With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  Barbara took it from her. She looked at Azhar. She said, “But…Sorry, but is it not allowed, or something?” That seemed unlikely. She knew a little about their customs, and gift giving was one of them.

  “And?” Azhar said to his daughter without answering Barbara’s question. “There is more, is there not?”

  Hadiyyah lowered her head again. Barbara could see that her lips were trembling.

  Her father said, “Hadiyyah. I shall not ask you—”

  “I fibbed,” the little girl blurted out. “I fibbed to my dad and he found out and I’m meant to give this back to you in consee…con…consequence.” She raised her head. She’d begun to cry. “But thank you, because I thought it was lovely. I liked ‘Peggy Sue’ especially.” Then she spun on her heel and fled, back towards the front of the house. Barbara heard her sob.

  She looked to her neighbour. She said, “Listen, Azhar. This is actually my fault. I had no idea Hadiyyah wasn’t supposed to go to Camden High Street. And she didn’t know where we were going when we set off. It was something of a joke anyway. She was listening to some pop group and I was giving her aggro about them and she was saying how great they are and I decided to show her some real rock ’n’ rock and I took her down to the Virgin Megastore but I didn’t know it was forbidden and she didn’t know where we were going.” Barbara was out of breath. She felt like an adolescent getting caught for being out after curfew. She didn’t much like it. She calmed herself and said, “If I’d known you’d forbidden her to go to Camden High Street, I never would have taken her there. I’m dead sorry, Azhar. She didn’t mention it straightaway.”

  “Which is the source of my irritation with Hadiyyah,” Azhar said. “She should have done so.”

  “But, like I said, she didn’t know where we were going till we got there.”

  “Once you arrived, was she wearing a blindfold?”

  “Of course not. But then it was too late. I didn’t exactly give her a chance to say something.”

  “Hadiyyah should not need an invitation to be truthful.”

  “Okay. Agreed. It happened, and it won’t happen again. At least let her keep the CD.”

  Azhar glanced away. His dark fingers—so slender, they looked like a girl’s—moved beneath his trim jacket to the pocket of his pristine white shirt. He felt there and brought forth a packet of cigarettes. He shook one out, appeared to think about what to do next, and then offered the packet to Barbara. She took this as a positive sign. Their fingers brushed as she took a cigarette from him, and he lit a match that he shared with her.

  “She wants you to stop smoking,” Barbara told him.

  “She wants many things. As do we all.”

  “You’re angry. Come in. Let’s talk about this.”

  He remained where he was.

  “Azhar, listen. I know what you’re worried about, Camden High Street and all that. But you can’t protect her from everything. It’s impossible.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t seek to protect her from everything. I merely seek to do what’s right. But I find that I don’t always know what that is.”

  “Being exposed to Camden High Street isn’t going to pollute her. And Buddy Holly”—here Barbara gestured with the CD—“isn’t going to pollute her either.”

  “It’s not Camden High Street or Buddy Holly that comprises my concern,” Azhar said. “It is the lie, Barbara.”

  “Okay. I can see that. But it was only a lie of omission. She just didn’t tell me when she could have told me. Or should have told me. Or whatever.”

  “That is not it at all.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “She lied to me, Barbara.”

  “To you? About—”

  “And this is something I will not accept.”

  “But when? When did she lie to you?”

  “When I asked her about the CD. She said you had given it to her—”

  “Azhar, that was true.”

  “—but she failed to include the information about where it had come from. That in itself slipped out when she was chatting about CDs in general. About how many there were to choose from at the Virgin Megastore.”

  “Bloody hell, Azhar, that’s not a lie, is it?”

  “No. But the outright denial of having been in the Virgin Megastore is. And this is something that I will not accept. Hadiyyah is not to start that with me. She will not begin lying. She will not. Not to me.” His voice was so controlled and his features so rigid that Barbara realised far more was being discussed than his daughter’s initial venture into prevarication.

  She said, “Okay. I get it. But she feels wretched. Whatever your point is, I think you made it.”

  “I hope so. She must learn that there are consequences to the decisions she makes, and she must learn this as a child.”

  “I don’t disagree. But…” Barbara drew in on her cigarette before she dropped it to the front step and ground it out. “It seems like making her admit her wrongdoing to me—sort of like in public?—is punishment enough. I think you should let her keep the CD.”

  “I’ve decided the consequences.”

  “You can bend, though, can’t you?”

  “Too far,” he said, “and you break on the wheel of your own inconsistencies.”

  “What happens then?” Barbara asked him. When he didn’t reply, she went on quietly with, “Hadiyyah and lying…This isn’t really what it’s all about. Is it, Azhar.”

  He replied, “I will not have her start,” and he stepped back, preparatory to leaving. He added politely, “I have kept you from your toast long enough,” before he returned to the front of the property.

  NO MATTER HIS conversation with Barbara Havers and her reassurance on the subject, Winston Nkata didn’t rest easily beneath the mantle of detective sergeant. He’d thought he would—that was the hell of it—but it wasn’t happening, and the comfort he wanted in his employment hadn’t materialised for most of his career.

  He hadn’t started out in police work feeling uneasy about his job. But it hadn’t been long before the reality of being a black cop in a world dominated by white men had begun to sink in. He’d noticed it first in the canteen, in the way that glances sidled over to him and then slid onto someone else; then he felt it in the conversations, how they became ever so slightly more guarded when he joined his colleagues. After that it was in the manner that he was greeted: with just a shade more welcome than was given the white cops when he sat with a group at table. He hated that deliberate effort people made to appear tolerant when he was near. The very act of diligently treating him like one of the lads made him feel like the last thing he’d ever become was one of the lads.

  At first he’d told himself he didn’t want that anyway. It was rough enough round Loughborough Estate hearing himself called a fucking coconut. It would be that much worse if he actually ended up becoming part of the white establishment. Still, he hated being marked as phony by his own people. While he kept in mind his mother’s admonition that “it doesn’t make you a chair ’f some ignoramus calls you a chair,” he found it increasingly difficult just to keep himself moving in the direction he wanted to go. On the estate, that meant to and from his parents’ flat and nowhere else. Otherwise, it meant upward in his career.

  “Jewel, luv,” his mother had said when he phoned her with the news of his promotion. “Doesn’t matter one bit why they promoted you. What matters is they did, and now the opening’s there. You walk through it. And you don’t look back.”

  But he couldn’t do that. Instead, he continued to feel weighed down by AC Hillier’s sudden notice of him when before he’d been nothing more to the man than a passing face to which the assistant commissioner could not have put a name if his continued existence had depended upon it.

  Yet, there was still so much truth to what his mother had said. Just walk through the opening. He had to learn how to do it. And the entire subject of openings applied to more than one area of his life, which was what he was left thinkin
g about once Barb Havers departed for the day.

  He took a final look at the pictures of the dead boys before he too left the Yard. He did it to remind himself that they were young—terribly young—and as a consequence of their racial background, he had obligations that went beyond merely bringing their killer to justice.

  Below, in the underground carpark, he sat for a moment in his Escort and thought about those obligations and what they called for: action in the face of fear. He wanted to slap himself stupid for even having that fear. He was twenty-nine years old, for God’s sake. He was an officer of the police.

  That alone should have counted for something, and it would have done in other instances. But it counted for nothing in this situation, when being a cop was the single profession in life least designed to impress. Yet…It couldn’t be helped that he was a cop. He was also a man, and a man’s presence was called for.

  Nkata finally set off with a deep breath. He followed a route across the river to South London. But instead of heading home, he took a detour round the curved brick shell of the Oval and drove down Kennington Road in the direction of Kennington Station.

  The tube itself marked his destination, and he found a place to park nearby. He bought an Evening Standard from a vendor on the pavement, using the activity to build up his courage for walking the length of Braganza Street.

  At its bottom, Arnold House—part of Doddington Grove Estate—rose out of a lumpy carpark. Across from this building, a horticultural centre grew behind a chain-link fence, and it was against this fence that Nkata chose to lean, with his newspaper folded beneath his arm and his gaze on the third-floor covered walk that led to the fifth flat from the left.

  It wouldn’t take much effort to cross over the street and weave his way through the carpark. Once there, he was fairly certain the lift would be available since, more often than not, the security panel giving access to it was broken. How much trouble would it be, then, to cross, to weave, to punch the button, and then to make his way to that flat? He had a reason to do so. There were boys being murdered across London—mixed-race boys—and inside that flat lived Daniel Edwards, whose white father was dead but whose black mother was very much alive. But then that was the problem, wasn’t it. She was the problem. Yasmin Edwards.

  “Ex-convict, Jewel?” his mother would have said had he ever had the nerve to tell her about Yasmin. “What’n God’s name you thinking?”

  But that was easy enough to answer. Thinking of her skin, Mum, and how it looks when a lamp shines against it. Thinking of her legs, which ought to be wrapped round a man who wants her. Thinking of her mouth and the curve of her bum and the way her breasts rise and fall when she’s angry. Tall she is, Mum. Tall to my tall. Good woman who made one very big mistake, which she’d paid for like she ought.

  And anyway, Yasmin Edwards wasn’t really the point. Nor was she the target of duty. That was Daniel, who at nearly twelve could well be in the sights of a killer. Because who knew how their killer was choosing his victims? No one. And until they did know, how could he—Winston Nkata—walk away from giving a warning where it might be needed?

  All that was required of him was to walk across the street, dodge a few cars in the wretched carpark, depend upon the security panel being broken, ring the bell for the lift, and knock on that door. He was fully capable of doing that.

  And he was going to. Later, he swore that to himself. But just as he was about to lift his foot in step number one of however many it was going to take to get to Yasmin Edwards’ front door, the woman herself came along the pavement.

  She wasn’t walking from the underground station as Nkata himself had done. Rather, she was coming from the opposite direction, from beyond the gardens at the bottom of Braganza Street where, from her little shop in Manor Place, she offered hope in the form of makeup, wigs, and makeovers to black women suffering from disorders of the body and the soul.

  In reaction to seeing her, Nkata found himself fading back against the chain-link fence and into a pool of shadow. He hated himself the moment he did it, but he just couldn’t move forward as he ought to have done.

  For her part, Yasmin Edwards walked steadily towards Doddington Grove Estate. She didn’t see him in the shadows, and that alone was reason to talk to her. Good-looking woman on the street alone in this neighbourhood after dark? Need to be cautious, Yas. Need to be on the lookout. Someone jump you…hurt you…rape you…rob you…? What’s Daniel going to do if his mum goes the way of his dad and dies on him?

  But Nkata couldn’t say that. Not with Yasmin Edwards herself being the reason why Daniel’s father was dead. So he stayed in the shadows and he watched her, even as he felt the terrible shame of his breath going faster and his heart beating harder than it ought.

  Yasmin moved forward along the pavement. He saw that her 101 plaits with their beaded ends were gone now, her hair close cropped and no longer making the soft chorus that he would otherwise have heard from where he stood. She shifted the carrier bags she held from one hand to the other, and she felt in the pocket of her jacket. He knew that she was seeking her keys. End of the day, a meal to be got for her boy, life going on.

  She reached the carpark and crisscrossed through the ill-defined bays. At the lift, she punched the security code that would give her access, and then she punched the button to call it. She quickly disappeared within.

  She came out again on the third floor and strode towards her door. When she put her key in its lock, it opened before she had a chance to unlock it. And there was Daniel, backlit by a shifting glow that would be coming from the television set. He took the carrier bags from his mother, but as he was about to move off, she stopped him. Hands on hips, she stood. Head cocked. Weight on one of her long, lithe legs. She said something and Daniel came back to her. He set the bags down and submitted to a hug. Just at the point when it looked like the hug was being only endured and not enjoyed, his own arms went round his mother’s waist. Then Yasmin kissed the top of his head.

  After that, Daniel took the carrier bags inside and Yasmin followed him. She shut the door. A moment later, she appeared at the window which, Nkata knew, looked out from the sitting room. She reached for the curtains to shut them against the night, but before she did that, she stood for twenty seconds or so, gazing into the darkness, her expression set.

  He was still in the shadows, but he could sense it, he could feel it: She hadn’t looked his way once, but Nkata could swear that Yasmin Edwards had known all along that he was there.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A DAY LATER, STEPHENSON DEACON AND THE DIRECTORATE of Public Affairs decided the time had ripened enough for the first press briefing. Assistant Commissioner Hillier, given the word from above, instructed Lynley to be there for the big event, with “our new detective sergeant” in tow. Lynley wanted to be there as little as Nkata, but he knew the wisdom of at least appearing to cooperate. He and the DS descended via the stairs to arrive promptly at the conference. They encountered Hillier in the corridor.

  “Ready?” The AC spoke to Lynley and Nkata as he paused to examine his impressive head of grey hair in the glass cover of a notice board. Unlike the other two men, he looked pleased to be there and he seemed to be restraining himself from rubbing his hands in anticipation of the coming confrontation. Clearly, he expected the briefing to click along like the well-oiled machine it was designed to be.

  He didn’t wait for a response to his question. Instead, he ducked into the room. They followed.

  The print and broadcasting journalists had been relegated to the rows of seats fanning out before the dais. The television cameras were set to shoot over their heads. This would illustrate later for the public—via the nightly news—that the Met was making all possible efforts to keep the citizenry in the picture through an ostensibly open and welcoming venue for their human conduits of information.

  Stephenson Deacon, the head of the Press Bureau, had himself chosen to make the prefatory remarks at this first briefing. His appearance not
only signaled the importance of what was about to be announced, but it also telegraphed to the general public the appropriate level of police concern. Only the presence of the head of the DPA could have made a more impressive statement.

  The newspapers had, of course, jumped upon the story of a body found on the top of a tomb in St. George’s Gardens, as anyone with a brain at New Scotland Yard had known they would. The reticence of the police at the crime scene, the arrival there of an officer from New Scotland Yard long before the removal of the body, the lapse of time between the body’s discovery and this press conference…All of it had whetted the appetite of the journalists and spoke of a much bigger story to come.

  When Deacon turned the meeting over to him, Hillier played on this. He began with the larger purpose of the press conference, which was, he declared, “to make our young people aware of the dangers they face in the streets.” He went on to sketch out the crime under investigation, and just at the point at which anyone might have logically wondered why a briefing was being held to inform the media of a killing they’d already featured at the top of the news and on the first pages of their papers, he said, “At this juncture, we’re looking for witnesses to what appears to be a series of potentially related crimes against young men.”

  It took less than five seconds for the word series to lead ineluctably to serial, at which point the reporters jumped aboard like commuters leaping on the night’s final train. Their questions erupted like pheasants from beaten bushes.

  Lynley could see the pleasure in Hillier’s features as the reporters asked just the sort of questions that he and the Press Bureau had hoped they would ask, leaving unspoken the very topics that he and the Press Bureau had wished to avoid. Hillier held up a hand with an expression that communicated both his understanding and his tolerance of their outburst. He then went on to say precisely what he had planned to say, regardless of their questions.

  The individual crimes, he explained, had initially been investigated by the murder squads most closely associated with the locations in which the bodies had been found. Doubtless their brother and sister journalists who were responsible for gathering the news at each of these relevant stations would be happy to supply the notes they themselves had already assembled on the killings, which would save everyone valuable time just now. For its part, the Met was going to press forward with a thorough investigation of this most recent murder, tying it to the others if there was a clear indication that the crimes were related. In the meantime, the Met’s immediate concern—as he’d already mentioned—was the safety of the young people who populated the streets, and it was crucial that the message get out to them at once: Adolescent boys appeared to be the target of one or more killers. They needed to be aware of that and take appropriate precautions when away from home.