With No One As Witness

by Elizabeth George

  He rustled round on the floor next to his own seat. Ulrike watched him bring up a torch. He said. “This should be of some help,” and she turned back to reach over for the belt once again.

  Everything happened in less than three seconds after that. She waited for the light to shine from the torch. She said, “Rob?,” and then felt the jolt run through her body. She gasped for breath.

  The first spasm shook her. The second rendered her semiconscious. The third teetered her on the edge from which she slid into the dark.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  HARROW ROAD’S REPUTATION AS A POLICE STATION wasn’t a good one, but cops had a lot to contend with in West Kilburn. They were dealing with everything from the usual social and cultural conflicts one found within a multiethnic community, to street crime, drugs, and a thriving black market. They found themselves perpetually coping with gangs as well. In an area dominated by housing estates and grim tower blocks built in the sixties when architectural imagination was moribund, legends abounded of cops being outrun, outmanoeuvred, and outsmarted in places like the interlocking and tunnel-like corridors of the notorious Mozart Estate. The police had been outnumbered forever in this part of town. They knew it, which didn’t improve their tempers when it came to meeting the needs of the public.

  When Barbara and Nkata arrived, they found a heated argument going on in reception. A Rastafarian accompanied by a hugely pregnant woman and two children was demanding action of a special constable—“I wan’ that fuckin’ car back, man. You t’ink dis woman plan on giving birth in the street?”—who claimed things to be “out of my power, sir. You’ll have to talk to one of the officers who’re working on the case.”

  The Rasta said, “Shit, then,” and turned on his heel. He grabbed his woman’s arm and made for the door, saying, “Blood,” to Nkata with a nod as he passed him.

  Nkata identified himself and Barbara to the special constable. They were there to see Detective Sergeant Starr, he said. Harrow Road had a boy in lockup, fingered as the shooter in a street crime in Belgravia.

  “He’s ’xpecting us,” Nkata said.

  Harrow Road had reported to Belgravia, who’d reported, in turn, to New Scotland Yard. The snout in West Kilburn had proved reliable. He’d named a kid who resembled the one seen on the CCTV films from Cadogan Lane, and the cops had found him in very short order. He hadn’t even been on the run. The job on Helen Lynley done, he’d merely repaired to his home, via underground to Westbourne Park because his mug had been visible on their CCTV tapes as well, sans companion this time. Nothing could have been easier. All that remained was matching his fingerprints to those on the gun found in the garden near the scene of the crime.

  John Stewart had told Nkata to take it. Nkata had asked Barbara to accompany him. By the time they got there, it was ten o’clock at night. They could have waited till morning—they’d been working fourteen hours at that point and they were both knackered—but neither one of them was willing to wait. There was a chance that Stewart would hand this job over to someone else, and they didn’t want that.

  Sergeant Starr turned out to be a black man, slightly shorter than Nkata but bulkier. He had the look of a pleasant-faced pugilist.

  He said, “We’ve already had this yob in for street brawling and arson. Those times, he’s pointed the finger elsewhere. You know the sort. It wasn’t me, you fucking pigs.” He glanced at Barbara as if to ask pardon for his language. She waved a weary hand at him. He went on. “But the family’s got a whole history of trouble. Dad got shot and killed in a drug dispute in the street. Mum toasted her brain with something, and she’s been out of the picture for a while. Sister tried to pull off a mugging and ended up in front of the magistrate. The aunt they live with hasn’t been willing to hear shit about the kids being on the fast track to trouble, though. She’s got a shop down the road that she works in full-time and a younger boyfriend keeping her busy in the bedroom, so she can’t afford to see what’s going on under her nose, if you know what I mean. It was always just a matter of time. We tried to tell her first time we had the kid in here, but she wasn’t having it. Same old story.”

  “He talked before, you said?” Barbara asked. “What about now?”

  “We’re getting sod all out of him.”

  “Nothing?” Nkata said.

  “Not a word. He’d probably not’ve told us his name if we hadn’t already known it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Joel Campbell.”

  “How old?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Scared?”

  “Oh yeah. I’d say he knows he’s going away for this. But he also knows about Venables and Thompson. Who bloody doesn’t? So six years playing with bricks, finger-painting, and talking to shrinks and he’s finished with the criminal-justice system.”

  There was some truth in this. It was the moral and ethical dilemma of the times: what to do with juvenile murderers. Twelve-year-old murderers. And younger.

  “We’d like to talk to him.”

  “For what good it’ll do. We’re waiting for the social worker to show.”

  “Has the aunt been here?”

  “Come and gone. She wants him out of here directly or she’ll know the reason why. He’s going nowhere. Between her position and ours, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to discuss.”

  “Solicitor?”

  “I expect the aunt’s working on that angle now.”

  He gestured for them to follow him. On their way to the interview room, they were met by a worn-out looking woman in a sweatshirt, jeans, and trainers, who turned out to be the social worker. She was called Fabia Bender, and she told Sergeant Starr that the boy was asking for something to eat.

  “Did he ask or did you offer?” Starr inquired. Which meant, of course, had he opened his mouth to say something at last?

  “He asked,” she replied. “More or less. He said, ‘Hungry.’ I’d like to fetch him a sandwich.”

  “I’ll organise it,” he said. “These two want a word. You see to that.”

  Arrangements made, Starr left Nkata and Barbara with Fabia Bender, who didn’t have much more to add to what the detective had already told them. The boy’s mother, she said, was in a mental hospital in Buckinghamshire, where she’d been a repeat patient for years. During this most recent round of institutionalisation, her children had been living with their grandmother. When the old lady decamped for Jamaica with a boyfriend who was being deported, the children got passed off to the aunt. Really, it was no surprise that kids found their way into trouble when their circumstances were so unsettled.

  “He’s just in here,” she said and shouldered open a door.

  She went in first, saying, “Thank you, Sherry,” to a uniformed constable who apparently had been sitting with the boy. The constable left, and Barbara entered the room behind Fabia Bender. Nkata followed, and they were face-to-face with the accused killer of Helen Lynley.

  Barbara looked at Nkata. He nodded. This was the boy he’d seen on the CCTV film taken in Cadogan Lane and in the Sloane Square underground station: the same head of crinkly hair, the same face blotched with freckles the size of tea cakes. He was about as menacing as a fawn caught in the headlamps of a car. He was small, and his fingernails had been bitten to the quick.

  He was sitting at the regulation table, and they joined him there, Nkata and Barbara on one side and the boy and the social worker on the other. Fabia Bender told him that Sergeant Starr was fetching him a sandwich. Someone else had brought him a Coke although it remained untouched.

  “Joel,” Nkata said to the boy. “You killed a cop’s wife. You know that? We found a gun nearby. Fingerprints on that’ll turn out to be yours. Ballistics’ll show that gun did the killing. CCTV film places you on the scene. You and ’nother bloke. What d’you got to say, then, blood?”

  The boy slid his gaze over to Nkata for a moment. It seemed to linger on the razor scar that ran the length of the black man’s cheek. Unsmiling, Nkata was no teddy be
ar. But the boy drew himself in—one could almost see him call upon courage from another dimension—and he said nothing.

  “We want a name, man,” Nkata told him.

  “We know you weren’t alone,” Barbara said.

  “Th’ other bloke was an adult, wasn’t he? We want a name out of you. It’s the only way to go forward.”

  Joel said nothing. He reached for the Coke and closed his hands round it, although he did not attempt to pop it open.

  “Man, where you think you’re going for this one?” Nkata asked the boy. “You think we send blokes like you to Blackpool for a holiday? Going away is what happens to the likes of you. How you play it now determines how long.”

  This wasn’t necessarily true, but there was a chance that the boy wouldn’t know it. They needed a name, and they would have it from him.

  The door opened then and Sergeant Starr returned. He held the triangle of a plastic-wrapped sandwich in his hand. He unwrapped it and passed it over to the boy. The child picked it up but did not take a bite. He looked hesitant, and Barbara could tell he was struggling with a decision. She had the sensation that the alternatives he was considering were ones that none of them would ever be able to understand. When he finally looked up, it was to speak to Fabia Bender.

  “I ain’t grassing,” he said and took a bite of his sandwich.

  That was the end of it: the social code of the streets. And not only of the streets, but the code that pervaded their society as well. Children learned it at the knees of parents because it was a lesson essential to their survival no matter where they went. One did not sneak on a friend. But that alone told them volumes in the interview room. Whoever had been with the boy in Belgravia, there was a strong possibility that he was considered—at least by Joel—a friend.

  They left the room. Fabia Bender accompanied them. DS Starr remained with the boy.

  “I expect he’ll tell us eventually,” Fabia Bender assured them. “It’s early days yet, and he’s never been inside a youth facility before. When he gets there, he’ll have another think about what’s happened. He isn’t stupid.”

  Barbara considered this as they paused in the corridor. “He’s been in here for arson and a mugging, though, hasn’t he? What happened about that? A wrist slapping by the magistrate? Did things even go that far?”

  The social worker shook her head. “Charges were never brought. I expect they didn’t have the evidence they wanted. He was questioned, but then he was released both times.”

  So he was, Barbara thought, the perfect candidate for some sort of social intervention, of the kind provided in Elephant and Castle. She said, “What happened to him then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When he was released. Did you recommend him to any special programme?”

  “What kind of programme?”

  “The kind designed to keep kids out of trouble.”

  “You ever send a kid over to a group called Colossus?” Nkata asked. “’Cross the river, this is. Elephant and Castle.”

  Fabia Bender shook her head. “I’ve heard of it, of course. We’ve had their outreach people here for a presentation as well.”

  “But…?”

  “But we’ve never sent any of our children over to them.”

  “You haven’t.” Barbara made this a statement.

  “No. It’s quite a distance, you see, and we’ve been waiting for them to open a branch closer to this part of town.”

  LYNLEY WAS ALONE with Helen and had been so for the last two hours. He’d made the request of their respective families, and they’d agreed. Only Iris protested, but she’d been here at the hospital the least amount of time, so he understood how impossible she felt it that she would be asked to part from her sister.

  The specialist had come and gone. He’d read the charts and the reports. He’d studied the monitors. He’d examined what little there was to examine. In the end, he’d met everyone because Lynley had wanted it that way. As much as a person could ever be said to belong to anyone, Helen belonged to him by virtue of being his wife. But she was a daughter as well, a beloved sister, a loving daughter- and sister-in-law. The loss of her touched every one of them. He did not suffer this monstrous blow alone, nor could he ever claim to grieve it alone. So all of them had sat with the Italian doctor, the neonatal neurologist who told them what they already knew.

  Twenty minutes was not a vast span of time. Twenty minutes described a period in which very little could generally be accomplished in life. Indeed, there were days when Lynley couldn’t even get from his house to Victoria Street in under twenty minutes, and other than showering and dressing or brewing and drinking a cup of tea or doing the washing up after dinner or perhaps dead-heading the roses in the garden, one-third of an hour didn’t provide the leisure necessary to do much of anything. But for the human brain, twenty minutes was an eternity. It was forever because that was the nature of the alteration it could bring upon the life depending upon its normal functioning. And that normal functioning depended upon a regular supply of oxygen. Witness the victim of the gunshot, the doctor had said. Witness your Helen.

  The difficulty, of course, was in the not knowing, which arose from the not seeing. Helen could be seen—daily, hourly, moment by moment—lifeless in the hospital bed. The baby—their son, their amusingly named, for want of a permanent decision by his indecisive parents, Jasper Felix—could not. All they knew was all the specialist knew and what he knew was dependent upon what was common knowledge about the brain.

  If Helen had no oxygen, the baby had no oxygen. They could hope for a miracle, but that was all.

  Helen’s father had asked, “How likely is that ‘miracle’?”

  The doctor shook his head. He was sympathetic. He seemed generous and good hearted. But he would not lie.

  None of them looked at one another at first, once the specialist left them. All of them felt the burden, but only one of them experienced the weight of having to make a decision. Lynley was left with the knowledge that everything rested with him and upon him. They could love him—as they did and as he knew—but they could not move the cup from his hands to theirs.

  Each one of them spoke to him before they left for the night, somehow knowing without being told that the moment for resolution had arrived. His mother remained longer than any of them, and she knelt before his chair and looked up into his face.

  “Everything in our lives,” she said quietly, “leads up to everything else in our lives. So a moment in the present has a reference point, both in the past and in the future. I want you to know that you—as you are right now and as you ever will be—are fully enough for this moment, Tommy. One way or the other. Whatever it brings.”

  “I’ve been wondering how I’m meant to know what to do,” he said. “I look at her face and I try to see on it what she’d want me to do. Then I ask myself if even that is a lie, if I’m merely telling myself that I’m looking at her and trying to see what she’d want me to do when all the time I’m just looking at her and looking at her because I can’t face the coming moment when I won’t be able to look at her at all. Because she’ll be gone. Not only gone in spirit but gone in flesh as well. Because right now, you see, even in this, she’s giving me a reason to keep going on. I’m prolonging that.”

  His mother reached up and caressed his face. She said, “Of all my children, you were always the hardest on yourself. You were always looking for the right way to behave, so concerned you might make a mistake. But, darling, there are no mistakes. There are only our wishes, our actions, and the consequences that follow both. There are only events, how we cope with them, and what we learn from the coping.”

  “That’s too easy,” he said.

  “On the contrary. It’s monumentally difficult.”

  She left him then and he went to Helen. He sat at her bedside. He knew that no matter how he disciplined his mind to this moment, the image of his wife as she was just now would fade with time, just as the image of her as she had
been days ago would also fade, had indeed already begun to fade, until ultimately, there would be nothing of her left in his visual memory. If he wanted to see her, he’d be able to do so only in photographs. When he closed his eyes, however, he’d see nothing but the dark.

  It was the dark that he feared. It was everything that represented the dark, which he could not face. And Helen was at the centre of it all. As was the not-Helen that would come about the instant he acted in the only way he knew his wife would have wanted.

  She’d been telling him that from the first. Or was even that belief a lie?

  He did not know. He lowered his forehead to the mattress and he prayed for a sign. He knew he was looking for something that would make the road an easier one for him to walk. But signs did not exist for that purpose. They served as guides, but they did not smooth the way.

  Her hand was cool when he felt for it where it lay at her side. He closed his fingers round it and he summoned hers to move as they might have done had she only been what she looked, asleep. He pictured her eyelids fluttering open and he heard her murmured “Hullo, darling,” but when he raised his head, she was as before. Breathing because medical science had evolved to that extent. Dead because it had evolved no further.

  They belonged together. The will of man might have wished it otherwise. The will of nature was not so vague. Helen would have understood that even if she had not phrased it that way. Let us go, Tommy would have been how she put it. At the heart of matters, she had always been the wisest and most practical of women.

  When the door opened some time later, he was ready.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  He felt his heart swelling, as if it would be torn from his body. The monitors deadened. The ventilator hushed. The silence of parting swept into the room.

  BY THE TIME Barbara and Nkata arrived back at New Scotland Yard, the news was in. The gun bore the boy’s prints on the barrel and on the grip, and ballistics showed the bullet to have come from the same pistol. They made their own report to John Stewart, who listened stone faced. He looked as if he believed his own presence in the Harrow Road station might have made a difference, shaking the name of the other perpetrator out of the kid. Sod all he knew, Barbara thought, and she told him what they’d learned from Fabia Bender about the boy and about Colossus.