She Died Young (10 page)

McGovern was staying at a hotel – more of a pub, really – near Magdalen Bridge. The empty lounge was warm and cosy, almost too warm, in fact, and there was a lot of panelling and red upholstery. He asked for sandwiches, which were reluctantly brought by a dishevelled young woman. While he ate, he read through the flimsy carbon-copy list of families who had offered a Hungarian student hospitality. He’d asked for it out of instinct and only afterwards realised that a half-conscious supposition lay behind the request: that if an agent of some kind had been sent under cover of the refugees, it was likely he’d speak fluent English. But he wasn’t sure even of that. Only by working methodically through all the information available on each student might he find something that didn’t fit, some clue to suggest a hidden purpose. Besides, he wasn’t even sure he was meant to be looking for an infiltrator. His gloomy mood was hardening into cynicism. His visit seemed like a waste of time.

Some distinguished names stood out from the list. Among them was that of Professor Quinault.

And McGovern was deputed unofficially to investigate Quinault, Quinault who regarded him as his enemy. Dismayed as he’d been by the unwelcome assignment, he now thought he saw how it was meant to unfold. In a twisted way it was understandable. That didn’t make it any more palatable. Quinault wouldn’t cooperate with him; he wouldn’t get anywhere; Quinault’s supporters would then be able to say that any rumours were groundless. The whole thing would be batted into the long grass (as they, no doubt, would put it). Quinault’s enemies, on the other hand, might hope that the very presence of McGovern would indicate that they were serious, that they were gunning for him in their own subtle way. The mere presence of the representative of Special Branch would warn Quinault that he’d better take care. Still, because the Professor had a Hungarian staying with him, McGovern had an excuse for a visit.

McGovern sat still in the quiet lounge. To an observer he might have seemed comatose. The dullness that had overcome him acted as protection against the gnawing memory of the argument with Lily. It was some days ago now, but he was still, perhaps, in a state of shock, had not yet fully realised how bruised and angry he felt. Yet his drowsiness contained the seed of an impulse: to take the bull by the horns, to get Quinault over with, or at least to confront his own misgivings about the whole enterprise.

It was now pouring with rain, so he borrowed an umbrella from the reception desk and walked out into the deluge. At this hour, mid-afternoon, there were few people about and the liquid vistas of bleakly rain-washed streets harmonised with his sense of the futility of his task.

He paused in the shelter of a doorway to get his bearings and then set off in the direction of Corpus Christi. He asked at the porter’s lodge for the Professor without showing his identity card. Directed to a staircase at the far end of the little quad, he marvelled at how quiet it was in the unrelenting rain. It was hard to believe that these ancient, crumbling buildings housed students, full-blooded young men with National Service behind them, no longer schoolboys wet behind the ears.

The place was like a monastery, he thought, as he mounted the dark, curving stone staircase, its steps hollowed by the feet that had trodden them for five or six hundred years. Once, of course, it
had
been akin to a monastery. He’d often passed Glasgow University on his way to visit Lily in Hillhead, but that impressive edifice was pompous and thrusting in a Victorian Gothic way. Here, the worn steps, twisting upwards into medieval obscurity, suggested a superiority so ancient it need not be stated at all.

McGovern knocked on Professor Quinault’s wooden door. He waited. Silence. Then, just as he was about to turn away, a reedy voice sounded: ‘Come.’

It was almost as dark in the room as on the stairs, save for the glow from the coal fire and another from the standard lamp beneath which an incredibly old man was seated in a high-backed chair. Yet he stood up with surprising agility.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir.’

McGovern advanced, nearly tripping over the carpet, and this time he did hold out his identity card.

Quinault peered at it. ‘Can’t see a damn thing …’

‘Detective Chief Inspector McGovern, sir.’

There was a silence. Then Quinault’s high-pitched laugh was followed by his cracked voice. ‘This is an unexpected visitation. Pray be seated.’

McGovern lowered himself into the armchair opposite the old man. The seat was nearer the ground than he’d expected and he landed with a painful bump.

McGovern had never met the man seated opposite him, knew only of his war history and reputed anger at Kingdom’s death. He risked a direct approach. ‘You’ll probably not welcome a visit from me, sir.’

The old man peered forward. ‘McGovern, eh.’

In the silence that followed, McGovern began to regret his impulse, but he had no alternative than to press on. His voice was hoarse as he said: ‘I know you feel I was to blame for what happened …’

Quinault seemed sunk in thought. His chair creaked as he bent even further forward. His silence was oppressive.

‘… to Miles Kingdom.’

‘Kingdom.’ Quinault dredged up the word as if from a depth of memory, some sump of forgotten and decaying residue from a long-banished past. Another long silence followed. McGovern felt increasingly uncomfortable.

Finally: ‘Kingdom was a fool,’ murmured the old man. ‘And now you’ve come to … what? Apologise? Justify your actions?’ His voice died away, then revived. ‘All in the past now, dear boy, all in the past.’

McGovern was so surprised that he didn’t know what to say, but simply let the old man’s words sink in, and it was Quinault’s creaking voice that broke the silence.

‘No, that’s not it, is it? You’re here because of the Hungarians.’

This further startled and unnerved McGovern, although he knew he should have expected Quinault to work it out.

Another creaking laugh. ‘They were bound to send someone, weren’t they?’

It was hard to decipher the Professor’s expression, but McGovern caught a sense of alertness and anticipation, as if long-dormant instincts for conspiracy were suddenly revived, as if the old hunting dog sniffed the air and heard the distant sound of the tally ho.

‘That’s correct, I’m here to check up on the new arrivals.’ Yet now he was here, he hardly knew what to say. He hadn’t got over Quinault’s disconcertingly benign welcome. ‘I thought you might possibly, well, tell me your general impression. Inevitably there are rumours, the possibility that unfriendly individuals might slip in under cover of the general influx of the refugees.’

Even Quinault’s laugh was wizened. ‘It’s highly likely, isn’t it? But sending you charging up here is rather a case of shutting the stable doors, don’t you think … Are we really so feeble that we couldn’t pick up on any problems back in Vienna? Well … in any case my days in intelligence are long since over, as you know, Chief Inspector.’

‘I know, sir. But you have one of the students staying with you and that might have given you some idea …’

‘Gyorgy Meszarov? I felt we should do our bit. Many university families have opened their doors, offered hospitality. My wife wasn’t keen, but … in any case we never see him, he spends all his time at the hostel with his friends … I knew his parents, you see …’

McGovern waited for more. He fidgeted, trying to find a comfortable position.

‘Gyorgy is an interesting boy.’ Quinault spoke suddenly as though he’d woken from a doze. ‘His parents are keen Party members, dedicated communists, which makes him a rebel in his own family, as well as against the regime. I knew them briefly, in the war. It was possible to work with them then, of course … Hungary was on the side of the Nazis … they were in exile here for a while. Yes. But now everything’s changed and communism means something very different to Gyorgy from what it means to his parents. Yes. An interesting boy.’ And now McGovern caught a glance from the old man. Perhaps this was some sort of message, a clue. But probably not; youth in rebellion against parents was hardly news. Hadn’t his own father, after all, been a committed communist? Gyorgy Meszarov was probably simply in revolt against stifling Party dogma, Party duties. It gave McGovern a fellow feeling for the boy he hadn’t even met.

‘You should talk to him,’ said Quinault, echoing McGovern’s own thought – that he would speak to him, and soon. He laughed again. Sunk in his chair in the shadows, Quinault heaved his shoulders up and down. McGovern found the giggle disconcerting, especially as he had no idea of what the joke was supposed to be.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come!’

A young man who wore a short black gown over his tweed jacket stood in the doorway.

‘Come in, come in, Watson. But don’t shake your umbrella all over the floor like that.’

‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t realise …’

‘It’s your tutorial time. No need to apologise.’

McGovern stood up. ‘It’s I should apologise. I’ve taken up too much of your time.’

‘Not at all, Insp – Mr McGovern. Do come and see me again. Any time.’

chapter
12

M
ANFRED JARRELL HAD HAD
plenty of time to reflect on Blackstone’s phone call. He got a cup of tea in the canteen and sat brooding. What the dubious doctor had told Blackstone made no sense. The girl was already dead when she reached the hotel? How? Why? That a defrocked, so to speak, doctor had signed the death certificate was definitely suspicious, but it didn’t prove the girl had been murdered and why should you believe anything a crook like Dr Swann said in the first place? Blackstone, however, had been in a state of great excitement.

Jarrell, by contrast, had mixed feelings about the whole enterprise. What was the point of reopening the case – which wasn’t even, in any case, officially reopened? If it was to placate some journalist McGovern had got friendly with, well, there could be a point to that. If it was to form the spearhead of a campaign against police corruption, it was, in Jarrell’s opinion, misguided. The police hadn’t been called to the scene. They weren’t necessarily to blame for that. It was a distraction. If Moules wanted to clean up C Division, he should start with the Vice Squad. There were ways of working that Moules thought needed to change. Well and good. Whether he’d succeed in changing them was another matter. It was of course essential to get convictions. It was how it was done that came into question.

Jarrell knew quite well what his colleagues thought of him. They liked the disagreeable but all too accurate comments he made about some of the high-ups. They liked his perceived lack of ambition. He wasn’t a threat. He was an oddity, almost a mascot. Looks weird, but he knows a thing or two, was as near to a compliment as he’d get from them, but he was more than satisfied. He had the ultimate ascendancy: he didn’t care what they thought of him. He gracefully accepted his role as resident eccentric and even hammed it up from time to time, effectively disguising his contempt.

Jarrell knew more than they realised about his colleagues’ private lives, their foibles and obsessions, and sooner or later it would all come in useful. They by contrast knew little about his. He’d plodded away for six years, content to be McGovern’s sidekick, happy to learn from the Scot and to keep away from the limelight. He’d rejected all suggestions that he seek promotion. This was put down either to misplaced loyalty to McGovern or to an irresponsible fear of assuming authority. The truth (as only McGovern knew) was that his mother had long been ill with multiple sclerosis. His father, incapable of caring for the woman he’d taken for granted and whom he’d married to serve him, became depressed and taciturn. Six months after his wife’s death he’d succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

Jarrell had grieved, but now he was free. He could make his move. He abstemiously sipped his tea. He watched his colleagues as if from a distance. He stood outside their world. They knew that, but were quite unaware of the extent of his ambitions. He was more enthusiastic than McGovern about Moules’ anti-corruption plan, which he saw as a plausible stepping stone to greater things. He was determined, however, not to be known to be associated with it. In the meantime, he was far from sure that the Argyle Street business was the right way to go about it.

He was not pleased to see Slater bearing down on him. Slater reminded Jarrell of Cyclops, the one-eyed giant of ancient legend. Perhaps it was the way Slater charged noisily around, or his reputation as a bully. It was known that he’d had a very good war in the commandos and in recent months – or perhaps it was longer – he’d begun more and more to treat his work as if it were another combat mission. Jarrell wondered if anyone besides himself had noticed this change. When Jarrell had worked with him five years earlier he’d found him to be an easy-going copper and in fact rather lazy, preferring the pub to most other locations. Now he seemed supercharged with energy.

He came to a halt beside Jarrell’s table. ‘How many souls have you saved today?’ His voice rose above the low-level buzz of the canteen. One popular joke about Jarrell was that he was an evangelical Christian. His colleagues firmly believed this and were under the delusion that it riled Jarrell to be ribbed about it, when in fact he was an atheist with no interest in religion whatsoever. However, he’d long ago stopped denying it as that only reaffirmed their conviction.

Pleased with his joke, Slater broke into thundering laughter. His laughter was not reassuring. Those who felt its force found it even more frightening than his anger. When he laughed he became the anarchic lord of misrule and there was always the uneasy feeling that it was going to get out of control. Moreover his mood changed so quickly that his merriment was never safe. Storm clouds of suspicion inevitably darkened his face again before long.

‘What are you up to, then?’

‘Just doing the rounds in Bloomsbury.’

‘Keeping your cards close to your chest as usual. Make a first-class poker player you would – if it wasn’t against the Bible.’ This was the cue for another uproarious laugh. ‘Doing the Lord’s work. Hey – is Moulsey a God-botherer too? You and he should get along fine, then. Trying to lead us up the paths of righteousness. Oh my Lord! Whatever next! We’ll all have to pull our socks up, won’t we?’

It was not part of Jarrell’s plan to be associated with Moules’ clean-up drive. ‘I have no idea what his plans are,’ he said coldly. ‘All mouth and no trousers, I suspect,’ he added. He looked at his watch and stood up smartly. ‘I’d better get going.’

He parked his car near the hotel. It was one of those December days when the cold slowed everything down to zero. The city itself seemed numb, its stony streets in hibernation. Jarrell’s breath blew out in white clouds and dampened the scarf he’d wound round his face. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and looked around at the bleak, blackened buildings. He paused on the pavement, thinking about the case. The woman was the weak link, blurting out the name of the doctor like that. So a doctor had been at the scene. Very convenient to have someone on hand to sign the death certificate with no questions asked. They didn’t call the police. And the doctor lived nearby, only a few streets away. Might be a good idea to pop round to see him later on. It was too cold to linger.

The hotel passageway was at least warm. It smelled stale. A dark-haired woman appeared from a room to the right.

‘Mrs Camenzuli?’

Jarrell’s attitude to women was far different from Blackstone’s. To Jarrell, Maria Camenzuli was simply another slovenly and most likely deceitful witness whose gender was irrelevant. However, he did notice a fading bruise round her eye.

He flashed his identity card. ‘I’m just here to ask a few questions,’ he began pleasantly.

‘You speak to my husband.’

‘He’s at home, is he? Perhaps there’s somewhere we can talk …’

‘I call him.’

The proprietor, when he appeared, was a type familiar to Jarrell: uncooperative, a man for whom the first line of defence would be attack. Jarrell had little sympathy for the unattractive specimens with whom he often had to deal. Even in the Branch, the types he came across were more usually seedy crackpots than dedicated subversives, or else, as he saw it, in the case of the Irish in particular, they were straightforward thugs, who liked to dress up their crimes with political justifications. McGovern, he believed, had always been too nice, too keen on understanding. Yet the Irish did at least bother to cook up a reason for their violence. Men like Camenzuli were just vicious for the sake of it.

Camenzuli reluctantly led the way down the stairs at the back of the house. The basement sitting room was hot and cluttered with furniture, ornaments and sporting publications.

The more Jarrell questioned the Maltese, the less he said. When his wife attempted an answer he shut her up with a glare. ‘Why you come here?’ he snarled. ‘Case is closed.’

‘You know that? You followed the case, then.’

‘Of course we followed case. Not good for business when someone dies in hotel.’

‘We have reason to suppose it may not have been an accident.’

‘Of course it was accident.’

Maria Camenzuli glanced beseechingly at her husband. ‘They—’

He turned on her savagely. ‘
Shut up!
’

‘What is it, Mrs Camenzuli?’ Jarrell leant forward. She shrank away, glanced again at her husband.

‘You leave my wife alone.’

Sick of the man’s stonewalling, Jarrell eventually stood up. ‘You don’t mind if I have a look around, do you?’

‘You have search warrant?’

‘It’s not a case of searching the premises. I’d just like to see the staircase, where the girl fell down, you know.’

‘You saw staircase already. When you come in. You got eyes,’ said Camenzuli rudely. But as Jarrell made for the stairs anyway, he followed him, angrily protesting there was nothing to see. He glared from the hallway as Jarrell climbed upwards, examined the banisters, looked at the tattered carpet at the top. Then the arrival of a guest, or potential guest, distracted him. A discussion ensued. Jarrell heard Camenzuli calling his wife, then heard footsteps downstairs into the back of the house.

Jarrell thought he’d have a quick look round some of the bedrooms. Locked doors of this type presented no challenge. Jarrell didn’t expect to find anything, but it never hurt to have a look around.

The first bedroom he entered was furnished with a flimsy wooden bedstead covered with a rather thin counterpane. The wardrobe and chest of drawers were heavy and old-fashioned. The search was not arduous. He moved on to the next room. Jarrell felt under the mattress, seeing skeins and balls of dust, a few pennies and the odd bus ticket. The dust made him sneeze explosively. He looked for loose floorboards and for hollow spaces in the plastered walls; he opened rickety wardrobes. Signs of occupation were meagre too: here a glass of water in front of a fly-blown mirror; there a toothbrush by the basin; a pair of shoes, a girlie magazine.

Camenzuli started shouting again. Jarrell knew he couldn’t push his luck further. He glanced round one last time. The visit, the questions, the search – a useless exercise. Then he noticed a fall of soot in the fireplace.

He knelt down, rolled back his jacket sleeve, undid his shirt-sleeve cuff and rolled that up as well, then cautiously stretched his hand up into the mouth of the chimney.

He drew out a package wrapped in newspaper. It was uneven and squashy. He pulled back the newspaper, and beneath several layers something pale blue became visible.

Jarrell’s throat constricted. He was looking at a woman’s handbag.

It was a cheap thing, made of imitation leather. The shiny blue had cracked at the edges. The clasp was loose. Inside there was a little diary, some loose change, a lipstick, a handkerchief.

He came out onto the landing. Camenzuli glared up at him. He stood and looked down at his adversary from the top of the stairs. There was now no sign of the potential guest.

‘You come down now. I not give permission—’

Jarrell descended slowly. ‘I wonder if you can explain how this came to be hidden in the chimney of the back bedroom?’

When he reached the hall Jarrell opened the bag and took out the diary, leafed through it.

‘What is? Someone left behind – is nothing.’

Jarrell smiled. ‘A diary inside the bag identifies the owner as Valerie Jarvis.’

Mrs Camenzuli started to cry. Her husband watched Jarrell, but said not a word, his beady eyes fixed on the cheap pale blue handbag. All three of them stared at it, as if it were a ticking bomb.