“We’d like to show this round the place, if you don’t mind,” Jansen told her.
Ulrike didn’t like what this implied-that she was somehow out of the loop at Colossus-but she had no choice. Before the officers left to flash the photo round, she asked them about the superintendent’s wife. How was she?
Jansen shook his head. “Bad,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Will you-” She nodded at the photo. “Do you expect to catch him?”
Jansen looked down at it, a slim slip of paper in his large chafed hands. “The kid? That’ll be no problem,” he replied. “This is in the Evening Standard’s latest right now. It’ll make the front of every paper tomorrow morning and it’ll be on the news tonight and again tomorrow. We’ll get him, and I expect it’ll happen soon. And when we get him, he’ll talk and then we’ll have the other. Absolutely no bloody doubt about it.”
“I’m…That’s good,” she said. “Poor woman.”
And she did mean that. No one-no matter how rich, how privileged, how titled, how fortunate, or how anything else-deserved to be gunned down in the street. But even as she told herself this and assured herself that the milk of human kindness and compassion had not utterly drained out of her when it came to the upper class of this rigid society in which she lived, Ulrike still felt relieved that Colossus could not be attached to this new crime.
Only now, here were Mr. Bensley and Mrs. Richie and they were sitting with her in her office-another chair having been procured from the reception area-intent upon talking about the one subject she had done everything in her power to keep from them.
Bensley was the one to introduce it. He said, “Tell us about the dead boys, Ulrike.”
She could hardly act the innocent with a “What boys would this be?” sort of reply. There was nothing for it but to tell them that five boys from Colossus had been murdered from September onward, their bodies left in various parts of London.
“Why weren’t we informed?” Bensley asked. “Why did this information have to come to us from someone else?”
“From Neil, you mean.” Ulrike could not keep herself from saying it. She was caught between the desire to let them know she was perfectly aware of her Judas’s identity and the equal need to defend herself. She went on with, “I didn’t know myself till after Kimmo Thorne was murdered. He was the fourth victim. The police came round then.”
“But otherwise…?” Bensley did one of those tie-adjustment moves, of the kind meant to illustrate an incredulity that might otherwise strangle him. Mrs. Richie accompanied this with a click of her teeth. “How is it you didn’t know the other boys were dead?”
“Or even missing,” Mrs. Richie added.
“We’re not organised to keep attendance tabs on the clients,” Ulrike told them, as if they hadn’t had this explained to them a thousand times or more. “Once a boy or girl gets beyond the assessment course, they’re free to come and go as they like. They can participate in what we have to offer or they can drop out. We want them to stay because they want to be here. Only those who’re here as a probationary measure are monitored.” And even then, Colossus didn’t tattle on the kids straightaway. There was a certain amount of leeway given even to them, once they had completed the assessment course.
“That,” Bensley said, “is what we expected you to say.”
Or were told to expect, Ulrike thought. Neil had done his best: She’ll make excuses, but the fact remains: the director of Colossus damn well ought to know what’s going on with the kids Colossus is meant to be helping, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, how much work are we talking about: to look in on the courses and ask the instructors who’s there and who’s fallen by the wayside? And wouldn’t it be wise for the director of Colossus to place a phone call and try to locate a child who’s dropped out of a programme designed-and funded, let’s not forget that-to prevent him from dropping out in the first place? Oh, he’d done his very best, had Neil. Ulrike had to give him high marks for that.
She found she had no ready response to Bensley’s comment, so she waited to see what the board president and his companion had really come to see her about, which she reckoned was only tangentially related to the death of the Colossus boys.
“Perhaps,” Bensley said, “you were too distracted to know that boys had gone missing.”
“I’ve been no more distracted than usual,” Ulrike told him, “what with the plans for the North London branch and the associated fund-raising going on.” On your instruction, by the way, was what she did not add, but she did her best to imply it.
Bensley, however, didn’t make the inference she wished him to make. He said, “That’s not exactly how we understand it. There’s been another distraction for you, hasn’t there?”
“As I said, Mr. Bensley, there’s no easy way to approach this work. I’ve tried to keep my focus spread evenly on all the concerns a director would have in running a place like Colossus. If I missed the fact that several boys stopped coming, it was due to the number of concerns that I had to deal with related to the organisation. Frankly, I feel terrible that none of us”-with delicate emphasis on the word none-“managed to see that-”
“Let me be frank,” Bensley interrupted. Mrs. Richie settled herself in her chair, a movement of the hips spelling out Now we’ve got to the point.
“Yes?” Ulrike folded her hands.
“You’re under review, for want of a better word. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ulrike, because overall your work for Colossus has seemed unimpeachable.”
“Seemed,” Ulrike said.
“Yes. Seemed.”
“Are you sacking me?”
“I didn’t say that. But consider yourself under scrutiny. We’ll be conducting…Shall we call it an internal investigation?”
“For want of a better word?”
“If you will.”
“And how do you intend to carry out this internal investigation?”
“Through review. Through interviews. Let me say that I believe you’ve largely done a fine job here at Colossus. Let me also say, personally, that I hope you emerge unscathed from this look at your employment and personal history here.”
“My personal history? What does that mean, exactly?”
Mrs. Richie smiled. Mr. Bensley hemmed. And Ulrike knew her goose was in the oven.
She cursed Neil Greenham, but she also cursed herself. She understood to what extent she was going to be cooked if she didn’t bring about a significant alteration to the status quo.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“PUT HIM THROUGH TWO IDENTITY PARADES,” WAS HOW DI Stewart had initially greeted the news that Hamish Robson had cooperated as far as the Davey Benton murder was concerned but had refused to admit to anything else. “Have Minshall and Masoud both look at him.”
To Barbara’s way of thinking, two identity parades was a waste of time since Barry Minshall had already tentatively identified Robson from the photograph she’d nicked at his mother’s flat. But she tried to see it as DI Stewart would: not as the compulsion towards overkill that had long made the DI a notorious and tiresome personality at the Yard but as a tremor in the earth designed to rattle Robson into further admissions. The very act of standing in a line of men and waiting to learn if an unseen witness would finger you as the perpetrator of a crime was unnerving. Having to do it twice and hence understanding that there was yet another witness to God only knew what…At the end of the day, that was actually a very nice touch, and Barbara had to admit it. So she made the arrangements to have Minshall carted over to the Shepherdess Walk station, and she stood behind the two-way mirror while the magician picked out Robson in an instant, saying, “That’s the man. That’s two-one-six-oh.”