He jotted down a note and told the caller he’d pass the information along. He rang off and then looked up at Nkata. “What else?” he said. “I’ve got things to do.”

Nkata had Jack Veness’s background inscribed on his brain, along with the background of everyone else at Colossus who had piqued the interest of the police. He knew the young man had reason to be uneasy. Old lags were always the first to come under suspicion when a crime went down, and Veness knew it. He’d done time before-no matter it was arson-and he wouldn’t be anxious to do time elsewhere. And he was right about the cops’ tendency to set their sights on a culprit early on, based on his past and their past interactions with him. All over England, there were red-faced chief constables sweeping up the debris of dirty investigations into everything from bombings to murder.

Jack Veness was no fool to expect the worst. But on the other hand, positioning himself thus was a clever move.

“You got a lot of responsibility here,” Nkata said. “With everyone gone.”

Jack didn’t reply at once. This change in gears obviously was cause for suspicion. He finally made a reply of, “I c’n handle it.”

“Anyone notice?”

“What?”

“You handling it. Or are they too busy?”

This direction appeared doable. Jack went for it, saying, “No one notices much of anything. I’m low man on the totem pole, not counting Rob. He leaves, I’m done for. Doormat time.”

“Kilfoyle, you mean?”

Jack eyed him and Nkata knew he’d sounded too interested. “I’m not going there with you, mate. Rob’s a good lad. He’s been in trouble, but I expect you know that like you know I’ve been in trouble as well. That doesn’t make either one of us a killer.”

“You hang about with him much? Miller and Grindstone, f’r instance? That how you got to know him? He the mate you been talking about?”

“Look, I’m giving you sod all on Rob. Do your own dirty work.”

“All goes back to this Miller and Grindstone situation we got,” Nkata pointed out.

“I don’t see it that way, but shit, shit.” Jack grabbed a paper and scrawled a name and a phone number, which he then handed over. “There. That’s my mate. Ring him and he’ll tell you the same. We’re at the pub, then we’re off for a curry. Ask him, ask at the pub, ask at the take-away. ’Cross from Bermondsey Square, it is. They’ll tell you the same.”

Nkata folded the paper neatly and slid it into his notebook, saying, “Problem, Jack.”

“What? What?”

“One night tends to fade into ’nother when you always go to the same place, see? A few days-or weeks-after the fact, how’s someone s’posed to know which nights you were in the pub and buying take-away chicken tikka afterwards and which nights you skipped ’cause you were doing something else?”

“Like what? Like killing a few kids, you mean? Fuck it, I don’t care-”

“Trouble here, Jack?”

Another man had entered, a somewhat rounded bloke with hair too thin for his age and skin too ruddy even for someone recently exposed to the cold. Nkata wondered if he’d been listening just outside the reception door.

“Help you with something?” the man asked Nkata with a glance that took the DS in from head to toe.

Jack didn’t seem pleased to see the bloke. He apparently believed he needed no rescue. “Neil,” he said. “Another visit from the Bill.”

This would be Greenham, Nkata concluded. Just as well. He wanted a word with him too.

Jack went on. “More alibis needed. He’s got a list of dates this time. Hope you keep a diary of your every move ’cause that’s what he’s looking for. Meet DS Whahaha.”

Nkata said to Greenham, “Winston Nkata,” and reached for his warrant card.

“Don’t bother,” Neil said. “I believe you. And this is what you need to believe. I’m going in there”-he indicated the inner reaches of the building-“and I’m ringing my solicitor. I’m finished answering questions or having friendly chats with the cops without legal advice. You lot are bordering on harassment now.” And then to Veness, “Watch your backside. They don’t plan to rest till they get one of us. Pass word round.” He headed for the doorway to the interior of the building.

There was, Nkata concluded, nothing more to be gained on this side of the river aside from corroborating the Miller and Grindstone tale and the take-away curry situation. If Jack Veness was slip-sliding round London in the small hours, depositing bodies in the vicinity of the homes of his fellow Colossus workers, he’d not have announced that fact to anyone he knew at the pub or the take-away through obvious behaviour. Still, if he’d selected MABIL as his next source of young boys, he might not have been as circumspect about disguising his absence from the pub and the take-away on the nights of MABIL meetings. It was little enough to go on, but it was something.

Nkata left the building, telling Veness to have Robbie Kilfoyle and Griffin Strong phone him when they finally showed their faces. He went across the carpark at the rear of the building and slid into his Escort.

Across the street, tucked into the dismal and heavily graffitied railway arches leading out of London from Waterloo Station, four car-repair shops faced Colossus, along with a radio-controlled minicab and parcel service and a bicycle shop. In front of these establishments, young people of the area hung about. They mingled in groups and as Nkata watched, an Asian man emerged from the bicycle shop and shooed them off to another location. They exchanged words with the man, but nothing came of it. They began to slouch off towards New Kent Road.

When Nkata followed in his car, he saw more of them beneath the railway viaduct, and more strung out like African beads in twos, threes, and fours along the way to the grubby shopping centre, which took up the corner of Elephant and Castle. They shuffled along on a pavement spotted with discarded chewing gum, cigarette ends, orange juice cartons, food wrappers, crushed Coke cans, and half-eaten kebabs. Among themselves, they passed a fag…or more likely a spliff. It was difficult to tell. But they apparently had no worry of being stopped in this part of town, no matter what they did. There were more of them than there were outraged citizens to prevent them from doing whatever they liked, which seemed to be listening to deafening rap music and giving aggro to the kebab maker whose tiny establishment stood between the Charlie Chaplin Pub and El Azteca Mexican Products and Catering. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go: out of school, without the hope of employment, waiting aimlessly for the current of life to carry them wherever it would.

But none of them, Nkata thought, had started out this way. Each of them had once been a slate on which nothing had been written. This made him think of his own good fortune: that combination of humanity and circumstance that had brought him to where he was on this day. And had, he thought, also brought Stoney to where he was…

He wouldn’t think of his brother, beyond his help now. He would think of helping where he could. In memory of Stoney? No. Not for that. Rather, in acknowledgement of deliverance and in blessing of his God-given ability to recognise it when it had come.

THE CANTERBURY HOTEL was one of a series of white Edwardian conversions that curved north along Lexham Gardens from Cromwell Road in South Kensington. Long ago, it had been an elegant house among other elegant houses in a part of town made desirable by the proximity of Kensington Palace. Now, however, the street was only marginally appealing. It was a spot that catered to foreigners with minimal needs and on very tight budgets, as well as to couples looking for an hour or two in which to do sexual business together with no questions asked. The hotels had names relying heavily on the use of Court, Park, or locations of historical significance, all of which suggested opulence but belied the condition of their interiors.