Barry Maitland: The Marx Sisters

‘Haven’t told me,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘What’s the damage?’

Brock cleared his throat. ‘Three fingers of your right hand are broken,’ he said.

‘Anything else?’ she asked faintly.

‘One of the reinforcing bars went through your right side. Hell of a job to get you out of there. You’d appreciate it, having been in Traffic. Seems some of the bars down there were high tensile steel, and the steel cutters couldn’t get through them without making too much of a mess of you. Eventually had to lift you straight off. Lost a lot of blood. Missed the vital organs, though. They operated and stitched you up. It’ll be all right.’

She drifted away for a while, then suddenly lurched back into consciousness. ‘And?’

‘Another bar scraped your left knee. No great problem, but it’ll be sore for a while. You were very lucky.’

‘How?’ she whispered.

‘Lucky you weren’t a man, that is. The middle bar, in between those two, would have been very unpleasant.’

‘Ugh.’

‘Your left shoulder was dislocated and badly bruised.’

‘Oh.’

‘And you banged your head. Possible concussion.’

‘Mmm.’

‘That’s about it, really. Pretty good under the circumstances. You could have been killed.’

She closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.

Felix Kowalski did not seem to have benefited by the break and a hot breakfast. On the contrary, he crouched in his seat with the air of someone suffering from a very bad hangover. He eyed them truculently as they took their seats, Brock in front of him, Gurney to the side.

‘You must release my mother,’ he said, before they could speak. ‘At once. She is not in any way responsible for the death of Meredith Winterbottom. She has only confessed in order to protect me.’

‘Really?’ Brock said noncommittally, turning the pages of one of the two files he had brought in with him. ‘Are you confessing to that murder, then?’

‘No, of course not. But my mother obviously thinks I had something to do with it. Her confession, as you call it, is absurd.’ He was struggling with impatience and seemed slightly feverish.

Brock flicked the file shut and sat back. He stared at Kowalski and then nodded. ‘Go on, then.’

‘When…’ Kowalski hesitated and gave a little groan.

‘Are you all right? Would you like a doctor to have another look at you?’

‘No,’ he snapped. ‘When my father and I returned from delivering the last of his books to Notting Hill, my mother was waiting for us in the shop. It was about 2.30. She was upset. She told us what that old crone Mrs Rosenfeldt had said to her, and said she’d gone round to see Meredith Winterbottom. She was on her bed asleep, she said, and the thought had gone through my mother’s head, upset as she was, to strangle the woman. She even imagined putting on the rubber washing-up gloves she saw in the kitchen, so she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. That’s what she told us. Of course she did no such thing. My father was shocked at the idea, and we calmed her down and gave her a cup of tea from the flask we’d brought. Then I left to return the van. When she heard later that someone had killed Mrs Winterbottom, she must have naturally been worried that I might have done it while I was away, to save them further distress. Of course I didn’t, but the idea will have been preying on her mind. She’s not been well lately. Neither of them have.’

By the time he got to the end of this his voice had sunk to a monotone. There was silence.

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes.’

Gurney snorted contemptuously from across the room. Kowalski looked from one man to the other. ‘What else should there be?’

‘What about the books, Felix?’ Brock spoke very quietly.

Kowalski kept his face blank, his eyes unblinking.

‘Books?’

‘Mmm, books. Your mother had quite a bit to say about books.’

He appeared to rack his brains, then said slowly, ‘I think… she did mention something about some books. Under Mrs Winterbottom’s bed, I think it was, in a plastic carrier bag. My mother looked inside and saw that it contained some old books. When she mentioned them, I seem to remember that my father said something about them probably being ones that he had valued for her.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s about all I can remember.’

‘So your mother didn’t have the books with her when she returned to the shop?’

‘With her?’ He looked startled. He stared at Brock for a moment, searching rapidly for clues in his expressionless face, then groaned and covered his eyes with his hand. ‘She said that? She said she took them?’

‘Felix,’ Brock said, his voice still deadly quiet, ‘you don’t seem to have taken in what I told you last night.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘I will not be lied to. I will discover the truth. You are just making things a hundred times worse for yourself and your mother.’

Kowalski lowered his head. His shoulders rose and fell with his breathing. When he began to speak again, his head still down, his voice came deep, from the back of his throat.

‘When I left them, I drove the van round the block to the lower end of Jerusalem Lane. I went in to number 22. I wanted to tell Meredith to lay off my parents, but she was asleep. Lying peacefully on her bed. So I looked at the carrier bag with the books. There were about a dozen of them. The ones I looked in had inscriptions from Karl Marx, just as my father had described. He had said they were worth four or five thousand each. So I quietly put them back in the bag and walked out with them. I took them for my parents’ sake. I reckoned she owed them at least that.’ A note of anger infiltrated the resignation in his voice. ‘I had a duffle bag at the shop to carry the sandwiches my wife had made us, and I slipped the carrier bag into that when I got back. I suppose my mother must have seen. That’s why she thinks I killed Meredith Winterbottom. But I didn’t.’ He looked up to face Brock. ‘I swear to God I didn’t.’

‘Yes,’ Brock replied flatly. ‘Go on.’

‘What?’

‘Tell us about what you did with the books.’

‘Oh… I waited for a while till I thought things would be quieter. Then I told my father a friend of mine had some old architectural books to sell, and asked for the name of the architect he’d mentioned in connection with Meredith Winterbottom’s books. I remember now how my mother looked at me when I raised it. He still had the man’s business card, and I copied the phone number and rang it later. The architect said it was really a friend of his who was interested, an academic in the States. I contacted her, and it was she who told me about the other documents.’

He looked up at Brock, and for the first time there was a note of supplication in his voice. ‘I only stole the books for my parents. That’s all I wanted the other papers for. For them.’

‘No.’ Brock shook his head. ‘You needed money, didn’t you, Felix? For yourself. To escape. Isn’t that it?’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘I’d call it a kind of escape. Someone else might just call it a fantasy. Running away. Digging a tunnel out of the prison, to freedom. To Canada. A fantasy.’

A look of panic formed on Kowalski’s face.

Brock leaned forward and spoke intently to him. ‘I’d like you to appreciate just how impossible that fantasy now is, Felix. I’d like you to acknowledge the truth of the matter with me. There’s really nothing left to be angry about. It’s not a matter of other people stopping you any more. You’ve stopped yourself.’

Brock fished his half-lens spectacles out of his jacket pocket and made a bit of a play of examining a page of the file while he let that sink in.