Babel Read online

  ‘He hasn’t confessed?’

  ‘No, and his two mates are sticking to his alibi. At the moment Brock’s staying with the death threat charge, but if he needs more time he can use the Prevention of Terrorism Act and hold them for forty-eight hours, or five days with extensions. Forensic are going through their clothes, looking for gunshot residue. I reckon the kid’ll crack when they find that.’

  Kathy also tried to find out more about his undercover work in Special Branch, but he was gently evasive. Neither of them wanted to dwell on work, it seemed, and they turned to other things. Wayne had travelled a good deal, and Kathy encouraged him to talk about the places he’d visited. He was entertaining and good company. They began with a drink in a pub in the King’s Road, then went on to the curry, which Kathy confirmed was the best she’d ever tasted, thinking as she did so that it was ironic that the last man she’d been out with had been Leon, an Indian, who had never, to the best of her recollection, bought her a curry. Come to think of it, she wasn’t even sure if he liked Indian food. The thought of him still hurt, but less so as the evening passed. The two men weren’t at all alike, Leon seeming even more cool and taciturn in her memory the more relaxed and jolly Wayne made her feel. And of course that was the root of her problem, she decided with the clarity of revelation, as they continued to a little night club Wayne knew, and another bottle of wine took its effect. She simply hadn’t had enough experience, of life, of men, of the world, to know what suited her best and what would make her really happy.

  And in the light of this understanding, and the spirit of openness and experimentation it engendered, it perhaps wasn’t necessary for Wayne to spin her the line he did. At least she assumed, when she thought about it the next morning, that it was just a line, but subtly spun, in fascinating little tit-bits of information dropped during the course of the evening, so that by the end of it she was thoroughly taken in. His girlfriend, it seemed, was going through a crisis of the heart. Basically she wasn’t sure whether she loved him or someone else called Kim, who turned out to be a woman. Kathy could imagine, could she not, what that did for Wayne’s sense of self-worth, although in point of fact Kathy hadn’t noticed him at all deficient in that area. The crux was that the girlfriend was meeting with Kim that very evening, in the flat that all three shared, in order to resolve things one way or the other, and Wayne had promised to stay away. So he couldn’t go home. Regardless of what his girlfriend decided however, Wayne had realised that things could never be the same between them again, which made him feel pretty sad, although again Kathy hadn’t noticed that.

  So she had taken him back to Finchley, to sleep on her sofa, except that it didn’t work out that way. After he’d slipped away the next morning, with a kiss and a cup of tea brought to her in bed, she ran her hand over the warm rumpled bedding at her side and told herself, through her hangover and without complete conviction, that she had done absolutely the right thing, and was on the road to building a new, happier, freer Kathy Kolla. And there was something else—for the first time in weeks she hadn’t dreamed about that room, and had to face its terrors. It was a sign, surely, that she could escape for good, and the first step was her interview that day. Her appointment with the agency wasn’t until the late morning however, and she decided that in the meantime she might have a look at this glitzy university in the docklands, and, if she was around, have a quick word with Springer’s only student. Clare Hancock’s parting comment had stayed in her mind. No matter how mad his rantings in the letter seemed, Springer’s prophecy had come to pass. Kathy thought she probably owed it to Brock to do this much.

  Briony Kidd was again at her desk, and again the only postgraduate student in the little shared study, which today was blue with cigarette smoke, despite the ‘no smoking’ sign that someone had pinned to the door. The others, if there were any, had perhaps found more congenial places to work. She barely glanced at Kathy’s identification and seemed distracted and low. Her eyes kept returning to a blank sheet of paper on her table. Kathy had trouble getting her to talk at first.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’

  Briony shrugged, her eyes straying back to the blank paper.

  ‘I mean, if you’re busy working . . .’

  Briony took a deep, exhausted breath. ‘I can’t work. I haven’t written a word since Max . . .’

  ‘A thing like that is bound to upset your concentration,’ Kathy offered, pulling up a chair.

  ‘I’ve got to finish it this year, but I don’t think I can, without him. It was all going so well.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Hannah Arendt’s theory of action,’ she said reluctantly, sounding as if any kind of action would be too much for her.

  ‘She was a philosopher?’

  ‘Yes. A German Jew, like Max. She escaped from Germany before the War, and worked in France helping to get Jewish children out of Germany for a time, then she went to America.’

  ‘Ah yes. Max met her there, didn’t he? I remember reading that.’

  Briony nodded and lapsed into silence. She looked very pale and frail, and Kathy suspected she wasn’t eating much. That’s probably how I looked to Suzanne in the café that morning in Hastings, Kathy thought, and realised that something, her night with Wayne perhaps, had lifted her out of that, at least for the time being. The thought of it aroused a tingle of pleasure.

  ‘So, what was her theory of action?’

  The student looked round at her slowly. ‘You don’t really want to know.’

  ‘Is it too complicated for me to understand?’

  ‘No, but . . .’ She shrugged, as if the effort of arguing was too much. ‘She believed that there are essentially three modes of human activity. The most basic mode she called “labour”, satisfying the necessities of life, in which individuals are submerged in a common task, behaving according to patterns, playing pre-ordained roles, becoming members of classes.’ Her voice, becoming more lethargic, trailed away.

  ‘Right. So that’s number one.’

  ‘Mm. The second mode is called “work”. That’s where the individual is able to express himself through his activity, as a craftsman or creator of something. This mode has greater freedom, but the individual is still subordinate to the end product. Arendt believed that capitalism is intent on turning all work into labour, and that almost the only true work left is that of the artist.’

  ‘And the third?’

  Briony roused herself a little. ‘The third and highest mode of activity is “action”. This means initiating undertakings and interacting with other individuals who are also capable of action. It’s only in action that people are able to realise their individuality and reveal what they personally are. Even they themselves don’t know what this is until the event they precipitate reveals them to themselves and to others. They cannot know in advance what kind of self they’ll reveal by their actions.’

  ‘Oh. I think I see. Vaguely. And her life, was it one of action?’

  ‘Yes, it was. Through her books and arguments and the expression of her ideas.’

  ‘And mine is one of labour, I should think.’

  She said it as an attempt at a joke, but Briony didn’t smile. ‘Yes. Most people’s are.’

  ‘What else did she believe?’

  ‘Lots of things. That there’s a conflict between truth and freedom, for instance.’

  This was said with some sharpness, and Kathy wondered if it was aimed at her, the police. ‘You’ll have to explain that. I kind of thought they supported each other.’

  ‘She was repelled by the uniformity of the truths of religion, and now of science. She believed in the constant struggle of ideas and opinions against one another, rather than the inevitability of ideologies.’

  Kathy grasped at this. ‘I’ve heard that Max was antagonistic to science, and I couldn’t understand why. Is that the reason? He thought like Arendt?’

  ‘Yes. He believed that the whole project of science is to construct a single unifi
ed truth that will exclude all other views of the world. In that sense it is like a fundamentalist religion, and he hated it.’

  ‘What about the scientists here on this campus? Did he hate them?’

  ‘Especially them, and they hated him for challenging their “truth”.’

  ‘Are they particularly bad here, then?’

  ‘Oh, God, yes. Haven’t you heard of the CAB-Tech research project? That’s the ultimate obscenity. They don’t just want to find perfect truth, they want to create the perfect man.’

  Kathy smiled as if this was a joke, then realised that she was serious. ‘What, they say that?’

  ‘That’s what it amounts to.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s true! They’re getting all this money to make everybody’s genes the same.’

  ‘That’s how Max described it, was it?’

  Kathy couldn’t keep the scepticism from her voice, and Briony abruptly turned away. ‘What did you come for, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, I was just trying to establish what Max’s state of mind was like over the past three or four weeks. I thought you might be a good person to ask, working closely with him.’

  ‘State of mind?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kathy really wanted to ask if he was normal, but was beginning to suspect that normal wasn’t quite the term for Max Springer. ‘Was he at all agitated, would you say, under stress?’

  ‘Oh, you mean, did he feel threatened by the people who did this? No, not at all. He seemed very calm and normal to me. Almost . . . well, serene.’

  Kathy nodded and began to get to her feet. ‘All right. Well, I won’t—’

  ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t know about CAB-Tech. Aren’t you investigating them? Surely you must be? I read in the papers . . .’

  Kathy hesitated. She hadn’t picked that up from either Brock or Wayne. This was what happened when you blundered uninvited into other people’s investigations. Feeling foolish she said, ‘What did you read?’

  ‘About the Islamic extremists. I thought that was what you were looking for.’

  Feeling even more confused, Kathy said hesitantly, ‘Islamic . . . Yes, but I thought we were talking about CAB-Tech?’ ‘But, that’s them, isn’t it? They have lots of Islamic fundamentalists working over there. That’s what’s so absolutely right, isn’t it? The two old gangs seeking after one truth working together. Max thought it was bitterly funny if it weren’t so bloody tragic.’

  ‘Islamic fundamentalists?’ Kathy wondered if she was really following this.

  ‘Yes. Have they told you about the Christmas e-mail yet? No? Well, ask them, go on. You ask them about that.’

  9

  When she left UCLE Kathy realised that she was running short of time to get to her interview in the West End, and of course it was impossible to find a car park. Eventually she arrived half an hour late for her appointment, a lapse that the woman interviewer, middle-aged and severe, obviously found both significant and annoying.

  ‘You see, being on time is one of the absolutely basic requirements for a courier or tour guide. We run to timetables, schedules. What are you going to do with your party of twenty pensioners from Pontefract at Moscow airport at ten o’clock at night when you’ve just missed the last flight back to the west because you turned up half an hour late, eh?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m usually very prompt. In the police—’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman leapt in, the reference to the police obviously touching another nerve, ‘but in the police you can just say you were tied up with something important, and people just have to put up with it.’

  Kathy’s heart sank. Probably the woman had just been given a speeding ticket, or the cops had failed to turn up after she was burgled.

  ‘. . . whereas in a service industry like tourism, there simply is no acceptable excuse for letting the customer down. You do understand that, don’t you? I mean, why exactly do you want to change from the police anyway? You don’t have some romantic notion of exotic travel at someone else’s expense, do you? Because it’s not like that at all. It’s not glamorous, it’s hard work, sometimes extremely tedious, and often dealing with people who are boring and annoying.’

  While she tried to keep up with this, occasionally offering a conciliatory few sentences that only seemed to irritate the woman more, part of Kathy’s brain kept returning to Briony Kidd’s outburst. Kathy hadn’t tried to contact Brock, because she had been in such a rush, she told herself, but also, she knew, because this time she wanted more than a quick thanks and goodbye from him.

  ‘And apart from the languages problem, it doesn’t sound as if you’ve actually had a great deal of experience of travel, Ms Kolla, have you? I mean, a school trip to Paris . . . Excuse me, have I said something? What’s the matter?’

  The matter, the reason why Kathy was staring so disconcertingly at the woman, was that Clare Hancock’s final throw-away remark had just come back to her, the comment she hadn’t understood at the time, the reporter’s ‘lurking worry’ that they’d been given the fatwa story in order to put them off Springer’s feud with CAB-Tech. And with it had come the blinding realisation that this remark was very important, for with it the reporter had told her, inadvertently or not, who her informant for the fatwa story was.

  ‘Oh, golly,’ Kathy said, and blinked. ‘Sorry, where were we?’

  The woman stared at her with a mixture of alarm and incredulity, then looked hurriedly at her watch. ‘We were just coming to the end, I’m afraid. I have other clients waiting. I suggest you fill in the questionnaire in the reception area outside and leave it with the girl at the desk. We’ll be in touch.’

  Kathy left the place flattened. She went into the café next door and sat with a cup of short black in front of a mirrored screen in which she saw a reflection of a drained, unemployable female. ‘Well done,’ she muttered. ‘So what exactly can you do right?’

  ‘Kathy! Come in, come in!’ Brock seemed genuinely pleased to see her as he waved her to a seat. He looked tired and rumpled, and his secretary Dot had warned Kathy on the way in that he was short of sleep. She had done this, Kathy guessed, because Dot assumed Kathy’s visit was about some personal matter Brock could best do without.

  ‘I got your note from Wayne. Many thanks. Helps to paint a clearer picture of Springer’s state of mind, if nothing else. Obviously had his knickers badly in a twist.’

  ‘Yes, but suppose there was something in his claim that people at CAB-Tech might want to silence him?’

  Brock looked puzzled. ‘Oh, I don’t see how that’s possible, Kathy. You said yourself, in your report, that you didn’t believe it.’

  ‘Yes, but still . . . You’re positive that this Muslim lad is the killer?’

  ‘Looks pretty convincing, Kathy. I believe we can make a solid case that he had met Springer and had a grudge against him. He’s admitted that the green pamphlet was his, and forensic have established that the torn envelope was posted to Springer from the East End, somewhere within a mile of Shadwell Road. So we have evidence of a threat, a motive, and, when we crack his buddies, an opportunity.’

  ‘Is that enough?’

  ‘Well now . . .’ Brock considered Kathy carefully, his hand going up to rub the side of his grey beard. ‘I’d like more, of course. I’d like the gun and its source, and I’d like residue traces on Ahmed’s coat . . . That’s why I haven’t released any information yet, despite the best efforts of our press office, who are desperate to dampen this fatwa story that’s flaring up everywhere now. You’ve seen this morning’s papers? Yes, so . . . what is it, Kathy? I’ve seen this look before. You’ve thought of something.’

  ‘Have you worked out where the Herald got the fatwa story from?’

  ‘No, wish I had.’

  ‘Could it have been anyone at the university? Did anyone there know that you were working on the possibility of an Islamic extremist?’

  Brock thought about that. ‘Only one person to my knowledge. The University President
. I told him myself.’

  Kathy explained about Clare Hancock’s puzzling final comment. ‘I realised afterwards that it made sense only if she knew that her source might have some interest in suppressing Springer’s accusations against CAB-Tech.’

  ‘Someone at the university . . .’ He pictured the man sitting in his shirtsleeves at his steel desk in front of his great window, and his desire to control the information that went out to the media. ‘Yes, it’s possible.’

  ‘And there’s something else.’ As she told Brock about Briony’s claim of Islamic fundamentalists in CAB-Tech, he slowly stiffened upright in his seat with what Kathy thought was the look of someone who’d just discovered that he’d missed his flight, with twenty pensioners from Pontefract waiting at his back.

  Professor Haygill’s secretary explained that the professor was currently on a plane from the Gulf, and that he wouldn’t be returning to the university that day. Could someone else be of assistance? If the Chief Inspector would like some information on CAB-Tech, Professor Haygill’s Principal Research Scientist, Dr Tahir Darr, might be able to help. Brock said that would do fine, rang off and raised his eyebrows at Kathy. ‘The Gulf !’ He looked thoughtful, then added, ‘I know you’re on leave, Kathy, but since you’ve been taking a bit of an interest, and since two heads are better than one . . . fancy coming with me?’ Again Kathy sensed that she was being gently tested, like an invalid. And on the road out to the East End, Brock went on, in a tone of casual vagueness which Kathy thought contrived, ‘So, how are you, anyway? Everything’s all right at Suzanne’s?’

  ‘It’s very comfortable, thanks. She’s been good to me.’