The reverend asked to see his identification, as if not believing what his bodyguard had told him. Nkata handed it over and inspected Savidge much as Savidge inspected him. He wondered if the minister’s background was sufficient explanation for his adoption of all things African: Nkata knew that Savidge had grown up in Ruislip, the decidedly middle-class child of an air-traffic controller and a science teacher.
Savidge handed Nkata’s ID back to him. “So you’re the sop, are you?” he asked. “How stupid does the Met actually think I am?”
Nkata met Savidge’s eyes, and he held them for five seconds before he spoke, telling himself the other man was angry and with very good reason. There was truth to what he was saying as well.
He said, “We got something wants clarifying, Mr. Savidge. Thought it best ’f I come to do it in person.”
Savidge didn’t reply at once, as if he were taking the measure of Nkata’s refusal to rise to his baiting. He finally said, “What wants clarifying?”
“The boys you had in care. You told my guv that you had three of the four boys you were foster dad to placed in other homes cos of your wife. Her not speaking good English or something, I think you said.”
“Yes,” Savidge said, although he sounded wary. “Oni’s learning the language. If you’d like to see for yourself…”
Nkata moved his hand in a not-what-I-want gesture. He said, “I’m sure she’s learning English, all right. But fact is, Reverend, you di’n’t have the boys put somewhere else. They were taken away by Social Services before you ever married your wife, and what I don’t unnerstan is why you lied ’bout that to Superintendent Lynley when you must’ve figured we’d be looking into you.”
Reverend Savidge didn’t answer at once. A knock sounded at the door. It opened and the guard stuck his head inside. “Sky News want to know will you give them a word on camera with their reporter.”
“They’ve had my word,” Savidge replied. “Clear the whole lot out of here. We’ve people to feed.”
The man said, “Right,” and closed the door again. Savidge went to his desk and sat behind it. He gestured to a chair for Nkata.
Nkata said, “You want to tell me about it? Arrest for lewd conduct was what the records said. How’d you get the matter settled without more in the files?”
“It was a misunderstanding.”
“What sort of misunderstanding ends up with ’n arrest for lewd conduct, Mr. Savidge?”
“The sort that comes from having neighbours who’re waiting with bated breath for the black man to put a step wrong.”
“Meaning?”
“I sunbathe in the nude in the summer, when we actually have a summer. A neighbour saw me. One of the boys had come out of the house, and he decided to join me. That was it.”
“What? Two blokes lying starkers on the lawn or something?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
Savidge pressed his fingers together beneath his chin, as if considering whether to go on. He made his decision. “The neighbour…It was ridiculous. She saw the boy undressing. She saw me helping him. With his shirt or his trousers. I don’t know which. She leapt to an hysterical conclusion and she made a phone call. The result was an unpleasant few hours with the local authorities in the person of an aging police constable whose brains didn’t equal the leaps his imagination was making. Social Services swept in and took the boys off, and I ended up explaining myself to a magistrate. By the time the matter was officially sorted out, the boys were in other homes and it seemed heartless to uproot them once again. Sean was my first placement since then.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. A naked male adult, a naked male adolescent. A rare bit of sunshine. End of story.”
Not quite, of course, Nkata thought. There was the reason, as well, but he reckoned he knew what it was. Savidge was black enough for a white society to label him a minority, but he was far from black enough to be enthusiastically embraced by his brothers. The reverend was hoping that the summer sun could give him briefly what nature and genetics had denied him, and the rest of the year in a tanning bed could do much the same. Nkata thought about the irony of it and about how mankind’s behaviour was so often dictated by the sheer and lunatic misperception that went by the name Not Good Enough. Not white enough here, not black enough there, too ethnic for one group, too English for another. At the end of the day, he believed Savidge’s story of naked suntans in the garden. It was just on the right side of madness to be true.
He said, “I had a word with Sol Oliver over in North Kensington. He says Sean came asking to live with him.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Life wasn’t easy for Sean. He’d lost his mother to prison, and he’d been shuffled round the system for two years by the time I got him. I was his fifth placement, and he was tired of it all. If he could talk his dad into taking him in, at least he’d be somewhere permanently. That’s what he wanted. It’s hardly an unreasonable hope.”
“How’d he find out about Oliver?”
“From Cleopatra, I suppose. His mum. She’s in Holloway. He visited her every chance he got. When it could be arranged.”
“Anyplace else he went? Aside from Colossus?”
“Bodybuilding. There’s a gym up Finchley Road just a bit. Square Four Gym. I told your superintendent about it. After Colossus, Sean would stop here to check in with me—say hello and whatever—and then he’d head either home or to that gym.” Savidge seemed to reflect on this piece of information for a moment. Then he went on, reflectively, “I expect it was the men that drew him there, although I didn’t think about that at the time.”
“What did you think about?”
“Just that it was good he had an outlet. He was angry. He felt he’d been dealt a rotten hand in life and he wanted to change it. But now I see…the gym…It could have been how he was trying to make that change. Through the men who go there.”
Nkata sharpened to this. “In what way?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Savidge said.
“Then how?”
“How? In the way of all boys. Sean had a hunger and a thirst for men that he could admire. That’s normal enough. I just pray to God that wasn’t what killed him.”
HOPETOWN ROAD glided east off Brick Lane, deep within a crowded area of London that had been through at least three incarnations within Barbara Havers’ lifetime. The neighbourhood still held a multitude of grimy-looking wholesale garment shops and at least one brewery belching the scent of yeast into the air, but over the years its inhabitants had altered from Jewish to Caribbean to Bengali.
Brick Lane was attempting to make the most of its current ethnicity. Foreign restaurants abounded and along the pavement, and the streetlamps—heralded at the bottom of the street by a fanciful archway wrought of iron with a vaguely mosquelike shape—bore ornate fixtures suspended among filigree-iron decoration. Not what you’d see in Chalk Farm, Barbara thought.
She found Griffin Strong’s home directly across from a little green where hillocks offered children an area in which to play and a wooden bench offered their minders a place to sit. The Strong residence was one of a line of redbrick, plain terraced houses, their individuality expressed in their choice of front doors and front fences and in what they’d decided to do with their patch of front gardens. The Strongs had opted for a draughts-board pattern of large tiles on the ground, and they’d covered them with an array of pot plants that someone had been tending with devotion. Their fence was brick like the house and their door was oak with an oval of stained glass in the middle. All very nice, Barbara noted.
When she rang the bell, a woman answered. She had a crying baby on her shoulder and magenta workout attire on her body. She said, “Yes?,” over the sound of an exercise programme coming from within the house. Barbara showed her identification. She said she’d appreciate a word with Mr. Strong, if he was about. “Are you Mrs. Strong?” she added.
“I’m Arabella Strong,�
�� the woman said. “Come in, please. Just let me get Tatiana settled,” and she carried the squalling infant into the reaches of the house, leaving Barbara to mouth Tatiana? and to follow in her wake.
In the sitting room, Arabella laid the baby on a leather sofa, where a small pink blanket was topped by a smaller pink hot-water bottle. She put the baby on her back, wedged her in place with pillows, and set the hot-water bottle on her abdomen. “Colic,” she said to Barbara over the noise, “the warm seems to help.”
That proved to be true. In a few moments, Tatiana’s screaming subsided to whimpering so that the remaining din in the room came only from the telly. There, via video and to the accompanying ka-boom-diddy-boom of music, an impossibly sculpted woman was panting “lower abs, come on, lower abs, come on,” as she rhythmically thrust her legs and hips into the air from a supine position. As Barbara watched, the woman suddenly leaped to her feet and gave the camera a sideways view of her stomach. It was as flat as a Dutch horizon gone vertical. She was obviously someone who ignored the better things in life. Like Pop-Tarts, Kettle Crisps, battered cod, and chips soaked in vinegar. Miserable cow.
Arabella used the remote to switch off the television and the video recorder. She said, “I expect she’s at that at least sixteen hours a day. What do you think?”
“Rubens is rolling in his grave, you ask me. And she needs to be put out of my misery.”
Arabella chuckled. She sank onto the sofa next to her baby and motioned to a chair for Barbara. She reached for a towel and pressed it against her forehead. She said, “Griff isn’t here. He’s at the factory. We’ve a silk-screen business.”
“Where is it, exactly?” Barbara sat and dug her notebook from her shoulder bag. She flipped it open to take down the address.
Arabella gave it to her—it was in Quaker Street—and watched as Barbara wrote this down. She said, “This is about that boy, isn’t it? The one who was murdered? Griff told me about him. Kimmo Thorne, he was called. And about the other boy who’s gone missing. Sean.”
“Sean’s dead as well. His foster dad’s identified him.”
Arabella glanced at her baby, as if in reaction to this. “I’m sorry. Griff’s devastated about Kimmo. He’ll feel the same when he hears about Sean.”
“Not the first time someone died on his watch, I understand.”
Arabella smoothed Tatiana’s hairless head, her expression soft, before she replied. “As I said, he’s devastated. And he had nothing to do with either boy’s death. With any death. At Colossus or otherwise.”
“It makes him look a bit careless, though, if you know what I mean.”
“As it happens, I don’t.”
“Careless with other people’s lives. Or bloody unlucky. Which do you reckon it is?”
Arabella stood. She went to a metal bookshelf at one side of the room and took up a packet of cigarettes. She lit one jerkily and just as jerkily inhaled. Virginia Slims, Barbara saw. That figured. Mental imaging, or something. And Arabella needed it: She had her work cut out for her, getting back into shape. She was pretty enough—good skin, nice eyes, dark, silky hair—but she looked as if she’d gained a few stone too many during her pregnancy. Eating for two, she’d probably told herself.
“If it’s alibis you’re after—that is what your sort look for, isn’t it?—then Griff’s got one. Her name is Ulrike Ellis. If you’ve been to Colossus, you’ve met her.”
This was a truly interesting turn. Not the fact of Ulrike and Griff, which Barbara had already assumed was a probability, but the fact that Arabella knew about Ulrike and Griff. And didn’t appear upset about them. What was that all about?
Arabella seemed to read her mind. “My husband’s weak,” she said. “But all men are weak. When a woman marries, she marries knowing this and she decides in advance what she’s going to accept when it eventually crops up. She never knows how the weakness is going to manifest itself, but I suppose that’s part of the…the journey of discovery. Will it be drink, food, gambling, excessive work, other women, pornography, football hooliganism, addiction to sports, addiction to drugs? In Griff’s case, it turned out to be an inability to say no to women. But that’s hardly a surprise, considering how they throw themselves at him.”
“Tough to be married to someone so…” Barbara looked for the right word.
“Beautiful? Godlike?” Arabella offered. “Apollo? Narcissus? Whoever? No, it’s not difficult at all. Griff and I plan to stay married to each other. We’re both from broken homes, and we don’t intend that for Tatiana. As it happens, I’ve been able to put it all in perspective. There are worse things than a man who gives in to women’s advances. Griff’s been through this before, Constable. Doubtless, he’ll go through it again.”
Hearing this, Barbara wanted to shake the bewilderment out of her head. She was used to the idea of women fighting for their men or women seeking revenge after an infidelity or women harming themselves—or others, for that matter—when faced with an adulterous spouse. But this? Calm analysis, acceptance, and c’est la vie? Barbara couldn’t decide if Arabella Strong was mature, philosophical, desperate, or simply mad as a hatter.
She said, “So how’s Ulrike his alibi?”
“Compare the dates of the murders with his absences from home. He’ll have been with her.”
“All night?”
“Enough of it.”
And wasn’t that just bloody convenient? Barbara wondered how many phone calls had been placed among the three of them to cook this one up. She also wondered how much of Arabella’s placid acceptance was placid acceptance and how much was actually the result of the vulnerability a woman felt once she had a child to care for. Arabella needed her man to bring home the bacon if she herself wanted to stay home and care for Tatiana.
Barbara flipped her notebook closed and thanked Arabella for her time and her willingness to speak openly about her husband. She knew that if anything more was to be gained from this journey to East London, it wasn’t going to turn up here.
Back at her car, she dug out the A to Z and looked up Quaker Street. Luck was with her for once. She found it was just south of the railway tracks leading to Liverpool Street Station. It appeared to be a short one-way thoroughfare that connected Brick Lane to Commercial Street. She could walk there and work off at least one mouthful of her morning’s Pop-Tart. The jacket potato she’d inhaled at Camden Lock would have to wait.
“WE’RE HAVING a devil of a time with all the phone calls, Tommy,” John Stewart said. The DI had laid a neatly clipped document precisely in front of him. As he spoke, he lined up the corners of it within the curve of the conference table. He straightened his tie, checked his fingernails, and gazed round the room as if to assess its condition, reminding Lynley as he always did, that Stewart’s wife had probably had more than one reason for ending their marriage. “We’ve got parents clamouring from all over the country,” he went on. “Two hundred with missing kids at this point. We need more help on the phones.”
They were in Lynley’s office, trying to work out a change in the deployment of the personnel. They didn’t have enough manpower, and Stewart was right. But Hillier had refused to give them more without the magical production of a “result.” Lynley thought he’d had that with the identification of yet another body: fourteen-year-old Anton Reid, who’d been the first victim of their killer, his body left in Gunnersbury Park. A mixed-race boy, Anton had disappeared from Furzedown on the eighth of September. He’d been a gang member with arrests for malicious mischief, trespassing, petty theft, and assault, all of which had been relayed to New Scotland Yard earlier in the day by the Mitcham Road police station, who’d admitted having written Anton off as yet another runaway when his parents first reported him missing. The newspapers were going to be in a filthy uproar over that piece of data, Hillier had told Lynley at some considerable volume on the phone when he was given the news. So when the hell did the superintendent intend to have something to present to the press office other than a bleeding ide
ntity for another sodding body?
“Get on it,” had been the AC’s parting remark. “I don’t expect you lot need me down there wiping your arses. Or do you?”
Lynley had held his tongue and his temper. He’d called Stewart into his office and there they sat, sorting through the action reports.
Finally and definitively, there was nothing from Vice on any of the identified boys beyond Kimmo Thorne. Aside from Kimmo, none of them were engaged in illicit sex as rent boys, transvestites, or streetwalkers. And despite their otherwise chequered histories, none of them could be associated with either the sale or the purchase of drugs.
The interview with the taxi driver who’d discovered Sean Lavery’s body in the Shand Street tunnel had given them nothing. A background check on the man had shown a perfectly clean record without even a parking ticket to mar his reputation.
The Mazda in the tunnel could be associated with no one even tangentially involved in the investigation. With its number plates missing, its engine gone, and its body torched, there was no way to tell whose it was, and no witness could attest to how it had ended up in the tunnel in the first place or even how long it had been there. “That’s a real nonstarter” was how Stewart put it. “We’re better off using the manpower elsewhere. I suggest we have a rethink on those blokes surveilling the crime scenes as well.”
“Nothing there?”
“Sod all.”
“Christ, how can no one not have seen anything worth reporting?” Lynley knew his question would be taken as rhetorical, and it was. He also knew the answer. Big city. People on the underground and in the street all avoiding each other’s eyes. The public’s philosophy of see nothing, hear nothing, leave me alone was the very plague of their jobs as cops. “You’d think someone would at least have seen a car being torched. Or a car on fire, for the love of God.”
“As to that…” Stewart flipped through his neatly assembled paperwork. “We’ve had a wee bit of joy from background. To the point, Robbie Kilfoyle and Jack Veness. Two of the blokes from Colossus.”
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