The elderly Mrs. Mant had lived in Ebury Mews in a three-story town house that had been divided into flats. Her building was stucco with red chimney pots piled high on a variegated shingle roof, and window boxes were filled with daffodils, crocuses and ivy. I climbed stairs to the second floor and knocked on her door, but when it was answered, it was not by my deputy chief. The matronly woman peering out at me looked as confused as I did.

"Excuse me," I said to her. "I guess this has already been sold."

"No, I'm sorry. It's not for sale at all," she firmly said.

"I'm looking for Philip Mant," I went on. "Clearly I must have the wrong…"

"Oh," she said. "Philip's my brother." She smiled pleasantly. "He just left for work. You just missed him."

"Work?" I said.

"Oh yes, he always leaves right about this time. To avoid traffic, you know. Although I don't think that's really possible." She hesitated, suddenly aware of the stranger before her. "Might I tell him who dropped by?"

"Dr. Kay Scarpetta," I said. "And I really must find him."

"Why of course." She seemed as pleased as she was surprised. "I've heard him speak of you. He's enormously fond of you and will be absolutely delighted to hear you came by. What brings you to London?"

"I never miss an opportunity to visit here. Might you tell me where I could find him?" I asked again.

"Of course. The Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road." She hesitated, uncertain. "I should have thought he would have told you."

"Yes." I smiled. "And I'm very pleased for him."

I wasn't certain what I was talking about, but she seemed very pleased, too.

"Don't tell him I'm coming," I went on. "I intend to surprise him."

"Oh, that's brilliant. He will be absolutely thrilled."

I caught another taxi as I thought about what I believed she had just said. No matter Mant's reason for what he had done, I could not help but feel slightly furious.

"You going to the Coroner's Court, ma'am?" the driver asked me. "It's right there." He pointed out the open window at a handsome brick building.

"No, I'm going to the actual mortuary," I said.

"All right. Well that's right here. Better to walk in than be carried," he said with a hoarse laugh.

I got out money as he parked in front of a building small by London standards. Brick with granite trim and a strange parapet along the roof, it was surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence painted the color of rust. According to the date on a plaque at the entrance, the mortuary was more than a hundred years old, and I thought about how grim it would have been to practice forensic medicine in those days. There would have been few witnesses to tell the story except for the human kind, and I wondered if people had lied less in earlier times.

The mortuary's reception area was small but pleasantly furnished like a typical lobby for a normal business.

Through an open door was a corridor, and since I did not see anyone, I headed that way just as a woman emerged from a room, her arms loaded with oversized books.

"Sorry," she said, startled. "But you can't come back here."

"I'm looking for Dr. Mant," I said.

She wore a loose-fitting long dress and sweater, and spoke with a Scottish accent. "And who may I tell him is here to see him?" she politely said.

I showed her my credentials.

"Oh very good, I see. Then he's expecting you."

"I shouldn't think so," I said.

"I sec." She shifted the books to another arm and was very confused.

"He used to work with me in the States," I said. "I'd like to surprise him, so I prefer to find him if you'll just tell me where."

"Dear me, that would be the Foul Room just now. If you go through this door here." She nodded at it. "And you'll see locker rooms to the left of the main mortuary.

Everything you need is there, then turn left again through another set of doors, and right beyond that. Is that clear?"

She smiled.

"Thank you," I said.

In the locker room I put on booties, gloves and mask, and loosely tied a gown around me to keep the odor out of my clothes. I passed through a tiled room where six stainless-steel tables and a wall of white refrigerators gleamed.

The doctors wore blue, and Westminster was keeping them busy this morning. They scarcely glanced at me as I walked past. Down the hall I found my deputy chief in tall rubber boots, standing on a footstool as he worked on a badly decomposing body that I suspected had been in water for a while. The stench was terrible, and I shut the door behind me.

"Dr. Mant," I said.

He turned around and for an instant did not seem to know who I was or where he was. Then he simply looked shocked.

"Dr. Scarpetta? My God, why I'll be bloody damned."

He heavily stepped off the stool, for he was not a small man. "I'm so surprised. I'm rather speechless!" He was sputtering, and his eyes wavered with fear.

"I'm surprised, too," I somberly said.

"I quite imagine that you are. Come on. No need to talk in here with this rather ghastly floater. Found him in the Thames yesterday afternoon. Looks like a stabbing to me but we have no identity. We should go to the lounge," he nervously talked on.

Philip Mant was a charming old gentleman impossible not to like, with thick white hair and heavy brows over keen pale eyes. He showed me around the corner to showers, where we disinfected our feet, stripped off gloves and masks and stuffed scrubs into a bin. Then we went to the lounge, which opened onto the parking lot in back. Like everything else in London, the stale smoke in this room had a long history, too.

"May I offer you some refreshment?" he asked as he got out a pack of Players. "I know you don't smoke anymore, so I won't offer."

"I don't need a thing except some answers from you," I said.

His hands trembled slightly as he struck a match.

"Dr. Mant, what in God's name are you doing here?" I started in. "You're supposed to be in London because you had a death in the family."

"I did. Coincidentally."

"Coincidentally?" I said. "And what does that mean?"

"Dr. Scarpetta, I fully intended to leave anyway and then my mother suddenly died and that made it easy to choose a time."

"Then you've had no intention of coming back," I said, stung.

"I'm quite sorry. But no, I have not." He delicately tapped an ash.

"You could at least have told me so I could have begun looking for your replacement. I've tried to call you several times."

"I didn't tell you and I didn't call because I didn't want them to know."

"Them?" The word seemed to hang in the air. "Exactly who do you mean, Dr. Mant?"

He was very matter-of fact as he smoked, legs crossed, and belly roundly swelling over his belt. "I have no idea who they are, but they certainly know who we are. That's what alarms me. I can tell you exactly when it all began.

October thirteenth, and you may or may not remember the case."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Well, the Navy did the autopsy because the death was at their shipyard in Norfolk."

"The man who was accidentally crushed in a dry dock?" I vaguely recalled.

"The very one."

"You're right. That was a Navy case, not ours," I said as I began to anticipate what he had to say. "Tell me what that has to do with us."

"You see, the rescue squad made a mistake," he continued. "Instead of transporting the body to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where it belonged, they brought it to my office, and young Danny didn't know. He began drawing blood, doing paperwork, that sort of thing, and in the process found something very unusual amongst the decedent's personal effects."

I realized Mant did not know about Danny.

"The victim had a canvas satchel with him," he went on. "And the squad had simply placed it on top of the body and covered everything with a sheet. Poor form as it may be, I suppose had that not occurred we wouldn't have had a clue."