“He’s done this everywhere,” the woman declared. “We been trying to catch him at it, but he lives over Listria Park, he does, and that backs onto the cemetery. I ’spect he just comes over the wall, so we never know he’s here. Easy as pie when you’re young, eh?”

Listria Park was not, as Isabelle had first supposed, an actual park. It was instead a street comprising a curve of buildings that had once been individual homes but now were flats with windows overlooking Abney Park Cemetery and gardens over the wall from it, as Mrs. Littlejohn had described. It took some doing to find the building in which Marlon Kay lived, but once they’d done so, they discovered themselves in luck as the boy was at home. So was his father, and it was apparently this individual whose disembodied voice replied when they rang the buzzer next to the name D. W. Kay.

He barked out, “Yeah? Wha’ you want?”

Isabelle nodded at Lynley, who did the honours. “Metropolitan police. We’re looking for-”

Even through the crackling connection from the street to the flat, they could hear the commotion Lynley’s words provoked: a crash of furniture, a pounding of feet, a “Wha’ the bloody hell…Where you think you’re…Wha’d you do?” And then the buzzer went to open the door, and they pushed their way inside.

They headed for the stairs just as a heavyset boy came storming down them. He ploughed towards them, wild eyed and sweating, making for the door to the street. It was an easy matter for Lynley to stop him. One arm did that much. The other secured him.

“Lemme go!” the boy shrieked. “He’ll murder me, he will!” while above a man roared, “Get your bum back up ’ere, rotten little lout.”

Little was hardly an accurate adjective. While the boy wasn’t obese, he was still a sterling example of modern youth’s proclivity for victuals deep fried, fast, and loaded with various kinds of fats and sugars.

“Marlon Kay?” Isabelle said to the struggling youth being detained by Lynley’s grip upon him.

“Let me go!” he screamed. “He’ll beat me bloody. You don’ unnerstan!”

D. W. Kay came hurtling down the stairs at that point, cricket bat in his hands. He was swinging this wildly as he shouted, “Wha’d you fooking do? You fooking better tell me ’fore these coppers do or I’ll smack your head from here to Wales and make no mistake!”

Isabelle put herself squarely in his path. She said sharply, “That will do, Mr. Kay. Put that cricket bat down before I have you in the nick for assault.”

Perhaps it was her tone. It stopped the man in his tracks. He stood before her, breathing like a defeated racehorse-with breath, however, that smelled like teeth decaying straight up to his brain. He blinked at her.

She said, “I assume you are Mr. Kay. And this is Marlon? We want a word with him.”

Marlon whimpered. He shrank back from his father. He said, “He’ll bash me, he will.”

“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” Isabelle told the boy. “Mr. Kay, lead us up to your flat. I’ve no intention of having a discussion in the corridor.”

D.W. looked her up and down-she could tell he was the sort of man who had what pop psychologists would refer to as “woman issues”-and then he looked at Lynley. His expression said that as far as he was concerned, Lynley wore lace panties if he let a woman give orders in his presence. Isabelle wanted to smack him into Wales. What century did he think they were living in? she wondered.

She said, “Do I have to tell you again?” He snarled but cooperated. Back up the stairs he went, and the rest of them followed, Marlon cowering in Lynley’s grip. A middle-aged woman in cycling gear was standing at the top of the first flight of stairs. She made a moue that combined dislike, distaste, and disgust and said, “About time, you ask me,” to Mr. Kay. He shoved her out of the way and she said, “Did you see that? Did you see that?” to Lynley, ignoring Isabelle altogether. Her cry of, “Are you finally going to do something about him?” was the last they heard from her as they shut the door behind them.

Inside the flat, the windows were open, but as there was no cross ventilation, their gaping apertures did nothing to mitigate the temperature. The place itself was, remarkably, not a pigsty, as Isabelle had been expecting. There was a suspicious white layer upon nearly everything, but this turned out to be plaster dust, as they discovered that D. W. Kay was a plasterer by trade, and he’d been setting out to work when they’d rung the buzzer.

Isabelle told him they needed a word with his son, and she asked Marlon how old he was. Marlon said sixteen, and he winced, as if anticipating that his age was cause for corporal punishment. Isabelle sighed. What his age was cause for was the presence of an adult who was not police, preferably a parent, which meant that they were going to have to question the boy either in the presence of his glowering and explosive father or with a social worker.

She looked at Lynley. Appropriately, his expression said it was her call, as she was his superior. She said to the boy’s father, “We’re going to have to question Marlon about the cemetery. I take it you know that there’s been a murder there, Mr. Kay?”

The man’s face became inflamed. His eyes bulged. He was, Isabelle thought, a massive stroke waiting to happen. She went on. “We can question him here or at the local nick. If we do it here, you’ll be required not only to keep quiet but also to keep your hands off this boy from now until eternity occurs. If you do not, you’ll be arrested at once. One phone call from him, from a neighbour, from anyone, and in you go. A week, a month, a year, ten years. I can’t tell you what the judge will throw at you, but I can tell that what I just witnessed below is something that I will testify to. And I expect your neighbours will be happy to do likewise. Am I being clear or do you require further elucidation on this topic?”

He nodded. He shook his head. Isabelle assumed he was answering both questions and said, “Very well. Sit down and keep quiet.”

He skulked to a grey sofa, which was part of a sad-looking three-piece suite of a sort Isabelle hadn’t seen in years, complete with a tasseled fringe. He sat. Round him, plaster dust rose in a cloud. Lynley deposited Marlon in one of the two chairs and himself went to the window where he remained standing, resting against the sill.

Everything in the room faced a huge flat-screen television, which was featuring a cooking programme at the moment although the sound was muted. A remote lay beneath it, and Isabelle picked this up and switched the set off, which, for some reason, caused Marlon to whimper once again, as if a lifeline had been cut. His father curled a lip at him. Isabelle shot him a look. The man rearranged his features. She nodded sharply and went to sit in the other armchair, dusty like everything else.

She told Marlon the bare facts: He’d been seen emerging from the shelter next to the ruined chapel inside the cemetery. Within that shelter, a young woman’s body had been found. A magazine with one person’s fingerprints on it had been dropped in the vicinity of that body. An e-fit had been generated by the persons who’d seen him coming out of that shelter, and should an identity parade be needed, there was little doubt that he’d be picked from it, although because of his age, they’d likely use photographs and not require him to stand in a line. Did he want to talk about any of this?

The boy began to blub. His father rolled his eyes but said nothing.

“Marlon?” Isabelle prompted.

He sniveled and said, “It’s only cos I hate school. They bully me. It’s cos my bum’s like…It’s big, innit, an’ they make fun and it’s allas been tha’ way an’ I hate it. So I won’t go. I got to leave here, though, don’t I, so I go there.”

“Into the cemetery rather than to school?”

“Tha’s it, innit.”

“It’s summer holidays,” Lynley pointed out.