With No One As Witness (84 page)

“You know me too well.”

“Not like I don’t go through the same dance.”

“How’re you doing? What d’they expect you to be able to tell them?”

“From looking at the tapes? I don’t think they know. They’re trying everything at this end. I’m just another source.”

“And?”

“Sweet FA. Kid’s mixed race. Mostly white, some black, and something else. Don’t know what. Th’other bloke in the picture? He could be anyone. He knew what he was doing. Kept himself covered, face away from the camera.”

“Well, that was one excellent use of your time, wasn’t it?”

“I can’t blame them, Barb. Doing what they can. They got a decent lead, though. Not five minutes before you rang. Came through by phone.”

“What is it? Where’d it come from?”

“Over West Kilburn. Harrow Road station’s got a snout in the community they depend on reg’larly, some black bloke with a big street rep and a nasty disposition, so no one messes with him. ’Cording to Harrow Road, this bloke saw the pictures in the paper from the CCTV, and he phoned them up and gave them a name. Could be nothing, but Harrow Road seem to think it’s worth looking into. Could be, they say, we got the shooter we’re looking for.”

“Who is it?”

“Didn’t get the name. Harrow Road are picking him up for questions. But if he’s the one, he’s going to crack. No doubt about it. He’s going to talk.”

“Why? How can they be so sure?”

“’Cause he’s twelve years old. And this i’n’t the first time he’s been in trouble.”

ST. JAMES GAVE Lynley the news. They met not in the corridor this time but rather in the small room that the family had been occupying for what seemed to Lynley like months on end. Helen’s parents had been talked into decamping, going in the company of Cybil and Daphne to a flat they owned in Onslow Square, where Helen herself had once lived. Penelope had returned to Cambridge to check on her husband and her three children. His own family were taking a few hours for rest and for a change of scene in Eaton Terrace. His mother had phoned when they’d arrived, saying, “Tommy, what shall we do with the flowers?” Scores of bouquets on the front porch, she said, a coverlet of them that descended the steps and went onto the pavement. He had no suggestions to give her. Offerings of sympathy could not touch him, he found.

Only Iris remained, stalwart Iris, the least Clydelike of all the Clyde sisters. Not a hint of elegance anywhere about her, her long hair no-nonsense and pulled back from her face with slides in the shape of horseshoes. She wore no makeup, and her skin was lined from the sun.

She’d wept when she’d first seen her youngest sister. She’d said fiercely, “This is not supposed to happen here, God damn it,” and he’d understood from that that she meant violence and death brought about by a gun. The provenance of this was America, not England. What was happening to the England she’d known?

She’d been gone too long, he wanted to tell her. The England she’d known had been dead for decades.

She’d sat with Helen for hours before she spoke again, and then it was to say to him quietly, “She’s not here, is she?”

“No. She’s not here,” Lynley agreed. For the spirit of Helen was gone entirely, now moved onward to the next part of existence—whatever that was. What remained was just the housing for that spirit, kept from putrescence by the questionable miracle of modern medicine.

When St. James arrived, Lynley took him to the waiting area, leaving Iris with Helen. He listened to the news about the Harrow Road police and their snout, but what he took in was a single piece of information: trouble with the law prior to this.

He said, “What sort of trouble, Simon?”

“Arson and bag snatching, according to Youth Offenders up there. He’s had a social worker attempting to counsel the family for some time. I spoke with her.”

“And?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. An older sister doing community service for a street mugging and a younger brother no one knows much about. They all live with an aunt and her boyfriend on a council estate. That’s all I know.”

“Youth Offenders,” Lynley said. “He has a social worker, then.”

St. James nodded. His gaze stayed on Lynley and Lynley could feel him making a study of him, evaluating him even as he too drew together the facts like strands of a web whose centre was always and forever the same.

“Youth at risk,” Lynley said. “Colossus.”

“Don’t torture yourself.”

He gave a bleak laugh. “Believe me, I don’t need to. The truth is doing the job well enough.”

TO ULRIKE, given the current circumstances, there were no two uglier words than internal investigation. That the board of trustees intended to gather information about her was bad enough. That they intended to do it through interviews and reviews was worse. She had enemies aplenty at Colossus now, and three of them were going to be happy as the dickens to take the opportunity to throw a few tomatoes against the image of herself that she’d tried to build.

Neil Greenham headed the list. He’d probably been storing his rotten little informational fruit grenades for months now, just waiting for the appropriate time to hurl them. For Neil was fighting for complete control of Colossus, and this was something that Ulrike had not realised till the latest development of Bensley and Richie turning up in her office. Of course, he’d never been a team player, had Neil—witness him actually losing a teaching job in a climate where the government was begging for teachers!—and while that had always been something of a red flag that Ulrike now admitted she should have noted, it was nothing compared to the insidious side of him that had been revealed with the unexpected advent in Elephant and Castle of two of the board members, not to mention the questions they had asked upon their arrival. So Neil was going to revel in the chance to tar her with a brush he’d no doubt been dipping in pitch since the first time she’d looked at him sideways.

Then there was Jack. The whole what-had-she-been-thinking of Jack. Her errors with Jack didn’t have to do with trotting off to talk to his landlady aunt, however. They had more to do with giving him a paid position at Colossus in the first place. Oh yes, that was supposed to be the whole theory about the organisation: to build the sense of self in malefactors till they didn’t have to malefact any longer. But she’d let fall by the wayside a critical piece of knowledge that she’d always possessed about individuals like Jack. They didn’t take kindly to others’ suspicions about them, and they were especially nasty when it came to the idea—however mistaken—that someone had grassed them up or was considering doing so. So Jack would be looking for payback, and he’d get it. He wouldn’t be able to think things through to the point of understanding how taking part in the facilitation of her demise at Colossus might come back and bite him in the arse once a replacement for her was found.

Griff Strong, on the other hand, understood that only too well. He would do what it took to preserve his position in the organisation, and if that meant making ostensibly reluctant allegations of sexual harassment from a female superior who couldn’t keep her hands off his delectable albeit married and oh-so-hesitant body, then that was what he would do. So what Neil Greenham planted in the minds of the board of trustees and what Jack Veness watered, Griff would cultivate. He’d wear that blasted fisherman’s sweater for the interview, as well. If he told himself anything, he would list the reasons why they’d come to a situation of every man for himself. Arabella and Tatiana would top that list. “Rike, you know I’ve got personal responsibilities. You always knew that.”

The only person Ulrike could come up with who might speak up in support of her was Robbie Kilfoyle, and that was merely because as a volunteer and not a paid employee, he’d have to be careful when interviewed. He’d have to walk a fine line of neutrality because he’d have no other way to protect his future and move himself along in the direction he wanted, which was paid employment. He couldn’t want to deliver sandwiches for the rest of his life, could he? But he had to be positioned, had Rob. He had to see himself as a player on her team and no one else’s.

She went in search of him. It was late in the day. She didn’t check the time, but the darkness outside and the emptiness of the building told her it was long after six and probably closer to eight. Robbie often worked later into the evenings, putting things back in order. There was a good chance he was still in the back somewhere, but if he wasn’t, she was determined to track him down.

He was nowhere in the building, however. The kit room was compulsively neat—something to compliment Rob on when she saw him, Ulrike thought—and surgery could have been performed in the practice kitchen so tidy was it. The computer lab had been seen to as well, as had the assessment meeting room. Rob’s careful marks were evident everywhere.

Rational thought told Ulrike to wait till the next afternoon to speak to Robbie. He would turn up round half past two as always, and she could thank him and forge a bond with him then. But anxiety suggested she start forging straightaway, so she looked up Rob’s phone number and rang his house. If he wasn’t there, she reckoned, she could leave a message with his dad.

But the double ringing went on and on. Ulrike listened to it for a good two minutes before she rang off and went on to plan B.

She was, of course, flying by the seat of her jeans, and she knew it. But the part of her that was saying, Relax, go home, have a bath, drink some wine, you can do all this tomorrow was outshouted by the part of her exclaiming that time was flying and the machinations of her enemies were well under way. Besides, her stomach had been riding above her lungs, it seemed, for most of the day. She was never going to be able to breathe, eat, or sleep with ease till she did something to alter that.

And anyway, she was a doer, wasn’t she? She’d never sat round and waited to see how events unfolded.

In this instance, that meant corralling Rob Kilfoyle so he’d be ready to take her part. The only way she could see to do that was to get on her bicycle and find him.

It took the A to Z to accomplish the first part of the plan, since she had no clue where Granville Square was once she had Rob’s address in hand. She found it tucked to the east of King’s Cross Road. This was a definite plus. She would merely have to work her way up to Blackfriars Bridge, cross the river, and head north. It was simple, and its simplicity told her the journey to Granville Square was meant to be.

She saw it was later than she’d thought once she was outside and aboard her bicycle. The commuter traffic had long since thinned out, so the trip up Farringdon Street—even in the vicinity of Ludgate Circus—wasn’t as white knuckling as she’d expected.

She made good time to Granville Square, a four-sided terrace of simple Georgian town houses in various states of disrepair and renovation, typical of so many neighbourhoods in London. In the centre of the square was the ubiquitous patch of nature, this one not locked off, barred, and otherwise kept private to all but paying residents of the nearby houses, but rather open to anyone who wanted to walk, read, play with a dog, or watch children romp in the miniature playground along one side. Rob Kilfoyle’s house faced the middle of this playground. It was dark as a tomb, but Ulrike parked her bike by the railing and went up the steps anyway. He could be in the back, and now that she’d come, she wasn’t about to leave without making an attempt to roust him out of there if he was within.

She knocked but gained no reply. She rang the bell. She tried to peer in the front windows, but she had to resign herself to the admission that other than affording her exercise, the ride across town to this borderland between St. Pancras and Islington had been wasted.

“He isn’t home, our Rob,” a female voice declared behind her. “No surprise in that, though, poor lad.”

Ulrike turned from the door. A woman was watching her from the pavement. She was shaped like a barrel, with a similarly shaped, wheezing English bulldog on a lead. Ulrike went back down the steps to join her.

“D’you happen to know where he is?” She introduced herself as Rob’s employer.

“You that sandwich woman?” The woman said she was, “Sylvia Puccini. Missus. No relation by the way, if you’re musical. Live three doors down. Known our Rob since he was a toddler.”

“I’m Robbie’s other employer,” Ulrike said. “At Colossus.”

“Didn’t know he had another employer,” Mrs. Puccini said, eyeing her carefully. “Where’d you say?”

“Colossus. We’re an outreach programme for youth at risk. Robbie’s not strictly an employee, I suppose. He volunteers in the afternoons. After he does his sandwich round. But we consider him one of us all the same.”

“Never mentioned it to me.”

“You’re close to him?”

“Why d’you ask?”

Mrs. Puccini sounded suspicious, and Ulrike could sense that they might easily head into Mary Alice Atkins-Ward territory if she pursued this route. She smiled and said, “No particular reason. I thought you might be since you’ve known him so long. Like a second mum or something.”

“Hmm. Yes. Poor Charlene. God rest her dear tormented soul. Alzheimer’s, but Rob would have told you that, I expect. She went off early winter last year, poor thing. Didn’t know her own son from shoe leather at the end. Didn’t know anyone, if it comes down to it. And then his dad. He hasn’t had an easy time of it for the last few years, our Rob.”

Ulrike frowned. “His dad?”

“Dropped like a stone. Last September, this was. Setting off to work like always and drops like a hundredweight. Falls straight down the Gwynne Place Steps right over there.” She indicated the southwest end of the square. “Dead before he ever hit the ground.”

“Dead?” Ulrike asked. “I didn’t know Rob’s dad was also…He’s dead? You’re sure?”

In the light of a streetlamp, Mrs. Puccini cast her a look that indicated how bizarre she thought the question was. “If he’s not, luv, we all stood round and watched someone else get sent off to be cremated. And that’s not very likely, is it?”

No, Ulrike had to agree, it certainly wasn’t. She said, “I suppose it’s just that…You see, Rob’s never mentioned his dad passing away.” On the very much contrary, she added to herself.