19

THE POND MAN

On the night of January 17, 1995, as a belt of cold rain moved eastward across England, Horoko Tominaga chose to stay in and watch television. The young Japanese student had rented a basement room in a run-down Victorian boardinghouse on the edge of Hampstead, a subway stop away from Drewe’s neighborhood. Even though she had to share a bathroom and kitchen with several other foreign students, the rent was cheap and the Heath was close enough that she could always go out for a stroll whenever she felt cramped or homesick. Tonight the BBC was showing Pride and Prejudice and Sounds of the Eighties.

Tominaga flipped through the channels.

In Japan, a massive earthquake had shaken the city of Kobe.

In Texas, a retarded man convicted of murder was executed after the newly inaugurated governor, George Bush, turned down his appeal for clemency.

A little after nine Tominaga heard one of her housemates, Gina, coming downstairs to use the bathroom. An hour later Sandor and his girlfriend, Gyongyver, both Hungarian students, stumbled in from an evening on the town. Tominaga could hear them chatting and laughing upstairs. Around midnight she decided to turn in. She snapped the hall light on and walked to the bathroom. A man was standing inside, in the shadows. She couldn’t see his face.

“Who are you?” she asked, alarmed.

The stranger said he had a meeting with the landlord, David Konigsberg, and was looking for his room. Tominaga led him up the darkened stairway to Konigsberg’s room on the first floor and knocked on the door. There was no answer. The man asked to borrow Tominaga’s cell phone to call the landlord, but again there was no answer. Then he asked if he could wait in the hallway until Konigsberg returned. Tominaga felt uncomfortable leaving him there, but this was a boardinghouse, after all; strangers came and went.

She returned to her room in the basement, locked the door, and turned out the light. About thirty minutes later she heard footsteps moving quickly down the stairs, across the basement floor, and out the back door.

Tominaga had finally fallen asleep when a faint smell of smoke followed by a tumble of footsteps and shouts from upstairs jolted her out of bed. Wide awake, she opened her door and saw another of her housemates racing down the stairs toward the kitchen, shouting, “David’s room’s on fire!”

Tominaga helped him fill a saucepan with water and ran back up to the landlord’s room with him. A wastebasket filled with paper was ablaze, and the flames were already licking at the ceiling. Tominaga and her housemate ran downstairs screaming. As the smoke detectors went off, they fled out the back door.

Outside, Tominaga looked up at the house through the rain and saw one of the other students crawling out of her bedroom window on the second floor, then shimmying down a drainpipe to safety. The young Hungarians, Sandor and Gyongyver, were still trapped inside. Their only way out was through the window and onto the roof.

Sandor went first so he could pull Gyongyver up to safety. He climbed out and reached down for her, but she was frozen with fear, unable to move a muscle. Sandor screamed for her to climb, but the heat and smoke were unbearable. He pulled away, ran across the roof, and jumped to an adjoining building.

When he looked back, she was gone.

 

 

The next day Detective Richard Higgs sat at his desk in the Hampstead police station reading the preliminary reports on the fire at 49 Lowfield Road. By the time the firefighters had arrived at the scene, the three-story boardinghouse was nearly gutted. The investigators had determined that the fire spread too quickly to have been an accident. Higgs noted that none of the doors had been locked and that the fire alarms were intact.

All the students had escaped without life-threatening injuries save for Gyongyver: She had either slipped or jumped from the top floor and was found unconscious in a basement well. Her condition was critical, with severe burns and carbon monoxide poisoning from the smoke. Her ribs and pelvis had been fractured in the fall, and she was not expected to pull through.

If anyone had asked Higgs, a former fraud investigator, about his approach to detection and police procedure, he would have described himself as a “pond man.” An investigation was like a pond: You threw a pebble in and watched the ripples. A good detective began in the quiet center, then proceeded methodically to the bank. Somewhere in between, he got his man.

Higgs set the file out on his desk: He had witness statements, photographs, the medical examiner’s report, the fire marshal’s log, and the police report. In light of the young woman’s critical condition, the fire had been bumped up to a high priority. Nevertheless, Higgs knew that his chances of finding the culprit were slim, no matter how many detectives he had on the case. Arthur Conan Doyle once said that forensic science was unique because with most sciences, “you start with a series of experiments and work forward. But in forensic science we have the finished product and we have to work backward.” This was particularly problematic in the case of arson, where the statistics were not in Higgs’s favor: Only about 16 percent of all arson crimes were solved, compared to an average of 28 percent for other crimes. Arson was particularly tough to prove. The evidence was destroyed by the fire, and the possible motivations were myriad, ranging from murder and intimidation to revenge and hate crimes.

Higgs had considered all these, and none seemed to apply. He had quickly ruled out the most obvious suspects. In 98 percent of all murders in Europe, it was a spouse or close relative who pulled the proverbial trigger, but most of the Hungarian woman’s family lived abroad, and her boyfriend, initially a suspect, had been cleared. He had been severely burned on his legs and chest while he stood on the roof screaming for his girlfriend and trying to pull her out. When she died nearly one month after the fire, he would blame himself for her death and be placed under psychiatric observation.

As for the other students, all of whom were foreigners, none had reported racial or xenophobic harassment, which meant this probably wasn’t a hate crime. Higgs also had to rule out pyromania: Firebugs tended to work serially, using the same modus operandi over and over again. In this case, there were no other reports of arson in Hampstead or in the surrounding neighborhoods.

There was another possibility. Arson was often used to cover up other crimes, such as fraud, and Higgs thought there were two possible suspects in this regard. The first was the stranger Tominaga had seen in the bathroom. With her help, the police put together a computerized composite of a man in his forties, of average height and weight, wearing glasses and a mustache. The second suspect was the landlord. Detectives had recovered enough charred documents from his room to fill a Dumpster—among them, mail-order invoices addressed to different people, suspicious mortgage applications, and requests for rent aid, a state system set up to help landlords unable to rent out their premises. That was odd, Higgs thought, since Konigsberg had no vacancies when his boardinghouse burned down.²²

Higgs’s investigators discovered that a few days prior to the fire, one of Konigsberg’s tenants had threatened to report him to the rent aid agency. Maybe the man had been spooked enough to burn whatever incriminating evidence was in the room and the fire simply got out of hand. Higgs tracked Konigsberg down to a shabby camper, where he had been living since the blaze.

The landlord had a solid alibi, but Higgs suspected he was hiding something. He ordered three of his men to trace Konigsberg’s movements and reconstruct a minute-by-minute account of where he’d been in the hours leading up to the fire and what he’d done the following day. Higgs also wanted a full report on any other businesses Konigsberg was involved in.

Meanwhile, Higgs combed through the witness statements and noticed that one of the tenants at the boardinghouse had previously rented a room from Konigsberg at another address: 30 Rotherwick Road in nearby Golders Green. Why was Konigsberg renting out rooms in a house owned by someone else, a woman named Batsheva Goudsmid? It was a bit of a puzzle.

After twenty-nine years on the force, Higgs was weeks away from retirement. This would probably be his last case, and he had no intention of leaving it unsolved. He was determined to lock up the Hampstead firebug and leave a tidy office behind. Besides, it was always nice to get out of the station.

Higgs got into his unmarked car and drove the short distance to Rotherwick Road.

 

 

Batsheva Goudsmid stood in the doorway, in jeans and a sweater. She looked as if she’d been up all night. Higgs told her about the fire and asked her what she knew about David Konigsberg. She shook her head.

He’s a crook, but he had nothing to do with the fire, she said, and suggested that the police would be better off looking for her ex-partner, John Drewe. “He kidnapped my children and brainwashed them. He’s stolen all my money.”

Higgs wondered whether she was mentally unstable. The more she talked about Drewe, the more agitated she became. Her voice went up an octave, and she started shaking. She said that Drewe had convinced their family doctor and a child psychologist that she was abusing their two children. He had submitted reports stating that she had killed the family pets, locked her daughter in the bathroom, and set a hallway on fire. He had also convinced the child psychologist to write a damning medical report that had gotten Goudsmid fired. More recently, he had told family court that she was mentally ill and an unfit mother, and persuaded them to grant him custody of the children.

They’re all lies, she insisted.

Goudsmid told Higgs that she and Drewe had two Le Corbusier works that were now hanging on the walls of the family doctor’s office. She believed that Drewe had bribed him with art. She said Drewe was still hounding her, and had recently reported to the police that she was trying to commit suicide.

“Four policemen broke the door down,” she said. “I was stark naked in the bath. He’s trying to get me committed to an asylum so that he can take my house.” On another occasion, she continued, Drewe had sent nurses to her home to take her away, and she had been forced to hide in her neighbor’s gardening shed.

“I want him arrested! He’s a crook and a murderer. He’s the one who started the fire.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Higgs.

Konigsberg had something on him and he was blackmailing John, she claimed.

Goudsmid explained that she had met Konigsberg a year before at a community meeting organized by their local synagogue. She asked him to help her rent out four rooms in her house while she visited her ailing father in Israel, and he agreed to make the arrangements. She claimed that when she returned a few weeks later, she discovered that he had rented out the entire house to half a dozen students and pocketed the money. He had also taken several paintings, she claimed, along with a pile of incriminating correspondence that he was using to blackmail Drewe. She alleged that a few days before the fire, Drewe had called her to ask about the landlord. He wanted to know whether Konigsberg lived alone and what kind of locks and alarms he had at the boardinghouse. She was sure that Drewe had burned down the house because he couldn’t find the documents.

“What was in those documents?” Higgs asked.

Goudsmid suspected it had something to do with art. Over the years she had seen a stream of paintings and documents come and go from Rotherwick Road. Drewe always said that the paintings were gifts from his mentor, John Catch, but she no longer believed it. They were either stolen or forged.

Higgs put down his notebook and took a hard look at Goudsmid.

Her torrent of accusations was suspect: She had issues with Konigsberg, who she claimed had cheated her, and she had a mountain of grudges against Drewe, who had left her after a thirteen-year relationship and now had custody of their two children. Higgs had spent too many hours around interrogation tables and drunk too many cups of tea in the presence of practiced circumnavigators not to know that in cases involving egregious marital dysfunction, one had to stay on one’s toes. Here, a nasty custody battle appeared to have sent Goudsmid over the edge. Her partner had abandoned her and taken her children away. She was paranoid and inconsolable, a classic jilted woman.

He asked Goudsmid for Drewe’s phone number and thanked her for her time. As far as he was concerned, she was one of the most disagreeable people he had ever interviewed, but still he felt a small dash of sympathy.

Back at the station, he searched for any mention of Drewe in the database. The professor had no priors. He was now living with a Dr. Helen Sussman in Reigate, an affluent town in Surrey, fifteen miles from London. The detective picked up the phone and dialed Drewe’s number.

 

 

The man who swept into Hampstead Station was not what Higgs expected. Goudsmid had described her ex as a lout and a bully, an unscrupulous schemer who was capable of murder. The police thought they were in for a long and fruitless afternoon searching through the detritus of a marriage gone sour, but the gentleman who stood before the desk sergeant seemed poised and cooperative.

Everything about Professor John Drewe suggested confidence and accomplishment. He wore a tailored suit and spoke with an upper-class accent. He seemed relaxed and waited quietly for the detectives to escort him to one of the interrogation rooms.

Once they were seated, Higgs told him about his meeting with Goudsmid and described her long list of allegations.

She’s a disturbed woman, Drewe said calmly. If the detectives had any doubt, they could check with Social Services, which had been to see her several times and could verify her mental state. He admitted that he and Goudsmid had been through a messy breakup, and that he had been granted initial custody of the children, but he said they were still squaring off with family court. Meanwhile, the children were living with him and his new partner, whom he planned to marry, and were in a stable environment.

Goudsmid was bitter and angry, he told the detectives mournfully. The poor thing would say anything. He had let her stay at Rotherwick Road, even though he owned half of it, and he was paying for the children’s expenses.

The police wanted to know how he knew Konigsberg. Had he ever been in the house on Lowfield Road?

The professor had never heard of the man, nor had he set foot in the place, and he had an alibi: He had been with his fiancée on the night of the fire.

Where was he currently teaching, and how long had he held that post?

Drewe did not see how any of this related to the investigation. There was no need to go into it. Suffice it to say that he was a nuclear physicist and a businessman with interests in Britain and on the Continent. He had had dealings with Her Majesty’s government and had contacts at every level, including the Secret Service. Then he apologized to the officers, saying that he had several meetings ahead of him and that there was nothing else he could do for them. They were free to contact him if they had any more questions. With that he left the station, slipped into the back of his Bentley, and drove away.

“What an arrogant bastard,” thought Higgs. “He acts like he’s doing us a favor. He expects us to tip our caps.”

Higgs was determined not to let his personal feelings compromise his professional judgment, but it struck him that Drewe was unusually composed throughout the interview. Higgs had been around long enough to know that even the most innocent of citizens tended to be nervous when they were hauled down to the station.

The professor seemed a little too relaxed. The detective figured he was looking at the next ripple in the pond.