At first no one suspected that John Dresser was dead. Transcripts and tapes of early questioning by the police indicate that their initial belief was that the boys took John in an act of mischief, grew tired of his company, and left him somewhere to fend for himself. Although each of the boys was already known to the police, they were none of them known for anything more than truancy, acts of petty vandalism, and minor thefts. (One does wonder how Ian Barker, with a history of small animal torture, managed to go unnoticed for so long, however.) It was only when repeated witnesses began to step forward in the first thirty-six hours following John’s disappearance-communicating the level of the toddler’s distress-that the police seem to have developed a sense that something more ominous than a prank had occurred.

A search for the little boy had already begun, and as the area surrounding the Barriers was picked through by police and by concerned citizens in an organised and ever-widening circumference, it was not overlong before the Dawkins building site came under scrutiny.

Constable Martin Neild, twenty-four years old at the time and a brand-new father, was the individual who found the body of John Dresser, alerted to the possibility of its proximity by the sight of John’s blue snowsuit crumpled and bloodied on the ground near a disused Port-A-Loo. Inside this loo, Neild found the baby’s body, stuffed callously into the chemical toilet. Nield reports that he “wanted to think it was a doll or something,” but he knew otherwise.

“WHAT’S THE DECISION ABOUT SUNDAY LUNCH, ISABELLE? I’ve mentioned it to the boys, by the way. They’re quite keen.”

Isabelle Ardery pressed her fingers to her forehead. She’d taken two paracetamol but they’d done nothing to ease her headache. Nor had they done much for her stomach. She knew she should have eaten something before gulping them down, but the thought of food on top of an already roiling gut was more than she could have managed.

She said, “Let me speak to them, Bob. Are they there?”

He said, “You don’t sound quite yourself. Are you unwell, Isabelle?” Which wasn’t what he meant, of course. Unwell was a euphemism, and only barely. Unwell stood in place of everything else he didn’t intend to ask but fully intended to communicate.

She said, “I was up late last night. I’m on a case. You might have read about it. A woman’s been murdered in a North London cemetery…?”

He clearly wasn’t interested in that part of her life, only in the other. He said, “Hitting it rather hard then, are you?”

“There are usually late nights when it comes to a murder investigation,” she replied, deliberately choosing to misunderstand him. “You know that, Bob. So may I speak to the boys? Where are they? Certainly they’re not out somewhere at this hour of the morning.”

“Still asleep,” he said. “I don’t like to wake them.”

“Surely they can go back to sleep if I just say hello.”

“You know how they are. And they need their rest.”

“They need their mother.”

“They have a mother, as things stand. Sandra’s quite-”

“Sandra has two children of her own.”

“You aren’t suggesting she treats them differently, I hope. Because, frankly, I’m not listening to that. Because, also frankly, she treats them a damn sight better than their natural mother does since she’s fully conscious and in possession of all her faculties when she’s round them. Do you really want to have this kind of conversation, Isabelle? Now, are you coming for lunch on Sunday or are you not?”

“I’ll send the boys a note,” she said quietly, beating down her incipient rage. “May I assume, Bob, that you and Sandra aren’t forbidding my sending a note to them?”

“We’re not forbidding anything,” he said.

“Oh please. Let’s not pretend.” She rang off without a goodbye. She knew she’d pay for that later-Did you actually hang up on me, Isabelle? Surely we must have been disconnected somehow, yes?-but at the moment, she could do nothing else. To remain on the line with him meant being exposed to an extended display of his ostensible paternal concern, and she wasn’t up to it. She wasn’t, in fact, up to much that morning, and she was going to have to do something to alter that before heading into work.

Four cups of black coffee-all right, it was Irish coffee, but she could be forgiven for that as she’d used only a dash of spirits-one slice of toast, and a shower later, she was feeling fit. She was actually in the middle of the morning briefing before she felt the urge once more. But then, it was easy to fight it off because she could hardly duck into the ladies’, and that was just how it was. What she could do instead was keep her mind on her work and vow to have a different kind of evening and night at the end of this day. Which, she decided, she could easily manage.

Sergeants Havers and Nkata had reported in first thing from the New Forest. They were staying in a hotel in Sway-Forest Heath Hotel, it was called, Havers said-and this bit of information was met with guffaws and remarks of the “Hope Winnie’s managed to get his own room” ilk, which Isabelle cut off with a sharp, “That’ll do,” while they assessed the information the two sergeants had unearthed so far. Havers appeared to be building up a head of steam over the fact that Gordon Jossie was a master thatcher and that thatching tools were not only deadly but made by hand. For his part, Nkata seemed to be more interested in the fact of another woman being present in Gordon Jossie’s life. Havers also mentioned Gordon Jossie’s letters of reference from a Winchester college and then brought up a thatcher called Ringo Heath. She concluded by listing the names of individuals still needing to be spoken to.

“C’n we get you lot on to background checks?” Havers then asked. “Hastings, Jossie, Heath, Dickens…” They’d spoken to the local rozzers, by the way, but there wasn’t a lot of joy to be had from that quarter. New Scotland Yard were welcome to nose round the locals’ patch, according to the CS in Lyndhurst, but as the murder was in London, it wasn’t the locals’ problem.

Ardery assured the sergeant that they’d get on things at this end, since she herself wished to know everything there was to know about anyone even remotely concerned with Jemima Hastings. “I want to know every detail there is, down to whether their bowels move regularly,” she told the team. She instructed Philip Hale to carry on with the names from Hampshire and she ticked off the additional London names in case he’d forgotten them: Yolanda the Psychic, aka Sharon Price; Jayson Druther; Abbott Langer; Paolo di Fazio; Frazer Chaplin; Bella McHaggis. “Alibis for everyone, with confirmation, and try for two sources. John, I’ll want you handling that part. Coordinate with SO7 as well. Light a fire over there. We need some good information.”

Stewart gave no indication that he’d heard her, so Isabelle said, “Did you get that, John?” to which he smiled sardonically and pointed an index finger to his temple.

“All in there…guv,” he noted, and, “Anything else?” as if he suspected that she was the one in need of a good prodding.

She narrowed her eyes. She was about to respond when Thomas Lynley did so. He was standing at the back of the room, politely keeping himself out of the way although she couldn’t decide if this was a benefit to her or merely a reminder to everyone else of what was likely the immense contrast between their styles. He said, “Perhaps Matt Jones? Sidney St. James’s partner? It’s likely nothing, but if he’d been to the cigar shop as Barbara indicated…”

“Matt Jones as well,” Isabelle said. “Philip, can someone on your team…?”

“Will do,” Hale said.

She told them all to get on with it, then, and said, “Thomas? If you’ll come with me…”