The site itself was a grand idea gone bad through loss of funding. Originally intended as three stylishly modern office blocks within “a lovely, parklike setting of trees, gardens, paths, and copious outdoor seating,” it had been intended to infuse money into the surrounding community in order to bolster a faltering economy. But poor management on the part of the contractor resulted in the project being called to a halt before the first tower was completed.

On the day that Ian Barker ushered his companions to the site, it had languished untouched for nineteen months. It was fenced by chain link, but it was not inaccessible. Although signage on the fence warned that the site was “under surveillance 24 hours a day” and that “trespassers and vandals will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” regular incursions into the property made by children and adolescents indicated otherwise.

It was a tempting area both for playing and for clandestine rendezvous. There were dozens of places to hide; heaps of earth offered launching pads for mountain bikers; discarded boards, tubes, and pipes could stand in for weapons in games of war; small chunks of concrete substituted nicely for hand grenades and bombs. While it was a dubious location in which “to lose the baby” if the boys intended someone to come across him and take him to the nearest police station, it was a perfect spot in which the rest of the day’s horrors could play out.

WHEN THOMAS LYNLEY PULLED UP TO THE KIOSK AT NEW Scotland Yard the next morning, he began the process of steeling himself. The constable in charge stepped forward, not recognising the car. When he saw Lynley inside it, he hesitated before bending to the lowered window and saying huskily, “Inspector. Sir. It’s very good to have you back.”

Lynley wanted to say that he wasn’t back. But instead he nodded. He understood then what he should have understood before: that people were going to react to his appearance at the Yard and that he was going to have to react to their reacting. So he readied himself for his next encounter. He parked and went up to a set of offices in Victoria Block as familiar to him as his own home.

Dorothea Harriman saw him first. It had been five months since he’d encountered the departmental secretary, but neither time nor circumstances were ever likely to alter her. She was, as always, kitted out to perfection, today in a red pencil skirt and breezy blouse, a wide belt cinching in a waist that would have made a Victorian gentleman swoon. She was standing at a filing cabinet with her back to him, and when she turned and saw him, her eyes filled and she set a file on her desk and clasped both her hands at her throat.

She said, “Oh, Detective Inspector Lynley. Oh my God, how wonderful. It couldn’t possibly be better to see you.”

Lynley didn’t think he could live through more than one greeting such as this, so he said, as if he’d never been gone, “Dee. You look well today. Are they…?” and he indicated with a nod towards the superintendent’s office.

She told him that they were gathered in the incident room and did he want a coffee? Tea? A croissant? Toast? They’d recently started offering muffins in the canteen and it was no trouble-

He was fine, he told her. He’d had breakfast. She wasn’t to bother. He managed a smile and set off for the incident room, but he could feel her eyes on him and he knew he was going to have to get used to people assessing him, considering what they should say or not say, unsure how soon or even whether to mention her name. It was, he knew, the way of all people as they navigated the waters of someone else’s grief.

In the incident room, it was much the same. When he opened the door and walked in, the stunned silence that fell upon the group told him that Acting Superintendent Ardery hadn’t mentioned he’d be joining them. She was standing to one side of a set of china boards on which photos were posted and officers’ actions were listed. She saw him and said casually, “Ah, Thomas. Good morning,” and then to the others, “I’ve asked Inspector Lynley to come back on board and I hope his return is going to be a permanent one. Meanwhile, he’s kindly agreed to help me learn the ropes round here. I trust no one has a problem with that?” The way she spoke sent the message clearly: Lynley was going to be her subordinate and if anyone did have a problem with that, that relevant anyone could request reassignment.

Lynley’s gaze took them in, his longtime colleagues, his longtime friends. They welcomed him in their various ways: Winston Nkata with blazing warmth on his dark features, Philip Hale with a wink and a smile, John Stewart with the guarded expectancy of one who knows there’s more here than meets the eye, and Barbara Havers with confusion. Her face showed the question that he knew she wanted to ask him: Why didn’t you tell me yesterday? He didn’t know how he could explain. Of everyone at the Yard, she was closest to him and thus she was the last person to whom he could comfortably speak. She wouldn’t understand this, and he didn’t yet possess the words to tell her.

Isabelle Ardery continued the meeting that they had been having. Lynley took out his reading glasses and worked his way closer to the china board upon which the victim’s photographs were displayed, in life and in death, including grisly autopsy photos. An e-fit of a person of interest was situated near the pictures of the murder site, and next to this was a close-up of what appeared to be some sort of carved stone. This was an enlargement: The stone was reddish and square and it had the look of an amulet.

“…in the victim’s pocket,” Ardery was saying in apparent reference to this photograph. “It looks like something from a man’s ring, considering the size and the shape of it, and you can see it’s been carved although the carving itself is quite worn. It’s with forensics just now. As to the weapon, SO7 are telling us the wound suggests something capable of piercing to a depth of eight or nine inches. That’s all they know. There was rust left in the wound as well.”

“Plenty of that on the site,” Winston Nkata pointed out. “Old chapel, locked off with iron bars…Has to be a mountain of clobber round that place could be used for a weapon.”

“Which takes us to the possibility that this was a crime of opportunity,” Ardery said.

“No handbag with her,” Philip Hale said. “No identification on her. And she’d’ve had to have something to get up to Stoke Newington. Money, travel card, something. Could’ve started with bag snatching.”

“Indeed…So we need to put our hands on that bag of hers, if she had one,” Ardery said. “In the meantime, we’ve got two very good leads from the porn magazine left near the body.”

Called Girlicious, it was the type of magazine that was delivered to the point of sale encased in opaque black plastic, due to the sensitive-and here Ardery rolled her eyes-nature of its contents. This plastic served the purpose of preventing innocent children from pawing through it to have a look at the various pudenda on display. It also served the less obvious purpose of preventing the fingerprints of anyone other than the purchaser to be placed upon it. Now, they had a very good set of dabs to use in the investigation, but better than that, they had a shop receipt tucked within the pages, as if used as a marker. If this shop receipt was the point of purchase of the magazine-and it likely was-then there was a very good chance they were on the trail of whatever sod had bought it.

“He might or might not be our killer. He might or might not be this person-” She indicated the e-fit. “But the magazine was fresh. It hadn’t been there long. And we want to talk to whoever took it into that chapel’s annex. So…”

She began the assignments. They knew the drill: TIE first. The known associates of Jemima Hastings had to be interviewed: at Covent Garden where she was employed, at her lodgings in Putney, at any other place she frequented, at the Portrait Gallery where she had been present for the opening of the exhibition in which her picture hung. All of them would need alibis that would want checking out. Her belongings had to be gone through as well, and there were boxes upon boxes of them from her lodgings. An ever-widening search of the area near the cemetery had to be made to attempt to locate her bag, the weapon, or anything related to her journey across London to Stoke Newington.