“So get on that directly,” he was saying. “You may be right about Colossus after all.”
“Sorry,” Barbara said hastily. “Lost you for a moment, sir. Bad reception. Bloody mobiles. Try again?”
Lynley said that someone on DI Stewart’s team two had come up with some information on Griffin Strong. Evidently, Mr. Strong hadn’t been as forthcoming as he might have been on the subject of leaving Social Services prior to his employment at Colossus. A child had died in care while Strong was his social worker at his last posting, in Stockwell. It was time to dig round Strong a little deeper. Lynley gave her the man’s home address and told her to begin there. He lived in a housing estate on Hopetown Street. East One, Lynley told her. It would be a bit of a drive to get there. He could send someone else, but as Havers had been the one who was most insistent about Colossus…
Did he sound regretful? Barbara wondered. Making amends? Suddenly realising that his bad day didn’t have to become everyone else’s as well?
It didn’t matter. She’d take what she could get. She told him a maddening zigzag down to Whitechapel would be just the ticket. She’d get right on it, she said. She was, in fact, trotting back to her car even as they spoke.
“Fine,” Lynley said. “See to it, then.” He rang off before Barbara could tell him what she’d been considering as she watched the purple van ahead of her and the man at its rear, unloading a few boxes from inside.
Purple, Barbara had been thinking. Darkness, illumination provided only by a streetlamp some yards away, and a woman half asleep at a window above.
She walked over to the van and gave it a look. Lettering on the side indicated that the vehicle was operated by Mr. Magic, with a London phone number. That would be the man in the overcoat, Barbara thought, because in addition to concealing explosives, the garment was surely suitable for hiding everything from doves to Dobermans.
As she’d been sauntering over, jacket potato in hand, the man had used his foot to slam home the rear doors of the van. He’d left his hazard lights on, no doubt hopeful that this would prevent an enthusiastic traffic warden from ticketing him. He saw Barbara and said, “Excuse me. Could I ask you…I’ll just be a minute inside. Taking this”-nodding at the two boxes he had in his arms-“to the stall. Would you keep an eye out? They’re heartless round here when it comes to parking.”
“Sure,” Barbara said. “You’re Mr. Magic?”
He made a wry face. “Barry Minshall, actually. I won’t be a tick. Cheers.” He went in the side entrance to the Stables-one of at least four markets in the immediate area-and Barbara took the opportunity to walk round his van. It wasn’t a Ford Transit, but that didn’t matter because she wasn’t considering it as the one they were looking for. She knew how long the odds were that an officer on the case would providentially in the street run into the serial killer she happened to be seeking. But the idea of the van’s colour intrigued her with all it suggested about misinformation wearing the guise of truth.
Barry Minshall returned, expressing his thanks. Barbara took the opportunity to ask him what he sold on his stall. He spoke of magic tricks, videos, and gag items. He made no mention of any kind of oil. Barbara listened, wondering about the sunglasses he wore, considering the weather, but after her interlude with Wendy, she knew the sky was the limit on what one could expect to see in the area.
She took herself off to her car, thoughtful. Someone had said a red van, so they’d been thinking in red throughout the investigation. But red was only part of a larger spectrum of colour, wasn’t it? Why not something closer to blue? It was definitely something they needed to consider.
WHEN DS WINSTON NKATA went up to Plugged Inn to the Lord, he went prepared: In advance he did the requisite digging round in the background of Reverend Bram Savidge. The information he found was enough to arm him to meet the man, who’d been called the Champion of Finchley Road by both the Sunday Times magazine and the Mail on Sunday in special reports about his ministry.
A press conference was in full swing when Nkata entered the shopfront-church cum soup kitchen. The poor and the homeless usually served by the kitchen during the day had formed themselves into a dispirited queue outside along the pavement. Most of them had sunk onto their haunches with the sort of inevitable patience evidenced by people who’d lived too long on the edge of society.
Nkata felt a twinge as he passed them. It was only a twist of circumstance, he thought, the stalwart love of his parents, and the long-ago intervention of one concerned cop that had kept him from a life among them. He experienced the same constriction in his chest that he always experienced when he had to carry out one duty or another among his own people. He wondered if he’d ever get over it: the feeling that somehow he’d betrayed them by following a course that most of them did not understand.
He’d seen the same reaction in the eyes of Sol Oliver when he’d walked into his ramshackle car repair shop less than an hour earlier. It was part of a shantytown of buildings comprising the narrow street of Munro Mews in North Kensington, heavily marked by taggers and graffiti artists, blackened with generations of soot and the residue of a fire, which had gutted the structure next door. The mews itself backed onto Golberne Road, where Nkata had left his Escort. There, traffic trundled through a neighbourhood of dingy shops and grubby market stalls, between cracked pavements and gutters littered with rubbish.
Sol Oliver had been working on an antique Volkswagen Beetle when Nkata came upon him. Hearing his name, the mechanic lifted himself from a contemplation of the car’s minuscule engine. His gaze had taken in Nkata from head to toe and, when shown the DS’s warrant card, whatever Sol Oliver had suspected about Nkata settled his features into a permanent expression of distrust.
Yeah, he’d been put in the picture about Sean Lavery, Oliver told him in short order, although he didn’t sound particularly distressed about the news. Reverend Savidge had phoned with the information. He didn’t have anything to tell the cops about Sean in the days leading up to his death. He hadn’t seen his son in months.
“When was the last time?” Nkata asked.
Oliver looked at a calendar on the wall as if to stimulate his memory. It was hanging below a veritable hammock of cobwebs and above a grimy coffeemaker. A mug sat next to this, painted in a child’s hand with footballs and the single word “Daddy.”
“End of August,” Oliver said.
“You sure?” Nkata asked.
“Why? You think I killed him or summick?” Oliver set down the crescent wrench he was holding. He wiped his hands on a limp blue rag that was bruised with stains. “Look, man, I di’n’t even know the kid. I d’n’t even want to know him. I got a family now and what went on wif me and his mum was just what happens. I tol’ the kid I’m sorry Cleo’s doing time, but no way could I take him in, no matter what he wanted. Tha’s how it is. Not like we were married or nuffink.”
Nkata did his best to keep his face dispassionate, although the last thing he actually felt was disinterest. Oliver epitomised what was wrong with their men: Plant the seed because the woman was willing; walk away from the consequences with a shrug. Indifference became the legacy that was passed along from father to son.
He said, “What’d he want from you, then? I can’t think he was calling round just to chat.”