This, it seemed, prompted him to speak. “I hope you see my cooperation for what it is, Constable.”

“And what would that be?”

“A fairly good indication that I wish to be helpful. I haven’t done anything to anyone.”

“Mr. Minshall, I’m dead chuffed to hear it,” Barbara said. “Open her up, please.”

Minshall fished a set of keys out of his overcoat. He opened the van and stepped back to let Barbara inspect its contents. These comprised boxes. Boxes upon boxes. The magician, in fact, appeared to be keeping the entire cardboard industry in business. Felt-pen markings identified the putative contents of what seemed like three dozen containers: “Cards & Coins”; “Cups, Dice, Hankie, Scarf & Rope”; “Videos”; “Books & Mags”; “Sex Toys”; “Gags.” Beneath all of these, however, Barbara could see that the floor of the van was carpeted. The carpet was frayed, and a curious dark stain shaped like antlers reached out from beneath the cards and coins box, suggesting not only more of a stain beneath but also-possibly-an attempt to hide it in the first place.

Barbara stepped back. She swung the doors closed. Minshall said, “Satisfied?,” and he sounded-to her ears-like a man relieved.

She said, “Not quite. Let’s have a look up front.”

He seemed as if he wanted to protest but thought better of it. With a mutter, he unlocked the driver’s door and opened it. Barbara said, “Not that one,” and indicated the passenger’s door instead.

Inside, the front of the van was a mobile rubbish tip, and Barbara sifted her way through food wrappers, Coke cans, ticket stubs, carpark stubs, and handouts of the sort one found placed beneath windscreen wipers after a stint of parking on a public street. It was, in short, a treasure trove of evidence. If Davey Benton-or any one of the other dead boys-had been in this van, there were going to be dozens of signs indicating that.

Barbara slid her hand under the passenger seat to see if there were more goodies hidden from the eye. She brought forth a plastic disk of the sort one gets when checking a coat somewhere, along with a pencil, two biros, and an empty videocassette case. She moved round to the other side of the car, where Minshall stood at the driver’s door, perhaps mistakenly thinking she intended to let him drive off into the sunset. She gave him the nod and he opened it for her. She slid her hand under the driver’s seat.

Her fingers made contact with several objects here as well. She brought out a small pocket torch-operational-and a pair of scissors-dull and suitable for cutting only butter. And finally a black-and-white photograph.

She looked down at this and then up at Barry Minshall. She turned it round, facing him, and held it to her chest. “D’you want to give me the story on this, Bar?” she asked him amiably. “Or shall I guess?”

His reply was immediate, and she could have laid money on its coming. He said, “I don’t know how that-”

“Barry, save the line for later. You’re going to need it.”

She told him to hand over his keys and she pulled her mobile phone from her bag. She punched in the numbers and waited for Lynley to take the call.

“UNTIL WE FIND that van from the CCTV film,” Lynley said, “and until we know why it was going into St. George’s Gardens in the middle of the night, I don’t want it broadcast.”

Winston Nkata looked up from the notes he was taking in his small, leather-bound book. He said, “Hillier’s going to blow-”

“That’s the risk we’ll have to take,” Lynley cut in. “We run a bigger risk-a double risk-if the news of that van goes out prematurely. We tip our hand to the killer or, if that van on the tape does have a reason for being there, we’ve just predisposed the public to be thinking in terms of a red van when the actual vehicle could be something else.”

“That residue on the bodies, though,” Nkata said. “It says Ford Transit, doesn’ it?”

“But not the colour. So I’d like to avoid the whole matter for now.”

Nkata still didn’t look convinced. He’d come to Lynley’s office for the final word on what was going to be broadcast on Crimewatch-having been entrusted with the task by AC Hillier who, it appeared, had given up micromanaging the investigation for the time it was probably going to take him to decide what he wanted to wear on television in a few hours-and he looked down at his meagre notes and no doubt wondered how he was going to relay this information to their superior officer without raising his ire.

That, Lynley decided, could not be his worry. They’d given Hillier plenty of details to use on the programme, and he trusted that Hillier’s need to seem liberal in matters of race would keep him from taking out whatever frustration he had on Nkata. Nonetheless, he said, “I’ll take the heat on this, Winnie,” and added as a means of giving the DS further ammunition, “Until we hear from Barbara about that van she saw the magician driving, we hold back. So go with that e-fit from Square Four Gym and the reconstruction of Kimmo Thorne’s abduction. I expect we’ll get a result from that.”

A sharp knock on the door, and DI Stewart popped his head inside Lynley’s office. He said, “A word, Tommy?” and nodded a hello to Nkata, adding, “Got your face powdered for the cameras? Word has it your fan mail’s doubling every day.”

Nkata took the teasing with resignation. He said, “I’m forwarding it all on to you, man. Since the wife’s had enough, you’ll need a dating service, right? Fact, there’s a special letter come from a bird in Leeds. Twenty stone, she says, but I ’xpect you can handle that much woman.”

Stewart didn’t smile. “Sod you,” he said.

“Honours returned.” Nkata got to his feet and headed out of the office. Stewart took his place in one of the two chairs in front of Lynley’s desk. He tapped his fingers against his thigh, in the rhythmical pattern he adopted whenever he didn’t have something in his hands to play with. He was, Lynley knew from experience, a man who could dish it out but not take it. “That was a bit below the belt,” Stewart said.

“We’re all losing our sense of humour, John.”

“I don’t like my personal life-”

“No one does. Have you got something for me?”

Stewart appeared to consider this before he spoke, pinching the crease in his trousers and removing a speck of lint from his knee. “Two pieces of news. An ID on the Quaker Street body, courtesy of Ulrike Ellis’s list of missing Colossus kids. He was called Dennis Butcher. Fourteen years old. From Bromley.”

“Did we have him on the list of missing persons?”

Stewart shook his head. “Parents are divorced. Dad thought he was with Mum and her lover. Mum thought he was with Dad, Dad’s girlfriend, her two kids, and their new baby. So he was never reported missing. At least, that’s the story they tell.”

“Whereas the truth is…?”

“Good riddance, as far as they were concerned. We had the devil of a time getting either one of them to help ID the body, Tommy.”

Lynley looked away from Stewart and out of the window, through which the lights of nighttime London were beginning to glow. “I’d very much like someone to explain the human race to me. Fourteen years old. Why was he sent to Colossus?”

“Assault with a flick knife. He went to Youth Offenders first.”

“Another soul needing purification, then. He fits the mould.” Lynley turned back to the DI. “And the other piece of news?”

“We’ve finally come up with the Boots where Kimmo Thorne bought his makeup.”

“Have you indeed? Where is it? Southwark?”

Stewart shook his head. “We watched every tape from every Boots in the vicinity of his home and then in the area of Colossus. We got nothing. So we had another look at the paperwork on Kimmo and saw he hung round Leicester Square. It didn’t take long from there. Plotted out a quarter-mile radius from the square and found a Boots in James Street. There he was, buying his slap in the company of some bloke looking like the Grim Reaper gone Gothic.”