She pushed her way inside and found herself in a vestibule, where a long rack of hooks at waist height held miniature coats, jackets, and macs, while below a row of pint-sized Wellingtons waited neatly for their owners. There appeared to be two classrooms opening off this little hall: one large and one small and both of them filled with enthusiastic children engaged in making paper Valentines (the small room) and an energetic conga line galloping about to the tune of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (the large room).
Barbara was deciding which room to try for information when a sixtyish woman with spectacles on a gold chain round her neck came out of what seemed to be a kitchen, bearing a tray of ginger biscuits. Fresh ginger biscuits, by the smell of them. Barbara’s stomach made an appreciative gurgle.
The woman looked from Barbara to the door. Her expression said that it was not meant to be left unlocked, which Barbara acknowledged was not a bad idea. The woman asked if she could be of help.
Barbara showed her identification and told the woman-who gave her name as Mrs. McDonald-that she’d come about MABIL.
Mabel? Mrs. McDonald said. They had no child named Mabel enrolled.
This was an organisation of men who met in the basement in the evenings, Barbara told her. M-A-B-I-L, it was spelled.
Ah. Well, Mrs. McDonald knew nothing about that. For that sort of information, the constable would have to talk to the letting agent. Taverstock & Percy, she informed Barbara. On Gloucester Road. They handled all of the lettings for the community centre. Twelve-step programmes, women’s clubs, antiques and crafts fairs, writing classes, the lot.
Could she have a look round anyway? Barbara asked Mrs. McDonald. There was, she knew, nothing to find here, but she wanted to get a feel for the place where perversion was not only tolerated but encouraged.
Mrs. McDonald was less than happy about this request, but she said she’d show Barbara the facilities if she would wait right here while the biscuits got delivered to the conga line. She carried her tray into the larger room and handed it off to one of the teachers. She returned as the conga line disintegrated in a biscuit frenzy to which Barbara could only too well relate. She’d skipped lunch and it was already teatime.
She followed Mrs. McDonald dutifully from room to room. They blossomed with children-laughing, jabbering, fresh faced, innocent. Her heart felt sick at the thought of paedophiles defiling this atmosphere, even by their presence at night when these children were tucked up safely at home.
There was little enough to see, however. A large room with a dais at one end, a lectern pushed to one side, and chairs stacked up along walls decorated with rainbows, leprechauns, and an enormous, whimsical pot of gold. A small room with tot-sized tables where children created crafts that were then displayed along the walls in a riot of colour and imagination. A kitchen, a lavatory, a supply room. That was it. Barbara tried to picture the place filled with saliva-dripping child molesters, and it wasn’t difficult. She could see them here easily enough, the miserable lot of them getting their rocks off at the thought of all the kids in these rooms every single weekday, just waiting for some monster to snatch them off the street.
She thanked Mrs. McDonald and left St. Lucy’s. Although it seemed a dead end, she knew she couldn’t leave the stone of Taverstock & Percy unturned.
The estate agent, she found, was back on the other side of Cromwell Road and up a distance. She passed a Barclay’s-complete with drunken homeless beggar on the front steps-as well as a church and a string of nineteenth-century conversions-before she came to a smallish commercial area where Taverstock & Percy was bookended by a have-everything ironmonger and an old-fashioned take-away serving up sausage rolls and jacket potatoes to a line of road workers who were taking their tea break from a jackhammered hole in the middle of the street.
Inside Taverstock & Percy, Barbara asked to see the estate agent in charge of letting space in St. Lucy’s Church, and she was shown to a young woman called Misty Perrin, who was apparently thrilled by the idea that custom for St. Lucy’s was walking in off the street. She took out an application and fixed it to a clipboard, saying that of course there were certain rules and regulations that had to be met in order for anyone to have space in the former church or its basement.
Right, Barbara thought. That’s what kept away the riffraff.
She took out her identification and introduced herself to Misty. Could she have a word about a group called MABIL.
Misty lowered the clipboard to her desk, but she didn’t look concerned. She said, “Oh, of course. When you asked about St. Lucy’s, I thought…Well, anyway…MABIL. Yes.” She opened a filing drawer in her desk and fingered through its contents. She brought out a slim manila folder and opened it. She read through the material, nodding appreciatively and saying at the conclusion of her inspection, “I wish all tenants were as prompt as they are. Every month, they’re right on time with the rent. No complaints about how they leave the premises at the end of their meetings. No problem in the neighbourhood with illegal parking. Well, of course the clamp takes care of that, doesn’t it? Anyway, what would you like to know?”
“What sort of group is it?”
Misty looked back at her documents. “Support group, it appears. Men going through divorce. I’m not sure why they call it MABIL unless that’s an acronym for…Men Against what?”
“Bloody Inconsiderate Litigation?” Barbara offered. “Whose name’s on the contract?”
Misty read it to her. J. S. Mill. She recited the address as well. She went on to inform Barbara that the only somewhat odd thing about MABIL was that their fee always arrived in cash, brought in person by Mr. Mill on the first of the month. “He said it had to be cash because that’s how they came up with the money, through a collection at their meetings. Well, it’s a bit irregular and all that, but St. Lucy’s said that was fine by them just so long as they got the money. And they’ve got it, every month on the first, for the last five years.”
“Five years?”
“Yes. That’s right. Is there something…?” Misty looked anxious.
Barbara shook her head and waved off the question. What was the point? The girl was as innocent as the children in the Ladybird centre. She didn’t depend on the promise of anything coming from it, but she showed Misty the two e-fits anyway. “J. S. Mill look like either of these blokes?” she asked.
Misty glanced at the sketches but shook her head. He was much older, she said-round seventy?-and he didn’t have a beard or goatee or anything. He did wear an enormous hearing aid, if that was any help.
Barbara shuddered at the information. Someone’s granddad, she thought. She wanted to find and strangle him.
She took the address of J. S. Mill as she left the estate agency. It would be bogus. She had little doubt of that. But she’d hand it over to TO9 nonetheless. Someone somewhere had to kick down the doors of the members of this organisation.
She was heading back in the direction of Cromwell Road when her mobile rang. It was Lynley asking where she was.
She told him, bringing him up to date on what little she’d managed to glean from her efforts with the registration card from the Canterbury Hotel. “What about you?” she asked him.
“St. James thinks our boy may need to buy more ambergris oil,” Lynley told her and informed her of the rest of St. James’s report. “It’s time for you to take another trip up to Wendy’s Cloud, Constable.”
NKATA PARKED some distance along Manor Place. He was still thinking about the dozens of aimlessly sauntering black kids he’d seen in the vicinity of Elephant and Castle. No single place for them to go and very little for them to do. That wasn’t the real truth of the matter-if nothing else, they could be at school-but he knew that was the way they themselves saw their situation, taught to think it by older peers, by disgruntled and disappointed parents, by lack of opportunity and too much temptation. It was easier for them, in the long run, not to care. Nkata had thought of them all the way to Kennington. He allowed them to become his excuse.