With No One As Witness (88 page)

The man Fu was getting everything ready, primarily himself. He’d lit a candle and stripped, and he was anointing his naked body with a substance—this would be the ambergris, wouldn’t it?—that he took from a small brown vial. Next to him was the cooker that Muwaffaq Masoud had described to them in Hayes. It was heating up a large pan from which the scent of previously burnt meat gave off a faint odour.

He was actually humming. It was all in a night’s work for him. They were in his power, and the manifestation of power and the execution of power were what he wanted out of life.

On the floor of the van, the woman made a pitiful sound from beneath the duct tape. Fu turned at this, and in the light Lynley saw that he looked vaguely familiar, that he possessed that quintessential and very English face of substantial pointed nose, rounded chin, and bread-dough cheeks. He could have been a hundred thousand men on the street, but in him the strain had mutated somehow, so he was not a bland little individual working at an ordinary job and going home to the wife and the children every evening in a terrace house somewhere but, rather, he was who circumstances in life had altered him to be: someone who liked to kill people.

Fu said, “I wouldn’t have chosen you, Ulrike. I rather like you. It was actually my mistake ever to mention Dad. But when you started asking for alibis—and it was fairly obvious that was what you were doing, by the way—I knew I had to tell you something you’d be happy with. Sitting home alone would never have cut the mustard, would it? The alone part would have made you curious.” He looked down on her, completely friendly. “I mean, you would have been all over that, p’rhaps even telling the coppers about it. And then where would we be?”

He brought out the knife. He took it from the little work top where the propane cooker was merrily heating not only the pan but the van itself now. Lynley could feel the warmth undulating across to him.

Fu said, “It was meant to be one of the boys. I thought Mark Connor. You know him, don’t you? Likes to hang round in reception with Jack? Little rapist in the making, you ask me. He needs sorting, Ulrike. They all need sorting. Proper little gobshites, they are. Need discipline and no one gives that to them. Makes one wonder what kind of parents they have. Parenting, you know, is essential to development. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

He turned back to the cooker. He took up the candle and held it to various points on his body. It came to Lynley that this was a hieratic ritual he was watching. And he was meant to be watching, like a worshipper at church.

He wanted to speak, but his mouth too was covered with tape. He tested the bindings that held his wrists to the side of the van. They were immovable.

Fu turned again. He stood there quite naturally in his nudity, his body glistening where he’d used the oil on it. He held up the candle and saw that Lynley was watching him. He reached for something on the work top again.

Lynley thought it would be the torch to stun him once more, but it was instead a small brown bottle, not the one he’d been using but another that he took from a little cupboard and held up so that Lynley would be sure to see it.

“Something new, Superintendent,” he said. “After Ulrike, I’ll switch to parsley. Triumph, you see. And there’ll be much cause for it. For triumph. For me, that is. For you? Well, I don’t expect you’ve much to feel grand about at this moment, have you? But you’re curious, still, and who can blame you? You want to know, don’t you? You want to understand.”

He knelt by Ulrike, but he looked at Lynley. “Adultery. Nowadays it’s nothing she’d actually go to gaol for, but it’ll do nicely. She would have touched him—intimately, Ulrike? It would have been intimately, wouldn’t it?—so, like the others, her hands bear the stain of her sin.” He looked down at Ulrike. “I expect you’re sorry for that, aren’t you, darling?” He smoothed her hair. “Yes, yes. You’re sorry. So you’ll be released. I promise you that. When it’s over, your soul will fly to heaven. I’ll keep a bit of you with me…snip snip and you’re mine…but at that point, you won’t feel it. You won’t feel a thing.”

Lynley saw that the young woman had begun to cry. She struggled wildly against her restraints but the effort only exhausted her. Fu watched her, placid, and smoothed her hair once again when she was finished.

“It has to happen,” he said kindly. “Try to understand. And do know that I like you, Ulrike. Actually, I quite liked them all. You have to suffer, of course, but that’s what life is. Suffering through whatever we’re handed. And this is what’s been handed to you. The superintendent here will bear witness. And then he’ll pay for his own sins as well. So you’re not alone, Ulrike. You can take comfort from that, can’t you?”

The toying with her, Lynley saw, was giving the man pleasure, actual physical pleasure. This, however, seemed to embarrass him. It would doubtless make him feel like one of the “others” and he wouldn’t like that: the indication that he too was of warped human stock like every other psychopath who had gone before him, getting a sexual kick from another’s terror and pain. He picked up his trousers and donned them, pushing his phallus out of view.

But it seemed that the fact of his arousal altered him. He became all business, the friendly chat put behind him. He sharpened the knife. He spat into the pan to test the heat of it. From a rack, he took a length of thin line that he held—one end in each hand—and snapped expertly as if to test its strength.

“Down to work, then,” he said when he was fully prepared.

BARBARA STUDIED the van from the farthest end of the carpark, some sixty yards away. She tried to think what the inside might be like. If he’d killed the boys and sliced them open within the vehicle—which she was certain he’d done—that called for space, space in which to lay someone out, which meant the back of the van. Obvious, no? But how exactly was one of these bloody vehicles structured? she wondered. Where were its most vulnerable points and where the most secure? She didn’t know. And she didn’t have the time to find out.

She climbed back into the Bentley and she adjusted the seat, far back now, as far as it would go. This would make it difficult for her to drive, but she wasn’t going a great distance.

She fastened her safety belt.

She revved the motor.

She said, “Sorry, sir,” and changed the car from park to drive.

FU SAID to Ulrike, “We’ve had judgement already, haven’t we? And I can see both admission and repentance in your tears. So we’ll go on directly to punishment, darling. From punishment, you see, purification comes.”

Lynley watched as Fu removed the pan from the stove. He saw him smile kindly down at the struggling woman. He too struggled but it was to no avail. “Don’t,” Fu told them both. “It’ll make everything worse.” And then directly to Ulrike, “Anyway, darling, trust me on this. It’s going to hurt me far worse than it’ll ever hurt you.”

He knelt beside her and placed the pan on the floor.

He reached for her hand, untied it, and held it tight. He considered it for a moment, then kissed it.

And the side of the van exploded.

THE AIRBAG DEPLOYED. Smoke filled the car. Barbara coughed and fumbled frantically with the fastening on her safety belt. She managed to release it and she stumbled from the car, sore of chest and hacking to clear her lungs. When she got her breath back, she looked at the Bentley and realised then that what she’d thought was smoke was actually some sort of powder. The airbag? Who knew. The important thing was that nothing was on fire, neither the Bentley nor the van, although neither was the same as it had been.

She’d aimed for the driver’s door. She’d hit it dead centre. Thirty-eight miles an hour had done the job. The speed had destroyed the front of the Bentley and sent the van spinning into the shrubbery. What faced her now was the rear of the van, its single window staring and black.

He had the weapons, but she had surprise. She went forward to see what surprise had wrought.

The sliding door was on the passenger’s side. It was open. Barbara yelled, “Cops, Kilfoyle. You’re finished. Step outside.”

Nothing in response. He had to be unconscious.

She moved carefully. She looked round her as she went. It was dark as pitch, but her eyes were adjusting. The shrubbery was thick, gnarling from the ground right into the carpark, and she made her way along it to the open van door.

She saw figures, unaccountably two of them and a candle guttering on its side on the floor. She righted this and it shed light in a glow that allowed her to find him. Lynley hung limply from his arms and his wrists, bolted like a piece of meat to the side of the van. On the floor, Ulrike Ellis lay bound. She’d wet herself. The smell of piss was rank in the air.

Barbara stepped over her and got to Lynley. He was conscious, she saw, and she sent a broken prayer of gratitude heavenward. She ripped the piece of duct tape from his mouth, crying, “Did he hurt you? Are you hurt? Where is he, sir?”

Lynley said, “See to the woman, the woman,” and Barbara left him to go to her. She saw that a heavy frying pan lay next to Ulrike and for a moment she thought the bastard had bashed her with it and she was finished altogether. But when she knelt and felt for a pulse, it was fast and steady. She ripped the duct tape from Ulrike’s mouth. She unbound her left hand.

She said, “Sir, where is he? Is he here? Where—”

The van lurched.

Lynley shouted, “Barbara! Behind you!”

And the bastard was there. Back in the van and coming towards her and God damn but didn’t he have something in his hand. It looked like a torch but she couldn’t believe it was a torch since it wasn’t on and anyway he was storming at her and—

Barbara grabbed the only thing within reach. She leaped to her feet just as he lunged. He missed her, fell forward.

She was more fortunate.

She swung the frying pan and brained him on the back of the head.

He fell over Ulrike, but that didn’t matter. Barbara brained him a second time for good measure.

NKATA ARRIVED AT THE POLICE STATION ON LOWER Clapton Road in record time. He found it not overly far from Hackney Marsh, in an area of town he’d never before seen. An old redbrick Victorian affair, the station looked like something Bobby Peel might emerge from at any moment, and at this early hour, it was still lit up as if for night, exterior lights thwarting the would-be terrorists unheard of in the 1800s.

What had awakened him was his mobile phone ringing, with Barb Havers on the other end. She’d said tersely, “It’s Kilfoyle, Winnie. We’ve got the bugger. Lower Clapton Road if you want to be in on things. Do you?”

He’d said, “What? I thought you went to tell the super—”

“Kilfoyle was there. He snatched him out of the carpark. I followed and…bloody hell, I wrecked his Bentley, Win, but it was the only way—”

“You telling me you saw the guv get snatched and d’in’t ring for help? Fuck all, Barb—”

“I couldn’t.”

“But—”

“Winnie. Stuff a sock in it. If you want to be in on things, get over here now. They’ve got him in a cell while they wait for John Stewart to get here, but they’ll let us talk to him in advance if the duty solicitor gets here first. So d’you want in?”

“I’m on my way.”

He’d banged round in the dark in his haste to be gone, which had roused his mother. She’d come storming out of her bedroom with a tatting hook held aloft—God only knew what she’d intended to do with it—and when she’d seen him, she demanded to know what in the name of Jamaica he was doing out here at four thirty-two o’clock in the morning?

“You just gettin in?” she’d cried.

Just going out, he’d said.

“Without your breakfast? You sit down and let me do a proper fry-up for you.”

Can’t, Mum. Case is closing and I want to be there for it. Only so much time before I get muscled aside by the higher-ups.

So he’d grabbed his coat, kissed her cheek, and he’d taken off, sprinting down the corridor, hurtling down the stairs, dashing to his car. He had a general sense of where the police station was. Lower Clapton Road was just north of Hackney.

Now he hustled into reception, where he gave his name and showed his identification. The special on duty placed a call somewhere, and in less than two minutes, Barb Havers came to fetch him.

She brought him into the picture quickly: what she’d seen in the carpark of St. Thomas’ Hospital, her miserable wreck of a flaming worthless Mini breaking down, her appropriation of Lynley’s Bentley, the Lea Valley Ice Centre, the hurried plan, the crash of the Bentley into the van, finding Lynley and Ulrike Ellis within it, the brief confrontation with the killer himself.

“He didn’t count on the frying pan,” Barbara concluded. “I could’ve hit him round six times more, but the super shouted I’d bashed him enough.”

“Where is he?”

“The guv? In casualty. That’s where we all went when triple nine got these blokes”—with a gesture round her to indicate their colleagues from the Lower Clapton Road station—“over there. Kilfoyle’d hit him with the stun gun so much, they wanted to watch him for a while. Same for Ulrike.”

“And Kilfoyle?”

“Bugger’s head’s like a brick wall, Winnie. I didn’t break anything, more’s the pity. He’s probably got concussion, a contusion, whatever, but his vocal cords are operable, so he’s doing just fine ’s far as we’re concerned. Oh, and I got him with the stun gun ’s well.” She grinned. “Couldn’t resist.”

“Police brutality.”

“And proud to have it written on my tombstone. Here we are.” She shouldered open the door to an interview room. Inside, Robbie Kilfoyle sat with a duty solicitor who was speaking to him urgently.

Nkata’s first thought was that Kilfoyle didn’t, in fact, look very much like any e-fit they’d come up with during the course of the investigation. He bore only a mild resemblance to the man seen lurking round Square Four Gym, where Sean Lavery worked out, and he bore no resemblance at all to the man who’d bought the van from Muwaffaq Masoud late the previous summer, had he, in fact, even been that man. So much for people’s memories, Nkata thought.

Robson, on the other hand and for his sins, had been fairly close to the mark from the start with his profiling of the serial killer, and the meagre facts they were able to glean from Kilfoyle—when the duty solicitor wasn’t telling him to mind what he said or to plug his mug altogether—confirmed this. Kilfoyle’s age of twenty-seven was dead within range and his circumstances weren’t far off either. Mum deceased, he’d lived with his dad till the older man had dropped dead in late summer. That would’ve been the stressor, Nkata reckoned, because the first of the killings started not long afterwards. They already knew that his past fit the profile, with truancy problems, peeping Tom allegations, and AWOL concerns in his record. But in the limited time they had with him prior to DI John Stewart’s arrival to take over, they saw that the rest of the details were going to come from the evidence that would be gleaned from his home, possibly from the environs of the ice-rink carpark, and from his van.