“It hasn't been cold though.”
“The jacket was for more'n warmth. It was also protection if he accidentally pranged the bike on the road. Wouldn't get so cut up with the jacket on, they explained. So where is it is what they want to know.”
“It wasn't among his things in the flat?”
“Barb went through his clobber, so she can tell you—” Nkata stopped himself abruptly. He had the grace to look abashed.
“Ah.” Lynley said, the syllable rich with meaning.
“She worked the computer half the night afterwards,” Nkata said hastily.
“Did she indeed. And whose idea was it that she accompany you to the Cole boy's flat?”
Havers’ advent saved Nkata from having to reply. She arrived as if on cue, all business with a notebook in her hand. She looked as professionally attired as Lynley had ever seen her.
She didn't flop into the chair in front of his desk as usual. She stood by the open door, her heels pressed against it as if holding her body at a respectful attention. To Lynley's question about the jacket, she responded after a moment in which she seemed to be attempting to read her fellow DCs face as if it were a barometer that would enable her to assess the climate in Lynley's office.
“The kid's gear?” she said carefully when Nkata's earnest nod towards Lynley apparently told her it was at least moderately safe to reveal that she'd once again been derelict in her duties. “Well. Hmmm.”
“We'll deal later with what you were supposed to be doing, Havers,” Lynley told her. “Was a black leather jacket among the boy's clothes?”
She managed to look uncomfortable, Lynley noted. There was a mercy in that. She licked her lips and cleared her throat. Everything was black, she reported. There were sweaters, shirts, T-shirts, and jeans in his clothes cupboard. But a jacket hadn't been among them, not a leather one at least.
“There was a lighter jacket though, a windcheater,” she said. “And a coat. Really long, like something from the Regency period. That was it.” A pause. And then she ventured, “Why?”
Nkata told her.
“Someone must have taken it from the crime scene” was her immediate assessment. To which she added, “Sir,” in Lynley's direction as if the respectful utterance might indicate a newly found reverence for authority.
Lynley thought about what her conjecture implied. Two garments now were missing from the crime scene: a jacket and a waterproof. So were they back to two killers?
“P'rhaps the jacket points the way to the killer,” Havers offered as if reading his mind.
“If our killers worried about forensic evidence, then he should have stripped the body completely. What does taking only the jacket gain him?”
“Coverage?” Nkata said.
“He'd have had the raingear to hide the blood on him.”
“But if he knew he had to stop somewhere after the killing—or if he knew he'd be seen on the route back to his digs—he couldn't exactly have a waterproof on. Why would he be wearing it? It wasn't raining on Tuesday night.” Havers still stood at the doorway. And her questions and statement were careful, as if she'd finally and gratifyingly come to realise just how much a probationary figure she was.
There was sense in her remarks. Lynley acknowledged this with a nod. He went on to the postcards, saying as he used them to gesture with, “Let me hear it all again.”
Havers shot a look at Nkata as if she expected him to take the bit. He read her meaning and said, “I could do a quick A to zed off the top of my head. But I'd miss fifteen letters in between. You take it.”
“Right.” She stayed at the door. “I'd been thinking how any one of that lot”—with a nod to the cards on Lynley's desk—“might have a motive to murder Terry Cole. What if he'd been cheating them? What if he collected their cards, took their hundred pounds each, and never put up the cards at all? Or at least not the number he said.” After all, she pointed out, how did a prostitute really know where—or even if—her cards were tacked up, unless she went out personally to check on them? And even if she walked round central London making stops at every phone box she came to, what was to prevent Terry Cole from claiming that the BT contract cleaners were sweeping the boxes free of cards just as fast as he could distribute them?