Barry Maitland: Babel

‘Well, I just froze. I didn’t dare even breathe. My first thought was that he was going to shoot himself. I thought, maybe Max Springer was right and Richard is in some kind of terrible trouble and wants to end it all. But when I thought of Springer I remembered the newspaper report of that morning, how he had been shot at the university by an unknown gunman, and there was Richard holding a gun.’

‘Examining it, you say?’

‘Yes, I think so. Then he sort of shook his head, as if he’d come to a decision about something, opened the drawer of his desk, and put the gun inside. I stepped back from the door and returned to the foot of the stairs. I didn’t dare try to get up them again without him hearing, so I called out his name, as if I’d just come down. He answered and came out of the study. He looked very tired and I asked him if he was all right. He said he was, then started to switch off the lights, and we went upstairs.

‘The next day he was due to fly to the Gulf, and I was to drive him to the airport at midday. After breakfast he did some packing, then said that he was going to go for a walk to clear his head. I was surprised, because he never does that. I offered to go too, but he said he had some things to work out for his trip and he needed to think. He put on his old coat and I heard him go into his study before he left. Once I was sure he was gone I went in there and opened the desk drawer. The gun wasn’t there any more. I searched all through the desk, and the suitcase he’d packed, but I couldn’t find it. I began to think I’d imagined seeing it.’

Brock exchanged a glance with Kathy. ‘Why?’ he said cautiously, imagining what a defence counsel might make of this. ‘Had you been drinking before your husband got home that night?’

‘I’d had one or two drinks, yes. But I wasn’t anywhere near drunk. I know what I saw.’

‘But you’re absolutely sure it was a gun? It couldn’t have been something else black? His wallet perhaps?’

‘No, no, it was a gun. It was the last thing I expected to see in his hand. I looked at it so hard to be sure I wasn’t making a mistake. He turned it over, directly under the light. It glinted like dark metal.’

‘All right. So how long was he away the next morning?’

‘Not very long. Twenty minutes.’

‘Have you any idea where he might have gone?’

‘He turned left outside our gate, and when he returned he had mud on his shoes. There’s a small wood not far from our house, with a pond. I thought he might have gone there.’

Brock thought, simpler to have wrapped it up and put it in his dustbin, unless he was expecting his house to be searched while he was away.

‘That’s really all I know,’ Sheila Haygill said. Some of the stiffness had gone out of her and she sounded subdued, as if realising what she had done in informing on her husband.

‘Did you and Richard talk about Max Springer’s murder on that Friday night or Saturday before he left?’

‘Yes. I didn’t want to bring it up, but it was front page in the morning newspaper again, and it would have been strange not to. Richard said he’d read about it the previous day.’

‘Where was your husband on the Thursday, the day Springer was killed?’

‘At the university as far as I know. I believe he came home at about eight that evening, and he didn’t mention anything about a murder.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘I’ve thought about that, but I can’t remember. I mean, I didn’t know anything had happened and I had no special reason to remember that day. I suppose he must have been normal or I would have remembered something, wouldn’t I?’

Brock turned his collar up against the wind, and stared morosely at the icy water. He had knocked his knee getting out of the car, and the pain which had eased over the past week had returned whenever he put weight on his left leg. The pond was almost precisely circular as if it had been deliberately constructed by a landscaper, although it had in fact been formed by a bomb crater during the war, at a time when the surrounding wood was much larger than the present copse. It wasn’t deep, at its centre no more than waist high to the two divers in black wetsuits working across it, but the leafy silt of the bottom was treacherous to sift through, and there was a wealth of miscellaneous objects beneath the surface-bottles, cans, a bicycle frame, a milk crate-to confuse the search. Two other men in rubber boots were working around the edge, and behind him a line of uniforms was working through the copse. At least the wind and drizzle were keeping curious spectators away.

The four men working the pond were converging on the furthest quarter when one of the pair in the water gave a cry and held something up above his head. He turned and moved in slow motion through the sucking mud towards the bank, handing it to one of the men there who slipped it into a clear bag and hurried back to the path where Brock was standing.

‘A gun, sir,’ he grinned.

Through the mud smearing the pistol, Brock made out some of the letters cast into its side, CESKA. ‘Good,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s get some lunch.’

Haygill stumbled as he was led into the room. They had waited until the following day to arrest him while tests were done on the gun, a Czech-made service issue pistol, probably about twenty years old, and confirmation received that it had indeed fired the rounds that had killed Springer.

‘Are you all right, Professor?’ Brock asked. The man looked even greyer and more harried than when he’d last seen him.

‘Am I all right?’ Haygill repeated, as if he were giving the question serious consideration. ‘Well, yesterday my wife left me, my principal assistant resigned, and my university president stabbed me in the back. This morning I woke up with toothache, then I was arrested for murder. But otherwise I’m fine, thank you.’ He ran a hand distractedly through his hair, adjusted his glasses, and sat down.

As gallows humour went, Brock had heard better. He wondered how Haygill would cope with jail. Perhaps it would be a relief, the weight of all those frequent flier points lifted from his shoulders. More likely it would destroy him.

‘Can we get you something for the toothache?’

Haygill shook his head wearily, the bravado gone. ‘I took an aspirin, thanks.’

His solicitor came in with Bren. Brock started the recording equipment, stated the formalities, then said, ‘When did you first hear of the murder of Max Springer, Professor Haygill?’

‘First hear of it?’ It didn’t seem to be the question Haygill expected, and he frowned in thought. ‘Well, er, it would have been that weekend, I think. Probably the Sunday, while I was in the Gulf.’

‘Yes, that’s what you told me when we first met, on the following Tuesday, the twenty-fifth. How did you hear about it?’

‘Phone call, I think, or perhaps an e-mail. From my secretary perhaps, or Darr. I can’t remember. Is it important? Yes, I think my secretary phoned, because of the fuss they were making in the Sunday papers.’

‘She phoned on a Sunday?’

‘Yes. She thought I should know.’

Brock paused, letting this hang in the air for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Only your wife tells us that you discussed the murder with her on the Saturday morning, over breakfast.’

Haygill looked shocked. ‘My wife? You’ve spoken to my wife?’ He turned to his solicitor. ‘I thought wives couldn’t testify against husbands.’

The lawyer shook his head, looking very unhappy with the inference that could be drawn from this, which Brock duly pushed home. ‘Oh, they’re quite at liberty to testify against their husbands, Professor. So you’re saying that causes you to change your story, are you?’