With No One As Witness (50 page)

Gail looked apologetic. “Well, naturally, there must have been other things…more important…an accident or serious crime…not that it wasn’t serious to us, to come home and find someone inside our house. But to the police…”

“Don’t make excuses for them,” her husband told her. He set down the porridge bowl and the spoon and used the edge of a tea towel to wipe the residue from his young child’s face. “Law enforcement’s going down the toilet. Has been for years.”

“Ron!”

“No offence intended,” he said to Nkata. “It’s probably not down to you.”

Nkata said no offence was taken, and he asked them if they’d given the number plates of that van to their local police.

They had done, they said. The very night they phoned. When the police finally showed up on their doorstep—“Must have been two A.M. then,” Ritucci said—it was in the person of two female constables. They took a report and tried to look sympathetic. They said they would be in touch and in the meantime to come down to the station in a few days and pick up their report for insurance purposes.

“That was the end of it,” Gail Ritucci told Nkata.

“Cops didn’t do a bloody thing,” her husband added.

ON HER WAY to meet Lynley in Upper Holloway, Barbara Havers stopped by the ground-floor flat, which she’d been passing assiduously with her eyes directed forward for ages by this point. She carried with her the peace offering she’d bought off Barry Minshall’s stall: the pencil-through-the-five-pound-note trick meant to amuse and delight one’s friends.

She missed both Taymullah Azhar and Hadiyyah. She missed the casual friendship they shared, dropping by one another’s digs for a chat whenever the fancy took them. They weren’t family. She couldn’t even say they were the next best thing to family. But they were…something, a piece of familiarity and a comfort. She wanted both back, and she was willing to eat humble pie if that was what it was going to take to put things right between them.

She knocked on their door and said, “Azhar? It’s me. Have you got a few minutes?” Then she stood back. A dim light shone through the curtains, so she knew they were up and about, perhaps shrugging into dressing gowns or something.

No one answered. Music’s on, she told herself. A radio alarm that hadn’t been shut off after it awoke the sleeper. She’d been too quiet in her attempt. So she knocked again, harder this time. She listened and tried to decide if what she heard behind the door was the rustle of someone disturbing the curtains to see who’d come calling so early in the morning. She looked towards the window; she studied the panel of material that covered the panes of the French door. Nothing.

Then she felt embarrassed. She stood back another step. She said more quietly, “Well, all right then,” and she moved off to her car. If that was the way he wanted it…If she’d hit him so far below the belt with her remark about his wife taking off…But she’d said nothing but the truth, hadn’t she? And anyway, they’d both played dirty and he hadn’t been trotting to the bottom of the garden to apologise to her.

She forced herself to shrug the matter off and she used even more determination to leave the vicinity without looking back to see if one of them was watching her from a parted curtain. She went to where she’d left her car, all the way over in Parkhill Road, which was the closest space she’d been able to find upon her return the previous night.

From there she drove to Upper Holloway and found the comprehensive whose address Lynley had phoned to her while she’d still been in bed, trying to make herself rise to the irresistible oldies beat of Diana Ross and the Supremes ordering someone to “set me free why doanchew babe” on her radio alarm. She’d reached for the phone, attempted to sound chipper, and taken down the information on the inside bodice-ripping cover of Torn by Desire, which had kept her awake far into the night with the burning question of whether the hero and heroine would give in to their fatal passion for each other. That would take some heavy guesswork, she’d told herself sardonically.

The comprehensive in question wasn’t too far from Bovingdon Close, where Davey Benton’s family lived. It looked like a minimum-security prison, one whose occasional visual relief had been supplied courtesy of a David Hockney wanna-be.

Despite the distance he’d had to travel to get there in comparison with her own, Lynley was already waiting for her. He looked dead grim. He’d been to call upon the Bentons, he explained.

“How’re they doing?”

“As you’d expect. As anyone would be doing in the same situation.” Lynley’s words were terse, even more than she would have expected them to be. She looked at him curiously and was about to ask him what was up when he nodded at the front of the school. “Ready, then?” he asked her.

Barbara was. They were there to talk to one Andy Crickleworth, supposed mate of Davey Benton. Lynley had said on the phone that he wanted as much ammunition as possible when they finally spoke to Barry Minshall in an interview room at the Holmes Street police station, and he had a feeling that Andy Crickleworth would be the person to supply it.

He’d phoned ahead so the comprehensive’s administrators would be aware of the police interest in one of their pupils. Thus it was a matter of a few minutes only before Lynley and Barbara found themselves in the company of the school’s headteacher, his secretary, and a thirteen-year-old boy. The secretary looked grey and defeated, and the headteacher had the used-up appearance of a man for whom a pension couldn’t come too soon. For his part, the boy had braces on his teeth, spots on his face, and hair slicked back in the manner of a 1930s gigolo. By raising one half of his upper lip as he entered the room, he managed to look scornful about the whole matter of meeting the police. But the rehearsed snarl couldn’t stop the fidgeting of his hands, which pressed down into his groin throughout the interview, as if they wished to stop him from wetting himself.

The headteacher—Mr. Fairbairn—made the introductions. They held their meeting in a conference room, round an institutional table that was itself surrounded by uncomfortable institutional chairs. His secretary sat in a corner, taking notes furiously, as if they’d need to be compared to Barbara’s in an eventual lawsuit.

Lynley began by asking Andy Crickleworth if he knew that Davey Benton was dead. Davey’s name was due to be released to the press that morning, but the grapevine is a powerful plant. If the school had been informed of the murder via Davey’s parents, there was a high probability the word was out.

Andy said, “Yeah. Everyone knows. Least everyone in year eight knows.” He didn’t sound regretful about the matter. He clarified this by saying, “He got murdered, right?,” and the tone of the question suggested being murdered was a higher form of leaving life than falling ill or dying in an accident, achieving a coolness unavailable to the others.

That belief would be typical of almost any thirteen-year-old boy, Barbara thought. Sudden death was a seven-day wonder to them, happening to someone else and never to you. She said lightly, “Throttled first, discarded second, Andy,” to see if that would shake him. “You know there’s a serial killer working round London, don’t you?”

“He got Davey?” If anything, Andy sounded impressed, not chastened. “You want me to help you catch him or summat?”

Mr. Fairbairn said to the boy, “You’re to answer their questions, Crickleworth. That will be the limit to the matter.”

Andy gave him a sod you look.

Lynley said, “Tell us about the Stables Market.”

Andy looked wary. “Wha’ about it, then?”

“We’re told by his parents that Davey went there. And if he went, I expect his whole crew went as well. You were part of his crew, weren’t you?”

Andy shrugged. “Might’ve gone there. But it wouldn’t’ve been to do nothing wrong.”

“Davey’s dad says he nicked a pair of handcuffs off a magic stall there. Do you know about that?”

“I didn’t nick nothing,” Andy said. “If Davey did, he did. Wouldn’t surprise me, though. Davey liked nicking things. Videos from the shop in Junction Road. Sweets off the newsagent. Banana from the market. He thought it was cool. I told him he was asking to be caught sometime and dragged off to the nick, but he wouldn’t listen. Tha’ was Davey all over. He liked the lads to think he was hard.”

“What about the magic stall?” Barbara put in.

“Wha’ about it, then?”

“Did you go there with Davey?”

“Hey, I said I never nicked—”

“This isn’t about you,” Lynley cut in. “It isn’t about what you did or did not steal and where you might or might not have stolen it. Are we clear on that? We have the word of Davey’s parents that he visited a magic stall in the Stables Market, but that’s all we have, aside from your name, which they also gave us.”

“I di’n’t even know them!” Andy sounded panicked.

“We realise that. We also realise that you and Davey had some difficulty getting on with each other.”

“Superintendent,” Mr. Fairbairn said in a monitory tone, as if understanding how easily “difficulty getting on” could lead them into an accusation he did not intend to allow spoken in his conference room.

Lynley held up his hand, stopping him from saying anything further. “But none of that is important now, Andy. Do you understand? What is important is what you can tell us about the market, the magic stall, and anything else that might help us find Davey Benton’s killer. Is that clear enough for you?”

Andy said reluctantly that it was, although Barbara doubted it. He seemed more fixed on the drama of the situation than on the grim reality behind it.

Lynley said, “Did you ever accompany Davey to the magic stall in the Stables Market?”

Andy nodded. “Once,” he said. “We all went down there. Wasn’t my idea or nothing, mind you. I can’t remember who said let’s go. But we did.”

“And?” Barbara asked.

“And Davey tried to pinch some handcuffs off that weird bloke runs the magic stall. He got caught and the rest of us scarpered.”

“Who caught him?”

“The bloke. The weird one. Dead weird, he is. He wants sorting, you ask me.” Andy seemed to make a sudden connection between the questions and Davey’s death. He said, “D’you think that wanker killed our Davey?”

“Did you ever see them together after that day?” Lynley asked. “Davey and the magician?”

Andy shook his head. “I never.” He frowned and then added after a moment, “’Cept they must’ve.”

“Must have what?” Barbara asked.

“Must’ve seen each other.” He squirmed in his seat to look at Lynley, and he told the rest of his tale to him. Davey, he said, did some magic tricks at school. They were dead-stupid tricks—prob’ly anyone could’ve done them, really—but Davey’d never done any tricks before the day the crew went to that stall in the Stables Market. After, though, he did a trick with a ball: making it disappear, although anyone with a brain bigger than a pea could’ve seen how he did it. And then he did a trick with a rope: He cut it in half and then produced it uncut. He might’ve taught himself off the telly or something or even out of a book, but p’rhaps that wanker magician’d taught him the tricks, in which case Davey had prob’ly seen him more than once.

Andy sounded proud of this deduction and he looked round as if waiting for someone to shout, “Holmes, you amaze me.”

Instead, Lynley said, “Had you ever been to the magic stall before that day?”

Andy said, “No. I never. Never,” but as he spoke, he pressed his hands down into his crotch and held them there, and his glance went to Barbara’s biro.

Lying, she thought. She wondered why. “Do you like magic yourself, then, Andy?”

“’S all right. But not that baby stuff with balls an’ ropes. I like the sort makes jets disappear. Or tigers. Not th’ other shit.”

“Crickleworth,” Mr. Fairbairn said in warning.

Andy shot him a look. “Sorry. I don’t like the sort Davey did. Tha’s for little kids, innit. It don’t suit me.”

“But it suited Davey?” Lynley said.

“Davey,” Andy said, “was a little kid.”

Just the sort, Barbara thought, to appeal to a sod like Barry Minshall.

There was nothing more that Andy could tell them. They had what they needed: confirmation that Minshall and Davey Benton had had an interaction. Even if the magician claimed that his prints were on the handcuffs because they had belonged to him although he hadn’t seen Davey steal them off his stall, the police would be able to thwart him there. Not only had he seen Davey attempt to steal the handcuffs, but he’d also caught the boy in the act. As far as Barbara could see, they had Minshall coming and going.

As she and Lynley left the comprehensive, she said, “La-dee-dah-dah, Superintendent. Barry Minshall’s about to become our breakfast.”

“If it were only that easy.” Lynley’s voice sounded heavy, not at all as she’d expected it to sound.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Barbara asked him. “We’ve the kid’s statement now, and you know we can get the rest of Davey’s crew onboard if we need them. We’ve got the Indian woman putting Davey at Minshall’s flat, and his prints are going to be all over it. So I’d say things are looking up. What would you say?” She looked at him closely. “Has something else happened, sir?”

Lynley paused by his car. Hers was farther along the street. He didn’t say anything for a moment and she was wondering if he would when he uttered one word, “Sodomised.”

She said, “What?”

“Davey Benton was sodomised, Barbara.”

She muttered, “Hell. It’s just like he said.”

“Who?”

“Robson told us things would escalate. That whatever gave the killer his kicks at first would fail after a while. He’d need more. Now we know what it was.”

Lynley nodded. “We do.” Then he roused himself to add, “I couldn’t bring myself to tell the parents about it. I went to do so—they have a right to know what happened to their son—but when it came down to it…” He glanced away from her, across the street to an old-age pensioner who was hobbling along, pulling a wheeled grocery trolley behind him. “It was his father’s worst fear. I couldn’t realise it for him. I didn’t have the heart. They’re going to have to know eventually. If nothing else, it’ll come out during the trial. But when I looked at his face…” He shook his head. “I’m losing the will to keep doing this, Havers.”