Punch bags, speed bags, two boxing rings. Free weights. A treadmill. Skipping ropes. Two video cameras. Equipment was everywhere. So were the men using the equipment. Mostly blacks, but there were half a dozen white youths among them. And the man who’d been doing the shouting was also white: bald as a baby and wearing a grey towel round his shoulders. He was instructing two boxers in the ring. They were black, sweating, panting like overheated dogs.
Fu sought out the boy. He found him pounding a punch bag. He’d changed his clothes and was wearing a tracksuit. Already, it bore large crescents of sweat.
Fu watched as he pummeled the bag without either style or precision. He hurled himself upon it and pounded ferociously, ignoring everything else around him.
Ah, Fu thought. The journey across London had been well worth the risk after all. What He witnessed now had been worth even the brief interlude with the lout on the stairs. For unlike any other moment before this when Fu had been able to study the boy, this time the chosen one stood revealed.
He had an anger within him to match Fu’s own. He was indeed in need of redemption.
FOR A SECOND TIME, Winston Nkata didn’t go straight home. Instead, he followed the river to Vauxhall Bridge, where he crossed and circled round the Oval once again. He did it all without thinking, simply telling himself that it was time. The press conference made everything easier. Yasmin Edwards would know something about the murders at this point, so his purpose in calling would be to emphasise those details whose importance she might not have fully understood.
It was only when he’d parked across from Doddington Grove Estate that Nkata came fully to what he considered to be his senses. And that didn’t turn out to be an ideal situation, because coming to his senses also meant coming to his sensations, and the one he felt as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel was again largely cowardice.
On the one hand, he did have the excuse he’d been looking for. More than that, he had the duty he’d taken the attestation to perform. Surely it was a small enough matter to impart the necessary information to her. So why he should be feeling nerved out about doing his job… It was way beyond him to suss that one out.
Except, Nkata knew that he was lying to himself even as he allowed himself thirty seconds to do so. There were half a dozen reasons for his being reluctant to ride the lift up to that third-floor flat, and not the least of them was what he’d deliberately done to the woman who lived within it.
He hadn’t really come to terms with why he’d assigned himself the job of making Yasmin Edwards aware of her lover’s infidelity. It was one thing to be in honest pursuit of a killer; it was quite another to want the killer to be someone who stood in the way of Nkata himself achieving…what? He didn’t want to consider the answer to that question.
He said, “Come on, man,” and shoved open the car door. Yasmin Edwards might have knifed her own husband and done time for it. But the one thing he knew for certain was that if it came to knives between them, he had far more experience in wielding one.
There had been a time when he would have rung a different flat to gain access to the lift, telling the occupant at the other end of the buzzer that he was a cop so he could ride up to the third floor and knock on Yasmin Edwards’ door without her knowing he was on his way. But he didn’t allow himself to do that now. Instead, he buzzed her flat and when he heard her voice asking who was there, he said, “Police, Missus Edwards. I’ll need a word please.”
A hesitation made him wonder if she’d recognised his voice. A moment later, though, she released the lock on the lift. Its doors slid open and he stepped inside.
He thought she might meet him at the door to her flat, but it was as firmly closed as ever-with the curtains drawn for the evening at the sitting-room window-when he strode down the outdoor corridor to it. She answered quickly enough when he knocked, though, which told him she must have been standing just inside, waiting for his arrival.
She observed him expressionlessly, and she didn’t have to lift her head much to do so. For Yasmin Edwards was an elegant six feet tall and as imposing a presence as she’d been when he’d first met her. She’d changed out of her work clothes and was wearing striped pyjamas. She wore nothing else, and he knew her well enough to recognise that she’d deliberately put on no dressing gown when she’d heard who’d come calling, which was her way of signaling to the police that she feared nothing from them, having experienced the worst at their hands already.
Yas, Yas, he wanted to say. That’s not the way it has to be.
But instead, he said, “Missus Edwards,” and reached for his identification, as if he believed she didn’t remember who he was.
She said, “What is it, man? ’Nother murderer you’re sniffing up round here? No one in this flat capable of that but me, so when is it I need the alibi for?”
He shoved his warrant card back into his pocket. He didn’t sigh, although he wanted to. He said, “Could I have a word, Missus Edwards? Truth to tell, it’s about Dan.”
She looked alarmed, in spite of herself. But as if she suspected a trick of some kind, she remained where she was, blocking his entrance. She said, “You best tell me what’s about Daniel, Constable.”
“Sergeant now,” Nkata said. “Or does that make it worse?”
She cocked her head. He found he missed the sight and the sound of her 101 beaded plaits, although her close-cropped hair suited her just as well. She said, “Sergeant, is it? That what you come to tell Daniel?”
“I didn’t come to talk to Daniel,” he said patiently. “I come to talk to you. About Daniel. I c’n do it outside if that’s what you want, Missus Edwards, but you’re gonna get colder if you stand there much longer.” He felt his face get hot because of what his words implied about what he’d noticed: the tips of her breasts peaking against the flannel of the pyjama top, her exposed skin the colour of walnut goose-fleshing where the top formed a V. As best he could, Nkata avoided looking at the vulnerable parts of her that were open to the winter air, but still he could see the smooth and stately curve of her neck, the mole he’d never noticed before, beneath her right ear.
She shot him a look of contempt and reached behind the door where, he knew, she kept a line of hooks for coats. She brought from it a heavy cardigan, which she took her time about donning and buttoning to the throat. When she was garbed to her liking, she gave him her attention again. “Better?” she asked.
“Whatever’s best for you.”
“Mum?” It was her son’s voice, coming from his bedroom doorway, which, Nkata knew, was to the left of the front door. “Wha’s going on? Who’s-” Daniel Edwards stepped into view just beyond Yasmin’s shoulders. His eyes widened when he saw who was calling on them, and his grin was contagious, exposing those perfect white teeth of his, so adult in his twelve-year-old face.
Nkata said, “’Lo, Dan. Wha’s happening?”
“Hey!” Daniel said. “You ’member my name.”
“He’s got it in his records,” Yasmin Edwards said to her son. “Tha’s what cops do. Are you ready for the cocoa yet? It’s in the kitchen if you want it. Homework finished?”
“You coming in?” Daniel said to Nkata. “We got cocoa. Mum makes it fresh. I have enough to share ’f you like.”
“Dan! Is your hearing-”
“Sorry, Mum,” Daniel said. That grin again, though. Daniel disappeared through the kitchen doorway. The opening and closing of cupboards ensued from that direction.
“In?” Nkata said to the boy’s mother, with a nod at the interior of the flat. “This’ll take five minutes. I c’n promise that, cos I got to get home.”
“I don’t want you trying to get Dan-”
Nkata raised his hands in a sign of surrender. “Missus Edwards, I bother you since what happened happened? No, right? I think you c’n trust me.”