With No One As Witness

  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?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just something I thought you might like to know.”

  Games, games, games. “Yes? Well, if I might like to know, why don’t you tell me?”

  He turned back. “It’s gone. That’s all.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The signing-in book from reception. I thought I must’ve misplaced it when I packed up last night. But I’ve looked everywhere. It’s definitely gone.”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Abracadabra. Into thin air.”

  Ulrike rested back on her heels. Her mind wheeled through the possibilities, and she disliked every one of them.

  Jack said helpfully, “Robbie might have taken it for some reason. Or maybe Griff has it. He’s got a key to be in here after hours, doesn’t he?”

  This was too much. She said, “What would Robbie, Griff, or anyone else want with a signing-in book?”

  Jack shrugged elaborately and drove his fists into the pockets of his jeans.

  “When did you notice it was missing?”

  “Not till the first kids got here today. I went for the book but it wasn’t there. Like I said, I figured I misplaced it last night when I was packing up. So I just started another one till I could find the one that’s missing. Which I couldn’t. So I reckon someone nicked it off my desk.”

  Ulrike thought about the previous day. “The police,” she said. “When you came to fetch me. You left them alone in reception.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I reckoned ’s well. Only here’s the thing. I can’t suss out what they want with our signing-in book, can you?”

  Ulrike turned from his smug and comprehending face. She said, “Thank you for letting me know, Jack.”

  “Do you want me to—”

  “Thank you,” she repeated firmly. “Is there anything else? No? Then you can get back to work.”

  When Jack left her, after a little mock salute and a click of the heels that she was meant to take as amusing and did not, Ulrike shoved Anton Reid’s paperwork back into place. She slammed the filing drawer home and went for the phone. She punched in Griffin Strong’s mobile number. He was meeting with a new assessment group, their first day together, ice-breaking activities. He didn’t like to be interrupted whenever the kids were “in circle” as they called it. But this interruption couldn’t be helped and he would know that when he heard what she had to say.

  He said, “Yeah?” impatiently.

  “What did you do with the file?” she asked him.

  “As…ordered.”

  She could tell he chose the word deliberately, as mocking as was Jack’s sarcastic salute. He hadn’t yet twigged who stood in jeopardy here. But he would presently.

  He said, “That all?”

  Dead silence in the background told her every member of his assessment group was listening to his end of the exchange. She found a bitter satisfaction in that. Fine, Griffin, she thought. Let’s see how well you can carry on now.

  “No,” she told him. “The police know, Griff.”

  “Know what exactly?”

  “That Jared Salvatore was one of ours. They took the reception book yesterday. They’ll have seen his name.”

  Silence. Then, “Shit,” on a breath. Then a whisper, “God damn it. Why didn’t you think of that?”

  “I might ask the same of you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Anton Reid,” she said.

  Silence again.

  “Griffin,” she told him, “you need to understand something. You’ve been an exceptional fuck, but I won’t let anyone destroy Colossus.”

  She replaced the phone, carefully and quietly. Let him hang there, she thought.

  She turned to her computer. On it, she accessed the electronic information they had on Jared Salvatore. It wasn’t as extensive as had been the documents in his file, but it would do. She chose the print option. Then she picked up the number that Detective Constable Eyre had given her only minutes ago.

  He answered immediately, saying, “Eyre.”

  She said, “Constable, I’ve come up with some information. You’ll probably want to pass this along.”

  NKATA LET THE computer do the work for him on the postal codes amassed by the owner of Crystal Moon. While Gigi—the shop’s owner—would use them to prove the need for a branch of her business in a second location somewhere in London, Nkata intended to use them to make a match between the customers of Crystal Moon and the body sites. After reflecting on what Barb Havers had said on the subject of body sites, however, he decided to expand his search to include a comparison between the postal codes gathered by Crystal Moon and the postal codes of all Colossus employees. This took him more time than he’d expected. At the Colossus end of things, giving out postal codes to the cops was not an idea that anyone immediately embraced.

  When he finally had what he wanted, he printed out the document and studied it contemplatively. Ultimately, he passed it over to DI Stewart to relay along to Hillier when he made his request for the manpower to
run more surveillance. He was donning his overcoat to head back out, over to Gabriel’s Wharf to see to the next part of his assignment, when Lynley came to the door of the incident room and said his name quietly, adding, “We’re wanted upstairs.”

  We’re wanted upstairs meant only one thing. The fact that Hillier was asking for them now—a few hours after the press conference called by Reverend Bram Savidge—suggested the meeting was not going to be pleasant.

  Nkata joined Lynley, but he did not remove his overcoat. “I was heading to Gabriel’s Wharf,” he told the acting superintendent, hoping this would be enough to get him off the hook.

  “This won’t hold you up long,” Lynley said. It sounded like a promise.

  They took the stairs. Nkata said as they climbed, “I think Barb’s right, guv.”

  “About?”

  “Colossus. I got a match on one of the postal codes from Crystal Moon. I passed it along to DI Stewart.”

  “And?”

  “Robbie Kilfoyle. He’s got the same postal code as someone who shopped in Crystal Moon.”

  “Does he indeed?” Lynley stopped on the stairs. He seemed to think about the information for a moment. Then he said, “Still, it’s only a postal code, Winnie. He shares it with…what? How many thousand people? And his employment is on the wharf as well, isn’t it?”

  “Directly next to Crystal Moon,” Nkata admitted. “The sandwich shop.”

  “Then I don’t know how much weight we can give it, as much as we’d like to. It’s something, I agree—”

  “Which is what we need,” Nkata cut in. “Something.”

  “But unless we know what he bought…You see the difficulty, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. He works there on the wharf for God knows how long. He’s prob’ly bought something off that shop and every other shop over time.”

  “Exactly. But speak to them, all the same.”

  In Hillier’s suite, Judi MacIntosh ushered them in at once. Hillier was waiting for them, standing framed by the multiple panes of his windows and the view they offered of St. James’s Park. He was studying this view as they entered. At his fingertips on the credenza beneath the window, a newspaper lay neatly folded.

  Hillier turned. As if for an unseen camera, he picked up the paper and let it fall open so that he held the front page like a towel that covered his genitals. He said evenly, “How did this happen?”

  Nkata saw it was the latest Evening Standard. The story on the front page dealt with the press conference that Bram Savidge had called earlier in the day. The headline spoke of a foster father’s anguish.

  Anguish had not been among the reactions to Sean Lavery’s death that Nkata would have ascribed to Savidge. But he realised that “anguish” was more likely to sell copies of the paper than was “justifiable fury at police incompetence.” Although, truth to tell, it would have been close.

  Hillier went on, tossing the Standard onto his desk. He said to Lynley, “You, Superintendent, are supposed to be managing the victims’ families, not giving them access to the media. It’s part of the job, so why aren’t you doing it? Have you any idea what he’s said to the press?” Hillier stabbed at the paper as he made each following declaration: “Institutional racism. Police incompetence. Endemic corruption. All accompanied by calls for a thorough investigation by the Home Office, a Parliamentary sub committee, the Prime Minister, or anyone else who’s willing to take up the subject of house sweeping, which is what he accuses us of needing round here.” He brushed the paper off of his desk and into the rubbish basket next to it. “This bugger’s got their attention,” he said. “I want that changed.”

  There was something self-satisfied about Hillier’s expression that was out of keeping both with his tone and with what he was saying. It came to Nkata as he observed this that Hillier’s look had to do with the performance that he was giving, rather than with his outrage. He wanted to dress Lynley down in front of a subordinate officer, Nkata realised. He had the excuse of making that subordinate officer Nkata because of the press briefings that had gone before when Nkata had sat obediently at his side, second cousin to a performing dog.

  He said to Hillier before Lynley could respond, “’Scuse me, guv. I was at that briefing. Truth to tell, I di’n’t even think to stop it. My thought was he c’n call the press whenever he wants to call the press. His right to do it.”

  Lynley glanced his way. Nkata wondered if Lynley’s pride would allow him to carry off an intervention like this. He wasn’t sure, so before there was an opportunity for the acting superintendent to add something, Nkata went on.

  “I could’ve stepped up to the mike right after, ’f course, when Savidge was done with his piece. Could be that’s what I should’ve done ’s well. But I di’n’t think it’d be something you’d really want me to do. Not without you being there.” He smiled affably at the end of this: Little Black Sambo come to London.

  Next to him, Lynley cleared his throat. Hillier shot him a look, then one at Nkata. He said, “Get things under control, Lynley. I don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry running to the press over this.”

  “We’ll work on that angle specifically,” Lynley said. “Is that all, sir?”

  “The next press briefing—” Hillier gestured rudely towards Nkata. “I want you down there ten minutes prior.”

  “Got it,” Nkata said, tapping his skull with his index finger.

  Hillier started to say more, but then he dismissed them. Lynley made no comment till they were out of the office, beyond Hillier’s secretary, and crossing to Victoria Block. Then it was only, “Winston. Listen,” as his footsteps slowed. “Don’t do that again.”

  There was the pride, Nkata thought. He’d expected as much.

  But then Lynley surprised him. “There’s too much risk for you in taking Hillier on, even obliquely. I appreciate the loyalty, but it’s more important for you to watch your back than to watch mine. He’s a dangerous enemy. Don’t make him into one.”

  “He wanted to make you look bad in front of me,” Nkata said. “I don’t like that. Just thought I’d return the favour and let him see how it feels.”

  “That presupposes the AC might think he could ever look bad in front of anyone,” Lynley said wryly. They went to the lift. Lynley pushed the down button. He examined it for a moment before he went on. “On the other hand,” he said, “it’s a suitable irony.”

  “What’s that, guv?”

  “That in giving the rank of sergeant to you and denying it to Barbara, Hillier got more than he bargained for.”

  Nkata thought about this. The lift doors slid open. They entered and punched for the floors they needed. “D’you s’pose he reckoned I’d yes-guv him right to the grave?” he asked curiously.

  “Yes. I think that’s what he assumed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he has no idea who you are,” Lynley replied. “But I expect that’s something you’ve already realised.”

  They descended to the floor for the incident room, where Lynley got off, leaving Nkata to ride to the underground carpark. Before the doors closed upon him, however, the acting superintendent stopped them, his hand holding one of them back.

  “Winston—” He didn’t say anything else for a moment and Nkata waited for him to go on. When he finally did, it was to say, “Thank you all the same.” He released the lift door and let it slide closed. His dark eyes met Nkata’s for an instant, then were gone.

  It was raining when Nkata emerged from the underground carpark. Daylight was fast fading, and the rain exacerbated the gloom. Traffic lights gleamed against the wet streets; taillights of vehicles winked in the prisms of the raindrops hitting his windscreen. Nkata worked his way over to Parliament Square and inched towards Westminster Bridge in a queue of taxis, buses, and government cars. As he crossed, the river heaved in a grey mass below him, puckered with rain and rippled by the incoming tide. There a single barge chugged its way in the direction of Lambeth, and in its wheelhouse a solitary figure
kept the craft on its course.

  Nkata parked illegally at the south end of Gabriel’s Wharf and put a police placard in the window. Turning up the collar of his coat against the rain, he strode into the wharf area, where the overhead lights made a cheerful crisscrossing pattern above him and the owner of the bicycle rental shop was wisely wheeling his wares indoors.

  At Crystal Moon, it was Gigi this time and not her grandmother who was perched on a stool, reading behind the till. Nkata approached her and showed his police identification. She didn’t look at it, however. Instead, she said, “Gran told me you’d probably be back. She’s good that way. A real intuitive. In another time, she’d’ve been done for a witch. Did the agrimony work?”

  “Not sure what I’m meant to do with it.”

  “Is that why you’re back, then?”

  He shook his head. “Wanted to have a word about a bloke called Kilfoyle.”

  She said, “Rob?,” and closed her book. It was, he saw, one of the Harry Potters. “What about Rob?”

  “You know him, then?”

  “Yeah.” She said the word on two notes, a combination of confirmation and question. She looked wary.

  “How well?”

  “I’m not sure how I’m meant to take this,” she said. “Has Rob done something?”

  “He buy stuff here?”

  “Occasionally. But so do lots of other people. What’s this about?”

  “What’s he buy off you, then?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t been in in a while. And I don’t write down what people buy.”

  “But you know he bought something.”

  “Because I know him. I also know that two of the waitresses from Riviera Restaurant have made purchases as well. So have the head cook at Pizza Express and a collection of shop assistants from the wharf. But it’s the same as for Rob: I don’t recall what they bought. Except for the bloke at Pizza Express. He wanted a love potion for a girl he met. I remember that because we got into the whole love thing.”

  “Know him how?” Nkata asked her.

  “Who?”