years, and for that reason we may have fallen derelict in our duty to apprehend him by a more advanced means, which could in turn have saved him. And for this, I personally"-he touched his chest-"do feel responsible."
"His mate-a bloke called Blinker...one Charlie Burov-says they worked it as a pair across the river. Out of Leicester Square and not round here. Kimmo did the deed while Blinker kept watch."
"That explains some of it," Gill noted.
"Some?"
"Well, you see, he was not a stupid boy. We'd had him in for warnings. We tried to tell him time and again that it was only luck that was keeping him out of trouble, but he would not hear us."
"Kids," Barbara said. She was trying to be delicate with her croissant, but it was defying her attempts at social nicety, dissolving into delicious flakes that she restrained herself from licking from her fingers, not to mention from the table. "What're you going to do about them, anyway? They think they're immortal. Didn't you?"
"At that age?" Gill shook his head. "I was far too hungry then to think immortality was in store for me, Constable." He'd finished his breakfast and folded his paper napkin neatly. He placed his plate to one side and brought his cup of tea closer. "For Kimmo, it was more than a sense that he could not be hurt, that he could not fall into danger by making the wrong choice. He had to believe himself an astute judge of whom to go with and whom to refuse because he had plans, and soliciting was a means to make them happen. He could not-and would not-give it up."
"What sort of plans?"
Gill looked momentarily embarrassed, as if against his will he were about to confide an offensive secret to a lady. "Actually, he wished to have a sexual change. He was saving for that. He told us the first time we had him into the station."
"A bloke over in the market said you lot finally sent him down for selling stolen goods," Barbara said. "But what I don't get is why Kimmo Thorne? There's got to be dozens over there flogging lumber they've nicked."
"This is true," Gill said. "But as you and I well know, we do not have the manpower to sort through every stall in every market in London to ascertain which products are legitimately on offer and which are not. In this particular case, however, Kimmo was selling items that-without his knowledge-had all been engraved with infinitesimal serial numbers. And the last thing he expected was to find the owners of the items seeking them out Friday after Friday in the market. When they found him with their belongings for sale, they rang us up directly. I was called out and..." He raised his fingers. The gesture said, The rest is history.
"You'd never twigged before that that he was breaking and entering?"
"He was rather like a canine in that," Gill said. "He did not foul his own den. When he wished to break the law, he did so in another station's jurisdiction. He was clever that way."
Thus, Gill explained, Kimmo's arrest for selling stolen property went down as his first offence. Because of that, when he went in front of the magistrate, he was put on probation. This too the DS deeply regretted. Had Kimmo Thorne been taken seriously, had he been given more than a slap on the hand and a probation officer in Youth Offenders to report to, he might have changed his ways and still been walking the streets today. But alas, that had not happened. Instead, he'd been sent to an organisation for youth at risk and they'd tried to work with him.
Barbara's ears pricked up. Organisation? she asked. What? Where?
It was a charity called Colossus, Gill told her. "A fine project, right here, south of the river," he said. "They offer young people alternatives to street life, crime, and drugs. With recreational programmes, community activities, life-skills classes...And not just for youth at risk with the law, but for the homeless, for truants, for those in care...I admit to having relaxed my own vigilance on Kimmo's behalf when I knew he had been assigned to Colossus. Surely, I thought, someone there would take him under a protective wing."
"As a mentor?" Barbara asked. "Is that what they do?"
"That's what he needed," Gill said. "Someone to take an interest in him. Someone to assist him towards seeing he had a degree of value that he did not quite