“Will do.” Stewart made a note.
A knock on the door brought Barbara Havers into the office then. Close on her heels was Winston Nkata with whom she was in terse conversation. She looked excited. Nkata looked interested. Lynley grew momentarily heartened by the idea that progress might actually be about to occur.
Havers said, “It’s Colossus. Got to be. Listen to this. Griffin Strong’s silk-screening business just happens to be in Quaker Street. Sound familiar? It did to me. Turns out he’s got a smallish factory in one of the warehouses, and when I asked round in the area to suss out which one, an old bloke on the pavement shook his head, made some grave mutterings like the ghost of Christmas past, and pointed out the spot where-as he put it-the ‘devil made his presence known.’”
“Which meant?” Lynley asked.
“That one of the bodies was found not two doors down from our Mr. Strong’s secondary means of employment, guv. The third of the bodies, as it turned out. Which sounded too bloody coincidental to be coincidental, so I checked out the rest. And listen to this…” She stuck half of her arm into her enormous shoulder bag and, after some struggle, pulled out her tattered spiral notebook. She ran a hand through her hair-doing nothing to improve its overall dishevelled look-and went on. “Jack Veness: number eight Grange Walk, not even a mile from the Shand Street tunnel. Robbie Kilfoyle: sixteen Granville Square, sneezing distance from St. George’s Gardens. Ulrike Ellis: two-five-eight Gloucester Terrace, just round two corners from a multi-storey carpark. The multi-storey carpark, if you know what I mean. This has got to be a Colossus situation, start to finish. If the bodies themselves didn’t scream that at us, where the bodies were put bloody well does.”
“The Gunnersbury Park body?” John Stewart asked. He’d been listening with his head cocked, and his face wore an expression of paternal indulgence which Lynley knew that Havers would particularly loathe.
“I haven’t got to that one yet,” she admitted. “But odds are that body from Gunnersbury Park is someone else from Colossus. And bigger odds are that Gunnersbury Park is a hop and a jump from where a Colossus employee lives. So all we have to do is get the names and addresses of everyone who works there. Of volunteers as well. Because believe me, sir, someone inside’s trying to paint the place black.”
John Stewart shook his head. “I don’t like it, Tommy. A serial killer choosing his victims from within his immediate sphere? I can’t see how that plays with what we know about serial killers in general and this one in particular. We know this is an intelligent bloke we’re dealing with, and it’s damned lunacy to think he’d work there, volunteer there, or do anything else there. He’d know we’d twig it eventually, and then what? When we’re hot on his tail, what’s he going to do?”
Havers countered. “You can’t be thinking it’s some major coincidence that every body we’ve been able to identify just happens to be associated with Colossus.” Stewart shot her a look, and she added, “Sir,” as an afterthought. “With respect, that doesn’t make sense.” She pulled out another notebook from her battered shoulder bag. Lynley saw it was the signing-in register they’d taken surreptitiously from the reception desk at Colossus earlier. She opened it, riffling through a few pages as she said, “And listen to this. I had a look through this on my way back from the East End just now. You’re not going to believe…Bloody hell, what liars.” She leafed through the book and read aloud as she flipped through the pages, “Jared Salvatore, eleven A.M. Jared Salvatore, two-ten P.M. Jared Salvatore, nine-forty A.M. Jared Bloody Blooming Salvatore, three twenty-two P.M.” She slapped the notebook down on the conference table. It slithered across and knocked John Stewart’s neatly compiled notes to the floor. “Am I right that no cookery school in London knows the first thing about Jared Salvatore? Well, why would they when he was doing his cookery course at Colossus all along? Our killer’s right there inside that place. He’s picking and choosing. He’s setting things up like a pro, and he doesn’t expect us to catch him at any of it.”
“That fits in with something Robson pointed out,” Lynley said. “The sense of omnipotence the killer must have. How big a leap is it from putting bodies in public places to be working within the walls of Colossus? In both cases, he doesn’t expect to be caught.”
“We need to get every one of these blokes under surveillance,” Havers said. “And we need to do it now.”
“We haven’t the manpower for that,” John Stewart said.
“Then we’ve got to get it. And we’ve also got to grill each one of them, dig into their backgrounds, ask them-”
“As I’ve said, we’ve a manpower issue here.” DI Stewart turned away from Havers. He didn’t look pleased to have her grabbing control of the meeting. “Let’s not forget that, Tommy. And if our killer’s inside Colossus as the constable’s suggesting, then we’d better start looking at everyone else who works there as well. And at the other ‘clients’ who’re attached to the place: the participants or patients, whatever the hell they call themselves. I expect there are enough junior-level villains running round that place to fuel a dozen killings.”
“That’s a waste of our time,” Havers insisted, and, “Sir, listen to me,” to Lynley.
He cut in. “Your points are well taken, Havers. What did you get from Griffin Strong about the child who died on his watch in Stockwell?”
The constable hesitated. She looked abashed.
“Bloody hell,” DI John Stewart said. “Havers, did you not-”
“Look. When I heard about the body in the warehouse-” she began quickly, only to be cut off by Stewart.
“So you haven’t looked into the other yet? It’s a death on Strong’s watch in Stockwell, woman. Does that ring any damn bells for you?”
“I’m getting on to it. I came straight back. I went to the files for this other information first because I thought-”
“You thought. You thought.” Stewart’s voice was sharp. “It’s not your job to do the bloody thinking. When you’re given an order…” His fist hit the table. “Jesus. What the hell is it that keeps them from giving you the sack, Havers? I’d damn well like to know your secret, because whatever’s keeping you here isn’t between your ears and I sure as hell don’t think it’s between your legs.”
Havers’ face went completely white. She said, “You completely sodding piece of-”
“That’ll do,” Lynley said sharply. “You’re both out of order.”
“She’s-”
“That bastard just said-”
“Enough! Keep it out of this office and out of this investigation or both of you are permanently off the case. Christ but we have enough trouble already without you two going for each other’s throats.” He paused, waiting for his blood to cool. In the silence, Stewart shot Havers a look that clearly assessed her as an impossible cow, and Havers herself seethed openly back at him, a man with whom she’d long ago managed to work for only three weeks before charging him with sexual harassment. Meanwhile Winston Nkata remained by the door in the position he nearly always adopted when placed in a room with more than two white colleagues: He stood with his arms crossed and merely observed, as he had been doing since he’d walked in.
Lynley turned to him wearily. “What have you got for us, Winnie?”
Nkata reported on his meetings: first with Sol Oliver in his car repair shop, then with Bram Savidge. He went on with his visit to the gym where Sean Lavery did his workouts. He concluded with something that diffused the tension in the room: He might have found someone who’d actually seen the killer.
“There was some white bloke hanging round the gym not long before Sean went missing,” Nkata said. “He got noticed ’cause not many whites use the place. Seems one night he was lurking in the corridor just outside the workout room, and when one of the lifters asked him what did he want, he said he was new to the neighbourhood and just looking round for a place to work out. He never did go in, though. Not to the gym, not to the locker room, not to the steam room. Didn’t ask about membership or anything like it. Just showed up in the corridor.”