She said, “Here. Use this for your pills, Mr. Short,” and she pulled a chair out from the table and placed it next to the quaking young man. She said firmly, “Can you tell us where you got the uniform?”
Howard popped two pills into his mouth and drank them down. The position of Barbara’s chair forced the boy to turn in his own, offering only his profile to Stanley. Barbara gave herself a mental pat on the back for shifting the power so adroitly. Howard said, “From the jumble stall.”
“What jumble stall?”
“At the church fête. We have a church fête every spring and this year’s was Sunday. I took my gran because she had to work in the tea booth for an hour. It wasn’t worth taking her to the fête, going home, and coming back, so I hung about. That’s when I got the rags. They were selling them in the jumble stall. Plastic bags of rags. One pound fifty each. I bought three because I use them at work. It was for a good cause.” He added this earnestly. “They’re raising money to restore one of the windows in the chancel.”
“Where?” Barbara asked. “Which church, Mr. Short?”
“In Stanton St. Bernard. That’s where my gran lives.” He looked from Barbara to Sergeant Stanley. He said, “I’m telling the truth. I didn’t know nothing about that uniform. I didn’t even know it was in the bag till the cops dumped it out on the floor. I hadn’t even opened the bag yet. I swear it.”
“Who was working the stall?” Stanley interjected.
Howard licked his lips, looked Stanley’s way, then back to Barbara. “Some girl. A blonde.”
“Girlfriend of yours?”
“I didn’t know her.”
“Didn’t chat her up? Didn’t catch her name?”
“I only bought the rags off her.”
“Didn’t make a play? Didn’t think about what it would be like to roger her?”
“No.”
“Why? Too old for you? D’you like them young?”
“I didn’t know her, okay? I just bought those rags like I said, at the jumble stall. I don’t know how they got there. I don’t know the name of the bird ’at sold them to me. Even if I did, she pro’ly doesn’t know how they got there either. She was just working the stall, collecting money and handing over the bags. If you need to know more, you should pro’ly ask—”
“Defending her?” Stanley said. “Why’s that, Howard?”
“I’m trying to help you lot!” Short shouted.
“I bet you are. Just like I bet you took that little girl’s uniform and stowed it with the rags once you bought them at the fête.”
“I never!”
“Just like I bet you snatched her, drugged her, and drowned her.”
“No!”
“Just like—”
Barbara stood. She touched Short’s shoulder. “Thanks for your help,” she said firmly. “We’ll look into everything you’ve said, Mr. Short. Sergeant Stanley?” She canted her head towards the door and left the interview room.
Stanley followed her into the corridor. She heard him say, “Balls. If that little sod thinks—”
She swung round to face him. “That little sod nothing. You start thinking. Bully a witness like that and we end up with sod all, which is what we nearly got from that kid.”
“You believe that rubbish about tea booths and blondes?” Stanley snorted. “He’s dirty as used-up engine oil.”
“If he’s dirty, we’ll nail him. But we’ll do it legitimately or not at all. Got it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “So send that school uniform to forensics, Reg. Check every inch of it. I want hairs, I want skin, I want blood, I want dirt, I want grease, I want semen. I want dogshit, cowshit, birdshit, horseshit, and anything else that might be on it. Okay?”
The sergeant’s upper lip gave a roll of distaste. “Don’t waste my manpower, Scotland Yard. We know it’s the kid’s. If we need to verify, we’ll show it to her mother.”
Barbara planted herself six inches from his face. “Right. We do. We know it’s hers. But we don’t know her killer, do we, Reg? So we’re going to take that uniform, and we’re going to comb it, tape it, fibre-optic it, laser it, and do just about anything else we can do to it to get something from it that will lead us to her killer. Whether it’s Howard Short or the Prince of Wales. Am I making myself clear, or do you need it spelled out in writing from your CC?”
Stanley sucked slowly in on one side of his cheek. “Right,” he said. And added under his breath, “Fuck you, guv’nor.”
“You should be so lucky,” Barbara said. She turned and went back to the incidents room. Where in the hell, she wondered, was Stanton St. Bernard?
21
DESPITE THE FACT that a maintenance man was in the process of hanging Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier’s photographs for him, the AC had not wished to postpone his daily update. Nor had he wished to move it to a location from which he might not be able to supervise the appropriate placement of his pictorial history. So Lynley had been forced to deliver his report in hushed tones at the window, suffering through Hillier’s interruptions. These interruptions weren’t directed towards him. Rather, they were directed towards the maintenance man who was attempting to hang the photographs in such a way as to prevent their glass from reflecting the afternoon sunlight. Sunlight not only faded the pictures, it also obscured their subject from the admiration of anyone who might walk into the office. That was not acceptable.
Lynley concluded his report and waited for the AC’s comment. Hillier admired his mundane view of Victoria Street and pulled on his chin as he thought about what he’d heard. When he finally spoke, his lips barely moved, in deference to the need for confidentiality. “I have a press conference in a half hour,” he said. “I’ll need to give them something to chew on for tomorrow.” He made it sound as if he were considering what kind of bait to throw to the sharks. “What about this mechanic Havers has in Wiltshire? What was his name again?”
“Sergeant Havers doesn’t think he’s involved. She’s running tests on the Bowen girl’s uniform, which might give us something. But she isn’t suggesting that what the uniform tells us will tie Charlotte Bowen to the mechanic.”
“Still…” Hillier said. “It’s nice to be able to say that someone is out there assisting the police in their enquiries. She’s checking into his background?”
“We’re checking into everyone’s background.”
“And?”
Lynley was reluctant to part with what he knew. Hillier had a propensity to showboat for the press, all in the name of the Yard’s proficiency. But the papers already knew too much, and their interest wasn’t in seeing that justice was done. Rather, it lay in seeing that a story was broken more quickly than their competitors got to it.
“We’re looking for a link. Blackpool-Bowen-Luxford-Wiltshire.”
“Looking for links isn’t going to make us shine with the press and the public, Inspector.”
“We’ve got SO4 dealing with the prints from Marylebone and we’ve got a sketch of a possible suspect. Tell them we’re analysing evidence. Then release the sketch. That should satisfy.”
Hillier examined his face speculatively. “But you’ve more, haven’t you?”
“Nothing firm,” Lynley said.
“I thought I was clear when I handed you this case. I don’t want you holding back on reports.”
“There’s no point to my muddying the waters with conjecture,” he said, and he added, “Sir,” to pour oil where the waters weren’t so much muddied as potentially troubled.
“Hmph.” Hillier knew that to be called sir wasn’t exactly to be tutoyered by Lynley. He seemed about to respond with a directive that would put them at loggerheads. But a knock on his office door announced the intrusion of his personal secretary, who said from behind the wood, “Sir David? You wanted thirty minutes’ notice before the press conference. I’ve the make-up man here.”
Lynley stopped his mouth from quirking at the thought of Hillier in pancake and mascara facing the news media’s cam
eras. He said, “I’ll get out of your way, then,” and took the opportunity to escape.
In his own office, he found Nkata sitting at his desk, telephone pressed to his ear. He was saying, “DC Winston Nkata…Nkata, woman…Nkata. N-k-a-t-a. You tell him we need to talk. Fine?” He hung up the phone. He saw Lynley in the doorway and began to rise.
Lynley waved him back to the seat and took another, Havers’ usual chair in front of his desk. He said, “Well?”
“Some Bowen-Blackpool connections,” Nkata replied. “Bowen’s constituency chairman was there at the Tory conference. A bloke called Colonel Julian Woodward. Know him? Him and me, we had ourselves a pleasant little chat in Marylebone right after I left you at the squat.”
Colonel Woodward, Nkata told Lynley, was a retired Army man some seventy years old. A former instructor in military history, he’d retired at sixty-five and moved to London to be nearer to his son.
“Apple of his eye, that Joel,” Nkata said in reference to the Colonel’s son. “I got the ’pression that the Colonel’d do just about anything for him. He got the bloke his job with Eve Bowen, you know. And he took him along to Blackpool for that Tory conference.”
“Joel Woodward was there? How old was he then?”
“Nineteen just. He’d ’triculated at UCL at the time, getting set to read politics. He’s still there. Been working part-time on a doctorate since he’s twenty-two. That’s where he is at this moment, according to Bowen’s office. He was next on my list to have a natter with, but I couldn’t track him down. Been trying since noon.”
“Any connection to Wiltshire? Any reason either of the Woodwards would want to bring down Eve Bowen?”
“I’m still working on Wiltshire. But I got to say the Colonel has plans for Joel. Political plans and he doesn’t care who knows.”
“Parliament?”
“You got it. And he’s no admirer of Ms. Bowen, either.”
Colonel Woodward, Nkata went on, was a firm believer in a woman’s place. And it wasn’t in politics. The Colonel himself had been married and widowed three times and not one of his wives had felt the necessity to prove herself in any arena other than in the home. While he acknowledged that Eve Bowen had “more balls than our esteemed premier,” he also confessed to not liking her much. But he was cynical enough to know that to keep the Conservative Party in power, the constituency needed the best possible candidate to stand for election, and the best possible candidate might not always be someone with whom he felt in tune.
“He’s looking to replace her?” Lynley asked.
“Love to replace her with his boy,” Nkata said. “But no way is that going to happen unless someone or something pushes her out of power.”
Intriguing, Lynley thought. And supportive of what Eve Bowen herself had said in slightly different words: In politics, one’s fiercest enemies wore the guise of friends.
“What about Alistair Harvie?” Nkata asked.
“Snake oil.”
“Politician, man.”
“He didn’t seem to know anything about Bowen and Luxford in Blackpool, claimed not to know that Bowen had been there.”
“You believe him?”
“I did, frankly. But then Havers phoned in.”
Lynley told Nkata what Sergeant Havers had reported. He concluded with, “And she was able to dig up some background on Harvie’s years at Winchester as well. He has just about everything one would expect to see on his résumé of activities at the school. But one activity stood out among the rest. He was involved in ecology and cross-country trekking for his last two years there. And most of the trekking was done in Wiltshire, on Salisbury Plain.”
“So he knows the countryside.”
Lynley reached across the desk for a paper-clipped fan of telephone messages that had been placed near his phone. He put on his spectacles and flipped through the messages, asking, “Anything more on the tramp?”
“Not a squeak so far. But it’s early on that one. We’re still tracking down all of the Wigmore Street specials to give them a look at the sketch. And none of the blokes checking the local doss-houses’ve reported in yet.”
Lynley tossed the messages back onto the desk, removed his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. “It feels as if we’re making snail’s progress.”
“Hillier?” Nkata asked wisely.
“The usual. He’d like it wrapped up within twenty-four hours, all for the glory of the Yard. But he knows the odds and he’s not going to argue that we’re not facing a tremendous disadvantage.” Lynley thought of the reporters he’d seen at Eve Bowen’s house on the previous night, thought of the newsagents’ stands he’d seen that morning with Police Hunt Underway and MP Said No Cops scrawled across the notice boards that advertised the contents of the day’s lead story. “Blast them,” he muttered.
“Who’s that?” Nkata asked.
“Bowen and Luxford. Tomorrow marks a week from the kidnapping. If they’d brought us in the first hour she went missing, we’d have been through with this mess by now. As it is, we’re trying to heat up a cold trail, asking potential witnesses—with no interest in the matter and nothing at stake—to remember something that they might have seen six days after the fact. It’s madness. We’re relying on luck, and I don’t much like that.”
“But luck’ll do it, more often’n not.” Nkata leaned back in Lynley’s chair. He looked remarkably like someone who belonged behind the desk. He stretched his arms and locked his hands behind his neck. He smiled.
It was the smile that told Lynley. “You’ve got something more.”
“I do. Oh, I do.”
“And?”
“It’s Wiltshire.”
“Wiltshire connected to whom?”
“Well, that’s where things get real intriguing.”
Traffic slowed them down both in Whitehall and the Strand, but between crawling along and stopping altogether, it gave Lynley the opportunity to read the article in the Sunday Times magazine that Nkata had unearthed in his day of digging through the pasts of the suspects. The article was six weeks old. Entitled “Turning Round a Tabloid,” its featured subject was Dennis Luxford.
“Seven whole pages,” Nkata remarked as Lynley looked through it and scanned the paragraphs. “The happy family at home, at work, at play. With everyone’s background there in black and white. Lovely, huh?”
“This,” Lynley said, “could be the break we’re looking for.”
“That’s what I thought,” Nkata agreed.
At The Source, Lynley’s police identification made little impression upon the receptionist who gave him a look that said, I’ve seen blokes like you before. She phoned upstairs and said only, “Cops. Scotland Yard,” into the miniature mouthpiece of her headset. She added, “You got that right, luv,” with a guffaw, managing to drop every t in the sentence. She made out visitors’ badges in a rounded, childish script and slipped them into plastic holders. She said, “Eleventh floor. Use the lift. And don’t go snooping where you don’t belong, hear?”
When the lift doors opened on the floor in question, a grey-haired woman met them. She was slightly stoop-shouldered, as if with too many years of bending over filing cabinets, typewriters, and word processors, and she introduced herself as Miss Wallace, confidential, private, and personal secretary to The Source editor, Mr. Dennis Luxford.
She said, “If I might check your identification personally?” and her withered cheeks shook as if with the effrontery of the question. “We can’t be too careful when it comes to visitors. Newspaper rivalry. Perhaps you know what I mean?”
Again, Lynley showed his identification. Nkata did the same. Miss Wallace scrutinised both warrant cards diligently before murmuring, “Very well,” and leading them towards the editor’s office. It was obviously a dog-eat-dog business, getting the nation’s scandal sheets onto the streets. The wisest tabloids put their trust in the fact that everyone was suspect when it came to ownership of a story, even people claiming to be the police.
Lu
xford was at a conference table in his office, seated with two other men who appeared to be the head of circulation and the head of advertising if the graphs, charts, tables, and dummy pages of the tabloid were anything to go by. When Miss Wallace first interrupted them, swinging open the door and saying, “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Luxford,” the editor’s response to her was a sharp, “God damn it, Wallace, I thought I made myself clear on the topic of interruptions.” His voice sounded frazzled. From behind the secretary, Lynley could see that he didn’t look much better.
“They’re from Scotland Yard, Mr. Luxford,” Miss Wallace said.
Advertising and Circulation looked at each other, becoming interest incarnate at this turn of events. Luxford said to them, “We’ll go over the rest of this later,” and didn’t get up from his position at the head of the conference table until they and Miss Wallace were out of the room. Even when he did rise, he remained in place with the graphs, charts, tables, and dummy tabloid pages spread out in front of him. He said sharply, “This’ll be all over the newsroom in forty-five seconds. You couldn’t have phoned first?”
“Circulation meeting?” Lynley asked. “How are the numbers these days?”
“You haven’t come to discuss our numbers, I dare say.”
“I’m interested, nonetheless.”
“Why?”
“Circulation is everything to a newspaper, isn’t it?”
“I expect you know that. Advertising revenues depend on circulation.”
“And circulation depends upon the quality of the stories? Their veracity, their contents, their depth?” Lynley produced his identification yet another time, and while Luxford examined it, he himself examined Luxford. The man was dapperly dressed but jaundiced in colouring. The whites of his eyes didn’t look much better than the condition of his skin. “I would assume that one of the primary considerations any editor has is his paper’s circulation,” Lynley said. “You’ve been intent upon building yours, according to what I’ve just read in the Sunday Times magazine. No doubt you’d like to keep building it.”