understood quickly that their school trousers were as good as ruined, their reaction to Mr. Gupta's attack upon them was not as fierce as Ian's reportedly was. "He wanted to get that Paki," Reggie Arnold declared when questioned by the police. "He went mental. He wanted to rubbish the kiosk, but I stopped him, I did," an assertion unsupported by any facts that followed.
It's likely, however, that Ian was in pain and, lacking any socially acceptable response to pain (it appears unlikely that the boys sought out a public lavatory in which to wash the bleach from Ian's face), Ian reacted by blaming both Reggie and Michael for his situation.
Perhaps as a means of deflecting Ian's anger and avoiding a thrashing, Reggie pointed out Jones-Carver Pets and Supplies, in the window of which three Persian kittens played on a carpet-covered set of platforms. Reggie becomes vague at this point, when asked by the police what attracted him to the kittens, but he later accuses Ian of suggesting they steal one of the animals "for a bit of fun." Ian denied this during his questioning, but Michael Spargo has the other boy saying that they could cut off the cat's tail or "nail it to a board like Jesus" and "he thought that'd be wicked, that's what he said." Naturally, it's difficult to know who was suggesting what at this point, for as the boys' stories take them closer and closer to John Dresser, they become less and less forthright.
What is known is this: The kittens in question were not readily available to anyone, being locked inside the window-display cage because of their value. But standing in front of the cage was Tenille Cooper, four years old, who was watching the kittens as her mother made a purchase of dog food some six yards away. Both Reggie and Michael - interviewed independently and in the presence of a parent and a social worker - agree that Ian Barker grabbed little Tenille by the hand and announced, "This is better than a cat, innit," with the clear intention of walking off with her. In this he was thwarted by the child's mother, Adrienne, who stopped the boys and, in some outrage, began to question them, to demand why they weren't at school, and to threaten them with not only the security guard but also with the truant officer and the police. She was, of course, crucial in identifying them later, managing to pick photographs of all three of them from sixty pictures that were presented to her at the police station.
It must be said that had Adrienne Cooper gone for the security guard at once, John Dresser might never have come to the attention of the boys. But her failure - if it can even be called a failure, because how, indeed, was she even to imagine the horrors to follow - is minor compared to the failure of those individuals who later saw a progressively more and more distressed John Dresser in the company of the three boys and yet made no move either to alert the police or to take him from them.
Chapter Two
"YOU'RE UP TO SPEED ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO DI Lynley, I take it?"
Hillier asked, and Isabelle Ardery considered the man as well as the question before she replied.
They were in his office at New Scotland Yard, where banks of windows looked out on the rooftops of Westminster and some of the costliest real estate in the country. Sir David Hillier was standing behind his oceanic desk, looking crisp and clean and remarkably fit for a man his age.
He had to be somewhere in his middle sixties, she decided.
At his insistence, she herself was seated, which she thought quite clever of him. He wanted her to feel his dominance on the chance that she might think herself his superior. This would be physically, of course. She was unlikely to conclude that she had some other sort of ascendancy over the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. She was taller than he by a full three inches - even more if she wore higher heels - however, there her advantage ended.
She said, "You're referring to Inspector Lynley's wife? Yes. I know what happened to her. I daresay everyone in the force knows what happened. How is he? Where is he?"
"Still in Cornwall, as far as I know. But the team want him back, and you're going to feel it. Havers, Nkata, Hale ...All of them. Even John Stewart.