He'd cocked it up brilliantly. He'd shown his hand. He'd charged like a bull from the pen exactly sixty-seven minutes after opening his eyes that morning, galloping from his parents' flat to Kennington at the earliest hour he'd deemed reasonable. Snorting and pawing the ground, eager to lower his horns and attack, he'd ridden up in that creaking lift with a soaring sense of being about to break the case. And he'd gone to great lengths to assure himself that his mission to Kennington was indeed all about the case. Because if Katja Wolff had a little something on the side going on, and if Yasmin Edwards knew nothing about it, and if he could reveal the little something on the side in such a way as to create a fissure in their relationship, then what was to prevent Yasmin Edwards from admitting what he already knew in his bones to be true: that Katja Wolff had not been home on the night of the murder of Eugenie Davies.
He intended nothing more than that, he'd told himself. He was just a cop carrying out his duties. Her flesh meant nothing: smooth and taut, the colour of newly minted pennies. Her body was of no account either: lithe and firm, with a waist dipping in over welcoming hips. Her eyes were only windows: dark like the shadows and trying to hide what they couldn't hide, which was anger and fear. And that anger and fear were meant to be used, to be used by him to whom she was nothing, just a lezzie lag who'd chopped her husband one night and had taken up with a baby killer.
It wasn't his responsibility to sort out why Yasmin Edwards would bring that baby killer into her home, where her own child lived, and Nkata knew it. But he did tell himself that, aside from providing them the break they needed in the investigation, it would also be for the best if the fissure he was able to produce in the women's relationship led to a break-up that would take Daniel Edwards out of the reach of a convicted killer.
He shut his ears to the thought that the boy's own mother also was a convicted killer. After all, she'd struck out against an adult. There was nothing in her background to indicate she had it in for children.
So he was filled with the righteousness of his cause when he rang the buzzer at Yasmin Edwards' door. And when there was no answer at first, he merely used the lack of response as a spur. It dug into the sides of his reason for being there, and he rang again till he forced a reply.
Nkata was a man who'd encountered prejudice and hatred for most of his life. One couldn't be a member of a minority race in England and not be the recipient of hostility in a hundred subtle forms every day. Even at the Met, where he'd assumed performance counted for more than epidermal hue, he'd learned to watch himself, never allowing others in too close, never completely letting down his guard lest he pay the price of presuming that a familiarity of discourse meant an equality of mind. That was not the case, no matter how things looked to the uninitiated observer. And wise was the black man who remembered that.
Because of all this, Nkata had long thought himself incapable of the sort of judgement he'd learned to experience at the hands of others. But after his morning interview in the Doddington Grove Estate, he'd learned that his vision was just as narrow and just as fully capable of leading him to ill-founded conclusions as was the vision of the most illiterate, badly dressed, and ill-spoken member of the National Front.
He'd seen them together. He'd seen the way they greeted each other, the way they talked together, the way they walked like a couple to Galveston Road. He'd known the German was a woman whose life partner was another woman. So when they'd gone into that house and shut the door, he'd allowed an embrace silhouetted against the window to provoke his imagination into running from its pen like an untamed pony. A lesbian meeting another woman and trotting off with her for seclusion together meant only one thing. So he had believed. So he had let his belief colour his second interview in Yasmin Edwards' flat.
Had he not known how thoroughly he'd cocked things up right then, he would have been informed soon enough when he phoned the number on the business card that Katja had handed him. Harriet Lewis herself confirmed the story: Yes, she was Katja Wolff's solicitor. Yes, she had been with her on the previous evening. Yes, they had gone to Galveston Road together.
“You leave after quarter of an hour?” Nkata asked her.
She said, “What's this about, Constable?”
“What sort of business 'd you engage in in Galveston Road?” he asked her.
“None that's any business of yours,” the solicitor had said, just as Katja Wolff promised she would.
“How long's she been a client of yours?” he tried next.
“Our conversation is over,” she'd said. “I work for Miss Wolff, not for you.”
So he was left with nothing except the knowledge that he'd done everything wrong and that he'd have to explain himself to the one person he sought to emulate: DI Lynley. And when the traffic snarled up near Vauxhall Bridge, then stopped altogether as sirens blared and lights flashed up ahead, he was grateful not only for the diversion a smash-up provided but also for the time he would be handed to decide how to tell the tale of the last twelve hours.
Now he looked at the front of the Hampstead Police Station and forced himself out of his car. He walked inside, showed his ID, and trudged to do the penance his actions called for.
He found everyone in the incident room, where the morning meeting was just breaking up. The china board was filled with the day's list of actions and the men and women assigned to them, but the hush among the constables leaving told Nkata that they'd been informed about what had happened to Webberly.
DI Lynley and Barbara Havers remained behind, comparing two computer sheets. Nkata joined them, saying, “Sorry. Pileup at Vauxhall Bridge,” to which Lynley replied, looking up over his spectacles, “Ah. Winston. How did it go?”
“Couldn't shake either one of them from what they already said.”
“Damn,” Barb muttered.
“Did you speak to the Edwards woman alone?” Lynley asked.
“Didn't need to. Wolff 'as meeting with her solicitor, 'Spector. That's who the bird was. Solicitor confirmed when I rang her.” His face must have shown something of his chagrin, because Lynley examined him for a long moment, during which Nkata felt all the misery of a child who's displeased his parent.
“You sounded quite sure when we spoke,” Lynley remarked, “and when you're feeling sure, you're usually right. Are you certain you spoke to the solicitor, Winnie? Wolff could have given you the number of a friend to play the role of solicitor when you rang her.”
“She gave me her business card,” Nkata said. “And what solicitor of your acquaintance's going to lie for a client when the answer the cops want is either yes or no? But I still think the women are hiding something. I just went at it wrong to suss out what it is.” And then because his admiration for Lynley would always override his need to look good in the inspector's eyes, he added, “But I cocked it up with my whole approach. Whoever talks to them next, better not be me.”
Barbara Havers said supportively, “Well, God knows I've done that more than once, Winnie,” and Nkata shot her a grateful look. She had cocked up and it had cost her a suspension from duty, her previous rank, and probably the chance to rise in the Met. But she'd at least brought down a killer by the end of that case, while he'd done nothing more than complicate matters.
Lynley said, “Yes. Well. Haven't we all. No matter, Winston. We'll sort things out,” although he did sound disappointed to Nkata's ears, which wasn't half of what his own mum was going to sound when he told her what had happened.
“Jewel,” she'd say, “what were you thinking, son?”
And that was a question he preferred not to answer.
He brought himself round to listening to the update he'd missed from the morning's briefing. The BT records from Eugenie Davies' phone had been matched up with names and addresses. And the callers on her answer machine had likewise been identified. The woman who named herself Lynn had emerged as one Lynn Davies—
“A relation?” Nkata asked.
“Still to be discovered.”
?
??with an address that put her close to East Dulwich.
“Havers will handle that interview,” Lynley said. He went on to report that the unidentified male caller on the answer machine who'd angrily demanded that Mrs. Davies pick up the phone and talk to him was one Raphael Robson, whose address in Gospel Oak put him closer to the scene of the murder than anyone else, other than J. W. Pitchley, of course. “I'll take on Robson next,” Lynley went on, and he added to Nkata, “I'd like you there as well,” as if already knowing that he would need to bolster Nkata's faltering sense of competence.
Nkata said, “Right,” as Lynley went on to explain that the BT records had also confirmed Richard Davies' story of phone calls taken from and made to his former wife. They'd begun in early August, round the time their son had had his problem at Wigmore Hall and they'd continued up to the morning before Eugenie's death, when Davies had made a brief call to her. There were plenty of calls from Staines as well, Lynley told him. So both men's stories were being corroborated by the evidence they had at hand.
“A word, you three?” came from the doorway upon the conclusion of Lynley's remarks. They swung round to see that DCI Leach had returned to the incident room, and he had a scrap of paper in his hand that he gestured with as he said, “In my office, if you will,” after which he vanished, expecting them to follow.
“Where've you got to tracing the kid Wolff had while she was in prison?” Leach asked Barbara Havers when they joined him.
Barbara said, “I got side-tracked onto Pitchley once I stopped for his photo yesterday. I'm onto that today. But nothing's telling us that Katja Wolff even wants to know where the kid ended up, sir. If she wanted to find him, the first person she would've talked to is the nun. Which she hasn't done.”
Leach made a dismissive noise in his throat. “Check it out, all the same.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “D'you want it before or after I track down Lynn Davies?”
“Before. After. Just do it, Constable,” Leach said irritably. “We've had a report from across the river. Forensic have analysed the paint chips they found on the body.”
“And?” Lynley asked.
“We're going to have to adjust our thinking. SO7 says the paint shows cellulose mixed with thinners to water it down. That doesn't match up with anything that's been used on cars for at least forty years. They're telling us the chips came from something old. Think nineteen-fifties at the latest, they're saying.”
“Nineteen-fifties?” Barbara asked incredulously.
“That explains why last night's witness thought of a limousine,” Lynley said. “Cars were big in the fifties. Jaguars. Rolls-Royces. Bentleys were enormous.”
“So someone ran her down in his classic auto?” Barbara Havers asked. “Now, that's desperation.”
“Could be a taxi,” Nkata pointed out. “Taxi out of use, got sold to someone who fixed it up and uses it now for his regular motor.”
“Taxi, classic car, or golden chariot,” Barbara said, “everyone we've got under the microscope's out of the running.”
“Unless one of them borrowed a car,” Lynley noted.
“We can't discount that possibility,” Leach concurred.
“Are we back to square one, then?” Barbara asked.
“I'll get someone to start checking it out. That and repair shops catering for old cars. Although we can't expect much body damage on something manufactured in the fifties. Cars were like tanks then.”
“But they had chrome bumpers,” Nkata said, “massive chrome bumpers that could've got mashed.”
“So we'll need to check out old parts shops as well.” Leach made a note. “It's easier to replace than to repair, especially if you know the cops are looking.” He phoned into the incident room and allocated that assignment out, after which he rang off and said to Lynley, “It still could be a blind coincidence.”
Lynley said, “Do you think that, sir?” in a measured tone that told Nkata the DI was looking for something beneath whatever reply the DCI might give.
“I'd like to. But I do see how it puts one in blinkers: thinking what we want to think in this situation.” He gazed at his telephone as if willing it to ring. The others said nothing. Finally, he murmured, “He's a good man. He may have stepped wrong now and then, but which of us hasn't? Stepping wrong doesn't make him less of what he is.” He looked at Lynley, and they seemed to communicate something that Nkata couldn't understand. Then he said, “Get on with it, you lot,” and they left him.
Outside, Barbara Havers spoke to Lynley. “He knows, Inspector.”
Nkata said, “Knows what? Who?”
Barbara said, “Leach. He knows Webberly's got a connection with the Davies woman.”
“'Course he knows it. They worked on that old case together. Nothing new there. And we already knew it as well.”
“Right. But what we didn't know—”
“That'll do, Havers,” Lynley said. The two of them exchanged a long look before Barbara said airily, “Oh. Right. Well, I'm off, then,” and with a friendly nod at Nkata, she walked towards her car.
In the immediate aftermath of this brief exchange, Nkata felt the unspoken reprimand in Lynley's decision to keep from him what was obviously a new piece of information which he and Barbara had uncovered. Nkata realised he deserved to be left in the dark in this way—God knew he'd certainly not shown he possessed the requisite level of skill to do the right thing with a valuable new fact—but at the same time he thought he'd been circumspect enough with his recitation of his morning's cock-up so as not to be thought of as a complete incompetent. That obviously hadn't been the case.
Nkata felt all the misery of his position. He said, “'Spector, you want me off this now?”
“Off what, Winston?”
“The case. You know. 'F I can't talk to two birds without making a mess of things …”
In reply, Lynley looked completely confused, and Nkata knew he'd have to go further, admitting what he preferred to keep buried. He directed his gaze to Barbara, who'd climbed into her soup-tin car and was in the process of revving the Mini's sorely tried engine. He said, “I mean, 'f I don't know what to do with a fact when I got a fact, I guess I c'n see how you might not want me to have a fact in the first place. But that doesn't give me a full hand, which c'n make me less effective, right? Not that I showed how 'ffective I was this morning, of course. So what I'm saying's … if you want me off the case … What I'm saying's I understand. I should've known how to approach those two birds. 'Stead of thinking I knew everything, I should've thought there might be something I wasn't seeing. But I didn't, did I? So when I talked to them, I ballsed it up. And—”
“Winston,” Lynley cut in firmly. “A hair shirt might be appropriate, given the circumstance—whatever it is—but I assure you, the cat o' nine tails can be dispensed with.”
“What?”
Lynley smiled. “You've a brilliant career ahead of you, Winnie. No blots on your copy book, unlike the rest of us. I'd like to see you keep it that way. Do you understand?”
“That I cocked things up? That another cock-up'd mean a formal—”
“No. That I'd like to keep you in the clear should …” Uncharacteristically, Lynley paused in what seemed like the search for a phrase that would explain something without revealing what he was explaining. He settled on, “Should our procedures come under scrutiny later on, I'd prefer them to be mine and not yours,” and he made the statement with such delicacy, that Nkata followed it with a leap to comprehension once he put Lynley's words together with what Barbara Havers had inadvertently revealed just before leaving them.
He said in disbelief, “Holy God. You on to something you're keeping quiet about?”
Lynley said wryly, “Job well done. You didn't hear that from me.”
“Barb knows 'bout it?”
“Only because she was there. I'm responsible, Winston. I'd like to keep it that way.”
“Could it take us to the killer, what you're on to?”
“I don't think so. But yes, it may do.”
“Is it evidence?”
“Let's not discuss that.”
Nkata couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Then you got to turn it in! You got to 'stablish the chain. You can't not hand it over 'cause you think … What do you think?”
“That the hit-and-runs are probably connected but that I need to see exactly how they're connected before I make a move that could destroy someone's life. What's left of it. It's my decision, Winnie. And to protect yourself, I suggest you don't ask any more questions.”
Nkata studied the DI, not believing that Lynley, of all people, should be operating in a grey area. He knew that he could insist and end up in there with him—with Barbara as well—but he was ambitious enough to heed the wisdom in the inspector's words. Still, he said, “Wish you wouldn't go at it like this, man.”
“Objection noted,” Lynley said.
17
LIBBY NEALE DECIDED to call in sick with the flu. She knew Rock Peters would have a conniption and threaten to withhold her week's pay—not that that actually meant anything, since he was currently three weeks behind paying her anyway—but she didn't care. When she'd parted from Gideon the previous night, she'd hoped he'd come down to her flat after the cop left him, and when he didn't, she slept so badly that she was as good as sick anyway. So calling it the flu wasn't that much of a lie.
She wandered around her flat in sweats for the first three hours after she got up, mostly pounding the heels of her palms together and straining her ears to hear any sound from above to indicate that Gideon was stirring. She didn't get very far in her efforts. Finally, she gave up the attempt at eavesdropping on him—not that it was really eavesdropping when all you were listening for was the sound of movement to indicate that someone was basically all right—and she decided to make sure in person that he was doing okay. He'd been a wreck yesterday before the cop got there. Who the hell knew what condition he'd been in once the cop left?
Should've gone to him then, she told herself. And while she made an earnest attempt not to ponder the reason that she hadn't gone to him once the cop departed, the thought of what she should have done in the first place led inexorably to the why of why she hadn't.