Arrangements made, Lynley set off. By car, he was five minutes from the square if traffic was moving. It was, and he wove down towards the river. He came at the King’s Road from Sloane Avenue and chugged up to the square in the wake of a number 11 bus. The pavements were crowded with shoppers at this time of day, as was the Oriel Brasserie, where he took timely possession of a table the size of a fifty-pence coin just as three women with approximately twenty-five shopping bags were leaving it.
He ordered coffee and waited for St. James to conclude his business. His table was one in the Oriel’s front window, so he would be able to see his friend as he crossed the square and came down the neat, tree-lined walk that stretched past the Venus fountain to the war memorial. Right now, the centre of the square was empty save for pigeons that were scouting round for crumbs beneath the benches.
Lynley took a call from Nkata while he waited. Jack Veness had provided a friend to corroborate whatever alibi he chose to come up with, and Neil Greenham had latched on to his solicitor. The DS had left word for both Kilfoyle and Strong to phone him, but they’d no doubt hear from their mates at Colossus that alibis were being asked for, which would give both of them plenty of time to cook some up before speaking again to the cops.
Lynley told Nkata to carry on as best he could, and he picked up his coffee and downed it in three gulps. Scalding hot, it attacked his throat like a surgeon. Which was fine, he thought.
At last he saw St. James coming across the square. Lynley turned and ordered a second coffee for himself and one for his friend. The drinks arrived as did St. James, who shed his overcoat by the door and worked his way over to Lynley.
“Lord Asherton at rest,” St. James said with a smile as he pulled out a chair and carefully folded himself into it.
Lynley grimaced. “You’ve seen the paper.”
“It was hard to avoid.” St. James reached for the sugar and began his usual process of rendering his coffee undrinkable for any other human being. “Your photo is making quite a statement on the newsstands round the square.”
“With follow-ups to come,” Lynley said, “if Corsico and his editor have their way.”
“What sort of follow-ups?” St. James went for the milk next, just a dollop, after which he began stirring his brew.
“They’ve apparently heard from Nies. Up in Yorkshire.”
St. James looked up. He’d been smiling, but now his face was grave. “You can’t want that.”
“What I want is to keep them away from the rest of the squad. Particularly from Winston. They’ve set their sights on him next.”
“With you willing to have your dirty linen aired for public consumption instead? Not a good idea, Tommy. Not fair on you and certainly not fair on Judith. Or Stephanie, if it comes to that.”
His sister, his niece, Lynley thought. They shared in the story of the Yorkshire murder that had taken husband from one and father from the other. What rained on him as he tried to protect his team from exposure rained on his relations as well.
“I don’t see any way round it. I’ll have to warn them it’s coming. I daresay they can cope. They’ve been through it before.”
St. James was frowning down at his coffee. He shook his head. “Put them on to me, Tommy.”
“You?”
“It’ll work to keep them away from Yorkshire for a time and from Winston as well. I’m part of the team, if only tangentially. Play me up and set them on me.”
“You can’t want that.”
“I’m not enthusiastic about it. But you can’t want them delving into your sister’s marriage. In this way, they’d only be delving into-“
“Driving drunk and crippling you.” Lynley pushed his coffee away. “Christ but I’ve cocked so many things up.”
“Not this,” St. James said. “We were both drunk. Let’s not forget that. And anyway, I doubt your reporter from The Source will even touch upon the subject of my…physical situation, let’s call it. He’ll be too politically correct. Unseemly to mention it: Why d’you happen to be wearing that appliance on your leg, sir? It’s akin to asking someone when he stopped beating his wife. And anyway, if they do get on to it, I was out carousing with a friend and this is the result. An object lesson for today’s wild adolescents. End of story.”
“You can’t want them homing in on you.”
“Of course not. I’ll be the laughingstock of my siblings, not to mention what my mother will say in her inimitable fashion. But look at it this way: I’m outside the investigation even as I’m inside the investigation, and there’s an advantage to that. You can play it any way you want with Hillier. Either I’m part of the team-and he did say he wanted the team profiled, didn’t he, sir?-or I’m ruthlessly self-serving and, as an independent scientist, I’m seeking the self-aggrandisement that only exposure in the press will afford me. Play it either way.” Here he smiled. “I know you live only to torment the poor sod.”
Lynley smiled also, in spite of himself. “It’s good of you, Simon. It keeps them away from Winston. Hillier won’t like that, of course, but I can deal with Hillier.”
“And by the time they get round to Winston or anyone else, God willing, this business will be finished.”
“Have you anything with you?” Lynley nodded towards the briefcase that St. James had brought to the table with him.
“Dashed back for it, yes. I’ve had the advantage in several ways.”
“Which means I’ve missed something. All right. I can live with it.”
“Not missed exactly. I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say, then?”
“That I’ve the advantage of being some distance from the case while you’re in the thick of it. And I don’t have Hillier, the press, and God only knows who else breathing down my neck and demanding a result.”
“I’ll take the excuse as offered. With thanks. What did you find?”
St. James reached for the briefcase and opened it on a spare chair that he pulled from another table. He brought out the latest batch of paperwork he’d been sent.
“Have you found the source of the ambergris oil?” he asked.
“We have two sources. Why?”
“He’s run out.”
“Of the oil?”
“There was no trace of it on the Queen’s Wood body. On all the others it was present, not always in the same place, but there. But on this one, it’s not.”
Lynley thought about this. He saw a reason the oil might have been absent. He said, “The body was naked. The oil might have been on his clothes.”
“But the St. George’s Gardens body was naked as well-”
“Kimmo Thorne’s body.”
“Right. And he still had traces of the oil on him. No, I’d say there’s a very good chance our man’s run out of it, Tommy. He’s going to need more, and if you’ve traced two sources, a watch on those shops might prove to be the key.”
“You say there’s a good chance,” Lynley noted. “What else, then? There’s something else, isn’t there?”
St. James nodded slowly. He seemed undecided about the importance of his next revelation. He said, “It’s something, Tommy. That’s all I can say. I don’t like to interpret it because it could take you in the wrong direction at the end of the day.”
“All right. Accepted. What is it?”
St. James pulled another batch of documents out. He said, “The contents of their stomachs. Before this last boy, the Queen’s Wood boy-”
“Davey Benton.”
“Before him, the others had all eaten within an hour of their deaths. And in every case, the contents of the stomachs were identical.”
“Identical?”
“Without a deviation, Tommy.”
“But with Davey Benton?”
“He hadn’t had anything in hours. Eight hours at least. Taken in conjunction with the ambergris-oil situation…” St. James leaned forward. He put his hand on the neat stack of documents for emphasis. “I don’t need to tell you what this means, do I?”