With No One As Witness (74 page)

“So if she’s repaired,” Barbara said, “that’s good news, isn’t it? Isn’t it good news, Simon?”

She saw him withdraw inside himself then, to a place she could not know or imagine. He said, “It took so long to get to her, Barbara.”

“What do you mean? So long? Why?”

He shook his head. She saw—inexplicably—that his eyes grew cloudy. She didn’t want to hear the rest, then, but they’d waded too far into these waters. Retreat was not an option.

“Has she lost the baby?” Deborah was the one to ask the question.

“Not yet.”

“Thank God for that, then,” Barbara said. “So the news is good, right?” she repeated.

St. James said to his wife, “Deborah, would you like to sit down?”

“Stop it.” She raised her head. The poor woman, Barbara saw, looked like someone with a wasting disease. She felt, Barbara realised, like she’d pulled the trigger on Helen herself.

“For a while,” St. James said, his voice so low that Barbara had to lean in to him to make out his words, “she had no oxygen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her brain was deprived of oxygen, Barbara.”

“But now,” Barbara said, insistent still. “She’s all right, yes? What about now?”

“She’s on a ventilator now. Fluids, of course. A heart monitor.”

“Good. That’s very good, yes?” It was surely excellent, she thought, reason to celebrate, terrible moment but they’d all passed through it and everything was going to sort itself out. Right? Yes. Say the word yes.

“There’s no cortical activity,” St. James said, “and that means—”

Barbara walked away. She didn’t want to hear more. Hearing more meant knowing, knowing meant feeling, and that was the last bloody God damn thing…Eyes fixed on the lino, she paced rapidly out of the hospital into the cold night air and the wind, which struck her cheeks so surprisingly that she gasped and looked up and saw them gathered. The carrion feeders. The journalists. Not dozens of them, not as she’d seen them behind the barriers at the Shand Street tunnel and at the end of Wood Lane. But enough, and she wanted to hurl herself at them.

“Constable? Constable Havers? A word?”

Barbara thought it had to be someone from inside the hospital, coming out to fetch her with a piece of news, so she turned, but it was Mitchell Corsico and he was approaching with his notebook in his hand.

She said, “You need to clear out of here. You especially. You’ve done enough.”

His brow furrowed as if he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying to him. “You can’t think…” He paused, clearly regrouping. “Constable, you can’t think this has anything to do with The Source’s story on the superintendent.”

Barbara said to him, “You know what I think. Get out of my way.”

“But how is she? Is she going to be all right?”

“Get out of my bloody way,” she snarled. “Or I won’t answer for the consequences.”

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?”