From the street, the Canterbury Hotel looked as if it was going to live up to Barbara’s grim expectations of it. Its dingy white sign bore two holes that had renamed the establishment Can bury Hot, and its draughts-board marble porch gaped with missing pieces. Barbara stopped Lynley as he reached for the door handle.

“You see what I mean, don’t you?” She waved at him the revised e-fits that she’d been carrying. “It’s the one thing we haven’t talked about.”

“I don’t disagree,” Lynley told her. “But in the absence of something more-”

“We’ve got Minshall, sir. And he’s starting to cooperate.”

Lynley nodded at the door to the Canterbury Hotel. “The next few minutes will tell the tale on that. Right now what we know is that neither Muwaffaq Masoud nor our Square Four Gym witness has anything to gain by lying. You and I both know that’s not the case for Minshall.”

They were talking about the e-fits they’d obtained. Barbara’s point was their unreliability. Muwaffaq Masoud had last seen the man who’d purchased his van many months earlier. The Square Four Gym observer had seen the individual following Sean Lavery-“and he didn’t know if the bloke was really following Sean Lavery, admit it,” Barbara had said-more than four weeks previously. What they had right now in the sketches was entirely dependent upon the memory of two men who, at the precise moment they’d seen the person in question, had no reason to memorise a single detail about him. The e-fits thus could be worth sweet FA to the police, while one generated by Barry Minshall could set them straight.

If, Lynley’s point had been, they could rely upon Minshall to give them an accurate description in the first place. That was open to doubt until they saw how truthful his account was of the goings-on at the Canterbury Hotel.

Lynley led the way in. There was no lobby, just a corridor with a worn turkey runner and a pass-through window in a wall that seemed to open upon a reception office. The sound of aerosol spraying was emanating from this location, as was the heady eye-stinging odour of a substance that would have sent a huffer into raptures. They went to investigate.

There were no paper bags involved in what was going on. Instead, a twentysomething girl with what looked like a small chandelier dangling from one earlobe was squatting on the floor on an open tabloid, waterproofing a pair of boots. Hers, by the look of things: Her feet were bare.

Lynley had taken out his warrant card, but the receptionist did not look up. She was virtually ensconced in her position on the floor, fast becoming a victim of her aerosol can’s fumes.

“Hang on,” she said and sprayed away. She swayed dangerously on her heels.

“Bloody hell, get some air in this place.” Barbara strode back to the door and slung it open. When she returned to the reception office, the girl had dragged herself up off the floor.

“Whoa,” she said with a woozy laugh. “When they say do it in a ventilated place, they’re not kidding.” She reached for a registration card and plopped it on the counter along with a biro and a room key. “Fifty-five for the night, thirty by the hour. Or fifteen if you aren’t particular about the sheets. Which I wouldn’t recommend, by the way-the fifteen-pound option-but don’t mention I said that.” At that point, she finally took in the two people who’d come calling. It was clear she didn’t twig they were cops-despite Lynley’s identification dangling in plain sight from his fingers-because her glance went from Barbara to her companion to Barbara again, and her expression said of Lynley, Whatever floats your boat.

Barbara saved Lynley the embarrassment of having to disabuse the girl of her notion about their presence in the Canterbury Hotel. As she dug out her police identification, she said, “When we do it, we prefer the backseat of a car. Bit cramped to be sure, but definitely cheap.” She thrust her ID at the girl. “New Scotland Yard,” she said. “And dead dee-lighted to know you’re helping the neighbourhood cope with its ungovernable passions. This is Detective Superintendent Lynley, by the way.”

The girl’s eyes took in both warrant cards. She reached up and fingered the chandelier that dangled from her earlobe. “Sor-ry,” she said. “You know, I didn’t actually think the two of you-”

“Right,” Barbara cut in. “Let’s begin with the hours you work here. What are they?”

“Why?”

Lynley said, “Are you on duty at night?”

She shook her head. “I’m off at six. What’s going on? What’s happened?” It was clear that she’d been prepped on what to do should the rozzers ever come calling: She reached for the phone and said, “Let me get Mr. Tatlises for you.”

“He works reception at night?”

“He’s the manager. Hey! What’re you doing?” This last she said as Barbara reached over the reception counter and broke the connection on the phone.

“The night clerk will do just fine,” she told the girl. “Where is he?”

“He’s legal,” she said. “Everyone who works here is legal. There’s not a single person without papers, and Mr. Tatlises makes sure they all enroll in English classes as well.”

“A real upright member of society, he is,” Barbara said.

“Where can we find the night clerk?” Lynley asked. “What’s his name?”

“Asleep.”

“I’ve not heard that name before,” Barbara said. “What nationality is it?”

“What? He’s got a room here…That’s why. Look, he won’t want to be woken up.”

“We’ll do those honours for you, then,” Lynley said. “Where is it?”

“Top floor,” she said. “Forty-one. It’s a single. He doesn’t have to pay. Mr. Tatlises takes it out of his wages. Half price as well.” She said all this as if the information might be enough to keep them from speaking to the night clerk. As Lynley and Barbara headed for the lift, the girl reached for the phone. There was little doubt she was phoning either for reinforcements or to warn room 41 that the cops were on their way up.

The lift was a pre-World War I affair, a grilled cage that ascended at the dignified pace necessary for mystical assumptions into heaven. It was suitable for two individuals without luggage. But possession of luggage did not appear to be one of the qualifications for filling out a registration card in this hotel.

The door to 41 was open when they finally got there. The occupant was waiting for them, pyjamas on body and foreign passport in hand. He looked to be round twenty years old. He said, “Hello. How do you do. I am Ibrahim Selçuk. Mr. Tatlises is my uncle. I speak English little. My papers are in order.”

Like the words of the receptionist below, all of what he said was rote: lines you must recite if a cop asks you questions. The place was probably a hotbed of illegal immigrants, but that was something they were not concerned about at the moment as Lynley made clear to the man when he said, “We’re not involved in immigration. On the eighth, a young boy was brought to this hotel by an odd-looking man with yellow-white hair and dark glasses. An albino, we call him. No colour in his skin. The boy was young, blond-” Lynley showed Selçuk the picture of Davey Benton, which he took from his jacket pocket along with the mug shot taken of Minshall by the Holmes Street police. “He may have left in the company of another man who’d already booked a room here.”

Barbara added, “And this song and dance-young boys being brought to this place by the albino man and leaving later with some other bloke?-it’s supposedly happened over and over, Ibrahim, so don’t let’s try to pretend you haven’t seen the action.” She thrust the two e-fits at the night receptionist then, saying, “He might look like this. The man the young boy left with. Yes? No? Can you confirm?”

He said uneasily, “My English is little. I have passport here.” And he danced from one foot to another like someone needing to use the toilet. “People come. I give them card to sign and keys. They pay in cash, that is all.” He gripped the front of his pyjamas, in the area of his crotch. “Please,” he said, casting a look back over his shoulder.