Elizabeth George - With No One As Witness

Yet that was what the body represented to him: the sinister, left hand of evil. Ritualistic killings always struck him that way. And that this murder had been a ritual was something that he did not doubt.

The effigylike arrangement of the body served to encourage that deduction, but so did the mark in blood on the forehead: a crude circle crisscrossed by two lines that each bore cruciforms at the top and the bottom. Additionally, the element of a loincloth added support to this conclusion: an odd, lace-edged piece of fabric, which had been tucked, as if lovingly, round the genitals.

As Lynley donned the latex gloves and stepped to the side of the tomb to gaze more closely upon the body, he saw and learned of the rest of the signs that pointed to some sort of arcane rite having been carried out upon it. “What’ve we got?” he murmured to the forensic pathologist, who’d been snapping off his gloves and shoving them into his pocket.

“Two A.M. or thereabouts,” was the succinct reply. “Strangulation, obviously. Incised wounds all inflicted after death. One cut for the primary incision down the torso, with no hesitation. Then…see the separation here? Just at the area of the sternum? It looks like our knife man dipped his hands inside and forced a bigger opening, like a quack surgeon. We won’t know if anything’s missing inside him till we cut him open ourselves. Looks doubtful, though.”

Lynley noticed the inflection the pathologist had given to the word inside . He glanced quickly at the victim’s folded hands and his feet. All digits accounted for. He said, “As to outside the body? Is something missing?”

“The navel. It’s been chopped right off. Have a look.”

“Christ.”

“Yes. Ope’s got a dodgy one on her hands.”

Ope turned out to be a grey-haired woman in scarlet earmuffs and matching mittens who came striding towards Lynley from a group of uniformed constables who’d been in some sort of discussion when he’d arrived on the scene. She introduced herself as DCI Opal Towers, from Theobald’s Road police station, in whose patch they were currently standing. She’d taken just one look at the body and concluded they had a killer who “could definitely go serial,” she’d explained. She’d mistakenly thought that the boy on the tomb was the unfortunate initial victim of someone they could identify quickly and stop before he struck again. “But then DC Hartell over there”-with a nod towards a baby-faced detective constable who chewed gum compulsively and watched them with the nervous eyes of someone expecting a dressing down-“said he’d seen a killing something like this in Tower Hamlets when he worked out of the Brick Lane station a while back. I phoned his former guv and we had a few words. We think we’re looking at the same killer in both cases.”

At the time, Lynley hadn’t asked why she’d then phoned the Met. He hadn’t known till he met with Hillier that there were additional victims. He hadn’t known that three of the victims were racial minorities. And he hadn’t known that not a single one of them had yet been identified by the police. All that was later spelled out to him by Hillier. In St. George’s Gardens, he merely reached the conclusion that reinforcements were called for and that someone was needed to coordinate an investigation that was going to involve turf in two radically different parts of town: Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets was the centre of the Bangladeshi community, containing remnants of the West Indian population who had once been its majority, while the area of St. Pancras, where St. George’s Gardens formed a green oasis among distinguished Georgian conversions, was decidedly monochromatic, the colour in question being white.

He said to DCI Towers, “How far has Brick Lane got in their investigation?”

She shook her head and looked towards the wrought-iron gates through which Lynley had come. He followed her gaze and saw that members of the press and television news-distinguished by their notebooks, their handheld tape recorders, and the vans from which video cameras were being unloaded-had begun to gather. A press officer was directing them to one side. She said, “According to Hartell, Brick Lane did sod all, which is why he wanted out of the place. He says it’s an endemic problem. Now, could be he just has an axe he’s grinding on the reputation of his ex-guv over there, or could be those blokes’ve been sleeping at the wheel. But in either case, we’ve got some sorting to do.” She hunched her shoulders and drove her mittened hands into the pockets of her down jacket. She nodded at the news people. “To say they’re going to have a field day if they twig all that…Between you, me, and the footpath, I thought it best we look like we’ve got coppers from bottom to top crawling all over this.”

Lynley eyed her with some interest. She certainly didn’t look like a political animal, but it was clear that she was quick on her feet. Nonetheless he felt it wise to ask, “You’re sure about what Constable Hartell is claiming, then?”

“Wasn’t at first,” she admitted. “But he convinced me quick enough.”

“How?”

“He didn’t get as close a look at the body as I did, but he took me aside and asked about the hands.”

“The hands? What about the hands?”

She gave him a glance. “You didn’t see them? You best come with me, Superintendent.”

DESPITE THE EARLY HOUR AT WHICH HE ROSE THE NEXT morning, Lynley found that his wife was already up. He found her in what was going to be their baby’s nursery, where yellow, white, and green were the colours of choice, a cot and changing table comprised the furniture delivered so far, and photographs clipped from magazines and catalogues indicated the placement of everything else: a toy chest here, a rocking chair there, and a chest of drawers moved daily from point A to point B. In her first trimester, Helen was nothing if not changeable when it came to the appearance of their son’s nursery.

She was standing before the changing table, her hands massaging the small of her back. Lynley joined her, brushing her hair away from her neck, making a bare spot for his kiss. She leaned back against him. She said, “You know, Tommy, I never expected impending parenthood to be so political an event.”

“Is it? How?”

She gestured to the surface of the changing table. There, Lynley saw, the remains of a package lay. It had obviously come by post on the previous day, and Helen had opened it and spread its contents upon the table. These consisted of an infant’s snowy christening garments: gown, shawl, cap, and shoes. Next to them lay yet another set of christening garments: another gown, shawl, and cap. Lynley picked up the postal wrapping that had covered the box. He saw the name and the return address. “Daphne Amalfini,” he read. She lived in Italy, one of Helen’s four sisters.

He said, “What’s going on?”

“Battle lines are being drawn. I hate to tell you, but I’m afraid that soon we’ll have to choose a side.”

“Ah. Right. I take it that these…?” Lynley indicated the set of garments most recently unpacked.

“Yes. Daphne sent them along. With a rather sweet note, by the way, but there’s no mistaking the meaningful subtext. She knows that your sister must have sent us the ancestral Lynley baptismal regalia, being so far the only reproductive Lynley of the current generation. But Daph seems to think that five Clyde sisters procreating like bunnies is reason enough why the Clyde apparel should be sufficient unto the christening day. No, that’s not right. Not sufficient unto the day at all. More like de rigueur for the day. It’s all ridiculous-believe me, I know -but it’s one of those family situations that ends up being blown out of proportion if one doesn’t handle it correctly.” She looked at him and offered a quirky smile. “It’s utterly stupid, isn’t it? Hardly comparable to what you’re dealing with. What time did you actually get home last night? Did you find your dinner in the fridge?”