“Did you ask your wife if he’s turned up? Phoned? Sent a message?”
“She doesn’t answer the phone,” Savidge said. “Her English isn’t good enough. She lacks confidence.”
“Anything else?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean did you ask her about Sean?”
“I didn’t need to. She would have told me. She knows I’m worried.”
“What’s her relationship with the boy?”
“What’s that got to do with-”
“Mr. Savidge, I’ve got to ask,” Lynley said, his gaze steady. “She’s obviously much younger than you.”
“She’s nineteen years old.”
“Much closer in age to the boys you’ve sheltered than to yourself, am I right?”
“This isn’t about my marriage, my wife, or my situation, Superintendent.”
Oh, but it is, Lynley thought. He said, “You’re what? Twenty years older than she? Twenty-five years older? And the boys were what age?”
Savidge seemed to grow larger, indignation colouring his reply. “This is about a missing boy. In a circumstance in which other boys of a similar age have gone missing, if the newspapers are anything to go by. So if you think I’m going to let you misdirect my concerns because you lot have botched an investigation, you’d better change course.” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he went to a bookcase that held a small CD player and a rank of paperback books that looked untouched. From the top of this, he took up a photograph in a plain wooden frame. He thrust it at Lynley.
In the picture, Savidge himself in his African garb stood with his arm round the shoulders of a solemn-looking boy wearing an overlarge tracksuit. The boy had a head of germinant dreadlocks and a wary expression, like a dog’s too often returned to his cage at the Battersea shelter after a walk. He was very dark, only a little lighter than Savidge’s wife. He was also, unmistakably, the boy whose body they’d found that morning.
Lynley looked up. Beyond Savidge’s shoulder, he saw that the walls of Sean’s room had posters on them: Louis Farrakhan in passionate exhortation, Elijah Mohammed backed by neat-suited members of the Nation. A young Muhammad Ali, perhaps the most famous of the converted. He said, “Mr. Savidge…” And then, for a moment, he found himself in the position of not knowing exactly how to go on. A body in a tunnel became all too human the moment you placed it in a home. At that point, a body altered from a body to a person whose death could not go unmarked by a desire for revenge or a need for justice or the duty to express the simplest form of regret. He said, “I’m sorry. We’ve got a body you’re going to have to look at. It was found this morning, south of the river.”
Savidge said, “Oh my God. Is it…”
“I hope it isn’t,” Lynley said, although he knew it was. He took the other man’s arm to give him support. There were questions he was going to have to ask Savidge eventually, but at the moment there was nothing more to say.
ULRIKE MANAGED to cool her heels in her office till Jack Veness closed down the phones and tidied up the reception room for the day. Once she’d acknowledged his good night and heard the outer door slam behind him, she went in search of Griff.
She found Robbie Kilfoyle instead. He was in the entry corridor, emptying two rubbish bags of Colossus T-shirts and sweatshirts into the storage cupboard beneath the display case of goods for sale. At least, she saw, Griff had told the truth in this. He had spent several hours at his silk-screening business today.
She’d doubted that. When they’d met at the Charlie Chaplin, the first thing she’d said was, “Where’ve you been all day, Griffin?,” and then winced at the tone of her voice because she knew what she sounded like and he knew she knew, which was why he’d said, “Don’t,” before he told her. A piece of equipment had needed repair at the silk-screening shop and he’d seen to it, he said. “I told you I’d be going by the business on my way in. You wanted me to bring more shirts, remember?” That was a quintessential Griffin reply. I was doing what you asked, he implied.
Ulrike said to Robbie Kilfoyle, “Have you seen Griff? I need a word with him.”
Squatting on the floor, Robbie rested back on his heels and tipped his cap to the back of his head. He said, “He’s helping take that new group of assessment kids onto the river. They went off in the vans…round two hours ago?” Robbie’s expression told her he thought she-as director-ought to be aware of this piece of information. He said, “He left this stuff”-with a nod at the rubbish bags-“back in the kit room. I reckoned it was best to pack it all in here. C’n I help you with something?”
“Help me?”
“Well, if you want Griff and Griff’s not here, I might be able to…” He shrugged.
“I said I wanted a word with him, Robbie.” Ulrike was at once aware of how curt she sounded. She said, “Sorry. That was rude of me. I’m frazzled. The police. First Kimmo. Now…”
“Sean,” Robbie said. “Yeah. I know. He’s not dead, though, is he? Sean Lavery?”
Ulrike looked at him sharply. “I didn’t say his name. How d’you know about Sean?”
Robbie seemed taken aback. “That cop asked if I knew him, Ulrike. That woman cop. She came by the kit room. She said Sean was in one of the computer courses, so when I had a chance, I asked Neil what was going on. He said Sean Lavery didn’t turn up today. That was it.” Then he added, “Okay, Ulrike?,” as an afterthought, but he didn’t sound deferential when he said it.
She couldn’t blame him. She said, “I’m…Look, I didn’t mean to sound so…I don’t know…so suspicious. I’m on edge. First Kimmo. Now Sean. And the police. D’you know what time Griff and the kids will be back?”
Robbie took a moment, seeming to evaluate her apology, before he replied. This, she decided, was a wee bit much. He was, after all, only a volunteer. He said, “I don’t know. They’ll probably stop for a coffee afterwards. Half seven p’rhaps? Eight? He’s got his own keys to the place, right?”
True, she thought. He could come and go as he liked, which had been convenient in the past when they’d wanted to have a political powwow. Planning strategies before staff meetings and after hours. Here’s where I stand on an issue, Griffin. What about you?
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “They could be gone hours.”
“Not too late, though. The dark and all that. And it must be cold as hell on the river. Between you and me, I can’t think why assessment chose kayaking at all for their group activity this time round. Seems a hike would’ve been better. A footpath in the Cotswolds or something. Going between villages. They could’ve stopped for a meal at the end.” He went back to stowing the T-shirts and sweatshirts away in the cupboard.
“Is that what you would have done?” she asked him. “Taken them on a hike? Somewhere safe?”
He looked over his shoulder. “It’s probably nothing, you know.”
“What?”
“Sean Lavery. They bunk off sometimes, these kids.”
Ulrike wanted to ask him why he thought he knew the kids at Colossus better than she. But the truth was, he likely did know them better because she’d been distracted for months on end. Kids had come into and gone from Colossus, but her mind had been elsewhere.
Which could cost her her job, if it came down to the board of directors looking for someone culpable for what was going on…if something was going on. All those hours, days, weeks, months, and years given to this organisation: down the toilet in one hardy flush. She’d be able to get another job somewhere, but it wouldn’t be at a place like Colossus, with all of Colossus’s potential to do exactly what she so fervently believed needed to be done in England: to make change at a grass-roots level, which was at the level of the individual child’s psyche.