“How old was this man?” Lynley asked.

“I don’t know. Middle-aged? He must have been because he wasn’t in very good shape. He looked like someone who doesn’t take exercise.”

“Like someone who might easily get out of breath?”

“Possibly. But look, he didn’t have on a disguise. All right, I admit that some blokes wear them at first when they show up at MABIL-the wig, the beard, the turban, whatever-but by the time they’re ready…We’ve built trust between us. And no one does this without trust. Because for all they know, I could be a cop undercover. I could be anyone.”

“And so could they,” Havers said. “But you never thought about that one, did you, Bar? You just handed Davey Benton to a serial killer, waved good-bye, and drove off with the money in your pocket.” She turned to Lynley. “I’d say we have enough, wouldn’t you, sir?”

Lynley couldn’t disagree. For now, they had enough from Minshall. They’d want a list of the calls he’d received on his mobile, they’d want to get over to the Canterbury Hotel, and they’d want to arrange for another e-fit to see if the one from Square Four Gym matched whatever image Minshall came up with of his client. From his description of two-one-six-oh, though, the points of comparison seemed to be not with the e-fit they already had from the gym, but rather with the description they’d been given earlier by Muwaffaq Masoud of the man who’d come to purchase his van. There hadn’t been a moustache and a goatee, to be sure. But the age was right, the lack of physical fitness was right, and the bald head Masoud saw could easily have been hidden by the peaked cap Minshall was familiar with.

For the first time, Lynley considered an altogether new idea.

“Havers,” he said to the constable when they were out of the interview room again, “there’s another way to go with this. It’s one that we’ve not looked at yet.”

“Which is?” she asked, stowing her notebook in her bag.

“Two men,” he said. “One procures and the other kills. One procures to give the other the opportunity to kill. The dominant and the submissive partners.”

She thought about this. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said. “A twist on Fred and Rosemary, on Hindley and Brady.”

“More than that,” Lynley said.

“How?”

“It explains why we’ve got someone buying that van in Middlesex while someone else waits for him in a ‘minicab’ just outside Muwaffaq Masoud’s house.”

WHEN LYNLEY arrived home, it was quite late. He’d stopped in Victoria Street for a word with TO9 about MABIL, and he’d given the child-protection-team officers what information he had about the organisation. He told them about St. Lucy’s Church, near Gloucester Road underground station, and he asked what the possibilities were of closing the group down.

The news he received in return was grim. A meeting of like-minded people to discuss their like-mindedness did not constitute a breach of the law. Was there something else going on besides talk in the basement of St. Lucy’s Church? If not, Vice had too few officers and too many other ongoing illicit activities with which they had to contend.

“But these are paedophiles,” Lynley countered in frustration upon hearing this assessment from his colleague.

“May be,” was the reply. “But the CPS aren’t going to drag anyone into court based on his conversation, Tommy.” Still, TO9 would send someone undercover to a meeting of MABIL when their burdens were lighter round the Yard. Barring a complaint or hard evidence of criminal activities, that was the best TO9 could do.

So Lynley was feeling gloomy when he drove into Eaton Terrace. He parked in the garage in the mews and trudged down the cobblestone alley and round the corner to his home. The day had left him with the distinct sensation of being unclean: from his skin right through to his spirit.

Inside the house, the ground floor was mostly dark, with a dim light shining at the foot of the stairway. He climbed up and went to their bedroom to see if his wife had gone to bed. But the bed was undisturbed, so he went on, first to the library and ultimately to the nursery. There he found her. She’d bought a rocking chair for the room, he saw, and she was sitting in it, asleep, with an oddly shaped pillow in her lap. He recognised it from one of their many trips to Mothercare in the past few months. It was meant to be used when nursing a baby. The infant rested on it beneath the mother’s breast.

Helen stirred as he crossed the room to her. She said, as if they’d only just been speaking moments before, “So I decided to practise. Well, I suppose it’s more like seeing what it will feel like. Not the actual feeding, but just having him here. It’s odd when you think about it, I mean when you actually stretch the thought out.”

“What is?” The rocking chair was beneath the window, and he leaned against the sill. He watched her fondly.

“That we have actually created a little human being. Our own Jasper Felix, happily floating round inside me, waiting for his introduction to the world.”

Lynley shuddered at the latter part of her thought: introducing their son to a world that often seemed filled with violence and was indeed a place of great uncertainty.

Helen must have seen this because she said, “What is it?”

“Bad day,” he told her.

She extended her hand to him and he took it. Her skin was cool, and he could smell the scent of citrus upon her. She said, “I had a phone call from a man called Mitchell Corsico, Tommy. He said he was from The Source.”

“God,” Lynley groaned. “I’m sorry. He is from The Source.” He explained how he was attempting to thwart Hillier’s plan by keeping Corsico occupied with the minutiae of his own personal life. “Dee should have warned you he might be in touch. I didn’t think he’d be quite that fast. She was intent upon giving him an earful to keep him away from the incident room.”

“Ah.” Helen stretched and yawned. “Well, I did assume there was something going on when he called me Countess. He’d spoken to my father as well, as things turn out. I’ve no idea how he tracked him down.”

“What did he want to know?”

She began to get to her feet. Lynley helped her rise. She set the pillow into the baby’s cot and put a stuffed elephant on top of it. “Daughter of an earl, married to an earl. Obviously, he loathed me. I tried to amuse him with my astounding mindlessness and my sad, fading It-girl proclivities, but he didn’t seem as charmed as I would have liked. Lots of questions about why a blue blood-this is you, darling-would become a cop. I told him I hadn’t the slightest idea as I’d much prefer it if you were available to lunch with me daily in Knightsbridge. He asked to come and visit me here at home, a photographer in tow. I drew the line at that. I hope that was the right thing to do.”

“It was.”

“I’m glad. Of course, it was hard to resist the idea of posing artfully on the drawing-room sofa for The Source, but I managed it.” She slipped her arm round his waist and they headed for the door. “What else?” she asked him.

“Hmmm?” He kissed the top of her head.

“Your bad day.”

“God. It’s nothing I want to talk about now.”

“Have you had dinner?”

“No appetite,” he said. “All I want is to collapse. Preferably on something soft and relatively pliant.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “I know just what you need.” She took his hand and led him towards the bedroom.

He said, “Helen, I couldn’t manage it tonight. I’m done for, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”

She laughed. “I never thought I’d hear that from you, but fear not. I have something else in mind.” She told him to sit on the bed, and she went to the bathroom. He heard the snick of a match. He saw its flare. A moment later, water began to run in the tub, and she returned to him. “Do nothing,” she said. “Avoid thinking, if you can. Just be,” and she began to undress him.