With No One As Witness (33 page)

He said, “What’d he want from you, then? I can’t think he was calling round just to chat.”

“Like I said. Wanted to come live wif us, di’n’t he? Me, the wife, the kids. I got two. But I couldn’t take him. I don’t got the room an’ even if I did…” He looked round, as if seeking an explanation hidden within the pungent confines of the old garage. “We ’as strangers, man. Him and me. He was ’xpecting I just take him on cos we share blood but I couldn’t do that, see. He needed to get on wif his life. Tha’s what I did. Tha’s what we all do.” He seemed to read censure on Nkata’s face, because he went on with, “It’s not like his mum wanted me round, innit. She’s in the club, i’n’t she, but it’s not like she tol’ me till I run into her on the street when she’s ’bout ready to pop. Tha’s when she says it’s my kid, right? But how do I know? Anyways, she never comes to me af’er he’s born either. She goes her way. I go mine. Then he’s thirteen and comes round wanting me as a dad. But I don’t feel like his dad. I don’t know him.” Oliver picked up his crescent wrench again, obviously ready to go back to work. “Like I say, I’m sorry ’bout his mum getting herself locked up, but it’s not like I’m responsible for it.”

Right, Nkata thought now as he entered Plugged Inn to the Lord and took a position to one side of the room. He felt certain they could cross Sol Oliver from whatever list of suspects they were generating. The mechanic hadn’t possessed enough interest in Sean Lavery’s life to have seen to his death.

The same, however, couldn’t be said for Reverend Bram Savidge. When Nkata had done his homework on the man, he’d found there were elements of his background that needed exploration, not the least of which was why he’d lied to Superintendent Lynley about the removal from his home of three boys who’d once been in his care.

Dressed in African garb of caftan and head covering, Savidge was at a lectern that held three microphones. The bright lights needed by a television crew shone upon him as he spoke directly to journalists who occupied four rows of chairs. He’d managed to pull together a good audience, and he was making the most of it.

“So we’re left with nothing but questions,” he was saying. “They’re the reasonable questions of any concerned community, but they’re also the questions that habitually go ignored in circumstances where the police response is defined by the community’s colour. Well, we demand an end to that. Five deaths and counting, ladies and gentlemen, with the Metropolitan police waiting until death number four to finally get round to setting up a task force to investigate. And why is that?” His gaze swept over them. “Only the Metropolitan police can tell us.” He began to thunder at this point, touching on every topic that any reasonable person of colour would be asking: everything from why the earlier murders weren’t investigated thoroughly to why no warnings had been posted on the streets. There was an appropriate murmur among the journalists in response to this, but Savidge didn’t rest on any laurels. Instead he said, “And you lot, for shame. You are the whited sepulchres of our society, for you have abnegated your responsibility to the public every bit as much as have the police. These killings have ranked as news not worthy enough to merit front-page attention. So what’s it going to take for you to acknowledge that a life is a life, no matter its colour? That any life’s worthy. That it’s loved and mourned. The sin of indifference should weigh on your shoulders every bit as heavily as it weighs on the shoulders of the police. The blood of these boys cries out for justice and the black community will not rest till justice is done. That’s all I have to say.”

Reporters leapt to their feet, of course. The entire enterprise had been designed for that. They clamoured for Reverend Savidge’s attention, but he did everything save bathe his hands in their presence before he disappeared through a door leading to somewhere at the back of the establishment. He left behind a man who stepped to the lectern and identified himself as the solicitor for Cleopatra Lavery, the incarcerated mother of the fifth murder victim whose interests he was representing. She too had a message for the media, and he would read it to them forthwith.

Nkata didn’t remain to hear Cleopatra Lavery’s words. Instead, he skirted round the side of the room, and he made his way to the door Bram Savidge had used. It was guarded by a man in hieratic black robes. He shook his head at Nkata and crossed his arms.

Nkata showed him his identification. “Scotland Yard,” he said.

The guard took a moment to evaluate this before he told Nkata to wait. He went through to an office, returning in a moment to say that Reverend Savidge would see him.

Behind the door, Nkata found Savidge waiting for him, positioned in a corner of the small room. On either side of him framed photographs hung: Savidge in Africa, one black face among millions.

The reverend asked to see his identification, as if not believing what his bodyguard had told him. Nkata handed it over and inspected Savidge much as Savidge inspected him. He wondered if the minister’s background was sufficient explanation for his adoption of all things African: Nkata knew that Savidge had grown up in Ruislip, the decidedly middle-class child of an air-traffic controller and a science teacher.

Savidge handed Nkata’s ID back to him. “So you’re the sop, are you?” he asked. “How stupid does the Met actually think I am?”

Nkata met Savidge’s eyes, and he held them for five seconds before he spoke, telling himself the other man was angry and with very good reason. There was truth to what he was saying as well.

He said, “We got something wants clarifying, Mr. Savidge. Thought it best ’f I come to do it in person.”

Savidge didn’t reply at once, as if he were taking the measure of Nkata’s refusal to rise to his baiting. He finally said, “What wants clarifying?”

“The boys you had in care. You told my guv that you had three of the four boys you were foster dad to placed in other homes cos of your wife. Her not speaking good English or something, I think you said.”

“Yes,” Savidge said, although he sounded wary. “Oni’s learning the language. If you’d like to see for yourself…”

Nkata moved his hand in a not-what-I-want gesture. He said, “I’m sure she’s learning English, all right. But fact is, Reverend, you di’n’t have the boys put somewhere else. They were taken away by Social Services before you ever married your wife, and what I don’t unnerstan is why you lied ’bout that to Superintendent Lynley when you must’ve figured we’d be looking into you.”

Reverend Savidge didn’t answer at once. A knock sounded at the door. It opened and the guard stuck his head inside. “Sky News want to know will you give them a word on camera with their reporter.”

“They’ve had my word,” Savidge replied. “Clear the whole lot out of here. We’ve people to feed.”

The man said, “Right,” and closed the door again. Savidge went to his desk and sat behind it. He gestured to a chair for Nkata.

Nkata said, “You want to tell me about it? Arrest for lewd conduct was what the records said. How’d you get the matter settled without more in the files?”

“It was a misunderstanding.”

“What sort of misunderstanding ends up with ’n arrest for lewd conduct, Mr. Savidge?”

“The sort that comes from having neighbours who’re waiting with bated breath for the black man to put a step wrong.”

“Meaning?”

“I sunbathe in the nude in the summer, when we actually have a summer. A neighbour saw me. One of the boys had come out of the house, and he decided to join me. That was it.”

“What? Two blokes lying starkers on the lawn or something?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

Savidge pressed his fingers together beneath his chin, as if considering whether to go on. He made his decision. “The neighbour…It was ridiculous. She saw the boy undressing. She saw me helping him. With his shirt or his trousers. I don’t know which. She leapt to an hysterical conclusion and she made a phone call. The result was an unpleasant few hours with the local authorities in the person of an aging police constable whose brains didn’t equal the leaps his imagination was making. Social Services swept in and took the boys off, and I ended up explaining myself to a magistrate. By the time the matter was officially sorted out, the boys were in other homes and it seemed heartless to uproot them once again. Sean was my first placement since then.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. A naked male adult, a naked male adolescent. A rare bit of sunshine. End of story.”

Not quite, of course, Nkata thought. There was the reason, as well, but he reckoned he knew what it was. Savidge was black enough for a white society to label him a minority, but he was far from black enough to be enthusiastically embraced by his brothers. The reverend was hoping that the summer sun could give him briefly what nature and genetics had denied him, and the rest of the year in a tanning bed could do much the same. Nkata thought about the irony of it and about how mankind’s behaviour was so often dictated by the sheer and lunatic misperception that went by the name Not Good Enough. Not white enough here, not black enough there, too ethnic for one group, too English for another. At the end of the day, he believed Savidge’s story of naked suntans in the garden. It was just on the right side of madness to be true.

He said, “I had a word with Sol Oliver over in North Kensington. He says Sean came asking to live with him.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Life wasn’t easy for Sean. He’d lost his mother to prison, and he’d been shuffled round the system for two years by the time I got him. I was his fifth placement, and he was tired of it all. If he could talk his dad into taking him in, at least he’d be somewhere permanently. That’s what he wanted. It’s hardly an unreasonable hope.”

“How’d he find out about Oliver?”

“From Cleopatra, I suppose. His mum. She’s in Holloway. He visited her every chance he got. When it could be arranged.”

“Anyplace else he went? Aside from Colossus?”

“Bodybuilding. There’s a gym up Finchley Road just a bit. Square Four Gym. I told your superintendent about it. After Colossus, Sean would stop here to check in with me—say hello and whatever—and then he’d head either home or to that gym.” Savidge seemed to reflect on this piece of information for a moment. Then he went on, reflectively, “I expect it was the men that drew him there, although I didn’t think about that at the time.”

“What did you think about?”

“Just that it was good he had an outlet. He was angry. He felt he’d been dealt a rotten hand in life and he wanted to change it. But now I see…the gym…It could have been how he was trying to make that change. Through the men who go there.”

Nkata sharpened to this. “In what way?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Savidge said.

“Then how?”

“How? In the way of all boys. Sean had a hunger and a thirst for men that he could admire. That’s normal enough. I just pray to God that wasn’t what killed him.”

HOPETOWN ROAD glided east off Brick Lane, deep within a crowded area of London that had been through at least three incarnations within Barbara Havers’ lifetime. The neighbourhood still held a multitude of grimy-looking wholesale garment shops and at least one brewery belching the scent of yeast into the air, but over the years its inhabitants had altered from Jewish to Caribbean to Bengali.

Brick Lane was attempting to make the most of its current ethnicity. Foreign restaurants abounded and along the pavement, and the streetlamps—heralded at the bottom of the street by a fanciful archway wrought of iron with a vaguely mosquelike shape—bore ornate fixtures suspended among filigree-iron decoration. Not what you’d see in Chalk Farm, Barbara thought.

She found Griffin Strong’s home directly across from a little green where hillocks offered children an area in which to play and a wooden bench offered their minders a place to sit. The Strong residence was one of a line of redbrick, plain terraced houses, their individuality expressed in their choice of front doors and front fences and in what they’d decided to do with their patch of front gardens. The Strongs had opted for a draughts-board pattern of large tiles on the ground, and they’d covered them with an array of pot plants that someone had been tending with devotion. Their fence was brick like the house and their door was oak with an oval of stained glass in the middle. All very nice, Barbara noted.

When she rang the bell, a woman answered. She had a crying baby on her shoulder and magenta workout attire on her body. She said, “Yes?,” over the sound of an exercise programme coming from within the house. Barbara showed her identification. She said she’d appreciate a word with Mr. Strong, if he was about. “Are you Mrs. Strong?” she added.

“I’m Arabella Strong,” the woman said. “Come in, please. Just let me get Tatiana settled,” and she carried the squalling infant into the reaches of the house, leaving Barbara to mouth Tatiana? and to follow in her wake.

In the sitting room, Arabella laid the baby on a leather sofa, where a small pink blanket was topped by a smaller pink hot-water bottle. She put the baby on her back, wedged her in place with pillows, and set the hot-water bottle on her abdomen. “Colic,” she said to Barbara over the noise, “the warm seems to help.”

That proved to be true. In a few moments, Tatiana’s screaming subsided to whimpering so that the remaining din in the room came only from the telly. There, via video and to the accompanying ka-boom-diddy-boom of music, an impossibly sculpted woman was panting “lower abs, come on, lower abs, come on,” as she rhythmically thrust her legs and hips into the air from a supine position. As Barbara watched, the woman suddenly leaped to her feet and gave the camera a sideways view of her stomach. It was as flat as a Dutch horizon gone vertical. She was obviously someone who ignored the better things in life. Like Pop-Tarts, Kettle Crisps, battered cod, and chips soaked in vinegar. Miserable cow.

Arabella used the remote to switch off the television and the video recorder. She said, “I expect she’s at that at least sixteen hours a day. What do you think?”

“Rubens is rolling in his grave, you ask me. And she needs to be put out of my misery.”

Arabella chuckled. She sank onto the sofa next to her baby and motioned to a chair for Barbara. She reached for a towel and pressed it against her forehead. She said, “Griff isn’t here. He’s at the factory. We’ve a silk-screen business.”