‘All right, love?’ Pettifer said breezily, not appearing to notice her distress. ‘Got a visitor for you. ’Bye now,’ and he left, closing the door behind him.
Brock felt immediately uncomfortable, waiting to speak while the woman drew more tissues and rubbed vigorously at her eyes and nose.
‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Briony,’ he said when she finally turned in her seat to half face him. ‘I’m sorry to intrude. I wanted to speak to you about Professor Springer, but I could come back.’
‘No, it’s OK,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just very upset about it, that’s all.’
‘Of course. It was very shocking.’
‘I should have got used to the idea of it, but I was just…’ She looked at a sheaf of paper in front of her. ‘I was just…’ Her shoulders began to shake beneath the thick black sweater, and she began to sob.
Brock wondered if perhaps this was the only person who was really upset by Springer’s death. Everyone else seemed rather enthralled by it. As he stood waiting, he wished again that Kathy were here. He wondered what another student would make of it if they walked in now and saw him, a big bear of a man standing over the weeping girl.
‘I was reading his comments, you see,’ she blurted out suddenly. ‘What he’d written on my text. He only gave it back to me yesterday morning. With what happened, I hadn’t looked at it until now.’ She sobbed and wiped. ‘Seeing his words… so normal, as if nothing has happened.’
‘Of course. Look, would it be better if we went and got a cup of coffee somewhere? A bit of fresh air, you know…’
She shook her head. ‘It’s all right. I’m OK. What did you want to ask me?’ There was a green Bic cigarette lighter beside her papers, and she turned it over and over in her fingers as she spoke.
‘The same thing I’m asking anyone else I can find who was in contact with Professor Springer recently. Is there anything you can tell me to help us find whoever did this? Can you think of any reason why someone would do it? Did he tell you of any threats to his life?’
‘No, nothing like that. The only thing… the thing that keeps coming back to me was something he said in his tutorial yesterday, about how it was up to “us” now. It was like Martin Luther King’s last speech, do you remember, “I have a dream”? About how his people would reach the Promised Land, but he wouldn’t be with them, as if he knew that he would soon be murdered. That was how Max sounded, although at the time I didn’t realise. But afterwards, last night, his words came back, it was up to us now, my generation, as if he knew he wouldn’t be with us much longer. I guessed he was sort of rehearsing what he was going to say later, in his lecture.’
‘But nothing specific, then or earlier, about a threatening phone call, or note?’
‘No.’ Briony shook her head firmly and turned back to her papers, putting down the lighter and running her fingers over the pages as if wanting to feel the substance of Max Springer in his scribbled notes.
‘The lecture yesterday, was it a regular thing? Only I got the impression from others I spoke to that he didn’t do much lecturing.’
‘No, that’s right. He didn’t give any undergraduate courses any more. They wanted him to teach business ethics to commerce students, but he refused. He said he didn’t come here to teach budding entrepreneurs how to cheat their customers without getting caught.’ She smiled wanly.
‘Yesterday’s lecture was a one-off, a public lecture open to everyone. The title was “The Tyranny of Faith and Science”.’
‘That sounds challenging. I shouldn’t think the scientists would like that, or the Islamic students.’
She looked at him, puzzled for a moment, then nodded. ‘They boycotted it. The theme of the lecture was to be that…’ She pointed to one of a number of printed quotations, which she had stuck to the pinboard above her workspace.
‘ Where unanimity exists, some form of coercion is at work, whether of the tyrant or of logic. ’
‘Hannah Arendt wrote that. I’m studying her for my Ph. D.’
Brock looked at some of the other quotes on the wall. Another said, ‘ The poor man’s conscience is clear; yet he is ashamed… He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is only not seen… To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable. ’
‘Arendt again?’
‘She quoted it in one of her books, but it was originally said by John Adams, the second American President, the one after George Washington. It was one of Max’s favourite quotations. He said that every politician should have that pinned up over their desk.’
‘About the lecture, were there many people there?’
‘Not many,’ she said, defensive. ‘There were a dozen, twenty maybe, waiting, when we heard that something had happened outside.’
‘What about on your way into the theatre? Did you notice anyone then? Any strangers you didn’t recognise? Maybe wearing a dark anorak, jeans, light coloured trainers.’
‘That’s what they were asking us after it happened, but I didn’t see anyone like that.’ She stared glumly at the pinboard.
‘And did Max mention Islam at all in his tutorials?’
‘Yes. He drew parallels between scientific methods, Nazism and fundamentalist religions, like Islam. He said he was going to discuss this in his lecture. He said it would be a revelation to some people.’
‘Sounds as if he intended to upset a few people.’
She shrugged. ‘It was a favourite theme of his. He was fearless in expressing his opinions.’
‘OK, well I won’t disturb you any longer just now, Briony. If you do think of anything, here’s my phone number.’
Briony seemed preoccupied with some thought and didn’t reply. Brock turned to go. As he reached the door she suddenly spoke again.
‘I just remembered. At our last tutorial he said something else a bit odd. He used a phrase, “the people of the book”, and said something about it being a lottery which people of the book would shut him up first, something like that.’
‘People of the book? What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t think he meant they were going to take away his library card or something. I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t explain. He would do that, say something mysterious and leave you to think about it.’
‘You didn’t take it to mean that someone might want to kill him?’
‘Not at the time, no. But now… well, I don’t know.’
On the way back to his office in Queen Anne’s Gate, an annexe of New Scotland Yard a couple of blocks away from the Victoria Street headquarters building, Brock phoned the laboratory liaison officer, Sergeant Leon Desai, and arranged for him to meet him there.
‘Anything for us yet, Leon?’ Brock asked when they met.
‘They should be ready for a screening of the enhanced video film later this afternoon, Brock. And firearms has made a preliminary assessment of the cartridge, but verbal only at this stage, being a bit careful.’ He said it approvingly, being himself a stickler for accuracy.
‘Go on.’
‘7.62 millimetre, probably of Warsaw Pact origin, maybe to go with something like the Russian Tokarev automatic pistol. Doesn’t mean to say that’s what we’re looking for, of course. Could have been fired from something else.’
‘Availability in London?’
‘Yes, there’s quite a bit of old Soviet stuff floating around. The Tokarev and its ammunition was also sold to a number of countries outside the Warsaw Pact.’
He handed Brock a list. Brock’s frown deepened as he scanned it. ‘Syria, Somalia, Libya, People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen…’
He put the paper down and reached into his pocket, handing Leon the green pamphlet from Springer’s desk. ‘What do you make of that?’
Leon read, then said, ‘It’s the Qur’an.’
‘That’s what I thought. You’re not a Muslim are you, Leon?’
Leon gave him a sharp look to see if the question was serious.
