With No One As Witness

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

AS BARBARA HAVERS CAME BACK TO THE INCIDENT room, Nkata clocked the expression on her face. He saw her go to DI Stewart and have a few words, after which the DI left the room in a tearing hurry. This, in conjunction with Corsico’s having come from Lynley’s office to fetch Havers, told Nkata something was up.

He didn’t approach Havers to be brought into the picture just yet. Instead he watched her go to the computer on which she’d been digging round for information on the bath-salts bloke from the Stables Market. She did a credible job of setting herself back to the task at hand, but from across the room, Nkata could see that more than bath salts was on her mind. She stared at the computer screen for at least two minutes before she roused herself and picked up a pencil. Then she stared at the screen for two minutes more before she gave up the effort and got to her feet. She headed out of the incident room, and Nkata saw she’d dug her fags from her bag. Sneaking off for a smoke in the stairwell, he thought. This would be a good time for a chat.

But instead of heading for the stairs to light up, she went for coffee, plugging coins into the machine and dismally watching the brew dribble into a plastic cup. She fished a fag out of her packet of Players as well, but she didn’t light it.

He said, “Company?,” and felt round in his pocket for change for the coffee machine.

She turned and said tiredly, “Winnie. Come up with anything?”

He shook his head. “You?”

She did likewise. “The bath-salts bloke-John Miller?-turns out to be squeaky clean. Pays his council tax on time, has a credit card he pays off once a month, has his telly licence squared away, has a house and a mortgage and a cat and a dog, a wife and three grandkids. Drives a ten-year-old Saab and has bad feet. Ask me anything. I’ve become his Boswell.”

Nkata smiled. He plugged his own coins into the coffee machine and punched white with sugar. He said, with a nod back in the direction of the incident room, “Corsico coming for you like that, earlier? I reckoned he picked you for the next profile in the paper. But it’s something else, i’n’t it. He came to get you from the super’s office.”

Barb didn’t even try to misdirect him, another reason Nkata liked her. She said, “He phoned. Guv had him on the line when I got there.”

Nkata knew whom she meant at once. He said, “Tha’s what Stewart got on to?”

She nodded. “He’ll get the records.” She took a sip of her coffee and didn’t grimace at the flavour of the brew. “For what good it’ll do. This bloke’s not stupid. He’s not going to phone from a mobile and he’s not going to ring us up from his bedroom land line, is he? He’s in a call box somewhere and he’s damn sure not going to make it in front of his home, his work, or anywhere else we’re likely to connect him to.”

“Has to be done, though.”

“Right.” She examined the cigarette she’d been intending to light up. She made up her mind and shoved it into her pocket. It broke in half. Part fell to the floor. She looked at it, then gave it a kick under the coffee machine.

“What else?” Nkata asked her.

“This bloke mentioned Helen. Super’s cut up, and who can blame him.”

“Tha’s from the paper. He’s trying to unnerve us.”

“Right. Well. He’s managed that.” Barbara downed her coffee and crumpled the cup with a crunch. She said, “Where is he, anyway?”

“Corsico?” Nkata shrugged. “Digging through someone’s personnel file, I expect. Typing everyone’s name online and seeing what he can come up with next for a good story. Barb, this bloke-Red Van-what’d he say ’bout her?”

“About Helen? I don’t know the details. But the whole idea of anything being printed in the paper about anyone…This isn’t good. Not for us and not for the investigation. How’re you with Hillier, by the way?”

“Avoiding him.”

“Not a bad idea.”

Mitchell Corsico appeared from out of nowhere then, his face brightening when he saw them by the coffee machine.

The reporter said, “DS Nkata. I’ve been looking for you.”

Barb said under her breath to Nkata, “Rather you than me, Winnie. Sorry,” and started back for the incident room. She and Corsico passed each other without a glance. A moment later, Nkata found himself alone with the reporter.

“Could I have a word?” Corsico purchased a tea for himself from the machine: milk and extra sugar. He slurped when he drank it. Alice Nkata would have disapproved.

“Work to do,” Nkata said and made a move to go.

“It’s about Harold, actually.” Corsico’s voice remained as friendly as ever. “I wonder if you’d just like to make a comment about him. The contrast between two brothers…It’ll be a brilliant lead for the story. You’re next, as you’ve probably gathered. You on the one hand and Lynley on the other. It’s sort of an alpha and omega situation that’ll make good reading.”

At the mention of his brother’s name, Nkata had felt his whole body stiffen. He would not talk about Stoney. And a comment about him? Like what? Anything he said-even if he said he had no comment at all-would come back to haunt him. Defend Stoney Nkata and it would go down to blinkers and blacks supporting blacks no matter what. Make no comment and it would go down to a cop disowning his past, not to mention his family.

Nkata said, “Harold”-and how odd his brother’s Christian name sounded when he’d never called him that in his life-“he’s my brother. Tha’s right.”

“And would you like to-”

“I just did,” Nkata said. “Just confirmed it for you. If you’ll ’scuse me, then, I’ve got work to do.”

Corsico followed him down the corridor and into the incident room. He pulled up a chair next to Nkata’s and took out his notebook, referring to the page on which he’d taken down information in what looked like old-fashioned shorthand.

He said, “I began that all wrong. Let me try it again. Your dad’s called Benjamin. He drives a bus, right? How long has he worked for London transport? Which route would he be on, DS Nkata?”

Nkata tightened his jaw and began to sort through the papers on which he’d been recording information earlier.

Corsico said, “Yes. Well. It’s Loughborough Estate, South London, isn’t it? Have you lived there long?”

“All my life.” Still, Nkata did not look at the reporter. His every movement he designed to say, I’m busy, man.

Corsico wasn’t buying. He said with a glance at his notes, “And your mother? Alice? What does she do?”

Nkata swung round in his chair. He kept his voice polite. He said, “Super’s wife ended up in the paper. Tha’s not happening to my fam’ly. No way.”

Corsico apparently took this as a welcome into Nkata’s psyche, which seemed to be of more interest to him anyway. He said, “Tough being a cop with your background, Sergeant? Is that how it is?”

Nkata said, “I don’t want a story ’bout me in the paper. I can’t make it any more clear ’n that, Mr. Corsico.”

“Mitch,” Corsico said. “And you’re looking at me as an adversary, aren’t you? That’s not how it should be between us. I’m here to do the Met a service. Did you read the piece about Superintendent Lynley? Not a bit of negativity to it. He was depicted in the most positive light I could manage. Well yes, all right, there’s something more to be said about him…The affair in Yorkshire and his brother-in-law’s death…but we don’t need to get into that anytime soon, so long as the rest of the officers cooperate when I want to feature them.”

“Hang on, man,” Nkata said. “You threatening me? With what you’ll do to the super ’f I don’t play your game?”

Corsico smiled. Casually, he waved the questions off. “No. No. But information comes to me via the newsroom at The Source, Sergeant. That means someone else likely gets the information before I do. And that means my editor’s twigged that there’s more to a story than I’ve printed so far and he wants to know why, not to mention when I’m going to do a follow-up. Like this Yorkshire information: ‘Why aren’t you going with the murder of Edward Davenport, Mitch?’ he’s going to ask. I tell him that I’ve got a better story in hand, a sort of rags-to-riches or rather Brixton-Warriors-to-the-Met story. Believe me, I tell him, when you see this you’ll understand why I moved on from Lynley. How’d you get that scar on your face, Sergeant Nkata? Is it from a flick knife?”

Nkata said nothing: not about Windmill allotments and the street fight that had ended up with his disfigurement and certainly nothing about the Brixton Warriors, who were as active as ever south of the river.

“Besides,” Corsico said, “you know this comes from higher up than me, don’t you? Stephenson Deacon-not to mention AC Hillier-drives a hard bargain with the press. I expect they’ll drive a harder bargain with you if you don’t jump onboard and help out with the profiles.”

At this, Nkata made himself nod in a friendly fashion as he pushed back from his desk. He picked up his notebook and said with as much dignity as he could manage, “Mitch, I got to talk to the super right now. He’s waiting for this”-with a gesture towards his notes-“so we’ll have to do…whatever we have to do later on.”

He left the incident room. Lynley didn’t need the information he had-it was useless anyway-but there was no way in hell he was going to sit there and listen to the journalist’s polite, implied threats. If Hillier blew a fuse as a result of Nkata’s lack of cooperation, so be it, he decided.

Lynley’s office door was open, and the superintendent was on the phone when Nkata entered. Lynley acknowledged him with a nod, indicating the chair in front of his desk. He was listening and writing on a yellow pad.

When he was finished with his call, Lynley said to him presciently, “Corsico?”

“He started off with Stoney. Straightaway. Man, I do not want this bloke digging into my fam’ly. Mum’s got enough on her shoulders without Stoney ending up in the papers again.” He surprised himself with his own passion. He hadn’t thought he still felt the betrayal, the outrage, the…the whatever it really was, because he could not name it at the moment and he knew he couldn’t afford to try.

Lynley took off his spectacles and put his fingers to his forehead, pressing hard. He said, “Winston, how do I apologise for all this?”

Nkata said, “You c’n take out Hillier, I guess. That’d do for a start.”

“Wouldn’t it just,” Lynley agreed. “So you refused Corsico?”

“More or less.”

“That was the right decision. Hillier won’t like it. God knows he’ll hear about it and have a seizure. But that won’t happen at once, and when it does, I’ll do my best to keep him away from you. I wish I could do more.”

Nkata was grateful for that much, considering the fact that the super had already been profiled by the journalist. He said, “Barb says Red Van rang you…”

“Flexing his muscles,” Lynley said. “He’s trying to unnerve us. What’ve you got?”

“Sod all from the credit card purchases. That’s a real nonstarter. Only connection between Crystal Moon and anyone we’re looking at is Robbie Kilfoyle: the sandwich delivery bloke. Can we get surveillance on him?”

“Based on Crystal Moon? We’re stretched too thin. Hillier won’t authorise more officers on this, and those we have are already working fourteen- and eighteen-hour days.” Lynley indicated his yellow pad. “SO7’s done the comparison of everything inside Minshall’s van to the rubber residue found on Kimmo Thorne’s bike. No match. Minshall put in old carpet and not rubber lining. But Davey Benton’s prints are all over that van. So are a score of other prints as well.”

“The other dead boys?”

“We’re doing the comparisons.”

“You don’t think they’re there, do you?”

“The other boys? Inside Minshall’s van?” Lynley put his reading glasses back on and looked at his notes before replying. “No. I don’t,” he finally said. “I think Minshall’s telling the truth, much as I hate to believe it, considering his perversions.”

“Which means…”

“The killer moved on from Colossus to MABIL once we showed up in Elephant and Castle asking questions. And now that Minshall’s in custody, he’s going to have to move on to yet another source of victims. We’ve got to get to him before he gets to them because God only knows where he’s going to find them and we can’t protect every boy in London.”

“We need the meeting times of this MABIL, then. We got to alibi everyone for them.”

“Back to square…if not square one, then square five or six,” Lynley agreed. “You’re right, Winston. It has to be done.”

ULRIKE HAD no choice but to take public transport. The bike ride from Elephant and Castle to Brick Lane was a long one, and she couldn’t afford the time it would take to pedal over there and back. It was suspicious enough that she was leaving Colossus without having a scheduled meeting both in her diary and on the calendar Jack Veness kept in reception. So she invented a phone call that had come in on her mobile-Patrick Bensley, president of the board of trustees, wanted her to meet him and a potential Big Money benefactor, she said-so she would be out. Jack would be able to find her on her mobile. She’d keep it on, as always.

Jack Veness had observed her, a half smile splitting his scraggly beard. He nodded knowingly. She didn’t give him the chance to make a remark. He needed sorting once again, but she didn’t have time to talk to him now about his attitude and the improvements in it that would be necessary should he ever want to advance in the organisation. Instead, she grabbed her coat, her scarf, and her hat, and she departed.

The cold outdoors was a shock that she felt against her eyeballs first and then in her bones. It was a quintessential London cold: so filled with damp that drawing air into her lungs was an effort. It prompted her to rush for the insufferable warmth of the underground. She crammed herself into a carriage heading for the Embankment and tried to keep away from a woman who was coughing wetly into the stale air.

At the Embankment, Ulrike disembarked and weaved through the other commuters. They were different here, their ethnicity changing from mostly black to largely white and far better dressed as she switched to the District line, which itself passed through some of the bastions of London’s establishment employment scene. On her way, she dropped a pound coin into the open guitar case of a busker. He was crooning from “A Man Needs a Maid,” sounding less like Neil Young and more like Cliff Richard with an adenoid problem. But at least he was doing something to support himself.

At Aldgate East, she purchased a copy of the Big Issue, her third in two days. She added an extra fifty pence to the price. The bloke selling it looked as if he needed it.

She found Hopetown Street a short distance along Brick Lane, and there she turned. She made her way to Griffin’s house. It wasn’t far into the estate, just across from a little green and some thirty yards from the community centre in which a group of children were singing as someone accompanied them on a badly tuned piano.

Ulrike paused just inside the gate that fenced off the tiny front garden. It was compulsively neat, as she’d thought it might be. Griff never spoke much about Arabella, but what Ulrike knew of her made the trimmed pot plants and the spotlessly swept stones on the ground exactly what she’d expected to find.

Arabella herself, however, was not. She came out of the house just as Ulrike started towards the door. She was guiding a pushchair over the threshold, its tiny occupant so heavily bundled against the cold that only a nose was showing.

Ulrike had expected someone utterly gone to seed. But Arabella had the look of someone quite trendy in her black beret and her boots. She wore a grey turtle-necked sweater and a black leather jacket. She was far too big in the thighs but was obviously working on it. She’d be back to form in no time.

Good skin, Ulrike thought as Arabella looked up. All her life in England exposed to the moisture in the air. You didn’t find skin like that in Cape Town. Arabella was a regular English rose.

Griff’s wife said, “Well, this is a first. Griff’s not here, if you’ve come looking for him, Ulrike. And if he’s not gone to work, he might be at the silk-screening business, although I rather doubt it, things being what they’ve been lately.” And squinting like a woman making sure of the identity of her listener, she added in a sardonic tone, “It is Ulrike, isn’t it?”

Ulrike didn’t ask how she knew. She said, “I haven’t come to see Griff. I’ve come to talk to you.”

“That’s another first.” Arabella eased the pushchair off the single step that played the part of front porch. She turned and locked the door behind her. She made an adjustment to the baby’s pile of quilts and then said, “I can’t see what we have to talk about. Surely Griff hasn’t made you promises, so if you think that you and I are going to have a reasonable discussion about divorce, swapping places, or whatever, I have to tell you you’re wasting your time. And not only with me, but with him.”

Ulrike could feel her face getting hot. It was childish, but she wanted to lay out a few facts in front of Arabella Strong, beginning with: Wasting my time? He fucked me in my office only yesterday, darling. But she restrained herself, saying only, “That’s not why I’ve come.”

“Oh, it’s not?” Arabella said.

“No. I’ve recently booted his pretty little arse out of my life. He’s all yours at last,” Ulrike replied.

“That’s just as well, then. You wouldn’t have been happy had he chosen you permanently. He’s not the easiest man to live with. His…His outside interests grow tiresome fast. One has to learn to cope with them.” Arabella came across the front garden to the gate. Ulrike stepped aside but didn’t open it for her. Instead, she let Arabella do it herself and afterwards she followed Griff’s wife into the street. Closer to her, Ulrike got a better sense of who she was: the sort of woman who lived to be taken care of, who left school at sixteen and then acquired one of those wait-till-a-husband-comes-along kind of jobs that are utterly inadequate for self-support should the marriage break down and the wife need to make her own way in the world.

Arabella turned to her and said, “I’m going up to Beigel Bake, near the top of Brick Lane. You can come along if you like. I’m happy enough for the company. A friendly chat with another woman is always nice. And anyway, I’ve something you might want to see.”

She started off, heedless of whether Ulrike was following. Ulrike caught her up, determined not to look as if she were tagging along like an undesirable appendage. She said, “How did you know who I was?”

Arabella glanced her way. “Strength of character,” she said. “The way you dress and the expression on your face. The way you walk. I saw you come up to the gate. Griff always likes his women strong, at least initially. Seducing a strong woman allows him to feel strong himself. Which he isn’t. Well of course, you know that. He never has been strong. He hasn’t had to be. Of course he thinks he is, just as he thinks he’s keeping secrets from me with all these…these serial trysts of his. But he’s weak the way every handsome man is weak. The world bows to his looks and he feels he must prove something to the world beyond his looks, which he utterly fails to do because he ends up using his looks to do it. Poor darling,” she added. “There are times I feel quite sorry for him. But we muddle along in spite of his foibles.”

They turned into Brick Lane, heading north. A lorry driver was making a delivery of bolts of bright silk to a sari shop that stood on the corner, still decorated with Christmas lights as it was, perhaps, all year.

Arabella said, “I expect that’s why you hired him, isn’t it?”

“Because of his looks?”

“I expect you interviewed him, found yourself a bit dazzled to be on the end of that soulful expression of his, and didn’t follow up a single reference. He’d have been depending upon that.” Arabella gave her a look that seemed well practised, as if she’d spent days and months awaiting the opportunity to have her say in front of one of her husband’s lovers.

Ulrike gave her that much. She deserved it, after all. “Guilty as charged,” she said. “He gives good interview.”

“I don’t know how he’ll cope when his looks fade,” Arabella said. “But I suppose it’s different with men.”

“Longer shelf life,” Ulrike agreed.

“Far more distant sell-by date.”

They found themselves having a quiet chuckle and then looked away from each other in embarrassment. They’d strolled some distance up Brick Lane. Across from a button-and-thread shop that looked as if it had done business on the spot since the time of Dickens, Arabella stopped.

She said, “There. That’s what I wanted you to see, Ulrike.” She nodded across the street, but not at Able-court and Son Ltd. Rather, she indicated the Bengal Garden, a restaurant that stood next to the button shop, its windows and front-door grilles closed and locked until nightfall.

“What about it?” Ulrike asked.

“That’s where she works. She’s called Emma, but I don’t expect that’s her real name. Probably something unpronounceable beginning with an m. So they added uh to Anglicise it. Or at least she did. Em-uh. Emma. Her parents probably call her by her given name still, but she’s trying very hard to be English. Griff intends to help her along in that. She’s the hostess. She’s a real departure for Griff-he doesn’t generally go in for ethnic types-but I think the fact that she’s trying to be English in the face of parental objection…” Arabella glanced Ulrike’s way. “He’d interpret that as strength. Or he’d tell himself so.”

“How do you know about her?”

“I always know about them. A wife does, Ulrike. There are signs. In this case, he took me to the restaurant for dinner recently. Her expression when we walked in? He’d obviously been there before and laid the groundwork. I was phase two: the wife on his arm so Emma can see the situation her darling must contend with.”

“What groundwork?”

“He has a particular pullover he wears initially when he wants to attract a woman. A fisherman’s sweater. Its colour does something special to his eyes. Did he wear it round you? For a meeting you may have had, just the two of you? Ah. Yes. I see that he did. He’s a creature of habit. But what works, works. So one can hardly blame him for not branching out.”

Arabella walked on. Ulrike followed, casting one last glance at the Bengal Garden. She said, “Why do you stay with him?”

“Tatiana,” she said, “is going to have a father.”

“What about you?”

“My eyes are open. Griffin is who Griffin is.”

They crossed a street and continued north, past the old brewery and into the region of leather shops and bargain prices. Ulrike asked the question she’d come to ask, although at this point she knew how unreliable Arabella’s answer was probably going to be.

“The night of the eighth?” Arabella repeated thoughtfully, offering Ulrike the possibility that she was actually going to hear the truth. “Why, he was home with me, Ulrike.” And then she added deliberately, “Or he was with Emma. Or he was with you. Or he was at the silk-screening business till dawn or later. I’ll swear to any of them, whatever Griff prefers. He, you, and everyone else can absolutely depend upon that.” She paused at the doorway to a large-windowed shop. Inside, customers lined up at a glass-fronted counter behind which an enormous blackboard listed the variety of bagels and the toppings on offer. She said, “I’ve no idea actually, but that’s something I’ll never tell the police, and that you can be sure of.” She looked away from Ulrike to the interior of the shop, wearing the expression of a woman who suddenly sees where she is for the very first time. “Ah,” she said, “here’s the Beigel Bake. Would you like a bagel, Ulrike? It will be my treat.”

HE FOUND A PLACE to park that had logic written all over it. Beneath Marks & Spencer, there was an undergound carpark, and while it had a CCTV camera-what else could one expect in this part of town?-should He ever be witnessed on film from this place, His presence possessed a rational explanation. Marks & Sparks had toilets; Marks & Sparks had a grocery. Either of those would serve as excuse.

To make sure, He went above to the store and put in an appearance in both facilities. He bought a chocolate bar in the grocery and stood wide legged at a urinal in the gents’. That, He thought, should satisfy.

He washed His hands thoroughly-at this time of year, one couldn’t be too careful with all the head colds going round-and He ducked out of the store afterwards and headed in the direction of the square. It formed the intersection of half a dozen streets, the one whose pavement He walked along being the busiest of them, coursing upward in a glut of taxis and private vehicles all struggling southwest to northeast. When He got to the square itself, He crossed over with the traffic lights, breathing the fumes of a number 11 bus.

After Leadenhall Market, He’d been cheesed off, but now He was in a different frame of mind. Inspiration had struck Him, and He’d snatched it up, making a switch in His plans without anyone’s intercession. As a result, there was no chant of ridicule from maggots. There was just the instant when He’d suddenly realised a new way was open to Him, broadcasting itself from every newsstand on every street corner that He passed.

In the square, He went to the fountain. It wasn’t in the centre as design would dictate, but rather towards the southern corner. It was what He came to first, in fact, and He stood looking at the woman, the urn, and the trickle of water she was pouring into the pristine pool beneath her. Although trees lined the square at no great distance from the fountain, He saw that no remainder of their dead leaves decomposed in the water. Someone had long ago fished them out, so the trickle from the urn fell sonorously, without the splat that otherwise would suggest decay. In this part of town, that would be an unthinkable idea: death, decay, and decomposition. That was what made His choice so perfect.

He stood back from the fountain and observed the rest of the square. It was going to present an enormous challenge. Beyond the row of trees that lined a broad central path to a war memorial at the far end, a rank of taxis waited for fares and an underground station disgorged passengers onto the pavement. They made for banks, for shops, for a pub. They sat at window tables of a brasserie nearby or joined a line of ticket buyers at the box office of a theatre.

This was no Leadenhall Market: busy in the morning, at noon, and at the end of a workday, but otherwise not busy at all in the dead of winter. This was a place alive with people, probably well into the early hours of the morning. But nothing was insurmountable. The pub would close, the tube station would be locked and barred eventually, the taxi drivers would go home for the night, and the buses would run far less frequently. By three-thirty, the square would be His. All He had to do, really, was wait.

And anyway, what He had in mind for this location would not take long. He was regretful about the game rails in Leadenhall Market, which He now could not use to make the statement He wished to make, but this was far better. For benches lined the path from the fountain to the war memorial-wrought iron and wood gleaming in the milky sunlight-and He was actually able to picture how it was going to be.

He could see their bodies in this place: one of them redeemed and released and the other not. One of them the observer and the other the observed, so consequently, one of them laid out and the other positioned in an air of watchful…solicitude. But both of them deliciously, delightfully dead.

The plans were in motion inside His head, and He felt filled, as He always did. He felt free. There was no room for the maggot at a time like this. The wormlike thing shrank back, as if trying to escape the sun, which was represented to the hateful creature by His presence and His plan. See, see? He wanted to demand. But that could not come now, and it would have no reason to come till He had the two of them-observer and observed-within the circle that was His power.

All that remained was the waiting, now. Following and finding the moment to strike.

LYNLEY EXAMINED the e-fit, product of Muwaffaq Masoud’s memory of the man who’d bought his van in the summer. He’d been looking at it for a good few minutes, trying to find points of comparison with the sketch they already had of the man who’d visited Square Four Gym in the days before Sean Lavery was murdered. He finally looked up-decision made-picked up the phone, and asked for an alteration in each drawing. On a copy of each, add a peaked cap, spectacles, and a goatee, he said. He wanted to see both individuals thus altered. He knew it was a stab in the dark, but there were times when a stab found flesh.

When that was in hand, Lynley finally had a moment to phone Helen. He’d thought much about his conversation with the serial killer, and he’d considered whether the best course of action was to send Helen home from her wanderings round London, with constables posted at front and back doors. But he knew how unlikely his wife was to embrace this move, and he also knew that overreacting to this could be playing into the killer’s hands. At the moment, their man had no idea where the Lynley home actually was. Far better to put Eaton Terrace itself under surveillance-from rooftops, from the Antelope Pub-and cast out a net into which the killer might well wander. That would take several hours to set up. All he had to do was make sure that Helen took care in the meantime while she was out in the streets.

He reached her in a babble of noise: crockery, cutlery, and women’s chatting. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Peter Jones,” she said. “We’ve paused for sustenance. I’d no idea that hunting for christening garments would be so grueling.”

“You’ve not made much progress if you’ve only got as far as Peter Jones.”

“Darling, that’s completely untrue.” And then obviously to Deborah, “It’s Tommy wondering how far we’ve managed to…Yes, I’ll tell him.” To Lynley, “Deborah says you might demonstrate a bit more faith in us. We’ve already made three stops and we’ve plans to go on to Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Marylebone, and a dear little shop Deborah’s managed to unearth in South Kensington. Designer wear for infants. If we can’t find something there, we’ll not find it anywhere.”

“You’ve a full day planned.”

“At the end of it all, we intend to have tea at Claridge’s, the better to look decorative among all that art deco. That was Deborah’s idea, by the way. She seems to think I’m not getting out enough. And, darling, we’ve found one christening outfit already, did I say?”

“Have you?”

“It’s terribly sweet. Although…well, your aunt Augusta might have a seizure watching her great-grandnephew-is that what Jasper Felix will be?-being ushered into Christianity in a miniature dinner jacket. But the nappies are so precious, Tommy. How could anyone complain?”

“It would be unthinkable,” Lynley agreed. “But you know Augusta.”

“Oh pooh. We’ll search on. I do want you to see the dinner jacket, though. We’re buying every outfit we think suitable, so you can help decide.”

“Fine, darling. Let me talk to Deborah.”

“Now, Tommy, you aren’t going to tell her to restrain me, are you?”

“Wouldn’t think of it. Put her on.”

“We’re behaving ourselves…more or less,” was what Deborah said to him when Helen handed over her mobile.

“I’m depending on that.” Lynley gave a moment’s thought to how he wanted to phrase things. Deborah, he knew, was incapable of dissembling. One word from him alluding to the killer and it would be written all over her face, in plain sight for Helen to see and to worry about. He sought a different tack. “Don’t let anyone approach you while you’re out today,” he said. “People in the street…Don’t let yourselves become engaged with anyone. Will you do that for me?”

“Of course. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, really. I’m being a mother hen. Flu going round. Colds. God only knows what else. Just keep an eye out and take care.”

She said nothing on the other end. He could hear Helen chatting to someone.

“Keep an adequate distance from people,” Lynley said. “I don’t want her falling ill when she’s finally got beyond morning sickness.”

“Of course,” Deborah said. “I’ll fend everyone off with my umbrella.”

“Promise?” he asked her.

“Tommy, is there something-”

“No. No.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes. Have a good day.”

He rang off then, depending upon Deborah’s discretion. Even if she told Helen exactly what he’d said, he knew it would seem to his wife that he was merely being overprotective about her health.

“Sir?”

He looked towards the door. Havers was standing there, her spiral notebook in hand. “What’ve you got?”

“Sod all in a bun,” she said. “Miller’s clean.” She went on to report what she’d managed to unearth on the bath-salts vendor, which was, as she’d said, nothing at all. She finished with, “So here’s what I’ve been thinking. P’rhaps we should consider him more carefully as someone likely to drop Barry Minshall in it. If he knows what we’ve got on Barry-I mean exactly-he might be willing to help. If nothing else, he could maybe identify some of the boys in the Polaroids we found in Barry’s digs. We find those boys, and we’ve got a way to break up MABIL.”

“But not necessarily a way to get the killer,” Lynley pointed out. “No. Turn the MABIL information over to TO9, Havers. Give them Miller’s name and his details as well. They’ll give it all to the relevant Child Protection team.”

“But if we-”

“Barbara,” he said, stopping her before she could get into it, “that’s the best we can do.”

Dorothea Harriman came into the office as Havers groused about letting even part of the investigation go. The departmental secretary had several pieces of paper in her hand, which she turned over to Lynley. She departed in a breeze of perfume, saying, “New e-fits, Acting Superintendent. Straightaway, I was told. He said to let you know he’s done several since you couldn’t tell him what the glasses were like or how thick the goatee was. The peaked cap, he said, is the same on them all.”

Lynley thanked her as Havers approached his desk for a look. The two sketches were now altered: Both of the suspects wore hats, spectacles, and had facial hair. It was little enough to go on, but it was something.

He got to his feet. “Come with me,” he told Havers. “It’s time to go to the Canterbury Hotel.”