Elizabeth George: With No One As Witness

“I thought I’d eat it for breakfast, actually.”

“Take-away garlic chicken?”

“Well. Perhaps not.”

“Any suggestions you care to make about the christening clothes, then? And don’t suggest we forego the christening altogether, because I don’t want to be responsible for my father’s having a stroke.”

Lynley thought about the situation. On the one hand, the christening garments from his own family had been used for at least five-if not six-generations of infant Lynleys as they were ushered into Christendom, so there was a tradition established in using them. On the other hand, if the truth were told, the clothes were beginning to look as if five or six generations of infant Lynleys had worn them. On the other, other hand-presuming three hands were possible in this matter-every child of every one of the five Clyde sisters had worn the more recently vintaged Clyde family raiment, and thus a tradition was being started there, and it would be pleasant to uphold it. So…what to do?

Helen was right. It was just the sort of idiotic situation that bent everyone out of shape. Some sort of diplomatic resolution was called for.

“We can claim both sets were lost in the post,” he offered.

“I had no idea you were such a moral coward. Your sister already knows hers arrived, and in any case, I’m a dreadful liar.”

“Then I must leave you to work out a Solomon-like solution.”

“A distinct possibility, now that you mention it,” Helen remarked. “A careful application of the scissors first, right up the middle of each. Then needle, thread, and everyone’s happy.”

“And a new tradition’s begun into the bargain.”

They both gazed at the two christening ensembles and then at each other. Helen looked mischievous. Lynley laughed. “We don’t dare,” he said. “You’ll work it out in your inimitable fashion.”

“Two christenings, then?”

“You’re on the path to solution already.”

“And what path are you on? You’re up early. Our Jasper Felix awakened me doing gymnastics in my stomach. What’s your excuse?”

“I’d like to head off Hillier if I can. The Press Bureau are setting up a meeting with the media, and Hillier wants Winston there, right at his side. I’m not going to be able to talk him out of that, but I’m hoping to get him to keep it low key.”

He maintained that hope all the way to New Scotland Yard. There, however, he soon enough saw that forces superior even to AC Hillier were at work, making Big Plans in the person of Stephenson Deacon, head of the Press Bureau and intent upon justifying his present job and possibly his entire career. He was doing this by means of orchestrating the assistant commissioner’s first meeting with the press, which apparently involved not only the presence of Winston Nkata at Hillier’s side but also a dais set up before a curtained background with the Union Jack draped artfully nearby, as well as detailed press kits manufactured to present a dizzying amount of noninformation. At the rear of the conference room, someone had also arranged a table that looked suspiciously intended for refreshments.

Lynley evaluated all of this bleakly. Whatever hopes he’d had of talking Hillier into a subtler approach were thoroughly dashed. The Directorate of Public Affairs were involved now, and that division of the Met reported not to AC Hillier but to his superior, the deputy comissioner. The lower downs-Lynley among them-were obviously being transformed into cogs in the vast machinery of public relations. Lynley realised that the best he could do was to protect Nkata from the exposure as much as possible.

The new detective sergeant had already been there. He’d been told where to sit when the press conference took place and what to say should he be asked any questions. Lynley found him steaming in the corridor. The Caribbean in his voice, child of his West Indian mother, always came out in moments of stress. Th became either d or t . Man -pronounced mon -worked its way forward as interjection of choice.

“I di’n’t get into this to be some dancing monkey,” Nkata said. “My job i’n’t meant to be all about my mum turning on the telly and seeing my mug on the screen. He thinks I’m dim, that’s what he thinks. I’m here to tell him I’m not.”

“This goes beyond Hillier,” Lynley said, with a nod of greeting to one of the sound technicians, who was ducking into the conference room. “Stay calm and put up with it for the moment, Winnie. It’ll be to your advantage in the long run, depending on what you want to do with your career.”

“But you know why I’m here. You bloody know why.”

“Put it down to Deacon,” Lynley said. “The Press Bureau are cynical enough to think the public will leap to a preordained conclusion when they see you on the dais elbow to elbow with the assistant commissioner of the Met. Just now Deacon’s arrogant enough to think your appearance there will quiet speculation in the press. But none of that is a reflection on you, either personally or professionally. You’ve got to remember that in order to get through this.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t believe it, man. And if there’s speculation out there, then it’s deserved. How many more dead is’t going to take? Black-on-black crime is still that: crime. With next to no one looking into it. An’ if this partic’lar situation happens to be white- on-black crime and it’s gone ignored, having me acting like Hillier’s right-hand man when you and he both know he wouldn’t’ve even promoted me if the circumstances’d been different…” Here Nkata paused, drawing breath as he seemed to search for just the right peroration to his remarks.

“Murder as politics,” Lynley said. “Yes. That’s it. Is that nasty? Undoubtedly. Is it cynical? Yes. Unpleasant? Yes. Machiavellian? Yes. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t mean you need to be-or are-anything less than a decent officer.”

Hillier came out of the room then. He looked pleased with whatever Stephenson Deacon had set up for the coming press briefing. “We’ll be buying at least forty-eight hours once we’ve met with them,” he said to Lynley and Nkata. “Winston, mind you remember your part.”

Lynley waited to see how Nkata would react. To his credit, Winston did nothing but nod neutrally. But when Hillier walked off in the direction of the lifts, he said to Lynley, “These’re kids we’re talking about. Dead kids , man.”

“Winston,” Lynley said, “I know.”

“What’s he doing, then?”

“I believe he’s positioning the press to take a fall.”

Nkata looked in the direction Hillier had taken. “How’s he going to manage that?”

“By waiting long enough for them to expose their bias before he talks to them. He knows the papers will get on to the fact that the earlier victims were black and mixed race, and when they do, they’ll start baying for our blood. What were we doing, asleep at the wheel, et cetera, et cetera. At that point, he’ll counter with piously wondering why it’s taken them so long to glean what the cops knew-and told the press-from the first. This last death makes page one of every paper. It runs near the front of the evening news. But what about the others? he’ll ask. Why weren’t they considered top stories?”

“Hillier’s taking the offensive, then,” Nkata said.

“It’s why he’s good at what he does, most of the time.”

Nkata looked disgusted. “Four white boys killed in different parts of town and the coppers’d be liaising themselves like the bloody dickens from the first.”

“They probably would.”

“Then-”

“We can’t correct their failures, Winston. We can loathe them and try to change them for the future. But we can’t go back and make them different.”