years back when they first started, he'd done the same to Maurice Fletcher and to Jackie Hoon when they started up.
"So there was no truth to Kimmo's goods being stolen?" Havers asked, looking up from her notebook. "Because, when you think of it, how else would a kid like Kimmo be coming across valuable pieces of silver for sale?"
They had assumed he was selling off family pieces, Elaine Grabinski said. They did ask him and that's what he told them: He was helping out his gran by offering the family silver to the public.
To Lynley it looked like a case of the Grabinskis believing what they had wanted to believe because they liked the boy, rather than a case of Kimmo being a sophisticated liar who pulled the wool over the eyes of an elderly couple. They had to have known at some level that he wasn't the legitimate article, but at that same level, they had to have not cared.
"We told the police we'd speak up for the boy if it came to court," Ray Grabinski asserted. "But once they carted poor Kimmo off, we didn't hear 'nother word about him. Till we saw the News of the World, that is."
"An' you ask Reg Lewis 'bout that, you lot," Elaine Grabinski said, returning to the epergne with renewed vigour. She added ominously, "What I wouldn't put past him fits in a teaspoon," and her husband said, "Now, pet," and patted her shoulder.
Reg Lewis turned out to be only slightly less antique than his wares. He wore bright tartan braces beneath his jacket and they held up a pair of ancient plus fours. His spectacles were as thick as the bottom of whisky tumblers. Overlarge hearing aids protruded from his ears. He fit the profile of their serial killer as well as a sheep fit the profile of a genius.
He "weren't s'prised none" when the cops had come calling for Kimmo, he told them. Something was off with the bugger first time Reg Lewis laid eyes on the creature. Dressed half man, half woman he did, with them tights of his or whatever they were, and those poncey ankle boots and the like. So when the cops showed up with a list of stolen property in their mitts, he-Reg Lewis, mind you-was not gobsmacked that they found what they were looking for in the possession of one Kimmo Thorne. Carted him off then and there, they did, and good riddance it was. Besmirching the reputation of the market, he was, flogging pinched silver. And not any pinched silver, mind you, but pinched silver that he'd been too thick to notice had personal and immediately identifiable engraving upon it.
What happened to Kimmo after that, Reg Lewis didn't know and didn't much care. The only good thing the little nancy boy did at the end of the day was not drag the Grabinskis down with him. And weren't those two blind as bats in the daylight? Anyone with sense would've known that boy was up to no good when he first showed his mug in the market. Reg warned the Grabinskis off him, he did, but would they listen to someone with their best interests at heart? Not bloody likely. Yet who turned out to be right at the end of the day, eh? And who never heard a word of you-were-right-Reg-and-we-apologise-for-our-nastiness from anyone, eh?
Reg Lewis had nothing more to add. Kimmo had vanished that day with the coppers. Perhaps he'd done a stretch in borstal. Perhaps he'd had the fear of God put into him at the police station. All Reg knew was that the boy hadn't brought any more stolen silver to sell in Bermondsey Market, which was fine by Reg. Cops over in Borough High Street could fill anyone in on the rest, couldn't they.
Reg Lewis said everything but "good riddance to bad rubbish," and if he'd read about or heard about Kimmo Thorne's murder, he made no mention of the fact. But it was clear that the boy had done nothing to enhance the reputation of the market in Reg's eyes. More than that, as he had pointed out, they would have to suss out from the local police.
They were on their way to do so-wending their way through the market, back to Lynley's car-when his mobile rang.
The message was terse, its meaning unmistakable: He was wanted immediately on Shand Street, where a tunnel beneath the railway took the narrow little thoroughfare to Crucifix Lane. They had another