With No One As Witness

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“LIKE I SAID FROM THE FIRST TO YOU LOT,” JACK VENESS declared, “I was at the Miller and Grindstone. I don’t know till what time because sometimes I’m there till last orders and sometimes I’m not and I don’t keep a fucking diary of it, okay? But I was there, and afterwards my mate and I went for a take-away. No matter how many times you ask me, I’m going to give you the same flipping answer. So what’s the point of asking?”

“Point,” Winston Nkata replied, “is that more in’eresting events keep piling up, Jack. More we learn about who’s doing what to who in this case, more we have to check out who might’ve done something else. And when. It always comes down to when, man.”

“It always comes down to cops trying to pin something on someone and not caring much who the someone is. You lot got a nerve, you know that? People locked up for twenty years, turns out they been framed, and you never change your approach, do you?”

“’Fraid that’s what’s going to happen?” Nkata asked him. “Why would that be?”

He and the Colossus receptionist were facing off right inside the entrance, where Nkata had followed him from the carpark. There, Jack’d been cadging cigarettes from two twelve-year-olds. He’d lit one, put another in his pocket, and tucked a third behind his ear. At first Nkata had thought he was one of the organisation’s clients. It was only when Veness had stopped him with an “Oy! You! What’re you about?” as he went for the door that Nkata realised the scruffy young man was a Colossus employee.

He’d asked Veness if he could have a word, and he’d offered his identification. He had a list of dates when MABIL had met-helpfully provided by Barry Minshall upon the advice of his solicitor-and he was comparing it to alibis. Trouble was, Jack Veness’s alibi was unchanging, as he’d taken pains to point out.

Now Jack stalked into the reception area, as if satisfied that he’d been cooperative. Nkata followed him. There, a boy was lounging on one of the mangy-looking sofas. He was smoking and trying unsuccessfully to blow rings in the direction of the ceiling.

“Mark Connor!” Veness barked at him. “What’re you about besides getting ready for a boot in your bum? No smoking anywhere inside Colossus, and you know that. What’re you thinking?”

“No one’s here.” Mark sounded bored. “’Nless you plan on grassing me to someone, no one knows.”

“I’m here, got it?” Jack snapped in reply. “Get the fuck out or put out the fag.”

Mark muttered, “Shit,” and swung his legs over the side of the sofa. He got to his feet and shuffled out of the room, the crotch of his trousers hanging nearly to his knees in gangsta fashion.

Jack went to the reception desk and punched a few keys at his computer. He said to Nkata, “What else, okay? If you want to talk to the rest of this lot, they’re out. One and all.”

“Griffin Strong?”

“You have trouble hearing?”

Nkata didn’t answer this. He locked eyes with Veness and waited.

The receptionist relented but made it clear by his tone that he wasn’t happy. “Hasn’t been in all day,” he said. “Probably having his eyebrows plucked somewhere.”

“Greenham?”

“Who knows? His idea of lunch is two hours and counting. So he c’n take Mummy to the doctor, he says.”

“Kilfoyle?”

“He never shows up till he’s made his deliveries, which I hope happens soon since he’s got my salami- and-salad baguette on him and I’d like to eat it. What else, man?” He grabbed up a pencil and tapped it meaningfully against a telephone message pad. As if on cue, the phone rang and he answered. No, he said, she wasn’t in. Could he take a message? He added pointedly, “Truth to tell, I thought she was meeting with you, Mr. Bensley. That’s what she said when she left,” and he sounded satisfied, as if a theory of his had just been proved right.

He jotted down a note and told the caller he’d pass the information along. He rang off and then looked up at Nkata. “What else?” he said. “I’ve got things to do.”

Nkata had Jack Veness’s background inscribed on his brain, along with the background of everyone else at Colossus who had piqued the interest of the police. He knew the young man had reason to be uneasy. Old lags were always the first to come under suspicion when a crime went down, and Veness knew it. He’d done time before-no matter it was arson-and he wouldn’t be anxious to do time elsewhere. And he was right about the cops’ tendency to set their sights on a culprit early on, based on his past and their past interactions with him. All over England, there were red-faced chief constables sweeping up the debris of dirty investigations into everything from bombings to murder.

Jack Veness was no fool to expect the worst. But on the other hand, positioning himself thus was a clever move.

“You got a lot of responsibility here,” Nkata said. “With everyone gone.”

Jack didn’t reply at once. This change in gears obviously was cause for suspicion. He finally made a reply of, “I c’n handle it.”

“Anyone notice?”

“What?”

“You handling it. Or are they too busy?”

This direction appeared doable. Jack went for it, saying, “No one notices much of anything. I’m low man on the totem pole, not counting Rob. He leaves, I’m done for. Doormat time.”

“Kilfoyle, you mean?”

Jack eyed him and Nkata knew he’d sounded too interested. “I’m not going there with you, mate. Rob’s a good lad. He’s been in trouble, but I expect you know that like you know I’ve been in trouble as well. That doesn’t make either one of us a killer.”

“You hang about with him much? Miller and Grindstone, f’r instance? That how you got to know him? He the mate you been talking about?”

“Look, I’m giving you sod all on Rob. Do your own dirty work.”

“All goes back to this Miller and Grindstone situation we got,” Nkata pointed out.

“I don’t see it that way, but shit, shit.” Jack grabbed a paper and scrawled a name and a phone number, which he then handed over. “There. That’s my mate. Ring him and he’ll tell you the same. We’re at the pub, then we’re off for a curry. Ask him, ask at the pub, ask at the take-away. ’Cross from Bermondsey Square, it is. They’ll tell you the same.”

Nkata folded the paper neatly and slid it into his notebook, saying, “Problem, Jack.”

“What? What?”

“One night tends to fade into ’nother when you always go to the same place, see? A few days-or weeks-after the fact, how’s someone s’posed to know which nights you were in the pub and buying take-away chicken tikka afterwards and which nights you skipped ’cause you were doing something else?”

“Like what? Like killing a few kids, you mean? Fuck it, I don’t care-”

“Trouble here, Jack?”

Another man had entered, a somewhat rounded bloke with hair too thin for his age and skin too ruddy even for someone recently exposed to the cold. Nkata wondered if he’d been listening just outside the reception door.

“Help you with something?” the man asked Nkata with a glance that took the DS in from head to toe.

Jack didn’t seem pleased to see the bloke. He apparently believed he needed no rescue. “Neil,” he said. “Another visit from the Bill.”

This would be Greenham, Nkata concluded. Just as well. He wanted a word with him too.

Jack went on. “More alibis needed. He’s got a list of dates this time. Hope you keep a diary of your every move ’cause that’s what he’s looking for. Meet DS Whahaha.”

Nkata said to Greenham, “Winston Nkata,” and reached for his warrant card.

“Don’t bother,” Neil said. “I believe you. And this is what you need to believe. I’m going in there”-he indicated the inner reaches of the building-“and I’m ringing my solicitor. I’m finished answering questions or having friendly chats with the cops without legal advice. You lot are bordering on harassment now.” And then to Veness, “Watch your backside. They don’t plan to rest till they get one of us. Pass word round.” He headed for the doorway to the interior of the building.

There was, Nkata concluded, nothing more to be gained on this side of the river aside from corroborating the Miller and Grindstone tale and the take-away curry situation. If Jack Veness was slip-sliding round London in the small hours, depositing bodies in the vicinity of the homes of his fellow Colossus workers, he’d not have announced that fact to anyone he knew at the pub or the take-away through obvious behaviour. Still, if he’d selected MABIL as his next source of young boys, he might not have been as circumspect about disguising his absence from the pub and the take-away on the nights of MABIL meetings. It was little enough to go on, but it was something.

Nkata left the building, telling Veness to have Robbie Kilfoyle and Griffin Strong phone him when they finally showed their faces. He went across the carpark at the rear of the building and slid into his Escort.

Across the street, tucked into the dismal and heavily graffitied railway arches leading out of London from Waterloo Station, four car-repair shops faced Colossus, along with a radio-controlled minicab and parcel service and a bicycle shop. In front of these establishments, young people of the area hung about. They mingled in groups and as Nkata watched, an Asian man emerged from the bicycle shop and shooed them off to another location. They exchanged words with the man, but nothing came of it. They began to slouch off towards New Kent Road.

When Nkata followed in his car, he saw more of them beneath the railway viaduct, and more strung out like African beads in twos, threes, and fours along the way to the grubby shopping centre, which took up the corner of Elephant and Castle. They shuffled along on a pavement spotted with discarded chewing gum, cigarette ends, orange juice cartons, food wrappers, crushed Coke cans, and half-eaten kebabs. Among themselves, they passed a fag…or more likely a spliff. It was difficult to tell. But they apparently had no worry of being stopped in this part of town, no matter what they did. There were more of them than there were outraged citizens to prevent them from doing whatever they liked, which seemed to be listening to deafening rap music and giving aggro to the kebab maker whose tiny establishment stood between the Charlie Chaplin Pub and El Azteca Mexican Products and Catering. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go: out of school, without the hope of employment, waiting aimlessly for the current of life to carry them wherever it would.

But none of them, Nkata thought, had started out this way. Each of them had once been a slate on which nothing had been written. This made him think of his own good fortune: that combination of humanity and circumstance that had brought him to where he was on this day. And had, he thought, also brought Stoney to where he was…

He wouldn’t think of his brother, beyond his help now. He would think of helping where he could. In memory of Stoney? No. Not for that. Rather, in acknowledgement of deliverance and in blessing of his God-given ability to recognise it when it had come.

THE CANTERBURY HOTEL was one of a series of white Edwardian conversions that curved north along Lexham Gardens from Cromwell Road in South Kensington. Long ago, it had been an elegant house among other elegant houses in a part of town made desirable by the proximity of Kensington Palace. Now, however, the street was only marginally appealing. It was a spot that catered to foreigners with minimal needs and on very tight budgets, as well as to couples looking for an hour or two in which to do sexual business together with no questions asked. The hotels had names relying heavily on the use of Court, Park, or locations of historical significance, all of which suggested opulence but belied the condition of their interiors.

From the street, the Canterbury Hotel looked as if it was going to live up to Barbara’s grim expectations of it. Its dingy white sign bore two holes that had renamed the establishment Can bury Hot, and its draughts-board marble porch gaped with missing pieces. Barbara stopped Lynley as he reached for the door handle.

“You see what I mean, don’t you?” She waved at him the revised e-fits that she’d been carrying. “It’s the one thing we haven’t talked about.”

“I don’t disagree,” Lynley told her. “But in the absence of something more-”

“We’ve got Minshall, sir. And he’s starting to cooperate.”

Lynley nodded at the door to the Canterbury Hotel. “The next few minutes will tell the tale on that. Right now what we know is that neither Muwaffaq Masoud nor our Square Four Gym witness has anything to gain by lying. You and I both know that’s not the case for Minshall.”

They were talking about the e-fits they’d obtained. Barbara’s point was their unreliability. Muwaffaq Masoud had last seen the man who’d purchased his van many months earlier. The Square Four Gym observer had seen the individual following Sean Lavery-“and he didn’t know if the bloke was really following Sean Lavery, admit it,” Barbara had said-more than four weeks previously. What they had right now in the sketches was entirely dependent upon the memory of two men who, at the precise moment they’d seen the person in question, had no reason to memorise a single detail about him. The e-fits thus could be worth sweet FA to the police, while one generated by Barry Minshall could set them straight.

If, Lynley’s point had been, they could rely upon Minshall to give them an accurate description in the first place. That was open to doubt until they saw how truthful his account was of the goings-on at the Canterbury Hotel.

Lynley led the way in. There was no lobby, just a corridor with a worn turkey runner and a pass-through window in a wall that seemed to open upon a reception office. The sound of aerosol spraying was emanating from this location, as was the heady eye-stinging odour of a substance that would have sent a huffer into raptures. They went to investigate.

There were no paper bags involved in what was going on. Instead, a twentysomething girl with what looked like a small chandelier dangling from one earlobe was squatting on the floor on an open tabloid, waterproofing a pair of boots. Hers, by the look of things: Her feet were bare.

Lynley had taken out his warrant card, but the receptionist did not look up. She was virtually ensconced in her position on the floor, fast becoming a victim of her aerosol can’s fumes.

“Hang on,” she said and sprayed away. She swayed dangerously on her heels.

“Bloody hell, get some air in this place.” Barbara strode back to the door and slung it open. When she returned to the reception office, the girl had dragged herself up off the floor.

“Whoa,” she said with a woozy laugh. “When they say do it in a ventilated place, they’re not kidding.” She reached for a registration card and plopped it on the counter along with a biro and a room key. “Fifty-five for the night, thirty by the hour. Or fifteen if you aren’t particular about the sheets. Which I wouldn’t recommend, by the way-the fifteen-pound option-but don’t mention I said that.” At that point, she finally took in the two people who’d come calling. It was clear she didn’t twig they were cops-despite Lynley’s identification dangling in plain sight from his fingers-because her glance went from Barbara to her companion to Barbara again, and her expression said of Lynley, Whatever floats your boat.

Barbara saved Lynley the embarrassment of having to disabuse the girl of her notion about their presence in the Canterbury Hotel. As she dug out her police identification, she said, “When we do it, we prefer the backseat of a car. Bit cramped to be sure, but definitely cheap.” She thrust her ID at the girl. “New Scotland Yard,” she said. “And dead dee-lighted to know you’re helping the neighbourhood cope with its ungovernable passions. This is Detective Superintendent Lynley, by the way.”

The girl’s eyes took in both warrant cards. She reached up and fingered the chandelier that dangled from her earlobe. “Sor-ry,” she said. “You know, I didn’t actually think the two of you-”

“Right,” Barbara cut in. “Let’s begin with the hours you work here. What are they?”

“Why?”

Lynley said, “Are you on duty at night?”

She shook her head. “I’m off at six. What’s going on? What’s happened?” It was clear that she’d been prepped on what to do should the rozzers ever come calling: She reached for the phone and said, “Let me get Mr. Tatlises for you.”

“He works reception at night?”

“He’s the manager. Hey! What’re you doing?” This last she said as Barbara reached over the reception counter and broke the connection on the phone.

“The night clerk will do just fine,” she told the girl. “Where is he?”

“He’s legal,” she said. “Everyone who works here is legal. There’s not a single person without papers, and Mr. Tatlises makes sure they all enroll in English classes as well.”

“A real upright member of society, he is,” Barbara said.

“Where can we find the night clerk?” Lynley asked. “What’s his name?”

“Asleep.”

“I’ve not heard that name before,” Barbara said. “What nationality is it?”

“What? He’s got a room here…That’s why. Look, he won’t want to be woken up.”

“We’ll do those honours for you, then,” Lynley said. “Where is it?”

“Top floor,” she said. “Forty-one. It’s a single. He doesn’t have to pay. Mr. Tatlises takes it out of his wages. Half price as well.” She said all this as if the information might be enough to keep them from speaking to the night clerk. As Lynley and Barbara headed for the lift, the girl reached for the phone. There was little doubt she was phoning either for reinforcements or to warn room 41 that the cops were on their way up.

The lift was a pre-World War I affair, a grilled cage that ascended at the dignified pace necessary for mystical assumptions into heaven. It was suitable for two individuals without luggage. But possession of luggage did not appear to be one of the qualifications for filling out a registration card in this hotel.

The door to 41 was open when they finally got there. The occupant was waiting for them, pyjamas on body and foreign passport in hand. He looked to be round twenty years old. He said, “Hello. How do you do. I am Ibrahim Selçuk. Mr. Tatlises is my uncle. I speak English little. My papers are in order.”

Like the words of the receptionist below, all of what he said was rote: lines you must recite if a cop asks you questions. The place was probably a hotbed of illegal immigrants, but that was something they were not concerned about at the moment as Lynley made clear to the man when he said, “We’re not involved in immigration. On the eighth, a young boy was brought to this hotel by an odd-looking man with yellow-white hair and dark glasses. An albino, we call him. No colour in his skin. The boy was young, blond-” Lynley showed Selçuk the picture of Davey Benton, which he took from his jacket pocket along with the mug shot taken of Minshall by the Holmes Street police. “He may have left in the company of another man who’d already booked a room here.”

Barbara added, “And this song and dance-young boys being brought to this place by the albino man and leaving later with some other bloke?-it’s supposedly happened over and over, Ibrahim, so don’t let’s try to pretend you haven’t seen the action.” She thrust the two e-fits at the night receptionist then, saying, “He might look like this. The man the young boy left with. Yes? No? Can you confirm?”

He said uneasily, “My English is little. I have passport here.” And he danced from one foot to another like someone needing to use the toilet. “People come. I give them card to sign and keys. They pay in cash, that is all.” He gripped the front of his pyjamas, in the area of his crotch. “Please,” he said, casting a look back over his shoulder.

Barbara muttered, “Bloody hell.” And to Lynley, “‘I’m about to wet myself’ is probably not part of his English lessons.”

Behind the man, his room was dark. In the light from the corridor, they could see that his bed was rumpled. He’d definitely been sleeping, but he’d also been prepared by someone at some point to keep his answers minimal at all times, admitting to nothing. Barbara was about to suggest to Lynley that forcing the bloke to hold his bladder for a good twenty minutes might go some distance towards loosening his tongue when a diminutive man in a dinner suit came trundling towards them from round the corner.

This had to be Mr. Tatlises, Barbara thought. His look of determined good cheer was spurious enough to act as his identification. He said in a heavy Turkish accent, “My nephew, his English wants repair. I am Mr. Tatlises and I’m happy to help you. Ibrahim, I will handle this.” He shooed the boy into his room again and he closed the door himself. “Now,” he said expansively, “you need something, yes? But not a room. No no. I’ve been told that already.” He laughed and looked from Barbara to Lynley with a we-boys-know-where-we-want-to-plant-it expression that made Barbara want to invite the little worm to take a bite of her fist. Like someone would want to have a shag with you? she wanted to ask him. Puhh-leez.

“We understand that this boy was brought here by a man called Barry Minshall.” Lynley showed Tatlises the relevant photos. “He left in the company of another man who, we believe, resembles this individual. Havers?” Barbara showed Tatlises the e-fits. “Your confirmation of this is what we require at this point.”

“And after that?” Tatlises inquired. He’d given a scant glance to the photos and the drawings.

“You’re not really in a position to wonder what happens after that,” Lynley told him.

“Then I do not see how-”

“Listen, Jack-o-mate,” Barbara broke in. “I expect your handmaiden of the boots downstairs put you in the picture that we’re not here from your local station: two rozzers looking round their new patch for a nice bit of dosh from the likes of you, if that’s how you keep this operation going. This’s just a bit bigger than that, so if you know something about what’s been going on in this rubbish tip, I suggest you unplug it and give us the facts, okay? We’ve got it from this individual”-she stabbed her finger onto Barry Minshall’s mug shot-“that one of his mates from a group called MABIL met a thirteen-year-old boy right in this hotel on the eighth. Minshall claims it’s a regular arrangement, since someone from here-and let me guess it’s you-belongs to MABIL as well. How’s this all sounding to you for a lark?”

“MABIL?” Tatlises said, with some fluttering of eyelashes to approximate confusion. “This is someone…?”

“I expect you know what MABIL is,” Lynley said. “I also expect that if we asked you to join an identity parade, Mr. Minshall would have no trouble picking you out as the fellow member of MABIL who works here. We can avoid all that, and you can confirm his story, identify the boy, and tell us whether the man he left with looks like either one of these two sketches, or we can prolong the entire affair and haul you over to Earl’s Court Road police station for a while.”

“If he left with him,” Barbara added.

“I know nothing,” Tatlises insisted. He rapped on the door of room 41. His nephew opened it so quickly that it was obvious he’d been standing directly behind it listening to every word. Tatlises began speaking to him rapidly in their language. His voice was loud. He pulled the boy over by his pyjama jacket, and he snatched the sketches and the pictures, forcing the young man to study them.

It was a nice performance, Barbara thought. He actually meant them to believe that his nephew, and not himself, was the paedophile here. She glanced at Lynley, seeking permission. He nodded. She stepped up to business.

“Listen to me, you little wanker,” she said to Tatlises, grabbing his arm. “If you think we’re going to jump on the wagon you’re driving, you’re even stupider than you look. Leave him bloody alone and tell him to answer our questions and you can answer them as well. Got it? Or do I need to help you with your understanding?” She released him, but not before she ended her question with a twist of his arm.

Tatlises cursed her in his language, or so she assumed he was doing from the passion of his words and the expression on his nephew’s face. He said finally, “I will report you for this,” to both of them, to which Barbara answered, “I’m wetting my knickers in terror. Now translate this for your ‘nephew’ or whatever the hell he really is. This kid…Was he here?”

Tatlises rubbed his arm where Barbara had manhandled it. She expected him to start shouting something meaningful, like “Unconscionable brutality!,” so assiduous were his ministrations to his limb. He finally said, “I do not work nights.”

“Brilliant. He does, though. Tell him to answer.”

Tatlises nodded at his “nephew.” The younger man looked at the picture and nodded in turn.

“Fine. Now let’s get on to the rest, okay? Did you see him leave the hotel?”

The nephew nodded. “He leaves with the other. I see this. Not the albin one, how you named him?”

“Not with the albino man, the man with yellowish hair and white skin.”

“The other, yes.”

“And you saw this? Them? Together? The boy walking? Talking? Alive?”

The last word set them both off in a babble of their own language. Finally, the nephew began to keen. He cried, “I did not! I did not!,” and a damp spot appeared in the crotch of his pyjama bottoms. “He leaves with the other. I see this. I see this.”

“What’s going on?” Lynley demanded of Tatlises. “Have you accused him-”

“Worthless! Worthless!” Tatlises broke in, smacking his nephew round the head. “What evil are you using this hotel for? Did you not think you would be caught?”

The boy sheltered his head and cried, “I did not!”

Lynley pulled the men apart, and Barbara planted herself between them. She said, “Get this straight and tattoo it on your eyeballs, both of you. This bloke brought the boy to the hotel, and this bloke left with him. Point the finger at each other and everyone in between, but there’s not a rat in this place not going down for pimping, pandering, paedophilia, and anything else that we can make stick to you. So I suggest you might want ‘cooperative as the dickens’ to be what gets written in red across your paperwork.”

She saw she’d got through. Tatlises backed off from his nephew. His nephew shrank back into his room. Both of them were reborn before their eyes. Tatlises might have had a dodgy arrangement with his MABIL friends about the use of the Canterbury Hotel, and he might have also collected a trunkful of lolly from allowing its rooms to be used for underage homosexual trysts, but it did seem he drew the line at murder.

He said, “This boy…” and took up the picture of Davey Benton.

“That’s right,” Barbara said.

“We’re fairly certain he left here alive,” Lynley told the man. “But he might have been killed in one of your rooms.”

“No, no!” Nephew’s English was improving miraculously. “Not with the albino. With the other man. I see this.” And he turned to his putative uncle and spoke at some length in their mutual tongue.

Tatlises translated. The boy in the picture had come with the albino and they had gone up to room 39, which had been booked earlier and checked in to by another man. The boy left with that man some hours later. Two, perhaps. No more than that. No, he had not appeared ill, drunk, drugged, or anything else for that matter, although Ibrahim Selçuk had not studied the boy, to tell the truth. He’d had no reason to. It was not the first time a boy had come with the albino man and left with another man.

The night clerk added that the identity of the boys changed and the identity of the men booking the room changed, but the man who coupled them was always the same: the albino from the picture that the police had with them.

“That is all he knows,” Tatlises finished.

Barbara showed the night clerk the sketches again. Was the man who booked the room either of these two blokes? she wanted to know.

Selçuk studied them and chose the younger of the two. “Maybe,” he said. “It is something like.”

They had the confirmation they needed: Minshall was apparently telling the truth insofar as the Canterbury Hotel went. So there was a slim hope that the hotel itself still had more it could reveal. Lynley asked to see room 39.

“There will be nothing,” Tatlises said hastily. “It has been thoroughly cleaned. As is every room once it has been used.”

Lynley was firm on this point, however, and they descended a floor, leaving Selçuk behind them to return to his sleep. Tatlises brought a master key from his pocket and admitted Lynley and Havers to the room in which Davey Benton had met his killer.

It was a dismal enough chamber of seduction. A double bed was its centrepiece, covered with the sort of quilted floral counterpane that would hide a multitude of mankind’s transgressions, from liquids spilt to bodily fluids leaked. Against one wall, a blond wooden chest served double duty as a desk, with a kneehole into which a mismatched chair was thrust. On top of this, a plastic tray held the requisite tea-making equipment, with a grubby tin pot to use for the brew and a grubbier electric kettle for boiling the water. Dingy curtains covered the single transom window, and brown fitted carpet bore streaks and stains, stretching across the floor.

“The Savoy must be in real agony over the competition,” Barbara remarked.

Lynley said, “We’ll want SOCO over here. I want a thorough going-over.”

Tatlises protested. “This room has been cleaned. You will find nothing. And nothing occurred in here that-”

Lynley swung on him. “I don’t particularly care to have your opinion at this point,” he said. “And I suggest you don’t care to give it.” And to Barbara, “Phone SOCO. Stay in this room till they get here. Then get whatever registration card was signed for this”-he seemed to seek a word-“place and check the address on it. Put Earl’s Court Road into the picture about everything going on here, if they aren’t already. Talk to their chief super. No one less.”

Barbara nodded. She felt a rush of pleasure, both at the sensation of progress being made and at the responsibility given her. It was almost like old times.

She said, “Right, will do, sir,” and took out her mobile as he directed Tatlises from the room.

LYNLEY STOOD outside the hotel. He tried to shake off the sensation that they were blindly swinging their fists at an enemy more adept at dodging than they were at forcing him into submission.

He phoned Chelsea. St. James would have had time to read and to assess the next group of reports he’d sent over to Cheyne Row. Perhaps, Lynley thought, there would be something uplifting he had to share. But instead of his old friend answering, it was Deborah’s voice Lynley heard. No one at home. Leave a message at the tone, please.

Lynley rang off without doing so. He phoned his friend’s mobile next and had luck there. St. James answered. He was just heading into a meeting with his banker, he said. Yes, he’d read the reports and there were two interesting details… Could Lynley meethim in…what, about half an hour? He was up in Sloane Square.

Arrangements made, Lynley set off. By car, he was five minutes from the square if traffic was moving. It was, and he wove down towards the river. He came at the King’s Road from Sloane Avenue and chugged up to the square in the wake of a number 11 bus. The pavements were crowded with shoppers at this time of day, as was the Oriel Brasserie, where he took timely possession of a table the size of a fifty-pence coin just as three women with approximately twenty-five shopping bags were leaving it.

He ordered coffee and waited for St. James to conclude his business. His table was one in the Oriel’s front window, so he would be able to see his friend as he crossed the square and came down the neat, tree-lined walk that stretched past the Venus fountain to the war memorial. Right now, the centre of the square was empty save for pigeons that were scouting round for crumbs beneath the benches.

Lynley took a call from Nkata while he waited. Jack Veness had provided a friend to corroborate whatever alibi he chose to come up with, and Neil Greenham had latched on to his solicitor. The DS had left word for both Kilfoyle and Strong to phone him, but they’d no doubt hear from their mates at Colossus that alibis were being asked for, which would give both of them plenty of time to cook some up before speaking again to the cops.

Lynley told Nkata to carry on as best he could, and he picked up his coffee and downed it in three gulps. Scalding hot, it attacked his throat like a surgeon. Which was fine, he thought.

At last he saw St. James coming across the square. Lynley turned and ordered a second coffee for himself and one for his friend. The drinks arrived as did St. James, who shed his overcoat by the door and worked his way over to Lynley.

“Lord Asherton at rest,” St. James said with a smile as he pulled out a chair and carefully folded himself into it.

Lynley grimaced. “You’ve seen the paper.”

“It was hard to avoid.” St. James reached for the sugar and began his usual process of rendering his coffee undrinkable for any other human being. “Your photo is making quite a statement on the newsstands round the square.”

“With follow-ups to come,” Lynley said, “if Corsico and his editor have their way.”

“What sort of follow-ups?” St. James went for the milk next, just a dollop, after which he began stirring his brew.

“They’ve apparently heard from Nies. Up in Yorkshire.”

St. James looked up. He’d been smiling, but now his face was grave. “You can’t want that.”

“What I want is to keep them away from the rest of the squad. Particularly from Winston. They’ve set their sights on him next.”

“With you willing to have your dirty linen aired for public consumption instead? Not a good idea, Tommy. Not fair on you and certainly not fair on Judith. Or Stephanie, if it comes to that.”

His sister, his niece, Lynley thought. They shared in the story of the Yorkshire murder that had taken husband from one and father from the other. What rained on him as he tried to protect his team from exposure rained on his relations as well.

“I don’t see any way round it. I’ll have to warn them it’s coming. I daresay they can cope. They’ve been through it before.”

St. James was frowning down at his coffee. He shook his head. “Put them on to me, Tommy.”

“You?”

“It’ll work to keep them away from Yorkshire for a time and from Winston as well. I’m part of the team, if only tangentially. Play me up and set them on me.”

“You can’t want that.”

“I’m not enthusiastic about it. But you can’t want them delving into your sister’s marriage. In this way, they’d only be delving into-“

“Driving drunk and crippling you.” Lynley pushed his coffee away. “Christ but I’ve cocked so many things up.”

“Not this,” St. James said. “We were both drunk. Let’s not forget that. And anyway, I doubt your reporter from The Source will even touch upon the subject of my…physical situation, let’s call it. He’ll be too politically correct. Unseemly to mention it: Why d’you happen to be wearing that appliance on your leg, sir? It’s akin to asking someone when he stopped beating his wife. And anyway, if they do get on to it, I was out carousing with a friend and this is the result. An object lesson for today’s wild adolescents. End of story.”

“You can’t want them homing in on you.”

“Of course not. I’ll be the laughingstock of my siblings, not to mention what my mother will say in her inimitable fashion. But look at it this way: I’m outside the investigation even as I’m inside the investigation, and there’s an advantage to that. You can play it any way you want with Hillier. Either I’m part of the team-and he did say he wanted the team profiled, didn’t he, sir?-or I’m ruthlessly self-serving and, as an independent scientist, I’m seeking the self-aggrandisement that only exposure in the press will afford me. Play it either way.” Here he smiled. “I know you live only to torment the poor sod.”

Lynley smiled also, in spite of himself. “It’s good of you, Simon. It keeps them away from Winston. Hillier won’t like that, of course, but I can deal with Hillier.”

“And by the time they get round to Winston or anyone else, God willing, this business will be finished.”

“Have you anything with you?” Lynley nodded towards the briefcase that St. James had brought to the table with him.

“Dashed back for it, yes. I’ve had the advantage in several ways.”

“Which means I’ve missed something. All right. I can live with it.”

“Not missed exactly. I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say, then?”

“That I’ve the advantage of being some distance from the case while you’re in the thick of it. And I don’t have Hillier, the press, and God only knows who else breathing down my neck and demanding a result.”

“I’ll take the excuse as offered. With thanks. What did you find?”

St. James reached for the briefcase and opened it on a spare chair that he pulled from another table. He brought out the latest batch of paperwork he’d been sent.

“Have you found the source of the ambergris oil?” he asked.

“We have two sources. Why?”

“He’s run out.”

“Of the oil?”

“There was no trace of it on the Queen’s Wood body. On all the others it was present, not always in the same place, but there. But on this one, it’s not.”

Lynley thought about this. He saw a reason the oil might have been absent. He said, “The body was naked. The oil might have been on his clothes.”

“But the St. George’s Gardens body was naked as well-”

“Kimmo Thorne’s body.”

“Right. And he still had traces of the oil on him. No, I’d say there’s a very good chance our man’s run out of it, Tommy. He’s going to need more, and if you’ve traced two sources, a watch on those shops might prove to be the key.”

“You say there’s a good chance,” Lynley noted. “What else, then? There’s something else, isn’t there?”

St. James nodded slowly. He seemed undecided about the importance of his next revelation. He said, “It’s something, Tommy. That’s all I can say. I don’t like to interpret it because it could take you in the wrong direction at the end of the day.”

“All right. Accepted. What is it?”

St. James pulled another batch of documents out. He said, “The contents of their stomachs. Before this last boy, the Queen’s Wood boy-”

“Davey Benton.”

“Before him, the others had all eaten within an hour of their deaths. And in every case, the contents of the stomachs were identical.”

“Identical?”

“Without a deviation, Tommy.”

“But with Davey Benton?”

“He hadn’t had anything in hours. Eight hours at least. Taken in conjunction with the ambergris-oil situation…” St. James leaned forward. He put his hand on the neat stack of documents for emphasis. “I don’t need to tell you what this means, do I?”

Lynley turned from his friend. He looked to the square outside where, beyond the window, the grey winter day moved unceasing towards darkness and what darkness brought with it.

“No, Simon,” he finally said. “You don’t have to tell me a thing.”