“While he’s in that condition, the killer has time to immobilise him,” Lynley added.

“And if he starts to come round…?” Havers said.

“The killer uses the gun on him again. By the time he’s back to normal, he’s gagged and restrained, and the killer can do what he wants with him.” Lynley handed the pictures back to St. James. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what’s happening.”

“Except…” Havers handed her own photograph back to St. James although she spoke to Lynley. “These are streetwise kids. You’d think they’d notice someone about to shove a gun in their ribs, wouldn’t you?”

“As to that, Barbara…” St. James dug out a few sheets of paper from an in basket on the top of a filing cabinet. He handed over to Lynley what first appeared to be an advertisement. On closer inspection, however, Lynley saw that the document had come from the Internet. On a site called PersonalSecurity.com, stun guns were offered for sale. But these were stun guns of an entirely different order from the pistol-shaped weapon one might associate with the name. Indeed, these didn’t appear to be guns at all, which was probably the point of owning one of them. Some of them were manufactured to look like mobile phones. Others looked like torches. All of them worked identically, however: The user had to make physical contact with the victim in order for the electrical charge to pass from the gun into the victim’s body.

Havers gave a quiet whistle. “I’m impressed,” she said. “And I reckon we can suss out how these things get into the country in the first place.”

“No difficult feat to smuggle them into the UK,” St. James agreed, “not looking like that.”

“And from there on to the black market,” Lynley said. “Well done, Simon. Thank you. Progress. I feel moderately encouraged.”

“We can’t give this to Hillier, though,” Havers pointed out. “He’ll put it on Crimewatch. Or hand it over to the press before you could say ‘Kiss my arse.’ Not,” she added hastily, “that you’d say that, sir.”

“Not,” Lynley said, “that I wouldn’t want to. Although I tend to like something a little more subtle.”

“Then we may have a difficulty with our plan.” Helen spoke from the table where she and Deborah had been flipping through their magazines. She held up one of them and Lynley saw that it featured clothing for infants and children. She said, “I have to say it’s not subtle at all. Deborah’s suggested a solution, Tommy. To the christening situation.”

“Ah. That.”

“Yes. Ah that. Shall we tell you, then? Or shall I wait till later? You could consider it a break from the grim realities of the case, if you’d like.”

“By switching to the grim realities of our families, you mean?” Lynley asked. “Now that’s diverting.”

“Don’t tease,” Helen said. “Frankly, I’d christen our Jasper Felix in a dishcloth if I had my way. But since I don’t-certainly not with two hundred and fifty years of Lynley history bearing down on me-I’ve wanted to come up with a compromise that will please everyone.”

“Hardly likely to happen with your sister Iris marshalling the rest of the girls to her side in favour of Clyde family history,” Lynley said.

“Well, yes of course, Iris is rather daunting when she sets her mind to something, isn’t she? Which is what Deborah and I were discussing when Deborah made the most obvious suggestion in the world.”

“Dare I ask?” Lynley looked at Deborah.

“New clothes,” she said.

“But not just new,” Helen added. “And not the usual gown, blanket, shawl, and whatever. The point is to get something that announces itself as a new tradition being established. By you and me. So naturally, that’s going to take a bit more effort. No simple dash through Peter Jones.”

“That’ll be a crushing blow to you, darling,” Lynley said.

“He’s being sarcastic,” Helen told the rest of them. And then to Lynley, “You do see it’s the answer, don’t you? Something new, something different, something that we can pass along-or at least claim we’re going to pass along-to our children so that they can use it as well. And you know it’s out there: what we’re looking for. Deborah’s actually volunteered to help me find it.”

“Thank you,” Lynley said to Deborah.

“D’you like the idea?” she asked him.

“I like anything with the promise of peace,” he said. “Even if it’s only momentary. Now if we can only resolve-”

His mobile chirped. As he reached for it in the breast pocket of his coat, Havers’ mobile went off as well.

The rest of them watched as the information was passed from New Scotland Yard to Lynley and Havers simultaneously. It wasn’t good news.

Queen’s Wood. In North London.

Someone had found yet another body.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HELEN WENT DOWN TO THE CAR WITH THEM. SHE stopped Lynley, saying only, “Tommy darling, please listen to me,” before he got inside. She cast a look towards Havers, who was already buckling herself into the passenger seat, and then said quietly to Lynley, “You’ll solve it, Tommy. Please don’t be so hard on yourself.”

He let out a breath. How well she knew him. He said just as quietly, “How can I be otherwise? Another one, Helen.”

“You must remember: You’re only one man.”

“I’m not. I’m more than thirty men and women, and we’ve done bloody sod all to stop him. He’s one man.”

“That’s not true.”

“Which part?”

“You know which part. You’re doing this the only way possible.”

“While boys-young boys, Helen, children barely into their teens-are dying out here in the street. No matter what they’ve done, no matter what their crimes, if they’ve even committed any, they don’t deserve this. I feel as if we’re all asleep at the wheel without knowing it.”

“I know,” she said.

Lynley could see the love and concern on his wife’s face. He was momentarily comforted by it. Still, as he got into the car, he said bitterly, “Please God don’t think so well of me, Helen.”

“I can’t think anything else. Go carefully please.” And then to Havers, “Barbara, will you see that he has a meal sometime today? You know him. He’s likely not to eat.”

Havers nodded. “I’ll find him a decent fry-up somewhere. Lots of grease. That’ll set him up proper.”

Helen smiled. She touched Lynley’s cheek and then stepped away from the car. Lynley could see her through the rearview mirror, still standing in place as they drove away.

They made fairly good time by using Park Lane and the Edgware Road, heading northwest initially. They skirted Regent’s Park on its north side, shooting towards Kentish Town. They were approaching Queen’s Wood from Highgate station when the day’s promised rain finally began to fall. Lynley cursed. Rain and a crime scene: a recipe for forensic nightmares.

Queen’s Wood was an anomaly in London: a bona fide woodland that had once been a park like any other park but had long ago been left to grow, thrive, or fail as it might. The result was acres of unbridled nature in the middle of urban sprawl. Houses and the occasional block of flats backed onto it, but within ten feet of the fences and walls of their back gardens, the woods burst out of the earth in an eruption of beech trees, bracken, shrubs, and ferns, all struggling with each other to survive just as they would in the countryside.

There were no lawns. No park benches. No duck ponds. No swans floating serenely on a lake or river. There were, instead, ill-marked paths, overfull rubbish bins sprouting everything from take-away containers to nappies, the odd signpost pointing vaguely to a route to Highgate station, and a hillside down which the woodland dropped towards a bank of allotments to the west.

The easiest access to Queen’s Wood lay beyond Muswell Hill Road. There, Wood Lane veered to the northeast, bisecting the southern portion of the park. The local police made a strong presence at the scene, having blocked off the end of the street with sawhorses where four police constables kitted out in rain gear held back the curious who were bobbing round beneath their umbrellas like a collection of mobile mushrooms.