This would not do. Morag took off after her. Barbara stepped inside the flat.
The first thing she noted was the overpowering smell of urine. Cat urine, she assumed. No one had changed the poor creature’s litter for days. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn over them, which greatly exacerbated the matter. It was no wonder the cat had bolted for the outdoors. Anything to get a breath of fresh air.
Barbara closed the door despite the odour, the better to give herself warning when Morag returned and would have to insert the key in the lock another time. That done, the flat was even gloomier, so she opened the curtains and saw that flat number 5, like that of Berkeley Pears, faced the woods at the back of the property.
She turned from the window and surveyed the room. The furniture came to her straight out of the sixties: vinyl sofa and chairs, side tables once called Danish modern, coy figurines in the shape of animals with anthropomorphic expressions on their faces. Bowls of potpourri-ostensibly attempting to rid the air of the foetid odour of cat-sat on lacy antimacassars that were now being used as mats. Barbara saw those last with a rush of happiness: Kimmo Thorne’s loincloth in St. George’s Gardens. Things were definitely looking up.
She prowled round for signs of recent occupation-of deadly occupation-and she found the first of them in the kitchen: one plate, one fork, one glass in the sink.
Did you feed him something before you raped him then, you bugger? Or did you have a bit of sustenance yourself while the kid entertained you with one more magic trick which you applauded and for which you told him you had a very nice reward? Come over closer to me, Davey my lad. God, but you’re a lovely boy. Did anyone ever tell you that? No? Why not? It’s plain to see.
On a floor in the corner, the cat’s dry food spilled out of a container and a large bowl next to it was empty of water. Using a dishcloth to hold it by its edges, Barbara carried this to the sink and filled it. Wasn’t the cat’s fault, she told herself. No point in letting it suffer any longer. And suffer Mandy had done since the night of Davey Benton’s murder. There was no way in hell that the killer could have afforded to return to this place once Davey was dead, not with the street crawling with cops intent upon finding a witness.
She went from the kitchen back into the sitting room, looking for signs. He’d have raped and strangled Davey Benton somewhere in here, but the rest he would have done when he got the body into the woods.
She went to the bedroom, where, as she had done in the sitting room, she opened the curtains and turned back to survey the scene illuminated by the fast-fading daylight. A bed with covers and counterpane in place; side table with an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock and lamp; chest of drawers with two framed photos sitting on top.
It all looked so ordinary, save for one detaiclass="underline" The clothes-cupboard door hung partially open. Inside, Barbara could see a flowery dressing gown askew on a hanger. She took it out. The belt was missing.
Let me show you how to do a knot trick, he’d said, and Barbara could hear his coaxing voice. It’s the only trick that I know, Davey, and believe me, it’ll make your mates stand up and take notice when they see how easily you can escape even if they tie your hands behind your back. Here. You tie me first. See how it works? Now I’ll tie you.
Something like that, she thought. Something like that. He had done it that way. And then bent the boy over the bed. No shouting, Davey. No wiggling about. Okay. All right. Don’t panic, lad. I’ll untie your hands. But no trying to get away from me now because…God damn, you scratched me, Davey. You bloody well scratched me and now I’ll have to…I told you not to make a sound, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Davey? Didn’t I, you miserable filthy little sod?
Or maybe he had used handcuffs on the boy. Glow-in-the-dark handcuffs just like those that Barry Minshall had given Davey. Or maybe he hadn’t needed to restrain him at all or hadn’t thought to restrain him because Davey had been so much smaller than the rest of the boys and there had, after all, been no mark of restraints on his wrists, not like the others…
Which gave Barbara pause. Which made her admit how desperately she wanted this place on Wood Lane to be the answer. Which told her she was on dangerous ground, weaving place to fit circumstance in the worst kind of reckless police work, of the sort that landed innocent people in prison because the cops were just so bloody tired and so anxious to get home for supper one night in ten because their wives were complaining and their kids were misbehaving and some serious sorting needed to be done and why did you even marry me, Frank or John or Dick, if you meant to be gone day and night for months on end…
That was how it happened, and Barbara knew it. That was how cops made deadly mistakes. She returned the dressing gown to the clothes cupboard and forced her mind to stop painting pictures.
Out in the sitting room, she heard Morag’s key scratching at the lock. There was no time for anything else but a quick look at the bedsheets beneath the counterpane, catching the faint scent of lavender upon them. They offered no visible secrets to her, so she moved to the chest of drawers on the other side of the room.
And there it was: everything she needed. In one of the two photographs, a woman posed in her wedding gown with her bespectacled groom. In the other, a much older version of the same woman stood on Brighton Pier. With her was a younger man. He was bespectacled like his father.
Barbara picked this latter picture up and took it over to the window for a better look. In the sitting room, Morag’s voice called out, “Are you in here, Constable?” and Mandy gave her Siamese yowl.
In the bedroom, Barbara murmured, “Bloody hell,” at what she was looking at. Hastily, she shoved the Brighton Pier photograph into her shoulder bag. She composed herself as best she could and called out, “Sorry. Having a look round. Got reminded of my mum. She goes for this sixties stuff in a very big way.”
Complete casuistry but it couldn’t be helped. Truth was, in her present state, Mum wouldn’t know the sixties from a basket of potatoes.
“She’d run out of water,” Barbara said helpfully when she joined the building manager in the sitting room. The sound of Mandy lapping came from the kitchen. “I refilled her bowl. She’s got plenty of food, though. I think she’ll be set for a while.”
Morag gave Barbara a shrewd look, which suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced of the constable’s heartfelt concern for the cat. But she didn’t make a move to frisk Barbara’s person, so the end result was a round of farewells after which Barbara hotfooted it outside and dug round in her shoulder bag for her mobile.
It rang just as she was about to punch in the numbers for Lynley. A Scotland Yard extension was calling.
“Detective Con…Constable Havers?” Dorothea Harriman was on the other end. She sounded terrible.
“Me,” Barbara said. “Dee, what’s wrong?”
Harriman said, “Con…Detect…” And Barbara realised she was sobbing.
She said, “Dee. Dee, get a grip. For the love of God, what’s going on?”
“It’s his wife,” she cried.
“Whose wife? What wife?” Barbara felt the fear coming upon her in a rush because there was only one wife that she could conceive of in that moment, one woman only about whom the department’s secretary might be calling her. “Has something happened to Helen Lynley? Has she lost her baby, Dee? What’s going on?”
“Shot.” Harriman keened the word. “The superintendent’s wife has been shot.”
LYNLEY SAW that St. James had come to him not in his old MG but in a panda car, driven from St. Thomas’ Hospital with lights flashing and siren blaring. He assumed this much because that was how they returned to the other side of the river, riding in the back with two grim-faced Belgravia constables in the front, the entire journey made in a matter of minutes which nonetheless felt like hours to him, all the time with traffic parting like Red Sea waters before them.