Kilburn had proved reliable. He'd named a kid who resembled the one seen on the CCTV films from Cadogan Lane, and the cops had found him in very short order. He hadn't even been on the run. The job on Helen Lynley done, he'd merely repaired to his home, via underground to Westbourne Park because his mug had been visible on their CCTV tapes as well, sans companion this time. Nothing could have been easier. All that remained was matching his fingerprints to those on the gun found in the garden near the scene of the crime.
John Stewart had told Nkata to take it. Nkata had asked Barbara to accompany him. By the time they got there, it was ten o'clock at night. They could have waited till morning-they'd been working fourteen hours at that point and they were both knackered-but neither one of them was willing to wait. There was a chance that Stewart would hand this job over to someone else, and they didn't want that.
Sergeant Starr turned out to be a black man, slightly shorter than Nkata but bulkier. He had the look of a pleasant-faced pugilist.
He said, "We've already had this yob in for street brawling and arson. Those times, he's pointed the finger elsewhere. You know the sort. It wasn't me, you fucking pigs." He glanced at Barbara as if to ask pardon for his language. She waved a weary hand at him. He went on. "But the family's got a whole history of trouble. Dad got shot and killed in a drug dispute in the street. Mum toasted her brain with something, and she's been out of the picture for a while. Sister tried to pull off a mugging and ended up in front of the magistrate. The aunt they live with hasn't been willing to hear shit about the kids being on the fast track to trouble, though. She's got a shop down the road that she works in full-time and a younger boyfriend keeping her busy in the bedroom, so she can't afford to see what's going on under her nose, if you know what I mean. It was always just a matter of time. We tried to tell her first time we had the kid in here, but she wasn't having it. Same old story."
"He talked before, you said?" Barbara asked. "What about now?"
"We're getting sod all out of him."
"Nothing?" Nkata said.
"Not a word. He'd probably not've told us his name if we hadn't already known it."
"What is it?"
"Joel Campbell."
"How old?"
"Twelve."
"Scared?"
"Oh yeah. I'd say he knows he's going away for this. But he also knows about Venables and Thompson. Who bloody doesn't? So six years playing with bricks, finger-painting, and talking to shrinks and he's finished with the criminal-justice system."
There was some truth in this. It was the moral and ethical dilemma of the times: what to do with juvenile murderers. Twelve-year-old murderers. And younger.
"We'd like to talk to him."
"For what good it'll do. We're waiting for the social worker to show."
"Has the aunt been here?"
"Come and gone. She wants him out of here directly or she'll know the reason why. He's going nowhere. Between her position and ours, there wasn't a hell of a lot to discuss."
"Solicitor?"
"I expect the aunt's working on that angle now."
He gestured for them to follow him. On their way to the interview room, they were met by a worn-out looking woman in a sweatshirt, jeans, and trainers, who turned out to be the social worker. She was called Fabia Bender, and she told Sergeant Starr that the boy was asking for something to eat.
"Did he ask or did you offer?" Starr inquired. Which meant, of course, had he opened his mouth to say something at last?
"He asked," she replied. "More or less. He said, 'Hungry.' I'd like to fetch him a sandwich."
"I'll organise it," he said. "These two want a word. You see to that."
Arrangements made, Starr left Nkata and Barbara with Fabia Bender, who didn't have much more to add to what the detective had already told them. The boy's mother, she said, was in a mental hospital in Buckinghamshire, where she'd been a repeat patient for years. During this most recent round of institutionalisation, her children had been living with their grandmother. When the old lady decamped for Jamaica with a boyfriend who was being deported, the children got passed off to the aunt. Really, it was no surprise that kids found their way into trouble when their circumstances were so unsettled.