With No One As Witness (44 page)

The shop assistant didn’t know anything about a magic stall, but she reckoned Tara Powell over at body piercing could direct Barbara wherever she needed to go. “Does fine work, Tara,” the shop assistant said. She herself had a silver stud beneath her lower lip.

Barbara found the body-piercing stall without any trouble. Tara Powell turned out to be a cheerful twentysomething girl with appalling teeth. Her bow to her employment consisted of half a dozen holes from the lobe to the top of her right ear as well as a thin gold ring through her left eyebrow. She was in the middle of driving a needle through the septum of an adolescent girl’s nose while her boyfriend stood by with the chosen piece of jewellery in his palm. It was a thick ring not unlike those used on cows. That, Barbara thought, was going to be attractive.

Tara was nattering on about—of all things—the Prime Minister’s hairline. She apparently had done some considerable research into the subject of the burden of power and responsibility and its effect on hair loss. She could not, however, apparently apply much of her theory to Lady Thatcher.

It turned out that Tara did indeed know where the magic stall was. She said that Barbara would find it in the alley. When Barbara asked what alley, she said the alley and rolled her eyes in such a way as to communicate that the information ought to be sufficient. Then she turned to her customer and said, “This’ll pinch a bit, luv,” and with one deft thrust she drove the needle through the girl’s nose.

Barbara beat a hasty retreat as the girl screamed, slumped over, and Tara cried, “Smelling salts! Quick!” to someone. It was, Barbara thought, an edgy kind of employment.

Although Barbara lived not far from Camden High Street and its markets and although she’d been in the Stables many times, she hadn’t known that the narrow passage in which she finally found the magic stall had a name. It wasn’t so much an actual alley as it was a gap, lined on one side by the brick wall of one of the old artillery buildings and on the other by a long row of holdings from which vendors sold their wares: everything from books to boots.

The place was dimly lit by bare bulbs dangling from a cord that ran the length of the alley. They broke into a gloom that was accentuated by the sooty stable wall and the darkly stained stalls opposite. Not all of them were open, this being a weekday. But the magic stall was. As Barbara approached it, she could see the same oddly dressed man she’d earlier seen unloading his van in the street. He was doing a rope trick to entertain a group of enthralled young boys who, instead of being at school, were gathered round his stall. They were just about the size—and the age—of the dead boy in Queen’s Wood, Barbara noted.

She stood at the side of the group, watching the magician interact with the boys at the same time as she studied his stall. It wasn’t large—about the size of a wardrobe—but he’d managed to cram it with magic tricks, with practical jokes along the lines of artificial vomit suitable for laying on mum’s new carpet, with videos of magic acts, books on illusions, and old magazines. Among the items for sale were handcuffs identical to those Barbara had in her pocket. They were part of a sideline in saucy bedroom toys that were on offer as well.

Barbara worked her way round to the back of the group, to have a better look at the magician. He was dressed as he’d been when she’d last seen him, and she noted that his red stocking cap not only covered his head completely but also came down over his eyebrows as well. With the addition of his dark glasses to complete the ensemble, the magician had successfully obscured the upper half of his face and head. Under normal circumstances, Barbara wouldn’t have thought too much about this detail. Under the conditions of a murder inquiry, however, a quirky costume going along with a pair of handcuffs, a dead boy, and a van made the bloke doubly suspicious. Barbara wanted to get him alone.

She eased her way round to the front of the group and began to look over the magic tricks for sale. The goods here seemed suitable for kids: magic colouring books, linking rings, flying coins and the like. This put Barbara in mind of Hadiyyah and Hadiyyah’s solemn little face and sorrowful wave behind the French windows whenever Barbara passed the ground-floor flat in Eton Villas. And that put Barbara in mind of Azhar, of the unpleasant words they’d exchanged the last time they’d seen each other. They’d been scrupulously avoiding each other ever since. A peace offering was called for, but Barbara wasn’t sure which one of them ought to be offering it.

She picked up the pencil-penetration kit and read the scanty directions (borrow a five-pound note from someone in your audience, push the pencil into its centre, rip it sideways and ta-duh! the five-pound note remained intact). She was reflecting on its suitability as a peace offering when she heard the magician say, “That’ll be all for now. Run along, you lot. I’ve work to do.” A few of the children protested, asking for just one more trick, but he was adamant. “Next time,” he said and shooed them off. He wore, Barbara saw, fingerless gloves on his pasty hands.

The kids departed—although not before Mr. Magic separated one boy from the flying coin trick he’d attempted to pinch as he drifted away—and then the magician was all Barbara’s. Was there something he could help her with? he asked.

Barbara purchased the pencil-penetration kit, an investment of less than two quid in the cause of neighbourly peace. She said, “You’re good with the kids. You must have them hanging round all the time.”

“Magic,” he said with a shrug as he put the kit neatly into a small plastic bag. “Magic and boys. They seem to go together.”

“Just like Marmite and toast.”

His lips curved in an I-can’t-help-my-own-popularity smile.

Barbara said, “They must get on your nerves after a time, all these little blokes hanging about and wanting you to perform for them.”

“It’s good for business,” he said. “They go home, talk to Mum and Dad about what they’ve seen, and when a birthday party comes up, they know what they want for the entertainment.”

“A magic show?”

He swept off the stocking cap and bowed. “Mr. Magic, at their service. Or yours. Birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, the odd christening, New Year’s Eve. Et cetera.”

Barbara blinked, then made a quick recovery as the man drew his cap back over his head. He was using it, she saw, for the same reason he was probably also using the dark glasses and the gloves. He appeared to be an albino. Dressed as he was at the moment, he would garner the occasional look in the street. Dressed otherwise—with the colourless hair revealed and the eyes unshaded—he’d have been gawped at, not to mention tormented by the very kids who admired him now.

He handed his business card over to Barbara. She did him the same courtesy and watched what she could see of his face to note a reaction. He said, “Police?”

“New Scotland Yard. At your service.”

“Ah. Well. They can’t be wanting a magic show there.”

Good recovery, Barbara thought. She brought the glow-in-the-dark handcuffs out of her shoulder bag. They were encased in a plastic evidence bag, on their way to be fingerprinted.

“These came from your stall, I understand,” Barbara said. “Recognise them?”

“I sell something like,” the magician replied. “You can see for yourself. I keep them over with the saucy items.”

“A kid called Davey Benton had these off you, according to his dad when we called at his house. Pinched them, he did. He was meant to bring them back and turn them over to you.”

The dark glasses prevented Barbara from reading any reaction in the magician’s eyes. She was reliant on the tone of his voice, which was perfectly even as he said pleasantly, “Obviously, he dropped the ball on that.”

“Which part?” Barbara asked. “Pinching them or returning them?”

“Since you found them in his things, I expect we can say he dropped the ball on returning them.”

“Yeah. I expect,” Barbara said. “Only I didn’t quite say I’d found them among his things, did I?”

The magician turned his back and coiled the rope from the rope trick into a neat and snakelike mound. Barbara smiled inwardly when he did this. Gotcha, she thought. In her experience, every smooth customer had a rough edge somewhere.

Mr. Magic gave his attention back to her. “The handcuffs may have come from me. You can see I sell them. But I’m hardly the only person in London with saucy items for purchase or for pinching.”

“No. But I expect you’re the closest to Davey’s home, aren’t you?”

“I’d hardly know. Has something happened to this boy?”

“Something’s happened to him, yes,” Barbara said. “He’s pretty much dead.”

“Dead?”

“Dead. But let’s not play echoes. When we went through his things and came up with these and his dad told us where they’d come from because Davey told him…You can see how I ended up wanting to know if they look familiar to you, Mr…. What’s your real name? I know it’s not Magic. We’ve met before, by the way.”

He didn’t ask where. His name was Minshall, he said. It was Barry Minshall. And yes, all right, it seemed that the handcuffs had come from his stall if the boy had claimed as much to his dad. But the fact was that kids pinched things, didn’t they. Kids always pinched things. It was part of being kids. They pushed the envelope. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and since all the cops seemed to do round here was give them a talking to if they were caught misbehaving, what did they stand to lose by having a go, eh? Oh, he tried to keep an eye out for that sort of thing, but sometimes he missed a set of sticky fingers adhering to an article like glow-in-the-dark handcuffs. Sometimes, he said, a kid was just too bloody good, a regular Artful Dodger.

Barbara listened to all this, nodding and doing her best to look thoughtful and open-minded. But she could hear the slow building of anxiety in Barry Minshall’s voice, and it acted on her the way the scent of fox acts on a pack of hounds. This bloke was lying through his teeth and out of his nostrils, she thought. He was the sort who saw himself cool as a lettuce leaf, which was just how she liked it since lettuce was always so easy to wilt.

She said, “You’ve got a van somewhere. I saw you unloading it last time I was here. I’d like to have a look at it, if you don’t mind.”

“Why?”

“Let’s call it curiosity.”

“I don’t think I’m obliged to show it to you. Not without a warrant, at least.”

“Right you are. But if we go that route—which, of course, is your right—I’m going to wonder like hell if you’ve got something in that van that you don’t want me finding.”

“I’ll be wanting to ring my solicitor about this.”

“Ring away, Barry. Here. I’ve got a mobile you can use.” She thrust half of her arm into her capacious bag and dug round enthusiastically.

Minshall said, “I have my own. Look. I can’t leave the stall. You’ll need to come back later.”

“No need for you to leave the stall at all, mate,” Barbara said. “Hand over the keys to the van, and I’ll have a browse through it on my own.”

He thought this one over behind his dark glasses and beneath the Dickensian stocking cap. Barbara could imagine the wheels turning furiously in his head as he tried to decide which route to take. Demanding both a solicitor and a search warrant was the sensible and the wise thing to do. But people were seldom either sensible or wise when they had something to hide and the cops turned up unexpectedly asking questions and wanting answers on the spot. That was when people made the foolish decision to bluff their way through a few difficult moments, mistakenly assuming that Inspector Plod had come calling and concluding they were more than a match for him. They thought that if they asked for their solicitor immediately—doing what those American police dramas always called “lawyering up”—they’d be marking themselves forever with a scarlet G for Guilty across their chests. Truth was, they’d be marking themselves with the scarlet I for Intelligent. But they seldom thought that way under pressure, which was what Barbara was depending upon now.

Minshall reached his decision. He said, “This is a waste of your time. Worse, it’s a waste of mine. But if you believe it’s necessary for whatever reason…”

Barbara smiled. “Trust me. I’m one of the lot who serve, protect, and do no ill.”

“Fine. All right. But you’ll have to wait while I close up the stall, and then I’ll take you to the van. It’ll take a few minutes, I’m afraid. I hope you have the time.”

“Mr. Minshall,” Barbara said, “you are one lucky sod. Because time is exactly what I have today.”

WHEN LYNLEY arrived back at New Scotland Yard, he discovered that the media were already gathering, setting up shop in the little park that covered the corner where Victoria Street met Broadway. There, two distinct television crews—recognisable by the logos on their vans and on their equipment—were in the process of constructing what appeared to be a broadcasting point while nearby beneath the dripping trees in the park, several reporters milled about, distinguishable from the crew by their manner of dress.

Lynley observed this with a hollow heart. It was, he knew, too much to hope for that the media were here for any reason other than the killing of a sixth adolescent boy. A sixth killing warranted their immediate attention. It also made them unlikely to go along with how the DPA wanted them to cover the situation.

He negotiated the confusion in the street and pulled into the entrance that would take him down to the carpark. There, however, the officer in the kiosk didn’t employ his usual one finger acknowledgement and lift the barrier for him. Instead, he sauntered out to the Bentley and waited while Lynley lowered the window.

He bent to the interior. “Message for you,” he said. “You’re to go straight to the assistant commissioner’s office. Do not pass go and all the trappings, if you know what I mean. AC made the call personally. Making sure there was no ifs, ands, and buts about it. I’m to phone to tell him you’ve arrived, ’s well. Question is, how much time d’you want? We can make it anything, only he doesn’t want you stopping to talk to your team on the way.”

Lynley muttered, “Christ.” Then after a moment’s thought, “Wait ten minutes.”

“Right you are.” The officer stepped back and admitted Lynley to the carpark. In the subdued light and the silence, Lynley used the ten minutes to close his eyes, remaining in the Bentley with his head pressed against the headrest.