Barry Maitland - Babel

She curled her lip, the muscles tight across her face. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘It won’t take long. And I do feel stupid, it’s true, for taking so long to understand what you and Max were doing. I take it this is your theory of action, is it? The highest form of human activity, taking events into your own hands?’

She said nothing.

‘Only I’m just rather afraid that you can’t repeat history, not really. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Trying to repeat what Max did. Someone said that history happens the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’

‘Marx,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, I thought so. And I’m afraid this will be a farce, Briony. You’ll burn yourself and cause a bit of damage, and it won’t make the least bit of difference. Richard Haygill and his work won’t be stopped.’

‘That’s what you were supposed to do,’ she said bitterly. ‘You arrested him, you had him in your hands, and you let him go.’

‘I had no choice. The case against him was too weak. In the end, Max just hadn’t done a good enough job. I think it was vanity that got in the way; he thought that the shock of his death would be enough to carry all before it. All the same, what he did was, in its own peculiar way, extraordinary, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you first realise how he died?’

Briony shook her head with irritation and began to turn away.

‘It’s all right,’ Brock said quickly. ‘You have plenty of time. None of the people outside will interfere as long as I’m here.’

She hesitated, then shrugged and slumped onto a stool. ‘All right.’ She suddenly looked very tired, and he guessed she hadn’t slept for some time. ‘I didn’t understand at first.’

‘He hadn’t confided in you?’

‘No. He told me very little.’ The faintest trace of bitterness. ‘I was there, on the steps, the evening that he died.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘I was terribly shocked. I stayed for a while, then I left. I didn’t want to go home. I needed to talk to someone, so I went to Chandler’s Yard to see Fran and Nargis. Abu was there. He’d only just arrived, and it was obvious that something had happened to him. He was like a spring wound tight, pacing up and down, muttering to himself. The others were asking him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t speak to them. Then I told them my news, about Max, and as I spoke I saw a terrible change come over Abu. He began trembling all over and staring at me with wide eyes. I asked him if he knew something about Max’s death, but he just turned and ran out of the flat. Later Qasim said he’d found him praying downstairs in the mosque, and asked us if he was all right because he seemed to be acting so strange.’

‘You knew Abu pretty well by that stage, did you, Briony?’

‘Yes. When Nargis went to Kashmir to get married, Abu and I became closer friends. We… we talked a lot.’

Brock detected an edge in her voice as she said this, and said, ‘He was a nice looking boy. Perhaps you hoped for more than friendship?’

‘That would have been stupid, wouldn’t it?’ she snapped. ‘He still loved Nargis, despite everything.’ She said it too quickly, too angrily, and Brock recognised the jealousy behind the words.

‘Well, anyway, you knew him well enough to see that he’d been profoundly affected by something that evening. Did you guess what it was?’

‘Not at first. The idea of Abu being mixed up in Max’s death would have been too awful. Even when I met you the next day and you asked me if Max had ever upset Muslims, I never connected it with Abu. When I thought about it afterwards I decided you must have had suspicions about the other Muslims working at CAB-Tech.’

‘Did you decide to give us a nudge in that direction by telling the press that we were thinking along those lines?’

She flushed, ‘Yes. I thought it would make it impossible for you not to follow that up. And I was sure it must be true. I thought Abu must have discovered something about what the others had done, and that was why he was behaving so strangely. I was in a state of shock over Max. Everyone was talking about him, the papers were full of stories, and I felt as if I’d lost, I don’t know… a close relative or something. Then on Monday morning, when there was that speculation in the paper about an Islamic connection, they also reported that the police were saying that the killer had escaped on a motorbike, and suddenly I realised that it might have been Abu who killed Max. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it must be true.

‘I went to Chandler’s Yard. I wanted to confront Abu and hear his denial with his own lips. But he wasn’t there. When I went upstairs, no one was there. I went into Nargis’ room and at first I thought I’d wait for them. My head was spinning. On the table was a packet of photographs and I looked through them. Most of them were of Nargis and Abu together. They looked so normal, so happy and untroubled by all the terrible things that had been happening around them. I felt I didn’t understand them at all, and I began to feel this great anger. How could he have done such a thing? How could she protect him? Everything about their lives seemed to be a deception. They must both be fanatics, I thought, to do such a thing. And I thought that if only Nargis hadn’t come back from Pakistan everything might have been different, and I might have saved Abu from ending up like this, a murderer. And suddenly I hated them both, Nargis as much as Abu, and I wanted to hurt them for what they’d done.’

She wiped the back of her free hand across her face, and Brock saw the glint of tears.

‘So what did you do?’ he urged softly.

She shook her head as if she wanted rid of something stuck inside. ‘I took one of the photographs, and an envelope from the drawer, and I went out into Shadwell Road and posted it to Nargis’ father. I betrayed them. I killed Abu.’

‘Well, now, you couldn’t have known that would be the result. Why didn’t you come to us?’

‘I had no evidence. I just wanted to hurt them…’ Her tears were flowing freely. ‘It was the most terrible, the most stupid thing I’ve ever done.’

‘Until now, Briony. You can’t put it right by doing this. When did you begin to suspect that it wasn’t as simple as that?’

Briony sucked in a sobbing breath which turned into a choking cough. She recovered and gasped, ‘On the day after Abu died, I went to Chandler’s Yard again. I almost couldn’t show my face, and yet I couldn’t stay away. I had to hear for myself what had happened. I met Fran there, and she had been trying to console Nargis, who had told her something very strange. She had said that Abu had been very troubled, and had finally confessed to her that he’d been obliged to do something very terrible. There was a man he knew, to whom he owed a great debt. This man had once saved his life, and had given him an education, like a father. Now he wanted Abu to repay the debt with a single act. He wanted Abu to commit a murder.

‘Suddenly I thought I understood. Haygill! Haygill had forced Abu to kill Max. I asked Fran if Nargis had named the man to whom Abu was indebted, and she said, yes, he was the man whose name had been in all the papers, Professor Springer. And I said, no, no, Springer was the name of the victim. What was the name of the other man? And she said, “There was no other man. Springer wanted Abu to kill him. It was the most terrible demand that anyone could make.”’

There was silence apart from the gentle whistling sound. Brock cleared his throat, his saliva acid, then prompted her again. ‘And you remembered the passage in Max’s book, about the boy in the Shatila camp. The ages matched, didn’t they? Was there anything else that convinced you he was Abu?’