With No One As Witness (47 page)

That, Lynley decided, could not be his worry. They’d given Hillier plenty of details to use on the programme, and he trusted that Hillier’s need to seem liberal in matters of race would keep him from taking out whatever frustration he had on Nkata. Nonetheless, he said, “I’ll take the heat on this, Winnie,” and added as a means of giving the DS further ammunition, “Until we hear from Barbara about that van she saw the magician driving, we hold back. So go with that e-fit from Square Four Gym and the reconstruction of Kimmo Thorne’s abduction. I expect we’ll get a result from that.”

A sharp knock on the door, and DI Stewart popped his head inside Lynley’s office. He said, “A word, Tommy?” and nodded a hello to Nkata, adding, “Got your face powdered for the cameras? Word has it your fan mail’s doubling every day.”

Nkata took the teasing with resignation. He said, “I’m forwarding it all on to you, man. Since the wife’s had enough, you’ll need a dating service, right? Fact, there’s a special letter come from a bird in Leeds. Twenty stone, she says, but I ’xpect you can handle that much woman.”

Stewart didn’t smile. “Sod you,” he said.

“Honours returned.” Nkata got to his feet and headed out of the office. Stewart took his place in one of the two chairs in front of Lynley’s desk. He tapped his fingers against his thigh, in the rhythmical pattern he adopted whenever he didn’t have something in his hands to play with. He was, Lynley knew from experience, a man who could dish it out but not take it. “That was a bit below the belt,” Stewart said.

“We’re all losing our sense of humour, John.”

“I don’t like my personal life—”

“No one does. Have you got something for me?”

Stewart appeared to consider this before he spoke, pinching the crease in his trousers and removing a speck of lint from his knee. “Two pieces of news. An ID on the Quaker Street body, courtesy of Ulrike Ellis’s list of missing Colossus kids. He was called Dennis Butcher. Fourteen years old. From Bromley.”

“Did we have him on the list of missing persons?”

Stewart shook his head. “Parents are divorced. Dad thought he was with Mum and her lover. Mum thought he was with Dad, Dad’s girlfriend, her two kids, and their new baby. So he was never reported missing. At least, that’s the story they tell.”

“Whereas the truth is…?”

“Good riddance, as far as they were concerned. We had the devil of a time getting either one of them to help ID the body, Tommy.”

Lynley looked away from Stewart and out of the window, through which the lights of nighttime London were beginning to glow. “I’d very much like someone to explain the human race to me. Fourteen years old. Why was he sent to Colossus?”

“Assault with a flick knife. He went to Youth Offenders first.”

“Another soul needing purification, then. He fits the mould.” Lynley turned back to the DI. “And the other piece of news?”

“We’ve finally come up with the Boots where Kimmo Thorne bought his makeup.”

“Have you indeed? Where is it? Southwark?”

Stewart shook his head. “We watched every tape from every Boots in the vicinity of his home and then in the area of Colossus. We got nothing. So we had another look at the paperwork on Kimmo and saw he hung round Leicester Square. It didn’t take long from there. Plotted out a quarter-mile radius from the square and found a Boots in James Street. There he was, buying his slap in the company of some bloke looking like the Grim Reaper gone Gothic.”

“That would be Charlie Burov,” Lynley said. “Blinker, as he’s commonly called. A mate of Kimmo’s.”

“Well, he was there. Big as life, both of them. Quite the pair, Kimmo and Charlie. Hard to miss. The person at the till was female, by the way, and there was a queue. Four people waiting to be served.”

“Anyone matching our e-fit from Square Four Gym?”

“Not so you could tell. But it’s CCTV film, Tommy. You know what that’s like.”

“What about the profiler’s description?”

“What about it? It’s vague enough to match three-quarters of the under-forty male population of London. The way I see it, we’re dotting and crossing. Enough i’s and t’s and we may stumble across what we’re looking for.”

There was truth to that: the endless slog that left no stone unturned. For it was often the least expected stone that, upended, revealed a vital piece of information.

Lynley said, “We’ll want Havers to have a look at the film, then.”

Stewart frowned. “Havers? Why?”

“She’s the only person so far who’s seen everyone we’re interested in at Colossus.”

“So you’re taking her theory on board?” Stewart asked the question casually—and it wasn’t an illogical inquiry—but there was something in the tone of it as well as in the attention Stewart suddenly gave to a thread on the seam of his trousers that made Lynley look more sharply at the DI.

“I’m taking every theory onboard,” he replied. “Have you a problem with that?”

“No problem, no,” Stewart said.

“Then…?”

The DI moved restlessly in his chair. He seemed to consider how best to answer, and he finally decided, saying, “There’s some muttering about favoritism, Tommy. Among the rest of the team. And there’s also the matter of…” He hesitated, and Lynley thought for a moment that Stewart was going to suggest ludicrously that there was talk of his having some sort of personal interest in Barbara Havers. But then Stewart said, “It’s the championing of her that’s misunderstood.”

“By everyone?” Lynley asked. “Or just by you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He knew how deep DI Stewart’s dislike of Havers ran. He said lightly, “John, I’m a glutton for punishment. I’ve sinned, and Barbara’s my purgatory. If I can mould her into a cop who can work as part of a team, I’m saved.”

Stewart smiled, in spite of himself, it seemed. “She’s clever enough if she weren’t so bloody maddening. I’ll give you that. And God knows she’s tenacious.”

“There’s that,” Lynley said. “It’s a case of her good points outweighing her bad.”

“Hell of a dress sense, though,” Stewart pointed out. “I think she shops at Oxfam.”

“I’ve no doubt she’d say there are worse places,” Lynley said. The phone on his desk rang as he was speaking and he lifted the receiver as Stewart stood to go. It was, he found, a case of speak of the devil.

“Minshall’s van,” Havers said without preamble. “It’s a SOCO wet dream, sir.”

Lynley nodded at Stewart as he left the office. He gave his attention to the telephone. “What’ve you got?” he asked Havers.

“Treasure. There’s so much lumber in his van that it’ll take a month to sort it all out. But there’s one item in particular that’s going to ring your chimes. It was under the driver’s seat.”

“And?”

“Child porn, sir. Dodgy photo of a naked kid with two blokes: taking at one end and giving at the other. You fill in the blanks. I say we get a warrant to search his place and another to tear his van apart. Get a SOCO team over here with fine-tooth combs.”

“Where is he now? Where are you?”

“Still in Camden Town.”

“Take him to the Holmes Street station, then. Put him in an interview room and get his address. I’ll meet you at his digs.”

“The warrants?”

“That’s not going to be a problem.”

THE MEETING had gone on far too long, and Ulrike Ellis was feeling the strain. Every extremity in her body tingled, with buzzing little impulses on the nerve endings running up and down her arms and her legs. She was trying to stay calm and professional—the personification of leadership, intelligence, foresight, and wisdom. But as the discussion among the board droned on, she grew ever more desperate to get out of the room.

This was the part she hated about her work: having to put up with the seven do-gooders who constituted the board of trustees and who absolved whatever guilty consciences they had about their obscene wealth by writing out the occasional cheque to the charity of their choice—in this case, Colossus—and corralling their equally well-heeled friends to do the same. Because of this, they tended to take their responsibility more seriously than Ulrike would have liked. So their monthly meetings in the Oxo Tower dragged on for hours as every penny was accounted for and tedious plans for the future were laid.

Today the gathering was worse than usual: They were all teetering on the edge without knowing it while she attempted to hide that fact from them. For meeting their long-term goal to raise enough money to open a branch of Colossus in North London was going to come to nothing if any scandal became associated with the organisation. And the need for Colossus was truly desperate across the river. Kilburn, Cricklewood, Shepherd’s Bush, Kensal Rise. Disenfranchised youth lived lives exposed to drugs, shootings, muggings, and robberies every day over there. Colossus could offer them an alternative to a lifestyle that doomed them to addictions, sexual diseases, incarceration, or an early death, and they deserved the opportunity to experience what Colossus had to offer.

In order for any of this to happen, though, it was essential that no connection exist between the organisation and a killer. And no connection did exist save the coincidence of five troubled boys dying at the same time as they ceased coming to classes and activities near Elephant and Castle. Ulrike was convinced of this, for there was no other path she could take and continue to live with herself.

So she put on a show of cooperation during the endless meeting. She nodded, took notes, murmured things like “Excellent idea” and “I’ll get on to that straightaway.” Through this means, she eked out yet another successful encounter with the trustees until one of them finally made the blessed motion to adjourn.

She’d ridden her bicycle to the Oxo Tower, so she hurried down to it. It wasn’t far to Elephant and Castle, but the narrow streets and the growing darkness made the way treacherous. By rights, she should have missed the news vendor’s placard altogether as she passed down Waterloo Road. But the phrase “Sixth Murder!” leapt out at her in front of a tobacconist’s shop, and she ground to a halt and pulled her bike onto the pavement.

Heart seizing up, she went inside and snatched up the Evening Standard. She read as she scraped a few coins out of her purse and handed them over at the till.

My God, my God. She couldn’t believe it. Another body. Another boy. Queen’s Wood, North London this time. Found that morning. He hadn’t yet been identified—at least no name had been given out by the police—so there was still the hope that this was a coincidental killing bearing no relationship to the other five murders…Except that Ulrike couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that. The age was similar: The paper used the term “young adolescent” to refer to the victim, and obviously they knew he hadn’t died of natural causes or even accidentally since they were calling it a murder. But still, couldn’t it be…?

She needed this killing to be unrelated to Colossus. She was desperate for that. If it was not, then she needed to be clearly seen as assisting the police in any way she could. There was absolutely no middle ground in this situation. She could temporise or outright prevaricate, but all that would do was prolong the inevitable if she’d accidentally hired a murderer as an employee and then refused to take action to root him out. If that was the case, she was done for. And so, probably, was Colossus.

Back at Elephant and Castle, she went straight to her office. She riffled through the contents of the top drawer in her desk for the card that the Scotland Yard detective had given to her. She punched in the numbers but was told that he was in a meeting and could not be interrupted. Was there a message or could someone else help her…?

Yes, she told the DC on the line. She identified herself. She mentioned Colossus. She wanted the dates when each of the bodies had been found. It was a matter of connecting the dead boys with activities at Colossus and the individuals who led those activities. She wanted to provide Superintendent Lynley with a fuller report than she’d previously given him, and those dates were the keys to meeting that self-imposed obligation.

The DC put her on hold for several minutes, no doubt seeking a superior officer to approve this request. When he came back, it was with the dates. She wrote them down, double-checked them against the names of the victims, and then rang off. Then she looked at them thoughtfully, and she considered them in the light of someone’s desire to discredit and ruin Colossus.

If there was a connection between Colossus and the dead boys, aside from the obvious one, she thought, it would have to be about reducing the organisation to rubble. So perhaps someone inside this place hated these types of kids in their every manifestation. Or perhaps someone inside had been thwarted in his desire to advance, to make a change in the workings of the programme, to succeed at a high level with a previously unheard of number of clients, to…anything. Or perhaps someone wanted to take her place and this was the route to get there. Or perhaps someone was mad as a hatter and only posing as a normal human being. Or perhaps—

“Ulrike?”

She looked up from the list of dates. She’d taken a calendar out of her drawer in order to compare those dates with scheduled activities and the location of those activities. Neil Greenham was standing there, his odd round head poked just inside her door, looking deferential.

Ulrike said, “Yes, Neil? May I help you?”

He blushed for some reason, his pudgy face going an unattractive shade that climbed all the way to his scalp and highlighted the scarcity of his hair. What was that all about? “Wanted you to know I’ll need to leave early tomorrow. Mum’s got to see the doctor about her hip, and I’m the only one who can drive her.”

Ulrike frowned. “She can’t go by cab?”

Neil looked markedly less deferential at this. “As it happens, she can’t. It’s too expensive. And I won’t have her taking the bus. I’ve already told the kids to come two hours earlier.” And then he added, “If that’s okay with you,” although he didn’t sound like someone who was going to alter his plans if they weren’t okay with his superior.

Ulrike thought about this. Neil had been manoeuvring for an administrative position since he’d come to work for them. He had to prove himself first, but he didn’t want to. His sort never did. He needed putting in his place. She said, “It’s fine, Neil. But in future, please check with me before you alter your schedule, will you?” She looked back down at her list, dismissing him.