Each of the houses had been given a sandwich-size plot of earth in front of its door that the more optimistic inhabitants were treating as their gardens. In front of number 30, the patch of earth in question was a rough triangle of dying grass, and a child’s bike lay on its side upon it, next to a green plastic garden chair. Near this a tattered shuttlecock looked as if a dog had been chewing on it. The accompanying racquets leaned against the wall by the front door, most of their strings broken.

When Lynley rang the bell, a man in miniature opened the door. He was not even eye to eye with Havers, top heavy with the look of someone who weight trained to compensate for his lack of height. He was red eyed and unshaven, and he glanced from them to the tarmac beyond them as if expecting someone else.

He said, “Cops,” like the answer to a question no one had asked.

“That’s who we are.” Lynley introduced himself and Havers and waited for the man-they knew only that his name was Benton-to ask them in. Beyond him, Lynley could see the doorway to a darkened sitting room and the shapes of people seated inside. A child’s querulous voice asked why couldn’t they open the curtains, why couldn’t he play, and a woman shushed him.

Benton said harshly over his shoulder in that direction, “You mind what I told you.” Then he gave his attention back to Lynley. “Where’s the uniform?”

Lynley said they weren’t part of the uniformed patrol but rather they worked in a different department and were from New Scotland Yard. “May we come in?” he asked. “It’s your son that’s gone missing?”

“Didn’t come home last night.” Benton’s lips were dry and flaky. He licked them.

He stepped back from the door and led them into the sitting room, at the end of a corridor of no more than fifteen feet. In the semidarkness there, five people were arrayed on chairs, the sofa, a footstool, and the floor. Two young boys, two adolescent girls, and a woman. She was Bev Benton, she said. Her husband was Max. And these were four of their children. Sherry and Brenda the girls, Rory and Stevie the boys. Their Davey was the one gone missing.

All of them, Lynley noted, were uncommonly small. To one degree or another, all of them also resembled the body in Queen’s Wood.

The boys were meant to be at school, Bev told them; the girls were meant to be at work in the food stalls at Camden Lock Market. Max and Bev themselves were meant to be serving the public from their fish van in Chapel Street. But no one was going anywhere from this house till they had word about Davey.

“Something’s happened to him,” Max Benton said. “They would’ve sent regular coppers otherwise. We’re none of us so thick ’s we don’t know that much. What is it, then?”

“It might be best for us to speak without the children here,” Lynley said.

Bev Benton keened two words, “Oh God.”

Max barked at her, “We’ll have none of that,” and then said to Lynley, “They stay. If it’s an object lesson they’re about to have, then I by God want them having it.”

“Mr. Benton-”

“There’ll be no Mr. Benton about it,” Benton said. “Give us the brief.”

Lynley wasn’t about to go at it that way. He said, “Have you a photograph of your son?”

Bev Benton spoke. “Sherry, pet, fetch Davey’s school picture from the fridge for the officer.”

One of the two girls-blonde like the body in the woods, and identically fair skinned, delicate featured, and small boned-left them quickly and just as quickly returned. She handed over the picture to Lynley, her eyes cast down to his shoes, and then returned to the footstool, which she shared with her sister. Lynley dropped his gaze to the picture. A cheeky-looking boy grinned up at him, his fair hair darkened by the gel that formed it into little spikes. He had a sprinkling of freckles across his nose and headphones slung round his neck, above his school-uniform pullover.

“Slipped them on at the last minute, he did,” Bev Benton commented, as if in explanation of the headphones, which were hardly part of his regulation school attire. “Likes his music, Davey. Rap music. Mostly those blacks from America with the p’culiar names.”

The boy in the photo resembled the body they had, but only an identification made by one of the parents could confirm this. Still, no matter what sort of lesson Max Benton wanted the rest of his children to have, Lynley had no intention of offering it to them. He said, “When was the last time you saw Davey?”

“Yesterday morning.” Max was the one to answer. “He got off to school like always.”

“Didn’t come home when he was due, though,” Bev Benton said. “He was meant to mind Rory and Stevie here.”

“I went to tae kwon do to see was he there,” Max added. “Last time he bunked off doing something he was meant to do, that’s where he claimed he went instead.”

“Claimed?” Barbara Havers asked. She’d remained in the doorway, and she was writing in her new spiral notebook.

“He was meant to come to our fish stall in Chapel Market one day,” Bev explained. “To help his dad. When he didn’t come, he said he’d gone to tae kwon do and lost the time. There’s a bloke he’s had some trouble with-”

“Andy Crickleworth,” Max put in. “Little sod’s trying to sort Davey out and set himself up as head of the crew Davey runs with.”

“Not a gang,” Bev added hastily. “Just boys. They been mates for ages.”

“But this Crickleworth’s new. When Davey said he wanted to see the tae kwon do, I thought…” Max had been standing, but now he went to the sofa to join his wife. He dropped down onto it and scrubbed his hands across his face. The smaller children reacted to this evidence of their dad’s upset by huddling together at the knees of one of their sisters, who put her hands on their shoulders as if to comfort them. Max brought himself under control, saying, “Tae kwon do people? They never heard of Davey. Never seen him. Didn’t know him. So I phoned the school to see had he been going truant without them telling us, only he hadn’t, see. Today’s the only day he didn’t show up. All term.”

“Has he been in trouble with the police before?” Havers asked. “Ever face the magistrates? Ever been assigned to a young people’s group for straightening him out?”

“Our Davey doesn’t need straightening out,” Bev Benton said. “He never even misses school. And he’s that good in his classes, he is.”

“Doesn’t like anyone to know that, Mum,” Sherry murmured, as if believing her mother had betrayed a confidence in her final remark.

Max added to this. “He was meant to be tough. Tough louts don’t care much for school.”

“So Davey acted the part,” Bev explained. “But he wasn’t like that.”

“And he’s never been in trouble with the police? Never had a social worker?”

“Why d’you keep asking that? Max…” Bev turned to her husband as if for explanation.

Lynley intervened. “Have you phoned his friends? The boys you mentioned?”

“No one’s seen him,” Bev replied.

“And this other boy? This Andy Crickleworth?”

No one in the family had met him. No one in the family even knew where to find him.

“Any chance Davey might’ve made him up?” Havers asked, looking up from her notebook. “Covering for something else he was up to?”

There was a little silence at this. Either no one knew or no one wanted to answer. Lynley waited, curious, and saw Bev Benton glance at her husband. She seemed reluctant to say anything else. Lynley let the silence continue till Max Benton broke it.

“Bullies di’n’t ever go after him, did they. They knew our Davey’d sort them if they picked a fight. He was small and…” Benton seemed to realise he’d slipped into the past tense and he stopped himself, looking shaken. His daughter Sherry supplied the conclusion to his thought.

“Pretty,” she said. “Our Davey’s dead pretty.”

They all were that, Lynley thought: pretty and small, very nearly doll-like. The boys especially would have to do something to compensate for that. Like fight back furiously if someone tried to harm them. Like end up getting bruised and banged about before they were throttled, sliced, and discarded in the woods.