“God damn-”

“But we’ve done some snooping, so we’ve got an idea of their nighttime activities.”

“Which are?”

Stewart gave the nod to his team three officers. So far, very little looked suspicious. After his day at Colossus, Jack Veness evidently went regularly to the Miller and Grindstone, his local in Bermondsey, where he also had a second job behind the bar at the weekends. He drank, smoked, and made the occasional call from a phone box outside-

“That sounds promising,” someone pointed out.

– but that was it. Then he went home or to a take-away curry shop near Bermondsey Square. Griffin Strong, on the other hand, seemed to alternate between his silk-screening business in Quaker Street and his home. He also, however, appeared to have a liking for a Bengali restaurant in Brick Lane, where he went to dine alone occasionally.

As for Kilfoyle and Greenham, team three were gathering information telling them that Kilfoyle spent many of his evenings in the Othello Bar of the London Ryan Hotel, which was at the base of the Gwynne Place Steps. These led up to Granville Square. Otherwise, he was at home in the square.

“Living with whom?” Lynley asked. “Do we know?”

“Deed poll says the property belongs to Victor Kilfoyle. His dad, I reckon.”

“What about Greenham?”

“The only thing he’s done of interest is take Mummy to the Royal Opera House. And he apparently has a lady friend he meets on the side. We know they’ve done cheap Chinese in Lisle Street and a gallery opening in Upper Brook Street. Other than that, he’s at home with Mummy.” Stewart smiled. “In Gunnersbury, by the way.”

“Is anyone surprised by that?” Lynley commented. He glanced at Havers. She was doing her best, he saw, not to crow I was right, and he had to give her marks for that. She’d made the connection between employees at Colossus and the dump sites of bodies from the start.

Nkata joined them then, fresh from a meeting with Hillier. They were set to film Crimewatch, he reported, and he scowled at the good-natured comments about a star being born, which rose when he made this announcement. They’d be using the e-fit of the interloper seen at Square Four Gym, he informed them, which had been developed in concert with the bodybuilder who’d seen their potential suspect. To this, they would add the photographs of all identified victims as well as a dramatic reconstruction of what they now presumed to be Kimmo Thorne’s manner of encountering his killer: a red Ford Transit stopping a bicycle rider with stolen goods in his possession, the van’s driver helping to load the bicycle and the goods into the vehicle.

“We’ve something to add to that as well,” Stewart put in when Nkata was done. He sounded pleased. “CCTV footage. I won’t say we’ve hit gold, but we’ve had a little luck at last with a CCTV camera mounted on one of the buildings near St. George’s Gardens: the image of a van driving down the street.”

“Time and date?”

“Matching up with Kimmo Thorne’s death.”

“Christ in heaven, John, why’s it taken this long to get to it?”

“We had it early on,” Stewart said, “but it wasn’t clear. We needed an enhancement, and that took time. But the wait was worth it. You’d better have a look and give the word on how you want it used. Crimewatch might get some mileage from it.”

“I’ll look at it straightway,” Lynley told him. “What about surveillance at the body sites. Anything?”

Nothing, as it turned out. If their killer was considering a nocturnal visit to the shrine of his criminal accomplishment-as contended in Hamish Robson’s remarks about him-he had not yet done so. Which brought up the profile itself. Barbara Havers said she’d had another look at it, and she wanted to point out part of Robson’s description: the section which claimed the killer probably lived with a dominant parent. They had two suspects so far with parents in the home: Kilfoyle and Greenham. One with Dad, one with Mum. And wasn’t it dodgy that Greenham was taking Mum to the Royal Opera House but the woman friend only got cheap Chinese and a gratis gallery opening? What did that mean?

It was worth looking at, Lynley told her, and he said, “Who’s got the information on who Veness lives with?”

John Stewart responded. “There’s a landlady. Mary Alice Atkins-Ward. A distant relation.”

“Do we tighten up on Kilfoyle and Greenham, then?” a DC asked, pencil at the ready.

“Let me look at the CCTV film first.” Lynley told them to get back to their assigned actions. He himself followed John Stewart to a video recorder. He signaled Nkata to accompany them. He saw Havers glower at this but chose to ignore it.

He had high hopes of the CCTV footage. The e-fit had provided little enough inspiration. To him, it looked like Everyman and No Man. The suspect had worn a cap of some sort-didn’t they all?-and while upon an initial glimpse of it, Barbara Havers had pointed out gleefully that Robbie Kilfoyle wore a EuroDisney cap, that was hardly a damning piece of evidence. For Lynley’s money, the e-fit was on the borderline of worthless, and he reckoned Crimewatch would prove him right on that.

Stewart snatched up the remote for the video recorder and switched on the television. Onto the corner of the screen, the time and date popped up along with a section of mews beyond which the wall of St. George’s Gardens curved. As they watched, the front of a van pulled into the picture at the end of the mews, which appeared to be some thirty yards from the CCTV camera guarding the mews itself. The vehicle stopped, lights out, and a figure emerged. He carried a tool and disappeared round the curve of the wall, presumably to apply his implement to something out of sight of the camera. This would, Lynley thought, be the padlock on the chain that held the gate closed at night.

As they watched, the figure came back into view, too distant and, even on the enhanced film, too grainy to be distinguishable. He climbed into the van and it rolled smoothly forward. Before it disappeared behind the wall, Stewart paused the film. He said, “Have a look at that lovely little picture, Tommy.” He sounded pleased.

As well he might, Lynley thought. For on the film, they’d managed to capture writing on the side of the van. The miracle would have been a complete identification, which was more than they got. But half of a miracle would do. Three partial lines of faded printing were visible:

waf

bile

chen

Below them a number was rendered: 873-61.

“That last looks like part of a phone number,” Nkata said.

“My money says the rest is the name of a business,” Stewart added. “Question is: Do we go with it on Crimewatch?”

“Who’ve you got working on the van right now?” Lynley asked. “What are they doing?”

“Trying to get something on that partial phone number from BT, checking business licences to see if we can find a match for those letters we can see in the name, running things through Swansea another time.”

“That’ll take a century,” Nkata pointed out. “But how many million people see this ’f we put it on the telly?”

Lynley considered the ramifications of running the video on Crimewatch. Millions watched the show, and it had been useful on dozens of occasions in accelerating the speed of an investigation. But there were inherent risks in broadcasting the film countrywide, not the least of which was tipping their hand to the killer. For there was every chance that their man would be watching and would put the van through such a high-powered cleaning and scouring that all evidence of any of their dead boys having been in it would be forever obliterated. And there was the additional chance that their man would dump the van immediately, taking it to one of a hundred places far out of London where it wouldn’t be found for years. Or he might put it in a lockup somewhere with the same result.