‘And you are pretty sure it was him?’
‘Hard to tell for sure, I only glimpsed him when we were here before, but I think so. Yes.’
They came out of the tunnelled archway and turned left to the Dean’s office just as the door to her office was thrown open and a young man dressed in black came out, shouting back into the office.
He said something in a language that Kate didn’t understand – presumably Arabic, she thought – and hurried off.
The Dean, Sheila Anderson, appeared in the open doorway and called after him in the same language.
But the youth was gone, flapping a dismissive hand angrily over his shoulder as he disappeared into one of the buildings at the bottom left-hand side of the quad.
‘Is there a problem?’ asked Bennett.
‘He wanted to go into his cousin’s room.’
‘Jamil Azeez, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was he after?’
The Dean shrugged. ‘He said something about a book he’d lent him. I said I would have to wait for Jamil to give permission, but Malik became angry. Claiming it was his property and he had a right to it.’
‘You speak Arabic?’ Kate asked.
‘No, Iranian. Not fluently. But I spent some years in Iran as a child.’
‘Really?’
‘My father was in the diplomatic corps. We were stationed there for a while.’
‘When it was still Persia?’ said Kate.
‘Indeed,’ replied the Dean, pleased. ‘A lot of people forget that. Persia had become Iran long before Jamil and Malik were even born.’
‘What was the book he was after?’
The Dean shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. What of Jamil – is there any improvement in his condition?’
‘I’m sorry, no,’ said Kate.
‘But you have a suspect. You think you may know who attacked him?’
Bennett held out the photograph of the man arguing with Jamil on Camden High Street. ‘Not yet. Not as such, but we wondered if you might be able to identify this man.’
The Dean took the photo, her forehead creasing as she recognised the man in it. ‘Matt Henson. You think he attacked Jamil?’
‘He’s your gardener?’ prompted Kate.
‘No, dear,’ said the Dean.
‘I saw him here yesterday, raking the leaves.’
‘He comes for a few hours each weekend to do odd jobs about the place. He’s on community service. My husband is a magistrate. I like to help out where I can.’
‘What is your husband’s name?’ asked Bennett, taking out his notebook.
The Dean became agitated. ‘Surely you don’t need to speak to him?’
‘We just need to know where Matt Henson lives, what his offence was.’
‘I can give you those details. Come in.’
Kate and DI Bennett followed the woman as she led them into her office. It was a spacious room: a large desk cluttered with books and papers to one side, a large multicoloured rug on the floor – genuine and expensive, Kate thought as she looked around the space. Book-filled shelves lined the walls; it could have been a teaching professor’s room rather than an administrator’s. Kate looked at some of the books as the Dean rummaged in her desk drawers. There were a lot of directories, academic reference journals and a whole section of American literature.
The Dean looked up to see what she was looking at. ‘I did my Master’s in contemporary American fiction,’ she said and turned to Bennett. ‘A large part of it on the detective fiction genre, in fact, inspector.’
Bennett picked up a copy of
‘He was indeed.’ Sheila Anderson pulled out a sheet of paper from her desk and held it out to the detective. ‘Here are Matt’s address details. But, like I said, I am absolutely sure he had nothing to do with the attack on Jamil. He’s a lovely boy.’
Another lovely boy, Kate thought to herself and reappraised the woman. She was in her fifties but carried herself with a sensual grace. Her make-up was elegant but noticeable, American style, and her hair was immaculately groomed, the cut running to a lot more than the twenty pounds that Kate herself paid for a trim every couple of months or so.
‘What was he given community service for?’ she asked.
The Dean coloured slightly. ‘It really isn’t relevant.’
