Hearing this, DI Stewart set about arranging surveillance at the body sites before he went on to another report: The officers who’d been slogging through all of the relevant CCTV tapes from the areas near the body-dump sites were continuing that tedious job. It wasn’t exactly gripping drama, but the constables in question were soldiering on, supported by vats of hot coffee. They were looking not only for a van but for another means of transporting a body from point A to point B, and one that wouldn’t necessarily be noticed by people living in the vicinity: milk float, street-sweeping trolley, and the like.
To this information, he added that they’d had a report from SO7 on the makeup worn by Kimmo Thorne. The brand was No. Seven, commonly sold at Boots. Did the superintendent want them to start observing all the CCTV films from the Boots outlets nearest Kimmo Thorne’s home? He didn’t sound thrilled with this possibility. Still, he pointed out, “That might give us something. Bloke at the till disapproving how the Thorne kid was bent and wanting to do him in? That sort of thing.”
Lynley didn’t want to count anything out at this point. So he gave the nod for Stewart to assign a team to get on to the security tapes from the Boots outlets in the vicinity of Kimmo Thorne’s Southwark home. He himself assigned the two outlets for oil of ambergris to Nkata and to Havers, telling Havers to look in on Wendy’s Cloud when she headed home at the end of the day. In the meantime, she would accompany him to Elephant and Castle. He was determined to see himself what could be gained from a call upon Colossus. If one of the boys had been associated with it, what was to say the rest of the victims-still unidentified-might not have been allied with it as well?
“Couldn’t this last’ve been a copycat killing?” Havers asked. “That’s something we haven’t talked about yet. I mean, I know how Robson explained the differences between this body and the others, but those differences could be owing to someone knowing something about the crime scene but not everything, right?”
That couldn’t be discounted, Lynley agreed. But the truth was that copycat killings came from information generated by the news media, and despite the fact that they had a leak somewhere in the investigation, he knew that it was a recent one. The press jumping on the fact that the latest body was black was evidence of that since there were far more sensational details to exploit on the front pages of the tabloids than that one. And Lynley knew how the media worked: They weren’t about to withhold something gruesome if it had the potential to sell another two hundred thousand copies of their papers. So indications were strong that they didn’t have anything gruesome on record yet, which suggested this killing wasn’t a copy of the earlier ones but rather another death in a line of similar deaths, all bearing the signature of a single killer.
That was the person they had to find, quickly. For Lynley was perfectly capable of making the psychological jump implied by everything Hamish Robson had told him that morning about the man they were looking for: If he’d treated this last body with contempt and without remorse, things were escalating now.
CHAPTER NINE
NKATA MANAGED TO DEPART VICTORIA STREET WITHOUT a run-in with Hillier. He’d had a message on his mobile from the AC’s secretary advising him of “Sir David’s wish to confer prior to the next press briefing,” but he decided to ignore it. Hillier no more wanted to confer with him than he wanted to be exposed to the Ebola virus, and that was a fact, one which Nkata had been reading between the lines of his every meeting with the man. He was tired of being Hillier’s token nod-of-head to equal opportunities for minorities at the Met. He knew if he continued to play along with the propaganda, he was going to end up despising his profession, his associates, and himself. That wasn’t fair on anyone. So he escaped from New Scotland Yard directly upon the conclusion of the meeting in the incident room. He used oil of ambergris as his excuse.
He made his way across the river to Gabriel’s Wharf, an expensive square of riverfront tarmac which stood just beyond the midway point between two of the bridges that spanned the Thames: Waterloo and Blackfriars. It was a summertime kind of place, completely open to the air. Despite the cheery lights strung above it in crisscross fashion-and lit, even though it was still daylight-in winter the wharf was experiencing little custom. No one at all was doing business in the shop hiring out bicycles and inline skates, and while there were a few browsers in the small, ramshackle galleries that defined the wharf’s boundaries, the other enterprises were virtually deserted. These comprised restaurants and food stalls, which in summer would be hard pressed to keep up with the demand for the crepes, pizzas, sandwiches, jacket potatoes, and ices that were largely going ignored at present.
Nkata found Crystal Moon lodged between two take-aways: crepes on the left and sandwiches on the right. It was part of the eastern portion of the wharf, where shantylike shops and galleries backed right up to a line of tenements. The upper floors of these had long ago been painted with trompe l’oeil windows, each of a style so different from the last that the overall feeling was one of speeding round Europe on foot. Georgian London windows gave way within four paces to rococo Paris, which in turn faded fast to the doge’s Venice. It was nothing if not fanciful, in keeping with the wharf itself.
Crystal Moon maintained the whimsical atmosphere, inviting one to enter through a beaded curtain fashioned to look like a galaxy dominated by a slice of lunar green cheese. Nkata ducked through this and opened the door beyond it, expecting to be greeted inside by a pyramid- wearing hippie hopeful who called herself something like Aphrodite but whose real name was Kylie from Essex. Instead, he found a grandmotherly type seated on a tall stool next to the till. She was wearing a soft pink twin set and purple beads and she was leafing through a glossy magazine. A stick of incense burning next to her spread the scent of jasmine into the air.
Nkata nodded but did not immediately approach her. Rather, he took stock of what was on offer. Crystals abounded, as one might expect: hanging from cords, decorating small lamp shades, worked into candleholders, loose in small baskets. But so did incense, tarot cards, dream catchers, fragrant oils, flutes, recorders, and-for some reason not immediately apparent-decorated chopsticks. He went to the oils.
Black man in the shop. White woman alone. At another time, Nkata might have set her mind at rest by introducing himself and proffering his identification. Today, however, with Hillier and everything Hillier stood for on his mind, he just wasn’t in the mood for adding to the peace of any white person, old lady or not.
He did a little browsing. Anise. Benzoin. Klinden. Chamomile. Almond. He picked up one, read the label, and noted the multitude of uses. He replaced it and picked up another. Behind him the pages of the magazine continued to turn with no alteration in pace. Finally, after stirring on her stool, the proprietor of the shop spoke.
Only, it turned out she wasn’t the proprietor at all, which she revealed to Nkata with an embarrassed little laugh as she offered to assist him. “I don’t know how much help I can be,” she told him, “but I’m willing to try. I just come in once a week for the afternoon, you see, while Gigi-that’s my granddaughter-has her singing lessons. This is her little place, what she’s doing till she’s broken into the business…Isn’t that how they say it? May I be any help, by the way? Looking for anything special?”
“What’s all this for, then?” Nkata indicated the display of small bottles that contained the oils.