‘Hah!’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Because she was a manipulative bitch who was prepared to do anything to get her own way.’
‘Even kill herself?’
‘Maybe she got the dose wrong. I told you before that she wasn’t very good with figures.’
‘Yes you did, didn’t you? But why implicate her supervisor?’
Ringland shrugged-rather evasively, Kathy thought. ‘I don’t know. Out of spite, I suppose. They didn’t always see eye to eye.’
‘I don’t always see eye to eye with my boss, but I don’t try to implicate him in my suicide.’
‘That’s what I mean-she was unstable.’
‘You said manipulative, wanting to get her own way. So how was Dr da Silva stopping her?’
He shook his head dismissively. ‘I’m just saying she gave him a lot of grief. She was a difficult student, okay? She demanded a lot of attention. We all get them from time to time. She was a particularly bad case.’
‘Did he sleep with her, Colin?’
‘Christ!’ Ringland rocked back in his seat. ‘Who told you that?’
Kathy smiled. ‘That’s not really an answer, is it?’
‘Look…’ He was flustered now. ‘You’d have to ask Tony. I certainly don’t believe so, and you’d be advised to take student gossip with a grain of salt.’
‘Or a grain of arsenic.’ Kathy got to her feet. ‘Thanks for your help, and for your patience with our audit. We’ll get out of your hair as soon as we can.’
She was stepping out the front door when her phone rang, and once again she heard the excited, slightly breathless voice of the librarian, Gael Rayner.
‘Kathy! Sorry, but we’ve had another incident.’
‘Another one?’
‘Yes, an assault, right here in the library stacks.’
‘What kind of assault? Not another poisoning?’
‘No, much more physical. Someone just attacked Nigel Ogilvie. One of the other readers heard the commotion and found him, unconscious. I rang triple nine for an ambulance, and now you. I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m on my way.’
The ambulance was parked outside the library’s front door on St James’s Square when Kathy arrived, the stretcher being loaded into the back.
She showed her ID. ‘How is he?’
‘Heavy bruising, cuts, probable concussion and fractured ribs and radius. He was conscious when we arrived, said he’d fallen down the stairs, but that’s not how it looks.’
‘Okay.’ Kathy checked the motionless figure in the neck brace, eyes closed. ‘Where are you taking him?’
‘UCH.’
Gael Rayner opened the front door of the library and waved Kathy in. ‘We locked all the doors after I phoned you, just in case the assailant was still here. I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do.’ Her eyes were bright with excitement.
‘That’s fine. Tell me what happened.’
Gael led her in through a crowd of chattering readers in the entrance hall. ‘One of our members, Mr Vujkovic, was in the stacks and heard an argument on the floor below. Then there was a cry and a crash. He went down to investigate, although he’s not a very agile man, so it took him a little time. He found Nigel lying among a pile of books that had fallen out of the shelves.’
They hurried back through the library to the book stacks, to where several elderly men were standing in a cluster at the foot of a flight of stairs, beside a tumbled heap of books scattered across the floor. Kathy recognised Mr Vujkovic, and he shuffled forward and repeated the story in broken English.
‘The ambulance officer told me that Nigel said he’d fallen down the stairs,’ Kathy said.
‘No, no,’ Mr Vujkovic said. ‘There was much struggle, much argument. Maybe push down stair, yes, okay, but not fall.’
‘Was he arguing with a man, or a woman?’
‘I think man. I couldn’t see. Nigel scream like pig in slaughterhouse.’
Two uniformed officers had arrived, and Kathy sent them off to search the building, guided by one of the librarians. She looked around at the scene. There was blood on the steel grille floor, and also traces of sand on the bottom step of the staircase.
‘Do the builders come up here, Gael?’
‘No, they shouldn’t.’
‘But if we go down a level we’d come to the door out to the area where they’re working, is that right? Show me.’
They went down the next flight and emerged into a corridor. Along the floor Kathy found other traces of sand and cement dust. They came to the door that Gael had let Kathy in by the previous week when she’d come to interview Nigel Ogilvie. It was unlocked. Kathy pushed it open and walked out into the passageway beside the building site, following it to the open entrance gates. The site hut was nearby, and fixed to its parapet was a security camera covering the site entry and street outside. She knocked on the door, and explained to the site manager what had happened.
‘This was about forty minutes ago,’ she said.
‘No problem.’
He fiddled with the machine in the corner of his office, and then replayed it backwards.
‘There!’ They watched as a white van materialised across the courtyard, and a man ran backwards out of it and into the library’s compound. Running the recording further back they established that the white van had arrived fifteen minutes earlier. The image of the driver, wearing overalls and a peaked cap, was indistinct, but Kathy was able to make out the van’s number. It took one phone call to establish that it belonged to Brentford Pyrotechnics.
•
The tyres squealed as Kathy turned into the car park of the fireworks factory, the blue light pulsing. She pulled up at the office entrance and marched into the reception area. A girl at the front desk jumped as she demanded to see Mr Pigeon, and hurried to the door of the adjoining office. The manager appeared, greeting her with a cautious smile, and led her into his room.
‘Another query, Inspector?’
She handed him the number of the van taken from the CCTV. ‘Is this your van, Mr Pigeon?’
He studied the slip of paper. ‘I think that may be one of ours. Why?’
‘I’d like to know who the driver is and where it is now.’
‘Is this a traffic matter? Has it been in an accident?’
‘If you could just answer my questions, please.’
Pigeon frowned, then seeing the look on Kathy’s face lifted the phone and dialled an internal number. After a short conversation he said, ‘The driver is Keith Rafferty. He left about an hour and a half ago to take a consignment out to a job in Epping, due back after lunch, around two. Now, may I ask what this is all about?’
‘Your van was recorded just over an hour ago at an address in Central London at the time of a serious assault. The driver was filmed going into the building where the assault took place.’
‘My goodness. You suspect Keith?’
‘You know he has a criminal record, do you?’
Pigeon’s eyebrows rose. ‘I can’t say I was aware of that, no. One moment.’
He went over to a filing cabinet and withdrew a file. There were a couple of pages inside. ‘No, there’s no mention of a record. Was it serious, what he did?’
‘Assault, living off immoral earnings. He did gaol time. There was also a rape case that was dropped for lack of evidence.’
‘Oh dear. I had no idea. He had a very glowing reference from a security consultant…’ he scanned one of the pages, ‘by the name of Crouch.’
‘Yes, they were in the army together. Crouch was also implicated in the alleged rape.’
‘Oh. Well, that is most disturbing. So you want to interview Keith?’
