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 something?” 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.”