With No One As Witness

Now she waited in the interview room for Barry Minshall to give her the word: Yes was all she required of him. Yes and she was out of there. Yes and she was making an arrest.

The door finally opened. She pushed her Prince of Wales mug to one side. James Barty preceded his client into the room.

Minshall wore his dark glasses, but the rest of him was strictly incarceration-issue garb. He needed to get used to it, Barbara thought. Barry would be going away for a good many years.

“Mr. Minshall and I are still waiting to hear from the CPS,” his solicitor said by way of prefatory remarks. “The magistrate’s hearing was-”

“Mr. Minshall and you,” Barbara said, “ought to be thanking your stars we still need him hanging round this end of town. When he gets to remand, he’s likely to find the company not quite as accommodating as it is here.”

“We’ve been cooperative thus far,” Barty said. “But you can’t expect that cooperation to extend into infinity, Constable.”

“I don’t have deals to offer and you know it,” Barbara told him. “TO9 is dealing with Mr. Minshall’s situation. Your hope”-and this to Minshall himself-“is that those boys in the Polaroids we found in your flat enjoyed their experience at your hands so much that they wouldn’t dream of testifying against you or anyone else. But I wouldn’t count on that. And anyway, face it, Bar. Even if those boys don’t want to be put through a trial, you’ve still supplied a thirteen-year-old to a killer and you’re going down for that one. If I were in your position, I’d want it known to the CPS and everyone else concerned that I started cooperating the moment the rozzers asked my name.”

“It’s only your belief that Mr. Minshall supplied a boy to someone who murdered him,” Barty said. “That has never been our position.”

“Right,” Barbara said. “Have it any way you want, but the laundry gets wet no matter what order you put it into the machine.” From her bag she brought out the framed photograph she’d taken from flat number 5 in Walden Lodge. She laid it on the table at which they were sitting, and she slid it across to Minshall.

He lowered his head. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark glasses, but she noted his breathing and it seemed to her he was making an effort to keep it steady. She wanted to believe this meant something important, but she didn’t want to get ahead of herself. She let the moments stretch out between them while inside she repeated two words: Come on. Come on. Come on.

Finally, he shook his head, and she said to him, “Take off your glasses.”

Barty said, “You know that my client’s condition makes it-”

“Shut up. Barry, take off your glasses.”

“My eyesight-”

“Take off your bloody glasses!”

He did so.

“Now look at me.” Barbara waited till she could see his eyes, grey to the point of altogether colourless. She wanted to read the truth in them, but even more than that she wanted just to see them and to have him know that she was seeing them. “At this precise moment, no one’s saying you handed over any boys in order to get them killed.” She felt her throat trying to close on the words, but she forced herself to say them anyway because if the only way to get him to move in her direction was to lie, cheat, and flatter, she would lie and cheat and flatter with the best of them. “You didn’t do that to Davey Benton and you didn’t do that to anyone else. When you left Davey with this…this bloke, you expected the game to be played the way it had always been played. Seduction, sodomy, I don’t know what-”

“They didn’t tell me what-”

“But,” she broke in because the last thing she could bear was to hear him justify, protest, deny, or excuse. She just wanted the truth and she was determined to have it from him before she left the room. “You didn’t mean him to die. To be used, yes. To have some bloke touch him up, rape him even-”

“No! They were never-”

“Barry,” his solicitor said. “You needn’t-”

“Shut up. Barry, you offered those boys for cash to your slimeball mates at MABIL, but the deal was always sex, not murder. Maybe you had the boys yourself first or maybe you just popped your cork by having all those other blokes depending on you to supply them with new flesh. The point is, you didn’t mean anyone to die. But that’s what happened and you’re either going to tell me that the bloke in this picture is the one who called himself two-one-six-oh or I’m going to walk out of this room and let you go down for everything from paedophilia to pandering to murder. That’s it. You’re going down, Barry, and you can’t escape it. It’s up to you how far you want to sink.”

She had her eyes locked on his and his skittered wildly in their sockets. She wanted to ask him how he’d come to be the man he was-what forces in his own past had brought him to this-but it didn’t matter. Abused in childhood. Molested. Raped and sodomised. Whatever had turned him into the malevolent procurer he was, all that was water under the bridge. Boys were dead and a reckoning was called for.

“Look at the picture, Barry,” she said.

He moved his gaze to it another time and he looked at it long and hard. He finally said, “I can’t be sure. This is old, isn’t it? There’s no goatee. Not even a moustache. He’s got…his hair is different.”

“There’s more of it, yes. But look at the rest of him. Look at his eyes.”

He put his glasses back on. He picked up the picture. “Who’s he with?” he asked.

“His mum,” Barbara said.

“Where’d you get the picture?”

“From her flat. Inside Walden Lodge. Just up the hill from where Davey Benton’s body was found. Is this the man, Barry? Is this two-one-six-oh? Is this the bloke you gave Davey to at the Canterbury Hotel?”

Minshall set the photograph down. “I don’t…”

“Barry,” she said, “take a nice, long look.”

He did so. Again. And Barbara switched from Come on to prayer.

He finally spoke. “I think it is,” he said.

She let out her breath. I think it is wouldn’t cut the mustard. I think it is wouldn’t get a conviction. But it was enough to spawn an identity parade, and that was good enough for her.

HIS MOTHER had finally arrived at midnight. She’d taken one look at him and opened her arms. She didn’t ask how Helen was because someone had managed to catch her en route from Cornwall and tell her. He could see that from her face and from the way his brother hung back from greeting him, gnawing on his thumbnail instead. All Peter managed to say was, “We rang Judith straightaway. She’ll be here by noon, Tommy.”

There should have been comfort in this-his family and Helen’s family gathering at the hospital so that he did not have to face this alone-but comfort was inconceivable. As was seeing to any simple biological need, from sleeping to eating. It all seemed u

In the hospital bed, Helen was insignificant in comparison to the machinery round her. They had told him the names, but he recalled only their individual functions: for breathing, to monitor the heart, for hydration, to measure oxygen in the blood, to maintain watch over the foetus. Aside from the whir of these instruments, there was no other sound in the room. And outside the room, the corridor was hushed, as if the hospital itself and every person within it already knew.

He didn’t weep. He didn’t pace. He made no attempt to drive his fist through the wall. So perhaps that was why his mother ultimately insisted he had to go home for a while when the next day dawned and found them all still milling round the hospital corridors. A bath, a shower, a meal, anything, she told him. We’ll stay right here, Tommy. Peter and I and everyone else. You must make an attempt to take care of yourself. Please go home. Someone can go with you if you like.