As an enlightened society, surely we must admit that something at some level was wrong with Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker, and equally as an enlightened society, surely we owed those three boys relief in the form of direct intervention long before the crime ever occurred or at the very least therapeutic assistance once they were taken from their homes and held for trial. Can we not say that in failing to provide either intervention or assistance we as a society failed Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker just as surely as we failed to protect young John Dresser from their attack upon him?

It’s a simple matter to declare the boys evil, but even as we do so, we must keep in mind that at the time of the crime’s commission, they were children. And we must ask what purpose is served by putting children on public display for a criminal trial rather than by immediately providing them with the help they need.

Chapter Thirty-One

SHE’D SAID AFTERWARDS, “I’M NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU. IT’S just something that happened.”

He’d replied, “Of course. I understand completely.”

She’d gone on with, “No one can know about this.”

He’d said, “I think that might be the most obvious point.”

She’d said, “Why? Are there others?”

“What?”

“Obvious points. Other than I’m a woman, and you’re a man, and these things sometimes happen.”

Of course there were other points, he’d thought. Aside from raw animal instinct, there was his motivation to consider. There was hers as well. There was also what now, what next, and what do we do when the ground has shifted beneath our feet.

“Regret, I suppose,” he’d told her.

“And do you? Because I don’t. As I said, these things happen. You can’t say they haven’t happened to you, of all people. I won’t believe that.”

He wasn’t quite as she seemed to think him, but he didn’t disagree with her. He swung himself out of her bed, sat on the edge, and considered her question. The answer was yes and it was also no, but he didn’t speak either.

He’d felt her hand on his back. It was cool, and her voice had altered when she said his name. No longer clipped and professional, her voice was…Was it maternal? God, no. She was not in the least a maternal sort of woman.

She’d said, “Thomas, if we’re to be lovers-”

“I can’t just now,” had been his reply. Not that he couldn’t conceive of himself as the lover of Isabelle Ardery, but that he could conceive of it only too well, and that frightened him for all it implied. “I ought to leave,” he said.

“We’ll speak later,” she had responded.

He’d arrived home quite late. He’d slept very little. In the morning he spoke by mobile to Barbara Havers, a conversation he’d have preferred to avoid. As soon as he was able afterwards, he set upon the work of Frazer Chaplin and his alibi.

DragonFly Tonics had its offices in a mews behind Brompton Oratory and Holy Trinity Church. It faced the churchyard, although a wall, a hedge, and a path separated the two. Across the alley from the establishment, he saw that two Vespas were parked. One bright orange and the other fuchsia, each bore transfers with DragonFly Tonics printed upon them, much like those he’d seen on Frazer Chaplin’s motor scooter outside Duke’s Hotel.

Lynley parked the Healey Elliott directly in front of the building. He paused to look at the array of goods that were displayed in its front window. These consisted of bottles of substances with names like Wake-up Peach, Detox Lemon, and Sharpen-up Orange. He inspected these and thought wryly of the one he’d choose had they only manufactured it: Show Some Sense Strawberry came to mind. So did Get a Grip Grapefruit. He could have used two of those, he reckoned.

He went inside. The office was quite spare. Aside from some cardboard boxes with the DragonFly Tonics logo printed on the side, there was only a reception desk with a middle-aged woman sitting behind it. She wore a man’s seersucker suit. At least it looked like a man’s since its jacket hung loosely round her. It was a size that would have fitted Churchill.

She was stuffing brochures into envelopes, and she continued with this as she said, “Help you?” She sounded surprised. It seemed that her day was rarely interrupted by someone wandering in off the street.

Lynley asked her about their method of advertising, and she jumped to the conclusion that he meant to cover the Healey Elliott-visible through the window from within the reception area-with DragonFly Tonics transfers. He shuddered inwardly at the thought of such a desecration. He wanted to demand in outrage, “Are you quite mad, woman?” but instead he maintained an expression of interest. She pulled from her desk a crisp manila folder, from which she slid what appeared to be a contract. She spoke of rates paid for the size and number of transfers applied and the typical mileage expected from the driver of the vehicle. Obviously, she noted, black cabs received the most money, followed quite closely by motorcycle and motor scooter couriers. What sort of driving did he do? she asked Lynley.

This prompted him to correct her notion. He showed her his identification, and he asked her about the records kept of people who had vehicles of one sort or another decorated-and he used that term loosely-with the transfers from DragonFly Tonics. She told him that, of course, there were records because how else were people meant to be paid for swanning round London and regions beyond with advertising plastered to their vehicles?

Lynley was hoping to discover that there was no Frazer Chaplin with a contract to advertise DragonFly Tonics at all. From this, he had decided, it could be assumed that the Vespa Frazer had shown to Lynley outside Duke’s Hotel was not his at all but one produced on a moment’s inspiration and declared to be a Chaplin possession. He gave the receptionist Frazer’s name and asked if she could produce his contract.

Unfortunately, she did just that, and all of it was as Frazer had avowed. The Vespa was his. It was lime green. To it, transfers had been applied. They were, in fact, applied professionally in Shepherd’s Bush since DragonFly Tonics hardly wanted a slapdash job done with them. They were put on to last, not to be easily removed, and when they were removed at the end of the contract, the vehicle would be repainted.

Lynley sighed when he saw this. Unless Frazer had used a different vehicle to get up to Stoke Newington, they were back to any and all CCTV films from the area and the possibility that one of them had recorded his Vespa in the vicinity of the cemetery. They were also back to the door-to-door slog-which was going on anyway per Isabelle’s instructions-and the hope that someone had seen the scooter. Or, he reckoned, they were down to Frazer using someone else’s scooter or motorcycle to get there, because with ninety minutes to do what needed to be done and to get to Duke’s Hotel on time afterwards, he would have had to go to north London by that means. There was simply no other way that he could have managed the traffic.

Lynley was considering all this when his eyes lit upon the date of the contract: one week before Jemima died. This prompted him to dwell on dates in general, which made him realise there was a detail he had overlooked. There was indeed another way the murder of Jemima Hastings could have been managed, he thought.

HE WAS GETTING into his car when Havers rang him. He said, “Lynley,” whereupon the sergeant began babbling-there was no other word for it-about Victoria Street, a cash-point machine, the Home Office, and having a gin and tonic.

He thought at first that was what she’d done-had a gin and tonic or two or three-but then in the midst of her frantic monologue he picked up the word snout and from this he finally was able to decipher that she was asking him to meet someone at a cash-point in Victoria Street, although he still wasn’t sure why he was meant to do this.