With No One As Witness (53 page)

In midwinter, the site was very nearly perfect for what Fu had in mind. It was virtually deserted in the daytime aside from during the City workers’ lunch hours, and at late nighttime with the traffic bollards removed from either end of the main route through, what few vehicles rolled through it did so intermittently.

Fu strolled through the market towards its main entrance on Gracechurch Street. The shops were open, but they were sparsely peopled, while the most business being transacted appeared to be happening inside the Lamb Tavern, behind whose translucent windows the shapes of drinkers moved periodically. In front of this establishment, a shoe-shine boy did desultory business, buffing the black shoes of a banker type who was reading a broadsheet as his footwear was seen to. Fu glanced at this newspaper when he passed the man. One would expect a type like him to be perusing the Financial Times, but this was the Independent instead, and it carried on its front page the sort of headline that broadsheets generally reserved for royal superdramas, political nightmares, and acts of God. The words “Number Six” comprised it. Below that, a grainy photograph appeared.

Fu felt a different sort of need at the sight of this. It was one directed not towards fulfilling His growing desire but one that—had He lacked control—would have otherwise propelled Him towards that banker and that broadsheet like a starving hummingbird to the embrace of a flower. To proclaim Himself, to be understood.

He diverted His eyes instead. It was too early, yet He recognised in Himself the same sensation He’d experienced while watching the television programme about Him on the previous night. And how odd to name the sensation for what it was, because it was not at all what He’d expected it to be.

Anger. The heat of it, searing the muscles of His throat until He would cry out. For the one who truly sought Him had made no appearance before the television cameras, sending minions instead, as if Fu were a spider easily crushed beneath his heel.

He’d watched and there the maggot had found Him, slithering up the chair in which He sat, crawling in through His nose, curling behind His eyes till His vision went blurry, and then residing within His skull, where he remained. There to taunt. There to prove…pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. Stupid little wanker, nasty little swine.

Think you’re someone? Think you’ll ever be someone? Useless piece…Don’t you ever turn your face from me when I’m talking to you.

Fu tossed from it, turned from it. There it stayed.

You want fire? I’ll show you fire. Give me your hands. I said give me your sodding hands. Here. You like how it feels?

He’d leaned His head against the back of the chair and He’d closed His eyes. The maggot ate greedily at His brain, and He tried not to feel or acknowledge it. He tried to remain where He was, doing what He alone had been able to do.

You hear me? You know me? How many people do you intend to send to the grave before you’re satisfied?

As many as it takes, He’d thought at last. Till I am sated.

He’d opened His eyes then to see the sketch on the television screen. His face, and not His face at all. Someone’s memory trying to coax an image out of the ether. He evaluated the depiction of Him, and He’d chuckled. He’d loosed His shirt and exposed Himself to the hate that would be directed towards that image from every corner of the country.

Come, He’d told it. Eat through my tissue.

That’s what you think they’ll do? For you? Shite, you’re full of it, aren’t you, boy. I never did see a case like you.

No one had, Fu thought. No one would again. Leadenhall Market made the promise of that.

He stood opposite a string of three shops just inside the Gracechurch Street entrance: two butchers’ shops and a fishmonger’s, all red, gold, and cream, like a Dickens Christmas. Above each shop and extending the entire length of it hung three tiers of nineteenth-century iron rails with myriad hooks reaching out from them. It was upon these that game birds had been displayed one hundred years ago, turkey upon turkey and pheasant upon pheasant, tempting the passerby to make a purchase during the appropriate season. Now they were only an antique remnant of a time long passed. But they were designed to serve Him.

It was here that He would bring them both. Proof and witness simultaneously. It would, He decided, be a crucifixion of sorts, with arms stretched wide along the game rails and the rest of the bodies wedged within the spaces between the rails themselves. It would be the most public of His displays. It would be the most bold.

He walked the area as He laid His plans. There were four separate ways to come into Leadenhall Market, each of them posing a different kind of challenge. But all of them shared one commonality, and it was the commonality of virtually every street within the City itself.

There were CCTV cameras everywhere. Those in Leadenhall Place guarded Lloyd’s of London; in Whittingdon Avenue they watched over a Waterstone’s and the Royal & Sun Alliance across the street; in Gracechurch Street they guarded Barclays Bank. The best possibility was in Lime Street Passage, but even here a smaller camera hung above a greengrocer’s that He would have to pass when making His way into the market itself. It was much like choosing the Bank of England as the spot where He’d make His next “deposit.” But the challenge of it all was half the pleasure. The other half came with the commission itself.

He would use Lime Street Passage, He decided. Its small and insignificant camera would be the easiest to get to and to render useless.

Having made this decision, He felt at peace. He retraced His steps, into the market and then in the direction of Leadenhall Place and Lloyds of London beyond it. That was when He heard the call.

“You, sir. Beg pardon, sir, if you’ll just hang on…”

He paused. He turned. He saw a pear-shaped man coming towards Him, official epaulets broadening his shoulders. Fu allowed His face to fall into the slack expression that seemed to put people at ease in His presence. He offered a quizzical smile as well.

“Sorry,” the man said as he joined Him. He was out of breath, which wasn’t a surprise. He was overweight, and his trousers and shirt did not fit him properly. He wore the uniform of a security guard and his name badge said he was called B. Stinger. Fu wondered how often he was teased about that name. Or if it was a real name at all.

“It’s the times,” B. Stinger said. “Sorry.”

“Something going on?” Fu looked round as if for an indication of this. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just that…” B. Stinger gave a rueful grimace. “Well, we saw you on the telly screens…in security, you know? You seemed to be…I told that lot you were probably looking for a shop, but they said…Anyway. Sorry, but can I help you find something?”

Fu did what seemed natural in response. He looked round for cameras, for more cameras than He’d seen outside the market itself. He said, “What? Did you see me on CCTV?”

“Terrorists,” the man said with a shrug. “IRA, Muslim militants, Chechens, other assorted louts. You don’t look like one of them, but when we see someone hanging about…”

Fu widened His eyes, an oh-wow sort of look. He said, “And you thought that I…?” He smiled. “Sorry. I was having a look round. I come past here every day and I’d never actually been inside. It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” He pointed to the features He declared especially to His liking: the silver dragons, the gold-lettered signs with their deep maroon backgrounds, the decorative plasterwork. He felt like a bloody art appreciationist, but He babbled enthusiastically. At the end, He said, “Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t bring my camera. You lot might’ve had me in the nick for that. But you’re doing your job. I know that. D’you want my ID or something? I was just leaving, by the way.”

B. Stinger held up his hands, palms outward, as if to say enough. “I just needed to have a word. I’ll tell them you’re clear.” And then he added, like a confidential aside, “Paranoid, that lot. I’m up and down those stairs at least three times an hour. It’s nothing personal.”

Fu spoke affably. “I didn’t think it was.”

B. Stinger waved Him off and Fu nodded good-bye. He went on His way back to Leadenhall Place.

But there He paused. He felt the tension riding down his neck and across His shoulders, like a substance that was pouring out of His ears. This had all been for nothing, and a waste of His time when time was crucial now…He wanted to track down the security guard and take him as a prize, no matter how foolhardy such an act would be. Because now He would have to start again, and starting again when His need was this great was a dangerous proposition. It put Him in the position of being driven to carelessness. He couldn’t afford that.

Think you’re special, gobshite? Think you’ve got something anyone would want?

He tightened His jaw. He forced Himself to look at the cold, hard facts. This place would not do for His purpose, and He was blessed by the appearance of the security guard to demonstrate that fact. Obviously, there were more cameras within the market itself than He’d accounted for, hidden high in the vaulted ceiling, no doubt, tucked beneath an outspread dragon wing, made to look part of the elaborate plasterwork…. It made no difference. What counted was what He knew. And now He could seek another place.

He thought about the television programme. He thought about the newspaper articles. He thought about pictures. He thought about names.

He smiled at how simple the answer was. He knew the spot He had to seek.

BY THE TIME Lynley and Nkata returned to New Scotland Yard, Barbara Havers had done the work on Minshall’s background. She had also viewed the Boots tapes to scan the queue behind Kimmo Thorne and Charlie Burov—aka Blinker—to see if any familiar face appeared there, and she’d additionally done her best with what other customers she could see in the shop from the CCTV footage. There was no one, she reported, who bore any resemblance to anyone she’d seen at Colossus. Barry Minshall was also not among the customers, she added. As to the e-fit from Square Four Gym and whether anyone in Boots looked like that individual…. She’d been less than enthusiastic about that sketch from the first.

“Whole thing’s a nonstarter,” she said to Lynley.

“What about Minshall’s background?”

“He’s kept his nose clean up to now.”

She’d handed the photos of the boys in magician costumes over to DI Stewart, and he’d given them to officers who were in the process of showing them to the dead boys’ parents for possible identification. She said, “If you ask me, I don’t think that’s going to get us anywhere either, sir. I compared them to the photos we’ve already got of the dead boys, and no one looks like a match to me.” She sounded unhappy with this development. She definitely fancied Minshall for the killer.

Lynley told her to carry on digging in the background of the bath-salts vendor from the Stables Market, the bloke called John Miller who’d seemed overly interested in the goings-on at Barry Minshall’s stall.

In the meantime, John Stewart had assigned five constables—this was all he could spare, the DI told Lynley—to handle the post-Crimewatch phone calls about the e-fit sketch and other information. Countless viewers apparently knew someone who bore a marked resemblance to the baseball-capped man who’d been seen in Square Four Gym. The constables had the job of sorting the wheat from the chaff among the callers. Cranks and crackpots loved the opportunity to make themselves important or to have a bit of revenge on a neighbour they were rowing with. What better way than to inform the police that one person or another “wants checking out.”

Lynley went from the incident room to his office, where he found a report from SO7 sitting on his desk. He had fished his spectacles from his jacket pocket and started to read it when the phone rang and Dorothea Harriman’s hushed voice told him that AC Hillier was heading in his direction.

“He’s got someone with him,” Harriman said sotto voce. “I don’t know who it is, but he doesn’t look like a cop.”

A moment later, Hillier entered the room. He said, “I’m told you’re holding someone.”

Lynley removed his reading glasses. He glanced at Hillier’s companion before he replied: a thirtyish man wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson. Definitely, he thought, not a cop.

He said to the man, “We’ve not met…?”

Hillier said impatiently, “This is Mitchell Corsico, The Source. Our embedded reporter. What’s this about a suspect, Superintendent?”

Lynley carefully set the report from SO7 facedown on his desk. He said, “Sir, if I could have a private word?”

“That,” Hillier told him, “is not going to be necessary.”

Corsico said hastily, with a glance from one man to the other, “Let me just step outside.”

“I said—”

“Thank you.” Lynley waited till the journalist had gone into the corridor before he went on to Hillier, “You said forty-eight hours before the journalist would come onboard. You’ve not given me that.”

“Take it above my head, Superintendent. This is not down to me.”

“Then who?”

“The Directorate of Public Affairs made a proposal. I happen to think it’s a good one.”

“I’ve got to protest. This is not only irregular, it’s also dangerous.”

Hillier didn’t look pleased with this remark. “You listen to me,” he said. “The press can’t get much hotter. This story is dominating every paper and every news outlet on television as well. Unless we get lucky and some hothead Arab group decides to bomb Grosvenor Square, we don’t have a prayer of escaping scrutiny. Mitch is on our side—”

“You can’t possibly think that,” Lynley countered. “And you assured me the reporter would come from a broadsheet, sir.”

“And,” Hiller went on, “his idea has merit. His editor phoned the DPA with it and the DPA gave it the go-ahead.” He turned to the door and called out, “Mitch? Come back in here, please,” which Corsico did, Stetson shoved to the back of his head.

Corsico echoed Lynley’s sentiments. He said, “Superintendent, God knows this is irregular, but you’re not to worry. I want to begin with a profile piece. To bring the public into the picture about the investigation through the people involved in it. I want to start with you. Who you are and what you’re doing here. Believe me, no detail about the investigation proper will be in the story if you don’t want it there.”