He gazed upon them long and hard. They turned for him, one at a time. He asked that three of them step forward-Robson was one of them-and he took a lengthier look at them. Finally he shook his head.

“The middle gentleman resembles him,” he said, and Barbara felt a rush of pleasure since he’d fingered Robson. But the pleasure died when he went on. “But I must say it is only a resemblance based on the shape of his head and the type of body. The robustness of it. The man I sold the van to was older, I think. He was bald. He had no facial hair.”

“Try to think of this bloke here without the goatee,” Barbara said. She didn’t add that Robson could have shaved his thinning hair off before he went out to Hayes to purchase a van.

Masoud tried to do as she asked. But his conclusion remained unchanged. He could not say for certain that the man he was looking at was the same man who’d purchased a van from him in the summer. He was terribly sorry about that, Constable. He sincerely wished to be of help.

Barbara took this news back to New Scotland Yard. She kept her report to Stewart brief. It was yes on Minshall and no on Masoud, she told the DI. They needed to find that sodding van.

Stewart shook his head. He was going over someone’s report-red pencil in hand like a frustrated schoolteacher-and he tossed it down on his desk before he said, “That whole line’s a nonstarter, as things turn out.”

“Why?” Barbara asked.

“Robson’s telling the truth.”

She gawped at him. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean copycat, Constable. C-o-p-y and c-a-t. He killed the kid and arranged it to look like one of the other murders.”

She said, “What the hell?,” and shoved her hand through her hair in sheer frustration. “I just spent four bloody hours putting this bloke into identity parades. D’you mind telling me why you had me waste my time like that if you knew…” She couldn’t even finish.

The DI said with his usual finesse, “Christ, Havers. Don’t get your knickers caught in the crack, all right? No one’s keeping secrets from you. St. James only just rang us with the details. He’d told Tommy it was likely, nothing else. Then the attack on Helen happened, and Tommy never passed the information on to us.”

“What information?”

“The dissimilarities revealed by the postmortem exam.”

“But we always knew there were dissimilarities: the manual strangulation, the lack of a stun gun, the rape. Robson himself pointed out that things escalate when-”

“The boy hadn’t eaten in hours, Constable, and there was no trace of ambergris oil on him.”

“That could be explained-”

“Every other boy had eaten within an hour of his death. Every other boy had consumed the identical thing. Beef. Some bread. Robson didn’t know that and he didn’t know about the ambergris oil. What he did to Davey Benton was based on what he knew of the crime, which was superficial: what he saw in the preliminary report and in the photographs of the scene. That’s it.”

“Are you saying Minshall had nothing to do…Robson had nothing…?”

“They’re responsible for what happened to Davey Benton. End of story.”

Barbara sank heavily into a chair. Round her, the incident room was muted. Obviously, everyone knew about the dead end they’d all just run headlong into. “Where does that leave us?” she asked.

“Back to alibis, background checks, prior arrests. Back, I daresay, to Elephant and Castle.”

“We’ve damn well done-”

“So we do it again. Plus every other man whose name has come up in the course of the investigation. They’re all going under the microscope. Make yourself part of that.”

She looked round the room. “Where’s Winnie?” she asked.

“Belgravia,” Stewart said. “He’s having a closer look at the CCTV tapes they got off Cadogan Lane.”

No one said why, but no one had to. Nkata was looking at the CCTV tapes because Nkata was black and a mixed-race boy was featured on them. God, but they were so obvious, Barbara thought. Have a look at these snaps of the shooter, Winnie. You know how it is. All of them look the same to us and, besides, if this is gang related…You get the picture, don’t you?

She picked up a phone and punched in the numbers of Nkata’s mobile. When he answered, she heard voices babbling in the background.

“Masoud said Robson’s not our bloke,” she told him. “But I expect you’re up to speed on that.”

“No one knew till St. James phoned Stewart, Barb. This was…Must’ve been round eleven this morning? Wasn’t personal.”

“You know me too well.”

“Not like I don’t go through the same dance.”

“How’re you doing? What d’they expect you to be able to tell them?”

“From looking at the tapes? I don’t think they know. They’re trying everything at this end. I’m just another source.”

“And?”

“Sweet FA. Kid’s mixed race. Mostly white, some black, and something else. Don’t know what. Th’other bloke in the picture? He could be anyone. He knew what he was doing. Kept himself covered, face away from the camera.”

“Well, that was one excellent use of your time, wasn’t it?”

“I can’t blame them, Barb. Doing what they can. They got a decent lead, though. Not five minutes before you rang. Came through by phone.”

“What is it? Where’d it come from?”

“Over West Kilburn. Harrow Road station’s got a snout in the community they depend on reg’larly, some black bloke with a big street rep and a nasty disposition, so no one messes with him. ’Cording to Harrow Road, this bloke saw the pictures in the paper from the CCTV, and he phoned them up and gave them a name. Could be nothing, but Harrow Road seem to think it’s worth looking into. Could be, they say, we got the shooter we’re looking for.”

“Who is it?”

“Didn’t get the name. Harrow Road are picking him up for questions. But if he’s the one, he’s going to crack. No doubt about it. He’s going to talk.”

“Why? How can they be so sure?”

“’Cause he’s twelve years old. And this i’n’t the first time he’s been in trouble.”

ST. JAMES GAVE Lynley the news. They met not in the corridor this time but rather in the small room that the family had been occupying for what seemed to Lynley like months on end. Helen’s parents had been talked into decamping, going in the company of Cybil and Daphne to a flat they owned in Onslow Square, where Helen herself had once lived. Penelope had returned to Cambridge to check on her husband and her three children. His own family were taking a few hours for rest and for a change of scene in Eaton Terrace. His mother had phoned when they’d arrived, saying, “Tommy, what shall we do with the flowers?” Scores of bouquets on the front porch, she said, a coverlet of them that descended the steps and went onto the pavement. He had no suggestions to give her. Offerings of sympathy could not touch him, he found.

Only Iris remained, stalwart Iris, the least Clydelike of all the Clyde sisters. Not a hint of elegance anywhere about her, her long hair no-nonsense and pulled back from her face with slides in the shape of horseshoes. She wore no makeup, and her skin was lined from the sun.

She’d wept when she’d first seen her youngest sister. She’d said fiercely, “This is not supposed to happen here, God damn it,” and he’d understood from that that she meant violence and death brought about by a gun. The provenance of this was America, not England. What was happening to the England she’d known?

She’d been gone too long, he wanted to tell her. The England she’d known had been dead for decades.

She’d sat with Helen for hours before she spoke again, and then it was to say to him quietly, “She’s not here, is she?”

“No. She’s not here,” Lynley agreed. For the spirit of Helen was gone entirely, now moved onward to the next part of existence-whatever that was. What remained was just the housing for that spirit, kept from putrescence by the questionable miracle of modern medicine.