With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  “She’s been taken to St. Thomas’ Hospital,” St. James said. His eyes reddened at the rims, and he cleared his throat harshly. “Tommy, you must come with me at once.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  OUTSIDE BERKELEY PEARS’ FLAT, BARBARA HAVERS CONSIDERED her next move. It appeared to be a nice little visit with Barry Minshall in the Holmes Street station to see what else she could scoop out of the cesspool that was his brain.

  She was heading off to do just that, making her way along the corridor towards the stairs, when she heard the sound. It was something between a howl and the cry of someone in the throes of death by strangulation, and it stopped Barbara in her tracks. She waited to hear if the cry would repeat itself, and in due course it did. Throaty, desperate…It took a moment for her to realise that she was listening to a cat.

  “Bloody hell,” she murmured. It had sounded exactly like…She attached the sound to the shriek that someone in the building had heard the night of Davey Benton’s murder, and when she made that leap, she realised that everything about her journey to Walden Lodge might well have been an exercise in pure futility.

  The cat cried again. Barbara knew little enough about felines, but it sounded like one of those cracked-voice Siamese types. Malevolent little furballs though they were, they still had a right—

  Furballs. Barbara looked towards the door behind which the cat sounded another time. Cat fur, she thought, cat hair, whatever the bloody hell it was. There’d been cat hair on Davey Benton’s body.

  She went in search of the building manager. A question to one of the Moppits directed her to a ground-floor flat. She knocked on the door.

  After a moment, a woman’s voice called out, “Who is it, please?” in a tone that suggested she’d opened the door more than once to an unexpected visitor.

  Barbara identified herself. Several locks were disengaged and the building manager stood before her: Morag McDermott, she was called. What did the police want this time round because God only knew she’d told them everything she could think of last time they’d come seeking information about “that dreadful nasty business in the woods.”

  Barbara saw she’d interrupted Morag McDermott in the midst of an afternoon snooze. Despite the time of year, she wore a thin dressing gown through which her skeletal body showed, and her hair was pancaked on one side. The unmistakable pattern of a chenille counterpane had lumped her cheeks like facial cellulite.

  She added sharply, “How on earth did you get into the building? Let me see your identification at once.”

  Barbara fished it out and explained the situation with the front door and the Moppits. In response to this, the building manager pulled a sticky pad from a tabletop nearby and scribbled furiously upon it. Barbara took this as invitation to enter, and she did so as Morag McDermott slapped her note onto the wall next to the door. This was already aflutter with two score similar notes. The wall resembled a prayer board in a church.

  It was for her monthly report to the management firm, Morag informed Barbara as she replaced the little yellow pad in a drawer. Now, if the constable would step this way, into the sitting room…

  She made it sound as if the room in question required directions to get to when in fact it was less than five feet from the front door. The flat’s floor plan was identical to that of Berkeley Pears but reversed so that it faced not the woods but the street. Its decor, however, was utterly dissimilar to the flat Barbara had been in earlier. Where Berkeley Pears would have passed a drill sergeant’s inspection, Morag was a poster child for clutter and sheer bad taste. Mostly, this was due to horses, of which there were hundreds on display, on every surface, in all sizes, and of all possible composition: from plastic to rubber. She was National Velvet gone berserk.

  Barbara edged her way past a tea stand of Lippizaners poised to perform their airs above the ground. She trod the sole path available into the room, which led to a sofa burdened with perhaps a dozen equine cushions. There she deposited herself. She’d begun to perspire, and she understood why the building manager was wearing so thin a dressing gown in the middle of winter. It felt like a Jamaican summer in the flat, and it smelled as if the place hadn’t been aired since the day of Morag’s advent in the building.

  Cutting to the chase was the best option for personal survival, Barbara concluded, so she went directly to the subject of the cat. She’d been about to leave the building, she said, when she’d heard the sound of an animal in distress. She wondered if Morag ought to know about that. It certainly sounded—to her admittedly unschooled ears since she’d never owned anything more than a gerbil—serious. A Siamese cat perhaps, she added helpfully. This would be in flat number 5.

  “That’s Mandy,” Morag McDermott told her promptly. “Esther’s cat. She’s on holiday. I mean Esther, of course, not the cat. She’ll quiet soon enough when Esther’s boy comes to feed her. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  Worry for the animal was the last thing on Barbara’s mind, but she went with the flow of the conversation. She needed to get inside that flat, and she didn’t want to wait for a warrant to do it. Mandy sounded dead frantic, she told the building manager solemnly. True, she didn’t know much about felines, but she thought the situation wanted checking into. And by the way, Berkeley Pears had told her that cats weren’t allowed in the building. Had he been playing fast and loose with the truth?

  “That man will say anything,” Morag replied. “Of course cats are allowed in the building. Cats, fish, and birds.”

  “But not dogs?”

  “He knew that before he moved in, Constable.”

  Barbara nodded. Yes, well, people and their animals…It took all kinds, didn’t it? She brought Morag round to flat number 5 once again. “This cat…Mandy? She sounds…well, is there any chance the son hasn’t come round to feed her for a while? Have you seen him here? Entering or leaving?”

  Morag thought about this, drawing the neck of her dressing gown more tightly closed at her throat. She admitted that she hadn’t exactly seen the son in the vicinity lately, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there. He was completely devoted to his mum. Everyone should have such a son.

  Nonetheless…Barbara offered a smile she hoped was ingratiating. Perhaps they ought to have a look…? For the sake of the cat? Something could have happened to prevent the son from coming round, couldn’t it? Car crash, heart attack, kidnap by aliens…?

  At least one of Barbara’s suggestions seemed to work because Morag nodded thoughtfully and said, “Yes, perhaps we ought to see…” before she went over to a corner cupboard and opened it to reveal the back of its door covered with hooks from which keys dangled.

  Still attired in her dressing gown, Morag led the way to flat number 5. There was silence behind the door and for a moment Barbara thought that her ruse to get inside was going to fail. But as Morag said, “I don’t actually hear—” Mandy howled cooperatively once more. With an “Oh, my dear,” the building manager hastily unlocked the door and opened it. The cat escaped like a lag given an unexpected opportunity. She melted round the corner of the corridor, going for the stairs and doubtless heading for the freedom of the front door, which the Moppits still had propped open.

  This would not do. Morag took off after her. Barbara stepped inside the flat.

  The first thing she noted was the overpowering smell of urine. Cat urine, she assumed. No one had changed the poor creature’s litter for days. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn over them, which greatly exacerbated the matter. It was no wonder the cat had bolted for the outdoors. Anything to get a breath of fresh air.

  Barbara closed the door despite the odour, the better to give herself warning when Morag returned and would have to insert the key in the lock another time. That done, the flat was even gloomier, so she opened the curtains and saw that flat number 5, like that of Berkeley Pears, faced the woods at the back of the property.

  She turned from the window and surveyed the room. The furniture came to her st
raight out of the sixties: vinyl sofa and chairs, side tables once called Danish modern, coy figurines in the shape of animals with anthropomorphic expressions on their faces. Bowls of potpourri—ostensibly attempting to rid the air of the foetid odour of cat—sat on lacy antimacassars that were now being used as mats. Barbara saw those last with a rush of happiness: Kimmo Thorne’s loincloth in St. George’s Gardens. Things were definitely looking up.

  She prowled round for signs of recent occupation—of deadly occupation—and she found the first of them in the kitchen: one plate, one fork, one glass in the sink.

  Did you feed him something before you raped him then, you bugger? Or did you have a bit of sustenance yourself while the kid entertained you with one more magic trick which you applauded and for which you told him you had a very nice reward? Come over closer to me, Davey my lad. God, but you’re a lovely boy. Did anyone ever tell you that? No? Why not? It’s plain to see.

  On a floor in the corner, the cat’s dry food spilled out of a container and a large bowl next to it was empty of water. Using a dishcloth to hold it by its edges, Barbara carried this to the sink and filled it. Wasn’t the cat’s fault, she told herself. No point in letting it suffer any longer. And suffer Mandy had done since the night of Davey Benton’s murder. There was no way in hell that the killer could have afforded to return to this place once Davey was dead, not with the street crawling with cops intent upon finding a witness.

  She went from the kitchen back into the sitting room, looking for signs. He’d have raped and strangled Davey Benton somewhere in here, but the rest he would have done when he got the body into the woods.

  She went to the bedroom, where, as she had done in the sitting room, she opened the curtains and turned back to survey the scene illuminated by the fast-fading daylight. A bed with covers and counterpane in place; side table with an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock and lamp; chest of drawers with two framed photos sitting on top.

  It all looked so ordinary, save for one detail: The clothes-cupboard door hung partially open. Inside, Barbara could see a flowery dressing gown askew on a hanger. She took it out. The belt was missing.

  Let me show you how to do a knot trick, he’d said, and Barbara could hear his coaxing voice. It’s the only trick that I know, Davey, and believe me, it’ll make your mates stand up and take notice when they see how easily you can escape even if they tie your hands behind your back. Here. You tie me first. See how it works? Now I’ll tie you.

  Something like that, she thought. Something like that. He had done it that way. And then bent the boy over the bed. No shouting, Davey. No wiggling about. Okay. All right. Don’t panic, lad. I’ll untie your hands. But no trying to get away from me now because…God damn, you scratched me, Davey. You bloody well scratched me and now I’ll have to…I told you not to make a sound, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Davey? Didn’t I, you miserable filthy little sod?

  Or maybe he had used handcuffs on the boy. Glow-in-the-dark handcuffs just like those that Barry Minshall had given Davey. Or maybe he hadn’t needed to restrain him at all or hadn’t thought to restrain him because Davey had been so much smaller than the rest of the boys and there had, after all, been no mark of restraints on his wrists, not like the others…

  Which gave Barbara pause. Which made her admit how desperately she wanted this place on Wood Lane to be the answer. Which told her she was on dangerous ground, weaving place to fit circumstance in the worst kind of reckless police work, of the sort that landed innocent people in prison because the cops were just so bloody tired and so anxious to get home for supper one night in ten because their wives were complaining and their kids were misbehaving and some serious sorting needed to be done and why did you even marry me, Frank or John or Dick, if you meant to be gone day and night for months on end….

  That was how it happened, and Barbara knew it. That was how cops made deadly mistakes. She returned the dressing gown to the clothes cupboard and forced her mind to stop painting pictures.

  Out in the sitting room, she heard Morag’s key scratching at the lock. There was no time for anything else but a quick look at the bedsheets beneath the counterpane, catching the faint scent of lavender upon them. They offered no visible secrets to her, so she moved to the chest of drawers on the other side of the room.

  And there it was: everything she needed. In one of the two photographs, a woman posed in her wedding gown with her bespectacled groom. In the other, a much older version of the same woman stood on Brighton Pier. With her was a younger man. He was bespectacled like his father.

  Barbara picked this latter picture up and took it over to the window for a better look. In the sitting room, Morag’s voice called out, “Are you in here, Constable?” and Mandy gave her Siamese yowl.

  In the bedroom, Barbara murmured, “Bloody hell,” at what she was looking at. Hastily, she shoved the Brighton Pier photograph into her shoulder bag. She composed herself as best she could and called out, “Sorry. Having a look round. Got reminded of my mum. She goes for this sixties stuff in a very big way.”

  Complete casuistry but it couldn’t be helped. Truth was, in her present state, Mum wouldn’t know the sixties from a basket of potatoes.

  “She’d run out of water,” Barbara said helpfully when she joined the building manager in the sitting room. The sound of Mandy lapping came from the kitchen. “I refilled her bowl. She’s got plenty of food, though. I think she’ll be set for a while.”

  Morag gave Barbara a shrewd look, which suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced of the constable’s heartfelt concern for the cat. But she didn’t make a move to frisk Barbara’s person, so the end result was a round of farewells after which Barbara hotfooted it outside and dug round in her shoulder bag for her mobile.

  It rang just as she was about to punch in the numbers for Lynley. A Scotland Yard extension was calling.

  “Detective Con…Constable Havers?” Dorothea Harriman was on the other end. She sounded terrible.

  “Me,” Barbara said. “Dee, what’s wrong?”

  Harriman said, “Con…Detect…” And Barbara realised she was sobbing.

  She said, “Dee. Dee, get a grip. For the love of God, what’s going on?”

  “It’s his wife,” she cried.

  “Whose wife? What wife?” Barbara felt the fear coming upon her in a rush because there was only one wife that she could conceive of in that moment, one woman only about whom the department’s secretary might be calling her. “Has something happened to Helen Lynley? Has she lost her baby, Dee? What’s going on?”

  “Shot.” Harriman keened the word. “The superintendent’s wife has been shot.”

  LYNLEY SAW that St. James had come to him not in his old MG but in a panda car, driven from St. Thomas’ Hospital with lights flashing and siren blaring. He assumed this much because that was how they returned to the other side of the river, riding in the back with two grim-faced Belgravia constables in the front, the entire journey made in a matter of minutes which nonetheless felt like hours to him, all the time with traffic parting like Red Sea waters before them.

  His old friend kept a hand on his arm, as if expecting Lynley to bolt from the car. He said, “They’ve got a trauma team with her. They’ve given her blood. O-negative, they said. It’s universal. But you’ll know that, won’t you. Of course you will.” St. James cleared his throat and Lynley looked at him. He thought at that moment, unnecessarily, that St. James had once loved Helen, had so many years ago intended to be her husband himself.

  “Where?” Lynley’s voice was raw. “Simon, I told Deborah…I said that she was to—”

  “Tommy.” St. James’s hand tightened.

  “Where, then? Where?”

  “In Eaton Terrace.”

  “At home?”

  “Helen was tired. They parked the car and unloaded their parcels at the front door. Deborah took the Bentley round to the mews. She parked it, and when she got back to the house—”

  “She didn’t hear anything? See anything
?”

  “She was on the front step. At first, Deborah thought she’d fainted.”

  Lynley raised his hand to his forehead. He pressed in on his temples as if this would allow him to understand. He said, “How could she have thought—”

  “There was virtually no blood. And her coat—Helen’s coat—it was dark. Is it navy? Black?”

  Both of them knew the colour was meaningless, but it was something to cling to and they had to cling to it or face the unthinkable.

  “Black,” Lynley said. “It’s black.” Cashmere, hanging nearly to her ankles, and she loved to wear it with boots whose heels were so high that she laughed at herself at the end of the day when she hobbled to the sofa and fell upon it, claiming she was a mindless victim of male Italian shoe designers with fantasies of women bearing whips and chains. “Tommy, save me from myself,” she would say. “Only foot binding could be worse than this.”

  Lynley looked out of the window. He saw the blur of faces and knew they’d made it as far as Westminster Bridge, where people on the pavements were caught in their own little worlds into which the sound of a siren and the sight of a panda car zooming by caused them only an instant of wondering, Who? What? And then forgetting because it didn’t affect them.

  “When?” he said to St. James. “What time?”

  “Half past three. They’d thought to have tea at Claridge’s, but as Helen was tired, they went home instead. They’d have it there. They bought…I don’t know…tea cakes somewhere? Pastries?”

  Lynley tried to absorb this. It was four forty-five. He said, “An hour? More than an hour? How can that be?”

  St. James didn’t reply at once, and Lynley turned to him and saw how drawn and gaunt he looked, far more than normal for he was a gaunt and angular man by birth. He said, “Simon, why in God’s name? More than an hour?”

  “It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to get to her.”

  “Christ,” Lynley whispered. “Oh God. Oh Christ.”