Elizabeth George - With No One As Witness

“Has the aunt been here?”

“Come and gone. She wants him out of here directly or she’ll know the reason why. He’s going nowhere. Between her position and ours, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to discuss.”

“Solicitor?”

“I expect the aunt’s working on that angle now.”

He gestured for them to follow him. On their way to the interview room, they were met by a worn-out looking woman in a sweatshirt, jeans, and trainers, who turned out to be the social worker. She was called Fabia Bender, and she told Sergeant Starr that the boy was asking for something to eat.

“Did he ask or did you offer?” Starr inquired. Which meant, of course, had he opened his mouth to say something at last?

“He asked,” she replied. “More or less. He said, ‘Hungry.’ I’d like to fetch him a sandwich.”

“I’ll organise it,” he said. “These two want a word. You see to that.”

Arrangements made, Starr left Nkata and Barbara with Fabia Bender, who didn’t have much more to add to what the detective had already told them. The boy’s mother, she said, was in a mental hospital in Buckinghamshire, where she’d been a repeat patient for years. During this most recent round of institutionalisation, her children had been living with their grandmother. When the old lady decamped for Jamaica with a boyfriend who was being deported, the children got passed off to the aunt. Really, it was no surprise that kids found their way into trouble when their circumstances were so unsettled.

“He’s just in here,” she said and shouldered open a door.

She went in first, saying, “Thank you, Sherry,” to a uniformed constable who apparently had been sitting with the boy. The constable left, and Barbara entered the room behind Fabia Bender. Nkata followed, and they were face-to-face with the accused killer of Helen Lynley.

Barbara looked at Nkata. He nodded. This was the boy he’d seen on the CCTV film taken in Cadogan Lane and in the Sloane Square underground station: the same head of crinkly hair, the same face blotched with freckles the size of tea cakes. He was about as menacing as a fawn caught in the headlamps of a car. He was small, and his fingernails had been bitten to the quick.

He was sitting at the regulation table, and they joined him there, Nkata and Barbara on one side and the boy and the social worker on the other. Fabia Bender told him that Sergeant Starr was fetching him a sandwich. Someone else had brought him a Coke although it remained untouched.

“Joel,” Nkata said to the boy. “You killed a cop’s wife. You know that? We found a gun nearby. Fingerprints on that’ll turn out to be yours. Ballistics’ll show that gun did the killing. CCTV film places you on the scene. You and ’nother bloke. What d’you got to say, then, blood?”

The boy slid his gaze over to Nkata for a moment. It seemed to linger on the razor scar that ran the length of the black man’s cheek. Unsmiling, Nkata was no teddy bear. But the boy drew himself in-one could almost see him call upon courage from another dimension-and he said nothing.

“We want a name, man,” Nkata told him.

“We know you weren’t alone,” Barbara said.

“Th’ other bloke was an adult, wasn’t he? We want a name out of you. It’s the only way to go forward.”

Joel said nothing. He reached for the Coke and closed his hands round it, although he did not attempt to pop it open.

“Man, where you think you’re going for this one?” Nkata asked the boy. “You think we send blokes like you to Blackpool for a holiday? Going away is what happens to the likes of you. How you play it now determines how long.”

This wasn’t necessarily true, but there was a chance that the boy wouldn’t know it. They needed a name, and they would have it from him.

The door opened then and Sergeant Starr returned. He held the triangle of a plastic-wrapped sandwich in his hand. He unwrapped it and passed it over to the boy. The child picked it up but did not take a bite. He looked hesitant, and Barbara could tell he was struggling with a decision. She had the sensation that the alternatives he was considering were ones that none of them would ever be able to understand. When he finally looked up, it was to speak to Fabia Bender.

“I ain’t grassing,” he said and took a bite of his sandwich.

That was the end of it: the social code of the streets. And not only of the streets, but the code that pervaded their society as well. Children learned it at the knees of parents because it was a lesson essential to their survival no matter where they went. One did not sneak on a friend. But that alone told them volumes in the interview room. Whoever had been with the boy in Belgravia, there was a strong possibility that he was considered-at least by Joel-a friend.

They left the room. Fabia Bender accompanied them. DS Starr remained with the boy.

“I expect he’ll tell us eventually,” Fabia Bender assured them. “It’s early days yet, and he’s never been inside a youth facility before. When he gets there, he’ll have another think about what’s happened. He isn’t stupid.”

Barbara considered this as they paused in the corridor. “He’s been in here for arson and a mugging, though, hasn’t he? What happened about that? A wrist slapping by the magistrate? Did things even go that far?”

The social worker shook her head. “Charges were never brought. I expect they didn’t have the evidence they wanted. He was questioned, but then he was released both times.”

So he was, Barbara thought, the perfect candidate for some sort of social intervention, of the kind provided in Elephant and Castle. She said, “What happened to him then?”

“What do you mean?”

“When he was released. Did you recommend him to any special programme?”

“What kind of programme?”

“The kind designed to keep kids out of trouble.”

“You ever send a kid over to a group called Colossus?” Nkata asked. “’Cross the river, this is. Elephant and Castle.”

Fabia Bender shook her head. “I’ve heard of it, of course. We’ve had their outreach people here for a presentation as well.”

“But…?”

“But we’ve never sent any of our children over to them.”

“You haven’t.” Barbara made this a statement.

“No. It’s quite a distance, you see, and we’ve been waiting for them to open a branch closer to this part of town.”

LYNLEY WAS ALONE with Helen and had been so for the last two hours. He’d made the request of their respective families, and they’d agreed. Only Iris protested, but she’d been here at the hospital the least amount of time, so he understood how impossible she felt it that she would be asked to part from her sister.

The specialist had come and gone. He’d read the charts and the reports. He’d studied the monitors. He’d examined what little there was to examine. In the end, he’d met everyone because Lynley had wanted it that way. As much as a person could ever be said to belong to anyone, Helen belonged to him by virtue of being his wife. But she was a daughter as well, a beloved sister, a loving daughter- and sister-in-law. The loss of her touched every one of them. He did not suffer this monstrous blow alone, nor could he ever claim to grieve it alone. So all of them had sat with the Italian doctor, the neonatal neurologist who told them what they already knew.

Twenty minutes was not a vast span of time. Twenty minutes described a period in which very little could generally be accomplished in life. Indeed, there were days when Lynley couldn’t even get from his house to Victoria Street in under twenty minutes, and other than showering and dressing or brewing and drinking a cup of tea or doing the washing up after dinner or perhaps dead-heading the roses in the garden, one-third of an hour didn’t provide the leisure necessary to do much of anything. But for the human brain, twenty minutes was an eternity. It was forever because that was the nature of the alteration it could bring upon the life depending upon its normal functioning. And that normal functioning depended upon a regular supply of oxygen. Witness the victim of the gunshot, the doctor had said. Witness your Helen.