“PUT HIM THROUGH TWO IDENTITY PARADES,” WAS HOW DI Stewart had initially greeted the news that Hamish Robson had cooperated as far as the Davey Benton murder was concerned but had refused to admit to anything else. “Have Minshall and Masoud both look at him.”
To Barbara’s way of thinking, two identity parades was a waste of time since Barry Minshall had already tentatively identified Robson from the photograph she’d nicked at his mother’s flat. But she tried to see it as DI Stewart would: not as the compulsion towards overkill that had long made the DI a notorious and tiresome personality at the Yard but as a tremor in the earth designed to rattle Robson into further admissions. The very act of standing in a line of men and waiting to learn if an unseen witness would finger you as the perpetrator of a crime was unnerving. Having to do it twice and hence understanding that there was yet another witness to God only knew what…At the end of the day, that was actually a very nice touch, and Barbara had to admit it. So she made the arrangements to have Minshall carted over to the Shepherdess Walk station, and she stood behind the two-way mirror while the magician picked out Robson in an instant, saying, “That’s the man. That’s two-one-six-oh.”
Barbara had the pleasure of saying to Robson, “That’s one down, mate,” so as to leave him dangling in the wind of suspense. Then she cooled her heels while Muwaffaq Masoud worked his way from Hayes into the City via a wasted eternity on the Piccadilly line. Even though she understood the game plan that Stewart was following, at that point she would have preferred that Stewart follow it with someone other than her. So she still tried to work her way out of having to hang about the Shepherdess Walk station waiting for Masoud to turn up. He was, she told DI Stewart, going to say the same as Minshall, so wouldn’t her time be better spent looking for the lockup where Robson’d left the van? There was going to be a mountain of evidence against the sod when they found that lockup, wasn’t there?
Stewart’s response had been, “Set about the job you’ve been assigned, Constable,” whereupon he doubtless returned to his list of to-dos. He was a great one for making lists, was Stewart. Barbara could only imagine how his day began at home as he consulted his self-made schedule to see what time he was meant to clean his teeth.
Her own day had begun with Breakfast News on the telly. They ran the best of the CCTV footage that they’d managed to get off a house in a street not far from Eaton Terrace, and to this they added a more ill-defined image that they’d got from Sloane Square underground station. These were the individuals wanted for questioning in the shooting of Helen Lynley, Countess of Asherton, the presenters told their early morning audience. Anyone who recognised either one of them was asked to phone the incident room at the Belgravia Street police station.
Once the presenters had said her name, they then kept referring to Helen as Lady Asherton. It was as if the individual she was had been completely engulfed by her marriage. The fifth time the presenters used her title, Barbara turned off the telly and tossed the remote into a corner. She couldn’t cope with any more of it.
Despite the hour, she wasn’t hungry. She knew that there was no way she was going to be able to face something even vaguely resembling breakfast, but she also knew she had to have something, so she forced herself to eat a tin of unheated American sweet corn followed by half a plastic container of rice pud.
When she’d worked herself up to it, she picked up the phone and tried to get real news of Helen. She couldn’t bear the thought of talking to Lynley, and she didn’t expect him to be at home anyway, so she phoned St. James’s number. This time she managed to get a real person on the line and not a voice on an answer machine. That person was Deborah.
When she had her there, Barbara wasn’t quite sure what to ask. How is she? was ludicrous. How’s the baby? was just as bad. How’s the superintendent coping? was the only query even remotely reasonable, but it was also unnecessary because how the hell was the superintendent supposed to be coping, knowing the decision that faced him: a modest proposal of keeping his wife a dead body in a bed for the next few months, with air pumping mechanically in and out of her, while their child was reduced to…They just didn’t know. They knew it was bad. They just didn’t know how bad. How close to disaster was close enough?
Barbara settled on saying to Deborah, “It’s me. I just wanted to check in. Is he…? I don’t know what to ask.”
“Everyone’s arrived,” Deborah told her. Her voice was very quiet. “Iris-that’s Helen’s middle sister, she lives in America, did you know?-she was the last to get here. She made it, finally, last night. She had a terrible time getting out of Montana; they’ve had so much snow. Everyone stays at the hospital in a little room they’ve set up. It’s not far from hers. They go in and out. No one wants to leave her alone.”
She meant Helen, of course. No one wanted Helen left alone. It was an extended vigil for all of them. How could anyone decide? she wondered. But she couldn’t ask. So she said, “Has he talked to anyone? A priest, a minister, a rabbi, a…I don’t know, anyone?”
There was a silence. Barbara thought perhaps she’d intruded too far. But finally Deborah spoke again, and her tone had changed to such careful tightness that Barbara knew she was crying.
“Simon’s been there with him. Daze-that’s his mother-she’s there as well. There’s a specialist supposed to fly in today, someone from France, I think, or perhaps it’s Italy, I don’t really remember.”
“A specialist? What sort?”
“Neonatal neurology. Something like that. Daphne wanted it done. She said if there’s the slightest possibility that the baby wasn’t harmed…She’s taking this very badly. So she thought that an expert on babies’ brains…”
“But Deborah, how’s that going to help him cope? He needs someone to help him deal with what he’s going through.”
Deborah’s voice dropped. “I know.” She gave a broken laugh. “It’s exactly what Helen hated, you know. All this soldiering on that people do. Stiff upper lips and just getting on with things. God forbid anyone should sound like a whinger. She hated that, Barbara. She’d prefer to have him screaming from the rooftop. At least, she would say, that’s real.”
Barbara felt her throat tighten. She couldn’t talk any longer. So she said, “If you see him, tell him…” What? I’m thinking of him? Praying for him? Going through the motions of bringing all this to an end when she knew it was only beginning for him? What was the message, exactly?
She needn’t have worried.
“I’ll tell him,” Deborah said.
On her way to her car, Barbara saw Azhar watching her somberly from the French windows of his flat. She raised a hand but she didn’t stop, not even when Hadiyyah’s solemn little face appeared next to him and his arm went round her thin shoulders. The parent-child love of it was too much at the moment. Barbara blinked away the image.
When Muwaffaq Masoud finally arrived at the Shepherdess Walk station those hours later, Barbara recognised him mostly by his confusion and unease. She met him in reception and introduced herself, thanking him for coming such a distance to help with the inquiry. He smoothed his beard unconsciously-she was to see that he did this a lot-and he polished his spectacles once she took him to the room from which they’d view the line of men.
He gazed upon them long and hard. They turned for him, one at a time. He asked that three of them step forward-Robson was one of them-and he took a lengthier look at them. Finally he shook his head.
“The middle gentleman resembles him,” he said, and Barbara felt a rush of pleasure since he’d fingered Robson. But the pleasure died when he went on. “But I must say it is only a resemblance based on the shape of his head and the type of body. The robustness of it. The man I sold the van to was older, I think. He was bald. He had no facial hair.”
“Try to think of this bloke here without the goatee,” Barbara said. She didn’t add that Robson could have shaved his thinning hair off before he went out to Hayes to purchase a van.
Masoud tried to do as she asked. But his conclusion remained unchanged. He could not say for certain that the man he was looking at was the same man who’d purchased a van from him in the summer. He was terribly sorry about that, Constable. He sincerely wished to be of help.
Barbara took this news back to New Scotland Yard. She kept her report to Stewart brief. It was yes on Minshall and no on Masoud, she told the DI. They needed to find that sodding van.
Stewart shook his head. He was going over someone’s report-red pencil in hand like a frustrated schoolteacher-and he tossed it down on his desk before he said, “That whole line’s a nonstarter, as things turn out.”
“Why?” Barbara asked.
“Robson’s telling the truth.”
She gawped at him. “What d’you mean?”
“I mean copycat, Constable. C-o-p-y and c-a-t. He killed the kid and arranged it to look like one of the other murders.”
She said, “What the hell?,” and shoved her hand through her hair in sheer frustration. “I just spent four bloody hours putting this bloke into identity parades. D’you mind telling me why you had me waste my time like that if you knew…” She couldn’t even finish.
The DI said with his usual finesse, “Christ, Havers. Don’t get your knickers caught in the crack, all right? No one’s keeping secrets from you. St. James only just rang us with the details. He’d told Tommy it was likely, nothing else. Then the attack on Helen happened, and Tommy never passed the information on to us.”
“What information?”
“The dissimilarities revealed by the postmortem exam.”
“But we always knew there were dissimilarities: the manual strangulation, the lack of a stun gun, the rape. Robson himself pointed out that things escalate when-”
“The boy hadn’t eaten in hours, Constable, and there was no trace of ambergris oil on him.”
“That could be explained-”
“Every other boy had eaten within an hour of his death. Every other boy had consumed the identical thing. Beef. Some bread. Robson didn’t know that and he didn’t know about the ambergris oil. What he did to Davey Benton was based on what he knew of the crime, which was superficial: what he saw in the preliminary report and in the photographs of the scene. That’s it.”
“Are you saying Minshall had nothing to do…Robson had nothing…?”
“They’re responsible for what happened to Davey Benton. End of story.”
Barbara sank heavily into a chair. Round her, the incident room was muted. Obviously, everyone knew about the dead end they’d all just run headlong into. “Where does that leave us?” she asked.
“Back to alibis, background checks, prior arrests. Back, I daresay, to Elephant and Castle.”
“We’ve damn well done-”
“So we do it again. Plus every other man whose name has come up in the course of the investigation. They’re all going under the microscope. Make yourself part of that.”
She looked round the room. “Where’s Winnie?” she asked.
“Belgravia,” Stewart said. “He’s having a closer look at the CCTV tapes they got off Cadogan Lane.”
No one said why, but no one had to. Nkata was looking at the CCTV tapes because Nkata was black and a mixed-race boy was featured on them. God, but they were so obvious, Barbara thought. Have a look at these snaps of the shooter, Winnie. You know how it is. All of them look the same to us and, besides, if this is gang related…You get the picture, don’t you?
She picked up a phone and punched in the numbers of Nkata’s mobile. When he answered, she heard voices babbling in the background.
“Masoud said Robson’s not our bloke,” she told him. “But I expect you’re up to speed on that.”
“No one knew till St. James phoned Stewart, Barb. This was…Must’ve been round eleven this morning? Wasn’t personal.”
“You know me too well.”
“Not like I don’t go through the same dance.”
“How’re you doing? What d’they expect you to be able to tell them?”
“From looking at the tapes? I don’t think they know. They’re trying everything at this end. I’m just another source.”
“And?”
“Sweet FA. Kid’s mixed race. Mostly white, some black, and something else. Don’t know what. Th’other bloke in the picture? He could be anyone. He knew what he was doing. Kept himself covered, face away from the camera.”
“Well, that was one excellent use of your time, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t blame them, Barb. Doing what they can. They got a decent lead, though. Not five minutes before you rang. Came through by phone.”
“What is it? Where’d it come from?”
“Over West Kilburn. Harrow Road station’s got a snout in the community they depend on reg’larly, some black bloke with a big street rep and a nasty disposition, so no one messes with him. ’Cording to Harrow Road, this bloke saw the pictures in the paper from the CCTV, and he phoned them up and gave them a name. Could be nothing, but Harrow Road seem to think it’s worth looking into. Could be, they say, we got the shooter we’re looking for.”
“Who is it?”
“Didn’t get the name. Harrow Road are picking him up for questions. But if he’s the one, he’s going to crack. No doubt about it. He’s going to talk.”
“Why? How can they be so sure?”
“’Cause he’s twelve years old. And this i’n’t the first time he’s been in trouble.”
ST. JAMES GAVE Lynley the news. They met not in the corridor this time but rather in the small room that the family had been occupying for what seemed to Lynley like months on end. Helen’s parents had been talked into decamping, going in the company of Cybil and Daphne to a flat they owned in Onslow Square, where Helen herself had once lived. Penelope had returned to Cambridge to check on her husband and her three children. His own family were taking a few hours for rest and for a change of scene in Eaton Terrace. His mother had phoned when they’d arrived, saying, “Tommy, what shall we do with the flowers?” Scores of bouquets on the front porch, she said, a coverlet of them that descended the steps and went onto the pavement. He had no suggestions to give her. Offerings of sympathy could not touch him, he found.
Only Iris remained, stalwart Iris, the least Clydelike of all the Clyde sisters. Not a hint of elegance anywhere about her, her long hair no-nonsense and pulled back from her face with slides in the shape of horseshoes. She wore no makeup, and her skin was lined from the sun.
She’d wept when she’d first seen her youngest sister. She’d said fiercely, “This is not supposed to happen here, God damn it,” and he’d understood from that that she meant violence and death brought about by a gun. The provenance of this was America, not England. What was happening to the England she’d known?
She’d been gone too long, he wanted to tell her. The England she’d known had been dead for decades.
She’d sat with Helen for hours before she spoke again, and then it was to say to him quietly, “She’s not here, is she?”
“No. She’s not here,” Lynley agreed. For the spirit of Helen was gone entirely, now moved onward to the next part of existence-whatever that was. What remained was just the housing for that spirit, kept from putrescence by the questionable miracle of modern medicine.
When St. James arrived, Lynley took him to the waiting area, leaving Iris with Helen. He listened to the news about the Harrow Road police and their snout, but what he took in was a single piece of information: trouble with the law prior to this.
He said, “What sort of trouble, Simon?”
“Arson and bag snatching, according to Youth Offenders up there. He’s had a social worker attempting to counsel the family for some time. I spoke with her.”
“And?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. An older sister doing community service for a street mugging and a younger brother no one knows much about. They all live with an aunt and her boyfriend on a council estate. That’s all I know.”
“Youth Offenders,” Lynley said. “He has a social worker, then.”
St. James nodded. His gaze stayed on Lynley and Lynley could feel him making a study of him, evaluating him even as he too drew together the facts like strands of a web whose centre was always and forever the same.
“Youth at risk,” Lynley said. “Colossus.”
“Don’t torture yourself.”
He gave a bleak laugh. “Believe me, I don’t need to. The truth is doing the job well enough.”
TO ULRIKE, given the current circumstances, there were no two uglier words than internal investigation. That the board of trustees intended to gather information about her was bad enough. That they intended to do it through interviews and reviews was worse. She had enemies aplenty at Colossus now, and three of them were going to be happy as the dickens to take the opportunity to throw a few tomatoes against the image of herself that she’d tried to build.
Neil Greenham headed the list. He’d probably been storing his rotten little informational fruit grenades for months now, just waiting for the appropriate time to hurl them. For Neil was fighting for complete control of Colossus, and this was something that Ulrike had not realised till the latest development of Bensley and Richie turning up in her office. Of course, he’d never been a team player, had Neil-witness him actually losing a teaching job in a climate where the government was begging for teachers!-and while that had always been something of a red flag that Ulrike now admitted she should have noted, it was nothing compared to the insidious side of him that had been revealed with the unexpected advent in Elephant and Castle of two of the board members, not to mention the questions they had asked upon their arrival. So Neil was going to revel in the chance to tar her with a brush he’d no doubt been dipping in pitch since the first time she’d looked at him sideways.
Then there was Jack. The whole what-had-she-been-thinking of Jack. Her errors with Jack didn’t have to do with trotting off to talk to his landlady aunt, however. They had more to do with giving him a paid position at Colossus in the first place. Oh yes, that was supposed to be the whole theory about the organisation: to build the sense of self in malefactors till they didn’t have to malefact any longer. But she’d let fall by the wayside a critical piece of knowledge that she’d always possessed about individuals like Jack. They didn’t take kindly to others’ suspicions about them, and they were especially nasty when it came to the idea-however mistaken-that someone had grassed them up or was considering doing so. So Jack would be looking for payback, and he’d get it. He wouldn’t be able to think things through to the point of understanding how taking part in the facilitation of her demise at Colossus might come back and bite him in the arse once a replacement for her was found.
Griff Strong, on the other hand, understood that only too well. He would do what it took to preserve his position in the organisation, and if that meant making ostensibly reluctant allegations of sexual harassment from a female superior who couldn’t keep her hands off his delectable albeit married and oh-so-hesitant body, then that was what he would do. So what Neil Greenham planted in the minds of the board of trustees and what Jack Veness watered, Griff would cultivate. He’d wear that blasted fisherman’s sweater for the interview, as well. If he told himself anything, he would list the reasons why they’d come to a situation of every man for himself. Arabella and Tatiana would top that list. “Rike, you know I’ve got personal responsibilities. You always knew that.”
The only person Ulrike could come up with who might speak up in support of her was Robbie Kilfoyle, and that was merely because as a volunteer and not a paid employee, he’d have to be careful when interviewed. He’d have to walk a fine line of neutrality because he’d have no other way to protect his future and move himself along in the direction he wanted, which was paid employment. He couldn’t want to deliver sandwiches for the rest of his life, could he? But he had to be positioned, had Rob. He had to see himself as a player on her team and no one else’s.
She went in search of him. It was late in the day. She didn’t check the time, but the darkness outside and the emptiness of the building told her it was long after six and probably closer to eight. Robbie often worked later into the evenings, putting things back in order. There was a good chance he was still in the back somewhere, but if he wasn’t, she was determined to track him down.
He was nowhere in the building, however. The kit room was compulsively neat-something to compliment Rob on when she saw him, Ulrike thought-and surgery could have been performed in the practice kitchen so tidy was it. The computer lab had been seen to as well, as had the assessment meeting room. Rob’s careful marks were evident everywhere.
Rational thought told Ulrike to wait till the next afternoon to speak to Robbie. He would turn up round half past two as always, and she could thank him and forge a bond with him then. But anxiety suggested she start forging straightaway, so she looked up Rob’s phone number and rang his house. If he wasn’t there, she reckoned, she could leave a message with his dad.
But the double ringing went on and on. Ulrike listened to it for a good two minutes before she rang off and went on to plan B.
She was, of course, flying by the seat of her jeans, and she knew it. But the part of her that was saying, Relax, go home, have a bath, drink some wine, you can do all this tomorrow was outshouted by the part of her exclaiming that time was flying and the machinations of her enemies were well under way. Besides, her stomach had been riding above her lungs, it seemed, for most of the day. She was never going to be able to breathe, eat, or sleep with ease till she did something to alter that.
And anyway, she was a doer, wasn’t she? She’d never sat round and waited to see how events unfolded.
In this instance, that meant corralling Rob Kilfoyle so he’d be ready to take her part. The only way she could see to do that was to get on her bicycle and find him.
It took the A to Z to accomplish the first part of the plan, since she had no clue where Granville Square was once she had Rob’s address in hand. She found it tucked to the east of King’s Cross Road. This was a definite plus. She would merely have to work her way up to Blackfriars Bridge, cross the river, and head north. It was simple, and its simplicity told her the journey to Granville Square was meant to be.
She saw it was later than she’d thought once she was outside and aboard her bicycle. The commuter traffic had long since thinned out, so the trip up Farringdon Street-even in the vicinity of Ludgate Circus-wasn’t as white knuckling as she’d expected.
She made good time to Granville Square, a four-sided terrace of simple Georgian town houses in various states of disrepair and renovation, typical of so many neighbourhoods in London. In the centre of the square was the ubiquitous patch of nature, this one not locked off, barred, and otherwise kept private to all but paying residents of the nearby houses, but rather open to anyone who wanted to walk, read, play with a dog, or watch children romp in the miniature playground along one side. Rob Kilfoyle’s house faced the middle of this playground. It was dark as a tomb, but Ulrike parked her bike by the railing and went up the steps anyway. He could be in the back, and now that she’d come, she wasn’t about to leave without making an attempt to roust him out of there if he was within.
She knocked but gained no reply. She rang the bell. She tried to peer in the front windows, but she had to resign herself to the admission that other than affording her exercise, the ride across town to this borderland between St. Pancras and Islington had been wasted.
“He isn’t home, our Rob,” a female voice declared behind her. “No surprise in that, though, poor lad.”
Ulrike turned from the door. A woman was watching her from the pavement. She was shaped like a barrel, with a similarly shaped, wheezing English bulldog on a lead. Ulrike went back down the steps to join her.
“D’you happen to know where he is?” She introduced herself as Rob’s employer.
“You that sandwich woman?” The woman said she was, “Sylvia Puccini. Missus. No relation by the way, if you’re musical. Live three doors down. Known our Rob since he was a toddler.”
“I’m Robbie’s other employer,” Ulrike said. “At Colossus.”
“Didn’t know he had another employer,” Mrs. Puccini said, eyeing her carefully. “Where’d you say?”
“Colossus. We’re an outreach programme for youth at risk. Robbie’s not strictly an employee, I suppose. He volunteers in the afternoons. After he does his sandwich round. But we consider him one of us all the same.”
“Never mentioned it to me.”
“You’re close to him?”
“Why d’you ask?”
Mrs. Puccini sounded suspicious, and Ulrike could sense that they might easily head into Mary Alice Atkins-Ward territory if she pursued this route. She smiled and said, “No particular reason. I thought you might be since you’ve known him so long. Like a second mum or something.”
“Hmm. Yes. Poor Charlene. God rest her dear tormented soul. Alzheimer’s, but Rob would have told you that, I expect. She went off early winter last year, poor thing. Didn’t know her own son from shoe leather at the end. Didn’t know anyone, if it comes down to it. And then his dad. He hasn’t had an easy time of it for the last few years, our Rob.”
Ulrike frowned. “His dad?”
“Dropped like a stone. Last September, this was. Setting off to work like always and drops like a hundredweight. Falls straight down the Gwynne Place Steps right over there.” She indicated the southwest end of the square. “Dead before he ever hit the ground.”
“Dead?” Ulrike asked. “I didn’t know Rob’s dad was also…He’s dead? You’re sure?”
In the light of a streetlamp, Mrs. Puccini cast her a look that indicated how bizarre she thought the question was. “If he’s not, luv, we all stood round and watched someone else get sent off to be cremated. And that’s not very likely, is it?”
No, Ulrike had to agree, it certainly wasn’t. She said, “I suppose it’s just that…You see, Rob’s never mentioned his dad passing away.” On the very much contrary, she added to herself.
“Well, he wouldn’t, I expect. I can’t say Rob’d ever be the sort to go shopping for pity, no matter how bad he felt about his dad’s passing. Vic was one who didn’t ever tolerate whingers, and you know what they say: as the sapling’s bent. But make no mistake about it, my dear. That boy felt deeply when he found himself alone.”
“There are no other relations?”
“Oh, there’s a sister somewhere, a lot older than Rob, but she took off years ago and didn’t show up to either funeral. Married, kids, Australia or who knows where. Far as I know, she’s not been in touch since she was eighteen.” Mrs. Puccini gazed at Ulrike more sharply then, as if evaluating her. When she next spoke, it was apparent why. “On the other hand, dear, between you, me, and Trixie here”-she indicated the dog with a shake of the lead, which the animal apparently took as a sign to resume her walk because she lumbered to her feet from where she’d been squatting gustily at Mrs. Puccini’s ankles-“he wasn’t a very nice bloke, that Victor.”
“Rob’s father.”
“As ever was. A real shocker when he went like that, true, but not a lot of hearts were breaking at the thought of it in this neighbourhood, if you must know.”
Ulrike heard this, but she was still attempting to process the first bit of information: that Robbie Kilfoyle’s dad was in fact dead. She was comparing this to what Rob had told her recently…Sky Television, wasn’t it? Something called Sail Away? All she said to Mrs. Puccini was, “I do wish he’d told me. It helps to talk.”
“Oh, I expect he’s talking.” Unaccountably, Mrs. Puccini nodded once again towards the Gwynne Place Steps. “There’s always a friendly ear when you’re paying for it.”
“Paying?” Friendly ears and paying suggested one of two things: prostitution, which seemed about as much Rob’s style as armed robbery, or psychotherapy, which seemed equally unlikely.
Mrs. Puccini appeared to know what she was thinking because she gave a hoot of laughter before she explained. “The hotel,” she said. “At the base of the steps. He goes to the bar there most nights. I expect that’s where he is right now.”
This proved to be the case when Ulrike bade Mrs. Puccini and Trixie good night and headed across the square and down the steps. She found that they led to an unassuming and unmistakably postwar tower block, heavily given over to chocolate-coloured bricks and minimal exterior decoration. Inside, however, it boasted a lobby done up in faux art deco, its walls hung with paintings depicting well-heeled men and women lounging and partying between the two world wars. At one end of this lobby, a door marked the entrance to the Othello Bar. It seemed strange to Ulrike that Robbie-or anyone from the neighbourhood-would choose a hotel rather than a nearby pub in which to do his drinking, but she decided that the Othello Bar had one quality to recommend it, at least on this night: There was virtually no one present. If Robbie wished to bend the sympathetic ear of the barman, that individual was entirely available. There were seats at the bar to boot, another feature making the Othello perhaps more welcoming than the corner pub.
Robbie Kilfoyle was at one of these seats. Two of the tables were occupied by businessmen working at laptops with their lagers before them; one other table was taken up by three women whose enormous bums, white trainers, and choice of drink at this time of night-white wine-suggested they were American tourists. Otherwise the bar was empty. Thirties music played from speakers in the ceiling.
Ulrike slid onto the stool next to Robbie. He glanced her way once, then again when the sight of her registered with him. His eyes widened.
“Hi,” she said. “One of your neighbours said you might be here.”
He said, “Ulrike!,” and looked round her as if to see if she was accompanied by someone. He was wearing a snug black jersey, she noted, which emphasised his physique in a way that his usual neatly ironed white shirt had never done. Lessons from Griff? she wondered. He had quite a nice body.
The barman heard Rob exclaim and came to take her order. She said she’d have a brandy, and when he fetched it for her, she told Rob that Mrs. Puccini had suggested she look for him here. “She said you’d been coming here regularly since your dad died,” Ulrike added.
Robbie looked away and then back at her. He didn’t attempt to obfuscate, and Ulrike had to admire him for that. He said, “I didn’t like to tell you about it. That he’d died. I couldn’t think of a way to tell you. It seemed like it would’ve been…” He thought about it, it appeared, as he turned his pint of lager between his hands. “It would have been like asking for special treatment. Like hoping someone’d feel sorry for me and give me something as a result.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Ulrike asked. “I hope nothing anyone’s done at Colossus would make you feel you had no friends to confide in.”
“No, no,” he said. “I don’t think that. I s’pose I just wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
“Are you now?” This was, she saw, an opportunity to forge the loyalty bond with Robbie. While she had bigger concerns than the death of a man that had taken place months ago-a man she had never even met-she wanted Robbie to know that he had a friend at Colossus and that friend was sitting right next to him in the Othello Bar.
“Am I ready to talk about it?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“Painful?”
A glance in her direction. “Why d’you say that?”
She shrugged. “It seems obvious. You apparently had a close relationship with him. You lived together, after all. You must have spent a great deal of time together. I remember your telling me about how the two of you watched tele-” She stopped, the words cut off by the realisation. She twirled her brandy glass slowly and made herself finish. “You watched television with him. You did say you watched television with him.”
“And we did,” he replied. “My dad was a bugger and a half on good days, but he never went after anyone when the telly was on. I think it hypnotised him. So whenever we were alone together-especially after Mum finally went into hospital-I turned on the telly to keep him off my back. Force of habit when I was talking to you about watching the telly with him, I guess. That’s all we ever really did together.” He drained his beer. “Why’d you come?” he asked.
Why had she come? Suddenly, it seemed rather unimportant. She sifted through topics to find one that was simultaneously believable and innocuous. She said, “Actually, to thank you.”
“What for?”
“You do so much round Colossus. Sometimes you don’t get acknowledged enough.”
“You came round here for that?” Robbie sounded incredulous, as any reasonable person might.
Ulrike knew the ground was treacherous here, so she decided that opting for the truth was wise. “More than that, really. I’m being…well…investigated, Rob. So I’m sorting out who my friends are. You must have heard.”
“What? Who your friends are?”
“That I’m being investigated.”
“I know the cops’ve been round.”
“Not that investigation.”
“Then what?”
“The board of trustees are looking into my performance as director of Colossus. You must have known they came round today.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why must I have known? I’m pond scum over there. Least important and last informed.”
He said it casually, but she could tell he was…what? Frustrated? Bitter? Angry? Why hadn’t she seen this before? And what was she supposed to do about it now, other than apologise, make a vague promise about things changing round Colossus, and go on her way?
She said, “I’m going to try to change that, Rob.”
“If I take your part in the coming conflict.”
“I’m not saying-”
“It’s okay.” He shoved his pint glass away, shaking his head when the barman offered him another. He settled his bill and hers and said, “I understand it’s a game. I get the politics of everything. I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest you were.”
“No offence’s been taken. You’re doing what you have to do.” He slid off his stool. “How’d you get here?” he asked. “You didn’t bike over, did you?”
She told him she had done. She finished off her brandy and said, “So I’d better set off.”
He said, “It’s late. I’ll take you home.”
“Take me? I thought you cycled as well.”
“To work,” he said. “Otherwise, no. I got Dad’s van off him when he died in the summer. Poor sod. He bought himself a camper for his pension years and dropped dead the next week. Never even had a chance to use it. Come on. We can fit your bike inside. I’ve done it before.”
“Thanks, but that’s really not necessary. It puts you to trouble, and-”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s not any trouble.” He took her arm. He said, “’Night, Dan,” to the barman and he guided Ulrike not to the door through which she’d come but towards a corridor. This led, she found, to the toilets and, beyond them, to the kitchen, which he entered. Only a single cook remained, and he said, “Rob,” with a nod of hello as they passed through. She saw there was another exit here, an escape route for the kitchen workers should a fire start, and this was the door that Robbie chose. It took them to a narrow carpark behind the hotel, canyoned on one side by the building itself and on the other side by a slope at the top of which was Granville Square. In a far dark corner of the carpark, a van stood waiting. It looked old and harmless, with rust spots pitting the faded white lettering on its side.
“My bike,” Ulrike began.
“Up in the square? We’ll sort that out. Get in. We’ll drive round to pick it up.”
She looked round the carpark. It was dimly lit and otherwise deserted. She looked at Robbie. He shot her a smile. She thought of Colossus and how hard she’d worked and how much would fall into ruin if she was made to hand it over to someone else. Someone like Neil. Someone like Griff. Anyone, in fact.
Some things needed a leap of faith, she decided. This was one of them.
At the van, Robbie opened the door for her. She climbed inside. He shut the door. She felt for the seat belt but couldn’t find it anywhere above her shoulder. When Robbie joined her and saw her searching, he started the van up and said, “Oh, sorry. That’s a bit tricky. It’s lower than you’d expect. I’ve got a torch here somewhere. Let me give you some light.”
He rustled round on the floor next to his own seat. Ulrike watched him bring up a torch. He said. “This should be of some help,” and she turned back to reach over for the belt once again.
Everything happened in less than three seconds after that. She waited for the light to shine from the torch. She said, “Rob?,” and then felt the jolt run through her body. She gasped for breath.
The first spasm shook her. The second rendered her semiconscious. The third teetered her on the edge from which she slid into the dark.