Lynley waved him back into place. He went round to stand behind him, where he could see a column of postcards that had been arranged on his leather blotter. The cards ran along one edge of this, samples of the lot that—according to Nkata—had been taken from Terry Cole's flat.
Lynley saw that punishment was offered on some of the cards; domination was promised on others; still others suggested that one's ultimate fantasies could be fulfilled. Mention was made of bubble baths, massages, video services, torture chambers. Some cards offered the use of animals; a few noted that costumes could be provided. Many had photographs depicting such delights as were on offer from the Transsexual Black She-Male or The Ultimate Domina or a Hot Stunning Thai Girl In short, there was something for every taste, inclination, and perversion. And since the cards looked too fresh from the printer to have spent any time Blu Tacked to the walls of a phone box prior to being collected by a sweaty-palmed teenager with masturbation in mind, the only conclusion to be reached from the presence of several thousand of such cards beneath his bed was that Terry Cole had not been a collector but, rather, a distributor—a part of the great machine that peddled sex in London.
This, at least, explained the cash that Cilia Thompson claimed the boy had carried. Card boys who worked quickly enough putting up cards in phone boxes all round central London could earn a substantial living because the going rate was one hundred pounds for every five hundred cards the boy managed to place. And the service of a card boy was absolutely essential: Agents of British Telecom removed the cards daily, so they always had to be replaced.
Two of these cards had been isolated from the column on Lynley's blotter and lay in the centre of his desk. One displayed the photo of a putative schoolgirl; one bore only print. Lynley picked them up and examined them—feeling heart-sore—as Nkata continued his call.
SHHH was printed across the top of the first. And below the photograph ran the words Don't Tell Mummy What's On After School! The picture itself showed a rucksack with books tumbling out of it and bending from the waist to gather them up was a girl, her bum pointing towards the camera. She wasn't one's average schoolgirl: Her pleated skirt was hiked up to display black thong knickers and thigh-high black stockings with lace round the top. She was looking coyly over her shoulder at the camera, blonde hair tousled and tumbling round her face. Beneath her stiletto-heeled shoes was a telephone number with a hand-scrawled ring me! next to it.
“Christ,” Lynley whispered. And when Nkata ended his phone call, he said as if an explanation in the light of day would negate the one he'd heard via phone from the constable in the dead of night, “Take me through it the entire situation beginning to end another time, Winnie.”
“Let me fetch Barb. The brainwork was hers.”
“Havers?” Lynley's tone stopped the other man from picking up the phone. “Winston, I told her I wanted her on the computer. You assured me that's what she was doing. Why's she involved in this end of the investigation?”
Nkata showed his palms, empty and innocent. He said, “She's not involved. I'd the box of cards in your motor when I came back here last evening from Battersea. I called in to see how she was doing on CRIS. She asked to take the cards along with her when she went home. To have a look through them. The rest … She can tell you how it played out.”
Nkata's face wore the guileless expression of a child at the knees of Father Christmas, declaring that there was more to the story than had been revealed. Lynley sighed. “Fetch her, then.”
Nkata reached for the phone. He punched in a few numbers and while waiting for the connection, said solemnly, “She's working CRIS right now. Been there since six this morning.”
“I'll kill the fatted calf,” Lynley replied.
Nkata, not given to biblical exegesis or allusion, said, “Right,” uncertainly. And then into the phone, “Guv's here, Barb.” That was the extent of it.
While they waited for Havers, Lynley examined the second postcard. He didn't want to think of the anguish that lay ahead for the parents of the murdered girl, however, so he gave his attention back to Nkata. “Anything else this morning, Winnie?”
“I'd a page from the Coles. Missus and the sister. That was the sister I was talking to just now.”
“And?”
“The boy's jacket's missing.”
“Jacket?”
“Right. A black leather jacket. He always wore it when he rode the big bike. When you gave Mrs. Cole that list of the kids effects—those receipts, remember?—the jacket wasn't on it. They think someone pinched it at the station in Buxton.”
Lynley recalled the photographs of the crime scene. He thought about the evidence that he'd looked through in Buxton. Then he said, “Are they certain about the jacket?”
“Generally wore it, they claimed. And he wouldn't've ridden all the way north in a T-shirt, which's all the covering it looked like he had … from the receipts, that is. He wouldn't've ever ridden on the motorway in only a T-shirt, they said.”