Chapter 3 Four Minutes

On Monday morning, Iris taught the death of Socrates to ninety undergraduates who had not done the reading. Lecture Hall C was too warm, the way it always was in October. The old radiators knocked like someone asking to be let in. Rain streaked the tall windows and turned the courtyard outside into a watercolour of grey stone and yellow leaves. In the third row, a boy had fallen asleep with his cheek on his notebook and his pen still upright in his hand, as if nobody had told it yet. On any other Monday she would have stopped mid-sentence, tiptoed up the steps, and delivered the rest of the lecture from six inches above his ear until the whole hall was crying with laughter. On any other Monday she would have been pacing, talking with her hands, perching on the edge of the desk, losing her pencil out of her hair and finding it again behind her ear. Her students called her Professor Sunshine when they thought she couldn't hear. She had always pretended not to. This Monday, she stood very still behind the lectern in a grey jumper three sizes too big, with violet shadows under her eyes, and the boy in the third row slept on undisturbed. "He was given a choice," Iris said. "Exile, or hemlock. His friends had bribed the guards. The cell door was open. He could have walked out of Athens and lived another twenty years." She looked out at the rows of faces. "Why didn't he?" A girl near the front put her hand up. "Because running away would have meant his whole life was a lie. Everything he'd taught about obeying the laws." "Good. Anyone else?" A boy at the back, without raising his hand: "Maybe he was just protecting someone." A few people laughed. Iris didn't. "Protecting who?" The boy shrugged, embarrassed now. "I dunno. People don't usually die for an idea, do they? They die for a person. The idea's just what they say afterwards." Iris stood at the lectern a moment longer than was natural. Ninety pens waited. "That's not in the text," she said at last. "But it's not wrong." Morrow was waiting outside with two coffees and the face of a man carrying bad news in one hand and worse news in the other. "Which first?" Iris asked. "The DA wants to charge Vane. Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock." She took the coffee. "On what? A tuning fork and a neighbour who saw him leave?" "On a tuning fork, a neighbour, a motive a jury will understand in thirty seconds, and a suspect who won't speak." He fell into step beside her, crunching a mint. "Your wet cup's interesting, Hale. Interesting doesn't stop a charge." "And the worse news?" "Isn't worse. Just strange." He pulled a folded sheet from inside his coat. "We went back through the building last night. Mrs. Pellman, third floor, directly under Crane. Seventy-one, can't sleep, hears everything. She heard someone go up the stairs at about eleven twenty-eight. She's sure of the time because the late news had just finished on her radio." "Anything about the person?" "Leather soles. Not trainers, not boots. She said they walked like they had nowhere to be." Morrow's mouth twisted. "Her words. Like a man walking into church." They had stopped under the stone colonnade. Rain hissed on the flagstones beyond the arches. "Elias left at eleven-twenty," Iris said slowly. "Eight minutes later, somebody walks up. Crane opens the door, puts the kettle on, makes tea." "Then Bill Hartley, across the landing, hears a thud at eleven thirty-six. Knocks, gets no answer, tries the door. It's unlocked. Finds Crane at eleven-forty. Nobody passed him on the landing. Nobody passed Mrs. Pellman on the stairs." "Then how did they get out?" "Bedroom window. Fire escape. The latch was open. Forensics assumed Crane left it that way." "Crane sorted his pills by the day of the week, Morrow. He didn't leave windows open in October." Morrow said nothing, which was how he agreed with her. Iris closed her eyes and laid it out in the dark, piece by piece, the way her father had taught her to lay out an argument: every premise on the table before you let yourself touch the conclusion. 11:20. Elias leaves. Crane alive at the door. 11:28. Leather soles on the stairs. Unhurried. Somewhere in between, a kettle boils. Tea is poured. Drunk. 11:36. A thud. 11:40. A body. "Four minutes," she said. "What?" She opened her eyes. "Between the thud and Hartley opening the door, there were four minutes. The killer had four minutes to get out before somebody came in. Do you know what you'd do with four minutes, Morrow? You'd run. You'd go straight for that window." "But he didn't." "He washed a cup." She heard her own voice, very quiet. "He stood at the sink with a dead man behind him, and washed his cup, and dried it, and put it in the rack the right way up. He spent his four minutes on that." She looked out at the rain. "Somebody who walks into a building like it's a church. Somebody who doesn't panic. Somebody who couldn't bear to leave a mess." For a moment, something moved at the very edge of her mind. A kitchen doorway. Warm water running over a pair of long, elegant hands. She set it down very carefully, the way you set down a glass you have suddenly realised is too hot. "One more thing," Morrow said. "Crane's mobile. One call after Vane left. Eleven twenty-four. Two minutes long." He held out the sheet. "To Victor Ashby." The name meant nothing to Morrow. It meant something to her. "Ashby ran Linden Hall," Iris said. "He was the director when it burned." "He was also the man who collected four million in insurance and built the shiny new Ashby Centre on the same plot." Morrow's eyebrows rose. "You knew that?" "My father sat on the board," she said. "Years ago." "So Crane rings Ashby four minutes after Vane leaves and says what? I'm about to talk?" Morrow was already turning, already digging for his car keys. "We bring Ashby in. Today." "Wait." Iris looked at the address printed under the name. "Hollins Park." "So?" "Hollins Park is forty minutes from Crane's building. At night, in the rain, thirty-five at the very best. If Crane rang Ashby at eleven twenty-four, Ashby could not have been on those stairs at eleven twenty-eight." She handed the sheet back. "Victor Ashby isn't the second cup of tea." Morrow stared at her. "Then who the hell is?" "Somebody who was already close," Iris said. "Close enough to be there in eight minutes. Close enough to watch Elias Vane walk out of that building." The thought arrived cold and whole, and she made herself say it out loud. "Somebody who was waiting outside." She requested the Linden fire file at noon. It came up from the basement archive at three: two cardboard boxes gone soft at the corners, smelling of dust and something faintly burnt, though she knew that was her imagination. She read it alone in an empty interview room with the door shut. Fire originated in basement electrical room, approx. 23:52, 14 October. Cause: faulty wiring. Ruled accidental. Deceased (3): Daniel Vane, 22, cellist, Young Artists' Programme. Samuel Ortiz, 58, night security. Grace Liu, 34, lighting technician. Clipped to the page were three small photographs. Ortiz, grey-moustached and solemn in a security cap. Liu, laughing at something out of frame, a pencil behind her ear. And Daniel Vane: a round, open, freckled face under a mop of dark curls, a gap between his front teeth, grinning straight into the camera as if it had just told him a joke. He looked nothing like his brother. And then, around the eyes, he looked exactly like him. Iris turned the photograph face down and kept reading. Typed and signed, the statement of the only witness: I, Walter James Crane, stage manager, state that I completed the final walk-through of Linden Hall at 23:30. All performers and staff had departed with the exception of Mr. Ortiz, on duty, and Ms. Liu, who was completing a lighting inventory. I locked the main doors at 23:35 and left by the stage door. She read it three times. Then she turned to the coroner's page for Daniel Vane and found the line she was looking for. Body recovered from rehearsal room B, ground floor. Cello case beside the deceased. Crane had sworn that at half past eleven every performer had gone home. Daniel Vane had died inside, beside his cello. So either Daniel had been hiding in the building when Crane did his walk-through, or he had come back in after the doors were locked. And Crane had locked the main doors himself. Which meant someone had let Daniel in, or someone had left a door open for someone else, and Daniel had walked through it. Either way, Walter Crane's sworn statement was a lie. He had lied for seven years. And on the night he decided to stop, someone had walked up his stairs like a man walking into church. Iris sat back. The radiator ticked. Outside, the light was already going. I was there that night, Professor. I saw more than one person go back inside. She picked up the file and went to find him. It was the third time she had walked into that room. She knew, now, the exact sound of the door: a sigh, then a click. She knew the hum of the light. She knew the way he looked up when she came in. And she knew, which unsettled her more than anything, that she had been waiting all afternoon to see him do it. He did it. "You haven't slept," he said. "Neither have you." "I'm not the one who has to think clearly tomorrow." She sat and laid the fire report on the table between them, open at Crane's statement. She didn't say anything. She let him read. She watched his eyes move down the page. When they reached All performers and staff had departed, they stopped. His jaw tightened once, very slightly, the way a string tightens under a tuning key. "You knew he lied," Iris said. "Yes." "Why didn't you ever say so?" "I did. Seven years ago. To the police, to the inquiry, to anyone who'd listen." He pushed the page back towards her, gently, as if it were still capable of hurting someone. "I was twenty-four. I was the brother of a dead boy. I was angry and grieving and sure. Mr. Crane was a respected man with thirty years at the hall and no reason to lie." The corner of his mouth moved. "Who would you have believed, Professor?" Iris had no answer to that. She found she didn't like having no answer. "Tell me about that night," she said. "Not who. Just what you saw." For a long moment she thought he would refuse. Then he looked down at his hands, and began. "I picked him up after the concert. I always picked him up. He didn't drive; he said cars were too quiet, he couldn't hear the road." A breath. "It was raining. Like now. We were halfway home when he realised he'd left his cello in the rehearsal room. He'd taken it out of its case to show someone something, and then he'd got talking, and he forgot." Elias almost smiled. "He was always talking." Iris didn't move. "I was tired. I'd been working since six. I said it could wait till morning. He said the radiators in that room were broken and the cold would crack the wood. So I turned the car round." His voice didn't change. Only his hands did. They had gone very still on the table, too still, like hands that had learned what happens when they move. "It was eleven-forty when we got back. The main doors were locked. But the side door by the loading bay was open, propped with a fire extinguisher. Daniel said, See? Fate. He was laughing. He said, Five minutes. And he ran in through the rain with his jacket over his head." He stopped. The light hummed. "I told him five minutes," Elias said quietly. "I sat in the car with the engine running. I was annoyed with him. I remember that. I remember being annoyed, and putting the radio on, and watching the clock on the dashboard." Iris realised her own hands were pressed flat on the table, as if bracing against something. "At eleven forty-four, a car pulled up at the far end of the loading bay. Someone got out and went in through the same door. At eleven forty-seven, someone came out of the building, walking fast. Not running. Walking fast." His eyes weren't on her. They were seven years away. "At eleven fifty-two, I saw a light. Orange. In the basement windows. I thought someone had switched on a lamp." He swallowed. "By the time I understood it wasn't a lamp, the whole ground floor was smoke. I got as far as the corridor. They pulled me out." He turned his left hand over on the table, palm up, and for the first time she saw the whole of the scar. It didn't just cross the back of his hand. It wrapped round the side and spread across the heel of his palm, pale and shiny and tight, the skin of a burn. "They told me afterwards it was too late from the moment it started. They said it as if that should help." Iris didn't trust herself to speak. She thought of a round freckled face with a gap between its front teeth, laughing in the rain with a jacket over its head. Five minutes. She thought of a tuning fork in a coat pocket, still warm. She looked at the shiny skin on Elias's palm, and something in her chest gave way so quietly she almost didn't notice. "It wasn't your fault," she said. He looked at her then. His eyes were very tired and very kind, and it was the kindness that undid her. "You're very good at your job, Professor," he said softly. "But you don't believe that either. You never believe anything until you've proved it." She looked away first. She was not used to looking away first. When she spoke again, her voice was steady because she made it steady. "The person who went in at eleven forty-four. Who was it?" "Victor Ashby." He said it at once, without hesitation. It was true; she could hear that it was true. But he said it fast, the way you hand somebody the smaller of two parcels so they won't ask about the larger one. "And the person who came out at eleven forty-seven?" Silence. "Mr. Vane." She leaned forward. "Tomorrow at nine, the District Attorney is going to charge you with murder. If you give me a name, I can stop it. If you don't, I'm not sure that I can." "I know." "Then why—" "Because once a name is said, it can't be unsaid." His voice was very gentle. "Some people can survive the truth, Professor. Some people can't. I've had seven years to decide which kind this one is." "That isn't your decision to make." "No," he agreed. "It isn't. But it's the only one I have left." By a quarter past six she was in Morrow's car. The wipers beat back and forth, back and forth, like a metronome set too slow. "Ashby went in at eleven forty-four," Iris said. "Eight minutes before the fire. He ran a hall that burned and owns a centre built out of the insurance money, and for seven years nobody asked him a single question, because the only witness swore the building was empty." She stared at the road. "And on Saturday night, Walter Crane rang him to say the silence was over." "So Ashby's dirty." "Ashby's frightened. It's not the same thing." She pressed her thumb into the inside of her left wrist and didn't notice she was doing it. "He couldn't have killed Crane. But he knows who walked out of that building at eleven forty-seven." The Ashby house in Hollins Park was large and pale and lit in every single window, the way houses are lit when someone inside is afraid of the dark. The gates stood open. So did the front door. In the doorway stood a thin, elegant woman in a cream cashmere cardigan, with her arms wrapped tight around herself. "Mrs. Ashby? Detective Inspector Morrow. We need to speak to your husband." "He's not here." Her voice was thin and flat. "He left an hour ago." "Left for where?" "The airport. He packed a bag. He wouldn't tell me why." She looked past Morrow at Iris then, and her eyes narrowed in a faint, bewildered recognition. "You're Arthur Hale's daughter. Aren't you?" The rain came down between them. "Yes," said Iris. "He rang someone, you know. Victor did. Just before he left." Mrs. Ashby's arms tightened around herself. "I heard him in the study. He said, It's started again. And then he said, You told me this was finished." She shook her head slowly. "I don't know who he was talking to. But he was crying. Thirty-one years of marriage, and I have never heard Victor cry." Behind Iris, Morrow was already on his radio, his voice gone sharp: airport, all departures, Victor Ashby, now. Iris didn't hear him. She was standing on the wet steps of a stranger's house in the cold yellow light from the open door, and she was thinking of a man in a grey sweater in a locked room. And of how his hands had gone so still, the day before, when she'd said the words my father. Nine o'clock tomorrow. Fifteen hours.