With No One As Witness (64 page)

THE CANTERBURY HOTEL was one of a series of white Edwardian conversions that curved north along Lexham Gardens from Cromwell Road in South Kensington. Long ago, it had been an elegant house among other elegant houses in a part of town made desirable by the proximity of Kensington Palace. Now, however, the street was only marginally appealing. It was a spot that catered to foreigners with minimal needs and on very tight budgets, as well as to couples looking for an hour or two in which to do sexual business together with no questions asked. The hotels had names relying heavily on the use of Court, Park, or locations of historical significance, all of which suggested opulence but belied the condition of their interiors.

From the street, the Canterbury Hotel looked as if it was going to live up to Barbara’s grim expectations of it. Its dingy white sign bore two holes that had renamed the establishment Can bury Hot, and its draughts-board marble porch gaped with missing pieces. Barbara stopped Lynley as he reached for the door handle.

“You see what I mean, don’t you?” She waved at him the revised e-fits that she’d been carrying. “It’s the one thing we haven’t talked about.”

“I don’t disagree,” Lynley told her. “But in the absence of something more—”

“We’ve got Minshall, sir. And he’s starting to cooperate.”

Lynley nodded at the door to the Canterbury Hotel. “The next few minutes will tell the tale on that. Right now what we know is that neither Muwaffaq Masoud nor our Square Four Gym witness has anything to gain by lying. You and I both know that’s not the case for Minshall.”

They were talking about the e-fits they’d obtained. Barbara’s point was their unreliability. Muwaffaq Masoud had last seen the man who’d purchased his van many months earlier. The Square Four Gym observer had seen the individual following Sean Lavery—“and he didn’t know if the bloke was really following Sean Lavery, admit it,” Barbara had said—more than four weeks previously. What they had right now in the sketches was entirely dependent upon the memory of two men who, at the precise moment they’d seen the person in question, had no reason to memorise a single detail about him. The e-fits thus could be worth sweet FA to the police, while one generated by Barry Minshall could set them straight.

If, Lynley’s point had been, they could rely upon Minshall to give them an accurate description in the first place. That was open to doubt until they saw how truthful his account was of the goings-on at the Canterbury Hotel.

Lynley led the way in. There was no lobby, just a corridor with a worn turkey runner and a pass-through window in a wall that seemed to open upon a reception office. The sound of aerosol spraying was emanating from this location, as was the heady eye-stinging odour of a substance that would have sent a huffer into raptures. They went to investigate.

There were no paper bags involved in what was going on. Instead, a twentysomething girl with what looked like a small chandelier dangling from one earlobe was squatting on the floor on an open tabloid, waterproofing a pair of boots. Hers, by the look of things: Her feet were bare.

Lynley had taken out his warrant card, but the receptionist did not look up. She was virtually ensconced in her position on the floor, fast becoming a victim of her aerosol can’s fumes.

“Hang on,” she said and sprayed away. She swayed dangerously on her heels.

“Bloody hell, get some air in this place.” Barbara strode back to the door and slung it open. When she returned to the reception office, the girl had dragged herself up off the floor.

“Whoa,” she said with a woozy laugh. “When they say do it in a ventilated place, they’re not kidding.” She reached for a registration card and plopped it on the counter along with a biro and a room key. “Fifty-five for the night, thirty by the hour. Or fifteen if you aren’t particular about the sheets. Which I wouldn’t recommend, by the way—the fifteen-pound option—but don’t mention I said that.” At that point, she finally took in the two people who’d come calling. It was clear she didn’t twig they were cops—despite Lynley’s identification dangling in plain sight from his fingers—because her glance went from Barbara to her companion to Barbara again, and her expression said of Lynley, Whatever floats your boat.

Barbara saved Lynley the embarrassment of having to disabuse the girl of her notion about their presence in the Canterbury Hotel. As she dug out her police identification, she said, “When we do it, we prefer the backseat of a car. Bit cramped to be sure, but definitely cheap.” She thrust her ID at the girl. “New Scotland Yard,” she said. “And dead dee-lighted to know you’re helping the neighbourhood cope with its ungovernable passions. This is Detective Superintendent Lynley, by the way.”

The girl’s eyes took in both warrant cards. She reached up and fingered the chandelier that dangled from her earlobe. “Sor-ry,” she said. “You know, I didn’t actually think the two of you—”

“Right,” Barbara cut in. “Let’s begin with the hours you work here. What are they?”

“Why?”

Lynley said, “Are you on duty at night?”

She shook her head. “I’m off at six. What’s going on? What’s happened?” It was clear that she’d been prepped on what to do should the rozzers ever come calling: She reached for the phone and said, “Let me get Mr. Tatlises for you.”

“He works reception at night?”

“He’s the manager. Hey! What’re you doing?” This last she said as Barbara reached over the reception counter and broke the connection on the phone.

“The night clerk will do just fine,” she told the girl. “Where is he?”

“He’s legal,” she said. “Everyone who works here is legal. There’s not a single person without papers, and Mr. Tatlises makes sure they all enroll in English classes as well.”

“A real upright member of society, he is,” Barbara said.

“Where can we find the night clerk?” Lynley asked. “What’s his name?”

“Asleep.”

“I’ve not heard that name before,” Barbara said. “What nationality is it?”

“What? He’s got a room here…That’s why. Look, he won’t want to be woken up.”

“We’ll do those honours for you, then,” Lynley said. “Where is it?”

“Top floor,” she said. “Forty-one. It’s a single. He doesn’t have to pay. Mr. Tatlises takes it out of his wages. Half price as well.” She said all this as if the information might be enough to keep them from speaking to the night clerk. As Lynley and Barbara headed for the lift, the girl reached for the phone. There was little doubt she was phoning either for reinforcements or to warn room 41 that the cops were on their way up.

The lift was a pre–World War I affair, a grilled cage that ascended at the dignified pace necessary for mystical assumptions into heaven. It was suitable for two individuals without luggage. But possession of luggage did not appear to be one of the qualifications for filling out a registration card in this hotel.

The door to 41 was open when they finally got there. The occupant was waiting for them, pyjamas on body and foreign passport in hand. He looked to be round twenty years old. He said, “Hello. How do you do. I am Ibrahim Selçuk. Mr. Tatlises is my uncle. I speak English little. My papers are in order.”

Like the words of the receptionist below, all of what he said was rote: lines you must recite if a cop asks you questions. The place was probably a hotbed of illegal immigrants, but that was something they were not concerned about at the moment as Lynley made clear to the man when he said, “We’re not involved in immigration. On the eighth, a young boy was brought to this hotel by an odd-looking man with yellow-white hair and dark glasses. An albino, we call him. No colour in his skin. The boy was young, blond—” Lynley showed Selçuk the picture of Davey Benton, which he took from his jacket pocket along with the mug shot taken of Minshall by the Holmes Street police. “He may have left in the company of another man who’d already booked a room here.”

Barbara added, “And this song and dance—young boys being brought to this place by the albino man and leaving later with some other bloke?—it’s supposedly happened over and over, Ibrahim, so don’t let’s try to pretend you haven’t seen the action.” She thrust the two e-fits at the night receptionist then, saying, “He might look like this. The man the young boy left with. Yes? No? Can you confirm?”

He said uneasily, “My English is little. I have passport here.” And he danced from one foot to another like someone needing to use the toilet. “People come. I give them card to sign and keys. They pay in cash, that is all.” He gripped the front of his pyjamas, in the area of his crotch. “Please,” he said, casting a look back over his shoulder.

Barbara muttered, “Bloody hell.” And to Lynley, “‘I’m about to wet myself’ is probably not part of his English lessons.”

Behind the man, his room was dark. In the light from the corridor, they could see that his bed was rumpled. He’d definitely been sleeping, but he’d also been prepared by someone at some point to keep his answers minimal at all times, admitting to nothing. Barbara was about to suggest to Lynley that forcing the bloke to hold his bladder for a good twenty minutes might go some distance towards loosening his tongue when a diminutive man in a dinner suit came trundling towards them from round the corner.

This had to be Mr. Tatlises, Barbara thought. His look of determined good cheer was spurious enough to act as his identification. He said in a heavy Turkish accent, “My nephew, his English wants repair. I am Mr. Tatlises and I’m happy to help you. Ibrahim, I will handle this.” He shooed the boy into his room again and he closed the door himself. “Now,” he said expansively, “you need something, yes? But not a room. No no. I’ve been told that already.” He laughed and looked from Barbara to Lynley with a we-boys-know-where-we-want-to-plant-it expression that made Barbara want to invite the little worm to take a bite of her fist. Like someone would want to have a shag with you? she wanted to ask him. Puhh-leez.

“We understand that this boy was brought here by a man called Barry Minshall.” Lynley showed Tatlises the relevant photos. “He left in the company of another man who, we believe, resembles this individual. Havers?” Barbara showed Tatlises the e-fits. “Your confirmation of this is what we require at this point.”

“And after that?” Tatlises inquired. He’d given a scant glance to the photos and the drawings.

“You’re not really in a position to wonder what happens after that,” Lynley told him.

“Then I do not see how—”

“Listen, Jack-o-mate,” Barbara broke in. “I expect your handmaiden of the boots downstairs put you in the picture that we’re not here from your local station: two rozzers looking round their new patch for a nice bit of dosh from the likes of you, if that’s how you keep this operation going. This’s just a bit bigger than that, so if you know something about what’s been going on in this rubbish tip, I suggest you unplug it and give us the facts, okay? We’ve got it from this individual”—she stabbed her finger onto Barry Minshall’s mug shot—“that one of his mates from a group called MABIL met a thirteen-year-old boy right in this hotel on the eighth. Minshall claims it’s a regular arrangement, since someone from here—and let me guess it’s you—belongs to MABIL as well. How’s this all sounding to you for a lark?”

“MABIL?” Tatlises said, with some fluttering of eyelashes to approximate confusion. “This is someone…?”

“I expect you know what MABIL is,” Lynley said. “I also expect that if we asked you to join an identity parade, Mr. Minshall would have no trouble picking you out as the fellow member of MABIL who works here. We can avoid all that, and you can confirm his story, identify the boy, and tell us whether the man he left with looks like either one of these two sketches, or we can prolong the entire affair and haul you over to Earl’s Court Road police station for a while.”

“If he left with him,” Barbara added.

“I know nothing,” Tatlises insisted. He rapped on the door of room 41. His nephew opened it so quickly that it was obvious he’d been standing directly behind it listening to every word. Tatlises began speaking to him rapidly in their language. His voice was loud. He pulled the boy over by his pyjama jacket, and he snatched the sketches and the pictures, forcing the young man to study them.

It was a nice performance, Barbara thought. He actually meant them to believe that his nephew, and not himself, was the paedophile here. She glanced at Lynley, seeking permission. He nodded. She stepped up to business.

“Listen to me, you little wanker,” she said to Tatlises, grabbing his arm. “If you think we’re going to jump on the wagon you’re driving, you’re even stupider than you look. Leave him bloody alone and tell him to answer our questions and you can answer them as well. Got it? Or do I need to help you with your understanding?” She released him, but not before she ended her question with a twist of his arm.

Tatlises cursed her in his language, or so she assumed he was doing from the passion of his words and the expression on his nephew’s face. He said finally, “I will report you for this,” to both of them, to which Barbara answered, “I’m wetting my knickers in terror. Now translate this for your ‘nephew’ or whatever the hell he really is. This kid…Was he here?”

Tatlises rubbed his arm where Barbara had manhandled it. She expected him to start shouting something meaningful, like “Unconscionable brutality!,” so assiduous were his ministrations to his limb. He finally said, “I do not work nights.”

“Brilliant. He does, though. Tell him to answer.”

Tatlises nodded at his “nephew.” The younger man looked at the picture and nodded in turn.

“Fine. Now let’s get on to the rest, okay? Did you see him leave the hotel?”

The nephew nodded. “He leaves with the other. I see this. Not the albin one, how you named him?”

“Not with the albino man, the man with yellowish hair and white skin.”

“The other, yes.”

“And you saw this? Them? Together? The boy walking? Talking? Alive?”

The last word set them both off in a babble of their own language. Finally, the nephew began to keen. He cried, “I did not! I did not!,” and a damp spot appeared in the crotch of his pyjama bottoms. “He leaves with the other. I see this. I see this.”