This Body of Death

Chapter Twenty-Two

LYNLEY TOOK A CALL FROM ISABELLE ARDERY AS HE EMERGED from Psychic Mews. Luckily, he’d set his phone on vibrate or he wouldn’t have heard it, as the noise from a shop playing Turkish music made hearing anything else impossible. He said, “Hang on, I’ve got to get out of here,” and he went outside.

“-has to be the quickest work he’s managed to do,” Isabelle Ardery was saying as he brought the mobile to his ear once he reached the pavement. At Lynley’s question, she repeated what she’d been telling him: that DI John Stewart, in an admirable display of what he was actually capable of when he wasn’t being deliberately difficult, had tracked down all of the phone calls made to and from Jemima Hastings’ mobile in the days leading up to her death, on the day of her death, and in the days after her death as well. “We’ve one call from the cigar shop on the day she died,” Ardery said.

“Jayson Druther?”

“And he confirms. He says it was about an order for Cuban cigars. He couldn’t find them. Her brother phoned her as well, as did Frazer Chaplin, and…I admit I’ve saved what’s most intriguing for last. There was a call from Gordon Jossie.”

“Was there indeed.”

“There was his number, large as life. Same one as on the postcards he put up round the portrait gallery and Covent Garden. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“What’ve we got on the mobile phone towers?” Lynley asked. “Anything yet?” They’d want to track the location of the callers when the calls to Jemima’s mobile had been made, and checking the pinging off the mobile phone towers was the way to do this. It couldn’t pinpoint exactly where a caller had been, but it would get them close to the spot.

“John’s checking into that. It’s going to take time.”

“Calls following her death?”

“There were messages from Yolanda, from Rob Hastings, from Jayson Druther, from Paolo di Fazio.”

“Nothing from Abbott Langer, then, or Frazer Chaplin? Nothing from Jossie?”

“Nothing at all. Not afterwards. Suggests to me that one of those blokes knew there was no point in phoning, doesn’t it?”

“What about calls she made on the day she died?”

“Three to Frazer Chaplin-this is in advance of the one she received from him-and one to Abbott Langer. They need talking to again, those two.”

Lynley told her he would get on to that. He was yards away from the ice rink.

He added what Yolanda had said about her last meeting with Jemima. If Jemima had sought advice from the psychic about hard truths needing to be spoken to someone, it seemed to Lynley that those hard truths were meant to be heard by a man. Since, if the psychic was to be believed, Jemima had apparently been in love with the Irishman, one of the possibilities was that he was the recipient of those hard truths that she needed to tell. Of course, Lynley told the superintendent, he was not blind to the fact that there were other equally strong potential recipients of Jemima Hastings’ message: Abbott Langer would be one of them, as would Paolo di Fazio, Jayson Druther, Yukio Matsumoto, and any other man whose life touched upon hers, such as Gordon Jossie as well as her own brother, Rob.

“Go with Chaplin and Langer first,” Ardery said when he’d finished. “We’ll keep digging at this end.” She was silent for a moment before adding, “Hard truths? That’s what she told you? D’you reckon Yolanda’s telling her own truths, Thomas?”

Lynley considered what Yolanda had said about him, about his aura, about the return of a woman-gone but not, and never forgotten-into his life. He had to admit that he didn’t know how much of what Yolanda said was based on intuition, how much on watching for subtle reactions in her listener as she spoke, and how much on what she really knew from the “other side.” He reckoned they could discount just about everything she proclaimed that had no basis in cold facts, and he said, “But when it comes to Jemima, the psychic wasn’t making predictions, guv. She was reporting on what Jemima actually told her.”

“Isabelle,” she said. “Not guv. We’d got to Isabelle, Thomas.”

He was quiet for a moment, considering this. He finally said, “Isabelle, then. Yolanda was reporting on what Jemima told her.”

“But she also has a vested interest in leading us astray if she herself put that handbag in the bin.”

“True. But someone else could have put it there. And she could be protecting that person. Let me talk to Abbott Langer.”

THE MOBILE PHONE records were simultaneously good news and bad news for Isabelle. Anything that led them in the direction of the killer had to be a plus. At the same time, however, anything that led them away from Yukio Matsumoto as that killer made her own position perilous. It was one thing if a killer attempting to run from the police was hit by a taxi and severely injured. This was bad for her situation, but it wasn’t fatal. It was quite another thing if an innocent psychiatric patient off his meds was hit while in the act of fleeing God-only-knew-what, cooked up by his feverish brain. That didn’t look good in the present climate of people being mistaken for terrorists and taken out by gunfire in hideous error. The long and short of it was that, mobile phone calls or not, they needed something definitive-something absolutely ironclad-to be the nail in Matsumoto’s coffin.

She had watched the Met’s preemptive press conference, which Stephenson Deacon and the Directorate of Public Affairs had put together. She had to admit that the press office was as smooth and cool as sculpted marble, but they would be, having had years of practice in the subtle art of imparting information meant to be explicative when the very last thing they wanted was to give out incriminating details about any officer from or any action taken by the Met. Deacon and Hillier himself had appeared before the cameras. Hillier had made the prepared statement. The accident in Shaftesbury Avenue was deemed unfortunate, undesirable, unavoidable, and every other un that could be excavated from someone’s thesaurus. But the officers were not armed, he intoned, they had clearly and repeatedly identified themselves as officers, and if a suspect runs from the police when the police want to question him, those police are going to give chase for obvious reasons. In a murder investigation, the safety of the public at large trumps other considerations, especially when someone is making an attempt to evade an interaction with the police. Who those police were by name Hillier didn’t divulge. That would come later, Isabelle knew, in the unfortunate event of someone needing to be thrown to the wolves.

Isabelle had a good idea of who that person would be. There were follow-up questions from journalists at the press conference, but she didn’t listen to them. She got back to work and she was still at work when a phone call came in from Sandra Ardery. The call didn’t come through her mobile, which was clever of Sandra, Isabelle thought, since she would have recognised the number and refused to answer. Rather, the call came through channels, ending up on Dorothea Harriman’s line. Harriman came personally to share the blessed news: Sandra Ardery would be that grateful for “just a word with you, guv. She says it’s about the boys?” That inflection on the noun indicated Harriman’s unfounded assurance that surely Isabelle would jump to talk to anyone who had something to say about “the boys.”

Isabelle restrained herself from snatching up the phone and barking, “What?” at Sandra. She had nothing against Bob’s wife, who at the very least always made an heroic attempt to remain a neutral party in Isabelle’s disputes with her former husband. She nodded at Harriman and took the call.

Sandra’s voice was breathy, as always. For some reason she spoke like someone either doing a bad impersonation of Marilyn Monroe or exhaling clouds of cigarette smoke although she didn’t indulge in the latter as far as Isabelle knew. “Bob said he tried to reach you earlier,” Sandra told her. “He left a message on your mobile? I did tell him to try your office, but…You know Bob.”

Ah yes, Isabelle thought. She said, “I’ve been caught up in things here, Sandra. We’ve had an incident with a bloke in the street.”

“Are you somehow involved in that? How dreadful. I saw the news conference. It interrupted my programme.”

Her programme was medical, Isabelle knew. Not a daily hospital drama, this, but rather an intense scientific exploration of debilitating conditions and numerous afflictions-fatal and otherwise. Sandra watched it religiously and took copious notes as a means of monitoring her children’s health. As a result, she regularly ferried them to their paediatrician in a state of panic, most recently because of a rash on the younger girl’s arm, which Sandra had firmly believed was an outbreak of something called Morgellons disease. Sandra’s obsession with this programme was the single subject that Isabelle and Bob Ardery could actually share a chuckle over.

“Yes, I’m involved in an investigation related to that incident,” Isabelle told her, “which is why I wasn’t able to-”

“Shouldn’t you have been at the press conference? Isn’t that how it’s done?”

“It’s not ‘done’ any particular way. Why? Is Bob monitoring me?”

“Oh no. Oh no.” Which meant that he was. Which meant that he had probably phoned his wife and told her to switch on the telly posthaste because his ex-had blotted her copybook properly this time and the proof was at that very moment being offered up for public consumption on the airwaves. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m phoning.”

“Why are you phoning? Are the boys all right?”

“Oh yes. Oh yes. Not to worry about that. They’re right as rain. A bit noisy, of course, and a bit rambunctious-”

“They’re eight-year-olds.”

“Of course. Of course. I don’t mean to imply…Isabelle, not to worry. I love those boys. You know I do. They’re just wildly different to the girls.”

“They don’t like dolls and tea parties, if that’s what you mean. But you didn’t expect them to, did you?”

“Not at all. Not at all. They’re lovely. We had an outing yesterday, by the way, the girls and the boys and I. I thought they might enjoy the cathedral in Canterbury.”

“Did you?” A cathedral, Isabelle thought weakly. For eight-year-olds. “I wouldn’t think-”

“Well of course, of course, you’re right. It didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. I’d thought the Thomas Becket part would appeal. You know what I mean. Murder on the high altar? This renegade priest? And it did, rather. At first. But holding their attention was a bit of a problem. I think they would have preferred a trip to the seaside, but I do so worry about sun exposure what with the ozone layer and global warming and the alarming increase in basal cell carcinoma. And they don’t like sunblock, Isabelle, which I can’t understand. The girls slather it right on, but one would think I’m trying to torture the boys, the way they react to it. Did you never use it?”

Isabelle drew in a steadying breath. She said, “Perhaps not as regularly as I might have done. Now-”

“But it’s crucial to use it. You must have known-”

“Sandra. Is there something particular you’ve phoned about? I’m quite tied up in things here, you see, so if this is just to chat…?”

“You’re busy, you’re busy. Of course, you’re busy. It’s only this: Do come to lunch. The boys want to see you.”

“I don’t think-”

“Please. I do plan to take the girls to my mum’s, so it will be just you and the boys.”

“And Bob?”

“And Bob, naturally.” She was silent for a moment and then she said impulsively, “I did try to get him to see, Isabelle. I told him it was only fair. I said you need time with them. I told him I would cook the lunch and have it ready for you and then we could all be off to my mum’s. We’d leave you with them and it would be just like a restaurant or a hotel only it would be in our house. But…I’m afraid he wouldn’t consider that. He just wouldn’t. I’m so sorry, Isabelle. He means well, you know.”

He means nothing of the kind, Isabelle thought.

“Please come, won’t you? The boys…I do think they’re caught in the middle, don’t you? They don’t understand. Well, how could they?”

“Doubtless Bob has explained it all.” Isabelle didn’t bother to try to keep bitterness at bay.

“He hasn’t, he hasn’t. Not word, not a word. Just that Mummy’s in London settling into a new job. Just as you agreed.”

“I didn’t agree. Where the hell did you get the idea that I agreed?”

“It’s only that he said-”

“Would you have agreed to hand over your children? Would you? Is that the sort of mother you think I am?”

“I know you’ve tried to be a very good mother. I know you’ve tried. The boys dote on you.”

“‘Tried? Tried?’” Isabelle suddenly heard herself and wanted to pound her fist against her skull as she realised she’d begun to sound exactly like Sandra, with her infuriating habit of doubling words and phrases, a nervous tic that always sounded as if she believed the world was partially deaf and in need of her constant reiteration.

“Oh, I’m not saying this right. I’m not saying-”

“I must get back to work.”

“But will you come? Will you consider coming? This isn’t about you and it’s not about Bob. It’s about the boys. It’s about the boys.”

“Don’t you bloody dare tell me what this is about.” Isabelle slammed the phone down. She cursed and dropped her head into her hands. I will not, I will not, she told herself. And then she laughed although even to her own ears she sounded hysterical. It was that bloody doubling of words. She thought she might go mad.

“Uh…guv?”

She looked up although she knew before she did so that the marginal deference in the tone marked the interruption as coming from DI John Stewart. He stood there with an expression on his face that told her he’d overheard at least part of her conversation with Sandra. She snapped, “What is it?”

“The Oxfam bin.”

It took her a moment before she got her brain round that one: Bella McHaggis and her recycling front garden. She said to Stewart, “What about it, John?”

“We’ve got more than a handbag inside it. We’ve something you’re going to want to see.”

THE CONTINUED HEAT wave was, Lynley found, making it a big day at the Queen’s Ice and Bowl, particularly on the ice itself. This was likely the coolest spot in London, and everyone from toddlers to pensioners appeared to be taking advantage of it. Some of them simply clung to the railing at the rink’s edge and pulled themselves along haphazardly. Others more adventurous wobbled round the rink without assistance, the more expert skaters trying to avoid them. In the very middle of the rink, future Olympians practised jumps and spins with varied degrees of success while, negotiating the crowd for space wherever possible, ice-dancing instructors plied their trade with inept partners, making brave attempts to mirror Torvill and Dean.

Lynley had to wait to speak to Abbott Langer, who was giving a lesson in the middle of the ice. He’d been pointed out to Lynley by the skate-hire bloke who referred to Langer as “the git with the hair.” Lynley hadn’t been certain what was meant by that until he caught a glimpse of the instructor. Then he saw there was no other description needed. He’d not seen such a hirsute Swiss roll outside of a photograph, ever.

No matter the case, Langer could certainly skate. He launched himself off the ice in an effortless jump as Lynley watched, demonstrating its ease for a young male pupil who looked round ten years old. The child tried it and landed on his bum. Langer glided over and lifted him to his feet. He bent his head to the child’s, they spoke for a moment, and Langer demonstrated a second time. He was very good. He was smooth. He was strong. Lynley wondered if he was also a killer.

When the lesson finished, Lynley intercepted the skating instructor as he said good-bye to his pupil and put guards on the blades of his skates. Could he have a word? Lynley enquired politely. He showed his identification.

Langer said, “I’ve spoken to the other two. Black bloke and some dumpy woman. I don’t see how I could have anything else to say.”

“Loose ends,” Lynley told him. “This shouldn’t take long.” He indicated the café that formed a division between the ice rink and the bowling alley. He said, “Let’s have a coffee, Mr. Langer,” and he waited till Langer resigned himself to a conversation.

Lynley bought two coffees and took them to the table where Langer dropped his bulky body. He was turning a salt cellar in his fingers. These were thick and strong looking, and his hands were large like the rest of him.

“Why did you lie to the other officers, Mr. Langer?” Lynley asked him without preamble. “You must have known everything you said would be checked.”

Langer made no reply to this. Wise man, Lynley thought. He was waiting for more.

“There are no ex-wives. Nor are there children,” Lynley said. “Why lie about something so easy to disprove?”

Langer took a moment to tear open two packets of sugar, which he dumped into his coffee. He did not stir it. “It’s nothing to do with what happened to Jemima. I’ve nothing to do with that.”

“Yes, but you’d say that, wouldn’t you?” Lynley pointed out. “Anyone would.”

“It’s a matter of consistency. That’s all.”

“Explain.”

“I tell everyone the same. Three ex-wives, children. It keeps things simple.”

“That’s important to you?”

Langer looked away. From where they sat, the ice rink was visible: all the lovely young things flying about-or otherwise-in their colourful tights and skimpy skirts. “I like to remain uninvolved,” he said. “Ex-wives and children help, I find.”

“Uninvolved with whom?”

“I’m an instructor. That’s all I do with them, whatever their ages. Sometimes a young one or a middle-aged one or any of them develop an interest because we’re close on the ice. It’s stupid, it doesn’t mean anything, and I don’t take advantage. Ex-wives make that possible.”

“With Jemima Hastings as well?”

“Jemima took lessons from me,” Langer told him. “That’s the extent of it. She used me, rather.”

“For what?”

“I told the others this already. I wasn’t lying about that. She wanted to keep her eye on Frazer.”

“She phoned you on the day she died. Along with the truth about ex-wives and children, you didn’t mention that to the other detectives.”

Langer took up his coffee. “I hadn’t remembered the call.”

“And do you now?”

He looked reflective. “Yes, actually. She was looking for Frazer.”

“Was she supposed to be meeting him at the cemetery?”

“I rather think she was checking up on him. She did that often. Anyone Frazer was involved with ended up doing that. Jemima wasn’t the first and she wouldn’t have been the last. Long as he worked here that went on.”

“A woman checking up on him?”

“A woman, who didn’t quite trust him, making sure he was walking the straight and narrow. He rarely did.”

“And for Jemima?”

“It was likely business as usual for Frazer, but I don’t know, do I? Anyway, I couldn’t help her that day, which she ought to have realised before she rang me.”

“Why?”

“Because of the time. He isn’t here at that hour. Had she thought about it, she would have known he wouldn’t be here. But he wasn’t answering his mobile, she said. She’d rung him a few times and he wasn’t answering and she wanted to know was he still here, where, perhaps, he wouldn’t be able to hear it with all the noise.” He indicated the clamour round them. “But really, she had to have known he’d already left for home. Anyway, that’s what I told her.”

For home, Lynley thought. “He didn’t go from here directly to Duke’s Hotel?”

“He always goes home first. He says he doesn’t like to keep his Duke’s kit here where it could get dirty, but knowing Frazer, there’s another reason.” He made a crude gesture with his hands, an indication of sexual intercourse. “Likely he’s been doing the job on someone en route, between here and Duke’s. Or there at home, even. It wouldn’t surprise me. That would be his style. Anyway, Jemima said she’d been leaving him messages and she was feeling panicky.”

“She used that term? Panicky?”

“No. But I could hear it in her voice.”

“Was it fear perhaps? Not panic, but fear? She was phoning from a cemetery, after all. People are sometimes frightened in cemeteries.”

Langer shrugged off this idea. He said, “I don’t think that’s what it was. ’F you ask me, I think it was dread of having to look squarely at something she’s been denying.”

Interesting point, Lynley thought. He said, “Carry on.”

“Frazer,” he said. “I expect she wanted very much to think Frazer Chaplin was the one, if you know what I mean, the one in inverted commas. But I expect in her heart she knew he wasn’t.”

“What makes you draw the latter conclusion?”

Langer smiled thinly. “Because it’s the conclusion they always reached, Inspector. Every last woman who hooked up with the bloke.”

THUS LYNLEY GREATLY anticipated meeting the male paragon he’d been hearing about. He made his way to St. James’s Place, a nearly hidden cul-de-sac where Duke’s Hotel formed a stately L of redbrick, decorative ironwork, oriel window, and sumptuous swaths of ivy tumbling from first-floor balconies. He left the Healey Elliott under the watchful eye of a uniformed doorman and entered into the reserved hush one usually encounters in places of worship. Could he be helped? he was asked by a passing bellboy.

The bar, he replied. An immediate smile of recognition: Lynley’s possession and use of the Voice would make him eternally welcome in any establishment where people spoke in murmurs, called employees “the staff,” and had the good sense to drink sherry before and port after. If the gentleman would come this way…?

The bar ran heavily to naval portraits and prints of ruined castles, with a painting of Admiral Nelson in his post-arm days taking a predominant position, as one would expect of a sea-oriented décor. The bar comprised three rooms-two of which were separated by a fireplace in which, mercifully, no fire was burning-and it was furnished with upholstered armchairs and round, glass-topped tables at which were gathered mostly business people at this time of day. They appeared to be tossing back gin and tonics, with a few hardier souls getting glassy-eyed over martinis. This was apparently the signature drink of one of the bartenders, an Italian man with a marked accent who asked Lynley if he wanted the speciality, which-he was told-was neither shaken nor stirred but rather bruised along into some sort of miraculous nectar.

Lynley demurred. He said he wouldn’t mind a Pellegrino, if they had it. Lime and no ice. And was Frazer Chaplin available for a chat? He produced his identification. The bartender-who bore the unlikely non-Italian name of Heinrich-gave no reaction at all to the presence of a policeman, in possession of a cultured accent or not. Indifferently, he said Frazer Chaplin had not yet arrived. He was expected-with a glance at an impressive watch-in the next quarter hour.

Did Frazer work regular hours? Lynley enquired of the bartender. Or did he, perhaps, just fill in when things were busy in the hotel?

Regular hours, he was told. “Wouldn’t have taken the job otherwise,” Heinrich said.

“Why not?”

“Evening shift is busiest. The tips are better. So are the customers.”

Lynley raised an eyebrow, seeking elucidation, which Heinrich was happy to give him. It seemed Frazer enjoyed the attention of various ladies of varying ages who frequented the bar at Duke’s Hotel most evenings. These were international businesswomen generally, in town for one reason or another, and Frazer was apparently willing to give them additional reasons to hang about.

“Has an eye out for a lady who’ll keep him how he wants to be kept,” was how Heinrich put it. He shook his head, but his expression was unmistakably fond. “Fancies himself a gigolo.”

“Is that working for him?”

Heinrich chuckled. “Not yet. But that’s not kept the lad from trying. He wants to own a boutique hotel, just like this place. But he wants someone else to buy it for him.”

“He’s looking for a great deal of money, then.”

“That’s Frazer.”

Lynley thought about this and how it related to the truths Jemima had wished to speak. To a man hoping for money from a woman, the message that she wouldn’t be handing it over to him would indeed be a very hard truth. As would be the possible truth that she wanted nothing more to do with him because she’d discovered he was after her money…if she had money in the first place. But again, and maddeningly, there were other truths when it came to Jemima. To Paolo di Fazio there was a hard truth that might have been told: that she was going to take up life with Frazer Chaplin despite Paolo’s feelings for her. As to everyone from Abbott Langer to Yukio Matsumoto, doubtless a little delving was going to reveal truths everywhere needing to be spoken.

Lynley did the maths on the time of Frazer Chaplin’s daily arrival in the bar of Duke’s Hotel: The Irishman had ninety minutes between the hour he left the ice rink and when he began work at this location. Was it time enough to race up to Stoke Newington, murder Jemima Hastings, and get to his second job? Lynley didn’t see how. Not only had Abbott Langer suggested that the man went to Putney before heading to Duke’s, but even had that not been the case, the London traffic would have made it next to impossible. And Lynley couldn’t see the killer getting to that cemetery on public transport.

When Frazer Chaplin arrived at Duke’s, Lynley had the uneasy feeling he’d seen the man before. Exactly where he’d seen him hovered on the edge of his consciousness, but for the moment he couldn’t insert the face into a location. He thought about where he’d been in recent days, but nothing clicked. He let it go for the moment.

He was no judge of male looks, but he could see Chaplin’s appeal to women who liked their men dark and edgy, possessing an air of danger, a cross between a modern-day Heathcliff and Sweeney Todd. He wore a cream jacket and white shirt with a red bow tie over his dark trousers, an outfit giving reasonable testimony to why he would want to change his clothes at home and not carry them round with him or leave them at the ice rink. Like Abbott Langer, his hair verged on black, but unlike Langer’s it was styled more in keeping with the times. It looked newly washed and he appeared to be freshly shaven. His hands looked manicured as well, and he wore an opal ring on his left ring finger.

He joined Lynley at once, having been given the word by the bartender. Lynley had taken a table quite near to the gleaming mahogany bar, and Frazer dropped into one of the chairs, extended his hand, and said, “Heinrich tells me you’d like a word? Have you something new to ask me? I’ve spoken to some other coppers already.”

Lynley introduced himself and said, “You appear to be the last person to speak to Jemima Hastings, Mr. Chaplin.”

Chaplin replied in his lilting accent, which, Lynley noted, would likely have appealed to the ladies as much as Frazer’s tough masculinity, “Do I, now,” but he made it a statement and not a question. “And how would you reckon that, Inspector?”

“From her mobile phone records,” Lynley told him.

“Ah,” he said. “Well, I expect the very last person to speak to Jemima would be the bloke who killed her, unless she was jumped on without preliminaries.”

“She seems to have phoned you a number of times in the hours leading up to her death. She phoned Abbott Langer as well, looking for you, according to him. Abbott seems to feel she was romantically involved with you, and he isn’t the only person to make that observation.”

“Would I be wrong to expect the other person is one Paolo di Fazio?” Chaplin asked.

“Where there’s smoke, there’s generally something in flames, in my experience,” Lynley said. “What was your phone call to Jemima Hastings about, Mr. Chaplin?”

Frazer tapped his fingers on the glass-topped table. A silver bowl of mixed nuts sat upon it, and he reached for a few and held them in the palm of his hand. He said, “She was a lovely girl. I’ll give you that. I’ll give everyone that if anyone wants it. But while I might have seen her on the outside now and again-”

“On the outside?”

“Away from Mrs. McHaggis’s lodgings. While I might have seen her now and again-the pub, the high street, having a meal somewhere, at a film, even?-that would be the extent of it. Now, I’ll also give you the fact that it could have appeared to others we were involved. Truth to tell, it could have appeared that way to Jemima as well. Her coming to the ice rink like she did, her talking to that gypsy woman who does the fortunes, that sort of thing makes it look like the two of us had it going. But more than being friendly to her…? More than being friendly like I would be to anyone I shared lodgings with…? More than merely having or trying to have a friendship…? That’s the stuff of fantasy, Inspector.”

“Whose?”

“What?”

“Whose fantasy?”

He popped the nuts into his mouth. He sighed. “Inspector, Jemima drew conclusions. Have you never known a woman to do that? One moment you’re buying a lager for a girl, and the next she’s got you married, with kids and living in a rose-covered cottage in the countryside. That’s not happened to you?”

“Not in my memory.”

“Lucky you are, then, for it’s happened to me.”

“Tell me about your phone call to her on the day of her death.”

“I swear to the Holy Ghost, man, I don’t even remember making it. But if I did, and if, as you say, she’d been phoning me as well, then likely as not I was merely returning her call, fending her off in one way or another. Or at least attempting to. She had it for me. I won’t deny that. But there’s no way I was encouraging the lass.”

“And the day of her death?”

“What about it?”

“Tell me where you were. What you did. Who saw you.”

“I’ve been over all this with the other two-”

“But not with me. And sometimes there are details that one officer misses or fails to put in a report. Please humour me.”

“There’s nothing to humour you with. I worked at the ice rink, I went home to shower and change, I came here. It’s what I do every day, for Jesus’ sake. There’s someone at every point to confirm this, so you can’t be thinking that I somehow scarpered up to Stoke Newington to kill Jemima Hastings. Especially as I had no bloody reason to do it.”

“How do you get from the ice rink to this job, Mr. Chaplin?”

“I’ve a scooter,” he said.

“Have you indeed?”

“I do. And if you’re thinking that I’d’ve had the time to weave through traffic and make it up to Stoke Newington and then back here…Well, you best come with me.” Frazer rose, picking up a few more nuts and tossing them into his mouth. He had a brief word with Heinrich and then led the way out of the bar and out of the hotel as well.

At the far end of the cul-de-sac that was St. James’s Place, Frazer Chaplin’s motor scooter stood. It was a Vespa, the sort of vehicle that zips up and down the streets of every major town in Italy. But unlike those scooters, this one was not only painted a violent and completely unforgettable lime green, it was also covered with bright red advertising transfers for a product called DragonFly Tonics, in effect becoming a mobile billboard not unlike those seen occasionally on black cabs round town.

Chaplin said, “Would I be mad enough to take myself up to Stoke Newington on that? To leave it parked anywhere and then do a dash to kill Jemima? What d’you take me for, man, a fool? Would you be likely to forget you’d seen that thing parked hither or thither? I wouldn’t, and I doubt anyone else would either. Take a bloody photo of it if you want. Show it round up there. Go to every house and shop in every street there is, and you’ll see the truth of it.”

“Which is what?”

“That I bloody well didn’t kill Jemima.”

When the police ask Ian Barker on tape, “Why did you make the baby naked?” he does not reply at first. His grandmother keens in the background, a chair scrapes the floor, and someone taps on the tabletop. “You know that baby was naked, don’t you? When we found him, he was naked. You know that, don’t you, Ian?” are the next questions, and they are followed by, “You yourself made him naked before you used the hairbrush on him. We know that because your fingerprints are on that hairbrush. Were you angry, Ian? Had Johnny done something to make you angry? Did you want to sort him out with the hairbrush?”

Ian finally says, “I didn’t do nothing to that kid. You ask Reggie. You ask Mikey. Mikey was the one changed his nappy, anyways. He knew how. He got brothers. I don’t. And Reg was the one nicked the bananas, eh?”

Michael says in response to the first mention of the hairbrush, “I never. I never. Ian told me he poohed. Ian said I was meant to change him. But I never,” and when asked about the bananas, he begins to cry. Ultimately he says, “It got poo on it, didn’t it. That baby was in the muck there on the ground…He was just laying there…,” whereupon his weeping turns to wailing.

Reggie Arnold addresses his mother, as before, saying, “Mum, Mum, there wasn’t no hairbrush. I never made that baby naked. I never touched him. Mum, I never touched that baby. Mikey kicked him, Mum. See, he was on the ground and he was on his face cause…Mum, he must’ve fell. And Mikey kicked him.”

When told of Reggie’s claim, following on the heels of Ian’s claims, Michael Spargo finally begins to tell the rest of the story in what is an attempt to defend himself against what he obviously sees as an effort on the part of the other two boys to shift blame upon him. He admits to using his foot on John Dresser, but he claims it was only to turn the baby over in order “to help him breathe right.”

From this point forward, the excruciating details slowly come out: the blows to little John Dresser from the boys’ feet, the use of copper tubing upon him like swords or whips, and ultimately the discarded concrete blocks. Parts of the story, however-the exact details of what happened with the banana and the hairbrush, for example-Michael refuses to speak about altogether, and this silence about those two pieces of evidence remains when the other two boys are questioned as well. But the postmortem examination of John Dresser’s body, in addition to the level of the boys’ continued distress when the subject of the hairbrush comes up, indicates the sexual component of the crime just as its terrible ferocity substantiates the deep well of anger each boy called upon in the final moments of the toddler’s life.

Once a confession was obtained from the boys, the Crown Prosecutors took the highly unusual and equally controversial decision not to present the full details of John Dresser’s antemortem injuries to the court during the subsequent trial. Their reasoning was twofold. First, they had not only the confessions but also the CCTV films, the eyewitness testimonies, and copious forensic evidence, all of which they believed established without doubt the guilt of Ian Barker, Michael Spargo, and Reggie Arnold. Second, they knew that Donna and Alan Dresser were going to be present for the trial, as was their right, and the CPS did not wish to exacerbate the parents’ agony by revealing to them the extent of the brutality that had been inflicted upon their child prior to and after his death. Wasn’t it enough, they reasoned, to learn one’s child-so recently out of infanthood-had been abducted, dragged across town, stripped naked, whipped with copper tubing, stoned with broken concrete, and dumped into an abandoned Port-a-Loo? Additionally, they had complete confessions from at least two of the boys (Ian Barker only going so far as admitting finally that he was in the Barriers that day and he saw John Dresser, before holding firm to, “Maybe I did something and maybe I didn’t,” for the rest of his interviews), and more than that seemed completely unnecessary for a conviction. It must be argued, however, that a third reason could well exist for the CPS’s silence on the matter of John Dresser’s internal injuries: Had these injuries become known, questions regarding the psychological state of his killers would have arisen, and these questions might have led the jury ineluctably towards manslaughter instead of murder because they would necessarily have been instructed to consider the 1957 Act of Parliament which declares that a person “shall not be convicted of murder if he was suffering from such abnormality of mind…as substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts” at the time of the crime. Abnormality of mind are the key words here, and John’s further injuries do much to suggest deep abnormality on the part of all three of his killers. But a verdict of manslaughter would have been unthinkable, considering the climate in which the boys were tried. While the venue for the trial had been changed, the crime had gone from being a national story to an international story. Shakespeare declares that “blood will have blood,” and this situation was an example of that.

Some have argued that when the boys stole the hairbrush from the Items-for-a-Pound shop in the Barriers, they knew full well what they were going to do with it. But to me, this suggests both reasoning and planning far beyond that of which they were capable. I don’t deny that perhaps my reluctance to believe in such a degree of premeditation is attached to a personal disinclination for considering the potential for pure iniquity to exist in the minds and hearts of ten-and eleven-year-old boys. Nor will I deny my preference for believing that the use of that hairbrush was the work of impulse. What I certainly will agree with is what the fact of that hairbrush illustrates about the boys: Those who abuse and violate have been abused and violated themselves, not once but repeatedly.

When the hairbrush was brought up in interviews, it was a subject that not one of the boys was willing to talk about. On tape, their reactions vary, from Ian’s assertion that “wasn’t no hairbrush that I ever saw,” to Reggie’s attempt at innocence with, “Mikey might’ve nicked one from that shop but I don’t know that, do I,” and, “I never took no hairbrush, Mum. You got to believe I never would’ve took no hairbrush,” to Michael’s, “We didn’t have no hairbrush, we didn’t have no hairbrush, we didn’t, we didn’t,” which rises in what sounds like panic with every denial. When Michael is gently told, “You know one of you boys took that hairbrush, son,” he agrees that, “Reggie might’ve, then, but I didn’t see,” and “I don’t know what happened to it, do I.”

It is only when the presence of the hairbrush at the Dawkins building site is brought up (along with the fingerprints upon it, in conjunction with the blood and the faecal matter on its handle) that the reactions of the boys escalate to their most emotive. Michael’s begins with, “I never…I told you and told you I didn’t…I didn’t take no hairbrush…there weren’t no hairbrush at all” and segues to “It were Reggie done it to that baby…Reggie wanted to…Ian took it from him…I said to stop and Reggie did it.” Reggie, on the other hand, addresses all his remarks to his mother, saying, “Mum, I never…I wouldn’t hurt no baby…Maybe I hit him once but I never…I took his snowsuit off him but it was all mucked up, that’s why…He were crying, Mum. I knew not to hurt him if he were crying.” During this, Rudy Arnold is silent, but Laura can be heard throughout, moaning, “Reggie, Reggie, what’ve you done to us?” as the social worker quietly asks her to drink some water, perhaps in an attempt to silence her. As for Ian, he finally begins to cry when the extent of John Dresser’s injuries are read to him. His grandmother can be heard weeping along with him and her words, “Sweet Jesus, save him. Save him, Lord,” suggest she’s accepted the boy’s culpability.

It is at the point of the hairbrush’s introduction into the interviews-three days after the toddler’s body was found-that the boys confess fully to the crime. It is, perhaps, one of the additional horrors of the murder of John Dresser that when the perpetrators of this ghastly crime confessed, only one of them had a parent present. Rudy Arnold sat by his son throughout. Ian Barker had only his grandmother and Michael Spargo was accompanied only by social workers.