She said, “Five of our boys are dead, Griff. Possibly six, because there’s another been found this morning. That’s what’s wrong.”

“But there’s no connection.”

“How can you say that? Five boys dead and what they all have in common besides trouble with the law is enrollment here.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I know that. I meant this Dennis Butcher thing. There’s no connection. He wasn’t one of mine. I didn’t even know him. So you and I…well, no one’s going to need to know.”

She stared at him. She wondered how she had failed to see…What was it about physical beauty? she asked herself. Did it make the beholder stupid as well as blind and deaf?

She said, “Yes. Well.” And added, “Have a nice evening, won’t you,” and picked up her pen and bent her head to her work.

He said her name once more, but she didn’t respond. And she didn’t look up as he left the office.

But his message remained with her after he was gone. These murders had nothing to do with him. She thought about this. Couldn’t it also be the case that they had nothing to do with Colossus? And if that was the case, wasn’t it true that by attempting to root out a killer from the organisation, Ulrike was turning a spotlight upon all of them, encouraging the police to dig deeper into everyone’s background and movements? And if she did that, wasn’t she also thereby asking the police to ignore everything that could point to the real killer, who would go on killing as the fancy took him?

The truth was that there had to be yet another connection among the boys, and it had to be a connection beyond Colossus. The police had so far failed to see this, but they would. They definitely would. Just so long as she held them off and kept their noses out of Elephant and Castle.

NOT A SOUL was on the pavement when Lynley made the turn into Lady Margaret Road in Kentish Town. He parked in the first available space he came to, in front of an RC church on the corner, and he walked up the street in search of Havers. He found her smoking in front of Barry Minshall’s home. She said, “He called for the duty solicitor straightaway once I got him to the station,” and handed over a photo in a plastic evidence bag.

Lynley looked at it. It was much as Havers had picturesquely described it on the phone to him. Sodomy and fellatio. The boy appeared to be about ten.

Lynley felt ill. The child could be anyone, anywhere, anytime, and the men taking their pleasure from him were completely unidentifiable. But that would be the point, wouldn’t it. Satisfying the urge was all there was to monsters. To them, it was merely a case of hunter and prey. He gave the picture back to Havers and waited for his stomach to settle before he gazed at the house.

Number 16 Lady Margaret Road was a sad affair, a brick-and-masonry building of three floors and a basement with every inch of its masonry and wood in need of paint. It had no formal house number attached to its door or to the squared-off columns that defined its front porch. Rather, 16 had been scrawled in marking pen on one of these pillars, along with the letters A, B, C, and D and the appropriate up and down arrows indicating where those respective flats could be found: in the basement or in the house proper. One of London’s great plane trees stood along the pavement, filling the small front garden with a covering of dead and decomposing leaves as thick as a mattress. The leaves obscured everything: from the sagging, low front wall of brick to the narrow path leading up to the steps, to the steps themselves: five of them which climbed to a blue front door. Two panels of translucent glass ran vertically up the middle half of this, one of them badly cracked and asking to be broken altogether. There was no knob, only a dead bolt surrounded by wood worn down by thousands of hands having pushed the door inward.

Minshall lived in flat A, which was in the basement. Its means of access was down a flight of steps, round the side of the house, and along a narrow passage where rainwater pooled and mould grew at the base of the building. Just outside the door was a cage holding birds. Doves. They cooed softly at the human presence.

Lynley had the warrants; Havers had the keys. She handed them over and let him do the honours. They stepped inside into utter darkness.

Finding a light was a matter of stumbling through what seemed to be a sitting room that had been thoroughly turned over by a burglar. But when Havers said, “Got a light here, sir,” and switched on a dim bulb on a desk, Lynley saw that the condition of the place was due only to slovenly housekeeping.

“What d’you reckon that smell is?” Havers asked.

“Unwashed male, dodgy plumbing, semen, and poor ventilation.” Lynley donned latex gloves; she did the same. “That boy was here,” he said. “I can feel it.”

“The one in the picture?”

“Davey Benton. What’s Minshall claiming?”

“He’s plugged it. I thought we’d get him on the CCTV cameras in the market, but the cops in Holmes Street told me they’re just for show. No film inside them. There’s a bloke there-he’s called John Miller-who could probably ID a photo of Davey, though. If he’ll talk at all.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I think he’s bent himself. Towards underage boys. I got the impression if he fingers Minshall, Minshall fingers him. Scratch mine, scratch yours.”

“Wonderful,” Lynley murmured grimly. He worked his way across the room and found another light by a sagging sofa. He switched it on and turned to look at what they had.

“Pay dirt in a saucepan,” Havers said.

He couldn’t disagree. A computer that doubtless had an Internet connection. A video player with racks of tapes beneath it. Magazines with graphic pictures of sex, others filled with S &M photos. Unwashed crockery. The paraphernalia of magic. They picked through this at different parts of the room till Havers said, “Sir? Do you make of these what I make of these? They were on the floor beneath the desk.”

She was holding up what appeared to be several tea towels. They were stiffened in spots, as if they’d been used while sitting at the computer, for matters having nothing to do with drying plates and glasses.

“He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” Lynley moved into what was a sleeping alcove, where a bed bore sheets of much the same appearance and condition as the tea towels. The place was a treasure trove of DNA evidence. If Minshall had engaged in his frolics with anyone other than his computer and the palm of his hand, there was going to be enough indication of that here to send him away for decades, if the anyone in question was an underage boy.

On the floor next to the bed was yet another magazine, limp with someone’s continual inspection of it. Lynley picked it up and leafed through it quickly. Raw photos of women, nude, legs splayed. Come-hither looks, wet lips, fingers stimulating, entering, caressing. It was sex reduced to base release and nothing else. It depressed Lynley to his core.

“Sir, I’ve got something.”

Lynley returned to the sitting room, where Havers had been going through the desk. She’d found a stack of Polaroid pictures, which she handed over.

They were not pornography. Instead, in each of them a different young boy was kitted out in magician’s togs: cape, top hat, black trousers and shirt. Occasionally a wand under the arm for effect. They were all engaged in what seemed to be the same trick: something with scarves and a dove. There were thirteen of them altogether: white boys, black boys, mixed-race boys. Davey Benton was not among them. As for the others, the parents and relatives of the dead boys would have to look them over.

“What’s he said about that photo in his van?” Lynley asked when he had flipped through the Polaroids a second time.