With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  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 eve
n 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 Ul
rike 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.