Barry Maitland: Babel

Pettifer looked puzzled. ‘I did listen to that, but I don’t remember anything about the Middle East. I think he made some general comments about fundamentalism and people with closed minds, but he was talking more about science than politics. And he was fairly scathing about the direction universities are heading. Oh, there are a few people on the campus here who would have liked to shut Max up, but even they wouldn’t go so far as to do it that way. At least, I don’t think so.’ He gave a little chuckle.

‘What sort of people?’

An expression of malevolent mischief slipped over Pettifer’s face. ‘Have you met our great leader yet, over in the Fuhrer bunker?’

‘You mean Professor Young? Yes, I met him yesterday. He was full of praise for Professor Springer. Said he’d be sorely missed.’

‘Hah! Hypocritical bastard! He’s been trying to get rid of Max ever since he took over this place. Me too for that matter. We don’t fit into his vision of a university for the new century, you see. Our day has passed. He reorganised the university structure when he came, disbanded the departments and lumped everybody into three divisions, two of which-the Division of Business and the Division of Science and Technology-make lots of money and are important, while the remainder, all the bits they don’t really want but can’t get rid of, were put in the Division of Humanities, Art, Society and Health, or HASH would you believe, which is what they’ve basically made of it.’

All this was said at an accelerating pace of invective. Then he stopped suddenly ‘You don’t want to know about all that, do you? Why should you?’

‘And Max was a thorn in their flesh, was he?’ Brock prompted patiently.

‘Oh, yes. Not like me, exactly-I’m the bolshie little know-it-all bastard in the back row at the President’s open staff briefings who asks the questions about where the money’s going and how come they can recruit so many bloody administrative assistants when we can’t afford tutors and library books. Max’s approach was more philosophical.’ Pettifer said the word with a hint of a sneer, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to talk of anyone, even his friend Springer, without having a dig at them. ‘Max attacked the principles rather than the practices. Especially those principles enshrined in the Division of Science and Technology.’

‘Why them?’

‘Max had a bee in his bonnet about the scientists. He thought they were dragging us willy-nilly towards a world where everything would be predetermined by technology, free will abolished. Especially here, where all their research is driven by money… And they make lots of that,’ he added with a snarl.

‘So he made enemies. Anyone in particular?’

‘Richard Haygill for a start. Professor of Medical Genetics and Director of the Centre of Advanced Biotechnology. Max once described him as a latter-day Dr Mengele…’ he smiled at the memory, ‘… in public, in the University Senate, before the Senate was abolished.’

‘That was rather strong, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh yes. And what made it even stronger was that Max’s parents both died at Auschwitz. Mengele might even have murdered them, for all we know. And Max was dead serious, it wasn’t just a bit of abusive hyperbole. Haygill blew his top, naturally, threatened to sue, but let it go in the end.’

‘Was this very recent?’

‘About a year ago, I think. I’m not aware of anything very recent. Since then our Great Leader has abolished the Senate and put in his own man to control the campus magazine, and generally adopted a policy of pretending that pests like Max and myself don’t exist. And by and large he’s been pretty successful, I must say. We rot away in this slum, deprived of funds and students and gratefully accept the package, when it’s finally offered to us by some smooth little human resource consultant shit with a BMW. probably sound very bitter to you.’

Brock smiled. ‘You do rather.’

‘Ah well.’ Pettifer waved his hand airily. ‘We all find our own forms of consolation. I might go and replenish mine now, I think, unless I can be of any further assistance.’

‘No, that’s fine. Do you know where I could find Max’s student, Briony Kidd?’

‘She shares a room just down the corridor. It’s not far, I’ll show you. She’s usually there.’

Pettifer led him down the deserted corridor and tapped on a door marked ‘Postgraduates’, then stepped in. Four workspaces had been crammed into the little room, two down each side, but only one was occupied. Brock recognised the slight figure dressed all in black, the gamine looks, the large dark-ringed eyes made more dramatic now by tears and the red rims of crying. She hurriedly grabbed a tissue from a box on the little table in front of her and wiped her nose.

‘All right, love?’ Pettifer said breezily, not appearing to notice her distress. ‘Got a visitor for you. ’Bye now,’ and he left, closing the door behind him.

Brock felt immediately uncomfortable, waiting to speak while the woman drew more tissues and rubbed vigorously at her eyes and nose.

‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Briony,’ he said when she finally turned in her seat to half face him. ‘I’m sorry to intrude. I wanted to speak to you about Professor Springer, but I could come back.’

‘No, it’s OK,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just very upset about it, that’s all.’

‘Of course. It was very shocking.’

‘I should have got used to the idea of it, but I was just…’ She looked at a sheaf of paper in front of her. ‘I was just…’ Her shoulders began to shake beneath the thick black sweater, and she began to sob.

Brock wondered if perhaps this was the only person who was really upset by Springer’s death. Everyone else seemed rather enthralled by it. As he stood waiting, he wished again that Kathy were here. He wondered what another student would make of it if they walked in now and saw him, a big bear of a man standing over the weeping girl.

‘I was reading his comments, you see,’ she blurted out suddenly. ‘What he’d written on my text. He only gave it back to me yesterday morning. With what happened, I hadn’t looked at it until now.’ She sobbed and wiped. ‘Seeing his words… so normal, as if nothing has happened.’

‘Of course. Look, would it be better if we went and got a cup of coffee somewhere? A bit of fresh air, you know…’

She shook her head. ‘It’s all right. I’m OK. What did you want to ask me?’ There was a green Bic cigarette lighter beside her papers, and she turned it over and over in her fingers as she spoke.

‘The same thing I’m asking anyone else I can find who was in contact with Professor Springer recently. Is there anything you can tell me to help us find whoever did this? Can you think of any reason why someone would do it? Did he tell you of any threats to his life?’

‘No, nothing like that. The only thing… the thing that keeps coming back to me was something he said in his tutorial yesterday, about how it was up to “us” now. It was like Martin Luther King’s last speech, do you remember, “I have a dream”? About how his people would reach the Promised Land, but he wouldn’t be with them, as if he knew that he would soon be murdered. That was how Max sounded, although at the time I didn’t realise. But afterwards, last night, his words came back, it was up to us now, my generation, as if he knew he wouldn’t be with us much longer. I guessed he was sort of rehearsing what he was going to say later, in his lecture.’

‘But nothing specific, then or earlier, about a threatening phone call, or note?’

‘No.’ Briony shook her head firmly and turned back to her papers, putting down the lighter and running her fingers over the pages as if wanting to feel the substance of Max Springer in his scribbled notes.