“Unless he brought it just after dawn,” Havers pointed out.

“Too risky,” Widdison said. “Commuters park on the lane and use the underground to get into town from here. He’d have to know that and plan accordingly. But he’d still run the risk of being seen by someone who decided to make the journey earlier than usual.”

“He does his homework, though,” Havers pointed out. “We know that from where he’s left the rest of them.”

Widdison looked unconvinced. He took them under the shelter and over to the body. It lay on its side but was otherwise dumped carelessly in the hollow created by the unearthed roots of the fallen beech. Its head was tucked into its chest; its arms windmilled out like someone frozen in the act of giving a signal.

This boy, Lynley saw, seemed younger than the others, although not by much. He was white as well: blond and extremely fair skinned, small and not particularly developed. At first glance, Lynley concluded-with relief-that he wasn’t one of theirs at all, that he and Havers needn’t have come this distance across London on someone’s whim. But when he squatted to have a better look, he saw the postmortem incision running down the boy’s chest and disappearing into the fold of his waist, while on his forehead, a crude symbol had been drawn in blood, brother to the symbol found on Kimmo Thorne.

Lynley glanced at the forensic pathologist, who was speaking into the microphone of a handheld tape recorder. “I’d like a look at his hands,” he said.

The man nodded. “I’ve done my bit. We’re ready to bag him,” and one of the team came forward to do so. They’d start by bagging the hands in paper, preserving any trace evidence from the killer that might be under the boy’s fingernails. From there they’d do the rest and when they moved the body, Lynley reckoned he’d get a better look at it.

That turned out to be the case. Rigor was present, but enough of the surface of the hands became visible when the body was lifted out of the hollow for Lynley to see that the palms were blackened from having been burnt. The navel was missing as well, chopped crudely out of the body.

“The Z that stands for Zorro,” Havers murmured.

She was right. They were indeed the signatures of their killer, despite the differences that Lynley could see were present on the body: There were no restraint marks on the wrists and the ankles, and the strangulation had been manual this time, leaving ugly dark bruises round the boy’s neck. There were other bruises as well, on the upper arms, extending down to the elbows, and along the spine, the thighs, and the waist. The largest bruise coloured the flesh from the temple down to the chin as well.

Unlike the others, Lynley concluded, this one boy had not gone gentle, which told him the killer had made his first error in his choice of victim. Lynley could only hope that the miscalculation left behind him a pile of evidence.

“He put up a fight,” Lynley murmured.

“No stun gun this time?” Havers asked.

They checked the body for the signature of that weapon as well. Lynley said, “It doesn’t appear so.”

“What d’you reckon that means? Would it be out of juice? Do they run out of it? They must, no?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps there wasn’t the chance to use it. It looks like things might not have gone according to plan.” He stood, nodded to those who stood waiting to bag the body, and returned to Widdison. “Anything in the area?” he asked.

“Two footprints beneath the boy’s head,” he said. “Protected from the rain. Could have been there earlier, but we’re taking casts anyway. We’re doing a perimeter search, but I reckon our real evidence is going to come from the body.”

Lynley left the DI with the instruction to get every statement from every house on Wood Lane over to him at New Scotland Yard as soon as possible. “That block of flats especially,” he said. “I agree with you. Someone has to have seen something. Or heard something. And have constables in place the rest of the day on either end of the street to grill commuters who come down from the underground station to fetch their cars.”

“Don’t expect to get much joy from that,” Widdison warned.

“Anything goes for joy at this point,” Lynley told him. He added the information about the van they were looking for. “Someone may have seen it,” he said.

Then he and Havers set off up the slope. Back on Wood Lane, they could see that the house-to-house was well in progress. Uniformed police were knocking on doors; others were standing in the shelter of porches, talking to inhabitants. Otherwise, no one else was on the pavement or in any front garden. The persistent rain was keeping everyone inside.

That was not the case at the barricade, however. More gawkers had gathered. Lynley waited while the sawhorse was moved once more, and he was thinking about what they’d seen in Queen’s Wood when Havers muttered, “Bloody hell, sir. He did it again,” and roused him from his thoughts.

He quickly saw what she was talking about. Just to the other side of the barricade, Hamish Robson gestured to them. At least, Lynley thought grimly, they’d managed to thwart AC Hillier in this: The constable standing watch had followed Lynley’s orders to the letter. Robson had no police identification; he would not be allowed beyond the barrier no matter what Sir David Hillier had told him to do.

Lynley lowered the window, and Robson worked his way over to the car. He said, “The constable here wouldn’t-”

“Those were my orders. You can’t go onto this crime scene, Dr. Robson. You shouldn’t have been allowed onto the last one.”

“But the assistant commissioner-”

“I’ve no doubt he rang you, but it’s just not on. I know you mean well. I also know you’re caught in the middle, one of us a rock and the other a hard place. I apologise for that. For that and the inconvenience to you, coming all this way. But as it is-”

“Superintendent.” Robson shivered, shoved his hands into his pockets. He’d obviously come in a hurry, without umbrella or raincoat. Great patches of damp extended across his shoulders, his spectacles were spotted with rain, and what little hair he had was sagging wetly round his face and into his forehead. “Let me help,” he said urgently. “It’s completely pointless to send me back to Dagenham when I’m already here, available to you.”

“That’s something you’ll have to take up with AC Hillier,” Lynley said, “the pointlessness of it.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Robson glanced round and nodded a few yards down the road. “Will you pull over there for a moment so we can talk about this?”

“I have nothing more to say.”

“Understood. But I have, you see, and I’d very much like you to hear me out.” He stepped back from the car in what seemed like a gesture of goodwill, one that left the decision up to Lynley: Drive off or cooperate. Robson said, “A few words. That’s all,” and he gave a wry smile. “I wouldn’t mind getting out of this rain. If you’ll let me get in the car, I promise to be gone the moment I’ve said my bit and heard your response to it.”

“And if I have no response?”

“You’re not that sort. So may I…?”

Lynley considered, then nodded sharply once. Havers said, “Sir,” in that uncharacteristically beseeching manner she used when she disapproved of a decision he’d taken. He said, “We may as well, Barbara. He’s here. He may have something we can use.”

“Crikey, are you-” She bit off her words as the back door opened and Hamish Robson sank into the car.

Lynley drove a short distance away, beyond the crowd. He pulled to the kerb, the engine still running and the wipers still moving rhythmically across the windscreen.

Robson didn’t fail to take notice of this. He said, “I’ll be quick, then. “I’d expect this crime scene to be different to the others. Not in all ways but in some. Am I right?”