“Important piece of knowledge, that,” Barbara said. “Very useful in gang warfare, Hadiyyah.”

“You’re in a gang?” Hadiyyah asked as Nkata resumed his full height. She looked up at him, her expression awed.

“Was,” he said. “Tha’s where this came from.” And to Barbara, “Ready? Want me to wait in the car?”

Barbara wondered why he asked the question and what he thought his immediate absence was meant to accomplish: a fond farewell between herself and her neighbour? What a ludicrous idea. She considered the reasons Winston might be thinking that and she took note of Azhar’s expression, which spoke of a level of discomfort that she couldn’t remember having ever seen in him.

She sifted through various possibilities suggested by three plastic containers of leftover dinner, Hadiyyah’s Urdu lesson, a canal trip, and Winston Nkata’s appearance at her cottage, and she came up with something too stupid to consider in the light of day. She quickly rejected it, then went on to realise she’d referred to Winston as her date, and that, in combination with her packing a bag, must have made Azhar-as proper as a Regency gentleman-think she was heading off for a few days in the country with her tall, nice-looking, well-built, athletic, and likely delicious-in-all-the-right-ways lover. The very thought made her want to guffaw. Herself, Winston Nkata, candlelit dinners, wine, roses, romance, and a few nights of bouncy-bounce in a hotel heavily hung with wisteria…She snorted and covered the snort with a cough.

She made a quick introduction between the two men, casually adding, “DS Nkata. We’ve got a case in Hampshire,” once she’d said Winston’s full name. She turned to the daybed before Azhar responded, hearing Hadiyyah say, “You’re a policeman as well? Like Barbara, you mean?”

“Just like,” Nkata said.

Barbara heaved her holdall to her shoulder as Hadiyyah said to her father, “C’n he come on the canal boat as well, Dad?”

To which Azhar replied, “Barbara herself said they’re going to Hampshire, khushi.”

They left the cottage, all of them together. They set off towards the front of the house. Barbara and Winston were behind the others but Barbara still heard Hadiyyah say, “I forgot. About Hampshire, I mean. But if they weren’t? What if they weren’t, Dad? Could he come as well?”

Barbara couldn’t hear Azhar’s reply.

LYNLEY DROVE THEM once again in Isabelle’s car. And once again, the arrangement seemed fine with him. He didn’t attempt to hold the door open for her another time-he hadn’t done so since she’d corrected him about this-and again he gave the driving his complete attention. She’d lost the plot on where in London they were just after Clerkenwell, so when her mobile phone rang as they were coursing by a nameless park, she took the call.

“Sandra wants to know do you want a visit.” It was Bob, speaking without preamble as usual. Isabelle cursed herself for not having examined the number of the incoming call although, knowing Bob, he likely would be ringing her from a phone she couldn’t identify anyway. He’d like to do that. Stealth was his main weapon.

She said, with a glance at Lynley, who wasn’t paying attention to her anyway, “What d’you have in mind?”

“Sunday lunch. You could come out to Kent. The boys will be happy to-”

“With them, d’you mean? Alone? In a hotel restaurant or something?”

“Obviously not,” he said. “I was going to say that the boys will be happy to have you join us. Sandra’ll do a joint of beef. Ginny and Kate actually have a birthday party to go to on Sunday so-”

“So it would be the five of us, then?”

“Well, yes. I can hardly ask Sandra to leave her own house, can I, Isabelle?”

“A hotel would be better. A restaurant. A pub. The boys could-”

“Not going to happen. Sunday lunch with us is the best offer I’ll make.”

She said nothing. She watched what went for London scenery as they passed it: rubbish on the pavements; bleak storefronts with grimy plastic signs naming each establishment; women dressed in black bedsheets with slits for their eyes; sad-looking displays of fruit and veg outside greengrocers; video rental shops; William Hill betting lounges…Where the hell were they?

“Isabelle? Are you there?” Bob asked. “Have I lost you? Is the connection-”

Yes, she thought. That’s exactly it. The connection’s broken. She closed her phone. When it rang again a moment later, she let it do so till her voice mail picked it up. Sunday lunch, she thought. She could picture it: Bob presiding over the joint of beef, Sandra simpering somewhere nearby-although truth to tell, Sandra didn’t simper and she was a more than decent sort, for which Isabelle was actually grateful, all things considered-the twins scrubbed and shiny and perhaps just a little perplexed at this modern definition of family that they were experiencing with Mummy, Dad, and stepmum gathered round the dining table as if it happened every day of the week. Roast beef, Yorkshire pud, and sprouts being handed round and everyone waiting for everyone else to be served and grace to be said by whoever said it, because Isabelle didn’t know and didn’t want to know and damn well did know that there was no way in bloody hell she was going to put herself through Sunday lunch at her former husband’s house, because he didn’t mean well, he was out to punish her or to blackmail her further and she couldn’t face that or face her boys.

You don’t want to threaten me. You don’t want to take this to court, Isabelle.

She said abruptly to Lynley, “Where in God’s name are we, Thomas? How long did it take you to be able to find your way round this bloody place?”

A glance only. He was too well bred to mention the phone call.

He said, “You’ll sort it out faster than you think. Just avoid the Underground.”

“I’m a member of the hoi polloi, Thomas.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said easily. “I meant that the Underground-the map of the Underground, actually-bears no relation to the actual layout of the city. It’s printed as it is to make it understandable. It shows things north, south, east, or west of each other when that might not necessarily be the case. So take the bus instead. Walk. Drive. It’s not as impossible as it seems. You’ll sort it out quickly enough.”

She doubted that. It wasn’t that one area looked exactly like the next. On the contrary, one area was generally quite distinct from the next. The difficulty was in sussing out how they related each to the other: why a landscape of dignified Georgian buildings should suddenly morph into an area of tenements. It simply made no sense.

When they came upon Stoke Newington, she was unprepared. There it was before her, recognisable by a flower shop that she remembered from her earlier journey, housed in a building with WALKER BROS. FOUNT PEN SPECIALISTS painted onto the bricks between its first and second floors. This would be Stoke Newington Church Street, so the cemetery was just up ahead. She congratulated herself on recalling that much. She said, “The main entrance is on the high street, to the left, on the corner.”

That was where Lynley parked, and they went into the information office just outside the gates. There they explained their purpose to a wizened female volunteer, and Isabelle brought out the e-fit that had prompted the phone call to New Scotland Yard. This individual had not made the call-“That would likely have been Mr. Fluendy,” she said, “I’m Mrs. Littlejohn”-but she recognised the e-fit herself.

“I expect that’s the boy does the carving, that is,” she said. “I hope you lot are here to arrest him cos we been ringing the local coppers ’bout that carving since my granny was a girl, let me tell you. You come ’ere, you two. I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”

She shooed them out of the information office, hung a sign on the door indicating to the nonexistent hordes of visitors that she’d return momentarily, and toddled into the cemetery. They followed. She took them to one of the trees that Isabelle had seen on her first visit to the place. Its trunk was carved with an elaborate design of quarter moon and stars with clouds obscuring part of the latter. The carving went all the way down the trunk of the tree, entirely baring it of bark. It was not the sort of thing one could have done quickly or easily. The carving measured at least four feet high and took up perhaps two feet of the tree’s circumference. The defacing of the tree aside, it was actually quite good.