With No One As Witness

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

PREPARATIONS HAD TO BE MADE, AND HE SET ABOUT them with His usual care. He worked quietly. He caught Himself smiling more than once. He even hummed as He measured for the span of a grown man’s arms and when He sang, He did so quietly because it would be idiocy to take an unnecessary and stupid risk at this point. He chose tunes from who-only-knew-where, and when He finally burst into “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” He had to chuckle. For inside the van, it was indeed a fortress: a place where He would be safe from the world, but the world would never be safe from Him.

The second set of leather restraints He fixed opposite the sliding panel door of the van. He used a drill and bolts to do the job, and He tested the result with the weight of His body, hanging from them as the observer would hang, struggling and twisting as the observer would do. He was satisfied with the result of His efforts, and He went on to catalogue His supplies.

The cylinder for the stove was full. The tape was cut and hanging well within His reach. The batteries in the torch were fresh. The implements for a soul’s release were sharp and prepared for use.

The van had petrol, a full supply. The body board was perfectly pristine. The clothesline ligatures were neatly coiled. The oil was in its proper place. This would, He thought, be His crowning achievement.

Oh yes, too right. You think that, do you? Where’d you learn to be such a fool?

Fu used the back of His tongue to change the pressure against His eardrums, eliminating the maggot’s voice for a moment, that insidious planting of the seeds of doubt. He could hear the whoosh of that pressure changing: Crinkle and crack against His eardrums and the maggot was gone.

Only to return the instant He ceased the movement of His tongue. How long’re you planning to occupy space upon the planet? Was there ever on earth a more useless bit of gobshite than you? Stand there and listen when I’m talking to you. Take it like a man or get out of my sight.

Fu hastened His work. Escape was the key.

He left the van and made for safety. There was nowhere, really, where the maggot left Him in peace, but there were still distractions. Always had been and always would be. He sought them. Quickly now, quickly quickly. In the van, He used judgement, punishment, redemption, release. Elsewhere, He used more traditional tools.

Do something useful with your time, little sod.

He would, He would. Oh yes He would.

He made for the television and punched it on, raising the volume until everything else might be driven away. On the screen, He found Himself looking at a building’s entrance, figures coming and going, a female reporter’s mouth moving, and words that He could not connect to meaning because the maggot would not leave His brain.

Eating at the very essence of Him. You hear me, gobshite? Understand what I say?

He raised the volume higher still. He caught snatches of words: yesterday afternoon…St. Thomas’ Hospital…condition critical…who is nearly five months pregnant…and then He saw him, the detective himself, witness, observer…

The sight brought Fu round and banished the maggot. He focussed on the television screen. The man Lynley was coming out of a hospital. He had a uniformed constable on either side of him and they were shielding him from reporters who were shouting questions.

“…any connection to…?”

“Do you regret-”

“Is this in any way related to the story that The Source…?”

“…decision to embed a journalist…?”

Lynley walked through them, away, beyond. He looked like stone.

The reporter on-screen said something about an earlier news conference, and the scene switched to that. A surgeon in operating gown stood behind a lectern, blinking in the television lights. He spoke about the removal of a bullet, the repairing of damage, a foetus that was moving but that’s all they could report at the moment, and when questions were asked by the unseen listeners, he would say no more, merely removing himself from behind the lectern and from the room. The scene then went back to outside the hospital, where the reporter stood, shivering in the morning’s wind.

“This is,” she said gravely, “the first time that a family member of a police detective has been struck down in the midst of an investigation. The fact that this crime should fall so quickly on the heels of a tabloid’s profile of that same detective and his wife brings into question the wisdom of the earlier and highly irregular Scotland Yard decision to allow a journalist unprecedented access to a criminal investigation.”

She ended her report but for Fu, the image of Lynley was what stayed with Him when the viewer was returned to the television studio where the presenters managed to look suitably grave as they went on with the morning’s news. Whatever they said was lost to Him at that point because He saw only the police detective: how he walked and where he looked. What struck Fu the most was that the man was not the least bit wary. He had no defence.

Fu smiled. He flicked off the television with a snap. He listened intently. No sound in the house. The maggot was gone.

DI JOHN STEWART took immediate charge, but it seemed to Nkata that he was merely going through the motions, his mind on other things. Everyone’s mind was elsewhere as well: either mentally at St. Thomas’ Hospital where the superintendent’s wife lay fighting for her life or with the Belgravia police who were handling the investigation into her shooting. Still, Nkata knew there was only one reasonable way for any of them to proceed, and he told himself to keep moving forward because he owed it to Lynley to do the job. But his heart wasn’t in it, and this was a bloody damn dangerous place to be. How simple a matter it was to let a crucial detail slip when one was in this state, because he-along with everyone else-was distracted by an external concern.

His carefully plotted and altogether irritating multicoloured outline in hand, DI Stewart had made assignments that morning and then began to micromanage every one of them in his inimitable fashion. He paced maddeningly round the room and when he wasn’t doing that, he was liaising with the Belgravia police. This consisted of demanding to know what progress they’d made on the attack on the superintendent’s wife. In the meantime, detectives in the incident room made reports and PCs typed them. Occasionally someone asked in a hushed voice, “Does anyone know how she is? Is there any word?”

The word was critical.

Nkata reckoned Barb Havers would know more, but she hadn’t put in an appearance so far. No one had made mention of this fact, so he’d concluded Barb was either still at the hospital, or on an assignment Stewart had given her earlier, or going her own way in things, in which case he wished she’d get in touch with him. He’d seen her briefly at the hospital on the previous night, but they hadn’t spoken more than to exchange a few terse words.

Now, Nkata tried to force his thoughts to travel in a productive direction. It seemed like days had passed since he’d last received an assignment. Making himself adhere to it was like swimming through refrigerated honey.

The list of dates for the MABIL meetings-helpfully provided by James Barty to demonstrate the extent to which his client Mr. Minshall was willing to cooperate with the police-covered the last six months. Using this list as a jumping-off point, Nkata had already spoken to Griffin Strong by telephone, and he had received the man’s meaningless assurance that he had been with his wife-never left her side and she would be the first to confirm that, Sergeant-whenever an alibi was called for. So Nkata had gone on to talk to Robbie Kilfoyle, who’d said he didn’t exactly keep records of what he did every night, which was little enough, since, besides watching the telly, all he ever did was drop by the Othello Bar for a pint and perhaps they could confirm that at the bar, although he doubted even they would be able to say when he’d been in and when he’d not. From there, Nkata had conversed with Neil Greenham’s solicitor, with Neil himself, and ultimately with Neil’s mother who said that her lad was a good lad and if he said he was with her whenever he said he was with her, then he was with her. As for Jack Veness, the Colossus receptionist declared that if his great-aunt, his mate, the Miller and Grindstone Pub, and the Indian take-away were not good enough to clear his name, then the cops could God damn arrest him and have done with it.

Nkata immediately discounted any alibi given by a relative, which consequently made Griffin Strong and Neil Greenham look good in the role of member of MABIL and serial killer. The problem for him was that both Jack Veness and Robbie Kilfoyle seemed to fit the profile far better. This made him in turn decide he needed to have a closer look at the profile document that had been provided for them weeks ago.

He was about to conduct a search for it in Lynley’s office when Mitchell Corsico turned up in the incident room, escorted there by a minion of Hillier’s whom Nkata recognised from their earlier press conferences together. Corsico and the minion had a word with John Stewart, at which point the minion left for points unknown and the journalist sauntered over to Nkata. He deposited himself on a chair near the desk where Nkata had been studying his notes.

“I got the word from my guv,” Corsico told him. “He’s axed the St. James direction. Sorry, Sergeant. You’re my next man.”

Nkata looked at him, frowning. “What? You crazy? After what’s happened?”

Corsico removed a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket, along with a notebook, which he flipped open. “I was set to do that forensic bloke next, the expert witness you lot have working outside the Yard? But the big cheeses over on Farringdon Street gave the project thumbs down. I’m back to you. Listen, I know you don’t like this, so I’m willing to compromise. I get inside to talk to your parents, I leave Harold Nkata out of the story. Sound like a deal to you?”

What it sounded like was a decision made by Hillier and his DPA cronies and passed along to Corsico, who’d probably already planted a bug in his editor’s ear about…what did they call it?…the natural angle that a story on Winston Nkata had. Human interest, they would describe it, without a thought where the last human interest tale had got them.

“No one’s talking to my mum and dad,” Nkata said. “No one’s putting their pictures in the paper. No one’s looking them up at home. No one’s getting inside their flat.”

Corsico made an adjustment to the volume on his tape recorder and nodded thoughtfully. “That does bring us to Harold then, doesn’t it? He shot that bloke in the back of the head, as I understand. Made him kneel at the edge of the pavement, then put the barrel of the gun to his skull.”

Nkata reached for the tape recorder. He dropped it onto the floor and slammed his foot into it.

“Hey!” Corsico cried. “I am not responsible-”

“You listen to me,” Nkata hissed. Several heads turned their way. Nkata ignored them. He said to Corsico, “You write your story. With or without me, I c’n see you’re set on doing it. But my brother’s part of it, my mum’s or my dad’s picture in that paper, one word ’bout Loughborough Estate…and I’m coming after you, unnerstan? And I ’xpect you know enough about me already to get what I mean.”

Corsico smiled, completely unfazed. It came to Nkata that this was the reaction the reporter had been seeking. He said, “Your speciality was the flick knife, as I understand it, Sergeant. You were what? Fifteen years old? Sixteen? Did a knife seem less traceable to you than…say…a pistol of the sort your brother used?”

Nkata wouldn’t take the bait this time. He got to his feet. “This isn’t going to be part of my day,” he told the reporter. He slid a pen into his jacket pocket, preparatory to heading for Lynley’s office to get back to what he’d intended to do.

Corsico got to his feet as well, perhaps with the intention of following. But that was when Dorothea Harriman came into the room, looked round for someone, and chose Nkata.

She said, “Is Detective Constable Havers-?”

“Not here,” Nkata said. “What’s wrong?”

Harriman gave a glance to Corsico before she took Nkata by the arm. She said meaningfully to the reporter, “If you don’t mind… Some things are personal,” and she waited until he retreated to the other side of the room. Then she said, “Simon St. James just phoned. The superintendent’s left the hospital. He’s meant to go home and rest, but Mr. St. James thinks he may head here at some point today. He’s not sure when.”

“He’s coming back to work?” Nkata couldn’t believe this was the case.

Harriman shook her head. “If he comes here, Mr. St. James thinks he’ll go to the assistant commissioner’s office. He thinks someone needs to…” She hesitated, her voice uncertain. She raised a hand to her lips and said in a more determined tone, “He thinks someone needs to be ready to look after him when he gets here, Detective Sergeant.”

BARBARA HAVERS cooled her heels in the interview room at the Holmes Street station while the solicitor serving the interests of Barry Minshall was rounded up. A sympathetic special constable in reception had taken one look at her and said, “Black or white?,” when she’d first entered the station. Now she sat with the coffee-white-in front of her, her hands curved round a mug that was shaped into the caricatured visage of the Prince of Wales.

She drank without tasting much of the brew. Her tongue said hot, bitter. That was it. She stared at her hands, saw how white her knuckles were, and tried to loosen her grip on the mug. She didn’t have the information she wanted and she didn’t like being in the dark.

She’d phoned Simon and Deborah St. James at the most reasonable hour she could manage. She’d ended up listening to their answer machine, so she reckoned they’d either never left the hospital on the previous night or had returned there before dawn to wait for further news about Helen. Deborah’s father wasn’t in, either. Barbara told herself he was walking the dog. She’d rung off on the answer machine without leaving a message. They had better things to do than phone her with news, which she might be able to get in another way.

But ringing the hospital was even worse. Mobile phones could not be used inside, so she was left having to speak to someone in charge of general information, which was no information at all. Lady Asherton’s condition was unchanged, she was told. What did that mean? she asked. And what about the baby she was carrying? There was no reply to this. A pause, a shuffling of papers, and then, Terribly sorry, but the hospital was not allowed…Barbara had hung up on the sympathetic voice, mostly because it was sympathetic.

She told herself that work was the anodyne, so she gathered her things and left her bungalow. At the front of the house, however, she saw that lights were on in the ground-floor flat. She didn’t pause to ask the shoulds of herself. At the sight of movement behind the curtains covering the French windows, she changed direction and crossed to them. She knocked without thinking, merely knowing that she needed something and that something was real human contact, no matter how brief.

Taymullah Azhar answered, manila folder in one hand and briefcase in the other. Behind him somewhere in the flat, water ran and Hadiyyah sang, off-key but what did it really matter: “Sometimes we’ll sigh, sometimes we’ll cry…” Buddy Holly, Barbara realised. She was singing “True Love Ways.” It made her want to weep.

Azhar said, “Barbara. How good to see you. I’m so very glad…Is something wrong?” He set down his briefcase and put the manila folder on top of it. By the time he’d turned back to her, Barbara had got a better grip on herself. He wouldn’t necessarily know yet, she thought. If he hadn’t looked at a newspaper and if he hadn’t turned on the radio or seen the television reports…

She couldn’t bring herself to talk about Helen. She said, “Working hard. Bad night. Not much sleep.” She remembered the peace offering she’d bought-it seemed like another lifetime to her-and she dug round in her shoulder bag till she found it: the five-pound-note trick meant for Hadiyyah. Astound your friends. Amaze your relations. “I picked this up for Hadiyyah. Thought she might like to try it out. It’ll take a five-pound note to do it. If you’ve got one…She won’t hurt it or anything. At least not when she gets good. So in the beginning I s’pose she could use something else. For practice. You know.”

Azhar looked from the magic trick in its plastic covering back to Barbara. He smiled and said, “You are very good. To Hadiyyah. And for Hadiyyah. This is not something I have told you, Barbara, and I apologise for that. Let me get her now so that you-”

“No!” The intensity of her word surprised both of them. They stared at each other in some confusion. Barbara knew she’d puzzled her neighbour. But she also knew she couldn’t explain to Azhar how the kindness of his words had seemed like a blow from which she felt in sudden danger. Not from what the words implied but from what her reaction to them told her about herself.

She said, “Sorry. Listen, I’ve got to go. About a dozen things on my plate and I’m juggling them all at once.”

“This case,” he said.

“Yeah. What a way to earn a living, eh?”

He observed her, dark eyes set in skin the colour of pecans, expression grave. He said, “Barbara-”

She cut him off. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Despite her need to escape the kindness in his tone, though, she reached out and clasped his arm. Through the sleeve of his neat white shirt she could feel the warmth of him and his wiry strength. “I’m dead chuffed you’re back,” she said, the words coming thickly. “See you later.”

“Of course,” he replied.

She turned to go, but she knew he was watching. She coughed and her nose began to run. She was God damn falling apart, she thought.

And then the blasted Mini wouldn’t start. It hiccuped and sighed. It spoke to her of arteries hardening with oil too long unchanged in its system, and she saw that from the French windows Azhar was still observing her. He took two steps outside and in her direction. She prayed and the god of transport listened. The engine finally sprang to life with a roar and she reversed down the drive and into the street.

Now she waited in the interview room for Barry Minshall to give her the word: Yes was all she required of him. Yes and she was out of there. Yes and she was making an arrest.

The door finally opened. She pushed her Prince of Wales mug to one side. James Barty preceded his client into the room.

Minshall wore his dark glasses, but the rest of him was strictly incarceration-issue garb. He needed to get used to it, Barbara thought. Barry would be going away for a good many years.

“Mr. Minshall and I are still waiting to hear from the CPS,” his solicitor said by way of prefatory remarks. “The magistrate’s hearing was-”

“Mr. Minshall and you,” Barbara said, “ought to be thanking your stars we still need him hanging round this end of town. When he gets to remand, he’s likely to find the company not quite as accommodating as it is here.”

“We’ve been cooperative thus far,” Barty said. “But you can’t expect that cooperation to extend into infinity, Constable.”

“I don’t have deals to offer and you know it,” Barbara told him. “TO9 is dealing with Mr. Minshall’s situation. Your hope”-and this to Minshall himself-“is that those boys in the Polaroids we found in your flat enjoyed their experience at your hands so much that they wouldn’t dream of testifying against you or anyone else. But I wouldn’t count on that. And anyway, face it, Bar. Even if those boys don’t want to be put through a trial, you’ve still supplied a thirteen-year-old to a killer and you’re going down for that one. If I were in your position, I’d want it known to the CPS and everyone else concerned that I started cooperating the moment the rozzers asked my name.”

“It’s only your belief that Mr. Minshall supplied a boy to someone who murdered him,” Barty said. “That has never been our position.”

“Right,” Barbara said. “Have it any way you want, but the laundry gets wet no matter what order you put it into the machine.” From her bag she brought out the framed photograph she’d taken from flat number 5 in Walden Lodge. She laid it on the table at which they were sitting, and she slid it across to Minshall.

He lowered his head. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark glasses, but she noted his breathing and it seemed to her he was making an effort to keep it steady. She wanted to believe this meant something important, but she didn’t want to get ahead of herself. She let the moments stretch out between them while inside she repeated two words: Come on. Come on. Come on.

Finally, he shook his head, and she said to him, “Take off your glasses.”

Barty said, “You know that my client’s condition makes it-”

“Shut up. Barry, take off your glasses.”

“My eyesight-”

“Take off your bloody glasses!”

He did so.

“Now look at me.” Barbara waited till she could see his eyes, grey to the point of altogether colourless. She wanted to read the truth in them, but even more than that she wanted just to see them and to have him know that she was seeing them. “At this precise moment, no one’s saying you handed over any boys in order to get them killed.” She felt her throat trying to close on the words, but she forced herself to say them anyway because if the only way to get him to move in her direction was to lie, cheat, and flatter, she would lie and cheat and flatter with the best of them. “You didn’t do that to Davey Benton and you didn’t do that to anyone else. When you left Davey with this…this bloke, you expected the game to be played the way it had always been played. Seduction, sodomy, I don’t know what-”

“They didn’t tell me what-”

“But,” she broke in because the last thing she could bear was to hear him justify, protest, deny, or excuse. She just wanted the truth and she was determined to have it from him before she left the room. “You didn’t mean him to die. To be used, yes. To have some bloke touch him up, rape him even-”

“No! They were never-”

“Barry,” his solicitor said. “You needn’t-”

“Shut up. Barry, you offered those boys for cash to your slimeball mates at MABIL, but the deal was always sex, not murder. Maybe you had the boys yourself first or maybe you just popped your cork by having all those other blokes depending on you to supply them with new flesh. The point is, you didn’t mean anyone to die. But that’s what happened and you’re either going to tell me that the bloke in this picture is the one who called himself two-one-six-oh or I’m going to walk out of this room and let you go down for everything from paedophilia to pandering to murder. That’s it. You’re going down, Barry, and you can’t escape it. It’s up to you how far you want to sink.”

She had her eyes locked on his and his skittered wildly in their sockets. She wanted to ask him how he’d come to be the man he was-what forces in his own past had brought him to this-but it didn’t matter. Abused in childhood. Molested. Raped and sodomised. Whatever had turned him into the malevolent procurer he was, all that was water under the bridge. Boys were dead and a reckoning was called for.

“Look at the picture, Barry,” she said.

He moved his gaze to it another time and he looked at it long and hard. He finally said, “I can’t be sure. This is old, isn’t it? There’s no goatee. Not even a moustache. He’s got…his hair is different.”

“There’s more of it, yes. But look at the rest of him. Look at his eyes.”

He put his glasses back on. He picked up the picture. “Who’s he with?” he asked.

“His mum,” Barbara said.

“Where’d you get the picture?”

“From her flat. Inside Walden Lodge. Just up the hill from where Davey Benton’s body was found. Is this the man, Barry? Is this two-one-six-oh? Is this the bloke you gave Davey to at the Canterbury Hotel?”

Minshall set the photograph down. “I don’t…”

“Barry,” she said, “take a nice, long look.”

He did so. Again. And Barbara switched from Come on to prayer.

He finally spoke. “I think it is,” he said.

She let out her breath. I think it is wouldn’t cut the mustard. I think it is wouldn’t get a conviction. But it was enough to spawn an identity parade, and that was good enough for her.

HIS MOTHER had finally arrived at midnight. She’d taken one look at him and opened her arms. She didn’t ask how Helen was because someone had managed to catch her en route from Cornwall and tell her. He could see that from her face and from the way his brother hung back from greeting him, gnawing on his thumbnail instead. All Peter managed to say was, “We rang Judith straightaway. She’ll be here by noon, Tommy.”

There should have been comfort in this-his family and Helen’s family gathering at the hospital so that he did not have to face this alone-but comfort was inconceivable. As was seeing to any simple biological need, from sleeping to eating. It all seemed unnecessary when his being was focussed on a single pinpoint of light in the midnight of his mind.

In the hospital bed, Helen was insignificant in comparison to the machinery round her. They had told him the names, but he recalled only their individual functions: for breathing, to monitor the heart, for hydration, to measure oxygen in the blood, to maintain watch over the foetus. Aside from the whir of these instruments, there was no other sound in the room. And outside the room, the corridor was hushed, as if the hospital itself and every person within it already knew.

He didn’t weep. He didn’t pace. He made no attempt to drive his fist through the wall. So perhaps that was why his mother ultimately insisted he had to go home for a while when the next day dawned and found them all still milling round the hospital corridors. A bath, a shower, a meal, anything, she told him. We’ll stay right here, Tommy. Peter and I and everyone else. You must make an attempt to take care of yourself. Please go home. Someone can go with you if you like.

There were volunteers to do that: Helen’s sister Pen, his brother, St. James. Even Helen’s father although it was easy to see that the poor man’s heart was in shreds and he’d be no help to anyone while his youngest daughter was where she was…as she was. So at first he’d said no, he would stay at the hospital. He couldn’t leave her, they must see that.

But finally, sometime in the morning, he consented. Home for a shower and a change of clothes. How long could that take? Two constables ushered him through a small gathering of reporters whose questions he neither understood nor even heard very well. A panda car drove him to Belgravia. He dully watched the streets roll by.

At the house they asked did he want them to stay? He shook his head. He could cope, he told them. He had a live-in man in the house. Denton would see that he had a meal.

He didn’t tell them that Denton was off on a long-awaited holiday: bright lights and big city, Broadway, skyscrapers, theatre every night. Instead, he thanked them for their trouble and took out his keys as they drove off.

The police had been. He saw signs of them in the scrap of crime-scene tape that still clung to the narrow porch’s railing, in the fingerprint dust that still powdered the door. There was no blood, Deborah had said, but he found a spot of it on one of the draughts-board marble tiles that comprised the top step just before the door. She’d been so close to getting inside.

It took him three tries to get his key properly in the lock, and when he’d managed the whole operation, he felt light-headed. He expected the house to be different somehow, but nothing had changed. The last bouquet of flowers she’d arranged had lost a few petals to the marquetry top of the table in the entry, but that was it. The rest was as he’d last seen it: one of her winter scarves hanging over the railing of the stairs, a magazine left open on one of the sofas in the drawing room, her dining-room chair sitting at an angle and not replaced the last time she’d sat upon it, a teacup in the kitchen sink, a spoon on the work top, a binder of fabric samples for the baby’s room on the table. Somewhere in the house, the bags of christening clothes were probably stowed. Mercifully, he did not know where.

Upstairs, he stood beneath the shower and let the water beat upon him endlessly. He found he couldn’t exactly feel it, and even when it struck his eyeballs, he didn’t blink nor did he feel pain. Instead, he relived individual moments, silently imploring a God he could not say he believed in to give him a chance to turn back time.

To what day? he asked himself. To what moment? To what decision that had led them all to where they now were?

He stood in the shower until there was no hot water left in the boiler. He had no idea how long he’d been there when he finally emerged. Dripping and shivering, he remained undried and unclothed till his teeth were castanets in his skull. He couldn’t face walking back into their bedroom and opening the wardrobe and the drawers to search out clean clothes. He was nearly air-dried before he summoned the will to pick up a towel.

He moved to the bedroom. Ridiculously, they were babes in arms without Denton there to sort them out, so their bed was badly made, and consequently the impression of her head was still in her pillow. He turned from this and forced himself over to the chest of drawers. Their wedding picture accosted him: hot June sunshine, the fragrance of tuberoses, the sound of Schubert from violins. He reached out and toppled the frame so it fell facedown. There was fleeting mercy when her image was gone and then quick agony when he could not see her so he righted it again.

He dressed. He gave the procedure the sort of care she herself would have taken. This allowed him to think about colours and fabrics for a moment, to search out shoes and the proper tie as if this were an ordinary day and she still in bed with a cup of tea on her stomach, watching to see he didn’t make a sartorial faux pas. His ties were the thing. They had always been. Tommy darling, are you absolutely certain about the blue one?

He was certain of little. He was certain, in fact, of only one thing, and that was that he was certain of nothing. He went through motions without complete knowledge of making them, so he found himself dressed at last and staring at himself in the mirrored wardrobe door wondering what he was meant to do next.

Shave, but he couldn’t. The shower had been difficult enough, labeled as it was “the first shower since Helen” and he couldn’t do more. He couldn’t have more labels because he knew the very weight of them would kill him in the end. The first meal since Helen, the first tank of petrol since Helen, the first time the post dropped through the door, the first glass of water, the first cup of tea. It was endless and it was burying him already.

He left the house. Outside, he saw that someone-most likely one of the neighbours-had left a bunch of flowers on his doorstep. Daffodils. It was that time of year. Winter faded to spring and he needed desperately to stop time altogether.

He picked up the flowers. She liked daffodils. He’d take them to her. They’re so cheerful, she’d say. Daffodils, darling, are flowers with spunk.

The Bentley was where Deborah had carefully parked it, and when he opened the door, Helen’s scent floated out to him. Citrus, and she was with him.

He slid into the car and closed the door. He rested his head on the steering wheel. He breathed in shallowly because it seemed to him that deep breaths would dissipate the scent more quickly, and he needed the fragrance to last as long as it possibly could. He couldn’t bring himself to adjust the car seat from her height to his, to sort out the mirrors, to do anything that would erase her presence. And he asked himself how, if he couldn’t do this much, this very simple and essential thing because, for the love of God, the Bentley wasn’t even the car she regularly drove, so what did it matter, then how could he possibly walk through what he had to walk through now?

He didn’t know. He was operating on rote behaviors that he hoped could carry him from one moment to the next.

Which meant starting the car, so that was what he did. He heard the Bentley purr beneath his touch and he reversed it out of the garage like a man performing keyhole surgery.

He glided slowly along the mews and into Eaton Terrace. He kept his eyes averted from his front door because he didn’t want to imagine-and he knew he would imagine, how could he help it?-what Deborah St. James had seen when she’d walked round the corner having parked the car.

As he drove to the hospital, he knew he was taking the same route the ambulance had taken when bearing Helen to Casualty. He wondered how much she’d been aware of what was going on around her: drips being established, oxygen seeping into her nose, Deborah somewhere nearby but not as close as those who listened to her chest and said her breathing was laboured on the left side now, nothing going into a lung that had already collapsed. She’d have been in shock. She wouldn’t have known. One moment she’d been on the front steps, searching out her door key, and the next she’d been shot. Short range, they’d told him. Less than ten feet away, probably closer to five. She’d seen him, and he’d seen the shock on her face, the surprise to find herself suddenly vulnerable.

Had he called her name? Mrs. Lynley, have you a moment? Countess? Lady Asherton, isn’t it? And she’d turned with that embarrassed, breathless laugh of hers. “Drat! That silly story in the paper. All of it was Tommy’s idea, but I expect I cooperated more than I should have done.”

And then the gun: automatic pistol, revolver, what did it matter? A slow, steady squeeze on the trigger, that great equaliser among men.

He found it difficult to think and even more difficult to breathe. He struck the steering wheel as a means of bringing himself round to the moment he was in and not one of the moments already lived through. He struck it to distract himself, to cause himself pain, to do anything to keep from fracturing beneath everything that assaulted him from memory and imagination.

Only the hospital could save him, and he hurried in the direction of its refuge. He wove round buses and dodged cyclists. He braked for a crocodile of tiny schoolchildren on the kerb waiting to cross the street. He thought of their own child among them-his and Helen’s: high socks, scabby knees, and miniature brogues, a cap on his head, a name tag fluttering round his neck. The teachers would have printed it for him, but he’d have been the one to decorate it any way that he liked. He’d have chosen dinosaurs because they’d taken him-he and Helen-to the Natural History Museum on a Sunday afternoon. There he’d stood beneath the bones of the T. rex with his mouth agape in wonder. “Mummy,” he would have said, “what is it? It’s tremendously big, isn’t it, Dad?” He’d have used words like that. Tremendously. He’d have named constellations, he’d have known the musculature of a horse.

A horn honked somewhere. He roused himself. The children were across the street now and on their way, heads bobbing and shoes scuffling along, three adults-fore, mid, and aft-keeping a careful eye on them.

Which was all that had been required and he’d failed: keeping a careful eye. Instead, he’d as good as provided a map to his own front door. Photographs of him. Photographs of Helen. Belgravia. How difficult could it have been? How tough a proposition even to ask a few questions in the neighbourhood?

And now he reaped the result of his hubris. There are things we don’t know, the surgeon had said.

But can’t you tell…?

There are tests for some conditions and no tests for others. All we can do is make an educated guess, a deduction based on what we know about the brain. From that we can extrapolate. We can present the facts as we know them and we can tell you how far those facts can take us. But that’s it. I’m sorry. I wish there were more…

He couldn’t. Think about it, cope with it, live with it. Anything. The horrible day after day of it. A sword piercing his heart but neither fatally, quickly, nor mercifully. Just the tip of it at first and then a bit more as days became weeks became the necessary months in which he waited for what he already knew was the very worst.

A human being can adapt to anything, yes? A human being can learn to survive because as long as the will to endure remained, the mind adjusted and it told the body to do the same.

But not to this, he thought. Not ever to this.

At the hospital, he saw that the journalists had finally dispersed. This was not a twenty-four/seven story for them. The initial incident and its relationship to the investigation of serial murders had mobilised them at first, but now they would check in only sporadically. Their focus would be on the perpetrator and the police from this point on, with passing references made to the victim and canned footage of the hospital used-a shot of a window somewhere, behind which the wounded was ostensibly languishing-should that be required by the producers. Soon even that would be considered a rehash of a twice-told tale. We need something fresh and if you haven’t got a new angle on this situation, bury it inside. Page five or six ought to do it. They had, after all, the meat of the matter: scene of the crime, press conference from the doctor, the image of himself-nice, good, a suitable reaction shot-leaving the hospital earlier in the day. They would be given the name of the press officer from the Belgravia station as well, so that was it, really. The story could just about write itself. On to other things. There were circulation figures to concern them and other breaking news to bolster those figures. This was business, merely business.

He parked. He got out of the car. He moved towards the hospital entrance and what waited for him inside: the unchanging and unchangeable situation, the family, his friends, and Helen.

Decide, Tommy darling. I trust you completely. Well…all except in the matter of ties. And that’s always been a puzzle to me because you’re generally a man of impeccable taste.

“Tommy.”

He stirred from his thoughts. His sister Judith was coming towards him. She was looking more like their mother every day: tall and lithe with close-cropped blonde hair.

He saw she was holding a folded tabloid, and he would later think it was this that set him off. Because it wasn’t the most recent edition but rather the one in which the story about him, his personal life, his wife, and his home had appeared. And suddenly what he felt was shame in such a wave that he thought he’d actually drown beneath it and the only way to struggle to the surface was to give in to the rage.

He took the tabloid from her. Judith said, “Helen’s sister had it stuffed in her bag. I hadn’t seen it yet. I actually didn’t know about it, so when Cybil and Pen mentioned-” She saw something, surely, for she came to his side and put her arm round him. She said, “It isn’t that. You mustn’t think so. If you start to believe-”

He tried to speak. His throat didn’t allow it.

“She needs you now,” Judith said.

He shook his head blindly. He turned on his heel and left the hospital, returning to his car. He heard her voice calling after him and then a moment later he heard St. James, who must have been near when he’d first seen Judith. But he couldn’t stop and speak to them now. He had to move, to go, to deal with things as they should have been dealt with from the first.

He made for the bridge. He needed speed. He needed action. It was cold and grey and damp outside, and there was clearly a rainstorm on its way, but when the first drops finally fell as he turned into Broadway, he saw them only as minor distractions, splatters on the windscreen on which was already written an unfolding drama, of which he wanted no part.

In the kiosk, the officer waved him through, his mouth opening to speak. Lynley nodded to him and drove on, descending to the carpark, where he left the Bentley and stood for a moment in the dim light, trying to breathe because it felt to him as if he’d been holding air in his lungs since he’d left the hospital, left his sister, returned the accusing tabloid to her hands.

He made for the lift. What was wanted was Tower Block, that aerie from which the sight of the trees in St. James’s Park marked the changing of the seasons. He made his way there. He saw faces emerge as if from a mist, and voices spoke, but he wasn’t able to make out the words.

When he reached AC Hillier’s office, the assistant commissioner’s secretary blocked his path to the door. Judi MacIntosh said, “Superintendent…,” in her most officious voice and then apparently read something or understood something for the first time because she altered to, “Tommy, my dear,” in a tone so rich with compassion that he could hardly bear it. “You don’t belong here. Go back to the hospital.”

“Is he in there?”

“Yes. But-”

“Then step aside please.”

“Tommy, I don’t want to have to ring for anyone.”

“Then don’t. Judi, step aside.”

“Let me at least tell him.” She made a move for her desk when any sensible woman would have simply charged into Hillier’s office ahead of him. But she did things by the book, which was her downfall because with the path unblocked, he accessed the door and let himself in, shutting it behind him.

Hillier was on the phone. He was saying, “…many so far?…Good. I want the stops pulled out…Bloody right it’s to be a special task force. No one strikes at a cop-” And then he saw Lynley. He said into the phone, “I’ll get back to you. Carry on.”

He rang off and stood. He came round the desk. “How is she?”

Lynley didn’t respond. He felt his heart slamming against his ribs.

Hillier gestured to the phone. “That was Belgravia. They’re getting volunteers-these’re men off duty, on rota, whatever-from all over town. Asking to be assigned to the case. They’ve a task force in place. It’s top priority. They went into action late yesterday afternoon.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What? Sit down. Here. I’m getting you a drink. Have you slept? Eaten?” Hillier went for the phone. He punched in a number and said he wanted sandwiches, coffee, and no it didn’t matter what kind, just get it to his office as soon as possible. Fetch the coffee first. And to Lynley again, “How is she?”

“She’s brain dead.” The first time he’d actually said the words. “Helen is brain dead. My wife is brain dead.”

Hillier’s face went slack. “But I was told a chest wound…How is that possible?”

Lynley recited the details, finding that he needed and wanted the pain of telling them one by one. “The wound was small. They didn’t see at first that-” No. There was a better way to say it all. “The bullet went through an artery. Then through parts of her heart. I don’t know the order, the actual path of it, but I expect you get the general idea.”

“Don’t-”

Oh, he would. He would. “But,” he said forcefully, “her heart was still beating at this point, so her chest began to fill with blood. But they didn’t know that in the ambulance, you see. Everything took them too long. So when they finally got her to hospital, she had no pulse, she had no blood pressure. They put a tube down her throat and they shoved another into her chest and that’s when the blood started coming out of her-pouring out-so they knew, you see, at that point they knew.” When he breathed, he could hear it grinding into his lungs and he knew Hillier could hear it as well. And he hated that fact for what it revealed, and for how it could be used against him.

Hillier said, “Sit down. Please. You need to sit down.”

Not that, he thought. Never that. He said, “I asked what they did for her in Casualty. Well, one would ask that, don’t you agree? They told me they opened her up right there and saw one of the holes the bullet had made. The doctor actually stuck his finger in it to stop the flow of blood, if you can picture that, and I wanted to be able to picture it because I had to know, you see. I had to understand because if she was breathing even shallowly…But they said the blood flow was inadequate to her brain. And by the time they controlled it…Oh, she’s breathing now on the machine and her heart’s back to beating, but her brain…Helen’s brain is dead.”

“God in heaven.” Hillier went to the conference table. He pulled out a chair and indicated he meant Lynley to sit. “I’m so sorry, Thomas.”

Not his name, he thought. He could not bear his name. He said, “He found us, you see. You understand that, yes? Her. Helen. He found her. He found her. You see that. You know how it happened, don’t you?”

“What do you mean? What are you talking-”

“I’m talking about the story, sir. I’m talking about your embedded journalist. I’m talking about putting lives into the hands-”

“Don’t.” Hillier raised his voice. It didn’t seem like something done in anger, though, rather in desperation. A last-ditch effort to stem a tide he could not stop from rising.

“He phoned me after that story appeared. He mentioned her. We gave him a key, a map, whatever, and he found my wife.”

“That’s impossible,” Hillier said. “I read the story myself. There was no way he could have-”

“There were a dozen ways.” His own voice was louder now, his anger fueled by the other’s denial. “The moment you started playing with the press, you created ways. Television, tabloids, radio, broadsheets. You and Deacon-the two of you-thought you could use the media like two crafty politicians, and see where it’s brought us. See where it’s brought us!”

Hillier held up both his hands, palms out: the universal sign to stop. He said, “Thomas. Tommy. This isn’t-” He stopped. He looked towards the door and Lynley could almost read the question in his mind: Where is that bloody coffee? Where are the sandwiches? Where is a useful distraction, for God’s sake, because I have a madman in my office. He said, “I don’t want to argue with you. You need to be at the hospital. You need to be with your family. You need your family-”

“I have no God damn family!” Finally the weir gave way. “She’s dead. And the baby…The baby…They want her on machines for at least two months. More if possible. Do you understand? Not alive, not dead, with the rest of us watching…And you…God damn you. You’ve brought us to this. And there is no way-”

“Stop. Stop. You’re mad with grief. Don’t do and don’t say…Because you’ll regret-”

“What the hell else do I have to regret?” His voice broke horribly and he hated the breaking and what it revealed about how he had been reduced. Man no longer, but something like an earthworm exposed to salt and to sun and writhing, writhing, because this was the end this was surely the end and he hadn’t expected…

There was nothing for it but to lunge for Hillier. To reach him, to grab him, to force him…somewhere…

Strong arms caught him. From behind, these were, so it wasn’t Hillier. He heard a voice in his ear.

“Oh Jesus, man. You got to get away. You got to come with me. Easy, man. Easy.”

Winston Nkata, he thought. Where had he come from? Had he been there all along, unnoticed?

“Take him away.” It was Hillier speaking, Hillier with a handkerchief to his face, held by a hand that was shaking.

Lynley looked at the detective sergeant. Nkata seemed to be behind a shimmering veil. But even then, Lynley could still see his face in the moment before his arms went round him.

“Come with me, guv,” Winston murmured in his ear. “You come with me now.”