“I’m talkin ’bout school time, innit,” Marlon said. “Now I go th’ cemetery cos tha’s what I do. Nuffink else round here and I don’t got friends, do I.”

“So you go to the cemetery and you carve on the trees?” Isabelle said.

Marlon shifted round on his barrel of a bum. “Di’n’t say-”

“Have you wood carving tools?” Lynley said.

“I di’n’t do nuffink to that tart! She was dead when I got there, wa’n’t she.”

“So you did go into the shelter by the chapel?” Isabelle said to the boy. “You admit you’re the person our witnesses saw coming out of the shelter four days ago?”

The boy didn’t confirm, but he didn’t deny. Isabelle said, “What were you doing there?”

“I do the trees,” he said. “An’ there’s no harm in it. Makes ’em pretty is all.”

“I don’t mean what were you doing in the cemetery,” Isabelle told him. “I mean in the shelter. Why’d you go into the shelter?”

The boy swallowed. This was, it seemed, the crux of the matter. He looked at his father. His father looked away.

Marlon whispered, “Magazine. It was…See, I bought it an’ wanted to have a glance and…” He gazed at her desperately, casting a glance at Lynley as well. “It was only tha’ when I saw them pitchers in the magazine…them women…You know.”

“Marlon, are you trying to tell me you went into the shelter to masturbate over pictures of naked women?” Isabelle asked baldly.

He began to weep in earnest. His father said, “Fooking twat,” and Isabelle shot him a look. Lynley said, “That’ll do, Mr. Kay.”

Marlon hid his face in his hands, pinching his cheeks with his fingers, saying, “I jus’ wanted…So I went inside there to-you know-but there she was an’ I got scared an’ I run off. I could see she was dead, couldn’t I. There was bugs an’ things an’ her eyes were open an’ the flies were crawling…I know I shoulda done summat but I couldn’t cos I…cos I…Cops would’ve asked what I was doing, like you’re askin now, and I’d have to say like I’m sayin now and he already hates me and he would find out. I won’t go to school. I won’t go. I won’t. But she was dead when I got there. She was dead. She was.”

He was likely speaking the truth, Isabelle reckoned, as she couldn’t imagine the boy having the bottle to commit an act of violence. He seemed the least aggressive child she’d ever encountered. But even a boy such as Marlon could snap, and one way or another he needed to be eliminated as a suspect.

She said, “All right, Marlon. I tend to think you might be telling the truth.”

“I am!”

“I’m going to ask you further questions, though, and you’re going to need to be calmer. Can you manage that?”

His father blew a breath of air from his mouth. Not bloody likely would have been his words.

Marlon cast a fearful look at his father and then nodded, his eyes welling with more tears. But he wiped his cheeks-he somehow made this a heroic gesture-and he sat up straight.

Isabelle went through the questions. Did he touch the body? No, he did not. Did he remove anything from the site? No, he did not. How near did he get to the body? He didn’t know. Three feet? Four? He took a step or two inside the shelter but that was all cos he saw her an’…Fine fine, Isabelle said, hoping to avoid another descent into hysteria. What happened then? He dropped the magazine and ran. He didn’t mean to drop it. He didn’t even know he’d dropped it. But when he saw he didn’t have it with him, he was too scared to go back cos “I never seen a dead person. Not like that.” He went on to say that she was all bloody down the front of her. Did he see a weapon? Isabelle asked him. He didn’t even see where she was cut up, he told her. As far as he could tell, it looked to him like she was sliced up everywhere cos there was so much blood. Wouldn’t a person have to be sliced up everywhere to have so much blood on ’em?

Isabelle redirected him, from inside the shelter to outside the shelter. True, it was at least a day after the killing itself when Marlon had come upon the body, as things turned out, but whomever he’d seen in the vicinity-whatever he’d seen in the vicinity-could be important to the investigation.

But he’d seen nothing. And when it came to Jemima Hastings’ handbag or anything else she might have possessed, the boy swore he’d not taken a thing. If she had a bag with her, he knew nothing of it. It might’ve been right there next to her, he avowed, and he wouldn’t’ve even known it was there cos all he saw was her, he said. An’ all that blood.

“But you didn’t report this,” Isabelle said. “The only report we had was from the young couple who saw you, Marlon. Why didn’t you report it?”

“Them carvings,” he said. “An’ the magazine.”

“Ah.” Defacing public property, buying pornographic magazines, masturbating-or at least intending to do so-in public: These had been his considerations, as had no doubt been the displeasure of his father, and the fact that his father seemed to express that displeasure by means of a cricket bat. “I see. Well, we’re going to need a few things from you. Will you cooperate with us?”

He nodded vigorously. Cooperation? No problem. Anything at all.

They would need a sample of his DNA, which a swab from his mouth would happily provide. They would also require his shoes, and his fingerprints, which would be easy enough to obtain. And his carving tools were going to have to be handed over for inspection by forensics. “I expect,” Isabelle said, “you’ve got any number of sharp objects among them? Yes? Well, we need to test them all, Marlon.”

The welling of eyes, the whimper, the father’s impatient and bull-like breath.

“It’s all to prove you’re telling the truth,” she assured the boy. “Are you, Marlon? Are you telling the truth?”

“Swear,” he said. “Swear, swear, swear.”

Isabelle wanted to tell him that one swearing was enough, but she reckoned she’d be wasting her time.

AS THEY WALKED back to the car, the superintendent asked Lynley what he was thinking. She said to him, “It’s not entirely necessary for you to keep silent in that sort of situation, you know.”

He glanced at her. Considering the heat of the day and their encounter with the Kays, she was managing to look remarkably collected, unruffled, professional, even cool in the blasting sun. Wisely-if unusually-she wore not a summer suit but a sleeveless dress, and Lynley realised it served more than one purpose in that it likely made her more comfortable at the same time as it made her less intimidating when she questioned people. People like Marlon, he thought, an adolescent boy whose trust she needed to garner.

He said, “I didn’t think you needed my-”

“Help?” she cut in sharply. “That’s not what I was implying, Thomas.”

Lynley looked at her again. “Actually, I was going to say my participation,” he told her.

“Ah. Sorry.”

“You’re prickly about it, then.”

“Not at all.” She fished in her bag and brought out a pair of dark glasses. Then she sighed and said, “Well, that’s not true. I am prickly. But one has to be, in our line of work. It’s not easy for a woman.”

“Which part isn’t easy? The investigation? Promoting? Navigating the corridors of power in Victoria Street, dubious though they may be?”

“Oh, it’s easy for you to have the odd chuckle at my expense,” she noted. “But I don’t expect any man comes up against the kinds of things a woman has to cope with. Especially a man…” She seemed unwilling to finish her thought.

He did it for her. “A man like me?”

“Well, really, Thomas. You can hardly argue that a life of privilege-the family pile in Cornwall, Eton, Oxford…remember I do know a bit about you-has made it difficult for you to succeed in your line of work. And why do you do it, anyway? Certainly you don’t need to be a policeman. Doesn’t your sort of man generally do something less-” She seemed to be searching for the right term and she settled on, “Less elbow rubbing with the great unwashed?”