With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  “But if we—”

  “Barbara,” he said, stopping her before she could get into it, “that’s the best we can do.”

  Dorothea Harriman came into the office as Havers groused about letting even part of the investigation go. The departmental secretary had several pieces of paper in her hand, which she turned over to Lynley. She departed in a breeze of perfume, saying, “New e-fits, Acting Superintendent. Straightaway, I was told. He said to let you know he’s done several since you couldn’t tell him what the glasses were like or how thick the goatee was. The peaked cap, he said, is the same on them all.”

  Lynley thanked her as Havers approached his desk for a look. The two sketches were now altered: Both of the suspects wore hats, spectacles, and had facial hair. It was little enough to go on, but it was something.

  He got to his feet. “Come with me,” he told Havers. “It’s time to go to the Canterbury Hotel.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “LIKE I SAID FROM THE FIRST TO YOU LOT,” JACK VENESS declared, “I was at the Miller and Grindstone. I don’t know till what time because sometimes I’m there till last orders and sometimes I’m not and I don’t keep a fucking diary of it, okay? But I was there, and afterwards my mate and I went for a take-away. No matter how many times you ask me, I’m going to give you the same flipping answer. So what’s the point of asking?”

  “Point,” Winston Nkata replied, “is that more in’eresting events keep piling up, Jack. More we learn about who’s doing what to who in this case, more we have to check out who might’ve done something else. And when. It always comes down to when, man.”

  “It always comes down to cops trying to pin something on someone and not caring much who the someone is. You lot got a nerve, you know that? People locked up for twenty years, turns out they been framed, and you never change your approach, do you?”

  “’Fraid that’s what’s going to happen?” Nkata asked him. “Why would that be?”

  He and the Colossus receptionist were facing off right inside the entrance, where Nkata had followed him from the carpark. There, Jack’d been cadging cigarettes from two twelve-year-olds. He’d lit one, put another in his pocket, and tucked a third behind his ear. At first Nkata had thought he was one of the organisation’s clients. It was only when Veness had stopped him with an “Oy! You! What’re you about?” as he went for the door that Nkata realised the scruffy young man was a Colossus employee.

  He’d asked Veness if he could have a word, and he’d offered his identification. He had a list of dates when MABIL had met—helpfully provided by Barry Minshall upon the advice of his solicitor—and he was comparing it to alibis. Trouble was, Jack Veness’s alibi was unchanging, as he’d taken pains to point out.

  Now Jack stalked into the reception area, as if satisfied that he’d been cooperative. Nkata followed him. There, a boy was lounging on one of the mangy-looking sofas. He was smoking and trying unsuccessfully to blow rings in the direction of the ceiling.

  “Mark Connor!” Veness barked at him. “What’re you about besides getting ready for a boot in your bum? No smoking anywhere inside Colossus, and you know that. What’re you thinking?”

  “No one’s here.” Mark sounded bored. “’Nless you plan on grassing me to someone, no one knows.”

  “I’m here, got it?” Jack snapped in reply. “Get the fuck out or put out the fag.”

  Mark muttered, “Shit,” and swung his legs over the side of the sofa. He got to his feet and shuffled out of the room, the crotch of his trousers hanging nearly to his knees in gangsta fashion.

  Jack went to the reception desk and punched a few keys at his computer. He said to Nkata, “What else, okay? If you want to talk to the rest of this lot, they’re out. One and all.”

  “Griffin Strong?”

  “You have trouble hearing?”

  Nkata didn’t answer this. He locked eyes with Veness and waited.

  The receptionist relented but made it clear by his tone that he wasn’t happy. “Hasn’t been in all day,” he said. “Probably having his eyebrows plucked somewhere.”

  “Greenham?”

  “Who knows? His idea of lunch is two hours and counting. So he c’n take Mummy to the doctor, he says.”

  “Kilfoyle?”

  “He never shows up till he’s made his deliveries, which I hope happens soon since he’s got my salami- and-salad baguette on him and I’d like to eat it. What else, man?” He grabbed up a pencil and tapped it meaningfully against a telephone message pad. As if on cue, the phone rang and he answered. No, he said, she wasn’t in. Could he take a message? He added pointedly, “Truth to tell, I thought she was meeting with you, Mr. Bensley. That’s what she said when she left,” and he sounded satisfied, as if a theory of his had just been proved right.

  He jotted down a note and told the caller he’d pass the information along. He rang off and then looked up at Nkata. “What else?” he said. “I’ve got things to do.”

  Nkata had Jack Veness’s background inscribed on his brain, along with the background of everyone else at Colossus who had piqued the interest of the police. He knew the young man had reason to be uneasy. Old lags were always the first to come under suspicion when a crime went down, and Veness knew it. He’d done time before—no matter it was arson—and he wouldn’t be anxious to do time elsewhere. And he was right about the cops’ tendency to set their sights on a culprit early on, based on his past and their past interactions with him. All over England, there were red-faced chief constables sweeping up the debris of dirty investigations into everything from bombings to murder.

  Jack Veness was no fool to expect the worst. But on the other hand, positioning himself thus was a clever move.

  “You got a lot of responsibility here,” Nkata said. “With everyone gone.”

  Jack didn’t reply at once. This change in gears obviously was cause for suspicion. He finally made a reply of, “I c’n handle it.”

  “Anyone notice?”

  “What?”

  “You handling it. Or are they too busy?”

  This direction appeared doable. Jack went for it, saying, “No one notices much of anything. I’m low man on the totem pole, not counting Rob. He leaves, I’m done for. Doormat time.”

  “Kilfoyle, you mean?”

  Jack eyed him and Nkata knew he’d sounded too interested. “I’m not going there with you, mate. Rob’s a good lad. He’s been in trouble, but I expect you know that like you know I’ve been in trouble as well. That doesn’t make either one of us a killer.”

  “You hang about with him much? Miller and Grindstone, f’r instance? That how you got to know him? He the mate you been talking about?”

  “Look, I’m giving you sod all on Rob. Do your own dirty work.”

  “All goes back to this Miller and Grindstone situation we got,” Nkata pointed out.

  “I don’t see it that way, but shit, shit.” Jack grabbed a paper and scrawled a name and a phone number, which he then handed over. “There. That’s my mate. Ring him and he’ll tell you the same. We’re at the pub, then we’re off for a curry. Ask him, ask at the pub, ask at the take-away. ’Cross from Bermondsey Square, it is. They’ll tell you the same.”

  Nkata folded the paper neatly and slid it into his notebook, saying, “Problem, Jack.”

  “What? What?”

  “One night tends to fade into ’nother when you always go to the same place, see? A few days—or weeks—after the fact, how’s someone s’posed to know which nights you were in the pub and buying take-away chicken tikka afterwards and which nights you skipped ’cause you were doing something else?”

  “Like what? Like killing a few kids, you mean? Fuck it, I don’t care—”

  “Trouble here, Jack?”

  Another man had entered, a somewhat rounded bloke with hair too thin for his age and skin too ruddy even for someone recently exposed to the cold. Nkata wondered if he’d been listening just outside the reception door.

  “Help you with someth
ing?” the man asked Nkata with a glance that took the DS in from head to toe.

  Jack didn’t seem pleased to see the bloke. He apparently believed he needed no rescue. “Neil,” he said. “Another visit from the Bill.”

  This would be Greenham, Nkata concluded. Just as well. He wanted a word with him too.

  Jack went on. “More alibis needed. He’s got a list of dates this time. Hope you keep a diary of your every move ’cause that’s what he’s looking for. Meet DS Whahaha.”

  Nkata said to Greenham, “Winston Nkata,” and reached for his warrant card.

  “Don’t bother,” Neil said. “I believe you. And this is what you need to believe. I’m going in there”—he indicated the inner reaches of the building—“and I’m ringing my solicitor. I’m finished answering questions or having friendly chats with the cops without legal advice. You lot are bordering on harassment now.” And then to Veness, “Watch your backside. They don’t plan to rest till they get one of us. Pass word round.” He headed for the doorway to the interior of the building.

  There was, Nkata concluded, nothing more to be gained on this side of the river aside from corroborating the Miller and Grindstone tale and the take-away curry situation. If Jack Veness was slip-sliding round London in the small hours, depositing bodies in the vicinity of the homes of his fellow Colossus workers, he’d not have announced that fact to anyone he knew at the pub or the take-away through obvious behaviour. Still, if he’d selected MABIL as his next source of young boys, he might not have been as circumspect about disguising his absence from the pub and the take-away on the nights of MABIL meetings. It was little enough to go on, but it was something.

  Nkata left the building, telling Veness to have Robbie Kilfoyle and Griffin Strong phone him when they finally showed their faces. He went across the carpark at the rear of the building and slid into his Escort.

  Across the street, tucked into the dismal and heavily graffitied railway arches leading out of London from Waterloo Station, four car-repair shops faced Colossus, along with a radio-controlled minicab and parcel service and a bicycle shop. In front of these establishments, young people of the area hung about. They mingled in groups and as Nkata watched, an Asian man emerged from the bicycle shop and shooed them off to another location. They exchanged words with the man, but nothing came of it. They began to slouch off towards New Kent Road.

  When Nkata followed in his car, he saw more of them beneath the railway viaduct, and more strung out like African beads in twos, threes, and fours along the way to the grubby shopping centre, which took up the corner of Elephant and Castle. They shuffled along on a pavement spotted with discarded chewing gum, cigarette ends, orange juice cartons, food wrappers, crushed Coke cans, and half-eaten kebabs. Among themselves, they passed a fag…or more likely a spliff. It was difficult to tell. But they apparently had no worry of being stopped in this part of town, no matter what they did. There were more of them than there were outraged citizens to prevent them from doing whatever they liked, which seemed to be listening to deafening rap music and giving aggro to the kebab maker whose tiny establishment stood between the Charlie Chaplin Pub and El Azteca Mexican Products and Catering. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go: out of school, without the hope of employment, waiting aimlessly for the current of life to carry them wherever it would.

  But none of them, Nkata thought, had started out this way. Each of them had once been a slate on which nothing had been written. This made him think of his own good fortune: that combination of humanity and circumstance that had brought him to where he was on this day. And had, he thought, also brought Stoney to where he was…

  He wouldn’t think of his brother, beyond his help now. He would think of helping where he could. In memory of Stoney? No. Not for that. Rather, in acknowledgement of deliverance and in blessing of his God-given ability to recognise it when it had come.

  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 a
gain, 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?”