Barry Maitland: Babel

‘I never was aware of any special sense of indebtedness,’ Haygill said with a kind of tired persistence, sounding as if his stamina was giving out. ‘He planned to do a Ph. D. at UCLE part-time while he was working for us, but… I don’t think he ever enrolled. Probably we kept him too busy. He was very good at his work. We soon began to realise what an asset he was.’

‘And naturally you praised him…’

‘Yes.’

‘And rewarded him. I see from his employment records that his salary was increased three times during the past fifteen months.’

‘Yes. We didn’t want to lose him, and salaries for such people have been going through the roof recently. Darr recommended, I agreed

…’

This went on for some hours, Bren aggressively probing, Haygill fending him off with declining but stubborn energy. When they finally let him go he had given them nothing that changed anything.

On the following day Brock received two early phone calls. The first came from Haygill’s solicitor, to say that his client was satisfied that he had done all that he reasonably could to assist the police, and that he had nothing more to say. If the police felt that they had grounds to charge him, they should go ahead and do so.

The second was from Mrs Haygill, requesting another meeting. When she arrived, she was wearing a new limegreen suit, her hair curled in a different style, and Brock guessed that the salons and boutiques of Cheadle Hulme had had a good weekend, for the purposes of morale. She sat very straight in her chair, holding an expensive new handbag in front of her like a shield.

Brock said, ‘I thought you were up in Manchester, Mrs Haygill.’

‘I decided to come back. I thought things over, and I decided that my place is by my husband’s side. You should understand that we met yesterday afternoon, and we are reconciled.’

‘Reconciled, I see.’

‘And therefore I will refuse to give evidence against my husband, if he is charged with anything. My solicitor says you can’t make me.’

‘Well, that is true. But you did give us a voluntary statement before, which was properly witnessed and recorded. And we found the gun you spoke of, exactly where you told us we would.’

She flushed, pursed her lips. ‘For which my husband has a perfectly reasonable explanation, which he has now related to me. He was trying to protect his staff out of loyalty. It was a mistake, but an understandable one.’

‘To attempt to conceal a murder weapon, Mrs Haygill?’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Tell me, what brought about this change of heart?’

‘I… I was too hasty. I reacted in anger to what I was told, when in fact it was incorrect. There was a misunderstanding.’ ‘About what?’

‘It’s really none of your business,’ she snapped, then hesitated and seemed to decide that she shouldn’t appear uncooperative. ‘I mentioned the last time that I was led to believe that my husband had hired a private detective to spy on me. Well, it appears that was incorrect. The man who was mistaken for the detective heard what had happened and got in touch with me. He said it was all a misunderstanding and my informant had got it all wrong.’

‘That was very decent of him. Did he say what his occupation really was?’

‘Not in so many words, but I guessed, from something he said, that he was a reporter, sniffing around for a story about my husband and Max Springer. When he was confronted, he let it be understood that he was a private detective.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Tah… My informant accused him of being that, and he thought it simplest to agree.’

‘And you’re now convinced that your husband had no part in the murder of Max Springer?’

‘I am.’

‘Despite Springer coming to see you to warn you that he intended to ruin him?’

‘I… I may have been mistaken about that.’

‘About him coming to see you?’

‘No, I mean, about him saying that he planned to ruin Richard. It may not have been as strong as that. Maybe… maybe it was more like, he wanted to have Richard and his research centre kicked out of the university.’

‘Maybe…?’ Brock looked at her with disbelief, and she lowered her eyes, embarrassed, but pressed on with the story she’d rehearsed, or been coached in.

‘Though, of course, he’d have had no chance of doing that. So it was all nonsense really.’

Brock sat back in his chair and gave a deep sigh. ‘And you’ve now told your husband about Springer’s visit to you that day?’

‘Yes. And I realise that I made too much of it when I talked to you. I’m sorry, but I was feeling quite… emotional, that day. Because of the story of the private detective, you see.’

After she left Brock sat alone in the room for a while, frowning, doodling a diagram of a ziggurat. He could imagine the regrouping that would have gone on in Haygill’s camp after Bren had finished grilling him the previous afternoon, and with the return of his wife. He imagined the schooling of Mrs Haygill, the plans for damage limitation, and the dawning realisation that there might yet be a way out of what must have seemed an impossible situation. And Leon had played his part in Haygill’s recovery, just as he had in his collapse. He reached for the phone and dialled Leon’s number.

‘I’ve just had a visit from Professor Haygill’s wife, Leon,’ he said, keeping his voice level. ‘I would have appreciated hearing from you before you spoke to her.’

‘I’m sorry, Brock.’ Leon sounded suitably penitent. ‘I just felt I had to do it on my own, without getting you involved, in case this ever comes out. After I heard about Mrs Haygill leaving her husband, I felt I had to do something to put things right with her. Apart from anything else, suppose I’d been called in court and Darr had recognised me?’

Brock had also thought of that. The whole thing had been misconceived from the beginning.

‘I just thought this was the best way to get out of it.’ Leon added, sounding very unhappy. ‘Will it affect your case, her coming to see you?’

Somewhat mollified, Brock said, ‘We’ll have to wait and see. Don’t worry about it. But Leon, the next time you decide to go undercover, speak to me first, will you?’

Brock’s morning was made complete by a call from Reggie Grice to say that he had now read the document provided by Haygill, describing the BRCA4 protocol, and he thought it was brilliant.

‘That wasn’t the word I was hoping for, Reggie.’

‘No, I know. I’m sorry.’

Everyone, it seemed, wanted to apologise this morning. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘It seems I may have misled you over this project. The whispers I’d heard aren’t borne out by the document at all. There’s nothing here that my committees would be likely to object to if the experiments were to be carried out in this country.’

‘Nothing ethically dubious?’

‘Not that I could see.’

‘Could the document you’ve got have been sanitised, Reggie? It’s easy enough to excise a few paragraphs or chapters on the word processor.’

‘I took your warning to look out for that, but I honestly couldn’t find any gaps in the process that’s described here. It stands complete, and I have to say, it’s bloody impressive. If they can get it to work the way it’s set out here, it’s potentially Nobel laureate standard. As good as that.’

‘Oh, dear.’ It seemed that Haygill’s prospects were recovering as rapidly as they had earlier collapsed.

‘Sorry.’

‘Reggie, if Springer had got hold of a copy of that document, could he have misinterpreted it, do you think?’

‘Did he have any scientific training? Biochemistry?’

‘I don’t think so.’