‘Ah, well, I’ve done some work for him.’
‘What, tutoring his kids, fixing his car?’
‘No, no. Police work.’
Kathy gave him a sceptical look and he hurried on. ‘My academic field is linguistics, studying texts, mainly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of things I’ve specialised in is establishing authorship of unattributed fragments of writing. A couple of years ago they did an article about it in the Montreal Gazette and Paul Ledoux contacted me. He was working on a suicide that he suspected might be a murder, and wondered if I could tell if the suicide note left on the guy’s computer was genuine. Looking at other things he’d done, I decided he hadn’t written this, and appeared as an expert witness in court. It turned out I was right. Since then I’ve given advice in over a dozen cases in Canada.’
‘Forensic linguistics,’ Kathy said.
‘Right. There aren’t many of us about. The thing is, I heard about the Russian’s letter to The Times this morning, and it occurred to me that you might need to authenticate it.’
‘We’ve done that.’
‘Oh.’ His face dropped.
‘The notepaper, the signature appear to be genuine. It was typed on his computer.’
‘That’s not what I look at. People can steal a piece of notepaper and copy a signature, but they can’t impersonate another person’s form of words, not perfectly. That’s what I study: the text, its construction, vocabulary, use of idiom and so on.’
‘Yes, I understand that, but-’
‘It just seemed to me a good idea-no, vital, that you check that too. After all, if Moszynski didn’t write that letter it changes everything, doesn’t it?’
Kathy considered his bright, intelligent eyes. There was something quite disarming about his enthusiasm, like an eager border collie that knows exactly what needs to be done. She could have used a few more border collies on the job today. ‘It certainly does.’
‘And you don’t really think the FSB is behind this, do you?’
‘Don’t I? Why do you say that?’
‘Because Brock’s in Scotland, isn’t he?’
She blinked. ‘What?’
‘On your phone in the hotel. Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. You were talking about someone being in Scotland. It’s Brock, isn’t it, following up a completely different line of investigation? I had exactly the same idea myself.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes. Emerson told me about Nancy’s plans to contact long-lost relatives up there, and I wondered if there might be something in her past that led to her death. I guess it’s my work that makes me think like that. I need to place the texts I deal with in the context of their past, because everything about them-language, ideas, themes-is shaped by that. You have to understand the past in order to interpret the present, like why you became a cop and I didn’t. So anyway, what do you think? Will Brock agree?’
‘Agree to what?’
‘To me taking a look at Moszynski’s letter. Or maybe he doesn’t have to, if he’s away in Scotland. You could commission me. I’m not expensive.’
Kathy laughed.
‘And it would look good on my CV. What we would need is similar samples-ideally other letters to newspapers. Do you know if he was in the habit of writing to the papers?’
A good question. ‘We can find out.’
She felt weary by the time she got to Brock’s place. Apprehensive, too-she had never seen Brock ill before, and it had been like a sudden revelation of his mortality. It had shaken her more than she’d realised, and as she raised the key to his front door she hesitated, remembering that first glimpse of him in bed the day before, and wondering how she would react if she went in and really did find him dead. Part of her would die too, she was sure of that.
‘That you, Kathy?’ The voice was hoarse.
She grinned, said, ‘Yep, it’s me,’ and ran up the stairs.
He was sitting on the sofa in the living room, looking somewhat diminished in his old tartan dressing-gown, but with a little colour in his cheeks.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Bit better. Come in, sit down.’
‘What are those?’ Kathy pointed to the files and crime scene photographs scattered around him.
‘I got Dot to courier them over.’ He nodded towards the whisky bottle on the side table. ‘Pour us a snifter, will you?’
‘How about food?’
‘Had some soup. Now, tell me what’s been going on.’
‘Everyone’s desperate for you to come back from Scotland.’
‘I’m planning on flying back tonight.’
‘Really? Are you up to it?’
‘Sadly the bracing Scottish weather didn’t agree with me, and I shall have a bit of a cold and look somewhat the worse for wear. But you’ve been covering for me long enough, Kathy. Tell me about today.’
So she did, everything except her drink with John Greenslade.
‘Zack’s right,’ Brock said. ‘Soon we won’t need to leave our screens to do our job. We’ll be able to see what’s going on inside every room and every car. But we still won’t be able to see what’s going on inside people’s heads. And you’re worried about what’s going on inside Vadim Kuzmin’s head, am I right?’
Kathy nodded. ‘He’s a hard case, doesn’t give much away.’
‘And Five can’t give us any leads to Russian visitors we should be talking to?’
‘Apparently not. We’re running our own checks through the Border Agency, but so far nothing promising.’
‘So we’re thinking of a domestic killer hired by someone like Vadim to do the dirty work while he’s out of the country.’
‘Something like that.’
‘What about Captain Marvel?’
‘Danny Yilmaz? We haven’t got any further with him. The CPS are worried about going for the aid and abet charge on the basis of what we have so far, and the court granted him bail.’
‘And yet he’s pretty much all we’ve got.’ Brock scratched his beard thoughtfully. ‘Tottenham have been looking into that cousin of his, Barbaros Kaya, but they haven’t come up with anything.’
‘Yes.’
‘I think we should speak to Danny again. And Vadim, a formal interview. Let’s work on both ends to find out who’s in the middle.’
THIRTEEN
E veryone seemed immensely pleased to see Brock back, Dot especially so. Brock shrugged off her solicitations with a grunt and a request for strong coffee. The truth was that he still felt half dead, and the effort involved in pretending to be normal seemed to sap what little energy he had. He sat alone for a while in his office, gathering his strength for the team meeting, then took a deep breath and put a call through to Commander Sharpe’s office. He too was delighted to hear from Brock.
‘You sound a bit ropey, Brock. Catch a bug on the plane? So how was the castle?’
Brock blinked, wondering what he was talking about. ‘Could still bear fruit, sir. But not as productive as I’d hoped. We’re becoming quite interested in Vadim Kuzmin.’
‘The son-in-law, yes of course. The FSB connection. Is there a problem?’
