Barry Maitland - The Marx Sisters

‘Oh?’

‘Mm. We’ve been having unofficial discussions with our friends over there-exchanging information on things generally, you know, the best buy in data banks, thumb screws, flashing blue lights, the things coppers like to talk about when they’re together. I was over there last month, as a matter of fact. Private visit, of course. It seems they don’t like villains who kill coppers any more than we do, whatever their politicians say. The politicians are, however, very sensitive about foreigners who import drugs.’

‘Is North doing that? He must be crazy.’

‘Of course not. He doesn’t need to with all that money in the Swiss bank accounts. However, it’ll be difficult for him to explain that to them when a large stash of heroin is found in his cellar in a couple of weeks’ time, him not even having learnt the language yet.’

‘Wow. And you’ll be waiting for him at the airport.’ ‘ Moi? ’ Brock raised his eyebrows in mock innocence. ‘I know nothing.

‘Anyway,’ he added with a weary sigh, ‘how wonderful to have no part in the whole dreary mess-scheming wives, unfaithful husbands, desperate plans leading nowhere. How wonderful to be like you, Sergeant Kolla, young, beautiful, single and free.’ He raised his empty glass. ‘And if you’re sticking to tomato juice, you can drive us back to Meredith Winterbottom’s funeral, and I can have another pint before we go.’

Just as at the end of her remembered childhood holidays, the sky was clouding over and becoming darker as Kathy drove them back towards the familiar urban landscapes. On the way they phoned Felix Kowalski and arranged to meet him at his father’s former bookshop at 4.

Traffic was heavy in central London, and when they reached the crematorium the service for Meredith Winterbottom had already begun. They waited in the car, parked so that they could view the front of the chapel. A faint smell of smoke permeated the air. Heavy drops of rain began to fall.

After five minutes the chapel doors were opened by a man in a dark suit, and people filed out under the portico, forming stiff little groups beneath its shelter. Most were elderly, and Kathy recognized a number from Jerusalem Lane. The members of Meredith’s family remained by the chapel doorway, as mourners came up to offer their condolences. The figure of Eleanor was distinctive, dressed in black, erect and sombre, her face pale against her dark hair. Beside her and a head shorter, Peg struck a considerably brighter note, in a scarlet coat with a pink scarf, matching gloves and wide-brimmed hat. From the car they could see the hat tilt graciously this way and that to acknowledge the sympathetic words of friends. On the other side of the chapel doorway, the Winter family formed an awkward group. Terry looked uncomfortable accepting the condolences of those who approached them, and his wife Caroline’s smiles of acknowledgement seemed thin and unconvincing. Kathy recognized the elder daughter, Alex, hovering in the background, morose, her shoulders stooped. Her teenage sister stood beside her, scuffing her feet impatiently.

No one was wearing a bow tie.

‘Do we go out and ask them?’ Kathy inquired doubtfully. The rain was falling steadily now, and one or two people were beginning to hurry out from the shelter of the portico towards the car park.

‘Not here.’ Brock wrinkled his nose. ‘Let’s try a long shot. Have you got the developer’s number?’

Brock dialled, and was passed from the receptionist to Slade’s secretary and finally to the man himself.

‘Hello, Chief Inspector.’

‘Sorry to bother you again, Mr Slade. A quick one. The architect for your project, does he wear a bow tie?’

‘Herbert Lowell? Never seen him in one. Why?’

‘We have to trace everyone who was in the area when Mrs Winterbottom died. Someone thought they’d seen a man in a bow tie, possibly an architect, youngish man.’

‘Not Lowell. Sounds more like Bob Jones. He used to work for The Lowell Partnership, on this project actually. But they parted company a couple of months ago, so I don’t know why he’d have been around the place.’

‘Probably not him, then, but we may check. Do you know where we could reach him?’

‘He set up on his own. You could try Lowell’s, or the Institute of Architects would have his address.’

‘Yes, fine. Thanks for your help.’

‘No problem. And thanks again for the autograph. My boy was over the moon. Goodbye.’

Kathy smiled. ‘He’ll be even more delighted when he sees your picture on the front page arresting North. You should start a fan club, sir.’

‘Thank you, Kathy. Just concentrate on getting us to Jerusalem Lane, would you, while I track down our phantom in the bow tie.’

He placed three more calls-one to directory inquiries, one to the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the third to the office of Concept Design, off Tottenham Court Road, less than half a mile west of Jerusalem Lane. Bob Jones agreed to meet them at his office at 5.30 that evening.

Through the empty shop window they could make out a light at the back of the bookshop. Eventually Felix Kowalski answered their knock, but not before they had become thoroughly wet waiting at the door. He led them through a succession of cramped rooms, their walls lined with empty shelves, the pages from old books scattered on the floor like the detritus of autumn. The musty smell of the departed books permeated the place. Without them the building looked forlorn, like the old lady’s body on the mortuary slab, a form abandoned by its content.

At the back of the shop was a tiny kitchen, with a small table and three rickety bentwood chairs. A green plastic shade hung over the light bulb suspended above the table, the electric light a welcome contrast to the dim greyness of the sky beyond the kitchen window, through which a small walled yard was visible.

At first Felix Kowalski was civil in his offers to take their wet coats and make them comfortable, but beneath the words Kathy soon began to feel the same bristling antagonism that had surprised her in his mother. His references to the meagre facilities of his father’s shop were scornful, and soon this bitter edge to his voice hardened into a constrained anger. He had, it seemed, a number of things to complain about, and it wasn’t long before he began to air them.

‘Yes, I work at the Polytechnic, for what it’s worth these days. Although it’s difficult to see the point sometimes when a lecturer with seven years’ fulltime study and a PhD behind him is paid little more than an eighteen-year-old police constable on his first day on the beat.’

He glared at Kathy, as if challenging her to provoke him further. His eyes, disconcertingly, didn’t quite look in the same direction, so that it was difficult to be sure whether the intensity of his stare was due to aggression or an attempt to focus. He was about forty. Damp black hair was pushed back from his forehead, his face puffy and flushed. She thought she caught the sweet smell of whisky on his breath.

‘Do you work in the same field as your father did when he was a professor?’

His lips pursed and he twitched his head back and forward in a gesture that might have been meant to indicate scorn.

‘Yes, I rather thought it might come round to that. My father isn’t well, you know. It’s a pity you found it necessary to bother him the way you did this morning. He found it very stressful.’

‘Really? That wasn’t the impression we got. He seemed quite happy to help us.’

‘And I resent you raking up things from his past that have nothing whatsoever to do with the case you’re supposed to be solving. Your approach just seems to be to charge in and stir up the mud and then grab at whatever comes up. Hardly scientific method, I should have thought.’