Barbara murmured appropriate responses, although toning sounded like something one did in a gym and exfoliating surely had to do with gardening, didn’t it? When Sidney at last had smoothed on a mask-“My T zone is just bloody murder,” she confessed-Barbara brought up the reason for her journey to Bethnal Green. She said, “Deborah tells me you introduced Jemima Hastings to her.”

Sidney acknowledged this. Then she said, “It was her eyes. I’d posed for Deborah-for the Portrait Gallery competition, you know?-but when the pictures weren’t what she wanted, I thought of Jemima. Because of her eyes.”

Barbara asked how she’d come to be acquainted with the young woman, and Sidney said, “Cigars. Matt likes Havanas-God, they smell awful-and I’d gone there to get him one. I remembered her later because of her eyes, and I reckoned she’d make an interesting face for Deborah’s portrait. So I went back and asked her and then took her along to meet Deborah.”

“Went back where?”

“Oh. Sorry. To Covent Garden. There’s a tobacconist in one of the courtyards? Round the corner from Jubilee Market Hall? It’s got cigars, pipe tobacco, snuff, pipes, cigarette holders…all the bits one associates with smoking. Matt and I stopped there one afternoon, which is how I knew where it was and what he bought. Now whenever he’s due back from one of his man-of-mystery jaunts, I pop in and get him a welcome-home cigar.”

Bleagh, Barbara thought. She was a smoker herself-always intending to give it up although never quite intending enough-but she drew the line at anything whose scent reminded her of burning dog poo.

Sidney was saying, “Anyway, Deborah quite liked the look of her when I introduced them, so she asked her to pose. Why? Are you looking for her?”

“She’s dead,” Barbara said. “She was murdered in Abney Park Cemetery.”

Sidney’s eyes darkened. Exactly as her brother’s did when he was struck by something, Barbara thought. Sidney said, “Oh Lord. She’s the woman in the paper, isn’t she? I’ve seen the Daily Mail…” And when Barbara confirmed this, Sidney went on. She was the sort of woman who chatted compulsively-utterly unlike Simon whose reserve was sometimes completely unnerving-and she sketched in every relevant and irrelevant detail pertaining to Jemima Hastings and Deborah St. James’s photograph of her.

Sidney couldn’t make out why Deborah had chosen Abney Park Cemetery, as it wasn’t exactly easy to get to, but you know Deborah. When she set her mind to something, there was no suggesting an alternative. She’d apparently scouted locations for weeks in advance of the photo shoot and she’d read about the cemetery-“something to do with conservation?” Sidney wondered aloud-and had done an initial recce there, where she’d found the sleeping lion monument and decided it was just the thing she wanted for background in the photo. As it turned out, Sidney had accompanied Deborah and Jemima-“I admit it. I was a bit put out that my photo hadn’t suited, you know?”-and she’d watched the subsequent photo shoot, wondering why she had failed as a subject for the portrait where Jemima was possibly going to succeed. “As a professional, you know, one needs to know…If I’m losing my edge, I must get on top of my game…?”

Right, Barbara agreed. She asked had Sidney seen anything that day in the cemetery, had she noticed anything…Did she remember anything? Something unusual? Had anyone watched the photo shoot, for example?

Well, yes of course, there were always people…And lots of men, if it came down to it. Only Sidney couldn’t remember any of them because it had been ages ago and she’d certainly not thought that she’d have to remember and God it was dreadful that Deborah’s picture might have been the means…I mean, wasn’t it possible that someone had tracked down Jemima by using that picture, had found Jemima, had followed her to that cemetery…except what was she doing there, did they know?…or perhaps someone had kidnapped her and taken her there? And how had she died?

“Who?” It was Matt Jones speaking. Somehow he’d come silently up the stairs-Barbara wondered when he’d ceased pounding on the plywood and how long he’d been listening-and he was a looming, sweating presence in the bathroom doorway, which he filled up in a fashion that Barbara would have called menacing had she not also wanted to call it curious. Close to him now, she had a sense of both danger and anger emanating from him. He was sort of a Mr. Rochester type, had Mr. Rochester been in possession of heavy weaponry in the attic and not a mad wife.

Sidney said, “That girl from the cigar shop, darling. Jemima…What was her surname, Barbara?”

“Hastings,” Barbara said. “She was called Jemima Hastings.”

“What about her?” Matt Jones asked. He crossed his arms beneath a set of pectorals that were tanned, hairless, impressive, and decorated with a tattoo that said MUM and was surrounded by a wreath of thorns. He possessed three scars on his chest as well, Barbara saw, a puckering of the flesh that had the suspicious look of healed bullet holes. Who was this bloke?

“She’s dead,” Sidney told her lover. “Darling, Jemima Hastings was murdered.”

He was silent. Then he grunted once. He moved away from the doorway and rubbed the back of his neck. “What about dinner?” he asked.

The West Town Road Arcade’s CCTV tapes from that day are grainy, making absolute identification of the boys who took John Dresser impossible, should such identification rely on the tapes alone. Indeed, had it not been for Michael Spargo’s overlarge mustard anorak, there is a chance that John’s abductors might have gone unapprehended. But enough people had seen the three boys and enough people were willing to come forward and identify them that the tapes consequently act as confirmation of their identities.

The films show John Dresser walking away quite willingly with the boys, as if he knows them. As they near the arcade exit, Ian Barker takes John’s other hand and he and Reggie swing the child between them, perhaps in the promise of more play to come. While they walk, Michael catches them up with a childlike skip and hop, and he seems to offer the toddler some of the French fries he’s been eating. This offer of food to a child who was waiting hungrily for his lunch appears to have been what kept John Dresser happy to go with them, at least at first.

It’s interesting to note that when the boys leave the Barriers, they do not do so by the exit that would take them to the Gallows, i.e., by the exit most familiar to them. Instead, they choose one of the lesser-used exits, as if they already have planned to do something with the toddler and wish to remain as unseen as possible when they make off with him.

In his third interview with the police, Ian Barker claims that their intention was just to “have a bit of fun” with John Dresser, while Michael Spargo says that he didn’t know “what them other two wanted with that baby,” a term (“the baby”) that Michael uses throughout his conversations with the police in reference to John Dresser. For his part, Reggie Arnold will not come close to discussing John Dresser until his fourth interview. Instead, he attempts to obfuscate, making repeated references to Ian Barker and his own confusion about “what he wanted that kitten for,” attempting to direct the course of the conversation on to his siblings, or assuring his mother-who was present for nearly all interviews-that he “didn’t nick nothing, never ever, Mum.”

Michael Spargo claims that he wanted to return the toddler to the shopping arcade once they had him outside the Barriers. “I told them we could drop him back inside, just leave the baby by the door or something, but they were the ones didn’t want to. I said we’d get into trouble for nicking him, wouldn’t we [note the objectifying use of nicking, as if John Dresser were something they’d pinched from a shop] but they called me a wanker and asked me did I want to grass them up, then.”