With No One As Witness (35 page)

“That fits in with something Robson pointed out,” Lynley said. “The sense of omnipotence the killer must have. How big a leap is it from putting bodies in public places to be working within the walls of Colossus? In both cases, he doesn’t expect to be caught.”

“We need to get every one of these blokes under surveillance,” Havers said. “And we need to do it now.”

“We haven’t the manpower for that,” John Stewart said.

“Then we’ve got to get it. And we’ve also got to grill each one of them, dig into their backgrounds, ask them—”

“As I’ve said, we’ve a manpower issue here.” DI Stewart turned away from Havers. He didn’t look pleased to have her grabbing control of the meeting. “Let’s not forget that, Tommy. And if our killer’s inside Colossus as the constable’s suggesting, then we’d better start looking at everyone else who works there as well. And at the other ‘clients’ who’re attached to the place: the participants or patients, whatever the hell they call themselves. I expect there are enough junior-level villains running round that place to fuel a dozen killings.”

“That’s a waste of our time,” Havers insisted, and, “Sir, listen to me,” to Lynley.

He cut in. “Your points are well taken, Havers. What did you get from Griffin Strong about the child who died on his watch in Stockwell?”

The constable hesitated. She looked abashed.

“Bloody hell,” DI John Stewart said. “Havers, did you not—”

“Look. When I heard about the body in the warehouse—” she began quickly, only to be cut off by Stewart.

“So you haven’t looked into the other yet? It’s a death on Strong’s watch in Stockwell, woman. Does that ring any damn bells for you?”

“I’m getting on to it. I came straight back. I went to the files for this other information first because I thought—”

“You thought. You thought.” Stewart’s voice was sharp. “It’s not your job to do the bloody thinking. When you’re given an order…” His fist hit the table. “Jesus. What the hell is it that keeps them from giving you the sack, Havers? I’d damn well like to know your secret, because whatever’s keeping you here isn’t between your ears and I sure as hell don’t think it’s between your legs.”

Havers’ face went completely white. She said, “You completely sodding piece of—”

“That’ll do,” Lynley said sharply. “You’re both out of order.”

“She’s—”

“That bastard just said—”

“Enough! Keep it out of this office and out of this investigation or both of you are permanently off the case. Christ but we have enough trouble already without you two going for each other’s throats.” He paused, waiting for his blood to cool. In the silence, Stewart shot Havers a look that clearly assessed her as an impossible cow, and Havers herself seethed openly back at him, a man with whom she’d long ago managed to work for only three weeks before charging him with sexual harassment. Meanwhile Winston Nkata remained by the door in the position he nearly always adopted when placed in a room with more than two white colleagues: He stood with his arms crossed and merely observed, as he had been doing since he’d walked in.

Lynley turned to him wearily. “What have you got for us, Winnie?”

Nkata reported on his meetings: first with Sol Oliver in his car repair shop, then with Bram Savidge. He went on with his visit to the gym where Sean Lavery did his workouts. He concluded with something that diffused the tension in the room: He might have found someone who’d actually seen the killer.

“There was some white bloke hanging round the gym not long before Sean went missing,” Nkata said. “He got noticed ’cause not many whites use the place. Seems one night he was lurking in the corridor just outside the workout room, and when one of the lifters asked him what did he want, he said he was new to the neighbourhood and just looking round for a place to work out. He never did go in, though. Not to the gym, not to the locker room, not to the steam room. Didn’t ask about membership or anything like it. Just showed up in the corridor.”

“Did you get a description?”

“Arranging for an e-fit. Bloke at the gym thinks he might be able to come up with a drawing of this bugger. Right off he was able to tell me no way did the villain belong there. Not a lifter at all, he said, smallish and thin. Long face. I think we got a chance here, Super.”

“Well done, Winnie,” Lynley said.

“That’s what I call good work,” John Stewart put in pointedly. “I’ll have you on my team anytime, Winston. And congratulations on the promotion. I don’t think I mentioned it earlier.”

“John.” Lynley tried for patience. He waited till he found it before he went on. “Take the salt outside please. Phone Hillier. See if you can get manpower for surveillance. Winston, we’ve got Kilfoyle working at a place called Mr. Sandwich, back at Gabriel’s Wharf. Try to make a connection between him and Crystal Moon.”

There was a general shuffling as the men went on their way, leaving Havers behind for Lynley to deal with. He waited till the door was shut to do so.

She spoke first, her voice low but still hot. “I don’t have to bloody put up with—”

“I know,” Lynley said. “Barbara. I know. He was out of order. You were in the right to react. But the other side of the coin, whether you want to see it or not, is that you provoked him.”

“I provoked him? I provoked him to say…?” She seemed unable to finish. She sank into a chair. “Sometimes I don’t even know you.”

“Sometimes,” he replied, “I don’t know myself.”

“Then—”

“You didn’t provoke the words,” Lynley interrupted. “They were inexcusable. But you provoked the fact of the words. Their existence, if you will.” He joined her at the table. He was feeling exasperated, and that was not a good sign. Exasperation meant he might soon run out of ideas on how to get Barbara Havers back into her position as a detective sergeant. It also meant he might soon run out of the willingness to do so. He said, “Barbara, you know the drill. Teamwork. Responsibility. Taking an action that’s been assigned and completing it. Turning over the report. Waiting for the next assignment. When you have a situation like this, one in which thirty-odd people are relying upon you to do what you’ve been told to do…” He lifted a hand and then dropped it.

Havers watched him. He watched her. And then it was as if a veil somehow lifted between them and she understood. She said, “I’m sorry, sir. What can I say? You don’t need more pressure, and I pile it on, don’t I?” She moved restlessly in her chair and Lynley knew she was longing for a cigarette, for something to do with her hands, for something to jolt her brain. He felt like giving her permission to smoke; he also felt like allowing her to squirm. Something had to give somewhere in the damn woman or she was going to be lost for good. She said, “Sometimes I get so bloody sick of everything in life being such a struggle. You know?”

He said, “What’s going on at home?”

She chuckled. She was slumped in her chair, and she straightened her back. “No. We’re not taking a stroll on that path. You’ve enough to cope with, Superintendent.”

“All things considered, a family dispute over two sets of christening clothes is hardly something to cope with,” Lynley said dryly. “And I’ve a wife politically adept enough to negotiate a truce between the in-laws.”

Havers smiled, it seemed, in spite of herself. “I didn’t mean at home and you know it.”

He smiled in turn. “Yes. I know.”

“You’re getting a platterful from upstairs, I expect.”

“Suffice it to say I’m learning how much Malcolm Webberly actually had to put up with to keep Hillier and everyone else off our backs all these years.”

“Hillier sees you hot on his tail,” Havers said. “A few more steps up the ladder and whammo…You’re heading up the Met and he’s pulling his forelock.”

“I don’t want to head up the Met,” Lynley said. “Sometimes…” He looked round the office he’d agreed to inhabit temporarily: the two sets of windows that ludicrously indicated a rise in rank, the conference table at which he and Havers sat, carpet tiles on the floor instead of lino, and outside beyond the door the men and women under his command for the moment. It was meaningless, really, at the end of the day. And it was far less important than what faced him now. He said, “Havers, I think you’re right.”

“Of course, I’m right,” she replied. “Anyone watching—”

“I don’t mean about Hillier. I mean about Colossus. He’s choosing kids from there, so he has to be connected somehow. It flies in the face of what we usually expect from a serial killer but on the other hand, how different is it, really, from Peter Sutcliffe picking up prostitutes or the Wests going for hitchhiking girls? Or someone targeting women walking dogs across parks or on commons? Or someone else always choosing an open window at nighttime and an elderly woman he knows is alone within? Our man’s doing what’s worked for him. And considering he’s managed to pull it off five times without getting caught—without, for the love of God, even being noticed—why shouldn’t he simply keep on doing it?”

“So you think the rest of the bodies are Colossus boys as well?”

“I do,” he said. “And since the boys we’ve identified so far have been throwaways to everyone but their families, our killer hasn’t had to worry about detection.”

“So what’s next?”

“Gather more information.” Lynley rose and considered her: disastrous of appearance and utterly headstrong. Maddening unto the death of him. But she was quick as well, which was why he’d learned to value having her at his side. He said, “Here’s the irony, Barbara.”

“What?” she said.

“John Stewart agreed with your assessment. He said as much before you walked into the office. He thinks it may be Colossus as well. You might have discovered that—”

“Had I kept my mug plugged.” Havers shoved her chair back, preparatory to getting to her feet. “So am I supposed to crawl? Curry favour? Create my own forelock to pull? Bring in coffee at eleven and tea at four? What?”

“Try staying out of trouble for once,” Lynley said. “Try doing what you’re told.”

“Which is what at this point?”

“Griffin Strong and the boy who died while Strong was with Social Services in Stockwell.”

“But the other bodies—”

“Havers. No one’s arguing with you about the other bodies. But we’re not going to leapfrog through this investigation no matter how much you’d like to do so. You’ve won a round. Now see to the rest.”

“Right,” she said, although she sounded reluctant even as she picked up her shoulder bag to get back to work. She headed for the door and then stopped, turned back to face him. “Which round was that?” she asked him.

“You know which round,” he told her in reply. “No boy’s safe if he ends up getting assigned to a spell at Colossus.”

“ANTON WHAT?” ULRIKE ELLIS SAID INTO THE TELEPHONE. “Could you spell the surname, please?”

On the other end of the line the detective, whose name Ulrike had already schooled herself to forget, spelled out R-e-i-d. He added that the parents of Anton Reid, who’d gone missing from Furzedown and had finally been identified as the first victim of the serial killer who’d so far murdered five boys in London, had listed Colossus as one of the places that their son had frequented in the months leading up to his death. Could the director confirm that, please? And a list of all Anton Reid’s contacts within Colossus would be necessary, madam.

Ulrike did not indulge in a misinterpretation of the courtesy behind the request. But she temporised, nonetheless. “Furzedown is south of the river, and as we’re well known here, Constable…?” She waited for a name.

“Eyre,” he said.

“Constable Eyre,” she repeated. “What I’m saying is that it’s a possibility that this boy—Anton Reid—merely told his parents he was involved with Colossus while using the time to do something else. It happens, you know.”

“He came to you through Youth Offenders, according to the parents. You should have the records.”

“Youth Offenders, is it? Then I’ll have to check. If you could give me your number, I’ll go through the files.”

“We do know he’s one of yours, madam.”

“You may know that, Constable…?”

“Eyre,” he said.

“Yes. Of course. You may know that, Constable Eyre. But at this moment, I do not. Now I shall have to go through our files, so if you give me your number, I’ll get back to you.”

He had no choice. He could get a search warrant, but that would take time. And she was cooperating. No one could claim otherwise. She was merely cooperating within the structure of her schedule, not within the structure of his.

The detective constable recited his phone number and Ulrike took it down. She had no intention of using it—reporting to him like a schoolgirl hauled onto the headmistress’s carpet—but she wanted to have it to wave in front of whomever turned up to gather information on Anton Reid. Because someone would definitely turn up at Colossus. Her job was to develop a plan to handle things when the moment arrived.

Off the phone, she went to the filing cabinet. She rued the system she had developed: the hard-copy backup to computer files. Pressed to it, she could have done something about material left upon hard drives, even if she’d had to reformat every miserable computer in the building. But the cops who’d come to Colossus had already seen her fingering through files in an ostensible search for Jared Salvatore’s paperwork, so they’d be highly unlikely to believe that some boys had electronic documents while others did not. Still, Anton’s folder could go the way of Jared’s. The rest was easy enough to accomplish.

She had Anton’s file halfway out of the drawer when she heard Jack Veness just outside her door. He said, “Ulrike? Could I have a word…?,” and he opened the door without further ado.

She said, “Do not do that, Jack. I’ve told you before.”

“I knocked,” he protested.

“Step one, yes. You knocked. Very nice. Now let’s work on step two, which is all about waiting for me to tell you to come in.”

His nostrils moved, white round the edges. He said, “Whatever you say, Ulrike,” and he turned to go, always the manipulative, petulant adolescent despite his age, which was what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?

Damn the man. She didn’t need this now. She said, “What do you want, Jack?”