The smaller one had not had the same foresight. His image, while not crisp, was still clear enough for Ulrike to be able to say with certainty-and no small measure of relief-that she didn’t know him. There was nothing about him that was recognisable to her, and she knew she would have been able to name him had they been acquainted because he had masses of unforgettably crinkly hair and enormous splotches-like monstrous, unrestrained freckles-on his face. He looked to be round thirteen years old, perhaps younger. And he was a mixed-race boy, she decided. White, black, and something in between.

She handed the picture back to Jansen. “I don’t know him,” she said. “The boy. Either one of them, although I can’t say for sure because of how the taller one is hidden. He saw the CCTV camera, I expect. Where was it?”

“There were three,” Jansen told her. “Two on a house, one across the street from it. This is from one of the cameras on the house.”

“Why’re you looking…?”

“A woman was gunned down on her doorstep. It may be down to these two.”

That was all he told her, but Ulrike made the leap. She’d seen the newspapers. The wife of the Scotland Yard superintendent, who’d come to Colossus to speak to Ulrike about the deaths of Kimmo Thorne and Jared Salvatore, had been shot on her doorstep in Belgravia. The hue and cry over this had been deafening, broadsheets and tabloids especially. The crime had been inconceivable to the inhabitants of that part of town, and they’d been making their feelings known in every venue they could find.

“He isn’t one of ours, this boy,” Ulrike replied to DI Jansen. “I’ve never seen him before.”

“Are you sure about the other?”

He had to be joking, Ulrike thought. No one would be able to recognise the taller man. If it even was a man. Still, she took another look at the picture. “I am sorry,” she said. “There’s just no way-”

“We’d like to show this round the place, if you don’t mind,” Jansen told her.

Ulrike didn’t like what this implied-that she was somehow out of the loop at Colossus-but she had no choice. Before the officers left to flash the photo round, she asked them about the superintendent’s wife. How was she?

Jansen shook his head. “Bad,” he said.

“I’m sorry. Will you-” She nodded at the photo. “Do you expect to catch him?”

Jansen looked down at it, a slim slip of paper in his large chafed hands. “The kid? That’ll be no problem,” he replied. “This is in the Evening Standard’s latest right now. It’ll make the front of every paper tomorrow morning and it’ll be on the news tonight and again tomorrow. We’ll get him, and I expect it’ll happen soon. And when we get him, he’ll talk and then we’ll have the other. Absolutely no bloody doubt about it.”

“I’m…That’s good,” she said. “Poor woman.”

And she did mean that. No one-no matter how rich, how privileged, how titled, how fortunate, or how anything else-deserved to be gunned down in the street. But even as she told herself this and assured herself that the milk of human kindness and compassion had not utterly drained out of her when it came to the upper class of this rigid society in which she lived, Ulrike still felt relieved that Colossus could not be attached to this new crime.

Only now, here were Mr. Bensley and Mrs. Richie and they were sitting with her in her office-another chair having been procured from the reception area-intent upon talking about the one subject she had done everything in her power to keep from them.

Bensley was the one to introduce it. He said, “Tell us about the dead boys, Ulrike.”

She could hardly act the innocent with a “What boys would this be?” sort of reply. There was nothing for it but to tell them that five boys from Colossus had been murdered from September onward, their bodies left in various parts of London.

“Why weren’t we informed?” Bensley asked. “Why did this information have to come to us from someone else?”

“From Neil, you mean.” Ulrike could not keep herself from saying it. She was caught between the desire to let them know she was perfectly aware of her Judas’s identity and the equal need to defend herself. She went on with, “I didn’t know myself till after Kimmo Thorne was murdered. He was the fourth victim. The police came round then.”

“But otherwise…?” Bensley did one of those tie-adjustment moves, of the kind meant to illustrate an incredulity that might otherwise strangle him. Mrs. Richie accompanied this with a click of her teeth. “How is it you didn’t know the other boys were dead?”

“Or even missing,” Mrs. Richie added.

“We’re not organised to keep attendance tabs on the clients,” Ulrike told them, as if they hadn’t had this explained to them a thousand times or more. “Once a boy or girl gets beyond the assessment course, they’re free to come and go as they like. They can participate in what we have to offer or they can drop out. We want them to stay because they want to be here. Only those who’re here as a probationary measure are monitored.” And even then, Colossus didn’t tattle on the kids straightaway. There was a certain amount of leeway given even to them, once they had completed the assessment course.

“That,” Bensley said, “is what we expected you to say.”

Or were told to expect, Ulrike thought. Neil had done his best: She’ll make excuses, but the fact remains: the director of Colossus damn well ought to know what’s going on with the kids Colossus is meant to be helping, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, how much work are we talking about: to look in on the courses and ask the instructors who’s there and who’s fallen by the wayside? And wouldn’t it be wise for the director of Colossus to place a phone call and try to locate a child who’s dropped out of a programme designed-and funded, let’s not forget that-to prevent him from dropping out in the first place? Oh, he’d done his very best, had Neil. Ulrike had to give him high marks for that.

She found she had no ready response to Bensley’s comment, so she waited to see what the board president and his companion had really come to see her about, which she reckoned was only tangentially related to the death of the Colossus boys.

“Perhaps,” Bensley said, “you were too distracted to know that boys had gone missing.”

“I’ve been no more distracted than usual,” Ulrike told him, “what with the plans for the North London branch and the associated fund-raising going on.” On your instruction, by the way, was what she did not add, but she did her best to imply it.

Bensley, however, didn’t make the inference she wished him to make. He said, “That’s not exactly how we understand it. There’s been another distraction for you, hasn’t there?”

“As I said, Mr. Bensley, there’s no easy way to approach this work. I’ve tried to keep my focus spread evenly on all the concerns a director would have in running a place like Colossus. If I missed the fact that several boys stopped coming, it was due to the number of concerns that I had to deal with related to the organisation. Frankly, I feel terrible that none of us”-with delicate emphasis on the word none-“managed to see that-”

“Let me be frank,” Bensley interrupted. Mrs. Richie settled herself in her chair, a movement of the hips spelling out Now we’ve got to the point.

“Yes?” Ulrike folded her hands.

“You’re under review, for want of a better word. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ulrike, because overall your work for Colossus has seemed unimpeachable.”

“Seemed,” Ulrike said.

“Yes. Seemed.”

“Are you sacking me?”

“I didn’t say that. But consider yourself under scrutiny. We’ll be conducting…Shall we call it an internal investigation?”

“For want of a better word?”

“If you will.”

“And how do you intend to carry out this internal investigation?”

“Through review. Through interviews. Let me say that I believe you’ve largely done a fine job here at Colossus. Let me also say, personally, that I hope you emerge unscathed from this look at your employment and personal history here.”