Elizabeth George - With No One As Witness

“We c’n keep them from being swept under the rug.”

“We could champion that cause. Yes. I agree.” And as Nkata started to say more, Lynley plunged on with, “But while we do that, a killer goes on killing. So what have we gained? Have we unburied the dead? Brought anyone to justice? Believe me, Winston, the press will recover from Hillier’s allegations about the pot and the kettle shortly after he makes them, and when they do, they’ll be all over him, like gnats on fruit. In the meantime, we’ve got four killings to deal with properly, and we won’t be able to do that if we don’t have the cooperation of those very same murder squads you’re hot to expose as bigoted and corrupt. Does that make sense to you?”

Nkata thought about this. He finally said, “I want a real role in all this. I got no plans to be Hillier’s lad at press conferences, man.”

“Understood and agreed,” Lynley said. “You’re a DS now. No one’s likely to forget that. Let’s get to work.”

The incident room had been set up a short distance from Lynley’s office, where uniformed PCs were already at the computer terminals, logging information that was coming in per Lynley’s request to the police boroughs where the earlier bodies had been found. China boards held crime-scene photographs along with a large schedule containing team members’ names and the identifying numbers of the actions assigned to them. Technicians had set up three video machines so that someone could review all relevant CCTV tapes-where and if they existed-from every area where the bodies had been dumped, and their flexes and cords snaked along the floor. The telephones were already ringing. Manning them at the moment were Lynley’s longtime colleague, DI John Stewart and two DCs. The former was seated at a desk already compulsively organised.

Barbara Havers was in the midst of highlighting data sheets with a yellow marker when Lynley and Nkata walked in. At her elbow sat an opened package of Mr. Kipling strawberry jam tarts and a cup of coffee, which she drained with a grimace, and a “Bloody hell. Cold,” after which she looked longingly at a packet of Players half-buried beneath a pile of printouts.

“Don’t even think of it,” Lynley told her. “What’ve you got from SO5?”

She set down her marker pen and worked the muscles of her shoulders. “You’re going to want to keep this one away from the press.”

“Now that’s a fine beginning,” Lynley commented. “Let’s have it, then.”

“Going back three months, Juvenile Index and Missing Persons together coughed up fifteen hundred and seventy-four names.”

“Damn.” Lynley took the data sheets from her and flipped through them impatiently. Across the room, DI Stewart rang off and finished his notes.

“You ask me,” Havers said, “it looks like things haven’t changed much since the last time SO5 faced the press about not keeping their systems up to date. You’d think they wouldn’t want egg on their neckties again.”

“You’d think so,” Lynley agreed. As a matter of course, the names of children reported missing went into the system at once. But often, when the child was found, the name was not then removed from the system. Nor was it necessarily removed when children who might have started out missing ended up either incarcerated as youth offenders or placed in the care of Social Services. It was a case of the left and right hands not knowing, and more than once this sort of inefficiency on the part of Missing Persons had created a logjam in an investigation.

“I’m reading the news on your face,” Havers said, “but no way can I do this alone, sir. More than fifteen hundred names? By the time I get through them all, this bloke”-with a jerk of her head towards the photographs posted on the china board-“he’ll have his next seven victims dispatched.”

“We’ll get you some help,” Lynley said. To Stewart, “John? Get some additional manpower for this. Put half on the phones checking to see if these kids have turned up since they went missing and have the other half go for a match: our four bodies to descriptions in the paperwork. Anything remotely possible that could allow us to tie a name to a corpse, run with it. And what’ve we heard from Vice on the most recent body? Has Theobald’s Road given us anything on the boy in St. George’s Gardens? Has King’s Cross? What about Tolpuddle Street?”

DI Stewart took up a notebook. “According to Vice, the description doesn’t fit any boy recently on the job anywhere. Among the regulars, no one’s missing. So far.”

“Get on to Vice where the other bodies were found as well,” Lynley said to Havers. “See if you can make a match with anyone reported missing there.” He went to the china board, where he gazed at the photos of the most recent victim. John Stewart joined him. As usual, the DI was nervous energy combined with an obsession for detail. The notebook he carried was open to an outline, which he’d done in various colours significant only to himself. Lynley said to him, “What’ve we got from across the river?”

“No reports yet,” Stewart said. “I checked with Dee Harriman not ten minutes ago.”

“We’ll want them to test the makeup this boy’s wearing, John. See if we can track down the manufacturer. Could be our victim didn’t put it on himself. If that’s the case and if the makeup’s not something available at every Boots in town, the point of sale could move us in the right direction. In the meantime, run a check on recent releases from prison and from mental hospitals. Recent releases from every youth facility within one hundred miles as well. And this works in both directions, so keep that in mind.”

“Both directions?” Stewart looked up from his furious writing.

“Our killer could come from one of them. But so could our victims. And until we have a positive identification on all four of these boys, we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with, except the most obvious.”

“One sick bastard.”

“There’s enough evidence on the last body to attest to that,” Lynley agreed. His gaze went to that evidence even as he spoke, as if drawn there without his intention: the long postmortem incision on the torso, the blood-drawn symbol on the forehead, the missing navel, and what hadn’t been noted or photographed until the body was moved for the very first time: the palms of the hands burned so thoroughly that the flesh was black.

He shifted his gaze to the list of actions he’d already assigned on the previous long night of setting up the team: There were men and women knocking on doors in the vicinity where every one of the first three bodies had been found; additional officers were studying prior arrests to see if any lesser crimes had been documented that bore the hallmark of escalating behaviour which might lead to such murders as they now had on their hands. This was well and good, but they also needed to get someone on to the loincloth that had dressed the final body, someone to deal with the bicycle and the pieces of silver that had been left at the scene, someone to triangulate and analyse all of the crime scenes, someone to run down all sex offenders and their alibis, and someone to check throughout the rest of the country to see if there were similar unsolved murders elsewhere. They knew they had four, but there was every possibility that they had fourteen. Or forty.

Eighteen police detectives and six police constables were working the case at this moment, but Lynley knew without a doubt they were going to need more. There was only one way to get them.

Sir David Hillier, Lynley thought sardonically, was going to love and hate that fact simultaneously. He’d be pleased as punch to announce to the press that thirty-plus officers were working the case. But he’d hate like the dickens having to authorise the overtime for them all.