie. You’re not serious.”

But his tone insisted he was. “If you remember, when we were in the first year, there was a sensational story in the papers about a man, a Bulgarian, who was murdered in London by a pellet the size of a pinhead that contained an almost unknown poison called ricin.”

“Georgi Markov.”

“Yes. We talked about it in chemistry with Blind Pugh. Remember?”

“Vaguely.”

“He said a gram of the stuff was enough to kill thirty-six thousand people and it attacked the red blood cells. It was obtained from the seeds or beans of the castor-oil plant, ricinus communis . They had to be ground up in a pestle and mortar because otherwise the hard seed-coat prevented absorption. Just a few seeds would be enough. Old Pugh told us all this in the belief that castor oil plants are tropical, but he was wrong. They’ve been grown in this country as border plants ever since Tudor times.”

“You’re saying you got hold of some?”

“From a local seedsman, and no health warning. I’m sorry if all this sounds callous. I felt driven at the time. I plotted how to do it, using this.”

Eddie spread his palm and a small piece of metal lay across it. “I picked it out of a litter bin after Stanski threw it away. This is the sewing machine needle he found. My murder weapon.”

I said with distaste, “You were responsible for that?”

“It came from my mother’s machine. I ground the needle to a really fine point and made a gelatine capsule containing the poison and filled the eye of the needle with it.”