With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  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.”

  Barbara found her Players and brought the packet out. She offered him one and hoped he’d hold firm and refuse, which he did. She lit up herself. The smell of burning tobacco was sharp and bitter in the cold winter air. “It doesn’t make you less of a cop,” she said, “just because you’ve become more of a human being.”

  “It’s the marriage thing,” he said to her. “It’s the fatherhood business. It makes one feel—” He corrected himself. “It makes me feel too exposed. I see how fleeting life can be. It can go in an instant, and this…what you and I are doing…it underscores that. And…Barbara, here’s what I never expected to feel.”

  “What?”

  “That I can’t bear it. And that dragging someone by his bollocks to justice isn’t going to change that for me any longer.”

  She took a deep hit on the fag and held it long. It was all a crap shoot, she wanted to tell him. Life had strings but no guarantees. But he knew that already. Every cop knew it. Just as every cop knew that one didn’t safeguard a wife, a husband, or a family just by working every day on the side of good guys. Kids still went bad. Wives committed adultery. Husbands had heart attacks. Everything one possessed could easily be wiped out in an instant. Life was life.

  She said, “Let’s just muddle through today. That’s what I say. We can’t take care of tomorrow till it gets here.”

  BARRY MINSHALL didn’t look as if he’d had an easy night of it, which was what Lynley had had in mind when he’d decided to wait until morning to interview the magician. He was disheveled and stooped. He came into the interview room in the company of the duty solicitor—James Barty, he said his name was as he led Minshall to the table and lowered him into a chair—and when the magician sat, he squinted in the bright lights and asked if he could have his dark glasses returned to him.

  “You’ll get nothing of use from looking at my eyes, if that’s what you hope,” he informed Lynley, and to make his point he raised his head and gave an illustration of his meaning. His eyes were slightly darker than the colour of smoke when dry wood burns, and they moved back and forth rapidly and incessantly. He took only a moment for this before he lowered his head. “Nystagmus and photophobia,” he said. “That’s what it’s called. Or do I need a note from my doctor to prove it to you lot? I need those glasses, all right? I can’t cope with the lights and I can’t bloody see without them anyway.”

  Lynley nodded at Havers. She left the room to fetch Minshall’s glasses. Lynley took the time to make ready the tape recorder and to study their suspect. He’d not seen albinism in the flesh before. It wasn’t what, in his ignorance, he’d thought it would be. No pink eyes. No snow-white hair. Rather, the greyish eyes and a dense look to the hair, as if a buildup of deposits had been laid upon it over time, causing it to bear a yellow tint. He wore this hair long, although it was drawn back from his face and banded at his neck. His skin was completely without pigmentation. Not even a freckle dotted its surface.

  When Havers returned with Minshall’s dark glasses, he put them on at once. This allowed him to raise his head although he kept it tilted throughout their interview, perhaps the better to control the dancing movement of his eyes.

  Lynley began with the preliminaries spoken for the sake of the tape recording that was being made. He went on to give the formal caution in order to snare Minshall’s complete attention and in case the magician did not understand the extent of his jeopardy, which was unlikely. Then he said, “Tell us about your relationship with Davey Benton,” as next to him, Havers took out her notebook for good measure.

  “Considering the present circumstances, I don’t think I’ll be telling you anything.” Barry Minshall’s words were even, sounding well rehearsed.

  His solicitor rested back in his chair, apparently at ease with that answer. He would have had the entire night to advise his client of his rights had Minshall asked for them.

  “Davey’s dead, Mr. Minshall,” Lynley said, “as you know. I’d advise you to take a more cooperative approach. Will you tell us where you were two nights ago?”

  There was a marked hesitation as Minshall thought about all the ramifications of remaining silent or offering an answer to this question. He finally said, “At what hour, Superintendent?,” and gestured to his solicitor when Barty made a move, as if to stop him from speaking at all.

  “At all hours,” Lynley told him.

  “You can’t be more specific than that?”

  “Are you that much in demand in the evenings?”

  Minshall’s lips curved. Lynley found it was disconcerting to interview someone whose eyes were protected by dark lenses, but he schooled himself to look for other signs: in the movement of the Adam’s apple, the twitch of fingers, the alteration in posture.

  “I closed my stall at the usual ho
ur of half past five. No doubt John Miller—the bath-salts vendor—will confirm that, as he spends an inordinate amount of time observing the children who dawdle round me. I went from there to a café near my home, where I regularly eat my dinner. It’s called Sofia’s Cupboard although there’s no Sofia and the coziness implied by cupboard is absent. But the price is reasonable and they leave me alone, which is how I prefer it. I went from there to my home. I went out again briefly to buy milk and coffee. That was it.”

  “And while you were home during the evening?” Lynley said.

  “What about it?”

  “What did you do? Watch your videos? Surf the Internet? Read a few magazines? Entertain visitors? Practise your magic?”

  This took him some time to think about. He said, “Well, as I recall…,” and then spent a long while doing his recalling. Too long for Lynley’s liking. Doubtless, what Minshall was doing was trying to assess how much the police would be able to confirm depending upon what he claimed to have been doing. Phone calls? There would be records of them. Mobile phone? The same. Internet use? The computer would show it. Visits to the local pub? There would be witnesses. Considering the state of his digs, he could hardly claim to have been cleaning the house, so it was down to television—in which case he’d have to name the programmes—his magazines, or his videos.

  He finally said, “I had an early night. I had a bath and went straight to bed. I don’t sleep well and occasionally it catches up with me, so I turn in early.”

  “Alone?” Havers asked the question.

  “Alone,” Minshall said.

  Lynley took out the Polaroid photos they’d found in his flat. He said, “Tell us about these boys, Mr. Minshall.”

  Minshall glanced down. After a moment he said, “Those would be the prize winners.”

  “The prize winners?”

  Minshall pulled the plastic case of Polaroids towards himself. “Birthday parties. They’re part of how I make my living, along with the stall in the market. I tell the hosts to have a game prepared for the children to play, and you’re looking at the prize.”

  “Which is?”

  “A magician’s costume. I have them made in Limehouse if you’d like the address.”

  “The names of these boys? And why is the winner always a boy? Are there no girls where you perform?”

  “One doesn’t actually find many girls who’re interested in magic. It doesn’t attract them as it does boys.” Minshall made much of examining the photos again. He held them closer to his face than was normal. He shook his head and put the pictures down. “I may have known their names at one time, but they’re gone now. In some cases, I don’t think I ever caught names at all. I didn’t think to. I never thought I’d have to name them to anyone. And certainly not to the police.”

  “Why did you photograph them at all?”

  “To show parents when arranging the next party,” he said. “It’s advertising, Superintendent. Nothing more sinister than that.”

  Smooth, Lynley thought. He had to give Minshall credit. It was not in vain that the magician had spent his night locked up in the Holmes Street station. But all his smoothness wrote guilt large upon his person. The job now was to discover a crack in the confident persona.

  Lynley said, “Mr. Minshall, we have Davey Benton placed at your stall. We have him stealing handcuffs from you. We have a witness to your catching him in the act. So I’ll ask you again to explain your relationship with the boy.”

  “Catching him in the act of pinching something from the stall doesn’t constitute a relationship,” Minshall said. “Children try to pinch things from me all the time. Sometimes I catch them. Sometimes I don’t. In the case of this boy…the constable here”—with a nod at Barbara—“did tell me you’d come across some handcuffs related to him, and they might have come from my stall at some point in time. But if they did, doesn’t that suggest to you that I didn’t catch him in the act of pinching them at all? Because why would I catch him in the act and then let him go off with the handcuffs afterwards?”

  “You may have had a very good reason for that.”

  “What would that be?”

  Lynley was not about to allow the suspect to start asking his own questions at this point or any other point in the interview. He knew they’d got all they were going to get from Minshall, but not all that was available. So he said, “A SOCO team is taking evidence from your flat as we speak, Mr. Minshall, and I daresay you and I both know what’s going to be found inside that place. Another officer has your computer in hand, and I’ve little doubt what sort of pretty pictures are going to turn up on it in short order when we begin logging on to the Web sites you’ve visited. In the meantime, forensic specialists are examining your van, your neighbour—I expect you know Mrs. Singh—positively identified Davey Benton as a child who visited you in Lady Margaret Road, and when she has a look at photos of some other dead boys…well, I expect you can fill the blanks there yourself. And this doesn’t begin to address the manner in which your fellow vendors in the Stables Market are going to dig your grave for you when we talk to them.”

  “About what?” Minshall said, although he sounded less full of himself now and he glanced at the solicitor as if for some kind of support.

  “About what’s about to happen now, Mr. Minshall. I’m arresting you on a charge of murder. One charge and counting. This interview is concluded for the moment.”

  Lynley leaned forward, gave the date and the time, and switched off the recorder. He handed over his card to James Barty and said to the solicitor, “I’m available should your client wish to expatiate on any answers, Mr. Barty. In the meantime, we’ve got work to do. I’m sure the duty sergeant will make Mr. Minshall quite comfortable here before he’s moved to a remand centre.”

  Outside, Lynley said to Havers, “We need to find the boys in those Polaroids. If there’s a tale to be told about Barry Minshall, one of them is going to tell it. We need to compare them to the photos of the dead boys as well.”

  She looked back at the station. “He’s dirty, sir. I can feel it. Can you?”

  “He’s what Robson told us to look for, isn’t he. That air of confidence. He’s up against it, and he’s not even worried. Check into his background. Go back as far as you can manage. If he was warned off biking on the pavement when he was eight years old, I want to know about it.” Lynley’s mobile rang as he was speaking. He waited till Havers had her actions jotted down in her notebook before he answered.

  The caller was Winston Nkata, and his voice had the sound of someone who was being careful to control his excitement. “We got the van, guv. Night of Kimmo Thorne’s last break-in, a van was cruising down the street too slow, like it was doing a recce of the area. Cavendish Road station took the information, but nothing came of it. Couldn’t relate it to the break-in, they said. They said the witness had to be mistaken on the number plates.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause the owner had an alibi. Confirmed by nuns from that Mother Teresa group.”

  “An unimpeachable source, I’d say.”

  “But listen to this. Van belongs to a bloke called Muwaffaq Masoud. His phone number matches the numbers we c’n see on the video of that van in St. George’s Gardens too.”

  “Where can we find him?”

  “Hayes. In Middlesex.”

  “Give me the address. I’ll meet you there.”

  Nkata did so. Lynley motioned to Havers to hand over her notebook and biro, and he jotted the address down in it. He ended the call from Nkata and thought about what this new development implied. Tentacles, he concluded. They were reaching out in all directions.

  He said to Havers, “Get on to Minshall and the rest at the Yard.”

  “Are we close to something?”

  “Sometimes I think so,” he answered honestly, “and other times I think we’ve barely begun.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  LYNLEY USED THE A40 TO MAKE HIS WAY OUT TO THE address in Middlesex that Nkata supplie
d him. It wasn’t easy to find, and the journey there encompassed wrong turns, route retracing, and the negotiation of a crossing place over the Grand Union Canal. Ultimately, the house in question turned out to be part of a small estate that was tucked within the embrace of two sports grounds, two playing fields, three lakes, and a marina. Part of Greater London, it still felt like the country, and the distant planes taking off from Heathrow couldn’t dispel the sensation that somehow one had cleaner air and the possibility of freer and safer movement here.

  Muwaffaq Masoud lived in Telford Way, a narrow street comprising terrace houses of amber brick. He lived at the end of one of the terraces, and he was at home to answer the door when Lynley and Nkata rang the bell.

  He blinked at them from behind heavy-framed spectacles, a slice of toast in his hand. He was not yet dressed for the day, and he wore a dressing gown fashioned like the robe boxers might don before their bouts, complete with a hood and the sobriquet “Killer” embroidered on the breast and across the back.

  Lynley offered his identification. “Mr. Masoud?” he said. And when the man bobbed his head in nervous affirmation, “May we have a word, please?” He introduced Nkata and said his own name. Masoud shot a look that went from one of them to the other before he stepped back from the door.

  This gave immediately into a sitting room. It was not much larger than a refrigerator box, and a wooden staircase dominated its far end. Closer, a wool-covered sofa stood on one side of the room, facing a faux fireplace on the other. In the corner, a metal curio stand held the room’s only decorations: perhaps a dozen photographs of what seemed to be a multitude of young adults and their offspring. Atop the stand, an additional picture formed part of a shrine, with silk flowers lying neatly at the base of a chrome-framed photograph of Princess Diana.

  Lynley looked at the curio stand and then back at Muwaffaq Masoud. He was bearded, between fifty and sixty years old. The belt of his dressing gown suggested something of a paunch beneath it.