“These came from your stall, I understand,” Barbara said. “Recognise them?”

“I sell something like,” the magician replied. “You can see for yourself. I keep them over with the saucy items.”

“A kid called Davey Benton had these off you, according to his dad when we called at his house. Pinched them, he did. He was meant to bring them back and turn them over to you.”

The dark glasses prevented Barbara from reading any reaction in the magician’s eyes. She was reliant on the tone of his voice, which was perfectly even as he said pleasantly, “Obviously, he dropped the ball on that.”

“Which part?” Barbara asked. “Pinching them or returning them?”

“Since you found them in his things, I expect we can say he dropped the ball on returning them.”

“Yeah. I expect,” Barbara said. “Only I didn’t quite say I’d found them among his things, did I?”

The magician turned his back and coiled the rope from the rope trick into a neat and snakelike mound. Barbara smiled inwardly when he did this. Gotcha, she thought. In her experience, every smooth customer had a rough edge somewhere.

Mr. Magic gave his attention back to her. “The handcuffs may have come from me. You can see I sell them. But I’m hardly the only person in London with saucy items for purchase or for pinching.”

“No. But I expect you’re the closest to Davey’s home, aren’t you?”

“I’d hardly know. Has something happened to this boy?”

“Something’s happened to him, yes,” Barbara said. “He’s pretty much dead.”

“Dead?”

“Dead. But let’s not play echoes. When we went through his things and came up with these and his dad told us where they’d come from because Davey told him…You can see how I ended up wanting to know if they look familiar to you, Mr… What’s your real name? I know it’s not Magic. We’ve met before, by the way.”

He didn’t ask where. His name was Minshall, he said. It was Barry Minshall. And yes, all right, it seemed that the handcuffs had come from his stall if the boy had claimed as much to his dad. But the fact was that kids pinched things, didn’t they. Kids always pinched things. It was part of being kids. They pushed the envelope. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and since all the cops seemed to do round here was give them a talking to if they were caught misbehaving, what did they stand to lose by having a go, eh? Oh, he tried to keep an eye out for that sort of thing, but sometimes he missed a set of sticky fingers adhering to an article like glow-in-the-dark handcuffs. Sometimes, he said, a kid was just too bloody good, a regular Artful Dodger.

Barbara listened to all this, nodding and doing her best to look thoughtful and open-minded. But she could hear the slow building of anxiety in Barry Minshall’s voice, and it acted on her the way the scent of fox acts on a pack of hounds. This bloke was lying through his teeth and out of his nostrils, she thought. He was the sort who saw himself cool as a lettuce leaf, which was just how she liked it since lettuce was always so easy to wilt.

She said, “You’ve got a van somewhere. I saw you unloading it last time I was here. I’d like to have a look at it, if you don’t mind.”

“Why?”

“Let’s call it curiosity.”

“I don’t think I’m obliged to show it to you. Not without a warrant, at least.”

“Right you are. But if we go that route-which, of course, is your right-I’m going to wonder like hell if you’ve got something in that van that you don’t want me finding.”

“I’ll be wanting to ring my solicitor about this.”

“Ring away, Barry. Here. I’ve got a mobile you can use.” She thrust half of her arm into her capacious bag and dug round enthusiastically.

Minshall said, “I have my own. Look. I can’t leave the stall. You’ll need to come back later.”

“No need for you to leave the stall at all, mate,” Barbara said. “Hand over the keys to the van, and I’ll have a browse through it on my own.”

He thought this one over behind his dark glasses and beneath the Dickensian stocking cap. Barbara could imagine the wheels turning furiously in his head as he tried to decide which route to take. Demanding both a solicitor and a search warrant was the sensible and the wise thing to do. But people were seldom either sensible or wise when they had something to hide and the cops turned up unexpectedly asking questions and wanting answers on the spot. That was when people made the foolish decision to bluff their way through a few difficult moments, mistakenly assuming that Inspector Plod had come calling and concluding they were more than a match for him. They thought that if they asked for their solicitor immediately-doing what those American police dramas always called “lawyering up”-they’d be marking themselves forever with a scarlet G for Guilty across their chests. Truth was, they’d be marking themselves with the scarlet I for Intelligent. But they seldom thought that way under pressure, which was what Barbara was depending upon now.

Minshall reached his decision. He said, “This is a waste of your time. Worse, it’s a waste of mine. But if you believe it’s necessary for whatever reason…”

Barbara smiled. “Trust me. I’m one of the lot who serve, protect, and do no ill.”

“Fine. All right. But you’ll have to wait while I close up the stall, and then I’ll take you to the van. It’ll take a few minutes, I’m afraid. I hope you have the time.”

“Mr. Minshall,” Barbara said, “you are one lucky sod. Because time is exactly what I have today.”

WHEN LYNLEY arrived back at New Scotland Yard, he discovered that the media were already gathering, setting up shop in the little park that covered the corner where Victoria Street met Broadway. There, two distinct television crews-recognisable by the logos on their vans and on their equipment-were in the process of constructing what appeared to be a broadcasting point while nearby beneath the dripping trees in the park, several reporters milled about, distinguishable from the crew by their manner of dress.

Lynley observed this with a hollow heart. It was, he knew, too much to hope for that the media were here for any reason other than the killing of a sixth adolescent boy. A sixth killing warranted their immediate attention. It also made them unlikely to go along with how the DPA wanted them to cover the situation.

He negotiated the confusion in the street and pulled into the entrance that would take him down to the carpark. There, however, the officer in the kiosk didn’t employ his usual one finger acknowledgement and lift the barrier for him. Instead, he sauntered out to the Bentley and waited while Lynley lowered the window.

He bent to the interior. “Message for you,” he said. “You’re to go straight to the assistant commissioner’s office. Do not pass go and all the trappings, if you know what I mean. AC made the call personally. Making sure there was no ifs, ands, and buts about it. I’m to phone to tell him you’ve arrived, ’s well. Question is, how much time d’you want? We can make it anything, only he doesn’t want you stopping to talk to your team on the way.”

Lynley muttered, “Christ.” Then after a moment’s thought, “Wait ten minutes.”

“Right you are.” The officer stepped back and admitted Lynley to the carpark. In the subdued light and the silence, Lynley used the ten minutes to close his eyes, remaining in the Bentley with his head pressed against the headrest.

It was never easy, he thought. You believed it might become so eventually if you were exposed to enough of horror and its aftermath. But just at the point where you thought you had mastered insentience, something occurred to remind you that you were still fully human, no matter what you’d previously thought.

That had been the case while standing alongside Max Benton as he’d identified the body of his oldest son. No Polaroid picture would do for him, no viewing from behind a glass partition, a safe distance from which there would always be certain aspects of the boy’s death that he would not have to know or at least not have to see firsthand. Instead he’d insisted upon seeing it all, refusing to say whether it was his missing boy until he’d been a witness to everything that marked the way Davey had gone to his death.