Antman (53 page)

'It could be a double bluff. He could still be trying to put you off,' said Tom. 'Do you trust him?'

'In an odd kind of way, yes. There's something pathetic about him, too.'

'Remember what you said about violence in the home.'

'I'm not going back on that. I'm keeping my eye on the ball, which is a multiple murder investigation.'

‘
Why go through the effort of chasing up the teacher?' Tom queried.

'I know it's crazy, but we've nothing to lose. It's only a couple of hours each way from Cambridge. I guess if we can reach the school before the kids and staff go home we stand a chance.'

*  *  *

They made it to the school gates by 3:00 pm and within ten minutes were on their way, thanks to the very cooperative school secretary, who somehow gained the impression they were relatives of Mr Regel. In the era of data protection, it was not the occasion to disillusion her. Tom held a small card with an address which apparently lay only fifteen minutes distant.

'Here we are. Leyton Gardens. What a place. He must have been desperate.'

'Past tense. You think he's gone, or dead.'

'I'm keeping an open mind on it. Number 31a, along there towards the end. Look at this metal grill on the door front. And the patching job over that hole. Someone's had a good go at kicking it in. Hullo, anybody in? Hullo.'

'I suggest we leave a note.'

‘
Wait. I can hear a sound. Mr Regel?'

‘
Who is it?'

She whispered to Tom. 'It's an old man. Sounds frail.'

'Police, sir. Can we have a few minutes of your time?'

The answer quavered after a shallow cough as though his throat had to be opened up to allow his voice to sound after a long period without use:

'I suppose so. You'll have to wait.'

There was a shuffling noise and they exchanged glances at the ponderous cacophony of bolts, chains and locks being drawn, removed and undone. Regel stood there, a cadaverous, unshaven figure in a faded blue-striped dressing gown. God, Belsen reincarnated, thought Tom. The man looked as though he wouldn't last the day. He stooped, panting with the exertion from that brief walk down the corridor to the front door.

'Tell me about teaching John Thompsen,' Chris prompted.

'Not much to tell.' Regel slumped on the chair at the battered dining table in the shabbily decorated back room. He fought to find enough breath to utter the responses. 'I never really knew him at all.'

'Okay, I want you to think back, not so much about knowing him yourself. Try to recall things about him. Perhaps you saw him getting involved in an activity. Or maybe you heard about it in the staff room, or through hearing other boys talking.'

Regel shook his head. 'I was never one for mixing with other staff. Difficult to remember anything specific.'

'Some particular misbehaviour perhaps,' interjected Tom. Chris flashed him a warning glance, but he continued. 'An offence against school discipline perhaps?'

'It doesn't have to involve the police,' interposed Chris, with a covert glare at Tom.

'Police,' said Regel. 'Only the usual stuff that all boys get up to I guess, don't they, at that age?'

'You tell me,' said Chris.

'Right,' said Regel. Then, with some embarrassment, 'You won't follow this up, will you? I can't become involved with the law.' He tapped his concave chest with his withered right arm. 'My heart. I can't have any stress.'

Tom caught a glimpse of the outlines of two narrow bands of ribs through the sagging V of the opened dressing gown. He studied Regel's raised arm. The flesh was wrinkled and grey, sinews and bones outlined as in the arm of an already dead person.

'No, Mr Regel, we aren't intending to splash you over the front pages. This is an inquiry into someone else. But our time is limited, so if you can tell us – anything at all –'

'Boys will be boys, they say,' said Regel. 'Shoplifting, buying tobacco for rollups with the profits, smoking, girls in the changing rooms, you name it.'

'Was Thompsen involved?'

Regel was speaking independently of her question. 'I was an outsider and so was he. Pupils can be cruel, but teachers as well. He may have been.'

'You can remember him being involved in trouble?'

'Not specifically. Then again, I can't recall not seeing him. He wasn't exactly one of the boys and neither was I. That's where we both went wrong.'

Regel looked at Tom.

'It is all right for you,' he said. 'You are a successful man. Nobody questions your background, your motives. They do not stare when you walk into the staff room as though you have arrived from an alien planet. You are not like her. What are you, some kind of technical, forensic person?' He stared, his eyes an intense blue, concentrating all the energy of his still alert brain, trapped inside this ageing frame. 'No, you are more than that. I am a scientist, I should know. You have the air of an intellectual. You are not a policeman. You are in research, a psychiatrist perhaps?'

Tom shook his head. He felt incredibly vulnerable under the gaze of this old man.

'I'm in a university, in insect research.'

'Of course.' Regel nodded. 'The insects, they are powerful. I take it you are a student of the social insects.'

Tom nodded.

'The ants perhaps, more than the bees. Bees are too uncontrollable. As for the wasps, the colonies die every year and only the queens survive the winter. We have to start again, from scratch.' His head rolled to the side as though the neck muscles could barely sustain its weight.

It was eerie, thought Tom, but he was transfixed by this cadaver of a man who gave off such psychic energy. 'But the ant has continuity, I showed the boys. I kept the nests in the biology lab. There were queens of Acanthomyops Niger, the common black lawn ant, ten, twelve, fifteen years old. You can do so much.'

'Tell me, Mr Regel,' said Chris, when did you arrive in this country?'

Tom couldn't believe the abrupt change in Regel's manner. The brightness in his eyes was veiled by fear.

'It's all right, Mr Regel, we aren't investigating you. It was the war, wasn't it?'

Regel nodded.

'You arrived from central Europe?'

He nodded again, never taking his eyes off Chris, as though she was the threat, the new interrogator.

'For a time you were interned. There was a period of adjustment, after the war.'

‘
We were the untouchables, when Hitler invaded Poland. I was in the province ruled by one of his brutes. Hitler left his barons to rule as they wished and asked no questions.

'You are Jewish?'

'No, I am a Pole. People make the assumption I'm a Jew.'

'You had no time for the Communists.'

‘
We thought when Hitler's troops invaded we would be allies. We had no idea our neighbours, the ethnic Germans, would turn against us. I thought we were all one, against the Russians. Instead, Hitler made an ally of Stalin. All of us Poles who weren't ethnic Germans were all treated as one by the Germans. The Jews were sent for extermination, but according to the Nazis the rest of the Poles were the
Untermenschen
, peasants with no culture. I escaped but the rest of my family were evicted from our fine house and resettled. It was a joke. They took them in cattle trucks and dumped them in the middle of nowhere in the southern province. They had no shelter, no food. I was the only one who lived.' Tears ran down his face as he spoke, but apart from that his expression stayed unchanged. 'I ran away and lived, while my family perished.'

They waited while Regel composed himself before continuing.

'I was in a camp in Hull for a while. It was near a village overlooking the town.'

'Hessle,' said Chris. 'You were in the resettlement camp at Hessle at the end of the war.'

'Yes, I remember the name. It sounded so – Germanic. I thought at the time, the English are hostile to some of us too, how strange. Later, when I moved to the south of England and taught at the school near Farnborough after the war, somebody found out I had Jewish blood. All those years, my family hid our Jewishness. It made no difference, ultimately. They were killed. And now the pupils started on me. The other teachers, they turned a blind eye. I stayed out of the staff room. I was an outsider in Poland and an outsider in England, but I was alive. I put up with it because I was alive.'

Chris opened the folder she was carrying and carefully pulled out a long, narrow roll which she unrolled carefully.

'I'd like you to look at this,' she said, placing it on the table.

Regel took it.

'My God!' he exclaimed, showing more interest in the proceedings. 'The school photo. What an event!'

'Can you recognise him on this?'

'It is so long ago.'

'Take your time.'

Regel's gaze travelled up and down the rows of boys, cross legged at the front, kneeling, then sitting, standing and standing on forms and tables – seven lines each of about fifty boys.

'There, that could be him, no that one. That is him.'

'Are you sure?'

Regel stared and finally shook his head.

'Not really. I cannot be absolutely certain. Sorry, it is difficult at this long distance in time. I would need time to think about it.' He gave a sigh so long that Chris began to worry whether this would be his last breath. His entire body seemed to deflate and then he fought for another breath and then another. Regel was becoming so exhausted that she knew it was pointless asking any more questions.

'You could do with a holiday,' she said.

'I could, but it is getting there.'

‘
Would you take a holiday in Yorkshire, if there was the possibility of a lift?'

'I would, but there's little point in talking about it.'

Chris reached a decision and took a deep breath. 'Mr Regel, I can offer you a lift to Hull. You could stay a few days. You'll have to find your own hotel expenses, but one of my colleagues will run you back afterwards. While you're in Hull, we could chat more about what you remember.'

Regel's expression changed and his manner became more animated than at any time in their brief conversation.

'I would love to see Hull.'

Chapter 35

As Tom walked down the corridor to his office, he ran into Luis Deakin. Over coffee he brought Luis up to date with the latest developments. He didn't mention Regel, though. He was under strict instructions from Chris to say nothing to anybody at all about Regel. Chris had settled Regel into his hotel and arrived at Tom's office shortly afterwards. The three of them stood round awkwardly.

'I'll bring us a coffee,' said Deakin. 'The kettle's already boiled.'

They demurred but he was insistent.

'Wake up and smell the coffee,' said Chris.

Tom looked questioningly. 'You've heard the expression,' she said. He shook his head. 'Sometimes you're so quaint,' she said. She sniffed as Luis appeared, carrying a tray with cafetiere, three mugs and a jug of milk. 'Nothing appeals like the smell of fresh coffee.'

'Not fresh ground, I'm afraid,' said Luis, 'but ground anyway and at least fresh brewed.'

They sat round the low table in Tom's office.

'There must be something, some vital clue as to Thompsen's whereabouts,' said Chris.

Luis shrugged. Chris pressed one fist hard onto the palm of the other hand.

'A man as odd as this must have something distinctive about him, some quirk or habit. Tom says you have an amazing memory for people, Luis. You worked with him, I gather.'

Luis shook his head. 'I wish I could be of some help, but there's nothing I can say.'