THE NAME ON THE REGISTRATION CARD WAS OSCAR Wilde. When Barbara Havers saw this, she looked up at Chandelier Earring, expecting a rolling of the eyes and an expression that said “What else would you expect?” But it was clear that the girl in reception was of the recent unschooled generation whose education was dependent upon music videos and gossip magazines. She hadn’t made the connection any more than the night clerk had, but at least he had the excuse of being a foreigner. Wilde-in revival or otherwise-probably wasn’t big in Turkey.
Barbara went on to the address: a number on Collingham Road. The hotel had a battered A to Z-purportedly for use by the hordes of tourists who stayed there-and she found the street not that far from Lexham Gardens. It was on the other side of Cromwell Road. She could hoof it there without any trouble.
Before descending to reception, she’d waited for the arrival of the SOCO team, having phoned for them from room 39. Mr. Tatlises had taken himself off somewhere in his dinner suit, doubtless to contact his fellow MABILians and give them the word that times were about to be a-changin’. He would then, she reckoned, make a vain attempt to destroy every bit of child pornography that he had in his possession. Stupid sod, Barbara thought. He wouldn’t’ve been able to resist downloading that filth off the Net-none of them could ever resist that-and he was just enough of an idiot to think delete meant gone but not forgotten. The Earl’s Court Road station would have a field day at this place. Once Tatlises was in their clutches, they’d find a way to squeeze him for everything he knew: about MABIL, about what was going on in the hotel, about little boys and money changing hands and everything else related to this disgusting situation. Unless, of course, some of them were involved in MABIL…some of the Earl’s Court Road cops…but Barbara didn’t want to think of that. Cops, priests, doctors, and ministers. One had to hope, if not to believe, that a moral core existed somewhere.
As ordered by Lynley, she spoke to the Earl’s Court Road chief super. He set the wheels in motion. When the SOCO team arrived, she felt secure enough to leave.
With the address from the registration card in hand and the card itself turned over to the SOCO team for fingerprinting, she crossed over Cromwell Road and headed east, in the direction of the Natural History Museum. Collingham Road headed south some 100 yards from Lexham Gardens. Barbara made the turn and began searching for the correct address along the row of tall, white-fronted conversions.
Considering the name that had been on the registration card, she had little hope of the address being anything but another sham. She wasn’t far from correct in this conclusion. Where Collingham Road met the lower half of Courtfield Gardens, an old stone church stood on the corner. A wrought-iron fence surrounded it, and inside the churchyard that the fence contained, a faded sign done in gold letters named the spot as St. Lucy’s Community Centre. Beneath this identification were the numbers of the street address. They corresponded identically to the numbers on the card from the Canterbury Hotel. How fitting it was, Barbara thought as she pushed through the gate and entered the churchyard. The address on the card was the address for MABIL: St. Lucy’s, the deconsecrated church not far from the Gloucester Road underground station.
Minshall had said that MABIL met in the basement, so that was where Barbara headed. She went round the side of the building, following a concrete path through a small, overgrown cemetery. Toppling gravestones and ivy-choked tombs filled it to capacity, all of them untended.
A set of stone steps led down to the basement at the back of the church. A sign on the bright blue door called this portion of the centre “Ladybird Infant Day-care.” This door stood partially open, and from within Barbara could hear the babble of children’s voices.
She pushed her way inside and found herself in a vestibule, where a long rack of hooks at waist height held miniature coats, jackets, and macs, while below a row of pint-sized Wellingtons waited neatly for their owners. There appeared to be two classrooms opening off this little hall: one large and one small and both of them filled with enthusiastic children engaged in making paper Valentines (the small room) and an energetic conga line galloping about to the tune of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (the large room).
Barbara was deciding which room to try for information when a sixtyish woman with spectacles on a gold chain round her neck came out of what seemed to be a kitchen, bearing a tray of ginger biscuits. Fresh ginger biscuits, by the smell of them. Barbara’s stomach made an appreciative gurgle.
The woman looked from Barbara to the door. Her expression said that it was not meant to be left unlocked, which Barbara acknowledged was not a bad idea. The woman asked if she could be of help.
Barbara showed her identification and told the woman-who gave her name as Mrs. McDonald-that she’d come about MABIL.
Mabel? Mrs. McDonald said. They had no child named Mabel enrolled.
This was an organisation of men who met in the basement in the evenings, Barbara told her. M-A-B-I-L, it was spelled.
Ah. Well, Mrs. McDonald knew nothing about that. For that sort of information, the constable would have to talk to the letting agent. Taverstock & Percy, she informed Barbara. On Gloucester Road. They handled all of the lettings for the community centre. Twelve-step programmes, women’s clubs, antiques and crafts fairs, writing classes, the lot.
Could she have a look round anyway? Barbara asked Mrs. McDonald. There was, she knew, nothing to find here, but she wanted to get a feel for the place where perversion was not only tolerated but encouraged.
Mrs. McDonald was less than happy about this request, but she said she’d show Barbara the facilities if she would wait right here while the biscuits got delivered to the conga line. She carried her tray into the larger room and handed it off to one of the teachers. She returned as the conga line disintegrated in a biscuit frenzy to which Barbara could only too well relate. She’d skipped lunch and it was already teatime.
She followed Mrs. McDonald dutifully from room to room. They blossomed with children-laughing, jabbering, fresh faced, innocent. Her heart felt sick at the thought of paedophiles defiling this atmosphere, even by their presence at night when these children were tucked up safely at home.
There was little enough to see, however. A large room with a dais at one end, a lectern pushed to one side, and chairs stacked up along walls decorated with rainbows, leprechauns, and an enormous, whimsical pot of gold. A small room with tot-sized tables where children created crafts that were then displayed along the walls in a riot of colour and imagination. A kitchen, a lavatory, a supply room. That was it. Barbara tried to picture the place filled with saliva-dripping child molesters, and it wasn’t difficult. She could see them here easily enough, the miserable lot of them getting their rocks off at the thought of all the kids in these rooms every single weekday, just waiting for some monster to snatch them off the street.
She thanked Mrs. McDonald and left St. Lucy’s. Although it seemed a dead end, she knew she couldn’t leave the stone of Taverstock & Percy unturned.
The estate agent, she found, was back on the other side of Cromwell Road and up a distance. She passed a Barclay’s-complete with drunken homeless beggar on the front steps-as well as a church and a string of nineteenth-century conversions-before she came to a smallish commercial area where Taverstock & Percy was bookended by a have-everything ironmonger and an old-fashioned take-away serving up sausage rolls and jacket potatoes to a line of road workers who were taking their tea break from a jackhammered hole in the middle of the street.
Inside Taverstock & Percy, Barbara asked to see the estate agent in charge of letting space in St. Lucy’s Church, and she was shown to a young woman called Misty Perrin, who was apparently thrilled by the idea that custom for St. Lucy’s was walking in off the street. She took out an application and fixed it to a clipboard, saying that of course there were certain rules and regulations that had to be met in order for anyone to have space in the former church or its basement.
Right, Barbara thought. That’s what kept away the riffraff.
She took out her identification and introduced herself to Misty. Could she have a word about a group called MABIL.
Misty lowered the clipboard to her desk, but she didn’t look concerned. She said, “Oh, of course. When you asked about St. Lucy’s, I thought…Well, anyway…MABIL. Yes.” She opened a filing drawer in her desk and fingered through its contents. She brought out a slim manila folder and opened it. She read through the material, nodding appreciatively and saying at the conclusion of her inspection, “I wish all tenants were as prompt as they are. Every month, they’re right on time with the rent. No complaints about how they leave the premises at the end of their meetings. No problem in the neighbourhood with illegal parking. Well, of course the clamp takes care of that, doesn’t it? Anyway, what would you like to know?”
“What sort of group is it?”
Misty looked back at her documents. “Support group, it appears. Men going through divorce. I’m not sure why they call it MABIL unless that’s an acronym for…Men Against what?”
“Bloody Inconsiderate Litigation?” Barbara offered. “Whose name’s on the contract?”
Misty read it to her. J. S. Mill. She recited the address as well. She went on to inform Barbara that the only somewhat odd thing about MABIL was that their fee always arrived in cash, brought in person by Mr. Mill on the first of the month. “He said it had to be cash because that’s how they came up with the money, through a collection at their meetings. Well, it’s a bit irregular and all that, but St. Lucy’s said that was fine by them just so long as they got the money. And they’ve got it, every month on the first, for the last five years.”
“Five years?”
“Yes. That’s right. Is there something…?” Misty looked anxious.
Barbara shook her head and waved off the question. What was the point? The girl was as innocent as the children in the Ladybird centre. She didn’t depend on the promise of anything coming from it, but she showed Misty the two e-fits anyway. “J. S. Mill look like either of these blokes?” she asked.
Misty glanced at the sketches but shook her head. He was much older, she said-round seventy?-and he didn’t have a beard or goatee or anything. He did wear an enormous hearing aid, if that was any help.
Barbara shuddered at the information. Someone’s granddad, she thought. She wanted to find and strangle him.
She took the address of J. S. Mill as she left the estate agency. It would be bogus. She had little doubt of that. But she’d hand it over to TO9 nonetheless. Someone somewhere had to kick down the doors of the members of this organisation.
She was heading back in the direction of Cromwell Road when her mobile rang. It was Lynley asking where she was.
She told him, bringing him up to date on what little she’d managed to glean from her efforts with the registration card from the Canterbury Hotel. “What about you?” she asked him.
“St. James thinks our boy may need to buy more ambergris oil,” Lynley told her and informed her of the rest of St. James’s report. “It’s time for you to take another trip up to Wendy’s Cloud, Constable.”
NKATA PARKED some distance along Manor Place. He was still thinking about the dozens of aimlessly sauntering black kids he’d seen in the vicinity of Elephant and Castle. No single place for them to go and very little for them to do. That wasn’t the real truth of the matter-if nothing else, they could be at school-but he knew that was the way they themselves saw their situation, taught to think it by older peers, by disgruntled and disappointed parents, by lack of opportunity and too much temptation. It was easier for them, in the long run, not to care. Nkata had thought of them all the way to Kennington. He allowed them to become his excuse.
Not that he actually needed one. This journey was owed, not to him but by him. The time had definitely come.
He got out of the car and walked the short distance to the wig shop, still a hopeful sign of what was possible among the failed and boarded-up establishments in the neighbourhood. The pubs, naturally, were still doing business. But other than a dismal corner shop with heavy grilles on the windows, Yasmin Edwards’ business was the only place open.
When Nkata entered, he saw that Yasmin was with a client. This was a skeletal black woman with a death’s-head face. She was bald, and she sat slumped in a beauty chair before the long, mirrored wall and the counter at which Yasmin worked. On the counter, a makeup case was open. Three wigs stood near it: one comprising a head full of plaits; one close cropped like Yasmin’s hair; one long and straight, of the sort worn by catwalk models.
Yasmin’s glance went to Nkata and then away, as if she’d been expecting him and was unsurprised by his arrival. He nodded at her, but he knew she didn’t see. She was focussed on her client and the brush on which she was applying blusher from a round tin box.
“I jus’ can’t see it,” her client said. Her voice was as exhausted as her body looked. “Don’t you bother with that, Yas-meen.”
“You wait,” Yasmin told her gently. “Le’ me fix you, luv, and in the meantime, study those wigs for the one you want.”
“I’n’t going to make a difference, is it,” the woman said. “I don’ know why I even came.”
“’Cause you’re pretty, Ruby, an’ the world deserves to see that.”
Ruby pooh-poohed her. “No more I’m pretty now,” she said.
Yasmin didn’t answer this remark, positioning herself instead in front of the woman in order to study her face. Yasmin’s own was professional, devoid of the pity that the other woman would doubtless have been able to sense in an instant. Yasmin bent towards her and applied the brush along the ridge of her cheekbones. She followed this with a similar movement along her jaw.
Nkata waited patiently. He watched Yasmin work: the flick of a brush, a heightening of shading round the eyes. She finished her client off with lipstick, which she applied with a delicate paintbrush. She wore no kind of lipstick herself. The rose-bloom scar on her upper lip-long-ago gift of her husband-made this impossible.
She stood back and surveyed her work. She said, “Now you’re something, Ruby. Which wig’s goin’ to finish off the picture?”
“Oh, Yas-meen, I dunno.”
“Now come on. Your husband i’n’t waiting out there for some bald-headed lady with a pretty new face. You want to try them again?”
“The short one, I guess.”
“You sure? The long one made you look like what-sername the model.”
Ruby chuckled. “Oh yeah, ’m ready for Fashion Week, Yas-meen. Maybe they’ll put me in a bikini. I finally got the figger for it. Le’ me do the short one. I like it good enough.”
Yasmin removed the short wig from the stand. She lowered it gently onto Ruby’s head. She stood back, then made an adjustment, then stood back again. “You’re ready for a big night out,” she said. “Make sure your man sees you get it.” She helped Ruby out of the beauty chair and took the voucher that the woman held out to her. She gently pushed away an additional ten-pound note that Ruby tried to press upon her. “None ’f that,” she said. “Buy some flowers for your flat.”
“Flowers enough at the funeral,” Ruby said.
“Yeah, but the corpse don’t get to enjoy them.”
They chuckled together. Yasmin saw her to the door. A car at the kerb waited for her, one door swinging open. Yasmin eased her inside.
When she returned to the shop, she went at once to the beauty chair where she began to repack her makeup supplies. Nkata said to her, “What’s she got?”
“Pancreas,” Yasmin said shortly.
“Bad?”
“Pancreas’s always bad, Sergeant. She’s doing chemo, but i’n’t any point. What d’you want, man? I got work to do.”
He approached her but still kept a safe distance between them. “I got a brother,” he said. “He’s Harold, but we called him Stoney. Cos he was stubborn as a stone in a field. A Stonehenge kind of stone, I mean. One you can’t budge no matter what.”
Yasmin paused in putting the makeup away, a brush in her hand. She frowned at Nkata. “So?”
Nkata licked his lower lip. “He’s in Wandsworth. Life.”
Her glance moved away, then back to him. She knew what that meant. Murder. “He do it?”
“Oh yeah. Stoney…Yeah. That was Stoney all the way through. Got a gun somewhere-he’d never say from who-and whacked a bloke in Battersea. He and his mate were trying to carjack his BMW and the bloke didn’t cooperate like they wanted. Stoney shot him in the back of the head. An execution. His mate turned him in.”
She stood there for a moment, as if evaluating this. Then she went back to work.
“Thing is,” Nkata went on, “I could’ve gone the same way and was doing jus’ that, ’cept I figured I was cleverer than Stoney. I could fight better, an’ anyway I wasn’t in’erested in ripping off cars. I had a gang, see, and they were my brothers, more brothers to me’n Stoney could’ve ever been anyway. So I fought with them cos that’s what we did. We fought over turf. This pavement, that pavement, this newsagent’s, that tobacconist. I end up in Casualty with my face split open”-he gestured to his cheek and the scar that ran down it-“and my mum faints dead on the floor when she sees it. I look at her and I look at my dad and I know he means to beat me bloody when we get home, with or without my face done up in stitches. And I see-all of a sudden, this was-that he means to beat me not for myself but cos I hurt Mum like Stoney hurt Mum. And then I really see how they treat her: doctors and nurses in Casualty, this is. They treat her like she did somethin’ wrong, which is what they think she did cos one of her boys ’s in prison and the other’s a Brixton Warrior. And that’s it.” Nkata held out his hands, empty. “A cop makes conversation with me-this is about the fight that got me the scar-and he starts me off in another direction. And I cling to him and I cling to it cos I won’t do to Mum what Stoney did.”
“As easy as that?” Yasmin asked. He could hear the note of scorn in her voice.
“As simple as that,” Nkata corrected her politely. “I wouldn’t ever say it was easy.”
Yasmin finished packing her makeup away. She closed the case with a snap and heaved it from the counter. She carried it to the back of the shop and shoved it on a shelf before she placed one hand on a hip and said, “That all?”
“No.”
“Fine. What else?”
“I live with my mum and dad. Over on Loughborough Estate. I’m goin’ to stay living with them no matter what cos they’re getting older and the older they get, the more dangerous it is over there. For them. I won’t have them facing aggro from smackheads an’ dope dealers an’ pimps. That lot don’t like me, they don’t wan’ to be round me, they sure as hell don’ trust me, and they keep their distance from my mum and my dad, long as I’m there. Tha’s how I want it and I’ll do what it takes to keep it that way.”
Yasmin cocked her head. Her face maintained its distrustful, scornful expression, the same expression she’d worn since he’d met her. “So. Why’re you telling me this?”
“Cos I want you to know the truth. An’ thing is, Yas, the truth i’n’t a road without curves and diversions. So you got to know that, yeah, I was ’tracted to you the first moment I saw you and who wouldn’t be? So, yeah, I wanted you away from Katja Wolfe but not cos I believed you’re meant for a man’s love and not a woman’s love cos I di’n’t know that, did I, how could I. But cos I wanted a chance with you and the only way to get that chance was to prove to you Katja Wolfe wasn’t worthy of what you had to offer. But at the same time, Yas, I liked Daniel from the first ’s well. An’ I could see Daniel liked me back. An’ I bloody well know-knew it then and know it now-how life can be for kids on the street with time on their hands, specially kids like Daniel, without dads in the house. An’ it wasn’t cos I thought you weren’t-aren’t-a good mum, cos I could see that you were. But I thought Dan needed more-he still needs more-an that’s what I came to tell you.”
“That Daniel needs-”
“No. All of it, Yas. Beginning to end.”
He still stood a distance from her, but he thought he could see the muscles move in her smooth dark neck as she swallowed. He thought he could see her heart beat in the vein on her temple as well. But he knew he was trying to think things into a reality defined by his hopes. Let it go, he told himself. Let it be what it is.
“What d’you want now, then?” Yasmin finally asked him. She returned to the beauty chair and picked up the two remaining wigs, holding one under each arm.
Nkata shrugged. “Nothing,” he said.
“An’ that’s the truth?”
“You,” he said. “All right. You. But I don’t know if tha’s even the truth, which is why I don’t want to say it out loud. In bed? Yeah. I want you like that. In bed. With me. But everything else? I don’t know. So tha’s the truth, and it’s what you’re owed. You always deserved it, but you never got it. Not from your husband and not from Katja. I don’t know if you’re even getting it from your current man, but you’re getting it from me. So there was you first an’ foremost in my eyes. And there was Daniel afterwards. An’ it’s never been as simple as you thinking I’m using Dan to get to you, Yasmin. Nothin’ is ever simple as that.”
Everything was said. He felt empty of nearly all that he was: poured onto the lino at her feet. She could step right through him or sweep him up and dump him in the street or…anything, really. He was bare and helpless as the day he’d been born.
They stared at each other. He felt the wanting as he’d not felt it before, as if stating it blatantly had increased it tenfold till it gnawed at him like an animal chewing from the inside out.
Then she spoke. Two words only and at first he didn’t know what she meant. “What man?”
“What?” His lips were dry.
“What current man? You said my current man.”
“That bloke. The last time I was here.”
She frowned. She looked towards the window as if seeing a reflection of the past in the glass. Then back at him. She said, “Lloyd Burnett.”
“You di’n’t say his name. He came in-”
“To get his wife’s wig,” she said.
He said, “Oh,” and felt a perfect fool.
His mobile rang then, which saved him from having to say anything more. He flipped it open, said, “Hang on,” into it, and used the blessed intervention as a means to his escape. He took out one of his cards and he approached Yasmin. She didn’t raise the wig stands to defend herself. She wore only a jersey on top-no pocket available-so he slid his card into the front pocket of her jeans. He was careful not to touch her any more than that.
He said, “I got to take this call. Someday, Yas, I hope it’s you ringing.” He was closer to her than she’d ever let him get. He could smell her scent. He could sense her fear.
He thought, Yas, but he didn’t say it. He left the shop and went towards his car, drawing the mobile to his ear.
THE VOICE ON the phone was unfamiliar to him, as was the name. “It’s Gigi,” a young woman said. “You told me to ring you?”
He said, “Who?”
She said, “Gigi. From Gabriel’s Wharf? Crystal Moon?”
The association brought him round quick enough, for which he was grateful. He said, “Gigi. Right. Yeah. Wha’s happened?”
“Robbie Kilfoyle’s been in.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “He made a purchase.”
“You got paperwork on it?”
“I got the till receipt. Right here in front of me.”
“Hang on to it,” Nkata told her. “I’m on my way.”
LYNLEY SENT the message to Mitchell Corsico immediately after he talked to St. James: The investigation’s independent forensic specialist would make a fine second profile for The Source, he told him. Not only was he an international expert witness and a lecturer at the Royal College of Science, but he and Lynley shared a personal history that began at Eton and had spanned the years since then. Did Corsico think a conversation with St. James would be profitable? He did, and Lynley gave the reporter Simon’s contact number. This would be enough to remove Corsico, his Stetson, and his cowboy boots from sight, Lynley hoped. It would keep the rest of the investigation’s team out of the reporter’s mind, as well. At least for a time.
He returned to Victoria Street then, details from the past several hours roiling round in his head. He kept going back to one of them, one offered by Havers in their phone conversation.
The name on the letting agreement at the estate agency-the only name aside from Barry Minshall’s that they could associate with MABIL-was J. S. Mill, Havers had told him. He’d supplied the rest, although she’d already got there: J. S. Mill. John Stuart Mill, if one wished to continue the theme set up at the Canterbury Hotel.
Lynley wanted to think that it was all part of a literary joke-wink wink, nudge nudge-among the members of the organisation of paedophiles. Sort of a slap in the collective face of the unwashed, unread, and uneducated general public. Oscar Wilde on the registration card at the Canterbury Hotel. J. S. Mill on the letting agreement with Taverstock & Percy. God only knew who else they would find on other documents relating to MABIL. A. A. Milne, possibly. G. K. Chesterton. A. C. Doyle. The possibilities were endless.
So, for that matter, were the million and one coincidences that happened every day. But still the name remained, taunting him. J. S. Mill. Catch me if you can. John Stuart Mill. John Stuart. John Stewart.
There was no use denying it to himself: Lynley had felt a quivering in his palms when Havers had said the name. That quivering translated to the questions that police work-not to mention life itself-always prompted the wise man to ask. How well do we ever know anyone? How often do we let outward appearances-including speech and behaviour-define our conclusions about individuals?
I don’t need to tell you what this means, do I? Lynley could still see the grave concern on St. James’s face.
Lynley’s answer had taken him places he didn’t want to go. No. You don’t need to tell me a thing.
What it all really meant was asking that the cup be passed along to someone else, but that wasn’t going to happen. He was in too far, truly “steep’d in blood so deep,” and he couldn’t retrace a single one of his steps. He had to see the investigation through to its conclusion, no matter where each single branch of it led. And there was decidedly more than one branch to this matter. That was becoming obvious.
A compulsive personality, yes, he thought. Driven by demons? He did not know. That restlessness, the occasional anger, the ill-chosen word. How had the news been received when Lynley-ahead of everyone else-had been handed the superintendent’s position after Webberly was struck down in the street? Congratulations? No one congratulated anyone over anything in those days that had followed Webberly’s attempted murder. And who would have thought to, with the superintendent fighting for his life and everyone else trying to find his assailant? So it was not important. It meant absolutely nothing. Someone had to step in, and he’d been tapped to do it. And it wasn’t permanent, so it could hardly have been an important enough detail to make anyone want…decide…be pushed to…No.
Yet everything took him back inexorably to his earliest days among his fellow officers: the distance they’d originally placed between themselves and him who would never be one of the lads, not really. No matter what he did to level the playing field, there would always be what they knew about him: the title, the land, the public school voice, the wealth and the assumed privilege it brought, and who bloody cared except everyone did at the end of the day and everyone probably always would.
But anything more than that-dislike evolving to grudging acceptance and respect-was impossible to consider. It was disloyal, even, to entertain such thoughts. It was divisive and nonproductive, surely.
Yet none of this kept him from having a chat with DAC Cherson in Personnel Management, although his heart was at its heaviest when he did it. Cherson authorised the temporary release of employment records. Lynley read them and told himself they amounted to nothing. Details that could be interpreted any way one wanted: a bitter divorce, a ruthless child-custody situation, spirit-breaking child support, a disciplinary letter for sexual harassment, a word to the wise about keeping fit, a bad knee, a commendation for extra course-work completed. Nothing, really. They amounted to nothing.
Still, he took notes and tried to ignore the sense of betrayal he felt as he did it. We all have skeletons, he told himself. My own are uglier than those of others.
He returned to his office. From where he’d stowed it on top of his desk, he read the profile of their killer. He thought about it. He thought about everything: from meals eaten and meals skipped, to boys disabled by an unexpected shot of electricity. What he thought was no. What he concluded was no. What he did was turn to the phone and ring Hamish Robson on his mobile.
He found him between sessions in his office near the Barbican, where he met with private clients away from the grim surroundings of Fischer Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It was a sideline dealing with normal people in temporary crisis, Robson told him.
“One can cope with the criminal element only so long,” he confided. “But I expect you know what I’m talking about.”
Lynley asked Robson if they could meet. At the Yard, elsewhere. It didn’t matter.
“I’ve a full diary into the evening,” Robson said. “Can we talk on the phone now? I’ve ten minutes before my next client.”
Lynley considered this, but he wanted to see Robson. He wanted more than merely talking to him.
Robson said, “Has something more…Are you all right, Superintendent? May I help? You sound…” He seemed to shuffle papers on the other end of the line. “Listen, I might be able to cancel a patient or two, or move them round a bit. Would that help? I’ve also got some shopping to do and I’d blocked out time for that at the end of the day. It’s not far from my office. Whitecross Street, where it intersects with Dufferin? There’s a fruit and veg stall where I could meet you. We could talk while I make my purchases.”
It would have to do, Lynley thought. But he could handle the preliminaries over the phone. He said, “What time?”
“Half past five?”
“All right. I can do that.”
“If you wouldn’t mind my asking…so that I might think about it in advance? Is there a new development?”
Lynley considered it. New, he thought. Yes and no, he decided. “How confident are you in your profile of the killer, Dr. Robson?”
“It’s not an exact science, naturally. But it’s very close. When you consider it’s based on hundreds of hours of detailed face-to-face interviews…when you consider the length and extent of the analyses of these interviews…the data compiled, the commonalities noted…It’s not like a fingerprint. It’s not DNA. But as a guide-even as a checklist-it’s an invaluable tool.”
“You feel that sure of it?”
“I feel that sure. But why are you asking? Have I missed something? Is there more information I ought to have? I can only work with what you give me.”
“What would you say to the fact that the first five boys killed had all eaten something within the final hour of their lives, while the last boy had eaten nothing in hours? Would you be able to make an interpretation from that?”
A silence while Robson considered the question. He ultimately said, “Not out of context. I wouldn’t like to.”
“What about the fact that the food eaten by the first five boys was identical each time?”
“That would be part of the ritual, I’d say.”
“But why skip it for the sixth boy?”
“There could be dozens of explanations. Not every boy was positioned identically after death. Not every boy had his navel removed. Not every boy had a symbol on his forehead. We’re looking for markers that make the crimes related, but they won’t be carbon copies of each other.”
Lynley didn’t reply to this. He heard Robson say to someone else, voice away from the phone, “Tell her a moment, please.” His next client had arrived, no doubt. They had little enough time to conclude their conversation.
Lynley said, “Fred and Rosemary West. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. How common was that? Could the police have anticipated it?”
“Male and female killers? Or two killers working as a team?”
“Two killers,” Lynley said.
“Well of course, the problem was the disappearance factor in both of those examples, wasn’t it? The lack of bodies and crime scenes to gather information from. When people simply disappear-bodies buried in basements for decades, hidden on the moors, what you will-there’s nothing to interpret. In the case of Brady and Hindley, profiling didn’t exist then, anyway. As for the Wests-and this would be the case for all serial-killing couples-there’s one dominant partner and one submissive partner. One kills, one watches. One starts the process, one finishes it off. But may I ask…Is this where you’re heading with the investigation?”
“Male and female? Two males?”
“Either, I suppose.”
“You tell me, Dr. Robson,” Lynley said. “Could we have two killers?”
“My professional opinion?”
“That’s all you’ve got.”
“Then, no. I don’t think so. I stand by what I’ve already given you.”
“Why?” Lynley asked. “Why stand by what you gave us originally? I’ve just given you two details you didn’t have earlier. Why don’t they change things?”
“Superintendent, I can hear your anxiety. I know how desperate-”
“You don’t,” Lynley said. “You can’t. You don’t.”
“All right. Accepted. Let’s meet at half past five. Whitecross and Dufferin. The fruit and veg man. He’s the first stall you come to. I’ll wait there.”
“Whitecross and Dufferin,” Lynley said. He rang off and carefully replaced the receiver.
He found that he was sweating lightly. His palm left a mark on the telephone. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his face. Anxiety, yes. Robson was right about that.
“Acting Superintendent Lynley?”
He didn’t need to look up to know it was Dorothea Harriman, always appropriate with her appellations. He said, “Yes, Dee?”
She said nothing more. He did look up then. She had an expression asking for forgiveness in advance. He frowned. “What is it?”
“Assistant Commissioner Hillier. He’s on his way down to see you. He rang me up personally and told me to keep you in your office. I said I would, but I’m happy to pretend you were already gone when I got here to tell you.”
Lynley sighed. “Don’t risk your own position. I’ll see him.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. God knows I need something to lighten up my day.”
THE MIRACLE, Barbara Havers found, was that Wendy was not in the clouds this time round. In fact, when Barbara arrived at the woman’s eponymous stall in Camden Lock Market, she was willing to wager that the aging hippie had actually taken the cure. Standing within the confines of her tiny establishment, Wendy still looked like hell on a tricycle-there was something about long grey locks, ashen skin, and multicoloured caftans fashioned from counterpanes of the subcontinent that simply did not appeal-but at least her eyes were clear. The fact that she didn’t remember Barbara’s earlier visit was something of a worry, but she seemed willing to believe her sister when Petula told her from behind the counter of her own establishment, “You were out of it, luv,” at the time of their previous introduction to each other.
Wendy said, “Whoops,” and gave a shrug of her fleshy shoulders. Then to Barbara, “Sorry, dear. It must’ve been one of those days.”
Petula confided to Barbara with no small degree of pride that Wendy was “twelve-stepping it, again.” She’d tried it before and it “hadn’t taken,” but the family had hopes it would this time round. “Met a bloke who gave her the ultimatum,” Petula added under her breath. “And Wendy’ll do anything for a length, you see. Always would. Has the sex drive of a she-goat, that girl.”
Whatever it took, Barbara thought. She said, “Ambergris oil,” to Wendy. “Have you sold any? This would be recently. Last few days, maybe?”
Wendy shook her grey locks. “Massage oil by the litre,” she said. “I’ve six spas who’re my most regular customers. They go in big for relaxants like eucalyptus. But no one’s doing ambergris. Which’s just as well, if you want to know my opinion. What we do to animals, someone out there will do to us eventually. Like aliens from another planet or something. They might like our fat just fine-the way we like whale blubber-and God only knows what they’ll use it for. But just you wait. It’s going to happen.”
“Wendy, luv,” Petula said, with one of those save-it-for-later chimes to her voice. She’d taken out a cloth and was using it to dust candles and the shelves they stood on. “It’s okay, dear.”
“I don’t even know when I last had ambergris oil in stock,” Wendy said to Barbara. “If someone asks for it, I tell them what I think.”
“And has anyone asked for it?” Barbara brought out the e-fits of their possible suspects. She was finding this part of the routine rather tedious, but who really knew when she was going to strike that vein of gold? “One of these blokes, p’rhaps?”
Wendy looked at the drawings. She frowned and then dug a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from deep within her copious cleavage. One of the lenses was cracked, so she used the other like a monocle. No, she told Barbara, neither of these blokes looked like anyone who’d come to the Cloud.
Barbara knew how unreliable her information would be-her drug use considered-so she showed the e-fits to Petula as well.
Petula made a study of both of them. Truth was, there were so many people coming into the market, especially at the weekends. She didn’t like to say one of these blokes had been in, but at the same time, she didn’t like to say neither of them had been in either. They looked a bit like beatnik poets, didn’t they? Or clarinet players in a jazz band. One half-expected to see their sort in Soho, didn’t one? Course one didn’t-not that much any longer-but there was a time-
Barbara created a diversion on Memory Lane with a question about Barry Minshall. “Albino magician” certainly got Petula’s attention-Wendy’s as well-and there was a moment when Barbara thought that the mention of Minshall’s name and a description of him was going to bear fruit. But no, an albino magician dressed in black and wearing dark glasses and a red stocking cap would be fairly memorable, even in Camden Lock Market. Minshall, they both said, was someone they definitely would have remembered.
Barbara realised that the tree of Wendy’s Cloud was not going to produce, no matter how she attempted its pollination. She returned the e-fits to her shoulder bag and left the two sisters to close up for the day, pausing on the pavement outside to light up a fag and consider her next move.
Late afternoon, and she could have gone home, but she had another route to explore. She hated the fact that all she kept turning down was one dead end after another, so she made her decision and went for her car. It was no great distance from Camden Lock to Wood Lane. And she could always go from there to the Holmes Street police station to see what more she could rattle out of Barry Minshall if things came to that.
She made her way north to Highgate Hill, doing a bit of rat-running in order to avoid the rush hour. It took her less time than she’d anticipated, and from there it was easy enough to negotiate the route to Archway Road.
She made one stop prior to taking herself to Wood Lane. A call to the incident room gleaned her the name of the estate agent who was selling the vacant flat in Walden Lodge that she’d heard about from one of the murder squad’s meetings. In the no-stone-left-unturned category, she knew that he was probably a pebble with nothing beneath it, but she went there anyway and had a word with the bloke, waving her e-fits in his direction for good measure. Sod bloody all on a toasted tea cake was what she got for the effort. She felt like a Girl Guide selling biscuits in front of a Weight Watchers’ meeting. There wasn’t a taker anywhere.
She went on to Wood Lane. There, she found the street crowded with cars parked its entire length. These would be the vehicles of commuters who drove in to town from the northern counties and parked to take the underground for the rest of the journey. Among them, the police were still searching for someone who had seen something in the early morning hours of the day that Davey Benton’s body had been found. Beneath the windscreen wiper of each car, a handout was tucked, and Barbara assumed it was this that asked for additional information from the daily commuters. For what it was worth. Perhaps a lot. Perhaps nothing at all.
At Walden Lodge, a descending drive led in the direction of an underground carpark. Barbara pulled her Mini into this drive. She was blocking access, but that couldn’t be helped.
When she climbed the front steps of the squat brick structure-so out of place in a street of otherwise historical buildings-she found that the front door was propped open. A yellow bucket of water held it so, and “The Moppits” was printed in red upon this. So much for security, Barbara thought. She entered the building and called out a hello.
A young man popped his head round the first corner. He had a mop in hand, and he wore a tool belt from which cleaning implements dangled officially. One of the Moppits, Barbara concluded, as above her in the building someone began hoovering.
“Help you?” the young man inquired, hitching up his tool belt. “Not s’posed to let anyone in.”
Barbara showed him her identification. She was working on the Queen’s Wood murder, she told him.
He told her hastily that he knew nothing about that. He and his wife were merely a mobile cleaning service. They didn’t live here. They came in once a week to do the sweeping, mopping, hoovering, and dusting of the common areas. And the windows as well, but only four times a year and today wasn’t one of those days.
It was too much information, but Barbara put that down to nerves: A cop pops up on someone’s horizon and suddenly everything can be open to interpretation. Best explain your life down to the minutest detail.
She had the flat number of the gent who’d seen the light flashing in the woods in the early morning hours when Davey’s body had been found. She had his name as well: Berkeley Pears, which sounded like a brand of tinned fruit to her. She told the Moppit where she was heading and went for the stairs to seek him out.
When she knocked on his door, a dog began yapping behind it. It was the kind of yapping she associated with a terrier in need of discipline, and she wasn’t disabused of this notion when four different locks were released and the opening door allowed a Jack Russell to charge forward, intent upon her ankles. She pulled back and raised her bag to club the animal off, but Mr. Pears appeared in the terrier’s wake. He blew on something that made no noise, but the dog apparently heard it. He-or was it she?-dropped to the floor at once, panting happily, as if a job had been well done.
“Excellent, Pearl,” Pears told the loathsome beast. “Good dog. Treaties?” Pearl wagged her tail.
“She’s supposed to do that?” Barbara said.
“It’s the startle factor,” the dog’s owner replied.
“I could’ve clubbed her. She could’ve been hurt.”
“She’s fast. She’d’ve had you before you had her.” He widened the door and said, “Bowl, Pearl. Now.” The dog dashed inside, presumably to wait by her dish for a reward. “C’n I help you?” Berkeley Pears then asked Barbara. “How did you get into the building? I thought you were management. We’re set to fight a legal battle over this, and she’s trying to intimidate us out of it.”
“Police.” Barbara showed him her ID. “DC Barbara Havers. Could I have a word?”
“This’s about the boy in the woods? I’ve already told them what little I know.”
“Yeah. Got it. But another set of ears…? You never know what’s going to turn up.”
“Very well,” he said. “Come in if you must. Pearlie?”-this in the direction of the kitchen-“Come, darling.”
The dog trotted out, bright eyed and friendly, as if she hadn’t been a nasty little killing machine only moments before. She jumped into her master’s arms and stuck her nose in the breast pocket of his tattersall shirt. He chuckled and dug in another pocket for her treat, which she swallowed without chewing.
Berkeley Pears was a type, there was no doubt of it, Barbara thought. He probably wore patent-leather shoes and an overcoat with a velvet collar when he left his digs. You saw his kind occasionally on the tube. They carried furled umbrellas, which they used as walking sticks, they read the Financial Times as if it meant something to them, and they never looked up till they reached their destination.
He showed her into his sitting room: three-piece suite in position, coffee table arranged with copies of Country Life and a Treasures of the Uffizi art book, modern lamps with metal shades at precise angles suitable for reading. Nothing was out of place in here, and Barbara assumed nothing dared to be…although three noticeable yellowish stains on the carpet gave testimony to at least one of Pearl’s less than salubrious canine activities.
Pears said, “I wouldn’t’ve seen a thing, you understand, if it hadn’t been for Pearl. And you’d think I’d get a thank-you for that, but all I’ve heard is, ‘The dog must go.’ As if cats are less of a bother”-he said cats the way others said cockroaches-“when all the time that creature in number five howls morning and night like it’s being skewered. Siamese. Well. What else would you expect? She leaves the little beast for weeks, while I’ve never left Pearl for so much as an hour. Not an hour, mind you, but does that count? No. One night when she barks and I can’t quieten her quick enough and that is it. Someone complains-as if they don’t all have contraband animals, the lot of them-and I get a visit from management. No animals allowed. The dog must go. Well, we intend to fight them to the very death, I tell you. Pearl goes, I go.”
That, Barbara thought, might have been the master plan. She wedged her way into the conversation. “What did you see that night, Mr. Pears? What happened?”
Pears took the sofa, where he cradled the terrier like a baby and scratched her chest. He indicated the chair for Barbara. He said, “I assumed it was a break-in at first. Pearl began…One can only describe it as hysterical. She was simply hysterical. She woke me from a perfectly sound sleep and frightened me to bits. She was flinging herself-believe me, there is no other word for it-at the balcony doors and barking like nothing I’ve ever heard from her before or since. So you can see why…”
“What did you do?”
He looked marginally embarrassed. “I rather…well, I armed myself. With a carving knife, which was all I had. I went to the doors and tried to see out, but there was nothing. I opened them, and that’s what caused the trouble because Pearl went outside on the balcony and continued barking like a she-devil and I couldn’t get a grip on her and keep hold of the knife, so it all took a bit of time.”
“And in the woods?”
“There was a light. A few flashes. It’s all I saw. Here. Let me show you.”
The balcony opened off the sitting room, its large sliding window covered by a set of blinds. Pears raised these and opened the door. Pearl scrambled from his arms onto the balcony and commenced barking, much as described. She yapped at an ear-piercing volume. Barbara could understand why the other residents had complained. A cat was nothing in comparison with this.
Pears grabbed the Jack Russell and held her snout. She managed to bark anyway. He said, “The light was over there, through those trees and down the hill. It has to have been when the body…well, you know. And Pearl knew it. She could sense it. That’s the only explanation. Pearl. Darling. That is enough.”
Pears stepped back inside the flat with the dog and waited for Barbara to do likewise. For her part, though, Barbara remained on the balcony. The woods began to dip down the hillside directly behind Walden Lodge, she saw, but that would be something one would not know from looking at the lodge from the street. The trees grew in abundance here, offering what would be a thick screen in summer but what was now a crosshatching of branches bare in midwinter. Directly below them and right up to the brick wall that defined the edge of the lodge’s property, shrubbery grew unrestrained, making access from Walden Lodge into the woods a virtual impossibility. A killer would have had to thrash through everything from holly to bracken in order to get from here to the spot where the body had been dumped, and no killer worth his salt-let alone a bloke who’d so far managed to eliminate six youths and leave virtually no evidence behind when he dumped their bodies-would have attempted that. He would have deposited a treasure trove of useful clues in his wake. And he hadn’t done so.
Barbara stood there thoughtfully, surveying the scene. She considered everything that Berkeley Pears had told her. Nothing he’d reported was out of place, but there was one detail that she didn’t quite understand.
She reentered the flat, pulling the balcony door closed behind her. She said to Pears, “There was a cry of some sort heard sometime after midnight from one of the flats. We’ve had that information from the interviews we’ve done with all the residents in this building. You’ve not mentioned it.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t hear it.”
“What about Pearl?”
“What about her?”
“If she heard the disturbance in the woods at this distance-”
“I suggest she sensed it rather than heard it,” Pears corrected.
“All right. We’ll say she sensed it. But then why didn’t she sense something wrong in the building round midnight when someone cried out?”
“Possibly because no one did.”
“Yet someone heard it. Round midnight. What d’you make of that?”
“A desire to help the police, a dream, a mistake. Something that didn’t happen. Because if it did, and if it was out of the ordinary, Pearl would have reacted. Good grief, you saw how she was with you.”
“That’s how she always is when there’s a knock at the door?”
“Under some conditions.”
“What would those be?”
“If she doesn’t know who’s on the other side.”
“And if she does know? If she hears a voice or smells a scent and recognises it?”
“Then she makes no noise. Which was why, you see, her barking at three forty-five in the morning was so unusual.”
“Because if she doesn’t bark, it means she knows what she’s seeing, hearing, or smelling?”
“That’s right,” Pears said. “But I don’t actually see what this has to do with anything, Constable Havers.”
“That’s okay in the scheme of things, Mr. Pears,” Barbara said. “Fact is, I do.”