With No One As Witness

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHEN DETECTIVE CONSTABLE BARBARA HAVERS PULLED into the underground carpark at New Scotland Yard the next morning, she was already on her fourth cigarette, not counting the one she’d lit up and sucked down as she made her way from bed to shower. She’d been smoking steadily since leaving her digs, and the always maddening trip from North London had done nothing to improve either her nerves or her mood.

She was used to rows. She’d had run-ins with everyone she’d ever worked with, and she’d even gone so far as to shoot at a superior officer, in the truly advanced row that had cost her her rank and very nearly her job. But nothing that had gone before in her patchy career-not to mention in her life-had affected her as she’d been affected in five minutes of conversation with her neighbour.

She hadn’t intended to take on Taymullah Azhar. Her objective had been to extend a simple invitation to his daughter. Careful research-well, what went for careful research on her part, which was to buy a copy of What’s On, like a tourist come to see the Queen-had informed her that a place called the Jeffrye Museum offered glimpses into social history via models of sitting rooms through the centuries. Wouldn’t it be brilliant for Hadiyyah to accompany Barbara there in order to feed her eager little mind with something other than considerations of the belly rings currently being worn by female pop singers? It would be a journey from North to East London. It would, in short, be edu-bloody-cational. How could Azhar, a sophisticated educator himself, object to that?

Quite easily, as it turned out. When Barbara knocked him up on her way out to her car, he opened the door and he listened politely, as was his habit, with the fragrance of a well-balanced and nutritional breakfast floating out from the flat behind him like an accusation against Barbara’s own morning ritual of Pop-Tart and Players.

“Sort of a double whammy, you could call it,” Barbara finished the invitation, and even as she said it, she wondered where the hell double whammy had come from. “I mean, the museum’s built in a row of old almshouses, so there’s historical and social architecture involved as well. The sort of thing kids pass without knowing what they’re passing, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I thought it might be…” What, she asked herself? A good idea? An opportunity for Hadiyyah? An escape from further punishment?

That last was it, of course. Barbara had passed Hadiyyah’s solemn little gated face in the window one time too many. Enough was bleeding enough, she’d thought. Azhar had made his point. He didn’t need to beat the poor kid over the head with it.

“This is very kind of you, Barbara,” Azhar had said with his usual grave courtesy. “However, in the circumstance in which Hadiyyah and I find ourselves…”

She’d appeared behind him then, having apparently heard their voices. She cried, “Barbara! Hello, hello,” and she peered round her father’s slender body. She said, “Dad, can Barbara not come in? We’re having our breakfast, Barbara. Dad’s made French toast and scrambled eggs. That’s what I’m having. With syrup. He’s having yogurt.” She wrinkled her nose, but not evidently at her father’s choice of food because she went on to say, “Barbara, have you been smoking already? Dad, can Barbara not come in?”

“Can’t, kiddo,” Barbara said hastily so Azhar wouldn’t have to issue an invitation he might not want to issue. “I’m on my way to work. Keeping London safe for women, children, and small furry animals. You know the drill.”

Hadiyyah bounced from foot to foot. “I got a good mark in my maths exam,” she confided. “Dad said he was proud when he saw it.”

Barbara looked at Azhar. His dark face was sombre. “School is very important,” he said to his daughter, although he looked at Barbara as he spoke. “Hadiyyah, please go back to your breakfast.”

“But can’t Barbara come-”

“Hadiyyah.” The voice was sharp. “Have I not just spoken to you? And has Barbara herself not told you that she must go to work? Do you listen to others or merely desire and hear nothing that precludes desire’s fulfillment?”

This seemed a little harsh, even by Azhar’s standards. Hadiyyah’s face, which had been glowing, altered in an instant. Her eyes widened, but not with surprise. Barbara could see she did it to contain her tears. She backed away with a gulp and scooted in the direction of the kitchen.

Azhar and Barbara were left together eyeball to eyeball, he looking like a disinterested witness to a car crash, she feeling the warning sign of heat seeping into her gut. That was the moment when she should have said, “Well. Right. That’s that, then. P’rhaps I’ll see you both later. Ta-ta,” and gone on her way, knowing she was wading out of her depth and mindlessly swimming into someone else’s business. But instead she’d held her neighbour’s gaze and allowed herself to feel the heat and its progression from her stomach to her chest, where it formed a burning knot. When it got there, she spoke.

“That was a bit out of order, don’t you think? She’s just a kid. When’re you planning to give her a break?”

“Hadiyyah knows what she is meant to do,” Azhar replied. “She also knows there are consequences when she goes her own way in defiance.”

“Okay. All right. Got it. Written in stone. Tattooed on my forehead. Whatever you want. But how about punishments fitting the crime? And while we’re at it, how about not humiliating her in front of me?”

“She is not-”

“She is,” Barbara hissed. “You didn’t see her face. And let me tell you this for a lark, all right? Life’s hard enough, especially for little girls. What they don’t need is parents making it harder.”

“She needs to-”

“You want her brought down a peg or two? Want her sorted? Want her to know she’s not numero uno in anyone’s life and she never will be? Just let her out in society, Azhar, and she’ll get the message. She bloody well doesn’t need to hear it from her father.”

Barbara could see she’d gone too far with that. Azhar’s face-always composed-shuttered completely. “You have no children,” he replied. “If one day you find yourself fortunate enough to be a mother, Barbara, you will think otherwise about how and when your child should be disciplined.”

It was the word fortunate and all it implied that allowed Barbara to see her neighbour in an entirely new light. Dirty fighter, she thought. But two could play at that game.

“No wonder she walked out, Azhar. How long did it actually take her to get a reading on you? Too long, I’d guess. But that’s not much of a surprise, is it? After all, she was an English girl, and none of us English girls play the game with all fifty-two cards in the deck, do we?”

That said, she turned and left him, enjoying the coward’s brief triumph at having had the last word. But it was the simple fact that she’d had that word that kept Barbara in raging and internal conversation, with an Azhar who wasn’t present, all the way into Central London. So when she pulled into a parking bay beneath New Scotland Yard, she was still in a state and hardly in the proper frame of mind for a day’s productive employment. She was also light-headed from nicotine.

She stopped in the ladies’ loo to splash some water on her face. She looked in the mirror and hated herself for stooping to examine her image for evidence of what she realized Taymullah Azhar had been seeing for all these months they’d been neighbours: Unfortunate female Homo sapiens, a perfect specimen of everything gone wrong. No chance for a normal life, Barbara. Whatever the hell that was.

“Sod him,” she whispered. Who was he, anyway? Who the bloody hell did he think he was?

She ran her fingers through her chopped-up hair, and she straightened the collar of her blouse, realising she should have ironed it…had she owned an iron. She looked three quarters of the journey towards a fright, but that couldn’t be helped and it didn’t matter. There was a job to do.

In the incident room, she found that the morning briefing was already going on. Superintendent Lynley glanced her way in the middle of listening to something being said by Winston Nkata, and he did not look particularly chuffed as his gaze traveled beyond her to the clock on the wall.

Winston was saying, “…works of wrath or vengeance, ’cording to what the lady at Crystal Moon told me. She looked it up in a book. She handed over a register of shop visitors wanting to be on their newsletter list, and she’s got credit card purchases and postal codes of customers as well.”

“Let’s match the postal codes with the body sites,” Lynley said to him. “Do the same with the register and the credit card purchases. We may get some joy there. What about Camden Lock Market?” Lynley looked towards Barbara. “What did you get from that stall, Constable? Did you stop there this morning?” Which was his way of saying, I trust that’s your reason for walking in here late.

Barbara thought, Holy hell. The run-in with Azhar had wiped every other consideration from her mind. She fumbled round her head for an excuse, but the course of wisdom brought her back from the brink at the last moment. She opted for the truth. “I dropped the ball on that,” she admitted. “Sorry, sir. When I was finished with Colossus yesterday, I…Never mind. I’ll get on to it directly.”

She saw the looks exchanged round her. She saw Lynley’s lips get thin for an instant, so she went on hastily in an attempt to smooth over the moment. “I think the direction we need to take is Colossus anyway, sir.”

“Do you.” Lynley’s voice was even, too even, but she chose to ignore that.

She said, “I do. We’ve got possibles and counting over there that need looking into. Aside from Jack Veness, who seems to know something about everyone, there’s a bloke called Neil Greenham who’s a bit overly helpful. He had a copy of the Standard that he was dead chuffed to show me, by the way. And that Robbie Kilfoyle-he was in reception yesterday, playing cards with that kid?-he volunteers in the kit room. He does lunch deliveries as a second job-”

“Van?” Lynley asked.

“Bike. Sorry,” Barbara said regretfully. “But he admitted he’s aiming for a real job at Colossus if it expands across the river, which gives him a motive to make someone else look-”

“Killing off the customers is hardly going to get him that, is it, Havers?” John Stewart cut in acerbically.

Barbara ignored the dig, going on to say, “His competition could be a bloke called Griff Strong, who’s lost his last two jobs in Stockwell and Lewisham because, according to him, he didn’t get along with female coworkers. That’s four possibles, and they’re all in the age range of the profile, sir.”

“We’ll look into them,” Lynley agreed. And just as Barbara thought she’d redeemed herself, Lynley asked John Stewart to hand out that assignment and he went on to tell Nkata to dig round in the background of Reverend Bram Savidge and to deal with the goings-on at Square Four Gym in Swiss Cottage, and a car repair shop in North Kensington, while he was at it. Then he made additional assignments involving the taxi driver who’d called 999 about the body in the Shand Street tunnel and the abandoned car where that body had been deposited. He took in a report about the cookery schools in London-no Jared Salvatore enrolled in any of them-before he turned to Barbara and said, “I’ll see you in my office, Constable.” He strode out of the incident room with a “Get on with it, then” to the rest of the team, leaving Barbara to follow. She noted that no one looked at her as she trailed after Lynley.

She found herself scurrying to keep up with him, and she didn’t like the dog-and-master feeling this evoked. She knew she’d muffed it by forgetting to check the stall in Camden Lock Market and she supposed she deserved a dressing-down for that, but on the other hand, she’d given them a new direction with Strong, Greenham, Veness, and Kilfoyle, hadn’t she, so that had to count for something.

Once in the superintendent’s office, however, it seemed that Lynley didn’t see things this way. He said, “Shut the door, Havers,” and when she had done so, he went to his desk. Instead of sitting, however, he merely leaned his hips against it and faced her. He gestured her to a chair, and he loomed above her.

She absolutely loathed the way this made her feel, but she was determined that loathing would not rule her. She said, “Your picture was on the front page of the Standard, sir. Yesterday afternoon. So was mine. So was Hamish Robson’s. We were standing just outside of the Shand Street tunnel. You were named. That’s not good.”

“It happens.”

“But with a serial killer-”

Lynley broke in. “Constable, tell me this: Are you deliberately attempting to shoot yourself in the foot or is all of this part of your unconscious?”

“All of this…? What?”

“You were given the assignment. Camden Lock Market. On your route home, for the love of God. Or, for that matter, on your route here. Do you realise how you appear to the others when-as you put it-you ‘drop the ball’? If you want your rank back, which I assume you do and which I also assume you know depends upon your being able to function as part of a team, how do you expect to achieve that if you’re going to make your own decisions about what’s important in this investigation and what is not?”

“Sir, that’s not fair,” Barbara protested.

“And this isn’t the first time you’ve operated on your own,” Lynley said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “If ever an officer had a professional death wish…What the hell were you thinking? Don’t you see I can’t keep running interference for you? Just when I begin to think I’ve got you sorted, you begin it all again.”

“All what?”

“Your infernal bloody-mindedness. Your taking the reins in your hands instead of the bit in your mouth. Your constant insubordination. Your unwillingness even to make a pretence of being part of a larger team. We’ve been through this before. Time and again. I’m doing my best to protect you, but I swear to you if this doesn’t stop…” He threw up his hands. “Get over to Camden Lock Market, Havers. To Wendy’s Rainbow or whatever the hell it was called.”

“Wendy’s Cloud,” Barbara said numbly. “But she may not be open because-”

“Then you can bloody well track her down! And until you do, I don’t want to see your face, hear your voice, or know you exist on the planet. Is that clear?”

Barbara stared at him. Her stare turned into an observation. She’d worked with Lynley for long enough to know how wildly out of character his outburst was, no matter how richly she deserved being sorted. She did a mental riffling through the reasons he was on the edge: another murder, a row with Helen, a run-in with Hillier, trouble with his younger brother, flat tyre on the way to work, too much caffeine, not enough sleep…But then it came to her, as easily as knowing who Lynley was.

She said, “He’s got in touch with you, hasn’t he? He saw your name in the paper and he bloody got in touch.”

Lynley observed her for a moment before making his decision. He moved round his desk. There he took a paper out of a manila folder. He handed it to her, and Barbara saw it was a copy of an original, which, she presumed, was already on its way to forensics.

THERE IS NO DENIAL, ONLY SALVATION was printed neatly in block letters on a single line across the page. Beneath this was not a signature but rather a marking that looked not unlike two squared-off but separated sections of a maze.

“How’d it get here?” Barbara asked, returning it to Lynley.

“By post,” Lynley said. “Plain envelope. Same printing.”

“What d’you make of the marking? A signature?”

“Of sorts.”

“Could be some bugger just wanting to play games, couldn’t it? I mean, he doesn’t actually tell us anything to show he knows something only the killer would know.”

“Except the salvation bit,” Lynley said. “It suggests he knows that the boys-at least the ones we’ve identified-have been in trouble with the law one way or another. Only the killer knows that.”

“Plus everyone at Colossus,” Barbara pointed out. “Sir, that bloke Neil Greenham had a copy of the Standard.”

“Neil Greenham and everyone else in London.”

“But you were named in the Standard, and that’s the edition he showed me. Let me dig around his-”

“Barbara.” Lynley’s voice was patient.

“What?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“‘It’?”

“Handle Camden Lock Market. I’ll deal with the rest.”

She was about to protest-better judgement be damned-when the phone rang and Lynley picked it up. He said, “Yes, Dee?,” to the departmental secretary. He listened for a moment, then said, “Bring him up here, if you will,” before ringing off.

“Robson?” Barbara asked.

“Simon St. James,” Lynley replied. “He’s got something for us.”

HE RECOGNISED that his wife, at this point, was his anchor. His wife and the separate reality that she represented. It was, to Lynley, nothing short of miraculous that he could go home and-for the few hours he was there-become, if not consumed, then at least diverted by something as ridiculous as the drama of trying to keep peace between their families over the idiotic question of christening clothes.

“Tommy,” Helen had said from the bed as she’d watched him dressing for the day, an early morning cup of tea balanced on her growing bump, “did I mention your mother phoned yesterday? She wanted to report that she’d finally found the christening booties after spending days rooting round the apparently spider-and-poisonous-snake-infested attics in Cornwall. She’s sending them along-the booties, not the spiders and the snakes-so be prepared to find them in the post, she said. A little yellowed with age, I’m afraid, she said. But certainly nothing that a good launderer couldn’t sort out. Of course, I didn’t know what to tell her. I mean, if we don’t use your family’s christening clothes, will Jasper Felix even be a proper Lynley?” She yawned. “Lord, not that tie, darling. How old is it? You look like an Etonian on the loose. First free weekend across the bridge to Windsor and trying to look like one of the lads. Wherever did you get it?”

Lynley unlooped it and replaced it in the wardrobe, saying, “The astonishing thing is that, as bachelors, men actually dress themselves for years not knowing they’re completely incompetent without a woman at their sides.” He took out another two ties and held them up for her approval.

“The green,” she said. “You know I love the green for work. It makes you look so Sherlockian.”

“I wore the green yesterday, Helen.”

“Pooh,” she said. “No one will notice. Believe me. No one ever notices men’s ties.”

He didn’t point out to Helen that she was contradicting herself. He merely smiled. He went across to the bed and sat on the edge of it. “What’ve you got on for today?” he asked her.

“I’ve promised Simon to work a few hours. He’s overextended himself again-”

“When has he not?”

“Well, he’s begging for help preparing a paper on a chemical whatsit applied to whosit to produce thisorthat. It’s all beyond me. I just go where he points and attempt to look decorative. Although”-and here she gazed fondly at her bump-“that’s soon going to be impossible.”

He kissed her forehead and then her mouth. “You’ll always look decorative to me,” he told her. “Even when you’re eighty-five and toothless.”

“I plan to keep my teeth right to the grave,” she informed him. “They’ll be perfectly white, completely straight, and my gums will not have receded so much as a millimeter.”

“I’m impressed,” he told her.

“A woman,” she replied, “should always have some kind of ambition.”

He laughed, then. She could always make him laugh. It was why she was a necessity to him. Indeed, he could have done with her this morning, diverting his thoughts from what was clearly Barbara Havers’ death wish.

If Helen was a miracle to him, Barbara was a puzzle. Every time he thought he’d got her on the road to professional redemption at last, she did something to disabuse him of that notion. A team player she was not. Assign her to any action like any other member of an investigation and she was likely to go one of two ways: embellish upon the activity until it was unrecognisable or drift her own way and ignore it altogether. But right now, with five murders demanding action before there was a sixth, there was too much at stake for Barbara to do anything but what she was told to do when she was told to do it.

Still, for all her maddening ways, Lynley had learned the wisdom of valuing Barbara’s opinion. Quite simply, she’d never been anyone’s fool. So he allowed her to remain in his office as Dee Harriman went to fetch St. James up from the lobby.

When the three of them were together and St. James’s demurral to Dee’s offer of coffee had sent her on her way, Lynley indicated the round conference table, and they sat there as they’d done so often in the past in other locations. Lynley’s first words were the same, as well.

“What do we have?”

St. James took a sheaf of papers from the manila envelope he’d carried with him. He made two piles of them. One held autopsy reports. The other consisted of an enlargement of the marking that had been made in blood on the forehead of Kimmo Thorne, a photocopy of a similar symbol, and a neatly typed, albeit brief, report.

“It took a while,” St. James said. “There’re an inordinate number of symbols out there. Everything from universal road signs to hieroglyphics. But on the whole, I’d say it’s a fairly straightforward business.”

He handed Lynley the photocopy and the enlargement of the mark that had been made upon Kimmo Thorne. Lynley laid them side by side as he reached in his jacket for his reading glasses. The parts of the symbol were all present in both of the documents: the circle, the two lines crisscrossing each other within and then extending beyond the circle, the cruciform tips at the end of the two lines.

“The same,” Barbara Havers said, craning her neck to see the two documents. “What is it, Simon?”

“An alchemical symbol,” St. James said.

“What does it mean?” Lynley asked.

“Purification,” he replied. “Specifically, a purification process achieved by burning out impurities. I’d say that’s why he’s scorching their hands.”

Barbara gave a low whistle. “‘There is no denial, only salvation,’” she murmured. And to Lynley, “Burning out their impurities. Sir, I think he’s saving their souls.”

St. James said, “What’s this?,” and looked to Lynley, who fetched him the copy of the note he’d received. St. James read it, frowned, and gazed towards the windows in thought. “It could explain why there’s no sexual component to the crime, couldn’t it?”

“Is the symbol he’s used on the note familiar to you?” Lynley asked his friend.

St. James studied it again. “You’d think it would be, after all the icons I’ve been looking at. May I take this with me?”

“Have at it,” Lynley said. “We’ve other copies.”

St. James put the paper into his manila envelope. He said, “There’s something else, Tommy.”

“What’s that?”

“Call it professional curiosity. The autopsies refer to a consistent bruiselike wound on each of the bodies, on the left side, between two and six inches beneath the armpit. Apart from one of the bodies where the wound also included two small burns in the centre, the description is the same every time: pale in the middle, darker-nearly red in the case of the body from St. George’s Gardens-”

“Kimmo Thorne,” Havers said.

“Right. Darker, then, round the edges. I’d like to have a look at that wound. A photograph will do, although I’d prefer to see one of the bodies. Can that be arranged? On Kimmo Thorne perhaps? Has his body been released to the family yet?”

“I can arrange it. But where are you heading with this?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” St. James admitted. “But I think it might have to do with how the boys were subdued. There’s no trace of any drug from toxicology, so they weren’t sedated. There’s no evidence of a struggle prior to placing restraints round the wrists and ankles, so there wasn’t an initial assault. Assuming this isn’t some sort of S and M ritual-a young boy being seduced into kinky sex by an older man who murders him ahead of the sex act-”

“And we can’t discount that,” Lynley noted.

“Right. We can’t. But assuming this has no overt sexual component to it, then there has to be a way your killer is managing to tie them up prior to the torture and the killing.”

“These are streetwise kids,” Havers noted. “They’re not likely to have cooperated with some bloke wanting to tie them up for a lark.”

“That’s very much the case,” St. James agreed. “And the presence of this consistent wound suggests that the killer knew to expect that from the very first. So not only must there be a connection among all the victims-”

“Which we’ve already found,” Havers cut in. She was beginning to sound excited, which, Lynley knew, was never a good sign when it came to keeping her on track. “Simon, there’s an outreach group called Colossus. Do-gooders working with inner-city youth, kids at risk, young offenders. It’s near Elephant and Castle, and two of these dead kids were involved over there.”

“Two of the identified bodies,” Lynley corrected her. “One other identified body isn’t connected to Colossus. And there are others still not identified at all, Barbara.”

“Yeah, but I say this,” Havers argued, “dig through the records and find out which kids stopped showing up at Colossus round the time of those other deaths we’re dealing with and I’d say Bob’s your mum’s little brother when it comes to identifying the other bodies. This is a Colossus situation, sir. One of those blokes has got to be our man.”

“There’s a strong suggestion they knew their killer,” St. James said, as if in agreement with Havers. “There’s a good possibility that they trusted him as well.”

“And that’s another key to what goes on at Colossus,” Havers added. “Trust. Learning to trust. Sir, Griff Strong told me that’s even part of their assessment course. And he leads the trust games that some of them do together. Bloody hell, we ought to take a team over there and grill the hell out of him. And those three other blokes. Veness, Kilfolye, and Greenham. They’ve all got a connection to at least one of the victims. One of them’s dirty. I swear it.”

“That might be the case, and I appreciate your enthusiasm for the task,” Lynley said dryly. “But you’ve got an assignment already. Camden Lock Market, I believe.”

Havers had the grace to look chastened. She said, “Oh. Right.”

“So perhaps now would be a good time to do it?”

She didn’t appear pleased, but she didn’t argue. She got to her feet and plodded towards the door. “Good to see you, Simon,” she said to St. James. “Cheers.”

“And you,” St. James said as she left them. He turned back to Lynley. “Trouble on that front?”

“When is there anything else when it comes to Havers?”

“I’ve always thought you considered her worth it.”

“I do. She is. Generally.”

“Close to getting her rank back?”

“I’d give it back to her, despite her bloody-mindedness. But I’m not the one making the decision.”

“Hillier?”

“As ever.” Lynley leaned back in his chair and took off his glasses. “He pigeonholed me this morning before I even got to the lift. He’s been trying to run the investigation through the machinations of the Press Bureau, but the reporters aren’t being as cooperative as they were in the beginning, grateful for the coffee, croissants, and the scraps of information Hillier’s been supplying them. It seems they’ve put it all together now: three mixed-race boys murdered in a similar fashion prior to Kimmo Thorne, and so far no appearance on Crimewatch by anyone from the Met. What’s that about? they want to know. What does that say to the community about the relative importance of these deaths to others in which the victim was white, blond, blue-eyed, and decidedly Anglo-Saxon? They’re starting to ask the hard questions, and he’s ruing his decision not to fight to keep the Press Bureau at a greater distance in all this.”

“Hubris,” St. James noted.

“Someone’s hubris run amok,” Lynley added. “And things are about to get worse. The last murdered boy-Sean Lavery-was in care, living up in Swiss Cottage with a community-activist type who-Hillier told me-is having a press conference himself round noon today. One can only anticipate what that’s going to do to the collective blood lust of the media.”

“Making Hillier his usual pleasure to work with?”

“Amen. The pressure’s on everywhere.” Lynley looked at the photocopy of the alchemical sign, considering the possibilities it offered of shedding light on the situation. He said to St. James, “I’m going to make a phone call. I’d like you to listen in, if you’ve time.”

He looked for the number for Hamish Robson and found it on the cover sheet of the report that the profiler had given him. When he had Robson on the phone, he switched it to the speaker and introduced him to St. James. He went through the information that St. James had provided, and to this he added an acknowledgement of Robson’s prescience: He told him the killer had been in contact.

“Has he indeed?” Robson said. “By phone? By post?”

Lynley read him the note. He said, “We’re concluding that the purification symbol on the forehead and the burning of the hands are connected. And we’ve tracked down some information on ambergris oil, which was found on the bodies. Evidently, it’s used for works of wrath or vengeance.”

“Wrath, vengeance, purity, and salvation,” Robson said. “I’d say he’s broadcasting his message fairly clearly, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s thought here that this is all coming from an outreach programme across the river,” Lynley said. “It’s called Colossus. They work with troubled youth. Do you want to add anything at this point?”

There was silence for a moment as Robson thought this over. He finally said, “We know he’s above average intelligence, but he’s frustrated that the world doesn’t see his potential. If you’ve come close to him in the investigation, he’s not going to put a foot wrong to let you get any nearer. So if he’s taking boys from one source-”

“Like Colossus,” Lynley added.

“Yes. If he’s taking boys from Colossus, I very much doubt he’ll carry on doing so when he sees you there asking questions.”

“Are you saying the killings themselves will stop?”

“They might. But only for a time. Killing provides him too much gratification to stop entirely, Superintendent. The compulsion to kill and the pleasure it yields will always overwhelm the fear of capture. But I expect he’ll take far more care now. He may change ground, move farther afield.”

“If he thinks the police are closing in,” St. James said, “why get in touch by post?”

“Ah, that’s part of the psychopath’s sense of invincibility, Mr. St. James,” Robson said. “It’s evidence of what he sees as his omnipotence.”

“The sort of thing that leads to his downfall?” St. James said.

“The sort of thing that convinces him he can’t make the one mistake that will doom him. It’s rather like Brady attempting to bring the brother-in-law into the fun and games: He thinks he’s so mighty a force of personality that no one who knows him would think of turning him in, let alone dare to do it. It’s the great flaw in the psychopath’s already flawed personality. Your killer in this case believes you can’t touch him no matter how close you get. He’ll ask you outright what evidence you have against him should you question him, and he’s going to be careful not to give you any henceforth.”

“We’re thinking there’s no sexual component to the crimes,” Lynley said, “which rules out previous Category A offenders.”

“This is about power,” Robson agreed, “but so are sex crimes. So you may well find something sexual down the line, perhaps a sexual degrading of the body should the murder itself not continue to provide the killer his required degree of satisfaction and release.”

“Is that normally the case?” St. James asked. “In murders like these?”

“It’s a form of addiction,” Robson said. “Each time he indulges his fantasy of salvation via torture, he needs a little bit more to satisfy him. The body grows tolerant of the drug-whatever the drug-and more is necessary to achieve nirvana.”

“So you’re saying to expect more. With possible variations on the theme.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

HE WANTED TO feel it again: the soaring that came from within. He wanted the sense of freedom that engulfed Him in the final moment. He wanted to hear His soul cry Yes! even as the muted shriek below Him strained out its last weak No! He needed this. More, He was owed it. But when the hunger rose in Him as an exigent presence, He knew that He couldn’t be hasty. This left Him with the wanting and a bubbling mixture of necessity and duty that He could feel in His veins. He was like a diver ascending to the surface too quickly. The longing was fast transforming into pain.

He took some time to attempt a mitigation. He drove to the marshes, where He could walk the tow path along the River Lea. There, He thought, He could seek relief.

They always panicked when they regained their senses and found themselves strapped down to the board, their hands and feet bound, and their mouths taped silver. As He drove them through the night, He could hear them struggling vainly behind Him, some of them in terror, others in anger. By the time He reached the appointed place, though, they had all passed through their preliminary and instinctive reaction and they’d arrived at the bargaining table. I’ll do what you want. Just let me live.

They never said this directly. But it was there, in their frenzied eyes. I’ll do anything, be anything, say anything, think anything. Just let me live.

He always stopped in the same safe spot, where a dogleg in the ice rink’s carpark protected him from view from the street. There, a spot was wildly overgrown with shrubbery and the security lamp above the area had long ago burnt out. He switched off the lights-both inside and out-and climbed into the back. He squatted next to the immobilised form and waited till His eyes adjusted to the darkness. What He said then was always the same, although His voice was gentle as well as regretful. You’ve done wrong. And then, I shall remove this-with his fingers on the tape-but only silence will keep you safe and ensure your release. Can you be silent for me?

They would nod, always, desperate to talk. To reason, to admit, sometimes to threaten or to demand. But no matter where they began or what they felt, they were reduced to supplication.

They felt His power. They could catch the strong scent of it in the oil He’d used to anoint His body. They saw it in the glint of the knife He brought forth. They felt it in the heat from the stove. They heard it in the crackle of the pan.

I don’t need to hurt you, He would tell them. We must talk, and if our talk goes well, this can end in your freedom.

Talk they would. Indeed, they would babble. His recitation of their crimes generally elicited nothing but anxious agreement from them. Yes, I did this. Yes, I am sorry. Yes, I swear…to whatever it is you will have me swear, just let me go.

But they added to that mentally, and He could read their thoughts. You filthy bastard, they concluded. I’ll see you sent to hell for this.

So, of course, He could not possibly release them. At least, not in the way they hoped to be released. But He was nothing if not a man of His word.

The burning came first, just of the hands, to show them His wrath as well as His mercy. Their declarations of guilt opened the door to their redemption, but they had to suffer in order to be cleansed. So He taped their mouths again and He held their hands to the white-hot heat till He smelled the odour of searing meat. Their backs arched for escape, and their bladders and their bowels gave way. Some passed out and did not then feel the garrotte first slide and then tighten round their necks. Others did not, and it was with these that Fu felt Himself truly exulting as their lives left their bodies and transported His.

And then He always meant to free their souls, using the knife against their earthbound flesh, opening them for their final release. It was what He had promised them, after all. They merely had to admit their guilt and express a true desire for redemption. But most of them did only the first. Most of them didn’t begin to understand the second.

The last had done neither. To the end, he’d denied. I didn’t do nothing, you freaking bastard, I didn’t do nothing, you got that straight? Fuck you, motherfucker, let me go.

Release, then, was impossible for him. Freedom, redemption, anything Fu offered, the boy both spat upon and cursed. He went unpurified, with his soul unreleased, a failure on the part of the Creature Divine.

But the infinite pleasure of the moment itself…That had actually remained for Fu. And that was what He wanted again. The seductive narcotic of utter command.

Walking the River Lea did not provide it. Nor did memory. Only one thing ever could.