Gun Street Girl (18 page)

“Thank you very much. That's great.”

“If you've any questions at all, please don't hesitate to ask.”

Handshakes. Smiles. Atkins led us to the room. And sure enough, everything: Case files, case notes, the coroner's report, evidence bags, the ME report, individual police officer logs, the desk sergeant's blotter, interview tapes. My little crack about the Chief Constable had scared the bejesus out of them.

After Atkins and Boyson had gone I poured more coffee down Lawson's throat.

He was finally in the land of the living.

“You see what they've done to us, Lawson?”

“No.”

“They don't want to be accused of withholding evidence, of starting an inter-force scandal, so they've given us absolutely everything. Do you see?”

“Uhm . . .”

“It could be they're trying to bury the relevant info in a blizzard of detail.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This lot will take us all morning.”

It did, and much of the afternoon.

We conference-called McCrabban with our results. What came out at the inquest appeared to be more or less the truth. Anastasia Coleman had died of a heroin overdose in the rented North Oxford home of Count Habsburg after a party given by the Round Table Club. Also in the home that morning were Michael Kelly and an unidentified male who, according to Kelly and Habsburg, “slipped out after the body was found but before the police arrived.” Neither Kelly nor Habsburg knew who the male was, but Habsburg had given a description to the police of a white male, about 11 stone, 5 foot 10 inches tall, black wavy hair, rounded face, public-school English accent. The police had circulated an artist's sketch of the male and canvassed partygoers, the Round Table Club, and the Oxford colleges, but there had been no takers. Or rather, a lot of false alarms but no leads that had panned out.

In the Oxford CID report the third man seemed to be a red herring anyway. The third man was almost certainly not the person who had either supplied or injected her with heroin. There were multiple eyewitness testimonies that Anastasia was an adept and experienced junkie: a smack cook from her very first year at Oxford. She was an established intravenous user and had injected friends and boyfriends on several occasions; a skill she had presumably learned during a gap year that she had spent mostly in South-East Asia.

The ME, crime scene, and autopsy photographs showed an emaciated, hollow-eyed girl covered with track lines. Anastasia was racing toward her rendezvous with death, and even if she'd survived that particular night and that particular party, you didn't fancy her chances of making old bones.

Still, none of that was our concern.

Our concern was Michael Kelly and his role in the affair.

The Michaelmas term was ending so we had to move fast before the students left college. We tracked down Anastasia's classmates, friends, and her college tutor. We showed our warrant cards, and everyone answered our questions even though we had no
de jure
authority.

Didn't matter. People wanted to talk. Lovely girl. Shame. So quiet. So gentle. Lovely. Dreamy. Off in her own world. Not much of a student. Not really a party girl as a matter of fact. Not wild. Reflective. Wrote poems. Big fan of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

Interview with Colin Prenderghast, the chief inspector who ran the local drug squad. “Where would a girl like Anastasia get heroin around here?”

“Not so easy around here. But London is only sixty minutes away by express bus.”

“You ever find Anastasia's dealer?”

“No. But she was rich. She had contacts. We found trace amounts of heroin and cocaine in her car, and in her rooms at Somerville she had an ounce of Turkish brown tar heroin stashed away in a hollowed-out economics book.”

“Who doesn't?”

My joke not appreciated. My jokes seldom appreciated.

And it wasn't really a joke anyway, more of a confession.

Michael Kelly's mates had mostly graduated, but several people remembered him with affection. A good egg. Not such a brilliant student, “but a total waster.”

We got a list of names of the secretive Round Table Club, but the interviews with them were unproductive. Most of the club were freshers who hadn't been at Oxford when Anastasia had died, and for the remaining members
omertà
was the order of the day. They hadn't been at the party that night, they had alibis, they didn't know who was there. It was not a completely officially sanctioned Round Table Club event, so there were no records . . .

Michael's college tutor spoke well of him. Not terribly hard working, not what you'd call brilliant, but applied himself and was pleasant enough.

“Popular?”

“Indeed. Yes. Didn't row but was in the right clubs. He was charming and a little bit dangerous. He was always one step ahead of the proctors. Until, of course, the fateful party . . .”

We spent the next day chasing down leads, conducting interviews, looking at angles, but there was nothing new. No signs of conspiracy. Oxford CID and the Thames Valley Constabulary depressingly competent.

Third day. Breakfast at the B&B. Toast and marmalade. Silver-top milk and cornflakes. Terry Wogan on in the background. Mrs. Brown hovering. A squirrel looking in the window.

Morning going through files.

Lawson found a meticulously photocopied copy of Anastasia's personal diary. Initial excitement as we read it together. But there was nothing of real interest. A few hasty entries. Lecture notes. Tutorial times. On the day before her death she had copied a few lines from Anne Sexton, but there were no revelations from the gates of death.

Doors open. Visitors. Superintendent Smith, Chief Inspector Boyson, Constable Atkins.

“How is everything, gentlemen?” asked Superintendent Smith, a tall Basil Fawltyish man in a grey suit.

“Good, thanks,” I replied.

“Everything up to the high standards of the RUC?”

No attempt to hide the sarcasm.

Grins.

Sniggers.

Even some outright laughter in our faces.

Gave Lawson the afternoon off. Walked up Norham Gardens to the house Gottfried Habsburg had rented on Fyfield Road—his pad while he was at the university. Bikes outside, students going in and out. Followed one of the students in. A communal living room. TV chairs, bean-bag chairs. No aura. No feel. Nothing to see here.

Back downtown. Martyrs' Memorial. Roman emperors' heads. Blackwell's bookshop. Michael Foot peering in the bookshop window. That stick, that haircut: unmistakable.

Inside. “Where's the poetry section?”

“Just over there to the left. All the way against the wall. There's new stuff by Christopher Logue and Geoffrey Hill. A display.”

“Oh yeah?”

“And of course we're stocking up on Philip Larkin in light of . . .” sotto voce “you know, on his last legs . . . cancer . . . no chance.”

I looked under S and found
The Complete Poems
of Anne Sexton. I flipped to the back cover and discovered that she was a glamorous, intelligent, good-looking brunette. It was ten quid but I bought it anyway and walked to the Bear Inn off the High Street. I ordered a pint of Fullers and sat down by the window. Rummaged in my briefcase, took out a picture of Anastasia Coleman in her sixth-form uniform. Before the gap year. Before the H. Bright girl, clever eyes, dimples. A good daughter. Destined to go far.

I opened the Sexton book in the middle. A nice line about suicides having a special language: “like carpenters” they want to know which tools, “they never ask why build . . .” As the book went on the poems about death and the methods of achieving death grew thicker. A poem entitled “Sylvia's Death” seethed with anger at Sylvia Plath managing to escape life first. A poem called “Suicide Note” spoke of taking an elevator into hell where “even the wasps cannot find my eyes.” It was heady stuff. Comforting, perhaps, if you were a junkie on a nightly elevator ride down into the depths unsure if you were ever coming back.

I closed the book, left the pint half drunk. I found Lawson at the B&B listening to The Archers with the Browns, a cat purring on his lap.

“Let's get out of this town,” I said.

“Home?” he asked hopefully.

“Not yet. Let's go to London. Let's interview the German.”

“OK,” he said.

15: GOTTFRIED HABSBURG

He had a reputation as a louche aristocrat, but we found Habsburg working as a stockbroker at a respectable City firm and living with an elderly uncle at a nice, large but rather run-down house by Hampstead Heath. I called to make an appointment and Gottfried said that he would take the day off to talk to us.

He was a slight young man with blond hair, blue-grey eyes, and high cheekbones. He was dressed in a dark, formal suit. His English was excellent, his manners impeccable. A valet brought us coffee in a large sitting room stuffed with books.

I told him about the suspicions that had arisen after Michael Kelly's supposed suicide and explained why we were looking into Anastasia Coleman's death again. I laid it all on the line for him: a conspiracy, the third man, police incompetence, Michael Kelly as the fall guy who knew too much . . . 

Lawson looked horrified as I spilled all of our pet theories to this stranger/material witness/potential conspirator. Sometimes it's best to keep all the pertinent information from an interview subject, sometimes it's better to tell them everything you know or suspect, and most of the time you follow Aristotle and take the middle road between these poles. Each case is a discrete entity. With the pleasant young Gottfried I felt that candor and forthrightness would get the job done. With the past behind him, our presence would be an unpleasant shock, but if we were ingratiating and explained that he was a tangential element in a wider investigation, it might be enough to get his lips moving. And if it wasn't, well, you could always dial it up. RUC men were experts at dialing it up . . . 

“So you can see why we'd appreciate your cooperation in this matter, Mr., er, Herr—”

“Gottfried, please.”

“Gottfried. The last thing we want to do is drag up painful memories. I know you've cooperated with Thames Valley Police and the coroner, but you can see that what happened with Anastasia might have some bearing on Michael Kelly's tragic death. Perhaps Michael knew the identity of the third man at your party. Perhaps he was being blackmailed into revealing this individual's identity. Perhaps he was the one doing the blackmailing. Maybe this has nothing at all to do with his death. There are many potential variables which we will need to eliminate from our inquiries.”

Gottfried stroked his chin and stubbed out his cigarette.

“You think Michael may have been killed to keep this man's identity a secret?”

“Who knows? If there was a blackmail scheme, someone may have killed Michael to keep him silent,” Lawson said.

“It's baroque, I'll grant you, but not beyond the realms of possibility,” I added.

“Then I too may be in danger?” Gottfried asked, his eyes widening slightly.

Lawson and I exchanged a glance. “Only if you know the man's name. Do you know the man's name?”

Gottfried looked at the floor.

“Sir? Do you know the man's name?”

Gottfried closed his eyes and shook his head, but there was no reeling it back in now.

“Let me make myself perfectly clear, sir. I am asking you if you know the name of the man who was with you and Michael Kelly the morning Anastasia Coleman died? Do you understand what I'm asking?”

Gottfried nodded.

“Well?”

“Am I being compelled to tell you?” Gottfried asked.

“It is a murder inquiry, Gottfried. Michael Kelly is dead; you are required to cooperate with us,” I said, although, of course, this wasn't strictly true.

Gottfried lit another cigarette.

“Sir, if we have to, we'll arrest you and bring you to Northern Ireland and interview you there,” Lawson said, his powers of invention impressing me no end.

Gottfried blew out a line of cigarette smoke.

He sighed.

Silence
.

One beat, two, three.

“Sir?”

“But you see, there is still the question of honor,” Habsburg said.

“Is the man you are protecting an honorable man? Would the gentleman you are protecting do the same for you?”

Habsburg considered it. “I do not know.”

“When the newspapers were attacking you, did he speak up? Did he offer to help you?”

“No.”

“Has he offered to help you since?”

“No.”

“Has he done one thing to help clear your reputation?”

“No.”

“What is his name?”

“You already know his name. Why must you make me confirm it?”

“What do you mean
we
already know his name?” I asked.

“You, the police.”

“What police?”

“At the Oxford police station I was shown his picture and asked if this was the man.”

Lawson and I exchanged another look.

“Oxford CID showed you a picture of the man who was in your house the morning of Anastasia Coleman's death?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And you confirmed that it was him?”

“Yes.”

“So Oxford CID already knows who he is?”

“Yes.”

“And they kept this name out of the papers and kept him away from the inquest?”

“Naturally. He is very well connected.”

“But how did it not come up at the inquest?” Lawson asked.

“The inquest was an extremely interesting experience. That too was a matter of honor. I had decided that if I was asked a direct question under oath about this person's identity I would tell the truth. But the situation never arose. The coroner was very careful not to ask me any direct questions about him.”

“The whole thing was rigged!” Lawson said, shocked. “That Colditz guy was in on it.”