With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  Arabella herself, however, was not. She came out of the house just as Ulrike started towards the door. She was guiding a pushchair over the threshold, its tiny occupant so heavily bundled against the cold that only a nose was showing.

  Ulrike had expected someone utterly gone to seed. But Arabella had the look of someone quite trendy in her black beret and her boots. She wore a grey turtle-necked sweater and a black leather jacket. She was far too big in the thighs but was obviously working on it. She’d be back to form in no time.

  Good skin, Ulrike thought as Arabella looked up. All her life in England exposed to the moisture in the air. You didn’t find skin like that in Cape Town. Arabella was a regular English rose.

  Griff’s wife said, “Well, this is a first. Griff’s not here, if you’ve come looking for him, Ulrike. And if he’s not gone to work, he might be at the silk-screening business, although I rather doubt it, things being what they’ve been lately.” And squinting like a woman making sure of the identity of her listener, she added in a sardonic tone, “It is Ulrike, isn’t it?”

  Ulrike didn’t ask how she knew. She said, “I haven’t come to see Griff. I’ve come to talk to you.”

  “That’s another first.” Arabella eased the pushchair off the single step that played the part of front porch. She turned and locked the door behind her. She made an adjustment to the baby’s pile of quilts and then said, “I can’t see what we have to talk about. Surely Griff hasn’t made you promises, so if you think that you and I are going to have a reasonable discussion about divorce, swapping places, or whatever, I have to tell you you’re wasting your time. And not only with me, but with him.”

  Ulrike could feel her face getting hot. It was childish, but she wanted to lay out a few facts in front of Arabella Strong, beginning with: Wasting my time? He fucked me in my office only yesterday, darling. But she restrained herself, saying only, “That’s not why I’ve come.”

  “Oh, it’s not?” Arabella said.

  “No. I’ve recently booted his pretty little arse out of my life. He’s all yours at last,” Ulrike replied.

  “That’s just as well, then. You wouldn’t have been happy had he chosen you permanently. He’s not the easiest man to live with. His…His outside interests grow tiresome fast. One has to learn to cope with them.” Arabella came across the front garden to the gate. Ulrike stepped aside but didn’t open it for her. Instead, she let Arabella do it herself and afterwards she followed Griff’s wife into the street. Closer to her, Ulrike got a better sense of who she was: the sort of woman who lived to be taken care of, who left school at sixteen and then acquired one of those wait-till-a-husband-comes-along kind of jobs that are utterly inadequate for self-support should the marriage break down and the wife need to make her own way in the world.

  Arabella turned to her and said, “I’m going up to Beigel Bake, near the top of Brick Lane. You can come along if you like. I’m happy enough for the company. A friendly chat with another woman is always nice. And anyway, I’ve something you might want to see.”

  She started off, heedless of whether Ulrike was following. Ulrike caught her up, determined not to look as if she were tagging along like an undesirable appendage. She said, “How did you know who I was?”

  Arabella glanced her way. “Strength of character,” she said. “The way you dress and the expression on your face. The way you walk. I saw you come up to the gate. Griff always likes his women strong, at least initially. Seducing a strong woman allows him to feel strong himself. Which he isn’t. Well of course, you know that. He never has been strong. He hasn’t had to be. Of course he thinks he is, just as he thinks he’s keeping secrets from me with all these…these serial trysts of his. But he’s weak the way every handsome man is weak. The world bows to his looks and he feels he must prove something to the world beyond his looks, which he utterly fails to do because he ends up using his looks to do it. Poor darling,” she added. “There are times I feel quite sorry for him. But we muddle along in spite of his foibles.”

  They turned into Brick Lane, heading north. A lorry driver was making a delivery of bolts of bright silk to a sari shop that stood on the corner, still decorated with Christmas lights as it was, perhaps, all year.

  Arabella said, “I expect that’s why you hired him, isn’t it?”

  “Because of his looks?”

  “I expect you interviewed him, found yourself a bit dazzled to be on the end of that soulful expression of his, and didn’t follow up a single reference. He’d have been depending upon that.” Arabella gave her a look that seemed well practised, as if she’d spent days and months awaiting the opportunity to have her say in front of one of her husband’s lovers.

  Ulrike gave her that much. She deserved it, after all. “Guilty as charged,” she said. “He gives good interview.”

  “I don’t know how he’ll cope when his looks fade,” Arabella said. “But I suppose it’s different with men.”

  “Longer shelf life,” Ulrike agreed.

  “Far more distant sell-by date.”

  They found themselves having a quiet chuckle and then looked away from each other in embarrassment. They’d strolled some distance up Brick Lane. Across from a button-and-thread shop that looked as if it had done business on the spot since the time of Dickens, Arabella stopped.

  She said, “There. That’s what I wanted you to see, Ulrike.” She nodded across the street, but not at Able-court and Son Ltd. Rather, she indicated the Bengal Garden, a restaurant that stood next to the button shop, its windows and front-door grilles closed and locked until nightfall.

  “What about it?” Ulrike asked.

  “That’s where she works. She’s called Emma, but I don’t expect that’s her real name. Probably something unpronounceable beginning with an m. So they added uh to Anglicise it. Or at least she did. Em-uh. Emma. Her parents probably call her by her given name still, but she’s trying very hard to be English. Griff intends to help her along in that. She’s the hostess. She’s a real departure for Griff—he doesn’t generally go in for ethnic types—but I think the fact that she’s trying to be English in the face of parental objection…” Arabella glanced Ulrike’s way. “He’d interpret that as strength. Or he’d tell himself so.”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “I always know about them. A wife does, Ulrike. There are signs. In this case, he took me to the restaurant for dinner recently. Her expression when we walked in? He’d obviously been there before and laid the groundwork. I was phase two: the wife on his arm so Emma can see the situation her darling must contend with.”

  “What groundwork?”

  “He has a particular pullover he wears initially when he wants to attract a woman. A fisherman’s sweater. Its colour does something special to his eyes. Did he wear it round you? For a meeting you may have had, just the two of you? Ah. Yes. I see that he did. He’s a creature of habit. But what works, works. So one can hardly blame him for not branching out.”

  Arabella walked on. Ulrike followed, casting one last glance at the Bengal Garden. She said, “Why do you stay with him?”

  “Tatiana,” she said, “is going to have a father.”

  “What about you?”

  “My eyes are open. Griffin is who Griffin is.”

  They crossed a street and continued north, past the old brewery and into the region of leather shops and bargain prices. Ulrike asked the question she’d come to ask, although at this point she knew how unreliable Arabella’s answer was probably going to be.

  “The night of the eighth?” Arabella repeated thoughtfully, offering Ulrike the possibility that she was actually going to hear the truth. “Why, he was home with me, Ulrike.” And then she added deliberately, “Or he was with Emma. Or he was with you. Or he was at the silk-screening business till dawn or later. I’ll swear to any of them, whatever Griff prefers. He, you, and everyone else can absolutely depend upon that.” She paused at the doorway to a large-windowed shop. Inside, customers lined up at a glass-
fronted counter behind which an enormous blackboard listed the variety of bagels and the toppings on offer. She said, “I’ve no idea actually, but that’s something I’ll never tell the police, and that you can be sure of.” She looked away from Ulrike to the interior of the shop, wearing the expression of a woman who suddenly sees where she is for the very first time. “Ah,” she said, “here’s the Beigel Bake. Would you like a bagel, Ulrike? It will be my treat.”

  HE FOUND A PLACE to park that had logic written all over it. Beneath Marks & Spencer, there was an undergound carpark, and while it had a CCTV camera—what else could one expect in this part of town?—should He ever be witnessed on film from this place, His presence possessed a rational explanation. Marks & Sparks had toilets; Marks & Sparks had a grocery. Either of those would serve as excuse.

  To make sure, He went above to the store and put in an appearance in both facilities. He bought a chocolate bar in the grocery and stood wide legged at a urinal in the gents’. That, He thought, should satisfy.

  He washed His hands thoroughly—at this time of year, one couldn’t be too careful with all the head colds going round—and He ducked out of the store afterwards and headed in the direction of the square. It formed the intersection of half a dozen streets, the one whose pavement He walked along being the busiest of them, coursing upward in a glut of taxis and private vehicles all struggling southwest to northeast. When He got to the square itself, He crossed over with the traffic lights, breathing the fumes of a number 11 bus.

  After Leadenhall Market, He’d been cheesed off, but now He was in a different frame of mind. Inspiration had struck Him, and He’d snatched it up, making a switch in His plans without anyone’s intercession. As a result, there was no chant of ridicule from maggots. There was just the instant when He’d suddenly realised a new way was open to Him, broadcasting itself from every newsstand on every street corner that He passed.

  In the square, He went to the fountain. It wasn’t in the centre as design would dictate, but rather towards the southern corner. It was what He came to first, in fact, and He stood looking at the woman, the urn, and the trickle of water she was pouring into the pristine pool beneath her. Although trees lined the square at no great distance from the fountain, He saw that no remainder of their dead leaves decomposed in the water. Someone had long ago fished them out, so the trickle from the urn fell sonorously, without the splat that otherwise would suggest decay. In this part of town, that would be an unthinkable idea: death, decay, and decomposition. That was what made His choice so perfect.

  He stood back from the fountain and observed the rest of the square. It was going to present an enormous challenge. Beyond the row of trees that lined a broad central path to a war memorial at the far end, a rank of taxis waited for fares and an underground station disgorged passengers onto the pavement. They made for banks, for shops, for a pub. They sat at window tables of a brasserie nearby or joined a line of ticket buyers at the box office of a theatre.

  This was no Leadenhall Market: busy in the morning, at noon, and at the end of a workday, but otherwise not busy at all in the dead of winter. This was a place alive with people, probably well into the early hours of the morning. But nothing was insurmountable. The pub would close, the tube station would be locked and barred eventually, the taxi drivers would go home for the night, and the buses would run far less frequently. By three-thirty, the square would be His. All He had to do, really, was wait.

  And anyway, what He had in mind for this location would not take long. He was regretful about the game rails in Leadenhall Market, which He now could not use to make the statement He wished to make, but this was far better. For benches lined the path from the fountain to the war memorial—wrought iron and wood gleaming in the milky sunlight—and He was actually able to picture how it was going to be.

  He could see their bodies in this place: one of them redeemed and released and the other not. One of them the observer and the other the observed, so consequently, one of them laid out and the other positioned in an air of watchful…solicitude. But both of them deliciously, delightfully dead.

  The plans were in motion inside His head, and He felt filled, as He always did. He felt free. There was no room for the maggot at a time like this. The wormlike thing shrank back, as if trying to escape the sun, which was represented to the hateful creature by His presence and His plan. See, see? He wanted to demand. But that could not come now, and it would have no reason to come till He had the two of them—observer and observed—within the circle that was His power.

  All that remained was the waiting, now. Following and finding the moment to strike.

  LYNLEY EXAMINED the e-fit, product of Muwaffaq Masoud’s memory of the man who’d bought his van in the summer. He’d been looking at it for a good few minutes, trying to find points of comparison with the sketch they already had of the man who’d visited Square Four Gym in the days before Sean Lavery was murdered. He finally looked up—decision made—picked up the phone, and asked for an alteration in each drawing. On a copy of each, add a peaked cap, spectacles, and a goatee, he said. He wanted to see both individuals thus altered. He knew it was a stab in the dark, but there were times when a stab found flesh.

  When that was in hand, Lynley finally had a moment to phone Helen. He’d thought much about his conversation with the serial killer, and he’d considered whether the best course of action was to send Helen home from her wanderings round London, with constables posted at front and back doors. But he knew how unlikely his wife was to embrace this move, and he also knew that overreacting to this could be playing into the killer’s hands. At the moment, their man had no idea where the Lynley home actually was. Far better to put Eaton Terrace itself under surveillance—from rooftops, from the Antelope Pub—and cast out a net into which the killer might well wander. That would take several hours to set up. All he had to do was make sure that Helen took care in the meantime while she was out in the streets.

  He reached her in a babble of noise: crockery, cutlery, and women’s chatting. “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Peter Jones,” she said. “We’ve paused for sustenance. I’d no idea that hunting for christening garments would be so grueling.”

  “You’ve not made much progress if you’ve only got as far as Peter Jones.”

  “Darling, that’s completely untrue.” And then obviously to Deborah, “It’s Tommy wondering how far we’ve managed to…Yes, I’ll tell him.” To Lynley, “Deborah says you might demonstrate a bit more faith in us. We’ve already made three stops and we’ve plans to go on to Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Marylebone, and a dear little shop Deborah’s managed to unearth in South Kensington. Designer wear for infants. If we can’t find something there, we’ll not find it anywhere.”

  “You’ve a full day planned.”

  “At the end of it all, we intend to have tea at Claridge’s, the better to look decorative among all that art deco. That was Deborah’s idea, by the way. She seems to think I’m not getting out enough. And, darling, we’ve found one christening outfit already, did I say?”

  “Have you?”

  “It’s terribly sweet. Although…well, your aunt Augusta might have a seizure watching her great-grandnephew—is that what Jasper Felix will be?—being ushered into Christianity in a miniature dinner jacket. But the nappies are so precious, Tommy. How could anyone complain?”

  “It would be unthinkable,” Lynley agreed. “But you know Augusta.”

  “Oh pooh. We’ll search on. I do want you to see the dinner jacket, though. We’re buying every outfit we think suitable, so you can help decide.”

  “Fine, darling. Let me talk to Deborah.”

  “Now, Tommy, you aren’t going to tell her to restrain me, are you?”

  “Wouldn’t think of it. Put her on.”

  “We’re behaving ourselves…more or less,” was what Deborah said to him when Helen handed over her mobile.

  “I’m depending on that.” Lynley gave a moment’s thought to how he wan
ted to phrase things. Deborah, he knew, was incapable of dissembling. One word from him alluding to the killer and it would be written all over her face, in plain sight for Helen to see and to worry about. He sought a different tack. “Don’t let anyone approach you while you’re out today,” he said. “People in the street…Don’t let yourselves become engaged with anyone. Will you do that for me?”

  “Of course. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, really. I’m being a mother hen. Flu going round. Colds. God only knows what else. Just keep an eye out and take care.”

  She said nothing on the other end. He could hear Helen chatting to someone.

  “Keep an adequate distance from people,” Lynley said. “I don’t want her falling ill when she’s finally got beyond morning sickness.”

  “Of course,” Deborah said. “I’ll fend everyone off with my umbrella.”

  “Promise?” he asked her.

  “Tommy, is there something—”

  “No. No.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. Have a good day.”

  He rang off then, depending upon Deborah’s discretion. Even if she told Helen exactly what he’d said, he knew it would seem to his wife that he was merely being overprotective about her health.

  “Sir?”

  He looked towards the door. Havers was standing there, her spiral notebook in hand. “What’ve you got?”

  “Sod all in a bun,” she said. “Miller’s clean.” She went on to report what she’d managed to unearth on the bath-salts vendor, which was, as she’d said, nothing at all. She finished with, “So here’s what I’ve been thinking. P’rhaps we should consider him more carefully as someone likely to drop Barry Minshall in it. If he knows what we’ve got on Barry—I mean exactly—he might be willing to help. If nothing else, he could maybe identify some of the boys in the Polaroids we found in Barry’s digs. We find those boys, and we’ve got a way to break up MABIL.”

  “But not necessarily a way to get the killer,” Lynley pointed out. “No. Turn the MABIL information over to TO9, Havers. Give them Miller’s name and his details as well. They’ll give it all to the relevant Child Protection team.”