She shook her head once, sharply. And when she answered him at last, in a voice so controlled that it spoke volumes on the emotion she had spent on the subject, she kept her eyes on the minster in the distance. “I couldn’t let myself do that, Inspector. I knew they were safe. I knew they were well. So I let them die. I had to if I wanted to survive. Can you understand?”

A few days ago he would have said no. And that would have been the truth of the matter. But that was not the case now. “Yes,” he replied. “I do understand.” He nodded to her in farewell and walked back to his car.

“Inspector-” He turned, his hand on the door handle. “You know where Russell is, don’t you?”

She read the answer in his face, but she listened instead to the lie. “No,” he responded.

Ezra Farmington lived directly across from the Dove and Whistle in the council house that abutted against Marsha Fitzalan’s. Like hers, its front garden was planted and cared for, but with less detailed concern, as if the man had started out with the best of intentions, but they, along with the plants, had become the worse for wear. Bushes were thriving but overgrown, weeds were assaulting the flower beds, dead annuals needed to be uprooted and discarded, and a small patch of lawn was looking long enough to be considered a potential source of fodder.

Farmington was not at all pleased to see him. He opened the door to Lynley’s knock and placed his body squarely in the frame. Over his shoulder Lynley saw that the other man had been going through his work, for dozens of watercolours were spread upon the sitting room couch and scattered on the fl oor. Some were torn into shreds, others were crumpled into tight, angry balls, still others were abandoned to meet their fate underfoot. It was a haphazard purging of artistic effort, however, because the artist himself was more than halfway drunk.

“Inspector?” Farmington asked with deliberate politeness.

“May I come in?”

The man shrugged. “Why not?” He opened the door wider and gestured Lynley inside with a lackadaisical sweep. “’Scuse the mess. Just cleaning out the crap.”

Lynley stepped over several paintings. “From four years ago?” he asked blandly.

It was the right choice of time. Farmington’s face told him so in the sudden flare of nostrils and the movement of lips.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?” He was just on the edge of slurring his words, and, perhaps noticing this himself, he sought control visibly.

“What time was it when you and William Teys argued?” Lynley asked, ignoring the man’s question.

“Time?” Ezra shrugged. “No idea. Drink, Ins…Inspector?” He smiled glassily and stiffl y crossed the room to pour himself a tumbler of gin. “No? You don’t mind if I…? Thank you.” He gulped back a mouthful, coughed, and laughed, swiping at his mouth so savagely with his wrist that the movement was as good as a blow. “Pulin’ wimp. Can’ even handle a drink.”

“You were coming down from High Kel Moor. That’s not a walk you would make in the dark, is it?”

“Course not.”

“And you heard music from the farmhouse?”

“Ha!” He waved his glass at Lynley. “Whole screamin’ band, In…spector. Thought I was in the middle of a fl ipping parade.”

“Did you see only Teys? No one else?”

“Are we counting sweet Nigel bringing the doggie home?”

“Aside from Nigel.”

“Nope.” He lifted his glass and drained it. “Course, Roberta was proba’ly inside the house changing the records, poor fat slob. She wasn’t much good for anything else. ’Cept,” his bleary eyes twinkled, “swinging an axe and sending Papa into the great beyond.” He laughed at his comment. “Like Lizzie Borden!” he added and laughed louder still.

Lynley wondered why the man was being deliberately repugnant, wondered what was motivating him to go to such great lengths to develop and then display a side of his character so ugly as to be intolerable. Hatred and anger were the foundation here and a contempt so virulent that it was like a third person in the room. Farmington was obviously a talented man and yet a man blindly bent upon destroying the single creative force that gave his life meaning.

As he clutched at himself with callous nonchalance and stumbled in the direction of the lavatory, Lynley looked at the paintings he left behind and saw the source of the man’s despair in the studies the artist could not bring himself to destroy.

They were done from every possible angle, in charcoal, pencil, pastels, and paint. They chronicled movement, passion, and desire, and bore witness to the anguish of the artist’s soul. They were all of Stepha Odell.

When Lynley heard the man’s returning footsteps, he forced his eyes from the work and his mind away from the implication. Instead, he made himself look at Farmington and in doing so he saw the other man clearly for the first time: womaniser and hypocrite, using past pain as an excuse for present behaviour. He saw that Farmington was at best his own mirror image, his second self, the man, indeed, he could choose to become.

From King’s Cross Station, Barbara took the Northern Line to Warren Street. Fitzroy Square was only a few minutes’ walk from there. She spent that time meditating on a plan of attack. It was clear that Gillian Teys was involved in this situation up to her neck, but that was going to be extremely diffi cult to prove. If she was smart enough to disappear from sight for eleven years, certainly she was smart enough to have a cast-iron alibi for the night in question. It seemed to Barbara that the best approach-if indeed Gillian was Nell Graham and if she could be located using the scant information they had-was to give her no choice, arrest her if necessary, in order to get her back to Keldale that night. She thought about everything that had been said about Gillian: about her delinquent behaviour, her sexual licence, and her ability to hide both under an exterior of angelic refi nement. There was only one way to deal with someone that clever. Be tough, be aggressive, be absolutely ruthless.

Fitzroy Square-a tidily renovated patch of Camden Town-was an unusual spot to fi nd a home for stray teenagers. Twenty years before, when the square had still been a postwar rectangle of sagging buildings, grubby pavements, and empty windowboxes, a home for the fl otsam and jetsam of London life would be what one would expect to find. But now, when the entire face of the square was crisp and new, when the lovely green in the centre was carefully fenced off against vagrants, when every building was freshly painted and every burnished door gleamed in the fading light of the day, it was hard to believe that society’s forgotten and unwanted, frightened and pained still lived here.

Number 11 was the home of Testament House, a Georgian building whose front was covered with scaffolding. A rubbish bin overflowing with plaster, empty paint tins, cardboard cartons, and dropcloths gave evidence to the fact that Testament House was joining its neighbours in an architectural renaissance. The front door stood open, and from within came the sound of music, not the rowdy rockand-roll one might have expected from a gathering place for runaway teenagers, but the delicate strains of classical guitar and the kind of quiet that spoke of an audience held spellbound. However, those on this week’s kitchen duty were not taking part in the recital above stairs, Barbara guessed, for even outside the air was rich with the aroma of tomato sauce and spices, sure indication of the evening’s fare.

She walked up the two steps and entered the building. The long hallway was covered with an old red runner, worn so thin in places that the wood of the floor beneath showed through. Walls were bare of decoration save bulletin boards that held employment information, messages received, and announcements posted. A schedule of classes at the university of Gower Street was given the most prominent position, with large cardboard arrows pointing to it encouragingly. Nearby clinics, drug programs, and Planned Parenthood offices were advertised for inhabitants, and the telephone number of a suicide hotline was printed repeatedly on tear-off sheets at the bottom of the board. Most of them, Barbara noted, were gone.