“In the best of all worlds.” Lynley finally spied a spindly, black-garbed figure near the baptismal font, who was darting looks in their general direction. “Ah. Over there, Havers. That could be our man.”

He didn’t run off as they approached him, although he cast a nervous glance towards the group at the pulpit and then another towards the people at the bookstall. When Lynley asked politely if he was Mr. Burov, the boy said, “’S Blinker. You the fuzz, then?” out of the side of his mouth like a character in a bad film noir.

Lynley introduced himself and Havers while he gave the boy a quick appraisal. Blinker appeared to be round twenty years old with a face that would have been completely nondescript had not head shaving and body piercing been in vogue. As it was, studs erupted from his face like a visitation of smallpox in silver and when he spoke, which was with some difficulty, it was to reveal half a dozen additional studs lined up along the edge of his tongue. Lynley didn’t want to think about the difficulty they presented the boy in eating. Hearing the difficulty they presented him in speaking was bad enough.

“This might not be the best place to have our conversation,” Lynley noted. “Is there somewhere nearby…”

Blinker agreed to a coffee. They managed to find a suitable café not far from St. Mary Overy Dock, and Blinker slid onto a chair at one of the grubby, Formica-topped tables where he studied the menu, and said, “C’n I get a spag bol, then?”

Lynley eased a malodorous ashtray towards Havers and said to the boy, “Be my guest,” although he shuddered at the thought of personally ingesting any kind of food-not to mention any kind of pasta-served up in a place where one’s shoes adhered to the lino and the menus looked in need of disinfectant.

Blinker apparently took Lynley’s reply as licence for liberality, for when the waitress came for their order he added gammon steak, two eggs, chips, and mushrooms along with a tuna and sweet-corn sandwich to the spaghetti. Havers ordered an orange juice, Lynley a coffee. Blinker grabbed the plastic salt shaker and began rolling it between his palms.

He didn’t want to talk until he’d “had a nosh,” he told them. So they waited in silence for the first of his plates to arrive, Havers taking the opportunity for another smoke, Lynley nursing his coffee and steeling himself to the spectacle of the boy working food past his tongue studs.

He’d apparently had plenty of practice, as things turned out. When the first plate was deposited in front of him, Blinker made quick work of the gammon steak and its companions, with minimum fuss and-blessedly-even less display. When he’d sopped up the remaining egg yolk and gammon grease with a triangle of toast, he said, “Better, that,” and appeared ready to give himself over for conversation and a cigarette, which he cadged from Havers while he waited for the pasta’s arrival on the scene.

He was “that torn up” about Kimmo, he told them. But he’d warned his mate-he’d warned him a hundred million times-about taking it up the chute from blokes he didn’t know. Kimmo always claimed the risk was worth it, though. And he always made them use a spunk bag…even if, admittedly, he didn’t always turn round at the vital moment to make sure it was on.

“I tol’ him it wa’n’t about some bloke infectin’ him, for God’s sake,” Blinker said. “It was about ’xactly what happened to him anyways. I never wanted him out there alone. Never. When Kimmo was on the streets, I was on the streets wif him. Tha’s the way it was s’posed to be.”

“Ah,” Lynley said. “I’m getting the picture. You were Kimmo Thorne’s pimp, then?”

“Hey. It wa’n’t like that.” Blinker sounded affronted.

“So you weren’t his pimp?” Barbara Havers put in. “What would you call it when it was home with its mother?”

“I was his mate,” Blinker said. “I kept watch for any nasty sort of business ’at might be going on, like some bloke wif more on his mind than a bit ’f fun wif Kimmo. We worked together, like a team. It wa’n’t my fault, was it, Kimmo being the one they fancied?”

Lynley wanted to say that Blinker’s appearance might have had something to do with who was being fancied by the punters, but he let the subject go. He said, “The night Kimmo disappeared, he didn’t start out with you, then?”

“I di’n’t even know he was going out, did I. We’d done Leicester Square the night before, see, and we’d found a party wanting some entertainment over in Hollen Street, so we did a bit of business wif them. We had enough dosh off that that we di’n’t need to be out again and Kimmo said his gran wanted him home for a night anyways.”

“Was that normal?” Lynley asked.

“Nah. So I should’ve known summat was up when he said it, but I didn’t cos it was fine wif me not to go out. I had the telly…and other things to do.”

“Such as?” Havers asked. When Blinker didn’t respond, merely looking in the direction of the kitchen for his spaghetti Bolognese to put in an appearance, she said, “What else were you two into besides prostitution, Charlie?”

“Hey. Like I said. We never were into-”

“Let’s not play games,” Havers cut in. “Tart it up any way you want, but the truth is, if you get paid for it, Charlie, it’s not true love. And you did get paid for it, right? Isn’t that what you said? And isn’t that why you didn’t need to be going out another night? Because Kimmo had earned you enough cash for a week probably, providing ‘entertainment’ in Hollen Street. I’m wondering what you did with the lolly, though. Smoke it, shoot it, snort it? What?”

“You know, I don’ have to talk to you lot,” Blinker said hotly. “I could get up right now and be out of that door faster’n-”

“And miss your spaghetti Bolognese?” Havers asked. “Holy hell, not that.”

Lynley said, “Havers,” in the tone he generally used-with limited success-to restrain her. And to Blinker, “Would it have been like Kimmo to go off on his own? Despite your usual arrangement?”

“He did sometimes, yeah. Like I said. I tol’ him not to, but he did it anyways. I said it wa’n’t safe. He wa’n’t a big bloke, was he, an’ if he misjudged who he let do him…” Blinker crushed his cigarette and looked away. His eyes grew watery. “Stupid little bugger,” he muttered.

His spaghetti Bolognese showed up, along with a dispenser of cheese that looked like sawdust deficient in iron. This he sprinkled delicately over the pasta and tucked in, his emotion subdued by his appetite. The café door opened and two workmen entered, jeans whitened by plaster dust and thick-soled shoes crusted with cement. They called out familiar hellos to the cook who was visible by means of a serving hatch, and they chose a table in a corner where they placed their orders for a multicourse meal not unlike the one Blinker himself had requested.

“I tol’ him this would happen if he went it alone,” Blinker said when he had finished wolfing down the pasta and was waiting for his tuna and sweet-corn sandwich. “I tol’ him over an’ over, but he never listened, did he. He said he could tell about blokes, he could. The bad ones, he said, they have this kind of smell ’bout them. Like they been thinking too long what they want to do to you and it makes their skin all oily and cooked up, like. I tol’ him that was rubbish and he had to take me wif him no matter what, but he wasn’t having any of that, was he, so look what happened.”

“So you think this is the work of a punter,” Lynley said. “Kimmo making a bad judgment call when he was alone.”

“What else could it be?”

“Kimmo’s gran said you’ve got him in trouble,” Havers said. “She claims he was flogging stolen property you handed over to him. What d’you know about that?”

Blinker rose in his chair as if he’d been mortally wounded. “I never!” he said. “She’s a bloody liar, she is. Flaming old cow. She di’n’t like me from the first and now she’s tryin to get me under the cosh, i’n’t she. Well, any trouble Kimmo got in di’n’t have nothing to do wif me. You ask round Bermondsey and see who knows Blinker and who knows Kimmo. Tha’s what you do.”