Second Violin (39 page)

‘Anything else in mind?’ he said, meaning ‘any other music’.

Kornfeld misunderstood and said, ‘Oh,
Ja.
Most evenings we have Heaven’s Gate University. Lectures and discussions. On Monday Professor Drax will speak. His field is politics
and history. Next Thursday I make my own modest contribution. I was a theoretical physicist in the old country. Perhaps one of you would care to speak? We always have room for more.’

To no one’s amazement this was greeted with silence.

Then to everyone’s amazement, Hummel spoke.

‘
Ja.
I will speak. Put me down for . . . for Man and God.’

Kornfeld scribbled, muttering to himself, ‘Man and God. Man and God. Ah . . . you were a theologian, Herr Hummel?’

‘No, a tailor.’

Then, ‘Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. At two, Herr Troy?’

And he left.

Billy had turned to stare at Hummel.

‘Are you quite sure about this, Joe?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’

Early the same day Troy drove out to Hendon. To the Metropolitan Police Laboratory. The brainchild of the eminent forensic scientist Sir Bernard Spilsbury. On occasion Troy had
dealt directly with the great man; more often than not, and certainly out of choice, he dealt with one Ladislaw Kolankiewicz, a Polish exile of undoubted qualification and talent – one of
those talents being an ability to swing between the tender and the obstreperous in a matter of seconds. He had been, at necessary moments in Troy’s life, the best listener in the world,
avuncular in the positive sense of the word. On other occasions Troy would arrive to find him mid-dissection, hunched over a corpse, swearing with all the power of the many languages available to
him. His oaths were the stuff of legend at Scotland Yard – there were those who saw only the funny side, the man who called Chief Inspectors of the Yard ‘Dog-wankers’ to their
face – and there were those who could not abide him – Onions was one – and there was Troy for whom Kolankiewicz seemed to hold an abiding, if abusive, affection.

‘What you want at this time of day, smartyarse?’

‘Rabbi Borg.’

‘Oh, he was one of yours, was he?’

‘Found him myself. I was in the car that ran over him.’

‘You drive?’

‘No. Stilton drove. But, to be accurate, I was in the second car. It was the first killed him, right?’

‘Right.’

‘When?’

‘8.58.’

‘So precise?’

‘The impact broke his pocket watch . . . so unless he carried a stopped watch in his waistcoat pocket . . . and it fits in fairly well with the onset of rigor . . . but tell me . . .
you
think he was murdered. Or you wouldn’t be here at a time when you are usually in bed. Why?’

‘Two things. I found his bible a hundred yards or so from the body. From thereon I think he was running. I think he ran until the car following hit him . . . caught him round about the
backside or thighs, I should think . . .’

‘Correct. Broke the right hip, then ran over the torso crushing the ribcage. Both lungs pierced. Poor bastard drowned in his own blood in less than a minute. Still warm when you got there,
when . . .?’

‘About an hour later. Still warm . . . and . . . the other thing – still sweaty. I could feel it on his wrist as I tried for a pulse. Dead men don’t sweat.’

Kolankiewicz could argue for a continent and two countries, but he didn’t.

‘So far, smartyarse, ten out of ten. Yes, he was soaked in sweat. I’d say he’d run more than a hundred yards. Even allowing for his age, and he was sixty-ish, his weight, and he
was stout, and the preponderant weight of traditional Jewish clothing on an August night, he had sweated . . . shall we say . . . unnaturally. He had, as you deduce, been running. Not a habit among
rabbis, I think. Can’t remember when I saw a rabbi so much as dash for a bus. As for the annual rabbis egg and spoon race . . .’

‘Anything else?’

‘I could probably come up with a tyre print off the back of the suit. But they’re not fingerprints. One car has the pattern, so do a thousand. And you and Stilton somewhat queered
the pitch when you ran over him a second time.’

‘Any marks on the body not consistent with hit and run?’

‘He was trussed for a hernia. Not a device ever used as a murder weapon, as I recall. He was immaculate in his habits. Clean fingernails, clean underwear, clean hanky, trimmed beard.
He’d eaten around five in the afternoon, and he’d pissed in his pants before he died. I conclude . . . a dignified man whose death had anything but dignity.’

It seemed to Troy that that simple statement said something timely about the condition of Europe at that moment, to sum up things that had happened in Berlin or Vienna or Warsaw. But to say so
was to risk a discussion that might last all morning.

‘You’re right . . . that was Izzy Borg as I remember him. Dignity. A dignity he didn’t stand on. A nice guy.’

‘A
mensh
.’

‘Quite. So who would want to . . . ?’

Kolankiewicz handed Troy a paper bag containing the contents of Rabbi Borg’s pockets – two pencils, a fountain pen, a pocket diary, two mint humbugs in wrappers, the stub of a
railway ticker from Liverpool Street to Cambridge and three shillings and sixpence halfpenny in change.

‘There’s almost nothing of any use to you. What you need is an eyewitness.’

Fat chance, thought Troy. That was the thing about life in the blackout. Witness, if they saw anything at all, saw only shadows. He had no high hope of solving his one, but that was no reason
not to try.

They stood in Troy’s old office once again that lunchtime. Drinking tea. Stilton’s stomach rumbling.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.

Troy said, ‘How many names on our list? Half a dozen?’

‘’Bout that.’

‘Would you mind handling them on your own? I could look into Borg’s death today.’

Stilton paused, thought, set his teacup back on the saucer.

‘You’re still saying it was murder?’

‘Yes, and so is Kolankiewicz.’

‘And Mr Onions?’

‘I haven’t told him yet. But I will.’

‘And I’ll have to tell Steerforth.’

‘Do you really have to?

‘You’re being naïve, Mr Troy. O’course I have to tell him. And there’ll be consequences. Ructions.’

‘Such as?’

‘He’ll be mad as hell with both of us. Spittin’ feathers. I can hear him now. “It’s none of your business . . . make your statements and get on with the job in
hand.” And then his spook mode’ll cut in. I can hear that too . . . “Murdered rabbi? . . . just as we’re rounding up Jews? Keep it to yourself.” He’ll tell us
it’s Branch business and want it kept a secret. Politically sensitive that’s what he’ll say. And if you don’t think the spooks in M15’ll back him up then you really
are naïve. They’ll sit on this. Penny to a quid they’ll not want this getting out now.’

‘Then would you mind waiting until I’ve talked to Onions?’

‘I think I can manage that, but why?’

‘If I make this Scotland Yard business, Murder Squad business, it won’t be Branch business and the only man who can tell me
not
to investigate is Onions. Steerforth can rant
and rave, but short of M15 going to the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary leaning on the Met Commissioner, the buck will stop with Onions.’

‘Onions lets you investigate anything you deem to be murder?’

‘Has so far.’

‘You know, for a young un you’ve got an awful lot of power. Most of us just do what we’re told.’

Troy had never been much good at that.

It had been an agonisingly scratchy, scrapey couple of hours in the music room. He was the least practised of the quartet and the least accomplished, but that was nothing
compared to the dullness inherent in the piece Kornfeld had chosen. There was nothing of
Nimrod
about it. There was nothing hummable about it. You didn’t listen to, let alone attempt
to play, Elgar’s only string quartet and come away humming anything. It was, to use the parlance of
the palais-de-dance,
anything but ‘catchy’, Rod thought. Lady Elgar had
supposedly referred to some aspect of the piece as ‘captured sunshine’. But it was bottled boredom.

Rod asked ‘why the Elgar?’

Kornfeld said, to the eager smiles of Herr Lippmann, his viola player, and Herr Schnitzler, his cellist, ‘It is England, the epitome of England. We were keen to do something that showed
England, that showed our willingness to be of England, to be English. We intend, of course, to invite all the British in the camp and some of the villagers on the island. This piece has . . . a
quality of light . . .’

‘Captured sunshine?’ Rod said, only to find the quotation and the sarcasm wasted and returned with more smiles.

‘Exactly!’

‘Y’know,’ Rod said slowly and carefully. ‘I’m pretty keen on Elgar myself. Saw the young Menuhin boy play the violin concerto a few years back, listened to the
symphonies all my life . . . or so it seems . . . but I can’t help feeling that we should be . . .’

Oh God, he couldn’t say it.

‘Yes?’ Kornfeld urged him on.

‘Well. We’re all from Vienna, aren’t we?’

‘Herr Lippmann is from Salzburg.’

‘Fine . . . I think my point will withstand the geography . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Why not something by Haydn or Schubert?’

Kornfeld looked at Lippmann and Schnitzler, Lippmann and Schnitzler looked at one another.

‘What does that prove?’ Kornfeld said eventually.

‘Nothing you can prove by playing a piece of second-rate Elgar. None of it makes us English, it’s merely playing politics. We should be playing music, music that means something to
us – we can at least give the English something of ourselves and as Vienna has so much to give that is first rate . . .?’

Rod let the sentence trail off.

Shrugs all round.

‘You think our guards will like Haydn or Schubert more?’

Time to lie. Rod didn’t think they’d give a damn about music at all.

‘I haven’t a clue. But we will. Let us be true to the name they’ve landed us with.’

More shrugs. They hadn’t heard.

‘You didn’t know they call this place Little Vienna?’

‘No.’

Kornfeld led Rod across to a huge cupboard built into the alcove formed by the chimney breast. He swung back the door to reveal a dozen shelves of alphabetised sheet music from floor to high,
high ceiling. Thomas Arne to Richard Wagner. You’d need a ladder to reach Arne and anyone ahead of Chopin. There were dozens of them, hundreds of them. Rod began to regret ever having
spoken.

‘Perhaps you could find the right piece for us?’

Rod stared. There might even be thousands here.

‘That’s very good, you know – “playing music not politics”.
Ja
, very good.’

Behind him Rod could hear Schnitzler muttering ‘something of ourselves’ over and over again – the sound of him getting nearer. Then he shuffled between the two of them and
reached into the heart of the cupboard, to the section labelled M.

‘Mozart,’ Schnitzler said pulling out a dozen folders of bound sheets and dropping as many more on the floor. What was left in his hand he seemed to regard as the product of
serendipity. He stared down at the top sheet and read out the title to them all.

‘The 23rd in F. Hmmm. I played it first as a boy. It is as you say . . . something of myself.’

He handed the music to Kornfeld.

‘You will find it livelier than the Elgar. I would even venture to say it is spritely. Not quite jazz, but spritely.’

He’d talked to the caretaker at Borg’s synagogue. He’d gone to Borg’s home and he’d talked to two surviving sisters – grief-stricken women
not bothering to restrain their tears, easily deceived by Troy’s reassurance that his questions were the stuff of routine. There had been a crime committed – it was illegal to drive
away after being involved in an accident. But it was no more than that. He fended off questions about the autopsy about the release of the body assuming that the truth could only worsen their
grief.

Rabbi Borg’s diary showed a 7.30 appointment in a community hall, less than a mile from where his body was found. Borg had spent an hour with six thirteen-year-old boys, and a further half
hour chatting with the father of one of them. He’d set off home in daylight, he’d been run down in daylight. And no one had seen a thing. As ever . . . he was ‘a man with no
enemies’ and ‘who would ever want to do a thing like that to nice man like . . .’ – their voices echoed those of Borg’s caretaker and sisters.

Troy arrived back at the Yard, not much wiser.

The phone rang.

‘Stilton,’ the voice on the other end said.

‘Are we done?’

‘We’re done with refugees, fifth columnists, pastry chefs, professors of physics and little Hitlers. Are you done with dead rabbis?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘Then we’d best meet.’

Troy looked at his watch. 6.05 p.m.

‘I could come over to you by seven.’

‘No. This is off the record and off the manor. I don’t want flapping lug’oles. Do you know the Hand & Shears in Cloth Fair, between Smithfield and Barts
Hospital?’

‘No, but I can find it.’

‘Seven it is then.’

Troy liked the streets behind Barts. It was as though they’d been deliberately hidden from the rest of the city, tucked into the shadow of Smithfield and forgotten about. Streets as narrow
as Goodwin’s Court, built for a very different London. Public houses no bigger than the front room of a terraced house. The etching on the street door read ‘Snug’ – it was.
The Hand & Shears was tiny – a spit-and-sawdust pub that probably catered to porters from the meat-market at nearby Smithfield. It was empty but for a fat-faced, walrus-moustached copper
seated at a corner table, just about big enough for four pints and an ash tray. This was why Stilton had chosen it – a pub that was full to bursting or empty because it relied for its trade
on men working shifts – all in or all out. He was on his first pint, a fringe of white froth on the end of his moustache.