With No One As Witness

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

IN HIS MIND, HE PUT A BODY BEFORE HIM: LYING ON THE floor, crucified by restraints and the board. It was a soundless but not a lifeless body and when its senses returned, what it knew was that it was in the presence of a power it could not hope to escape. So fear descended in the guise of anger, and in the presence of that fear, Fu’s heart grew large. Blood engorged His muscles, and He rose above Himself. It was the kind of ecstasy that only came from being a god.

Having had it that way, He wanted it again. Once He had experienced the sensation of who He actually was, bursting from the chrysalis of who He only appeared to be, it could not be laid aside. It was forever.

He had attempted to hold on to the feeling for as long as possible once the first boy died. Time and again, He had put Himself into darkness and there He slowly relived each moment that had taken Him from selection to judgement, and from there to admission, onward to punishment, and then to release. But still the sheer exultation of the experience had faded, as all things do. To recapture it, He had no choice but to make another selection, to perform once again.

He told Himself that He was not like the others who had gone before Him: swine like Brady, Sutcliffe, and West. They had all been cheap thrill seekers, cold-blooded killers who preyed on the vulnerable for no other reason than to shore themselves up. They shouted their insignificance to the world through acts the world was not likely to forget.

But for Fu things were different. Not for Him were innocent children at play, streetwalkers chosen at random off the pavement, female hitchhikers taking a fatal decision to climb into a car with a man and his wife…

In the sphere of those killers, the possession, the terror, and the slaughter were all. But Fu trod a different path to theirs, and that was what made His current state far more difficult to cope with. Had He been willing to join the swine, He knew that He would be resting easier now: He’d have only to scour the streets and within hours…ecstasy once again. Because that wasn’t who He was, Fu sought the darkness as an aid to relief.

Once He was there, though, He discerned intrusion. He drew a breath and held it, His senses alert. He listened. He thought of impossibility. But there was no mistaking what His body told Him.

He dispelled the gloom. He looked for the evidence. The light was dim as He preferred it, but enough to show Him that there were no obvious signs of intrusion into this place. Yet still He knew. He had learned to trust the nerve endings at the nape of His neck, and they were murmuring caution.

A book lay discarded on the floor near a chair. A magazine had its cover wrinkled. A stack of newspapers crisscrossed one on top of the other. Words. Words. Words upon words. All of them chattered, all accused. A maggot, they chorused. Here, here.

The reliquary, Fu realised. That was what he wanted. For only through the reliquary would it be possible for the maggot to speak once more. And what he would say…

Don’t tell me you’ve not bought brown sauce, cow. What else have you got to think about all day?

Dear, please. The boy-

Are you trying to tell me …? Get your arse down to the shops for that sauce. And leave the boy. I said leave him. Something wrong with your ears as well as your brain?

Now, dearest…

As if the tone and the words could somehow make a difference to the walking lightly and the loose-boweled fear. Both of which would return if He lost possession of the reliquary or its contents.

Yet He could see that the reliquary stood where He had left it, in its hiding place that was no place of hiding at all. And when He carefully removed the top, He found that the contents seemed to be undisturbed. Even the contents within the contents-carefully buried, preserved, and treasured-were as He’d left them. Or so they appeared.

He went to the pile of crisscrossed papers. He loomed above them, but they spoke only what He could see: a man in African garb. A headline declared the man “Foster Dad in Anguish,” and the story that accompanied the headline told the rest: all the deaths round London and they’d finally sussed out that there was a serial killer at work.

Fu felt Himself relax. He felt His hands warm, and the sickness within Him began to recede as He fingered fondly through the stack of tabloids. Perhaps, He thought, they would suffice.

He sat. He drew the entire stack closer, like Father Christmas embracing a child. How odd it was, He thought, that only with the last boy-the lying, denying, and accusing Sean who had forfeited redemption and release because he’d stubbornly refused to admit his guilt-had the police realised they were dealing with something superior to and larger than what they were used to. He had been giving them clues all along, but they’d refused to see. Now, though, they knew. Not His purpose, of course, but the fact of Him as a single and singular force of justice. Always a step ahead of those who sought Him. Supreme and supreme.

He lifted the most recent copy of the Evening Standard and set it aside. He went down the stack till He found the Mirror, which featured a photo of the tunnel in which He’d left the last body. He laid His hands on the photograph of the scene, and He dropped His gaze to encompass the other pictures on the page: cops because who else could they be? And one of them named so that now He knew who wished to thwart Him, who fruitlessly directed everyone else to turn Him from the course He followed. Lynley, detective superintendent. The name would be easy enough to remember.

Fu closed His eyes and conjured up the image of Himself and this Lynley in confrontation. But not the sort in which He faced him alone. Instead, the image displayed a moment of redemption in which the detective watched, helpless to do anything to stop the cycle of punishment and salvation as it played out before his eyes. That would indeed be something, Fu thought. That would be a statement that no one-no Brady, no Sutcliffe, no West, no anyone else-had ever been able to make.

Fu took in the pleasure of the thought, in the hope it would bring Him close to the heady sensation-what He called the very yesness-of those final moments of the act of redemption. Wanting the swelling of success to possess Him, wanting the knowledge of fully being to fill Him, wanting wanting wanting to feel the emotional and sensual explosion that occurred at the impact of desire and accomplishment…Please.

But nothing happened.

He opened His eyes, every nerve alive. The maggot had been here, defiling this place, and that was why He could not recapture any of the moments in which He’d been most fully alive.

He could not afford the despair that threatened, so He turned it to anger, and the anger itself He lasered on the maggot. Keep out of here, wanker. Keep out. Keep away.

But His nerves still tingled, telling a tale that revealed He would never have peace in this way. Peace could now be generated only by the act that brought another soul to its redemption.

The boy and the act itself, He thought.

What was needed was what would be.

RAIN FELL for the next five days, a heavy midwinter rain of the sort that generally made one despair of ever seeing the sun again. By the sixth morning, the worst of the storm had passed, but the glowering sky heralded the arrival of yet another as the day wore on.

Lynley didn’t go directly into the Yard as he normally would have done. Instead, he drove in the opposite direction, working his way over to the A4, heading out of Central London. Helen had suggested this journey to him. She’d gazed at him over a glass of breakfast orange juice and said, “Tommy, have you considered going out to Osterley? I think it’s what you need.”

He’d said in reply, “Is my self-doubt becoming that obvious?”

“I wouldn’t call it self-doubt. And I think you’re being too hard on yourself if that’s what you’re calling it, by the way.”

“What would you call it, then?”

Helen thought about this, head cocked to one side as she observed him. She hadn’t yet dressed for the day, hadn’t even bothered to comb her hair, and Lynley found he liked her tousled like this. She looked…She looked wifely, he thought, that was the word, although he’d have cut out his tongue before telling her that. She said, “I’d call it a ripple on the surface of your peace of mind, courtesy of the tabloids and the assistant commissioner of police. David Hillier wants you to fail, Tommy. You ought to know that by now. Even as he blusters on about bringing in a result, you’re the last person on earth he wants to do that.”

Lynley knew she was right. He said, “Which makes me wonder why he put me in this position in the first place.”

“Acting superintendent or heading this investigation?”

“Both.”

“It’s all to do with Malcolm Webberly, of course. Hillier told you himself that he knows what Malcolm would have wanted him to do, so he’s doing it. It’s his…his homage to him, for want of a better word. It’s his way of doing his part to ensure Malcolm’s recovery. But his own will-Hillier’s, I mean-gets in the way of his intention of helping Malcolm. So while you have the elevation to acting superintendent and you have the assignment to head this investigation, you also have Hillier’s bad wishes to go along with both.”

Lynley considered this. There was good sense to it. But that was Helen. Scratch the surface of her habitual insouciance and she was both sensible and intuitive to her core. “I’d no idea you’d become so adept at instant psychoanalysis,” he told her.

“Oh.” Lightly, she saluted him with her teacup. “It all comes of watching chat shows, darling.”

“Really? I’d never have thought of you as a covert chat-show viewer.”

“You flatter me. I’m becoming quite fond of the American ones. You know the sort: Someone sits on a sofa, pouring out his heart to the host and half a billion viewers, after which he’s given advice and sent off to slay dragons. It’s confession, catharsis, resolution, and renewal all in a tidy fifty-minute package. I adore the way they solve life’s problems on American television, Tommy. It’s rather the way Americans do most things, isn’t it? That gunslinger approach: Draw the gun, blast away, and the difficulty’s gone. Supposedly.”

“You aren’t recommending I shoot Hillier, are you?”

“Only as a last resort. In the meantime, I suggest a trip to Osterley.”

So he took up her suggestion. It was an ungodly hour for visiting a convalescent hospital, but he reckoned his police identification would be enough to get him inside.

It was. Most of the patients were still at their breakfasts, but Malcolm Webberly’s bed was empty. However, a helpful orderly directed him to the physiotherapy room. There, Lynley found Detective Superintendent Webberly working his way between two parallel bars.

Lynley watched him from the doorway. The fact that the superintendent was alive was miraculous. He’d survived a laundry list of injuries, all of them brought about by a hit-and-run driver. He’d endured the removal of his spleen and a good portion of his liver, a fractured skull and the removal of a blood clot on his brain, nearly six weeks of drug-induced coma, a broken hip, a broken arm, five broken ribs, and a heart attack in the midst of his slow recovery from everything else. He was nothing if not a warrior in the battle to regain his strength. He was also the one man at New Scotland Yard with whom Lynley had long felt he could be unguarded.

Webberly inched along the bars, encouraged by the therapist, who insisted upon calling him luv despite the scowls Webberly sent in her direction. She was approximately the size of a canary, and Lynley wondered how she would approach supporting the burly superintendent should he begin to topple. But it appeared that Webberly had no intention of doing anything other than making his way to the end of the apparatus. When he’d managed that, he said without looking in Lynley’s direction, “You’d think they’d let me have a bloody cigar on occasion, wouldn’t you, Tommy? Their idea of a celebration round here is an enema administered to the sound of Mozart.”

“How are you, sir?” Lynley asked, coming farther into the room. “Have you lost a few stone?”

“Are you saying I needed to?” Webberly looked shrewdly in his direction. He was pale and unshaven and he looked quite tentative about the titanium acting the part of his new hip. He wore a tracksuit instead of hospital garb. The words “Top Cop” decorated its jacket.

“Just a casual observation,” Lynley said. “To me you were always a picture needing no revision.”

“What cock.” Webberly grunted as he reached the end of the bars and made the turn that was necessary for his descent to the wheelchair, which the therapist brought to him. “Wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you.”

“Cup of tea, luv?” Webberly’s therapist asked him once he’d lowered himself to his chair. “Nice ginger biscuit? You did very well.”

“She thinks I’m a performing dog,” Webberly informed Lynley. He said to the woman, “Bring the whole damn tin of biscuits, thank you.”

She smiled serenely and patted his shoulder. “Cup of tea and a biscuit it is. And for you?” This last was directed to Lynley, who told her he’d do nicely with nothing. She disappeared into an adjoining room.

Webberly wheeled himself over to a window, where he raised the blinds and looked out at the day. “Bloody weather,” he growled. “I’m that ready for Spain, Tommy. The thought of it…That’s what’s keeping me going.”

“Taking your pension, then?” Lynley tried to make the question light, not a reflection of what he felt at the thought of the superintendent’s permanent removal from the force.

He didn’t fool Webberly with his tone, however. The superintendent gave him a look, cast over his shoulder from his perusal of the day. “David behaving badly, is he? You’ve got to come up with a strategy for coping with him. That’s all I can tell you.”

Lynley joined him at the window. There, they both looked morosely out at the grey day and what the window offered of it, which was a distant view of bare branches, the supplicant winter arms of trees in Osterley Park. Closer in, they had the carpark to gaze upon.

“For myself, I can do it,” Lynley said.

“That’s all anyone asks of you.”

“It’s the others I’m worried about. Barbara and Winston mostly. I’ve not done either of them any favours, taking on your position. It was madness to think I could.”

Webberly was silent. Lynley knew that the other man would see his point. Havers’ boat of dreams at the Yard would doubtless continue to take on water as long as she maintained her association with him. As for Nkata…Lynley knew that any other officer elevated to the rank of acting superintendent would have done a better job of keeping Winston out of Hillier’s clutches. Instead, Havers was looking more professionally doomed every day, while Nkata knew he was being used as a token and might end up carrying round a load of bitterness that could blight his career for years. No matter how he looked at the matter, Lynley felt it was all down to him that Nkata and Havers were in the positions they were in at the moment.

“Tommy,” Webberly said, as if Lynley had spoken all this, “you don’t have that power.”

“Don’t I? You did. You do. I ought to be able-”

“Stop. I’m not talking about the power to be a buffer between David and his targets. I’m talking about the power to change him, to un-David him. Which is what you’d like to do, if you’ll admit it. But he has his own set of demons, just like you. And there’s not a thing in the world that you can do to remove them from him.”

“So how do you cope with him?”

Webberly rested his arms on the windowsill. He was looking, Lynley saw, much older these days. His thin hair-once the faded sand of the redhead going grey-had now reached that destination, while the flesh under his eyes was baggy and the skin beneath his chin was wattled. Seeing this, Lynley was reminded of Ulysses’ rumination, faced with knowledge of his mortality: “Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.” He wanted to recite it to Webberly. Anything, he thought, to postpone the inevitable.

“It’s down to the knighthood, I reckon,” Webberly said. “You think David wears it comfortably. I believe he wears it like a suit of armour, which as we both know, has comfort as the least of its purposes. He wanted it, and he didn’t want it. He schemed to get it, and now he has to live with that.”

“The scheming? But that’s what he does best.”

“Too right. So think about having that on your gravestone. Tommy, you know all this. And if you can let the knowledge just get past that nasty temper of yours, you’ll be able to deal with him.”

There it was, Lynley thought. The dominant truth of his life. He could hear his father comment upon it, though the man had been dead nearly twenty years: Temper, Tommy. You’re allowing passion not only to blind you but to rule you, son.

What had it been at the time? A football match and a wild disagreement with a referee? A call in rugby he hadn’t liked? A row with his sister over a board game? What? And what did it matter now?

But that had been his father’s point. That, full stop. The black passion of the moment did not matter once the moment passed. He merely failed to see that fact, over and over again, resulting in everyone else having to pay for his fatal flaw. He was Othello without the excuse of Iago; he was Hamlet sans ghost. Helen was right. Hillier set traps and he walked right into them.

It was all he could do not to groan aloud. Webberly looked at him. “There’s a learning curve involved with the job,” the superintendent said kindly. “Why don’t you let yourself travel it?”

“Easier said than done when at the other end of the curve is someone waiting with a battle-axe.”

Webberly shrugged. “You can’t stop David from arming himself. Who you have to become is the person who can dodge the blows.”

The canary therapist came back into the room, tea in one hand and paper napkin in the other. On this rested a lone ginger biscuit, the superintendent’s reward for managing the parallel bars. “Here you go, luvvie,” she said to Webberly. “Nice hot cuppa with milk and sugar…I’ve made it just the way you like it.”

“I hate tea,” Webberly informed her as he took the cup and the biscuit.

“Oh, go on with you,” she replied. “You’re being quite naughty this morning. Is that because of your visitor?” She patted his shoulder. “Well, it’s good to see you showing some life. But stop pulling my leg, luv, or I’ll give you what for.”

“You’re the reason I’m trying to get the hell out of here, woman,” Webberly told her.

“That,” she said placidly, “is my whole objective.” She wagged her fingers and headed out of the room, scooping up a medical chart on her way.

“You’ve got Hillier, I’ve got her,” Webberly groused as he bit into his biscuit.

“But at least she offers refreshments,” Lynley said.

Nothing was resolved in the visit to Osterley, but Helen’s prescription did work as she’d thought it would. When Lynley left the superintendent back in his room, he felt ready for another round of his professional life.

What that round brought was information from a number of sources. He met the squad in the incident room, where phones were ringing and constables were typing information into the computers. Stewart was compiling action reports from one of his teams, and-mirabile dictu, as things turned out-Barbara Havers had, in his absence, apparently managed to take direction from the DI without episode. When Lynley called the group together, the first thing he learned was that, upon Stewart’s orders, Havers had traveled across the river to Colossus for another set-to with Ulrike Ellis.

“It’s amazing how quickly she was able to locate information on Jared Salvatore once she twigged we had the book from reception with his name blazed all over it,” Havers reported, “and she’s managed to unearth all sorts of useful details on Anton Reid. She’s onboard now, sir, cooperation incarnate. She’s provided the name of every kid who’s dropped out of Colossus for the last twelve months, and I’ve been seeing if we can match any of them with the rest of the bodies.”

“What about the other two boys’ personal connections to anyone at Colossus?”

“Jared and Anton? Griffin Strong was their assessment leader, surprise, surprise. Anton Reid also did some time on Greenham’s computer course.”

“What about Kilfoyle and Veness? Any relationship between the boys and them?”

Havers consulted her report which-perhaps as evidence of her dubious intention of being a model cop from this moment forward-appeared to be typed for once. “Both of them knew Jared Salvatore. Evidently, he was quite the whiz at creating recipes. He couldn’t read, so he couldn’t follow cookbooks, but he’d manage to whip up something without instructions and serve it round, with the staff at Colossus doing the guinea-pig thing. Everyone knew him, as things turn out. My mistake earlier”-she shot a look round the room as if anticipating a reaction from someone to her admission-“was asking only Ulrike Ellis and Griff Strong about Jared. When they said he wasn’t one of theirs, I believed them because they’d admitted to Kimmo Thorne right up front. Sorry.”

“What are Kilfoyle and Veness saying about Anton Reid, then?”

“Kilfoyle says he doesn’t remember Anton. Veness is vague about it. Thinks he may, he says. Neil Greenham remembers him well enough.”

“As to Greenham, Tommy,” John Stewart weighed in, “he’s got a real temper, according to the head teacher up in Kilburn where he taught. He lost it with kids a few times and he shoved one against the blackboard once. He heard about that from the parents straightaway and he apologised for it, but that doesn’t mean he was genuine about the apology.”

“So much for his theories on discipline,” Havers noted.

“Have we laid on surveillance for these blokes?” Lynley asked.

“We’re stretched too thin, Tommy. Hillier’s not authorising any more men till we’ve got a result.”

“God damn-”

“But we’ve done some snooping, so we’ve got an idea of their nighttime activities.”

“Which are?”

Stewart gave the nod to his team three officers. So far, very little looked suspicious. After his day at Colossus, Jack Veness evidently went regularly to the Miller and Grindstone, his local in Bermondsey, where he also had a second job behind the bar at the weekends. He drank, smoked, and made the occasional call from a phone box outside-

“That sounds promising,” someone pointed out.

– but that was it. Then he went home or to a take-away curry shop near Bermondsey Square. Griffin Strong, on the other hand, seemed to alternate between his silk-screening business in Quaker Street and his home. He also, however, appeared to have a liking for a Bengali restaurant in Brick Lane, where he went to dine alone occasionally.

As for Kilfoyle and Greenham, team three were gathering information telling them that Kilfoyle spent many of his evenings in the Othello Bar of the London Ryan Hotel, which was at the base of the Gwynne Place Steps. These led up to Granville Square. Otherwise, he was at home in the square.

“Living with whom?” Lynley asked. “Do we know?”

“Deed poll says the property belongs to Victor Kilfoyle. His dad, I reckon.”

“What about Greenham?”

“The only thing he’s done of interest is take Mummy to the Royal Opera House. And he apparently has a lady friend he meets on the side. We know they’ve done cheap Chinese in Lisle Street and a gallery opening in Upper Brook Street. Other than that, he’s at home with Mummy.” Stewart smiled. “In Gunnersbury, by the way.”

“Is anyone surprised by that?” Lynley commented. He glanced at Havers. She was doing her best, he saw, not to crow I was right, and he had to give her marks for that. She’d made the connection between employees at Colossus and the dump sites of bodies from the start.

Nkata joined them then, fresh from a meeting with Hillier. They were set to film Crimewatch, he reported, and he scowled at the good-natured comments about a star being born, which rose when he made this announcement. They’d be using the e-fit of the interloper seen at Square Four Gym, he informed them, which had been developed in concert with the bodybuilder who’d seen their potential suspect. To this, they would add the photographs of all identified victims as well as a dramatic reconstruction of what they now presumed to be Kimmo Thorne’s manner of encountering his killer: a red Ford Transit stopping a bicycle rider with stolen goods in his possession, the van’s driver helping to load the bicycle and the goods into the vehicle.

“We’ve something to add to that as well,” Stewart put in when Nkata was done. He sounded pleased. “CCTV footage. I won’t say we’ve hit gold, but we’ve had a little luck at last with a CCTV camera mounted on one of the buildings near St. George’s Gardens: the image of a van driving down the street.”

“Time and date?”

“Matching up with Kimmo Thorne’s death.”

“Christ in heaven, John, why’s it taken this long to get to it?”

“We had it early on,” Stewart said, “but it wasn’t clear. We needed an enhancement, and that took time. But the wait was worth it. You’d better have a look and give the word on how you want it used. Crimewatch might get some mileage from it.”

“I’ll look at it straightway,” Lynley told him. “What about surveillance at the body sites. Anything?”

Nothing, as it turned out. If their killer was considering a nocturnal visit to the shrine of his criminal accomplishment-as contended in Hamish Robson’s remarks about him-he had not yet done so. Which brought up the profile itself. Barbara Havers said she’d had another look at it, and she wanted to point out part of Robson’s description: the section which claimed the killer probably lived with a dominant parent. They had two suspects so far with parents in the home: Kilfoyle and Greenham. One with Dad, one with Mum. And wasn’t it dodgy that Greenham was taking Mum to the Royal Opera House but the woman friend only got cheap Chinese and a gratis gallery opening? What did that mean?

It was worth looking at, Lynley told her, and he said, “Who’s got the information on who Veness lives with?”

John Stewart responded. “There’s a landlady. Mary Alice Atkins-Ward. A distant relation.”

“Do we tighten up on Kilfoyle and Greenham, then?” a DC asked, pencil at the ready.

“Let me look at the CCTV film first.” Lynley told them to get back to their assigned actions. He himself followed John Stewart to a video recorder. He signaled Nkata to accompany them. He saw Havers glower at this but chose to ignore it.

He had high hopes of the CCTV footage. The e-fit had provided little enough inspiration. To him, it looked like Everyman and No Man. The suspect had worn a cap of some sort-didn’t they all?-and while upon an initial glimpse of it, Barbara Havers had pointed out gleefully that Robbie Kilfoyle wore a EuroDisney cap, that was hardly a damning piece of evidence. For Lynley’s money, the e-fit was on the borderline of worthless, and he reckoned Crimewatch would prove him right on that.

Stewart snatched up the remote for the video recorder and switched on the television. Onto the corner of the screen, the time and date popped up along with a section of mews beyond which the wall of St. George’s Gardens curved. As they watched, the front of a van pulled into the picture at the end of the mews, which appeared to be some thirty yards from the CCTV camera guarding the mews itself. The vehicle stopped, lights out, and a figure emerged. He carried a tool and disappeared round the curve of the wall, presumably to apply his implement to something out of sight of the camera. This would, Lynley thought, be the padlock on the chain that held the gate closed at night.

As they watched, the figure came back into view, too distant and, even on the enhanced film, too grainy to be distinguishable. He climbed into the van and it rolled smoothly forward. Before it disappeared behind the wall, Stewart paused the film. He said, “Have a look at that lovely little picture, Tommy.” He sounded pleased.

As well he might, Lynley thought. For on the film, they’d managed to capture writing on the side of the van. The miracle would have been a complete identification, which was more than they got. But half of a miracle would do. Three partial lines of faded printing were visible:

waf

bile

chen

Below them a number was rendered: 873-61.

“That last looks like part of a phone number,” Nkata said.

“My money says the rest is the name of a business,” Stewart added. “Question is: Do we go with it on Crimewatch?”

“Who’ve you got working on the van right now?” Lynley asked. “What are they doing?”

“Trying to get something on that partial phone number from BT, checking business licences to see if we can find a match for those letters we can see in the name, running things through Swansea another time.”

“That’ll take a century,” Nkata pointed out. “But how many million people see this ’f we put it on the telly?”

Lynley considered the ramifications of running the video on Crimewatch. Millions watched the show, and it had been useful on dozens of occasions in accelerating the speed of an investigation. But there were inherent risks in broadcasting the film countrywide, not the least of which was tipping their hand to the killer. For there was every chance that their man would be watching and would put the van through such a high-powered cleaning and scouring that all evidence of any of their dead boys having been in it would be forever obliterated. And there was the additional chance that their man would dump the van immediately, taking it to one of a hundred places far out of London where it wouldn’t be found for years. Or he might put it in a lockup somewhere with the same result.

It was Lynley’s decision. He decided to hold off making it. He said, “I want to think about this,” and to Winston, “Tell Crimewatch we may have something for them, but we’re working on it.”

Nkata looked uneasy, but he went for the phone. Stewart looked pleased as he returned to his desk.

Lynley nodded to Havers, an I’ll-see-you-now look. She grabbed up what looked like a pristine notebook and followed him out of the incident room.

“Good work,” he told her. He noted that she’d even dressed more suitably today, in a tweed suit and brogues. The suit had a stain on the skirt and the brogues weren’t polished, but it was otherwise a remarkable change in a woman who usually favoured drawstring trousers and T-shirts bearing groan-inducing puns.

She shrugged. “I’m capable of taking the hint when I’m clubbed with it, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Get your things and come with me.”

Her face altered, its hopeful brightness betraying her even as it deeply touched him. He wanted to tell her not to wear her professional heart on her sleeve, but he held his tongue. Havers was who Havers was.

SHE DIDN’T ASK where they were going till they were in the Bentley and heading in the direction of Vaux-hall Bridge Road. Then she said, “Are we doing a runner, sir?”

He said, “Believe me, I’ve thought about it more than once. But Webberly tells me there’s a route to dealing with Hillier. I’ve just not discovered it yet.”

“That must be like searching for the Holy Grail.” She examined her brogues and appeared to note their sad condition. She wet her fingers on her tongue and rubbed the damp against a scuff, without result. She said, “How is he, then?”

“Webberly? Slow progress, but progress.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Everything but the slow part. We need him back before Hillier self-destructs and takes us all down with him.”

“D’you think it’ll come to that?”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I don’t know what to think.”

At their destination, parking was its usual nightmare. He squeezed the Bentley in front of the entrance to the Kings Head and Eight Bells pub, directly beneath a “Do NOT Block This Entrance” sign, to which “You Will Die If You Do” had been added. Havers raised her eyebrow.

“What’s life without risk?” Lynley asked. But he put a police placard prominently on the dashboard.

“Now that’s living dangerously,” Havers noted.

They walked the few yards up Cheyne Row to the house at the corner of Lordship Place, where they found St. James being regaled by both Deborah and Helen, who were leafing through magazines as they chatted about “The absolute solution to everything. Simon, you’ve married a genius.” They were all in the lab.

“Logic,” Deborah replied. “It was nothing more.” She looked up and saw Lynley and Havers in the doorway. She said, “Just in time. Look who’s here. You won’t even have to go home to talk him into it, Helen.”

“Talk me into what?” Lynley went to his wife, tilting back her chin to examine her face. “You’re looking tired.”

“Don’t be a mother hen,” she chided. “You’ve got worry lines coming out on your forehead.”

“That’s down to Hillier,” Havers said. “We’ll all look ten years older in another month.”

“Isn’t he due to retire?” Deborah asked.

“Assistant commissioners don’t retire, my love,” St. James told his wife. “Not until the last hope of being made commissioner is finally beaten out of them.” He looked at Lynley. “I take it that doesn’t seem likely to happen soon?”

“You take it correctly. Have you got anything for us, Simon?”

“I expect you mean information and not whisky,” St. James said. He added, “Fu.”

“Phoo?” Havers said. “As in…what? Phooey? Typhoo tea?”

“As in the letters F and U.” On a china board, St. James had been working on a diagram with splotches of faux blood, but he left it and went to his desk where he took from the top drawer a paper on which was drawn the same symbol that had been on the bottom of the note they’d received at the Yard, purporting to be from the serial killer. “It’s a Chinese symbol,” St. James explained. “It means authority, divine power, and the ability to judge. It stands, in fact, for justice. And it’s pronounced Fu.”

Helen said, “Is that helpful, Tommy?”

“It’s in keeping with the message of the note he sent. And to some extent, with the mark on Kimmo Thorne’s forehead as well.”

“Because it is a mark?” Havers asked.

“I expect that would be Dr. Robson’s point.”

“Even if the other mark’s from alchemy?” Deborah asked the last question of her husband.

“It’s the fact of the marking, I daresay,” St. James replied. “Two distinct symbols with interpretations readily available. Is that what you mean, Tommy?”

“Hmm. Yes.” Lynley studied the piece of paper on which the mark had been reproduced and an explanation of the mark appeared. He said, “Simon, where did you get the information?”

“Internet search,” he said. “It wasn’t difficult.”

“So our boy’s got access to a computer as well,” Havers noted.

“That narrows it down to half the population of London,” Lynley said grimly.

“I think I can eliminate at least a portion of that group. There’s something else.” St. James had moved to a worktable where he was laying out a line of photographs. Lynley and Havers joined him, while Deborah and Helen remained at the other worktable, a selection of magazines open between them.

“I had these from SO7,” St. James said, in reference to the pictures, which Lynley saw were of each of the dead boys, along with respective enlargements of one small portion of each boy’s torso. “D’you recall the autopsy reports, Tommy, how they all mention a specific area of what they called ‘woundlike bruising’ on every one of the bodies? Well, have a look at this. Deborah did the enlargements for me last night.” He reached for one of the larger photos.

Lynley examined it, Havers looking over his shoulder. In the picture, he saw the bruising that St. James was talking about. He discerned that it was actually more of a pattern than a bruise, most distinguishable on Kimmo Thorne’s body because he was the only white youth. On Kimmo, a central pale area was ringed by dark bruiselike flesh. In the centre of the pale portion of this, two small marks had the look of burns. With variations due to the pigment of each boy, this distinctive mark was the same on every successive photograph that St. James handed over. Lynley looked up once he’d seen them all.

“Did SO7 actually miss this?” he asked. What he thought was, Christ. What a bloody cock-up.

“They mention it in the autopsies. The problem was in their term of reference. Calling it a bruise.”

“What do you make of it yourself? It looks something between a bruise and a burn.”

“I had a good idea, but I wasn’t entirely sure initially. So I scanned the photos and sent them over to a colleague in the States for a second opinion.”

“Why the States?” Havers had taken up one of the pictures and had been frowning down at it, but now she looked up curiously.

“Because, like nearly anything else you might imagine as a weapon, they’re legal in America.”

“What?”

“Stun guns. I think that’s how he’s incapacitating the boys. Before he does the rest.” St. James went on to explain how the characteristics of the bruiselike wounds on the bodies compared point by point to the kind of bruise that was the result of being jolted by the fifty thousand to two hundred thousand volts of electricity that such a weapon discharged. “Each of the boys was hit in relatively the same place on the body, on the left side of the torso. That tells us that the killer’s using the gun in the same way each time.”

“If you’ve got something that works, why mess about with it,” Havers said.

“Exactly,” St. James agreed. “The electricity from the stun gun scrambles the body’s nervous system, leaving the victim-as the name implies-literally stunned, unable to move even if he wants to. His muscles work rapidly but without any efficiency. His blood sugar is converted to lactic acid, which depletes him of energy. His neurological impulses are interrupted. He’s weak, confused, and disoriented.”

“While he’s in that condition, the killer has time to immobilise him,” Lynley added.

“And if he starts to come round…?” Havers said.

“The killer uses the gun on him again. By the time he’s back to normal, he’s gagged and restrained, and the killer can do what he wants with him.” Lynley handed the pictures back to St. James. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what’s happening.”

“Except…” Havers handed her own photograph back to St. James although she spoke to Lynley. “These are streetwise kids. You’d think they’d notice someone about to shove a gun in their ribs, wouldn’t you?”

“As to that, Barbara…” St. James dug out a few sheets of paper from an in basket on the top of a filing cabinet. He handed over to Lynley what first appeared to be an advertisement. On closer inspection, however, Lynley saw that the document had come from the Internet. On a site called PersonalSecurity.com, stun guns were offered for sale. But these were stun guns of an entirely different order from the pistol-shaped weapon one might associate with the name. Indeed, these didn’t appear to be guns at all, which was probably the point of owning one of them. Some of them were manufactured to look like mobile phones. Others looked like torches. All of them worked identically, however: The user had to make physical contact with the victim in order for the electrical charge to pass from the gun into the victim’s body.

Havers gave a quiet whistle. “I’m impressed,” she said. “And I reckon we can suss out how these things get into the country in the first place.”

“No difficult feat to smuggle them into the UK,” St. James agreed, “not looking like that.”

“And from there on to the black market,” Lynley said. “Well done, Simon. Thank you. Progress. I feel moderately encouraged.”

“We can’t give this to Hillier, though,” Havers pointed out. “He’ll put it on Crimewatch. Or hand it over to the press before you could say ‘Kiss my arse.’ Not,” she added hastily, “that you’d say that, sir.”

“Not,” Lynley said, “that I wouldn’t want to. Although I tend to like something a little more subtle.”

“Then we may have a difficulty with our plan.” Helen spoke from the table where she and Deborah had been flipping through their magazines. She held up one of them and Lynley saw that it featured clothing for infants and children. She said, “I have to say it’s not subtle at all. Deborah’s suggested a solution, Tommy. To the christening situation.”

“Ah. That.”

“Yes. Ah that. Shall we tell you, then? Or shall I wait till later? You could consider it a break from the grim realities of the case, if you’d like.”

“By switching to the grim realities of our families, you mean?” Lynley asked. “Now that’s diverting.”

“Don’t tease,” Helen said. “Frankly, I’d christen our Jasper Felix in a dishcloth if I had my way. But since I don’t-certainly not with two hundred and fifty years of Lynley history bearing down on me-I’ve wanted to come up with a compromise that will please everyone.”

“Hardly likely to happen with your sister Iris marshalling the rest of the girls to her side in favour of Clyde family history,” Lynley said.

“Well, yes of course, Iris is rather daunting when she sets her mind to something, isn’t she? Which is what Deborah and I were discussing when Deborah made the most obvious suggestion in the world.”

“Dare I ask?” Lynley looked at Deborah.

“New clothes,” she said.

“But not just new,” Helen added. “And not the usual gown, blanket, shawl, and whatever. The point is to get something that announces itself as a new tradition being established. By you and me. So naturally, that’s going to take a bit more effort. No simple dash through Peter Jones.”

“That’ll be a crushing blow to you, darling,” Lynley said.

“He’s being sarcastic,” Helen told the rest of them. And then to Lynley, “You do see it’s the answer, don’t you? Something new, something different, something that we can pass along-or at least claim we’re going to pass along-to our children so that they can use it as well. And you know it’s out there: what we’re looking for. Deborah’s actually volunteered to help me find it.”

“Thank you,” Lynley said to Deborah.

“D’you like the idea?” she asked him.

“I like anything with the promise of peace,” he said. “Even if it’s only momentary. Now if we can only resolve-”

His mobile chirped. As he reached for it in the breast pocket of his coat, Havers’ mobile went off as well.

The rest of them watched as the information was passed from New Scotland Yard to Lynley and Havers simultaneously. It wasn’t good news.

Queen’s Wood. In North London.

Someone had found yet another body.