“Five…? You can’t possibly conclude…I was told…Ulrike said you’d come here-”

“About Kimmo, yeah. But that’s just one of two dead bodies with names,” Barbara said.

“But you said that Sean…Sean’s only missing, isn’t he? He’s not dead…You don’t know…”

“We’ve a body this morning that could be Sean, and I’m sure Ulrike clued you in on that. Beyond that, we’ve got a kid called Jared Salvatore identified and three others in line to be claimed by someone. Five in all.”

He didn’t say anything, but he seemed to be holding his breath for some reason, and Barbara wondered what that meant. He finally murmured, “Jesus.”

“What’s happened to the rest of your assessment kids, Mr. Strong?” Barbara asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How closely do you follow them when they’re done with their first two weeks at this place?”

“I don’t. I haven’t. I mean, they go on to their instructors next. If they want to go on, that is. The instructors keep tabs on how they’re doing, and they report in to Ulrike. The whole team meets every two weeks and we talk, and Ulrike herself counsels the kids having trouble.” He frowned. He tapped his knuckles on his desk. “If these other kids turn out to be ours…Someone’s trying to discredit Colossus,” he told her. “Or one of us. Someone’s trying to get at one of us.”

“You think that’s the case?” Barbara asked.

“If even one other of the bodies comes from here, what else is there to think?”

“That kids are in danger all over London,” Barbara said, “but that they’re really up against it if they end up here.”

“Like we’re setting out to kill them, you mean?” Strong’s question was outraged.

Barbara smiled and flipped her notebook closed. “Your words, not mine, Mr. Strong,” she said.

REVEREND BRAM SAVIDGE and his wife lived in a West Hampstead neighbourhood that belied the church leader’s we-are-of-the-people demeanour. It was a small house, true. But it was far more than anyone whom Lynley had seen either dishing out the food or eating it at Plugged Inn to the Lord could afford. And Savidge led the way there in a late-model Saab. As DC Havers would have happily pointed out: Someone round here wasn’t hurting for lolly.

Savidge waited for Lynley to find a place for the Bentley on the tree-lined street. He stood on the front step of his house, looking vaguely biblical with his caftan blowing in the winter breeze, coatless despite the frigid winter weather. When Lynley finally joined him, he sorted out three locks on the front door and opened it. He called, “Oni? I’ve brought a visitor, darling.”

He didn’t call out about Sean, Lynley noted. Not “Has the boy phoned?” Not “Any word from Sean?” Just “I’ve brought a visitor, darling,” and in a tentative manner that sounded somehow like a warning and was completely out of character for the man Lynley had been speaking with so far.

There was no immediate reply to Savidge’s call. He said to Lynley, “Wait here,” and directed him to the sitting room. He himself went to a staircase and climbed quickly to the first floor. Lynley heard him moving along a corridor.

He took a moment to gaze round the sitting room, which was simply fitted out with well-made furniture and a brightly patterned rug. The walls held old documents, framed and mounted, and as above him doors opened and closed in rapid succession, Lynley went to examine these. One was an antique bill of lading, apparently from a ship called the Valiant Sheba whose cargo had been twenty males, thirty-two females-eighteen of whom were documented as “breeding”-and thirteen children. Another was a letter written in copperplate on stationery that bore “Ash Grove, nr Kingston” as its letterhead. Faded with time, this proved difficult to read, but Lynley made out “excellent stud potential” and “if you can control the brute.”

“My thrice-great-grandfather, Superintendent. He didn’t quite take to slavery.”

Lynley turned. In the doorway, Savidge stood with a girl at his side. “Oni, my wife,” he said. “She’s asked to be introduced.”

It was hard for Lynley to believe he was looking at Savidge’s wife, for Oni appeared no older than sixteen, if that. She was thin, long necked, and African to the core. Like her husband, her manner of dress was ethnic, and she carried an unusual musical instrument in her arms, its belly not unlike a banjo, but with a tall bridge that lifted more than a dozen strings high up.

One glance at her explained a great deal to Lynley. Oni was exquisite: like midnight unblemished, with hundreds of years of blood untarnished by miscegenation. She was what Savidge himself could never be because of the Valiant Sheba. She was also the last thing a rational man would want to leave alone with a group of teenage boys.

Lynley said, “Mrs. Savidge.”

The girl smiled and nodded. She looked to her husband as if for guidance. She said, “You might wanting?,” and halted, as if sorting through a catalogue of words that she knew and grammar whose rules she barely understood.

He said, “This is about Sean, darling. We don’t mean to disturb your practice with the kora. Why don’t you go on with it down here while I take the policeman up to Sean’s room?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I will be playing, then.” She went to the sofa and placed the kora carefully on the floor. As they were about to leave her, she said, “It is very sunless today, no? Another month passes. Bram, I…discover…No, not discover isn’t…I learn this morning…”

Savidge hesitated. Lynley discerned a change in him, like tension released. He said, “We’ll talk later, then, Oni.”

She said, “Yes. And the other as well? Again?”

“Perhaps. The other.” Quickly, he directed Lynley to the stairs. He led the way to a room at the back of the house. When they were within it, he seemed to feel the need to explain. He shut the door and said, “We’re trying for a baby. No luck so far. That’s what she meant.”

“That’s rough,” Lynley said.

“She’s worried about it. Worried that I might…I don’t know…discard her or something? But she’s perfectly healthy. She’s perfectly formed. She’s-” Savidge stopped, as if he realised how close he was to describing someone’s breeding potential himself. He settled on changing course altogether, and he said, “Anyway. This is Sean’s room.”

“Did you ask your wife if he’s turned up? Phoned? Sent a message?”

“She doesn’t answer the phone,” Savidge said. “Her English isn’t good enough. She lacks confidence.”

“Anything else?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean did you ask her about Sean?”

“I didn’t need to. She would have told me. She knows I’m worried.”

“What’s her relationship with the boy?”

“What’s that got to do with-”

“Mr. Savidge, I’ve got to ask,” Lynley said, his gaze steady. “She’s obviously much younger than you.”

“She’s nineteen years old.”

“Much closer in age to the boys you’ve sheltered than to yourself, am I right?”

“This isn’t about my marriage, my wife, or my situation, Superintendent.”

Oh, but it is, Lynley thought. He said, “You’re what? Twenty years older than she? Twenty-five years older? And the boys were what age?”

Savidge seemed to grow larger, indignation colouring his reply. “This is about a missing boy. In a circumstance in which other boys of a similar age have gone missing, if the newspapers are anything to go by. So if you think I’m going to let you misdirect my concerns because you lot have botched an investigation, you’d better change course.” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he went to a bookcase that held a small CD player and a rank of paperback books that looked untouched. From the top of this, he took up a photograph in a plain wooden frame. He thrust it at Lynley.

In the picture, Savidge himself in his African garb stood with his arm round the shoulders of a solemn-looking boy wearing an overlarge tracksuit. The boy had a head of germinant dreadlocks and a wary expression, like a dog’s too often returned to his cage at the Battersea shelter after a walk. He was very dark, only a little lighter than Savidge’s wife. He was also, unmistakably, the boy whose body they’d found that morning.