With No One As Witness (66 page)

Barbara went on to the address: a number on Collingham Road. The hotel had a battered A to Z—purportedly for use by the hordes of tourists who stayed there—and she found the street not that far from Lexham Gardens. It was on the other side of Cromwell Road. She could hoof it there without any trouble.

Before descending to reception, she’d waited for the arrival of the SOCO team, having phoned for them from room 39. Mr. Tatlises had taken himself off somewhere in his dinner suit, doubtless to contact his fellow MABILians and give them the word that times were about to be a-changin’. He would then, she reckoned, make a vain attempt to destroy every bit of child pornography that he had in his possession. Stupid sod, Barbara thought. He wouldn’t’ve been able to resist downloading that filth off the Net—none of them could ever resist that—and he was just enough of an idiot to think delete meant gone but not forgotten. The Earl’s Court Road station would have a field day at this place. Once Tatlises was in their clutches, they’d find a way to squeeze him for everything he knew: about MABIL, about what was going on in the hotel, about little boys and money changing hands and everything else related to this disgusting situation. Unless, of course, some of them were involved in MABIL…some of the Earl’s Court Road cops…but Barbara didn’t want to think of that. Cops, priests, doctors, and ministers. One had to hope, if not to believe, that a moral core existed somewhere.

As ordered by Lynley, she spoke to the Earl’s Court Road chief super. He set the wheels in motion. When the SOCO team arrived, she felt secure enough to leave.

With the address from the registration card in hand and the card itself turned over to the SOCO team for fingerprinting, she crossed over Cromwell Road and headed east, in the direction of the Natural History Museum. Collingham Road headed south some 100 yards from Lexham Gardens. Barbara made the turn and began searching for the correct address along the row of tall, white-fronted conversions.

Considering the name that had been on the registration card, she had little hope of the address being anything but another sham. She wasn’t far from correct in this conclusion. Where Collingham Road met the lower half of Courtfield Gardens, an old stone church stood on the corner. A wrought-iron fence surrounded it, and inside the churchyard that the fence contained, a faded sign done in gold letters named the spot as St. Lucy’s Community Centre. Beneath this identification were the numbers of the street address. They corresponded identically to the numbers on the card from the Canterbury Hotel. How fitting it was, Barbara thought as she pushed through the gate and entered the churchyard. The address on the card was the address for MABIL: St. Lucy’s, the deconsecrated church not far from the Gloucester Road underground station.

Minshall had said that MABIL met in the basement, so that was where Barbara headed. She went round the side of the building, following a concrete path through a small, overgrown cemetery. Toppling gravestones and ivy-choked tombs filled it to capacity, all of them untended.

A set of stone steps led down to the basement at the back of the church. A sign on the bright blue door called this portion of the centre “Ladybird Infant Day-care.” This door stood partially open, and from within Barbara could hear the babble of children’s voices.

She pushed her way inside and found herself in a vestibule, where a long rack of hooks at waist height held miniature coats, jackets, and macs, while below a row of pint-sized Wellingtons waited neatly for their owners. There appeared to be two classrooms opening off this little hall: one large and one small and both of them filled with enthusiastic children engaged in making paper Valentines (the small room) and an energetic conga line galloping about to the tune of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (the large room).

Barbara was deciding which room to try for information when a sixtyish woman with spectacles on a gold chain round her neck came out of what seemed to be a kitchen, bearing a tray of ginger biscuits. Fresh ginger biscuits, by the smell of them. Barbara’s stomach made an appreciative gurgle.

The woman looked from Barbara to the door. Her expression said that it was not meant to be left unlocked, which Barbara acknowledged was not a bad idea. The woman asked if she could be of help.

Barbara showed her identification and told the woman—who gave her name as Mrs. McDonald—that she’d come about MABIL.

Mabel? Mrs. McDonald said. They had no child named Mabel enrolled.

This was an organisation of men who met in the basement in the evenings, Barbara told her. M-A-B-I-L, it was spelled.

Ah. Well, Mrs. McDonald knew nothing about that. For that sort of information, the constable would have to talk to the letting agent. Taverstock & Percy, she informed Barbara. On Gloucester Road. They handled all of the lettings for the community centre. Twelve-step programmes, women’s clubs, antiques and crafts fairs, writing classes, the lot.

Could she have a look round anyway? Barbara asked Mrs. McDonald. There was, she knew, nothing to find here, but she wanted to get a feel for the place where perversion was not only tolerated but encouraged.

Mrs. McDonald was less than happy about this request, but she said she’d show Barbara the facilities if she would wait right here while the biscuits got delivered to the conga line. She carried her tray into the larger room and handed it off to one of the teachers. She returned as the conga line disintegrated in a biscuit frenzy to which Barbara could only too well relate. She’d skipped lunch and it was already teatime.

She followed Mrs. McDonald dutifully from room to room. They blossomed with children—laughing, jabbering, fresh faced, innocent. Her heart felt sick at the thought of paedophiles defiling this atmosphere, even by their presence at night when these children were tucked up safely at home.

There was little enough to see, however. A large room with a dais at one end, a lectern pushed to one side, and chairs stacked up along walls decorated with rainbows, leprechauns, and an enormous, whimsical pot of gold. A small room with tot-sized tables where children created crafts that were then displayed along the walls in a riot of colour and imagination. A kitchen, a lavatory, a supply room. That was it. Barbara tried to picture the place filled with saliva-dripping child molesters, and it wasn’t difficult. She could see them here easily enough, the miserable lot of them getting their rocks off at the thought of all the kids in these rooms every single weekday, just waiting for some monster to snatch them off the street.

She thanked Mrs. McDonald and left St. Lucy’s. Although it seemed a dead end, she knew she couldn’t leave the stone of Taverstock & Percy unturned.

The estate agent, she found, was back on the other side of Cromwell Road and up a distance. She passed a Barclay’s—complete with drunken homeless beggar on the front steps—as well as a church and a string of nineteenth-century conversions—before she came to a smallish commercial area where Taverstock & Percy was bookended by a have-everything ironmonger and an old-fashioned take-away serving up sausage rolls and jacket potatoes to a line of road workers who were taking their tea break from a jackhammered hole in the middle of the street.

Inside Taverstock & Percy, Barbara asked to see the estate agent in charge of letting space in St. Lucy’s Church, and she was shown to a young woman called Misty Perrin, who was apparently thrilled by the idea that custom for St. Lucy’s was walking in off the street. She took out an application and fixed it to a clipboard, saying that of course there were certain rules and regulations that had to be met in order for anyone to have space in the former church or its basement.

Right, Barbara thought. That’s what kept away the riffraff.

She took out her identification and introduced herself to Misty. Could she have a word about a group called MABIL.

Misty lowered the clipboard to her desk, but she didn’t look concerned. She said, “Oh, of course. When you asked about St. Lucy’s, I thought…Well, anyway…MABIL. Yes.” She opened a filing drawer in her desk and fingered through its contents. She brought out a slim manila folder and opened it. She read through the material, nodding appreciatively and saying at the conclusion of her inspection, “I wish all tenants were as prompt as they are. Every month, they’re right on time with the rent. No complaints about how they leave the premises at the end of their meetings. No problem in the neighbourhood with illegal parking. Well, of course the clamp takes care of that, doesn’t it? Anyway, what would you like to know?”

“What sort of group is it?”

Misty looked back at her documents. “Support group, it appears. Men going through divorce. I’m not sure why they call it MABIL unless that’s an acronym for…Men Against what?”

“Bloody Inconsiderate Litigation?” Barbara offered. “Whose name’s on the contract?”

Misty read it to her. J. S. Mill. She recited the address as well. She went on to inform Barbara that the only somewhat odd thing about MABIL was that their fee always arrived in cash, brought in person by Mr. Mill on the first of the month. “He said it had to be cash because that’s how they came up with the money, through a collection at their meetings. Well, it’s a bit irregular and all that, but St. Lucy’s said that was fine by them just so long as they got the money. And they’ve got it, every month on the first, for the last five years.”

“Five years?”

“Yes. That’s right. Is there something…?” Misty looked anxious.

Barbara shook her head and waved off the question. What was the point? The girl was as innocent as the children in the Ladybird centre. She didn’t depend on the promise of anything coming from it, but she showed Misty the two e-fits anyway. “J. S. Mill look like either of these blokes?” she asked.

Misty glanced at the sketches but shook her head. He was much older, she said—round seventy?—and he didn’t have a beard or goatee or anything. He did wear an enormous hearing aid, if that was any help.

Barbara shuddered at the information. Someone’s granddad, she thought. She wanted to find and strangle him.

She took the address of J. S. Mill as she left the estate agency. It would be bogus. She had little doubt of that. But she’d hand it over to TO9 nonetheless. Someone somewhere had to kick down the doors of the members of this organisation.

She was heading back in the direction of Cromwell Road when her mobile rang. It was Lynley asking where she was.

She told him, bringing him up to date on what little she’d managed to glean from her efforts with the registration card from the Canterbury Hotel. “What about you?” she asked him.

“St. James thinks our boy may need to buy more ambergris oil,” Lynley told her and informed her of the rest of St. James’s report. “It’s time for you to take another trip up to Wendy’s Cloud, Constable.”

NKATA PARKED some distance along Manor Place. He was still thinking about the dozens of aimlessly sauntering black kids he’d seen in the vicinity of Elephant and Castle. No single place for them to go and very little for them to do. That wasn’t the real truth of the matter—if nothing else, they could be at school—but he knew that was the way they themselves saw their situation, taught to think it by older peers, by disgruntled and disappointed parents, by lack of opportunity and too much temptation. It was easier for them, in the long run, not to care. Nkata had thought of them all the way to Kennington. He allowed them to become his excuse.

Not that he actually needed one. This journey was owed, not to him but by him. The time had definitely come.

He got out of the car and walked the short distance to the wig shop, still a hopeful sign of what was possible among the failed and boarded-up establishments in the neighbourhood. The pubs, naturally, were still doing business. But other than a dismal corner shop with heavy grilles on the windows, Yasmin Edwards’ business was the only place open.

When Nkata entered, he saw that Yasmin was with a client. This was a skeletal black woman with a death’s-head face. She was bald, and she sat slumped in a beauty chair before the long, mirrored wall and the counter at which Yasmin worked. On the counter, a makeup case was open. Three wigs stood near it: one comprising a head full of plaits; one close cropped like Yasmin’s hair; one long and straight, of the sort worn by catwalk models.

Yasmin’s glance went to Nkata and then away, as if she’d been expecting him and was unsurprised by his arrival. He nodded at her, but he knew she didn’t see. She was focussed on her client and the brush on which she was applying blusher from a round tin box.

“I jus’ can’t see it,” her client said. Her voice was as exhausted as her body looked. “Don’t you bother with that, Yas-meen.”

“You wait,” Yasmin told her gently. “Le’ me fix you, luv, and in the meantime, study those wigs for the one you want.”

“I’n’t going to make a difference, is it,” the woman said. “I don’ know why I even came.”

“’Cause you’re pretty, Ruby, an’ the world deserves to see that.”

Ruby pooh-poohed her. “No more I’m pretty now,” she said.

Yasmin didn’t answer this remark, positioning herself instead in front of the woman in order to study her face. Yasmin’s own was professional, devoid of the pity that the other woman would doubtless have been able to sense in an instant. Yasmin bent towards her and applied the brush along the ridge of her cheekbones. She followed this with a similar movement along her jaw.

Nkata waited patiently. He watched Yasmin work: the flick of a brush, a heightening of shading round the eyes. She finished her client off with lipstick, which she applied with a delicate paintbrush. She wore no kind of lipstick herself. The rose-bloom scar on her upper lip—long-ago gift of her husband—made this impossible.

She stood back and surveyed her work. She said, “Now you’re something, Ruby. Which wig’s goin’ to finish off the picture?”

“Oh, Yas-meen, I dunno.”

“Now come on. Your husband i’n’t waiting out there for some bald-headed lady with a pretty new face. You want to try them again?”

“The short one, I guess.”

“You sure? The long one made you look like what-sername the model.”

Ruby chuckled. “Oh yeah, ’m ready for Fashion Week, Yas-meen. Maybe they’ll put me in a bikini. I finally got the figger for it. Le’ me do the short one. I like it good enough.”