With No One As Witness (43 page)

He said, “Cops,” like the answer to a question no one had asked.

“That’s who we are.” Lynley introduced himself and Havers and waited for the man—they knew only that his name was Benton—to ask them in. Beyond him, Lynley could see the doorway to a darkened sitting room and the shapes of people seated inside. A child’s querulous voice asked why couldn’t they open the curtains, why couldn’t he play, and a woman shushed him.

Benton said harshly over his shoulder in that direction, “You mind what I told you.” Then he gave his attention back to Lynley. “Where’s the uniform?”

Lynley said they weren’t part of the uniformed patrol but rather they worked in a different department and were from New Scotland Yard. “May we come in?” he asked. “It’s your son that’s gone missing?”

“Didn’t come home last night.” Benton’s lips were dry and flaky. He licked them.

He stepped back from the door and led them into the sitting room, at the end of a corridor of no more than fifteen feet. In the semidarkness there, five people were arrayed on chairs, the sofa, a footstool, and the floor. Two young boys, two adolescent girls, and a woman. She was Bev Benton, she said. Her husband was Max. And these were four of their children. Sherry and Brenda the girls, Rory and Stevie the boys. Their Davey was the one gone missing.

All of them, Lynley noted, were uncommonly small. To one degree or another, all of them also resembled the body in Queen’s Wood.

The boys were meant to be at school, Bev told them; the girls were meant to be at work in the food stalls at Camden Lock Market. Max and Bev themselves were meant to be serving the public from their fish van in Chapel Street. But no one was going anywhere from this house till they had word about Davey.

“Something’s happened to him,” Max Benton said. “They would’ve sent regular coppers otherwise. We’re none of us so thick ’s we don’t know that much. What is it, then?”

“It might be best for us to speak without the children here,” Lynley said.

Bev Benton keened two words, “Oh God.”

Max barked at her, “We’ll have none of that,” and then said to Lynley, “They stay. If it’s an object lesson they’re about to have, then I by God want them having it.”

“Mr. Benton—”

“There’ll be no Mr. Benton about it,” Benton said. “Give us the brief.”

Lynley wasn’t about to go at it that way. He said, “Have you a photograph of your son?”

Bev Benton spoke. “Sherry, pet, fetch Davey’s school picture from the fridge for the officer.”

One of the two girls—blonde like the body in the woods, and identically fair skinned, delicate featured, and small boned—left them quickly and just as quickly returned. She handed over the picture to Lynley, her eyes cast down to his shoes, and then returned to the footstool, which she shared with her sister. Lynley dropped his gaze to the picture. A cheeky-looking boy grinned up at him, his fair hair darkened by the gel that formed it into little spikes. He had a sprinkling of freckles across his nose and headphones slung round his neck, above his school-uniform pullover.

“Slipped them on at the last minute, he did,” Bev Benton commented, as if in explanation of the headphones, which were hardly part of his regulation school attire. “Likes his music, Davey. Rap music. Mostly those blacks from America with the p’culiar names.”

The boy in the photo resembled the body they had, but only an identification made by one of the parents could confirm this. Still, no matter what sort of lesson Max Benton wanted the rest of his children to have, Lynley had no intention of offering it to them. He said, “When was the last time you saw Davey?”

“Yesterday morning.” Max was the one to answer. “He got off to school like always.”

“Didn’t come home when he was due, though,” Bev Benton said. “He was meant to mind Rory and Stevie here.”

“I went to tae kwon do to see was he there,” Max added. “Last time he bunked off doing something he was meant to do, that’s where he claimed he went instead.”

“Claimed?” Barbara Havers asked. She’d remained in the doorway, and she was writing in her new spiral notebook.

“He was meant to come to our fish stall in Chapel Market one day,” Bev explained. “To help his dad. When he didn’t come, he said he’d gone to tae kwon do and lost the time. There’s a bloke he’s had some trouble with—”

“Andy Crickleworth,” Max put in. “Little sod’s trying to sort Davey out and set himself up as head of the crew Davey runs with.”

“Not a gang,” Bev added hastily. “Just boys. They been mates for ages.”

“But this Crickleworth’s new. When Davey said he wanted to see the tae kwon do, I thought…” Max had been standing, but now he went to the sofa to join his wife. He dropped down onto it and scrubbed his hands across his face. The smaller children reacted to this evidence of their dad’s upset by huddling together at the knees of one of their sisters, who put her hands on their shoulders as if to comfort them. Max brought himself under control, saying, “Tae kwon do people? They never heard of Davey. Never seen him. Didn’t know him. So I phoned the school to see had he been going truant without them telling us, only he hadn’t, see. Today’s the only day he didn’t show up. All term.”

“Has he been in trouble with the police before?” Havers asked. “Ever face the magistrates? Ever been assigned to a young people’s group for straightening him out?”

“Our Davey doesn’t need straightening out,” Bev Benton said. “He never even misses school. And he’s that good in his classes, he is.”

“Doesn’t like anyone to know that, Mum,” Sherry murmured, as if believing her mother had betrayed a confidence in her final remark.

Max added to this. “He was meant to be tough. Tough louts don’t care much for school.”

“So Davey acted the part,” Bev explained. “But he wasn’t like that.”

“And he’s never been in trouble with the police? Never had a social worker?”

“Why d’you keep asking that? Max…” Bev turned to her husband as if for explanation.

Lynley intervened. “Have you phoned his friends? The boys you mentioned?”

“No one’s seen him,” Bev replied.

“And this other boy? This Andy Crickleworth?”

No one in the family had met him. No one in the family even knew where to find him.

“Any chance Davey might’ve made him up?” Havers asked, looking up from her notebook. “Covering for something else he was up to?”

There was a little silence at this. Either no one knew or no one wanted to answer. Lynley waited, curious, and saw Bev Benton glance at her husband. She seemed reluctant to say anything else. Lynley let the silence continue till Max Benton broke it.

“Bullies di’n’t ever go after him, did they. They knew our Davey’d sort them if they picked a fight. He was small and…” Benton seemed to realise he’d slipped into the past tense and he stopped himself, looking shaken. His daughter Sherry supplied the conclusion to his thought.

“Pretty,” she said. “Our Davey’s dead pretty.”

They all were that, Lynley thought: pretty and small, very nearly doll-like. The boys especially would have to do something to compensate for that. Like fight back furiously if someone tried to harm them. Like end up getting bruised and banged about before they were throttled, sliced, and discarded in the woods.

Lynley said, “May we see your son’s bedroom, Mr. Benton?”

“Why?”

“There might be some indication where he’s gone off to,” Havers said. “Sometimes kids don’t tell their parents everything. If there’s a mate you don’t know about…”

Max exchanged a look with his wife. It was the first time he’d seemed anything but master of the family. Bev nodded encouragingly. Max told Lynley and Havers to come with him, then.

He took them upstairs where three bedrooms opened onto a simple square landing. In one of the rooms, two sets of bunk beds stood against opposite walls, a chest of drawers between them. Over one of the bed sets a shelf high on the wall held a collection of CDs and a small, neat stack of baseball caps. Beneath the upper bed, the lower one had been removed altogether and in its place a private lair had been fashioned. Part of it was given over to clothes: baggy trousers, trainers, jumpers, and T-shirts featuring graphics of the American rap artists Bev Benton had spoken about. Part of it contained a set of cheap metal bookshelves that, upon inspection, held all fantasy novels. At the far end of the lair stood a small chest of drawers. All of this, Max Benton told them, was Davey’s.

As Lynley and Havers ducked within, each of them making for a different part, Max said in a voice no longer authoritarian but instead desperate and very much afraid, “You got to tell me. Wouldn’t be here, would you, unless there was something more. Course I see why you di’n’t want to say in front of the wife and the little ones. But now…They would’ve sent uniforms, not you lot.”

Lynley had slid his hands into the pockets of the first pair of trousers as Max Benton was speaking. He stopped, though, and came back out of the lair as Havers continued searching within it. He said, “You’re right. We have a body, Mr. Benton. It was found in Queen’s Wood, not far from Highgate station.”

Max Benton sagged a little, but he waved Lynley off when Lynley would have taken his arm and led him to the lower of the two beds across the room. He said, “Davey?”

“We’re going to ask you to look at the body. It’s the only way to be absolutely sure. I’m terribly sorry.”

He said again, “Davey?”

“Mr. Benton, it may not be Davey.”

“But you think…Else why would you be troubling to come up here wanting to see his things?”

“Sir…” From within the lair, Havers spoke. Lynley turned to see that she was holding out something for his inspection. It was a set of handcuffs, but not ordinary ones. They were not metal but formed from heavy plastic and in the dim light beneath the upper mattress, the handcuffs glowed. Havers said, “Could be—” But she was cut off by Max Benton, who said harshly, “I told him to return them things. He said he did. Swore to me because he di’n’t want me taking him along to make sure he handed them over.”

“To who?” Havers asked.

“He got ’em off a stall in the Stables Market, di’n’t he. Over by Camden Lock. He said they were a present from a vendor there, but what vendor hands out goods to kids hanging about, you tell me. So I reckoned he nicked them and I told him to take them back straightaway. Little bugger must’ve hid them instead.”

“What stall in the market? Did he tell you?” Lynley asked.

“Magic stall, he said. I don’t know the bloke’s name. He never said and I di’n’t ask. I just told him to take the handcuffs back and to bloody well stop pinching clobber not belonging to him.”

“Magic stall?” Barbara Havers asked. “Are you sure about that, Mr. Benton?”

“That’s what he said.”

Havers came out of the lair then. She said to Lynley, “Could I have a word, sir?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. She left the bedroom and went onto the landing.

She said to Lynley in a quiet, terse voice, “Bloody hell. I may’ve been wrong. Tunnel vision. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Havers, this isn’t the moment for sharing your epiphanies,” Lynley said.

“Wait. I’ve been thinking all along of Colossus. But I never thought of magic. What kid fifteen and under doesn’t like magic? No. Sir. Wait—” as Lynley was about to leave her to her stream-of-consciousness monologue. “Wendy’s Cloud is in Camden Lock Market, right next door to the Stables. Now, she’s hopped up on something much of the time and she can’t say what she’s selling or when she’s selling it. But she’s carried ambergris oil in the past—we know that—and when I finished talking to her the other day and was hiking back to my car, I saw this bloke at the Stables…”

“What bloke?”

“He was unloading boxes. He was taking them into a magic stall or something like a magic stall and he was a magician. That’s what he said. There can’t be more than one of them at the Stables, can there? And listen to this, sir. He was driving a van.”

“Red?”

“Purple. But in the light of a streetlamp at three A.M. or whenever…You’re at your window. You catch a glimpse. You don’t even think about it because, after all, this is a huge city we’re talking about and why would you think you were meant to notice everything about it if a van’s on the street at three A.M.?”

“Lettering on the van?”

“Yeah. It was a magician advert.”

“That’s not what we’re looking for, Havers. That’s not what we saw on the CCTV tape from St. George’s Gardens.”

“But we don’t know what that van was, the St. George’s Gardens one. It could have been the warden opening up. Or someone there to make a repair.”

“At three in the morning? Carrying a suspicious-looking tool that very well could have cut the lock from the gate? Havers—”

“Just hang on. Please. For all we know that could have a logical explanation that’ll be sorted out in another hour. Bloody hell, the bloke could’ve had legitimate business in the garden and what you thought was a tool was something to do with that business. He could have been doing anything: making a repair, taking a piss, making an early newspaper delivery, testing out a new sort of milk float. Anything. My point is…”

“All right. Yes. I see.”

She went on as if Lynley were still not onboard. “And I talked to this bloke. This magician. I saw him. So if this body in Queen’s Wood is Davey and if this bloke I saw is the one who had the handcuffs nicked by Davey…” She let him finish her thought.

Which he did, in short order. “He damn well better have an alibi for last night. Yes, all right, Barbara. I see how you’re putting it together.”

“And it’s him, sir. Davey. You know it.”

“The body? Yes. I think it is. But we can’t go further without the formality. I’ll deal with that.”

“And sh’ll I…?”

“Get on to the Stables Market. Make the connection between Davey and this magician if you can. Once you do that, get him in for questioning.”

“I think we’ve got our first real break, sir.”

“I hope you’re right,” Lynley replied.

BARBARA HAVERS TOOK THE GLOW-IN-THE-DARK HANDCUFFS with her to the Stables Market, which was, as suggested by its name, an enormous old artillery stable of grimy brick. It ran along a section of Chalk Farm Road, but she entered by means of Camden Lock Place, and began asking the whereabouts of the magic stall at the very first shop. This was an establishment selling furniture and fabrics from the subcontinent. The air was acrid with the scent of patchouli, and sitar music blared forth from speakers insufficient to handle the volume.