Elizabeth George - With No One As Witness

“I mean a highly responsible, crucial-”

“-visible,” Nkata cut in.

“-yes, all right. A visible role.” Hillier’s generally florid face was becoming quite ruddy. It was clear that the meeting wasn’t following his preconceived scenario. Had he asked in advance, Lynley would have been happy to tell him that, having once done a stint as chief battle counsel for the Brixton Warriors and bearing the scars to show it, Winston Nkata was the last person one ought to fail to take seriously when devising one’s political machinations. As it was, Lynley found himself enjoying the spectacle of the assistant commissioner floundering. He’d clearly expected the black man to snap joyfully at the chance to play a significant role in what was going to become a high-profile investigation. Since he wasn’t doing that, Hillier was left walking a tightrope between the displeasure of an authority being questioned by such an underling and the political correctness of an ostensibly moderate English white man who, at heart, truly believed that rivers of blood were imminently due to flow in the streets of London.

Lynley decided to let them go at it alone. He got to his feet, saying, “I’ll leave you to explain all the finer points of the case to Sergeant Nkata, sir. There’re going to be countless details to organise: men to bring off rota and the like. I’d like to get Dee Harriman on all that straightaway.” He gathered up the relevant documents and photographs and said to Nkata, “I’ll be in my office when you’re through here, Winnie.”

“Sure,” Nkata said. “Soon’s we got the fine print read.”

Lynley left the office and managed to keep himself from chuckling till he was some distance down the corridor. Havers, he knew, would have been difficult for Hillier to stomach as a detective sergeant once again. But Nkata was going to be a real challenge: proud, intelligent, clever, and quick. He was a man first, a black man second, and a cop only a distant third. Hillier, Lynley thought, had got every part of him in the wrong order.

He decided to use the stairs to descend to his office once he crossed to Victoria Block, and that was where he found Barbara Havers. She was sitting on the top step, one flight down, smoking and picking at a loose thread on the cuff of her jacket.

Lynley said, “You’re out of order, doing that here. You know that, don’t you?” He joined her on the step.

She studied the glowing tip of the tobacco, then returned the cigarette to her mouth. She inhaled with showy satisfaction. “Maybe they’ll sack me.”

“Havers-”

“Did you know?” she asked abruptly.

He gave her the courtesy of not pretending to misunderstand. “Of course I didn’t know. I would have told you. Got a message to you before you arrived. Something. He took me by surprise as well. As he doubtless intended.”

She shrugged. “What the hell. It’s not as if Winnie doesn’t deserve it. He’s good. Clever. Works well with everyone.”

“He’s putting Hillier through the paces, though. At least, he was when I left them.”

“Has he twigged that he’s to be window dressing? Black face at press conferences front and centre? No colour problems here, and look at this, everyone: We’ve got the proof in person? Hillier’s so bloody obvious.”

“Winston’s five or six steps ahead of Hillier, I’d say.”

“I should’ve stayed to see it.”

“You should have done, Barbara. If nothing else, it would have been wise.”

She tossed her cigarette to the landing below them. It rolled, stopped against the wall, and sent a lazy plume of smoke upwards. “When have I ever been that?”

Lynley looked her up and down. “With the ensemble today, as a matter of fact. Except…” He leaned forward to look towards her feet. “Are you actually holding the trousers together with staples, Barbara?”

“Quick, easy, and temporary. I’m a bird who hates commitment. I’d’ve used Sellotape but Dee recommended this. I shouldn’t’ve bothered one way or the other.”

Lynley rose from the step and extended his hand to help her up as well. “Apart from the staples, you’ve done yourself proud.”

“Right. That’s me. Today the Yard, tomorrow the catwalk,” Havers said.

They descended to his temporary office. Dorothea Harriman came to the door once he and Havers were spreading the case materials out on the conference table. She said, “Sh’ll I start phoning them in, Acting Superintendent Lynley?”

“The secretarial grapevine round here is, as ever, a model of efficiency,” Lynley noted. “Bring Stewart off rota to run the incident room. Hale’s in Scotland and MacPherson’s involved with that forged-documents situation, so leave them be. And send Winston through when he gets down from Hillier.”

“Detective Sergeant Nkata, right.” Harriman was making her usual competent notes on a sticky pad.

“You know about Winnie as well?” Havers asked, impressed. “Already? Have you got a snout up there or something, Dee?”

“The cultivation of resources should be the aim of every dutiful police employee,” Harriman said piously.

“Cultivate someone across the river, then,” Lynley said. “I want all the forensic material SO7 has on the older cases. Then phone each police borough where a body was found and get every scrap of every report and every statement they have on these crimes. Havers, in the meantime, you’ll need to get on to the PNC-grab at least two DCs from Stewart to help you-and pull out every missing-persons report filed in the last three months for adolescent boys ages…” He looked at the photos. “I think twelve to sixteen should do it.” He tapped the picture of the most recent victim, the boy with makeup smeared across his face. “And I think we’ll want to check with Vice on this one. It’s a route to go with all of them, in fact.”

Havers picked up on the direction his thoughts were taking. “If they’re rent boys, sir-runaways who happened to fall into the game, say-then it may be there’s no missing-person report filed for any one of them. At least not in the same month they were killed.”

“Indeed,” Lynley said. “So we’ll work backwards in time if we have to. But we’ve got to start somewhere, so let’s keep it at three months for now.”

Havers and Harriman left to see to their respective assignments. Lynley sat at the table and felt in his jacket pocket for his reading spectacles. He took another look at the photographs, spending the most time on those pictures of the final killing. They could not, he knew, accurately portray the understated enormity of the crime itself as he’d seen it earlier that day.

When he had arrived at St. George’s Gardens, the scythe-shaped area held a full complement of detectives, uniformed constables, and scenes-of-crime officers. The forensic pathologist was still on the scene, bundled against the grey-day cold in a mustard anorak, and the police photographer and videographer had just completed their work. Outside the tall wrought-iron gates of the gardens, the public had begun to gather, and from the windows of the buildings just beyond the garden’s brick wall and the mews behind it, more spectators were observing the activity taking place: the careful fingertip search for evidence, the minute examination of a discarded bicycle that sprawled near a statue of Minerva, the collection of silver objects that were scattered on the ground round a tomb.

Lynley hadn’t known what to expect when he showed his ID at the gate and followed the path to the professionals. The phone call he’d received had used the phrase “possible serial killing” and because of this, as he walked, he steeled himself to see something terrible: a disembowelment in the manner of Jack the Ripper, perhaps, a decapitation or dismemberment. He’d assumed it would be the horrific that he would be gazing upon when he worked his way to look at the top of the tomb in question. What he hadn’t assumed was that it would be the sinister.