Barbara muttered, “Bloody hell.” And to Lynley, “‘I’m about to wet myself’ is probably not part of his English lessons.”

Behind the man, his room was dark. In the light from the corridor, they could see that his bed was rumpled. He’d definitely been sleeping, but he’d also been prepared by someone at some point to keep his answers minimal at all times, admitting to nothing. Barbara was about to suggest to Lynley that forcing the bloke to hold his bladder for a good twenty minutes might go some distance towards loosening his tongue when a diminutive man in a dinner suit came trundling towards them from round the corner.

This had to be Mr. Tatlises, Barbara thought. His look of determined good cheer was spurious enough to act as his identification. He said in a heavy Turkish accent, “My nephew, his English wants repair. I am Mr. Tatlises and I’m happy to help you. Ibrahim, I will handle this.” He shooed the boy into his room again and he closed the door himself. “Now,” he said expansively, “you need something, yes? But not a room. No no. I’ve been told that already.” He laughed and looked from Barbara to Lynley with a we-boys-know-where-we-want-to-plant-it expression that made Barbara want to invite the little worm to take a bite of her fist. Like someone would want to have a shag with you? she wanted to ask him. Puhh-leez.

“We understand that this boy was brought here by a man called Barry Minshall.” Lynley showed Tatlises the relevant photos. “He left in the company of another man who, we believe, resembles this individual. Havers?” Barbara showed Tatlises the e-fits. “Your confirmation of this is what we require at this point.”

“And after that?” Tatlises inquired. He’d given a scant glance to the photos and the drawings.

“You’re not really in a position to wonder what happens after that,” Lynley told him.

“Then I do not see how-”

“Listen, Jack-o-mate,” Barbara broke in. “I expect your handmaiden of the boots downstairs put you in the picture that we’re not here from your local station: two rozzers looking round their new patch for a nice bit of dosh from the likes of you, if that’s how you keep this operation going. This’s just a bit bigger than that, so if you know something about what’s been going on in this rubbish tip, I suggest you unplug it and give us the facts, okay? We’ve got it from this individual”-she stabbed her finger onto Barry Minshall’s mug shot-“that one of his mates from a group called MABIL met a thirteen-year-old boy right in this hotel on the eighth. Minshall claims it’s a regular arrangement, since someone from here-and let me guess it’s you-belongs to MABIL as well. How’s this all sounding to you for a lark?”

“MABIL?” Tatlises said, with some fluttering of eyelashes to approximate confusion. “This is someone…?”

“I expect you know what MABIL is,” Lynley said. “I also expect that if we asked you to join an identity parade, Mr. Minshall would have no trouble picking you out as the fellow member of MABIL who works here. We can avoid all that, and you can confirm his story, identify the boy, and tell us whether the man he left with looks like either one of these two sketches, or we can prolong the entire affair and haul you over to Earl’s Court Road police station for a while.”

“If he left with him,” Barbara added.

“I know nothing,” Tatlises insisted. He rapped on the door of room 41. His nephew opened it so quickly that it was obvious he’d been standing directly behind it listening to every word. Tatlises began speaking to him rapidly in their language. His voice was loud. He pulled the boy over by his pyjama jacket, and he snatched the sketches and the pictures, forcing the young man to study them.

It was a nice performance, Barbara thought. He actually meant them to believe that his nephew, and not himself, was the paedophile here. She glanced at Lynley, seeking permission. He nodded. She stepped up to business.

“Listen to me, you little wanker,” she said to Tatlises, grabbing his arm. “If you think we’re going to jump on the wagon you’re driving, you’re even stupider than you look. Leave him bloody alone and tell him to answer our questions and you can answer them as well. Got it? Or do I need to help you with your understanding?” She released him, but not before she ended her question with a twist of his arm.

Tatlises cursed her in his language, or so she assumed he was doing from the passion of his words and the expression on his nephew’s face. He said finally, “I will report you for this,” to both of them, to which Barbara answered, “I’m wetting my knickers in terror. Now translate this for your ‘nephew’ or whatever the hell he really is. This kid…Was he here?”

Tatlises rubbed his arm where Barbara had manhandled it. She expected him to start shouting something meaningful, like “Unconscionable brutality!,” so assiduous were his ministrations to his limb. He finally said, “I do not work nights.”

“Brilliant. He does, though. Tell him to answer.”

Tatlises nodded at his “nephew.” The younger man looked at the picture and nodded in turn.

“Fine. Now let’s get on to the rest, okay? Did you see him leave the hotel?”

The nephew nodded. “He leaves with the other. I see this. Not the albin one, how you named him?”

“Not with the albino man, the man with yellowish hair and white skin.”

“The other, yes.”

“And you saw this? Them? Together? The boy walking? Talking? Alive?”

The last word set them both off in a babble of their own language. Finally, the nephew began to keen. He cried, “I did not! I did not!,” and a damp spot appeared in the crotch of his pyjama bottoms. “He leaves with the other. I see this. I see this.”

“What’s going on?” Lynley demanded of Tatlises. “Have you accused him-”

“Worthless! Worthless!” Tatlises broke in, smacking his nephew round the head. “What evil are you using this hotel for? Did you not think you would be caught?”

The boy sheltered his head and cried, “I did not!”

Lynley pulled the men apart, and Barbara planted herself between them. She said, “Get this straight and tattoo it on your eyeballs, both of you. This bloke brought the boy to the hotel, and this bloke left with him. Point the finger at each other and everyone in between, but there’s not a rat in this place not going down for pimping, pandering, paedophilia, and anything else that we can make stick to you. So I suggest you might want ‘cooperative as the dickens’ to be what gets written in red across your paperwork.”

She saw she’d got through. Tatlises backed off from his nephew. His nephew shrank back into his room. Both of them were reborn before their eyes. Tatlises might have had a dodgy arrangement with his MABIL friends about the use of the Canterbury Hotel, and he might have also collected a trunkful of lolly from allowing its rooms to be used for underage homosexual trysts, but it did seem he drew the line at murder.

He said, “This boy…” and took up the picture of Davey Benton.

“That’s right,” Barbara said.

“We’re fairly certain he left here alive,” Lynley told the man. “But he might have been killed in one of your rooms.”

“No, no!” Nephew’s English was improving miraculously. “Not with the albino. With the other man. I see this.” And he turned to his putative uncle and spoke at some length in their mutual tongue.

Tatlises translated. The boy in the picture had come with the albino and they had gone up to room 39, which had been booked earlier and checked in to by another man. The boy left with that man some hours later. Two, perhaps. No more than that. No, he had not appeared ill, drunk, drugged, or anything else for that matter, although Ibrahim Selçuk had not studied the boy, to tell the truth. He’d had no reason to. It was not the first time a boy had come with the albino man and left with another man.