In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

  In the darkness she could just make out the downward slope of fields to the south of the windmill and beyond them the distant rise of land again, above which hung a speckled-bright mantle of stars. To the west the scattered lights of the nearby village sequinned the darkness. To the north lay the weed-knotted fields they’d driven along to arrive at this place. And somewhere nearby—she knew it, she believed it, and she would prove it to herself as soon as Robin returned—sat Baverstock School for Boys.

  This was the connection she was looking for. This was the tie that bound London to Wiltshire. And this was the unbreakable bond between Dennis Luxford and the death of his child.

  24

  LYNLEY HADN’T REALIZED how much Helen had become part of the fabric of his life until he had breakfast alone the next morning. He’d skipped breakfast entirely on the previous day, thereby avoiding a prolonged and solitary engagement over eggs and toast. But since he’d skipped dinner as well, he was feeling lightheaded by midnight. He could have done with a snack at that point, but he wasn’t up to rustling round the kitchen. He decided instead just to pass out in bed and take care of his need for sustenance in the morning. So he left a note in the kitchen—“Breakfast. For one.”—and Denton had complied with his usual dedication to Lynley’s nutrition.

  Half a dozen serving dishes were lined up on the sideboard in the dining room. Two kinds of juice stood ready in jugs. Cornflakes, Weetabix, and muesli were arranged next to a bowl and another jug of milk. Denton’s strong suit was that he always followed directions. His weakness was not knowing when to stop. Lynley could never decide if the younger man was a frustrated actor or an even more frustrated set designer.

  After a bowl of cereal—he chose the Weetabix—he dipped into the serving dishes and helped himself to eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and bangers. It was not until he sat down with this second course that he became aware of how uncomfortably silent the entire house was. He ignored the illusion of claustrophobia that the silence produced. He gave his attention to The Times. He was wending his way through the editorial page—two columns and seven letters on the hypocrisy of the Tory Party’s Recommitment to Basic British Values as reflected in the recent actions of the East Norfolk MP and his Paddington rent boy—when he realised he’d read the same castigatory paragraph three times without the slightest idea of its contents.

  He pushed the newspaper away. There’d be plenty more to read when he got his hands on this morning’s edition of The Source. He raised his head and looked at what he’d been avoiding since he’d entered the dining room: Helen’s empty chair.

  He hadn’t phoned her last night. He could have done. He might have used as an excuse the fact that he’d seen St. James and made his apologies for the row he’d provoked among them on Monday afternoon. But there had been a strong emotion underlying the activity Helen had been engaged in on Monday night—that winnowing of utterly useless clothing for the poor of Africa—and if he spoke to her, he was fairly certain that he’d learn exactly what the emotion was. Since her current frame of mind and heart had obviously arisen from his lashing out at her and at his friends, Lynley knew that to approach her now was to run the risk of hearing something he didn’t wish to hear.

  Avoiding her was sheer emotional cowardice, and he knew it. He was attempting to pretend all was right with his world in the hope that pretending would make it so. Skipping breakfast yesterday had been part of the pretence. Better to rush off with his mind fully occupied by details of the investigation than to find his heart clouded by the fear that through his bullheaded stupidity, he may have lost or at least irreparably damaged what he prized most. Giving His human creations the ability to love had to be the Divinity’s most ingenious act of self-amusement, Lynley thought. Let them fall for each other and then drive each other mad, He must have schemed. What a bloody good laugh it will be to watch the chaos that ensues when I get the man-woman chemistry just right.

  Chaos had certainly ensued in his life, Lynley admitted. From the moment eighteen months ago when he’d realised he’d come to love Helen, he’d felt like Crane’s man in pursuit of the horizon. The more he tried to reach his destination, the endlessly farther it seemed to recede.

  He pushed away from the dining table and crumpled up the linen napkin as Denton came into the room. “Were you expecting the Micawbers for breakfast?” Lynley enquired pleasantly.

  Typically the allusion was lost on the younger man. If it hadn’t been created by Andrew Lloyd Webber for consumption in the West End, it simply didn’t exist. “Pardon?” Denton said.

  “Nothing,” Lynley said.

  “Dinner tonight, then?”

  Lynley nodded towards the sideboard. “Reheat that.”

  Denton saw the dawn. “Did I cook too much? It was just that I didn’t know for certain if one really meant one.” He directed a wary look at Helen’s chair. “I mean, I did get your note, but I thought Lady Helen might actually…” He somehow managed to look earnest, regretful, and concerned simultaneously. “You know. Women.”

  “Clearly not as well as you know them,” Lynley said. He left Denton to clear away the remains. He took himself off to New Scotland Yard.

  Havers phoned him as he was negotiating his way through the commuters, the suitcase laden travellers, and the double-decker tour coaches that clogged every artery near Victoria Station. They’d found the probable location where Charlotte Bowen had been held, she reported in a voice that attempted to sound casual but didn’t quite manage to carry it off without giving a hint of the pride she felt in her achievement. It was a windmill not far from Great Bedwyn and, more important, less than a mile from the Kennet and Avon Canal. Not the same spot along the canal where the body had been dropped, mind you, but with a narrow-boat hired expressly for the purpose, the killer could have stowed her body below deck, putted happily along to Allington, dumped her in the reeds, and gone on his way. Or, conversely, he could have driven her there because it wasn’t that far and Robin had pointed out…

  “Robin?” Lynley asked. He braked to avoid hitting a mohawk-haired boy with a ring through his left nipple and a push-chair curiously draped with black netting.

  “Robin Payne. Remember? The DC I’m working with? I’m staying at his—”

  “Oh yes. Right. That Robin.” He hadn’t remembered. He’d been too consumed with his own affairs to remember. But he remembered now. And from the lilt of Havers’ voice, he found himself wondering what, other than the identity of a killer, was in the process of being detected in Wiltshire.

  She went on to tell him that she’d left the crime scene team to go over the windmill. She’d be returning there as soon as she ate. She hadn’t eaten yet because she’d got in so late and she hadn’t slept much on the previous night and she thought she deserved a bit of a lie-in, so…

  “Havers,” Lynley told her, “carry on. You’re doing fine.”

  He wished he could have said the same for himself.

  At New Scotland Yard, Dorothea Harriman generously imparted the news in passing that AC Hillier was on the prowl, so Detective Inspector Lynley might want to keep his head low until something other than the Bowen case came up to occupy the Assistant Commissioner’s attention. Lynley said to her curiously, “You know what I’m working on, Dee? I thought all this was top secret.” To which she replied serenely, “Nothing’s secret in the ladies’ loo.”

  Brilliant, he thought.

  The top of his desk was a landslide of accumulating information. Centred among the folders, reports, faxes, and telephone messages was a copy of this morning’s Source. Appended to it was a note in Winston Nkata’s microscopic script. Lynley put on his spectacles and read it: Ready for the shit to hit? He detached the note and looked at the tabloid’s front page. From what he could see, Dennis Luxford had followed the kidnapper’s instructions to the letter, writing the article without sparing either himself or Eve Bowen. He’d accompanied it with relevant dates and time frames. And he’d associated it with the kidnapping and mur
der of Bowen’s daughter. He wrote about taking responsibility for Charlotte’s death by being reluctant to reveal the truth before this moment, but he made no mention of what had prompted him to write the story: the abduction of his son. He was doing everything possible to ensure the boy’s safety. Or so it seemed.

  This would certainly escalate the media frenzy that was feeding upon Eve Bowen. It brought Luxford into the spotlight, true, but the tabloids’ interest in him would be small potatoes compared to their desire to have at her. That consideration—what Eve Bowen was going to face and how accurately she had predicted having to face it—stirred disquiet in Lynley. He set The Source aside and began to go through the other material on his desk.

  He scanned the autopsy report that Havers had faxed him from Wiltshire. He read what he already knew: The drowning had not been accidental. The child had been rendered unconscious first, so that she would die without a struggle. The substance that had been used to drug her was a benzodiazepine derivative called diazepam. Its common name was Valium. A prescription drug, it was sometimes used as a sedative, sometimes used as a tranquilliser. In either case, enough of it in the bloodstream produced the same effect: unconsciousness.

  Lynley highlighted the drug’s identification in the report and set the fax aside. Valium, he thought, and he riffled through the other paperwork before him, looking for the forensic report he’d ordered the previous day at the Marylebone squat. He found it attached to a message requesting that he phone someone named Figaro at SO7, the forensic science lab across the river. As he punched in the number, he read the attached report from the lab’s chemistry division. They’d completed their analysis of the small blue chip that Lynley had found in the kitchen of the squat on George Street. As he had suspected, it was indeed a drug. And it was diazepam, they concluded, a benzodiazepine derivative with the common name Valium. Bingo, Lynley thought.

  A woman’s voice came on the line, saying brusquely, “Figaro.” And when Lynley identified himself, she went on. “Exactly what kind of strings are you pulling over there, Inspector Lynley? We’ve a six-week backload of work sitting here and when the goodies from that Porsche came through the lab yesterday, we were told to move them to the head of the class. I had people working here all night.”

  “The Home Secretary’s interested,” Lynley said.

  “Hepton?” She gave a sardonic laugh. “He’d do better to be interested in the rise in crime, wouldn’t he? Those National Front yobbos were raising hell outside my mum’s house last night. In Spitalfields, this is.”

  “If I see him, I’ll mention it,” Lynley said. He added, hoping to move her along, “I’m returning your call, Miss—”

  “Doctor,” she said.

  “Sorry. Doctor Figaro.”

  “Right. Let’s see.” He heard the slapping sound of slick-covered journals falling on each other, then the crinkling noise of papers being turned. “Porsche,” she muttered. “Where did I…Here…Let me just…”

  Lynley sighed, removed his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. They felt tired already and his day was just beginning. God knew what they’d feel like fifteen hours from now.

  As Dr. Figaro continued to rustle on her end of the line, Winston Nkata appeared in the doorway. He gave a thumbs-up sign—apparently in reference to whatever was contained in the leatherbound notebook he held open in his palm—and Lynley motioned him over to a chair.

  Figaro said into his ear, “Right. We’ve a match on the hairs.”

  “Hairs?” Lynley asked.

  “From the Porsche, Inspector. You wanted it swept, didn’t you? Well, it was swept, and we picked up some hair in the back. We’ve got blond and brown. And the brown is a match for the hair from the Bowen house.”

  “What hair from the Bowen house?”

  Nkata held up his hand. He mouthed, “The kid’s. I fetched it.”

  “What hair…?” Figaro sounded indignant. “Who’s running the show over there these days? We were pounding our skulls for you blokes till two in the morning and now you’re telling me—”

  Lynley interrupted with what he hoped was an adequate explanation of how the hair had momentarily slipped his mind. Figaro sounded partially placated, which was enough for him. He rang off and said to Nkata, “Good initiative, Winston. Again.”

  “We do aim to please,” the constable said. “Was it a match for the kid’s, then? In Luxford’s car?”

  “It was.”

  “Makes things interesting, that. You think they’re a plant? Along with the specs?”

  It was a definite possibility. But Lynley disliked thinking in the direction that Dennis Luxford had yesterday insisted he think. “Let’s keep our options open.” He nodded at the notebook. “What do you have?”

  “Best news there is.”

  “Which is what?”

  “A phone call from Bayswater. It just came in.”

  “Bayswater?” Nothing seemed less likely than a phone call from Bayswater to provide the best news of his day. “What’s this about?”

  Nkata smiled. “How’d you like to have a natter with that tramp?”

  Contrary to St. James’s speculations about the vagrant, there’d been no disguise. The man, as he’d been described and sketched, was absolutely real. His name was Jack Beard, and when Lynley and Nkata got to him, he wasn’t happy about being detained at the nearest police station to the Bayswater soup kitchen where he’d gone to take his morning meal. He’d been tracked there from a doss-house in Paddington, where a single viewing of the sketch in the hands of a detective constable had prompted a quick identification from a reception clerk eager to rid the building of the noxious police presence. He’d said, “Why, that’s old Jack Beard, that is,” and described what he knew of Jack’s daily routine. This apparently consisted of prowling through dustbins for the salable odd bit and dropping in on charitable organisations for meals.

  In the police station’s interview room, the first thing Jack Beard declared to Lynley was, “I ain’ done nothing to no one. Wha’s this about, then? Who are you, Mr. Fancy Suit? I need me a fag.”

  Nkata nicked three cigarettes from the duty sergeant and handed one over to the tramp. Jack puffed at it hungrily, holding it to his mouth, pinched between a scabby index finger and a black-nailed thumb as if someone might take it away from him. He looked suspiciously from Lynley to Nkata, from beneath a fringe of greasy grey hair.

  “I fought for Queen and country,” he said. “Likes of you can’t say as much, I d’say. What’d you want with me?”

  “We’ve been told you go through dustbins,” Lynley said.

  “Anything in a dustbin’s a toss-out. I c’n keep wha’ I find. Ain’t no law says I can’t. I been going through bins since twelve years back. I never caused no trouble. I never took nothing but were in the bin.”

  “There’s no question of that. You’re not in trouble, Jack.”

  Jack’s eyes shifted between the police officers again. “So wha’s this, then? I got stuff to do. I got my regular route to be walking.”

  “Does your regular route take you into Marylebone?”

  Nkata opened his notebook. Jack looked wary. He puffed locomotively at his cigarette. “Wha’ if it does? Ain’ no law says I can’t look in dustbins wherever they be. You show me the law says I can’t look where I wants.”

  “In Cross Keys Close?” Lynley asked. “Do you check the dustbins there as well?”

  “Cross Keys wha’? I dunno the place.”

  Nkata unfolded a copy of the sketch that had been made of Jack Beard. He placed it on the table in front of the man. He said, “There’s a writer-bloke living in Cross Keys Close who says you been there, Jack. Wednesday last, he says, you were going through the dustbins. He saw you good enough to describe to our sketch artist. This look like you, man? What d’you think?”

  “I dunno the place. I’m telling you honest. I dunno no Cross Keys. I didn’ do nothing. You got to let me out.”

  Lynley read the confusion on the old tramp’
s face. The pungent smell of fear was on him. He said again, “Jack, you’re not in trouble. This isn’t about you. A young girl was kidnapped from the area round Cross Keys Close on Wednesday last, not so long after you were there. We’d—”

  “I didn’t take no girl!” Jack crushed his cigarette against the table top. He tore the filter from a second cigarette and lit it. He swallowed and his eyes—yellow where they should have been white—watered suddenly. He said, “I did my time. Five years I did. I been clean since.”

  “You’ve been to prison?”

  “Break’n’enter. Five years in the Scrubs. But I learnt my lesson. I never been back. But my head’s no good and I forget easy so I never worked much. I do the dustbins now. Tha’s all I do.”

  Lynley sifted through what he’d said and found the cogent point. He said to Nkata, “Constable, tell Jack about Cross Keys Close, please.”

  Nkata, apparently, had also seen the problem. He took back the sketch, and as he returned it to his jacket pocket, he said, “It’s a squirrelly group of mews, this place. Maybe ten yards from Marylebone High Street, off Marylebone Lane near a fish and chips shop called the Golden Hind. There’s a street nearby—a cul de sac—where the backs of offices look down on a pub. This’s on the corner where the mews begin, place called the Prince Albert. Got some picnic tables out on the pavement. And the dustbins—”

  “Prince Albert, you say?” Jack Beard asked. “You say Prince Albert? I know the place.”

  “So you were there?” Lynley asked. “On last Wednesday?”

  “May’ve been.”

  Lynley thought through their facts for something to jog the tramp’s memory. He said, “The man who gave us your description said that you were rousted from the area by a constable, probably a special constable. Does that help?”