“What sort of plans?”
Gill looked momentarily embarrassed, as if against his will he were about to confide an offensive secret to a lady. “Actually, he wished to have a sexual change. He was saving for that. He told us the first time we had him into the station.”
“A bloke over in the market said you lot finally sent him down for selling stolen goods,” Barbara said. “But what I don’t get is why Kimmo Thorne? There’s got to be dozens over there flogging lumber they’ve nicked.”
“This is true,” Gill said. “But as you and I well know, we do not have the manpower to sort through every stall in every market in London to ascertain which products are legitimately on offer and which are not. In this particular case, however, Kimmo was selling items that-without his knowledge-had all been engraved with infinitesimal serial numbers. And the last thing he expected was to find the owners of the items seeking them out Friday after Friday in the market. When they found him with their belongings for sale, they rang us up directly. I was called out and…” He raised his fingers. The gesture said, The rest is history.
“You’d never twigged before that that he was breaking and entering?”
“He was rather like a canine in that,” Gill said. “He did not foul his own den. When he wished to break the law, he did so in another station’s jurisdiction. He was clever that way.”
Thus, Gill explained, Kimmo’s arrest for selling stolen property went down as his first offence. Because of that, when he went in front of the magistrate, he was put on probation. This too the DS deeply regretted. Had Kimmo Thorne been taken seriously, had he been given more than a slap on the hand and a probation officer in Youth Offenders to report to, he might have changed his ways and still been walking the streets today. But alas, that had not happened. Instead, he’d been sent to an organisation for youth at risk and they’d tried to work with him.
Barbara’s ears pricked up. Organisation? she asked. What? Where?
It was a charity called Colossus, Gill told her. “A fine project, right here, south of the river,” he said. “They offer young people alternatives to street life, crime, and drugs. With recreational programmes, community activities, life-skills classes…And not just for youth at risk with the law, but for the homeless, for truants, for those in care…I admit to having relaxed my own vigilance on Kimmo’s behalf when I knew he had been assigned to Colossus. Surely, I thought, someone there would take him under a protective wing.”
“As a mentor?” Barbara asked. “Is that what they do?”
“That’s what he needed,” Gill said. “Someone to take an interest in him. Someone to assist him towards seeing he had a degree of value that he did not quite believe he actually had. Someone to turn to. Someone to…” The DS seemed to bring himself up short, perhaps realising he’d gone from relaying information as an officer of the law to advocating action like a social militant. He loosened the tight grip he had on his teacup.
Small wonder that he was upset by the boy’s death, Barbara thought. With his present mind-set, she wondered not only how long Gill had been a cop but also how he managed to stay one, facing what he had to face at work every day. She said, “It’s not your fault, you know. You did what you could. Fact is, you did more than most cops would’ve done.”
“But as things turned out, I did not do enough. And that is what I must live with now. A boy is dead because Detective Sergeant Gill could not bring himself to do enough.”
“But there are millions of kids like Kimmo,” Barbara protested.
“And most of them are alive at this moment.”
“You can’t help them all. You can’t save each one.”
“That is what we tell ourselves, isn’t it?”
“What else should we tell ourselves?”
“That saving all of them is not required of us. What is required is helping the ones whom we come across. And this, Constable, I failed to do.”
“Bloody hell. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Who else,” he said, “is there to do so? Tell me that if you will. Because here is exactly what I believe: If more of us were hard on ourselves, more children would live lives all children deserve.”
At this, Barbara dropped her gaze from his. She knew she couldn’t argue with that. But the fact that she wanted to do so told her how close she herself was to caring too much. And this, she knew, made her more like Gill than she, as part of the team investigating these crimes, could afford to be.
That was the irony about police work. Care too little and more people died. Care too much and you couldn’t catch their killer.
“I’D LIKE A WORD,” Lynley said. “Now.” He didn’t add sir and he made no real effort to modulate his voice. Had he been present, Hamish Robson no doubt would have taken note of everything his tone implied about aggression and the need to settle a score, but Lynley didn’t care about that. They’d negotiated an arrangement. Hillier hadn’t upheld it.
The AC had just concluded a meeting with Stephenson Deacon. The head of the Press Bureau had left Hillier’s office looking as grim as Lynley felt. Things were obviously not going smoothly at that end of things, and for a moment Lynley took a perverse pleasure in this. The thought of Hillier eventually dangling in the wind of the Press Bureau’s machinations before a pack of baying journalists was deeply gratifying just now.
Hillier said, as if he hadn’t spoken, “Where the hell is Nkata? We’ve a meeting with the media coming up and I want him here in advance.” He gathered up an array of papers spread out on his conference table and shoved them at an underling who was still seated there, having attended the meeting that had gone on prior to Lynley’s arrival. He was a razor-thin twentysomething in John Lennon spectacles who was continuing to take notes as he apparently tried to avoid becoming the focus of Hillier’s exasperation. “They’re on to colour,” the AC said curtly. “So who the hell over there”-he jerked his finger in what Lynley decided was supposed to be a southerly direction, meaning south of the river, meaning the Shand Street tunnel-“leaked that bit to those predators? I want to know and I want that bugger’s head on a dish. You, Powers.”
The underling jumped to, leaning in to say, “Sir? Yes, sir?”
“Get that halfwit Rodney Aronson on the phone. He’s running The Source these days, and the colour question came in by phone from someone on that rotten little rag. Trace it back to us that way. Put pressure on Aronson. On anyone else you come across as well. I want every leak plugged by the end of the day. Get on to it.”
“Sir.” Powers scooted from the room.
Hillier went to his desk. He picked up the phone and punched in a few numbers, either oblivious of or indifferent to Lynley’s presence and his state of mind. Unbelievably, he began to book himself a massage.
Lynley felt as if battery acid were running through his veins. He strode across the room to Hillier’s desk, and he pushed the button to disconnect the AC from his phone call. Hillier snapped, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re-”
“I said I want a word,” Lynley cut in. “You and I had an arrangement, and you’ve violated it.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Only too well. You brought Robson in as window dressing, and I allowed it.”
Hillier’s florid face went crimson. “No one bloody allows-”
“Our agreement was that I would decide what he saw and what he didn’t see. He had no business at anyone’s crime scene, but there he was, given access. There’s only one way that sort of thing happens.”
“That’s right,” Hillier said. “Keep it in mind. There’s only one way anything happens round here and you are not that way. I’ll decide who has access to what, when, and how, Superintendent, and if it comes to me that it might advance the investigation by having the Queen turn up to shake hands with the corpse, then prepare yourself to tug your forelock because her Roller’s going to drop her off for a look. Robson’s part of the team. Cope with it.”