“More or less.”
“That was the right decision. Hillier won’t like it. God knows he’ll hear about it and have a seizure. But that won’t happen at once, and when it does, I’ll do my best to keep him away from you. I wish I could do more.”
Nkata was grateful for that much, considering the fact that the super had already been profiled by the journalist. He said, “Barb says Red Van rang you…”
“Flexing his muscles,” Lynley said. “He’s trying to unnerve us. What’ve you got?”
“Sod all from the credit card purchases. That’s a real nonstarter. Only connection between Crystal Moon and anyone we’re looking at is Robbie Kilfoyle: the sandwich delivery bloke. Can we get surveillance on him?”
“Based on Crystal Moon? We’re stretched too thin. Hillier won’t authorise more officers on this, and those we have are already working fourteen- and eighteen-hour days.” Lynley indicated his yellow pad. “SO7’s done the comparison of everything inside Minshall’s van to the rubber residue found on Kimmo Thorne’s bike. No match. Minshall put in old carpet and not rubber lining. But Davey Benton’s prints are all over that van. So are a score of other prints as well.”
“The other dead boys?”
“We’re doing the comparisons.”
“You don’t think they’re there, do you?”
“The other boys? Inside Minshall’s van?” Lynley put his reading glasses back on and looked at his notes before replying. “No. I don’t,” he finally said. “I think Minshall’s telling the truth, much as I hate to believe it, considering his perversions.”
“Which means…”
“The killer moved on from Colossus to MABIL once we showed up in Elephant and Castle asking questions. And now that Minshall’s in custody, he’s going to have to move on to yet another source of victims. We’ve got to get to him before he gets to them because God only knows where he’s going to find them and we can’t protect every boy in London.”
“We need the meeting times of this MABIL, then. We got to alibi everyone for them.”
“Back to square…if not square one, then square five or six,” Lynley agreed. “You’re right, Winston. It has to be done.”
ULRIKE HAD no choice but to take public transport. The bike ride from Elephant and Castle to Brick Lane was a long one, and she couldn’t afford the time it would take to pedal over there and back. It was suspicious enough that she was leaving Colossus without having a scheduled meeting both in her diary and on the calendar Jack Veness kept in reception. So she invented a phone call that had come in on her mobile-Patrick Bensley, president of the board of trustees, wanted her to meet him and a potential Big Money benefactor, she said-so she would be out. Jack would be able to find her on her mobile. She’d keep it on, as always.
Jack Veness had observed her, a half smile splitting his scraggly beard. He nodded knowingly. She didn’t give him the chance to make a remark. He needed sorting once again, but she didn’t have time to talk to him now about his attitude and the improvements in it that would be necessary should he ever want to advance in the organisation. Instead, she grabbed her coat, her scarf, and her hat, and she departed.
The cold outdoors was a shock that she felt against her eyeballs first and then in her bones. It was a quintessential London cold: so filled with damp that drawing air into her lungs was an effort. It prompted her to rush for the insufferable warmth of the underground. She crammed herself into a carriage heading for the Embankment and tried to keep away from a woman who was coughing wetly into the stale air.
At the Embankment, Ulrike disembarked and weaved through the other commuters. They were different here, their ethnicity changing from mostly black to largely white and far better dressed as she switched to the District line, which itself passed through some of the bastions of London’s establishment employment scene. On her way, she dropped a pound coin into the open guitar case of a busker. He was crooning from “A Man Needs a Maid,” sounding less like Neil Young and more like Cliff Richard with an adenoid problem. But at least he was doing something to support himself.
At Aldgate East, she purchased a copy of the Big Issue, her third in two days. She added an extra fifty pence to the price. The bloke selling it looked as if he needed it.
She found Hopetown Street a short distance along Brick Lane, and there she turned. She made her way to Griffin’s house. It wasn’t far into the estate, just across from a little green and some thirty yards from the community centre in which a group of children were singing as someone accompanied them on a badly tuned piano.
Ulrike paused just inside the gate that fenced off the tiny front garden. It was compulsively neat, as she’d thought it might be. Griff never spoke much about Arabella, but what Ulrike knew of her made the trimmed pot plants and the spotlessly swept stones on the ground exactly what she’d expected to find.
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.”