With No One As Witness

CHAPTER EIGHT

FU WAS CAREFUL WITH THE RELIQUARY. HE CARRIED IT before Him like a priest with a chalice and set it down on a tabletop. Gently, He removed the lid. A vaguely putrescent odour wafted upward, but He found that the smell did not bother Him nearly as much as it had done at first. The scent of decay would fade soon enough. But the achievement would be there forever.

He looked down upon the relics, satisfied. There were two of them now, nestling like shells in a rain cloud. With the slightest of shakes, the cloud subsumed them, and that was the beauty of where He’d placed them. The relics were gone, but still they were there, like something hidden within the altar of a church. In fact, the activity of reverently moving the reliquary from one place to another was indeed just like being in a church, but without the social restrictions that churchgoing always placed upon members of the congregation.

You’ll sit up straight. You’ll stop the fidgeting. D’you need a lesson in how to behave? When you’re told to kneel, you do it, boy. Put your palms together. God damn it. Pray.

Fu blinked. The voice. At once distant and present, telling him a maggot had slunk into his head. In through His ear and onward to His brain. He’d been less than careful, and the thought of church had given it entry at last. A snicker initially. Then an outright laugh. Then the echo of pray, pray and pray.

And, Finally looking for a job, are you? Where d’you expect to find one, stupid git? And you get out of the way, Charlene, or do you want some of this for yourself?

It was yammer and yammer. It was shout and shout. It sometimes went on for hours at a time. He’d thought He’d finally rid Himself of the worm, but thinking of church had been His mistake.

I want you out of this house, you hear? Sleep in a doorway if that’s what it takes. Or don’t you have the bottle for that?

You drove her there, blast you. You did her in.

Fu squeezed His eyes shut. He reached out blindly. His hands found an object, and His fingers felt buttons. He pushed them indiscriminately until sound roared forth.

He found Himself staring at the television set, where a picture came into focus as the voice of the maggot faded away. It took Him a moment to understand what He was looking at: The morning news was assaulting His ears.

Fu gazed at the screen. Things began to make sense. A female reporter with wind-tousled hair stood in front of a police barricade. Behind her, the black arch of the Shand Street tunnel gaped like the upper jaw of Hades, and deep within that piss-scented cavern, temporary lights illuminated the back end of the abandoned Mazda.

Fu relaxed into the sight of that car, released and released. It was, He thought, unfortunate that the barrier had been set up at the south end of the tunnel. From this position, the body could not be seen. And He’d taken such pains to make the message clear: The boy doomed himself, don’t you see? Not to retribution, from which there had never once been a realistic hope of escape, but from release. Until the end, the boy had both protested and denied.

Fu had expected to wake from the night with a sense of disquiet, born of the boy’s refusal to admit his shame. True, He hadn’t felt any such sense at the moment of his death, experiencing instead the momentary loosing of the vice that had His brain in its grasp, tighter and tighter with each passing day. But He had assumed He’d feel it later on, when clarity and personal honesty demanded that He evaluate His choice of subject. Yet upon waking He hadn’t felt anything remotely like unease at all. Instead, until the arrival of the maggot, well-being had continued to suffuse Him, like the sense of repletion after a good meal.

“…not releasing any other information at the moment,” the reporter was saying earnestly. “We know there’s a body, we’ve heard-and let me stress that we’ve only heard, and it has not been confirmed-that it’s the body of a boy, and we’ve been told that officers have arrived from the Met police squad already investigating the last murder in St. George’s Gardens. But as to whether this latest killing is related to the earlier murders…We’re going to have to wait for word on that.”

As she spoke, several individuals came out of the tunnel behind her: plainclothes cops by the look of them. A dumpy woman with pudding-basin hair took some direction from a blond officer in an overcoat that had the look of old money about it. She nodded once and headed out of sight, whereupon the officer stood in conversation with a bloke in a mustard anorak and another with concave shoulders and a crumpled mac.

The reporter said, “I’ll just see if I can have a word…,” and advanced as close to the barricade as she could get. But every other reporter had the same idea, and so much jostling and shouting ensued that no one got an answer to anything. The cops ignored the lot of them, but the telly cameraman zoomed in anyway. Fu got a good look at His adversaries. The dumpy woman was gone, but He had time to study Overcoat, Anorak, and Crumpled Mac. He knew He was more than a match for them.

“Five and counting,” He murmured to the television. “Don’t touch that dial.”

Nearby, He had a cup of tea that He’d made upon waking, and He saluted the television with it before He replaced it on a nearby table. Around Him, the house creaked as its pipes supplied the old radiators with water to heat the rooms, and He heard in those creaks an announcement of the maggot’s imminent return.

Look at this, He would instruct as He pointed to the television where the police discussed Him and His handiwork. I leave the message, and they must read. Every step of it planned in exquisite detail.

The stertorous breathing behind Him, then. That eternal signal of the maggot’s presence. Not in His head now, but here in this room.

What’re you doing, boy?

Fu didn’t need to have even a look. The shirt would be white, as it always was, but worn at both the collar and cuffs. The trousers would be charcoal or brown, the tie knotted perfectly and the cardigan buttoned. He’d have polished his shoes, polished his specs, and polished his round bald head as well.

The question again: What’re you doing? with the threat implicit in the tone.

Fu made no reply since the answer was obvious: He was watching the news and experiencing the unfolding of His personal history. He was making His mark, and wasn’t that exactly what He’d been instructed to do?

You best answer me when I speak to you. I asked what’re you doing and I want a reply.

And then, Where the hell were you brought up? Get that teacup off the bloody wood. You want to polish the furniture in your spare time since you’ve got so much of it? What’re you thinking about anyway? Or are you out of practice in that department?

Fu fixed His attention on the television. He could wait him out. He knew what came next because some things were written: bran in warm milk, soaked into slop, a glass of fibre dissolved in juice, those prayers sent heavenward for a quick movement of the bowels so he wouldn’t have to experience said movement in a public place like the gents’ loo at school. And if movement was achieved, a triumphant notation on the calendar hanging inside the cupboard door. R for regular when regular was the last thing a maggot could ever hope to be.

But something was different this morning. Fu could feel him charging, a horseman directly from Revelations.

Saying, Where are they? What’ve you bloody done…I told you to keep your filthy mitts off. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I expressly tell you? You turn off that God damn telly and look at me when I’m talking to you.

He wanted the remote. Fu would not hand it over.

You defying me, Charlene? You defying me?

What if He was? Fu thought. What if she was? What if they were? What if He did? What if everyone did? Amazingly, He found Himself unafraid, wary nevermore, utterly at ease, even a bit amused. The maggot’s power was nothing in comparison with His own now that He’d finally taken it up, and the beauty of it all was that the maggot had no idea who or what he was dealing with. Fu felt such a presence in His veins, such capability, such sureness and knowledge. He rose from the chair, and He allowed His body to come into its fullness, undisguised. He said, “I wanted and I took. That’s what it was.”

Then nothing. Nothing. It was as if the maggot read Fu’s power. He sensed a sea change.

“Good on you,” Fu said to him. Self-preservation tended to gain you very high marks round here.

But the maggot couldn’t leave it completely alone, not when his way of simply being had long been so thoroughly ingrained in him. So he watched Fu’s every move and he waited, eager for an indication that it was safe to speak.

Fu went to put the kettle on to boil. Perhaps, He thought, He would have a whole bloody pot of tea. And He would choose a blend possessing something of a vaguely celebratory air. He studied the boxes of tea in the cupboard. Imperial gunpowder? He thought. Too weak, although He had to admit that He found the name attractive. He settled on one that had been His mother’s favourite: Lady Grey, with its hint of fruit.

And then, What are you doing up? Before nine a.m. the first time in…how long? When’re you planning to do something useful? That’s what I really want to know.

Fu looked up from spooning Lady Grey into the teapot. “No one knows,” he said. “Not you, not anyone.”

That’s what you think? Taking a slash in public, but no one knows? Your name on the charge sheet three or four times and that’s fine, isn’t it? Who’s going to care? And don’t you touch Charlene! Anyone touches the stupid cow, it’s going to be me.

Now they were in familiar territory: the open-palm slapping so as not to leave a mark, the grip on the hair and the head jerked back, the shove into the wall and the kick in places where it wouldn’t show.

Punctured lung, Fu thought. Was that what it was? Saying, You watch, boy. You learn from this.

Fu felt the urge come upon Him, then. His fingertips tingled and the muscles throughout His body made Him ready to strike. But no. The time was not right. When the day came, though, it was going to be such a pleasure to lower the pudgy, soft, never-known-hard-work hands to the pan, to its burning surface. His face hovering above the maggot and His lips hurling the curses this time…

He would beg like all the others. But Fu would not relent. He would take him to the edge, like the others. And just like the others, He would hurl him over.

See my power. Know my name.

DETECTIVE CONSTABLE Barbara Havers made her way over to Borough police station and found it on the High Street, which in this part of town and at this time of morning was funneling commuters through its narrow canyon. The noise level was intense, and the cold air was heavy with diesel exhaust fumes. These were doing their best to deposit even more grime upon the already grimy buildings that sat back from pavements littered with everything from beer cans to condoms limp with use. It was that kind of neighbourhood.

Barbara was beginning to feel the stress. She’d never worked on a serial killing before, and while she’d always known the sensation of urgency attendant on getting to a killer and making an arrest, she’d never actually experienced what she was experiencing now, which was the feeling that she was somehow personally responsible for this latest murder. Five now, with no one held to an accounting. Whatever else, they weren’t working fast enough.

She was finding it difficult to keep her focus on Kimmo Thorne, victim number four. With number five dead and number six out there, somewhere innocently going about his daily affairs, it was all she could do to stay calm as she entered the Borough High Street station and flashed her identification.

She needed to speak to whoever had nabbed a kid called Kimmo Thorne in Bermondsey Market, she told the special. The matter was urgent.

She watched as he placed three telephone calls. He spoke low, keeping his eye upon her and no doubt evaluating her as a representative of New Scotland Yard. She didn’t look the part-disheveled and ill dressed, with all the glamour of a wheelie bin-and this morning she knew she was particularly unkempt. One did not rise before four A.M., spend several hours in the grime of South London, and still manage to swan about looking like the catwalk was in one’s afternoon diary. She’d thought her red high-top trainers had added a cheerful touch to her ensemble. But they seemed to be causing the special constable the most concern, considering the disapproving looks he kept casting in their direction.

She paced over to a notice board and read about community-action committees and neighbourhood watch programmes. She considered adopting two sad-looking dogs whose pictures were posted, and she memorised the phone number of someone willing to sell her the secrets of instant weight loss while allowing her to continue to eat whatever she wanted. She went on to read all about “Taking the Offensive When Walking at Night” and was halfway through this when a door opened and a male voice said, “Constable Havers? You’re wanting me, I believe.” She turned and saw a middle-aged Sikh in the doorway, his turban blindingly white and his dark eyes deeply soulful. He was called DS Gill, he told her. Would she accompany him to the canteen? He’d been having his breakfast, and if she didn’t mind his finishing it…Mushrooms on toast with baked beans. He had become more English than the English, he said.

She took a coffee and a chocolate croissant from the food on offer, eschewing the wiser and decidedly more nutritious possibilities. Why indulge in a virtuous half grapefruit when she was soon to learn the secret of weight loss while continuing to eat whatever she wanted, which was usually something laced with lard? She paid for her goodies and carried them to the table where DS Gill was once again tucking into the breakfast she had interrupted.

He told her that everyone at the Borough High Street station knew about Kimmo Thorne, even if not everyone had met the boy. Kimmo had long been one of those individuals whose doings were never far from the police radar screen. When his aunt and his gran had reported him missing, no one at the station had been surprised, although to have him turn up as a murder victim whose body was dumped in St. George’s Gardens…That had shaken a few of the less hardened officers at the station, making them wonder if they had done enough to try to keep Kimmo on the straight and narrow.

“You see, we quite liked the boy here, Constable Havers,” Gill confided in his pleasant Eastern voice. “My gracious, he was a character, Kimmo: always ready with the chat, whatever his circumstances happened to be. To be honest, it was very difficult not to like him, despite the cross-dressing and soliciting. Although, to be frank, we never actually caught him in the act of soliciting, no matter how we went about it. That boy had such a sense for when someone was undercover…If I may say so, he was streetwise beyond his years, and for that reason we may have fallen derelict in our duty to apprehend him by a more advanced means, which could in turn have saved him. And for this, I personally”-he touched his chest-“do feel responsible.”

“His mate-a bloke called Blinker…one Charlie Burov-says they worked it as a pair across the river. Out of Leicester Square and not round here. Kimmo did the deed while Blinker kept watch.”

“That explains some of it,” Gill noted.

“Some?”

“Well, you see, he was not a stupid boy. We’d had him in for warnings. We tried to tell him time and again that it was only luck that was keeping him out of trouble, but he would not hear us.”

“Kids,” Barbara said. She was trying to be delicate with her croissant, but it was defying her attempts at social nicety, dissolving into delicious flakes that she restrained herself from licking from her fingers, not to mention from the table. “What’re you going to do about them, anyway? They think they’re immortal. Didn’t you?”

“At that age?” Gill shook his head. “I was far too hungry then to think immortality was in store for me, Constable.” He’d finished his breakfast and folded his paper napkin neatly. He placed his plate to one side and brought his cup of tea closer. “For Kimmo, it was more than a sense that he could not be hurt, that he could not fall into danger by making the wrong choice. He had to believe himself an astute judge of whom to go with and whom to refuse because he had plans, and soliciting was a means to make them happen. He could not-and would not-give it up.”

“What sort of plans?”

Gill looked momentarily embarrassed, as if against his will he were about to confide an offensive secret to a lady. “Actually, he wished to have a sexual change. He was saving for that. He told us the first time we had him into the station.”

“A bloke over in the market said you lot finally sent him down for selling stolen goods,” Barbara said. “But what I don’t get is why Kimmo Thorne? There’s got to be dozens over there flogging lumber they’ve nicked.”

“This is true,” Gill said. “But as you and I well know, we do not have the manpower to sort through every stall in every market in London to ascertain which products are legitimately on offer and which are not. In this particular case, however, Kimmo was selling items that-without his knowledge-had all been engraved with infinitesimal serial numbers. And the last thing he expected was to find the owners of the items seeking them out Friday after Friday in the market. When they found him with their belongings for sale, they rang us up directly. I was called out and…” He raised his fingers. The gesture said, The rest is history.

“You’d never twigged before that that he was breaking and entering?”

“He was rather like a canine in that,” Gill said. “He did not foul his own den. When he wished to break the law, he did so in another station’s jurisdiction. He was clever that way.”

Thus, Gill explained, Kimmo’s arrest for selling stolen property went down as his first offence. Because of that, when he went in front of the magistrate, he was put on probation. This too the DS deeply regretted. Had Kimmo Thorne been taken seriously, had he been given more than a slap on the hand and a probation officer in Youth Offenders to report to, he might have changed his ways and still been walking the streets today. But alas, that had not happened. Instead, he’d been sent to an organisation for youth at risk and they’d tried to work with him.

Barbara’s ears pricked up. Organisation? she asked. What? Where?

It was a charity called Colossus, Gill told her. “A fine project, right here, south of the river,” he said. “They offer young people alternatives to street life, crime, and drugs. With recreational programmes, community activities, life-skills classes…And not just for youth at risk with the law, but for the homeless, for truants, for those in care…I admit to having relaxed my own vigilance on Kimmo’s behalf when I knew he had been assigned to Colossus. Surely, I thought, someone there would take him under a protective wing.”

“As a mentor?” Barbara asked. “Is that what they do?”

“That’s what he needed,” Gill said. “Someone to take an interest in him. Someone to assist him towards seeing he had a degree of value that he did not quite believe he actually had. Someone to turn to. Someone to…” The DS seemed to bring himself up short, perhaps realising he’d gone from relaying information as an officer of the law to advocating action like a social militant. He loosened the tight grip he had on his teacup.

Small wonder that he was upset by the boy’s death, Barbara thought. With his present mind-set, she wondered not only how long Gill had been a cop but also how he managed to stay one, facing what he had to face at work every day. She said, “It’s not your fault, you know. You did what you could. Fact is, you did more than most cops would’ve done.”

“But as things turned out, I did not do enough. And that is what I must live with now. A boy is dead because Detective Sergeant Gill could not bring himself to do enough.”

“But there are millions of kids like Kimmo,” Barbara protested.

“And most of them are alive at this moment.”

“You can’t help them all. You can’t save each one.”

“That is what we tell ourselves, isn’t it?”

“What else should we tell ourselves?”

“That saving all of them is not required of us. What is required is helping the ones whom we come across. And this, Constable, I failed to do.”

“Bloody hell. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Who else,” he said, “is there to do so? Tell me that if you will. Because here is exactly what I believe: If more of us were hard on ourselves, more children would live lives all children deserve.”

At this, Barbara dropped her gaze from his. She knew she couldn’t argue with that. But the fact that she wanted to do so told her how close she herself was to caring too much. And this, she knew, made her more like Gill than she, as part of the team investigating these crimes, could afford to be.

That was the irony about police work. Care too little and more people died. Care too much and you couldn’t catch their killer.

“I’D LIKE A WORD,” Lynley said. “Now.” He didn’t add sir and he made no real effort to modulate his voice. Had he been present, Hamish Robson no doubt would have taken note of everything his tone implied about aggression and the need to settle a score, but Lynley didn’t care about that. They’d negotiated an arrangement. Hillier hadn’t upheld it.

The AC had just concluded a meeting with Stephenson Deacon. The head of the Press Bureau had left Hillier’s office looking as grim as Lynley felt. Things were obviously not going smoothly at that end of things, and for a moment Lynley took a perverse pleasure in this. The thought of Hillier eventually dangling in the wind of the Press Bureau’s machinations before a pack of baying journalists was deeply gratifying just now.

Hillier said, as if he hadn’t spoken, “Where the hell is Nkata? We’ve a meeting with the media coming up and I want him here in advance.” He gathered up an array of papers spread out on his conference table and shoved them at an underling who was still seated there, having attended the meeting that had gone on prior to Lynley’s arrival. He was a razor-thin twentysomething in John Lennon spectacles who was continuing to take notes as he apparently tried to avoid becoming the focus of Hillier’s exasperation. “They’re on to colour,” the AC said curtly. “So who the hell over there”-he jerked his finger in what Lynley decided was supposed to be a southerly direction, meaning south of the river, meaning the Shand Street tunnel-“leaked that bit to those predators? I want to know and I want that bugger’s head on a dish. You, Powers.”

The underling jumped to, leaning in to say, “Sir? Yes, sir?”

“Get that halfwit Rodney Aronson on the phone. He’s running The Source these days, and the colour question came in by phone from someone on that rotten little rag. Trace it back to us that way. Put pressure on Aronson. On anyone else you come across as well. I want every leak plugged by the end of the day. Get on to it.”

“Sir.” Powers scooted from the room.

Hillier went to his desk. He picked up the phone and punched in a few numbers, either oblivious of or indifferent to Lynley’s presence and his state of mind. Unbelievably, he began to book himself a massage.

Lynley felt as if battery acid were running through his veins. He strode across the room to Hillier’s desk, and he pushed the button to disconnect the AC from his phone call. Hillier snapped, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re-”

“I said I want a word,” Lynley cut in. “You and I had an arrangement, and you’ve violated it.”

“Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Only too well. You brought Robson in as window dressing, and I allowed it.”

Hillier’s florid face went crimson. “No one bloody allows-”

“Our agreement was that I would decide what he saw and what he didn’t see. He had no business at anyone’s crime scene, but there he was, given access. There’s only one way that sort of thing happens.”

“That’s right,” Hillier said. “Keep it in mind. There’s only one way anything happens round here and you are not that way. I’ll decide who has access to what, when, and how, Superintendent, and if it comes to me that it might advance the investigation by having the Queen turn up to shake hands with the corpse, then prepare yourself to tug your forelock because her Roller’s going to drop her off for a look. Robson’s part of the team. Cope with it.”

Lynley was incredulous. One moment the assistant commissioner was frothing at the mouth about locating leaks within the investigation; the next moment he was happily welcoming a potential snout right into their midst. But the problem went beyond what Hamish Robson might deliberately or inadvertently reveal to the media. He said, “Had it occurred to you that you’re putting this man at risk? That you’re exposing him to danger just for the hell of it? You’re making yourself look good at his expense, and if anything goes wrong, it’s down to the Met. Have you thought of that?”

“You’re so far out of order-”

“Answer my question!” Lynley said. “There’s a killer out there who’s taken five lives, and for all we know he was standing behind the barrier this morning, among the gawkers, taking note of everyone who came and went.”

“You’re being hysterical,” Hillier said. “Get out of this office. I’ve no intention of listening to you rant like a common lout. If you can’t handle the pressure of this case, then take yourself off it. Or I’ll do it for you. Now where the hell is Nkata? He’s meant to be here when I talk to the press.”

“Are you listening to me? Have you any idea…” Lynley wanted to pound his fist on the top of the AC’s desk, just to feel something beyond outrage for a moment. He tried to calm himself. He lowered his voice. “Listen to me, sir. It’s one thing for a killer to mark one of us. That’s part of the risk we face when we take the job. But to put someone in the sight lines of a psychopath just to protect your political backside-”

“That’s enough!” Hillier looked apoplectic. “That’s bloody well enough. I’ve put up with your insolence for years but you’re so far out of order at this point…” He came round the desk, stopping within three inches of Lynley. “Get out of this office,” he hissed. “Get back to work. For the moment, we’re going to pretend this conversation never happened. You’re going to go about your business, you’re going to obey every order that comes in your direction, you’re going to get to the bottom of this mess, and you’re going to make a prompt arrest. After that”-here Hillier poked Lynley’s chest and Lynley’s vision went red although he managed to restrain himself from reacting-“we’ll decide what’s going to happen to you. Have I made myself clear? Yes? Good. Now get back to work and get a result.”

Lynley allowed the AC the last word although it felt like swallowing poison to do so. He turned on his heel and left Hillier to his political scheming. He used the stairs to descend to the incident room, cursing himself for thinking he could make a difference in Hillier’s way of doing business. He needed to keep his focus on matters that counted, he realised, and the AC’s use of Hamish Robson was going to have to be eliminated from that list.

All the members of the murder squad were in the picture with regard to the Shand Street tunnel body, and when Lynley joined them it was to find them as subdued as he expected. All counted, they numbered thirty-three now: from the constables on the street to the secretaries keeping track of all the reports and relevant documentation. Being defeated by a single individual when they had the power of the Met behind them-with everything from sophisticated communications systems and CCTV films to forensic labs and databases-was more than disheartening. It was humiliating. And worse, it had failed to stop a killer.

So they were much subdued when Lynley entered. The only noise among them was the tapping of computer keys. That too ceased when Lynley said quietly, “What’s the form?”

DI John Stewart spoke from one of his multicoloured outlines. Triangulating the crime scenes wasn’t proving fruitful, he said. The killer was, literally, all over the London map. This suggested a confident knowledge of the city, which in turn suggested someone whose day job would give him that knowledge.

“Taxi driver comes to mind, obviously,” Stewart said. “Minicab driver. Bus driver as well, since not one body site is particularly far off a bus route either.”

“The profiler’s saying he’s working a job below his ability,” Lynley acknowledged, although he was loath even to mention Hamish Robson after his contretemps with Hillier.

“Courier works as well,” one of the DCs pointed out. “Riding round on a motorbike’d give you the Knowledge as good as studying to drive a black cab.”

“Even a bicycle,” someone else said.

“But, then, where does the van come in?”

“Personal transport? He doesn’t use it for his job?”

“What do we have on the van?” Lynley asked. “Who talked to the St. George’s Gardens witness?”

A team two constable spoke up. Careful massaging of the witness had initially gleaned nothing, but she’d phoned in late last night with a sudden memory, which, she said, she hoped was a real memory and not a combination of imagination and her desire to help the police. At any rate, she felt she could say with confidence that it was a full-size van they were looking for. It had faded white lettering on the side, suggesting it was or had once been a business van.

“Confirmation for the Ford Transit, essentially,” Stewart said. “We’re working with the DVLA list, looking for a red one that belongs to a business.”

“And?” Lynley said.

“Takes time, Tommy.”

“We haven’t got time.” Lynley heard the agitation in his voice and he knew the others heard it as well. He was reminded at the worst possible moment that he wasn’t Malcolm Webberly, that he didn’t possess the former superintendent’s calm, nor his steady approach when under pressure. He saw in the faces gathered round him that the other officers were thinking this as well. He said more evenly, “Move forward on that front, John. The moment you’ve got something, I’ll want to know.”

“As to that…,” Stewart hadn’t made eye contact at Lynley’s outburst, instead making a notation that he underscored three times partway down his precise outline. “We’ve got two sources from the Net. For the ambergris oil.”

“Only two?”

“It’s not your everyday purchase.” The two sources were in opposite directions: a shop called Crystal Moon on Gabriel’s Wharf-

“That’s a south-of-the-river location for us,” someone noted hopefully.

– and a stall in Camden Lock Market called Wendy’s Cloud. Someone would need to suss out each place.

“Barbara lives up in the Camden Lock area,” Lynley said. “She can deal with that. Winston can…Where is he, by the way?”

“Hiding from Dave the Knave, probably,” was the reply, an irreverent reference to Hillier. “He’s started getting fan mail from the telly watchers, has Winnie. All those lonely birds looking for a man with promise.”

“Is he in the building?”

No one knew. “Get him on his mobile. Havers as well.”

As he spoke, Barbara Havers arrived. Winston Nkata followed in her wake seconds later. The others greeted them with tension-diffusing hoots and ribald greetings that suggested their dual advent had a personal explanation behind it.

Havers gave them two fingers. “Sod you lot,” she said affably. “I’m surprised to find you outside of the canteen.”

For his part, Nkata merely said, “Sorry. Trying to track down a social worker for the Salvatore boy.”

“Success?” Lynley asked.

“Sod all.”

“Keep with it. Hillier’s looking for you, by the way.”

Nkata scowled. He said, “Got something on Jared Salvatore from Peckham police.” He relayed all the information he’d gathered, while the others listened and made relevant notes. “Girlfriend said he was learning to cook somewhere, but the blokes at the station aren’t giving that credence,” he concluded.

“Have someone check the cookery schools,” Lynley told DI Stewart. Stewart nodded and made a note. Lynley said, “Havers? What about Kimmo Thorne?”

She said that everything they’d been told by Blinker and then by the Grabinskis and Reg Lewis in Bermondsey Market had checked out with the Borough police. She went on to add that Kimmo Thorne had evidently been involved in a programme called Colossus, which she called “Bunch of do-gooders south of the river.” She’d gone there to check out the place: a renovated manufacturing plant not far from the knot of streets that merged at Elephant and Castle. “They weren’t open yet,” Havers concluded. “The place was locked up tight, but there were some kids hanging about, waiting for someone to show up and let them in.”

“What did they give you?” Lynley asked her.

“Not a bloody thing,” Havers said. “I said, ‘You lot involved in this place?’ and they twigged I was a copper. That was that.”

“Look into it, then.”

“Will do, sir.”

Lynley filled them in, then, on what Hamish Robson had had to say about the latest killing. He didn’t tell them that the profiler had been sent to the scene by Hillier. There was no sense in getting them worked up about something over which they had no control. Thus, he mentioned the killer’s change in attitude towards the most recent victim and the indications that he could reappear at any of the crime scenes.

Hearing this, DI Stewart set about arranging surveillance at the body sites before he went on to another report: The officers who’d been slogging through all of the relevant CCTV tapes from the areas near the body-dump sites were continuing that tedious job. It wasn’t exactly gripping drama, but the constables in question were soldiering on, supported by vats of hot coffee. They were looking not only for a van but for another means of transporting a body from point A to point B, and one that wouldn’t necessarily be noticed by people living in the vicinity: milk float, street-sweeping trolley, and the like.

To this information, he added that they’d had a report from SO7 on the makeup worn by Kimmo Thorne. The brand was No. Seven, commonly sold at Boots. Did the superintendent want them to start observing all the CCTV films from the Boots outlets nearest Kimmo Thorne’s home? He didn’t sound thrilled with this possibility. Still, he pointed out, “That might give us something. Bloke at the till disapproving how the Thorne kid was bent and wanting to do him in? That sort of thing.”

Lynley didn’t want to count anything out at this point. So he gave the nod for Stewart to assign a team to get on to the security tapes from the Boots outlets in the vicinity of Kimmo Thorne’s Southwark home. He himself assigned the two outlets for oil of ambergris to Nkata and to Havers, telling Havers to look in on Wendy’s Cloud when she headed home at the end of the day. In the meantime, she would accompany him to Elephant and Castle. He was determined to see himself what could be gained from a call upon Colossus. If one of the boys had been associated with it, what was to say the rest of the victims-still unidentified-might not have been allied with it as well?

“Couldn’t this last’ve been a copycat killing?” Havers asked. “That’s something we haven’t talked about yet. I mean, I know how Robson explained the differences between this body and the others, but those differences could be owing to someone knowing something about the crime scene but not everything, right?”

That couldn’t be discounted, Lynley agreed. But the truth was that copycat killings came from information generated by the news media, and despite the fact that they had a leak somewhere in the investigation, he knew that it was a recent one. The press jumping on the fact that the latest body was black was evidence of that since there were far more sensational details to exploit on the front pages of the tabloids than that one. And Lynley knew how the media worked: They weren’t about to withhold something gruesome if it had the potential to sell another two hundred thousand copies of their papers. So indications were strong that they didn’t have anything gruesome on record yet, which suggested this killing wasn’t a copy of the earlier ones but rather another death in a line of similar deaths, all bearing the signature of a single killer.

That was the person they had to find, quickly. For Lynley was perfectly capable of making the psychological jump implied by everything Hamish Robson had told him that morning about the man they were looking for: If he’d treated this last body with contempt and without remorse, things were escalating now.