Elizabeth George: With No One As Witness

“But-”

“Winnie. Stuff a sock in it. If you want to be in on things, get over here now. They’ve got him in a cell while they wait for John Stewart to get here, but they’ll let us talk to him in advance if the duty solicitor gets here first. So d’you want in?”

“I’m on my way.”

He’d banged round in the dark in his haste to be gone, which had roused his mother. She’d come storming out of her bedroom with a tatting hook held aloft-God only knew what she’d intended to do with it-and when she’d seen him, she demanded to know what in the name of Jamaica he was doing out here at four thirty-two o’clock in the morning?

“You just gettin in ?” she’d cried.

Just going out, he’d said.

“Without your breakfast ? You sit down and let me do a proper fry-up for you.”

Can’t, Mum. Case is closing and I want to be there for it. Only so much time before I get muscled aside by the higher-ups.

So he’d grabbed his coat, kissed her cheek, and he’d taken off, sprinting down the corridor, hurtling down the stairs, dashing to his car. He had a general sense of where the police station was. Lower Clapton Road was just north of Hackney.

Now he hustled into reception, where he gave his name and showed his identification. The special on duty placed a call somewhere, and in less than two minutes, Barb Havers came to fetch him.

She brought him into the picture quickly: what she’d seen in the carpark of St. Thomas’ Hospital, her miserable wreck of a flaming worthless Mini breaking down, her appropriation of Lynley’s Bentley, the Lea Valley Ice Centre, the hurried plan, the crash of the Bentley into the van, finding Lynley and Ulrike Ellis within it, the brief confrontation with the killer himself.

“He didn’t count on the frying pan,” Barbara concluded. “I could’ve hit him round six times more, but the super shouted I’d bashed him enough.”

“Where is he?”

“The guv? In casualty. That’s where we all went when triple nine got these blokes”-with a gesture round her to indicate their colleagues from the Lower Clapton Road station-“over there. Kilfoyle’d hit him with the stun gun so much, they wanted to watch him for a while. Same for Ulrike.”

“And Kilfoyle?”

“Bugger’s head’s like a brick wall, Winnie. I didn’t break anything, more’s the pity. He’s probably got concussion, a contusion, whatever, but his vocal cords are operable, so he’s doing just fine ’s far as we’re concerned. Oh, and I got him with the stun gun ’s well.” She grinned. “Couldn’t resist.”

“Police brutality.”

“And proud to have it written on my tombstone. Here we are.” She shouldered open the door to an interview room. Inside, Robbie Kilfoyle sat with a duty solicitor who was speaking to him urgently.

Nkata’s first thought was that Kilfoyle didn’t, in fact, look very much like any e-fit they’d come up with during the course of the investigation. He bore only a mild resemblance to the man seen lurking round Square Four Gym, where Sean Lavery worked out, and he bore no resemblance at all to the man who’d bought the van from Muwaffaq Masoud late the previous summer, had he, in fact, even been that man. So much for people’s memories, Nkata thought.

Robson, on the other hand and for his sins, had been fairly close to the mark from the start with his profiling of the serial killer, and the meagre facts they were able to glean from Kilfoyle-when the duty solicitor wasn’t telling him to mind what he said or to plug his mug altogether-confirmed this. Kilfoyle’s age of twenty-seven was dead within range and his circumstances weren’t far off either. Mum deceased, he’d lived with his dad till the older man had dropped dead in late summer. That would’ve been the stressor, Nkata reckoned, because the first of the killings started not long afterwards. They already knew that his past fit the profile, with truancy problems, peeping Tom allegations, and AWOL concerns in his record. But in the limited time they had with him prior to DI John Stewart’s arrival to take over, they saw that the rest of the details were going to come from the evidence that would be gleaned from his home, possibly from the environs of the ice-rink carpark, and from his van.

The van was waiting for the arrival of SOCO. The environs of the ice-rink carpark were waiting for full daylight. That left his house in Granville Square. Nkata suggested they check it out. Barb was reluctant “to leave the bloody sod,” but she agreed to do so. They met DI Stewart on the way out. He already had his clipboard in hand, and the parting in his razor-cut hair might have been put there with a straight edge. There were still comb marks in it as well.

He nodded at them both. He directed his comments to Barb. “Well done, Havers. Doubtless you’ll be reinstated now. Back to rank. For what it’s worth, I approve. How is he?”

Nkata knew the DI wasn’t referring to Kilfoyle. Barb answered the question. “In casualty. For now. I expect they’ll release him in a few hours. I phoned his mum. She’ll fetch him. Or his sister will. They’re both here in London.”

“And otherwise?”

Barb shook her head. “He’s not saying much.”

Stewart nodded and looked bleakly at the police building. Barb’s face altered and Nkata could see she was thinking she could almost like the bloke for the instant in which he’d actually evidenced a modicum of compassion. “Poor bloody sod,” Stewart murmured. And then to them in his usual tone, “Carry on. Have something to eat. I’ll see you later.”

A meal was not of interest to them. They made their way instead to Granville Square. By the time they got there, it had come to life. A crime-scene van parked out front hailed SOCO’s presence within, and curious neighbours gathered on the pavement. Nkata flashed his ID at the constable at the front door, explained why Barb didn’t have hers, and got them both inside.

Within, more of the pieces of the killer’s personality became revealed. In the basement, a neat stack of newspapers and tabloids displayed stories that chronicled Kilfoyle’s exploits, and an A to Z sitting on a nearby table x-marked-the-spots he’d carefully selected to deposit bodies. Upstairs, the kitchen contained a wide variety of knives-all being tagged and bagged by SOCO-while over the chairs in the sitting room lay the same sort of tatting-edged mats that had been used to fashion a flimsy and respectful codpiece for Kimmo Thorne. Everywhere, tidiness reigned. The place was, in fact, a testament to tidiness. Only in one room were there signs-other than with the newspapers and the A to Z -that an extremely unsteady mind was at work: In a bedroom upstairs, a dated wedding picture had been defaced, with the shaggy-haired groom disemboweled by means of pen and ink and the same mark upon his forehead as had been made as the signature of the letter Kilfoyle had sent to New Scotland Yard. In the wardrobe as well, a disturbed hand had slit every male garment down its centre.

“Didn’t care for Dad much by the looks of things, did he?” Barb remarked.

A voice spoke from the doorway. “Thought you two might want to see this before we cart it off.” One of the white-suited forensic-team members stood there, an urn in his hands. It was a funeral urn by the look and the size of it, suitable for containing human ashes.

“What’ve you got?” Nkata asked.

“His souvenirs, I’ll wager.” He carried the urn to the chest of drawers on which the wedding picture stood. He tipped off its top. They looked inside.

Human dust formed the majority of the contents, along with several ash-covered lumps. Barb was the one who twigged what they were.

“The navels,” she said. “Whose ashes d’you expect those are? Dad’s?”