With No One As Witness Page 0,10

walls. There was nothing that suggested a struggle had taken place in the vicinity. There was also, in the entire stack of pictures from that crime scene, no photograph of the sort of evidence one expected to find where a murder occurs.

"No. He didn't die there. Nor did this one." Hillier picked up another batch of photographs. In it, the body of another slender boy was draped across the bonnet of a car, positioned as neatly as the first in Gunnersbury Park. "This one was found in an NCP car park at the top of Queensway. Just over five weeks later."

"What's the murder squad over there saying? Anything from CCTV?"

"The car park doesn't have closed-circuit cameras." Lynley answered Barbara's question. "There's a sign posted that there 'may' be cameras on the premises. But that's it. That's supposed to do the job of security."

"This one was in Quaker Street," Hillier went on, indicating a third set of photos. "An abandoned warehouse not far from Brick Lane. November twenty-fifth. And this-" he picked up the final batch and handed them over to Barbara-"is the latest. He was found in St. George's Gardens. Today."

Barbara glanced at the final set of pictures. In them, the body of an adolescent boy lay naked on the top of a lichen-covered tomb. The tomb itself sat on a lawn not far from a serpentine path. Beyond this, a brick wall fenced off not a cemetery-as one would expect from the tomb's presence-but a garden. Beyond the wall appeared to be a mews of garages and a block of flats behind them.

"St. George's Gardens?" Barbara asked. "Where is this place?"

"Not far from Russell Square."

"Who found the body?"

"The warden who opens the park every day. Our killer got access from the gates on Handel Street. They were chained up properly, but bolt cutters did the trick. He opened up, drove a vehicle inside, made his deposit on the tomb, and took off. Stopped to wrap the chain back round the gate so anyone passing wouldn't notice."

"Tyre prints in the garden?"

"Two decent ones. Casts are being made."

"Witnesses?" Barbara indicated the flats that lined the garden just beyond the mews.

"We've constables from the Theobald's Road station doing the door-to-door."

Barbara pulled all of the photographs towards her and laid the four victims in a row. She immediately took note of the differences-all of them major ones-between the final dead boy and the first three. All of them were young teenagers who'd died in an identical fashion, but unlike the first three boys, the latest victim was not only naked but also had a copious amount of makeup on: lipstick, eye shadow, liner, and mascara smeared across his face. Additionally, the killer had marked his body by slicing it open from sternum to waist and by drawing with blood an odd circular symbol on his forehead. The most potentially explosive political detail, however, had to do with race: Only the final victim was white. Of the earlier three, one was black and the two others were clearly mixed race: black and Asian, perhaps, black and Filipino, black and a blend of God only knew what.

Seeing this last feature, Barbara understood: why there had been no front-page newspaper coverage, why no television, and worst of all, why no whispers round New Scotland Yard. She raised her head. "Institutionalised racism. That's what they're going to claim, isn't it? No one across London-in any of the stations involved, right?-even twigged there's a serial killer at work. No one got round to comparing notes. This kid-" here she raised the photograph of the black youth-"might've been reported missing in Peckham. Maybe in Kilburn. Or Lewisham. Or anywhere. But his body wasn't dumped where he lived and disappeared from, was it, so the rozzers on his home patch called him a runaway, left it at that, and never matched him up to a murder that got reported in another station's patch. Is that what happened?"

"You can see the need for both delicacy and immediate action," Hillier said.

"Cheap murders, hardly worth investigating, all because of their race. That's what they're going to call the first three when the story gets out. The tabloids, television and radio news, the whole flaming lot."

"We intend to get the jump on what they call anything. If the truth be told, the tabloids, the broadsheets, the radio, and the television news-had they been attuned to what's going on and not intent on pursuing scandals among celebrities, the government, and the bloody royal family-might have

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