With No One As Witness

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

BARBARA HAVERS WATCHED AS BARRY MINSHALL-AKA Mr. Magic-closed up his stall in the alley. He took his time about it, every movement designed to communicate how much trouble the rozzers were causing him. Down came the display of saucy playthings, all of which had to be placed with undo gentleness in collapsible cardboard boxes that he kept stashed in a pile in a cubbyhole designed for this express purpose above the stall. Put away were the gag items in a similar fashion, as well as a number of the magic tricks. Every object had its particular storage spot, and Minshall made certain it was deposited there in an exact position known only to him. Through all this, Barbara waited in ease. She had all the time he was intent upon demonstrating that he needed. And if he happened to be using that time to concoct a story about Davey Benton and the handcuffs, she herself used it to note those features about the alley that promised to assist her in the coming exchange with Mr. Magic. For there would be an exchange, she knew. This bloke didn’t look the type to stand by idly as she rooted through his van. He was heading for too much trouble for that.

So in the minutes he took to shut up shop, she saw what could help her when the time came to put the thumbscrews on the magician: the CCTV cameras mounted at the mouth of the alley near a Chinese food stall and a bath-salts vendor some six yards away, who was watching Minshall with a great deal of interest even as the vendor devoured a samosa, the grease from which dripped down his hand and into the cuff of his shirt. That bloke, Barbara decided, looked like someone with a tale to tell.

He did, in a manner of speaking, when they passed him a few minutes later on their way out of the alley. He said, “Gotcherself a lady friend, Bar? Now that’s a change, innit? I thought you liked the boys.”

Minshall said pleasantly, “Do go fuck yourself, Miller,” and passed by the stall.

Barbara said, “Hang on,” and paused. She showed her ID to the bath-salts vendor. “Think you could identify some pictures of boys who might’ve hung about his stall in the past few months?” she asked him.

Miller was suddenly cautious. “What sort of boys?”

“The sort who’ve turned up dead all round London.”

He flicked a glance at Minshall. “I don’t want no trouble. I di’n’t know you were a cop when I said-”

“What difference does that make?”

“I di’n’t see anything.” He turned and busied himself with his wares. “It’s dim along here. Wouldn’t know one boy from another anyway.”

“Sure you would, John,” Minshall said. “You spend enough time ogling them, don’t you?” And then to Havers, “Constable, you were interested in my van…?” He continued on his way.

Barbara took note of the vendor’s name. She knew that his remarks about Barry Minshall could mean nothing, as could Minshall’s remarks about him: just the natural animosity that males sometimes have for each other. Or they could have been the result of Minshall’s oddity of appearance and Miller’s schoolboy reaction to that. But in either case, they were worth looking into.

Barry Minshall led her in the direction of the main entrance to the Stables Market. They emerged into Chalk Farm Road as a train rumbled by on the overhead tracks. In the fading light of the late afternoon, the streetlamps glowed against the wet pavement, and the diesel fumes of a passing lorry scented the air with the heavy bouquet that was quintessentially winter London in the rain.

Because of the cold and the damp, the usual suspects-Goths head to toe in black and old-age pensioners wondering what the hell had happened to the neighbourhood-were absent from the pavements. In their places, commuters hurried home from work and shop owners began to move their wares inside. Barbara noted the looks that Barry Minshall got as they passed these people. Even in an area of town known for the general weirdness of its inhabitants, the magician stood out, either for the dark glasses, long coat, and stocking cap he wore, or for an emanation of malevolence that formed an aura round him. Barbara knew which she believed it was. Stripped of the patina of purity suggested by the innocence of his magic tricks, Barry Minshall was a nasty piece of business.

She said to him, “Tell me, Mr. Minshall. What sorts of places do you usually perform? The magic, I mean. Can’t be you only use it to entertain the kids who stop at your stall. I expect you’d get a little rusty round the fingers if you left it to that.”

Minshall shot her a glance. She reckoned he was evaluating not only the question but also the various reactions she might have to his answers.

She offered him options. “Cocktail parties, for example? Ladies’ clubs? Private organisations?”

He made no reply.

“Birthday parties?” she went on. “I expect you’re quite the thing at them. What about at schools, as a special treat for the kids? Church functions? Boy Scouts? Girl Guides?”

He plodded onward.

“What about south of the river, Mr. Minshall? Ever do anything there? Round Elephant and Castle? What about youth organisations? Trips to borstal in the holidays?”

He gave her nothing. He didn’t intend to phone his solicitor about her request to see his van, but he clearly wasn’t going to say a word that might put him in further jeopardy. So he was only half a fool, she decided. No problem. Half was probably enough.

His van turned out to be on Jamestown Road, parked with one tyre on the kerb, facing the oncoming traffic. Fortunately, Minshall had left it beneath a streetlamp, and a pool of yellow light fell directly upon it, enhanced by a security system that switched on brightly at the front of a house some fifteen feet away. That, in addition to the daylight still lingering, made further illumination unnecessary.

“Let’s have a look, then,” Barbara said, with a nod at the van’s rear doors. “D’you want to do the honours, or shall I?” She dug round in her bag and brought out a pair of latex gloves as she spoke.

This, it seemed, prompted him to speak. “I hope you see my cooperation for what it is, Constable.”

“And what would that be?”

“A fairly good indication that I wish to be helpful. I haven’t done anything to anyone.”

“Mr. Minshall, I’m dead chuffed to hear it,” Barbara said. “Open her up, please.”

Minshall fished a set of keys out of his overcoat. He opened the van and stepped back to let Barbara inspect its contents. These comprised boxes. Boxes upon boxes. The magician, in fact, appeared to be keeping the entire cardboard industry in business. Felt-pen markings identified the putative contents of what seemed like three dozen containers: “Cards & Coins”; “Cups, Dice, Hankie, Scarf & Rope”; “Videos”; “Books & Mags”; “Sex Toys”; “Gags.” Beneath all of these, however, Barbara could see that the floor of the van was carpeted. The carpet was frayed, and a curious dark stain shaped like antlers reached out from beneath the cards and coins box, suggesting not only more of a stain beneath but also-possibly-an attempt to hide it in the first place.

Barbara stepped back. She swung the doors closed. Minshall said, “Satisfied?,” and he sounded-to her ears-like a man relieved.

She said, “Not quite. Let’s have a look up front.”

He seemed as if he wanted to protest but thought better of it. With a mutter, he unlocked the driver’s door and opened it. Barbara said, “Not that one,” and indicated the passenger’s door instead.

Inside, the front of the van was a mobile rubbish tip, and Barbara sifted her way through food wrappers, Coke cans, ticket stubs, carpark stubs, and handouts of the sort one found placed beneath windscreen wipers after a stint of parking on a public street. It was, in short, a treasure trove of evidence. If Davey Benton-or any one of the other dead boys-had been in this van, there were going to be dozens of signs indicating that.

Barbara slid her hand under the passenger seat to see if there were more goodies hidden from the eye. She brought forth a plastic disk of the sort one gets when checking a coat somewhere, along with a pencil, two biros, and an empty videocassette case. She moved round to the other side of the car, where Minshall stood at the driver’s door, perhaps mistakenly thinking she intended to let him drive off into the sunset. She gave him the nod and he opened it for her. She slid her hand under the driver’s seat.

Her fingers made contact with several objects here as well. She brought out a small pocket torch-operational-and a pair of scissors-dull and suitable for cutting only butter. And finally a black-and-white photograph.

She looked down at this and then up at Barry Minshall. She turned it round, facing him, and held it to her chest. “D’you want to give me the story on this, Bar?” she asked him amiably. “Or shall I guess?”

His reply was immediate, and she could have laid money on its coming. He said, “I don’t know how that-”

“Barry, save the line for later. You’re going to need it.”

She told him to hand over his keys and she pulled her mobile phone from her bag. She punched in the numbers and waited for Lynley to take the call.

“UNTIL WE FIND that van from the CCTV film,” Lynley said, “and until we know why it was going into St. George’s Gardens in the middle of the night, I don’t want it broadcast.”

Winston Nkata looked up from the notes he was taking in his small, leather-bound book. He said, “Hillier’s going to blow-”

“That’s the risk we’ll have to take,” Lynley cut in. “We run a bigger risk-a double risk-if the news of that van goes out prematurely. We tip our hand to the killer or, if that van on the tape does have a reason for being there, we’ve just predisposed the public to be thinking in terms of a red van when the actual vehicle could be something else.”

“That residue on the bodies, though,” Nkata said. “It says Ford Transit, doesn’ it?”

“But not the colour. So I’d like to avoid the whole matter for now.”

Nkata still didn’t look convinced. He’d come to Lynley’s office for the final word on what was going to be broadcast on Crimewatch-having been entrusted with the task by AC Hillier who, it appeared, had given up micromanaging the investigation for the time it was probably going to take him to decide what he wanted to wear on television in a few hours-and he looked down at his meagre notes and no doubt wondered how he was going to relay this information to their superior officer without raising his ire.

That, Lynley decided, could not be his worry. They’d given Hillier plenty of details to use on the programme, and he trusted that Hillier’s need to seem liberal in matters of race would keep him from taking out whatever frustration he had on Nkata. Nonetheless, he said, “I’ll take the heat on this, Winnie,” and added as a means of giving the DS further ammunition, “Until we hear from Barbara about that van she saw the magician driving, we hold back. So go with that e-fit from Square Four Gym and the reconstruction of Kimmo Thorne’s abduction. I expect we’ll get a result from that.”

A sharp knock on the door, and DI Stewart popped his head inside Lynley’s office. He said, “A word, Tommy?” and nodded a hello to Nkata, adding, “Got your face powdered for the cameras? Word has it your fan mail’s doubling every day.”

Nkata took the teasing with resignation. He said, “I’m forwarding it all on to you, man. Since the wife’s had enough, you’ll need a dating service, right? Fact, there’s a special letter come from a bird in Leeds. Twenty stone, she says, but I ’xpect you can handle that much woman.”

Stewart didn’t smile. “Sod you,” he said.

“Honours returned.” Nkata got to his feet and headed out of the office. Stewart took his place in one of the two chairs in front of Lynley’s desk. He tapped his fingers against his thigh, in the rhythmical pattern he adopted whenever he didn’t have something in his hands to play with. He was, Lynley knew from experience, a man who could dish it out but not take it. “That was a bit below the belt,” Stewart said.

“We’re all losing our sense of humour, John.”

“I don’t like my personal life-”

“No one does. Have you got something for me?”

Stewart appeared to consider this before he spoke, pinching the crease in his trousers and removing a speck of lint from his knee. “Two pieces of news. An ID on the Quaker Street body, courtesy of Ulrike Ellis’s list of missing Colossus kids. He was called Dennis Butcher. Fourteen years old. From Bromley.”

“Did we have him on the list of missing persons?”

Stewart shook his head. “Parents are divorced. Dad thought he was with Mum and her lover. Mum thought he was with Dad, Dad’s girlfriend, her two kids, and their new baby. So he was never reported missing. At least, that’s the story they tell.”

“Whereas the truth is…?”

“Good riddance, as far as they were concerned. We had the devil of a time getting either one of them to help ID the body, Tommy.”

Lynley looked away from Stewart and out of the window, through which the lights of nighttime London were beginning to glow. “I’d very much like someone to explain the human race to me. Fourteen years old. Why was he sent to Colossus?”

“Assault with a flick knife. He went to Youth Offenders first.”

“Another soul needing purification, then. He fits the mould.” Lynley turned back to the DI. “And the other piece of news?”

“We’ve finally come up with the Boots where Kimmo Thorne bought his makeup.”

“Have you indeed? Where is it? Southwark?”

Stewart shook his head. “We watched every tape from every Boots in the vicinity of his home and then in the area of Colossus. We got nothing. So we had another look at the paperwork on Kimmo and saw he hung round Leicester Square. It didn’t take long from there. Plotted out a quarter-mile radius from the square and found a Boots in James Street. There he was, buying his slap in the company of some bloke looking like the Grim Reaper gone Gothic.”

“That would be Charlie Burov,” Lynley said. “Blinker, as he’s commonly called. A mate of Kimmo’s.”

“Well, he was there. Big as life, both of them. Quite the pair, Kimmo and Charlie. Hard to miss. The person at the till was female, by the way, and there was a queue. Four people waiting to be served.”

“Anyone matching our e-fit from Square Four Gym?”

“Not so you could tell. But it’s CCTV film, Tommy. You know what that’s like.”

“What about the profiler’s description?”

“What about it? It’s vague enough to match three-quarters of the under-forty male population of London. The way I see it, we’re dotting and crossing. Enough i’s and t’s and we may stumble across what we’re looking for.”

There was truth to that: the endless slog that left no stone unturned. For it was often the least expected stone that, upended, revealed a vital piece of information.

Lynley said, “We’ll want Havers to have a look at the film, then.”

Stewart frowned. “Havers? Why?”

“She’s the only person so far who’s seen everyone we’re interested in at Colossus.”

“So you’re taking her theory on board?” Stewart asked the question casually-and it wasn’t an illogical inquiry-but there was something in the tone of it as well as in the attention Stewart suddenly gave to a thread on the seam of his trousers that made Lynley look more sharply at the DI.

“I’m taking every theory onboard,” he replied. “Have you a problem with that?”

“No problem, no,” Stewart said.

“Then…?”

The DI moved restlessly in his chair. He seemed to consider how best to answer, and he finally decided, saying, “There’s some muttering about favoritism, Tommy. Among the rest of the team. And there’s also the matter of…” He hesitated, and Lynley thought for a moment that Stewart was going to suggest ludicrously that there was talk of his having some sort of personal interest in Barbara Havers. But then Stewart said, “It’s the championing of her that’s misunderstood.”

“By everyone?” Lynley asked. “Or just by you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He knew how deep DI Stewart’s dislike of Havers ran. He said lightly, “John, I’m a glutton for punishment. I’ve sinned, and Barbara’s my purgatory. If I can mould her into a cop who can work as part of a team, I’m saved.”

Stewart smiled, in spite of himself, it seemed. “She’s clever enough if she weren’t so bloody maddening. I’ll give you that. And God knows she’s tenacious.”

“There’s that,” Lynley said. “It’s a case of her good points outweighing her bad.”

“Hell of a dress sense, though,” Stewart pointed out. “I think she shops at Oxfam.”

“I’ve no doubt she’d say there are worse places,” Lynley said. The phone on his desk rang as he was speaking and he lifted the receiver as Stewart stood to go. It was, he found, a case of speak of the devil.

“Minshall’s van,” Havers said without preamble. “It’s a SOCO wet dream, sir.”

Lynley nodded at Stewart as he left the office. He gave his attention to the telephone. “What’ve you got?” he asked Havers.

“Treasure. There’s so much lumber in his van that it’ll take a month to sort it all out. But there’s one item in particular that’s going to ring your chimes. It was under the driver’s seat.”

“And?”

“Child porn, sir. Dodgy photo of a naked kid with two blokes: taking at one end and giving at the other. You fill in the blanks. I say we get a warrant to search his place and another to tear his van apart. Get a SOCO team over here with fine-tooth combs.”

“Where is he now? Where are you?”

“Still in Camden Town.”

“Take him to the Holmes Street station, then. Put him in an interview room and get his address. I’ll meet you at his digs.”

“The warrants?”

“That’s not going to be a problem.”

THE MEETING had gone on far too long, and Ulrike Ellis was feeling the strain. Every extremity in her body tingled, with buzzing little impulses on the nerve endings running up and down her arms and her legs. She was trying to stay calm and professional-the personification of leadership, intelligence, foresight, and wisdom. But as the discussion among the board droned on, she grew ever more desperate to get out of the room.

This was the part she hated about her work: having to put up with the seven do-gooders who constituted the board of trustees and who absolved whatever guilty consciences they had about their obscene wealth by writing out the occasional cheque to the charity of their choice-in this case, Colossus-and corralling their equally well-heeled friends to do the same. Because of this, they tended to take their responsibility more seriously than Ulrike would have liked. So their monthly meetings in the Oxo Tower dragged on for hours as every penny was accounted for and tedious plans for the future were laid.

Today the gathering was worse than usual: They were all teetering on the edge without knowing it while she attempted to hide that fact from them. For meeting their long-term goal to raise enough money to open a branch of Colossus in North London was going to come to nothing if any scandal became associated with the organisation. And the need for Colossus was truly desperate across the river. Kilburn, Cricklewood, Shepherd’s Bush, Kensal Rise. Disenfranchised youth lived lives exposed to drugs, shootings, muggings, and robberies every day over there. Colossus could offer them an alternative to a lifestyle that doomed them to addictions, sexual diseases, incarceration, or an early death, and they deserved the opportunity to experience what Colossus had to offer.

In order for any of this to happen, though, it was essential that no connection exist between the organisation and a killer. And no connection did exist save the coincidence of five troubled boys dying at the same time as they ceased coming to classes and activities near Elephant and Castle. Ulrike was convinced of this, for there was no other path she could take and continue to live with herself.

So she put on a show of cooperation during the endless meeting. She nodded, took notes, murmured things like “Excellent idea” and “I’ll get on to that straightaway.” Through this means, she eked out yet another successful encounter with the trustees until one of them finally made the blessed motion to adjourn.

She’d ridden her bicycle to the Oxo Tower, so she hurried down to it. It wasn’t far to Elephant and Castle, but the narrow streets and the growing darkness made the way treacherous. By rights, she should have missed the news vendor’s placard altogether as she passed down Waterloo Road. But the phrase “Sixth Murder!” leapt out at her in front of a tobacconist’s shop, and she ground to a halt and pulled her bike onto the pavement.

Heart seizing up, she went inside and snatched up the Evening Standard. She read as she scraped a few coins out of her purse and handed them over at the till.

My God, my God. She couldn’t believe it. Another body. Another boy. Queen’s Wood, North London this time. Found that morning. He hadn’t yet been identified-at least no name had been given out by the police-so there was still the hope that this was a coincidental killing bearing no relationship to the other five murders…Except that Ulrike couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that. The age was similar: The paper used the term “young adolescent” to refer to the victim, and obviously they knew he hadn’t died of natural causes or even accidentally since they were calling it a murder. But still, couldn’t it be…?

She needed this killing to be unrelated to Colossus. She was desperate for that. If it was not, then she needed to be clearly seen as assisting the police in any way she could. There was absolutely no middle ground in this situation. She could temporise or outright prevaricate, but all that would do was prolong the inevitable if she’d accidentally hired a murderer as an employee and then refused to take action to root him out. If that was the case, she was done for. And so, probably, was Colossus.

Back at Elephant and Castle, she went straight to her office. She riffled through the contents of the top drawer in her desk for the card that the Scotland Yard detective had given to her. She punched in the numbers but was told that he was in a meeting and could not be interrupted. Was there a message or could someone else help her…?

Yes, she told the DC on the line. She identified herself. She mentioned Colossus. She wanted the dates when each of the bodies had been found. It was a matter of connecting the dead boys with activities at Colossus and the individuals who led those activities. She wanted to provide Superintendent Lynley with a fuller report than she’d previously given him, and those dates were the keys to meeting that self-imposed obligation.

The DC put her on hold for several minutes, no doubt seeking a superior officer to approve this request. When he came back, it was with the dates. She wrote them down, double-checked them against the names of the victims, and then rang off. Then she looked at them thoughtfully, and she considered them in the light of someone’s desire to discredit and ruin Colossus.

If there was a connection between Colossus and the dead boys, aside from the obvious one, she thought, it would have to be about reducing the organisation to rubble. So perhaps someone inside this place hated these types of kids in their every manifestation. Or perhaps someone inside had been thwarted in his desire to advance, to make a change in the workings of the programme, to succeed at a high level with a previously unheard of number of clients, to…anything. Or perhaps someone wanted to take her place and this was the route to get there. Or perhaps someone was mad as a hatter and only posing as a normal human being. Or perhaps-

“Ulrike?”

She looked up from the list of dates. She’d taken a calendar out of her drawer in order to compare those dates with scheduled activities and the location of those activities. Neil Greenham was standing there, his odd round head poked just inside her door, looking deferential.

Ulrike said, “Yes, Neil? May I help you?”

He blushed for some reason, his pudgy face going an unattractive shade that climbed all the way to his scalp and highlighted the scarcity of his hair. What was that all about? “Wanted you to know I’ll need to leave early tomorrow. Mum’s got to see the doctor about her hip, and I’m the only one who can drive her.”

Ulrike frowned. “She can’t go by cab?”

Neil looked markedly less deferential at this. “As it happens, she can’t. It’s too expensive. And I won’t have her taking the bus. I’ve already told the kids to come two hours earlier.” And then he added, “If that’s okay with you,” although he didn’t sound like someone who was going to alter his plans if they weren’t okay with his superior.

Ulrike thought about this. Neil had been manoeuvring for an administrative position since he’d come to work for them. He had to prove himself first, but he didn’t want to. His sort never did. He needed putting in his place. She said, “It’s fine, Neil. But in future, please check with me before you alter your schedule, will you?” She looked back down at her list, dismissing him.

He didn’t get the message, or he chose to ignore it. He said, “Ulrike.”

She looked up again. “What else?” She knew she sounded impatient because she was impatient. She tried to temper that with a smile and a gesture to her paperwork.

He observed this solemnly, then raised his gaze to her. “Sorry. I thought you might want to know about Dennis Butcher.”

“Who?”

“Dennis Butcher. He was doing Learn to Earn when he dis…”-Neil made an obvious correction in course-“when he stopped coming. Jack Veness told me the cops called while you were at the board meeting. That body found over in Quaker Street…? It was Dennis.”

Ulrike breathed only one word in reply. “God.”

“And now there’s another today. So I was wondering…”

“What? What were you wondering?”

“If you’ve considered…”

His significant pauses were maddening. “What?” she said. “What? What? I’ve got a load of work to do, so if you’ve something you need to say, Neil, then say it.”

“Yes. Of course. I was just thinking it’s time we called in all the kids and warned them, isn’t it? If victims are being chosen from Colossus, it seems that our only recourse-”

“Nothing indicates that victims are being chosen from Colossus,” Ulrike said, despite what she herself had been thinking a moment before Neil Greenham interrupted her. “These kids live their lives on the edge. They take and sell drugs, they’re involved with street muggings, burglaries, robberies, prostitution. They meet and mingle with the wrong sort of people every single day, so if they end up dead, it’s because of that and not because they’ve spent time with us.”

He was looking at her curiously. He let a silence hang between them, during which Ulrike heard Griff’s voice coming from the shared office of the assessment leaders. She wanted to be rid of Neil. She wanted to look at her lists and make some decisions.

Neil finally said, “If that’s what you think…”

“It’s what I think,” she lied. “So if there’s nothing else…?”

Again that silence and that look. Speculative. Suggestive. Wondering how best to use her obduracy to his own advantage. “Well,” he said, “I suppose that’s all. I’ll be off, then.” Still he looked at her. She wanted to slap him.

“Safe trip to the doctor tomorrow,” she told him evenly.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll make sure it is, won’t I.”

That said, he left her. When he was gone, she rested her forehead in her fingers. God. God. Dennis Butcher, she thought. Five of them now. And until Kimmo Thorne, she hadn’t even been aware of what was happening under her very nose. Because the only thing her nose could even begin to smell was the scent of Griff Strong’s aftershave.

And then he was there too. Not hesitating at the door as Neil had done, but barging right in.

He said, “Ulrike, you’ve heard about Dennis Butcher?”

Ulrike knotted her eyebrows. Did he actually sound pleased? “Neil told me just now.”

“Did he?” Griff sat on the only chair in the room besides her own. He wore that ivory fisherman’s sweater that set off his dark hair and the blue jeans that emphasised the Michelangelo shape of his thighs. How typical. “I’m glad you know,” he added. “It can’t be what we thought, then, can it?”

We? she thought. What we thought? She said, “About what?”

“What?”

“What did we think? About what?”

“That it’s to do with me. With someone wanting to set me up by killing these boys. Dennis Butcher didn’t go through assessment with me, Ulrike. He belonged to one of the other leaders.” Griff offered a smile. “It’s a relief. With the cops breathing down my neck…Well, I didn’t want that and I can’t think you did either.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“The police? Breathing down someone’s neck? Are you suggesting I’ve been involved in the deaths of these kids? Or that the police will think I’ve been involved?”

“Jesus, no. I just meant…You and I…” He made that gesture of his that was meant to seem boyish, the hand through the hair. It tousled nicely. He no doubt had it cut to do so. “I can’t think you want it getting about that you and I…Some things are best left private. So…” He flashed her that smile again. He looked over the top of her desk to the dates and the calendar. “What’re you up to? How’d the board meeting go, by the way?”

“You’d better leave,” she told him.

He looked confused. “Why?”

“Because I’ve work to do. Your day may have ended, but mine has not.”

“What’s wrong?” The boyish hand-to-hair again. She’d once thought it charming. She’d once seen it as an invitation to touch his hair herself. She’d reached to do so and she’d actually grown wet at the contact: her humble fingers, his glorious locks, prelude to both the kiss and the hungry pressure of his body against hers.

She said, “Five of our boys are dead, Griff. Possibly six, because there’s another been found this morning. That’s what’s wrong.”

“But there’s no connection.”

“How can you say that? Five boys dead and what they all have in common besides trouble with the law is enrollment here.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I know that. I meant this Dennis Butcher thing. There’s no connection. He wasn’t one of mine. I didn’t even know him. So you and I…well, no one’s going to need to know.”

She stared at him. She wondered how she had failed to see…What was it about physical beauty? she asked herself. Did it make the beholder stupid as well as blind and deaf?

She said, “Yes. Well.” And added, “Have a nice evening, won’t you,” and picked up her pen and bent her head to her work.

He said her name once more, but she didn’t respond. And she didn’t look up as he left the office.

But his message remained with her after he was gone. These murders had nothing to do with him. She thought about this. Couldn’t it also be the case that they had nothing to do with Colossus? And if that was the case, wasn’t it true that by attempting to root out a killer from the organisation, Ulrike was turning a spotlight upon all of them, encouraging the police to dig deeper into everyone’s background and movements? And if she did that, wasn’t she also thereby asking the police to ignore everything that could point to the real killer, who would go on killing as the fancy took him?

The truth was that there had to be yet another connection among the boys, and it had to be a connection beyond Colossus. The police had so far failed to see this, but they would. They definitely would. Just so long as she held them off and kept their noses out of Elephant and Castle.

NOT A SOUL was on the pavement when Lynley made the turn into Lady Margaret Road in Kentish Town. He parked in the first available space he came to, in front of an RC church on the corner, and he walked up the street in search of Havers. He found her smoking in front of Barry Minshall’s home. She said, “He called for the duty solicitor straightaway once I got him to the station,” and handed over a photo in a plastic evidence bag.

Lynley looked at it. It was much as Havers had picturesquely described it on the phone to him. Sodomy and fellatio. The boy appeared to be about ten.

Lynley felt ill. The child could be anyone, anywhere, anytime, and the men taking their pleasure from him were completely unidentifiable. But that would be the point, wouldn’t it. Satisfying the urge was all there was to monsters. To them, it was merely a case of hunter and prey. He gave the picture back to Havers and waited for his stomach to settle before he gazed at the house.

Number 16 Lady Margaret Road was a sad affair, a brick-and-masonry building of three floors and a basement with every inch of its masonry and wood in need of paint. It had no formal house number attached to its door or to the squared-off columns that defined its front porch. Rather, 16 had been scrawled in marking pen on one of these pillars, along with the letters A, B, C, and D and the appropriate up and down arrows indicating where those respective flats could be found: in the basement or in the house proper. One of London’s great plane trees stood along the pavement, filling the small front garden with a covering of dead and decomposing leaves as thick as a mattress. The leaves obscured everything: from the sagging, low front wall of brick to the narrow path leading up to the steps, to the steps themselves: five of them which climbed to a blue front door. Two panels of translucent glass ran vertically up the middle half of this, one of them badly cracked and asking to be broken altogether. There was no knob, only a dead bolt surrounded by wood worn down by thousands of hands having pushed the door inward.

Minshall lived in flat A, which was in the basement. Its means of access was down a flight of steps, round the side of the house, and along a narrow passage where rainwater pooled and mould grew at the base of the building. Just outside the door was a cage holding birds. Doves. They cooed softly at the human presence.

Lynley had the warrants; Havers had the keys. She handed them over and let him do the honours. They stepped inside into utter darkness.

Finding a light was a matter of stumbling through what seemed to be a sitting room that had been thoroughly turned over by a burglar. But when Havers said, “Got a light here, sir,” and switched on a dim bulb on a desk, Lynley saw that the condition of the place was due only to slovenly housekeeping.

“What d’you reckon that smell is?” Havers asked.

“Unwashed male, dodgy plumbing, semen, and poor ventilation.” Lynley donned latex gloves; she did the same. “That boy was here,” he said. “I can feel it.”

“The one in the picture?”

“Davey Benton. What’s Minshall claiming?”

“He’s plugged it. I thought we’d get him on the CCTV cameras in the market, but the cops in Holmes Street told me they’re just for show. No film inside them. There’s a bloke there-he’s called John Miller-who could probably ID a photo of Davey, though. If he’ll talk at all.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I think he’s bent himself. Towards underage boys. I got the impression if he fingers Minshall, Minshall fingers him. Scratch mine, scratch yours.”

“Wonderful,” Lynley murmured grimly. He worked his way across the room and found another light by a sagging sofa. He switched it on and turned to look at what they had.

“Pay dirt in a saucepan,” Havers said.

He couldn’t disagree. A computer that doubtless had an Internet connection. A video player with racks of tapes beneath it. Magazines with graphic pictures of sex, others filled with S &M photos. Unwashed crockery. The paraphernalia of magic. They picked through this at different parts of the room till Havers said, “Sir? Do you make of these what I make of these? They were on the floor beneath the desk.”

She was holding up what appeared to be several tea towels. They were stiffened in spots, as if they’d been used while sitting at the computer, for matters having nothing to do with drying plates and glasses.

“He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” Lynley moved into what was a sleeping alcove, where a bed bore sheets of much the same appearance and condition as the tea towels. The place was a treasure trove of DNA evidence. If Minshall had engaged in his frolics with anyone other than his computer and the palm of his hand, there was going to be enough indication of that here to send him away for decades, if the anyone in question was an underage boy.

On the floor next to the bed was yet another magazine, limp with someone’s continual inspection of it. Lynley picked it up and leafed through it quickly. Raw photos of women, nude, legs splayed. Come-hither looks, wet lips, fingers stimulating, entering, caressing. It was sex reduced to base release and nothing else. It depressed Lynley to his core.

“Sir, I’ve got something.”

Lynley returned to the sitting room, where Havers had been going through the desk. She’d found a stack of Polaroid pictures, which she handed over.

They were not pornography. Instead, in each of them a different young boy was kitted out in magician’s togs: cape, top hat, black trousers and shirt. Occasionally a wand under the arm for effect. They were all engaged in what seemed to be the same trick: something with scarves and a dove. There were thirteen of them altogether: white boys, black boys, mixed-race boys. Davey Benton was not among them. As for the others, the parents and relatives of the dead boys would have to look them over.

“What’s he said about that photo in his van?” Lynley asked when he had flipped through the Polaroids a second time.

“Doesn’t know how it got there,” Havers said. “Wasn’t him put it there. He’s completely innocent. It’s some mistake. Yadda yadda more yadda.”

“He could be telling the truth.”

“You’re joking.”

Lynley looked round the flat. “So far there’s no child pornography in here.”

“So far,” Havers said. She indicated the VCR and its accompanying cassettes. “You can’t tell me those videos are by Disney, sir.”

“I’ll give you that. But tell me: Why would he have a photo in his van and none where it’s infinitely safer for him to have it: here inside his flat? And why would all indication of what he’s been up to sexually be referenced to women?”

“Because he won’t take a trip to the nick for that. And he’s smart enough to know it,” she replied. “As for the rest, give me ten minutes to find it on that computer. If it takes that long.”

Lynley told her to have at it. He went down a corridor beyond the sitting room and found a grimy bathroom and beyond it a kitchen. More of the same in both of the locations. A SOCO team would have to delve into it. There were going to be fingerprints galore, in addition to trace evidence deposited by anyone who’d been inside the place.

He left Havers to the computer and went back outside, following the path to the front of the house. There, he climbed the steps to the porch and rang each of the bells for the flats within. Only one yielded an answer. Flat C on the first floor was occupied, and the voice of an Indian woman told him to come up. She would be happy to talk to the police as long as he had identification that he would be willing to slide under her door when he got there.

This sufficed to gain him entry to a flat with a view of the street. A sari-clad middle-aged woman admitted him, handing back his warrant card with a formal little bow. “One cannot be too careful, I find,” she told him. “It is the way of the world.” She introduced herself as Mrs. Singh. She was a widow, she revealed, of no children, straitened circumstances, and little opportunity to marry again. “Alas, my child-bearing years are over. I would serve only to care for someone else’s children now. Would you have tea with me, sir?”

Lynley demurred. Winter was long and she was lonely and he otherwise would have stopped long enough to give her a pleasant half hour or so. But the temperature in her flat was tropical and even if that hadn’t been the case, what he needed from her was a matter of a few minutes’ conversation, and he could afford no more time than that. He told her he’d come to inquire about the gentleman in the basement flat. Barry Minshall, by name. Did she know him?

“The odd man with the stocking hat, oh yes,” Mrs. Singh replied. “Has he been arrested?”

She asked the question as if the word finally were understood between them.

“Why do you ask that?” Lynley said.

“The young boys,” she said. “They came and they went from that basement flat. Day and night. I did phone the police three times about it. I believe you must investigate this man, I told them. Something clearly is not right. But I fear that they saw me as a meddlesome woman, getting into business that was not my own.”

Lynley showed her the picture of Davey Benton he’d had from the boy’s father. “Was this boy one of them?”

She studied it. She carried it to the window overlooking the street and she gazed from the picture to the ground below, as if trying to see Davey Benton in memory as he might have been: entering the front garden and going down the steps to the path to the basement flat. She said, “Yes. Yes. I have seen this boy. One day that man met him out there on the street. I saw this. He wore a cap, this boy. But I saw his face. I did.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Oh yes. I am certain. It is the headphones in this picture, you see. He had them as well, from a player of some kind. He was quite small and very pretty, just like this boy in the picture.”

“Did he and Minshall go into the basement flat?”

They went down the stairs and round the side of the house, she told him. She hadn’t seen them go into the flat, but one could assume…She had no idea how long they were there. She didn’t spend all of her time at the window, she explained with an apologetic laugh.

But what she’d said was enough, and Lynley thanked her for it. He turned down yet another offer of tea and descended the outer stairs to the basement flat once more. Havers met him at the door. She said, “Got him,” and led Lynley to the computer. On the screen was a list of the sites that Barry Minshall had visited. It didn’t take a degree in cryptology to read their titles and know what they were all about.

“Let’s get SOCO over here,” Lynley said.

“What about Minshall?”

“Let him languish till morning. I want him to think about us crawling round his flat, uncovering the slime trail of his existence.”