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 again, and her expression said of Lynley, Whatever floats your boat.