Lynley told her to carry on digging in the background of the bath-salts vendor from the Stables Market, the bloke called John Miller who’d seemed overly interested in the goings-on at Barry Minshall’s stall.

In the meantime, John Stewart had assigned five constables-this was all he could spare, the DI told Lynley-to handle the post-Crimewatch phone calls about the e-fit sketch and other information. Countless viewers apparently knew someone who bore a marked resemblance to the baseball-capped man who’d been seen in Square Four Gym. The constables had the job of sorting the wheat from the chaff among the callers. Cranks and crackpots loved the opportunity to make themselves important or to have a bit of revenge on a neighbour they were rowing with. What better way than to inform the police that one person or another “wants checking out.”

Lynley went from the incident room to his office, where he found a report from SO7 sitting on his desk. He had fished his spectacles from his jacket pocket and started to read it when the phone rang and Dorothea Harriman’s hushed voice told him that AC Hillier was heading in his direction.

“He’s got someone with him,” Harriman said sotto voce. “I don’t know who it is, but he doesn’t look like a cop.”

A moment later, Hillier entered the room. He said, “I’m told you’re holding someone.”

Lynley removed his reading glasses. He glanced at Hillier’s companion before he replied: a thirtyish man wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson. Definitely, he thought, not a cop.

He said to the man, “We’ve not met…?”

Hillier said impatiently, “This is Mitchell Corsico, The Source. Our embedded reporter. What’s this about a suspect, Superintendent?”

Lynley carefully set the report from SO7 facedown on his desk. He said, “Sir, if I could have a private word?”

“That,” Hillier told him, “is not going to be necessary.”

Corsico said hastily, with a glance from one man to the other, “Let me just step outside.”

“I said-”

“Thank you.” Lynley waited till the journalist had gone into the corridor before he went on to Hillier, “You said forty-eight hours before the journalist would come onboard. You’ve not given me that.”

“Take it above my head, Superintendent. This is not down to me.”

“Then who?”

“The Directorate of Public Affairs made a proposal. I happen to think it’s a good one.”

“I’ve got to protest. This is not only irregular, it’s also dangerous.”

Hillier didn’t look pleased with this remark. “You listen to me,” he said. “The press can’t get much hotter. This story is dominating every paper and every news outlet on television as well. Unless we get lucky and some hothead Arab group decides to bomb Grosvenor Square, we don’t have a prayer of escaping scrutiny. Mitch is on our side-”

“You can’t possibly think that,” Lynley countered. “And you assured me the reporter would come from a broadsheet, sir.”

“And,” Hiller went on, “his idea has merit. His editor phoned the DPA with it and the DPA gave it the go-ahead.” He turned to the door and called out, “Mitch? Come back in here, please,” which Corsico did, Stetson shoved to the back of his head.

Corsico echoed Lynley’s sentiments. He said, “Superintendent, God knows this is irregular, but you’re not to worry. I want to begin with a profile piece. To bring the public into the picture about the investigation through the people involved in it. I want to start with you. Who you are and what you’re doing here. Believe me, no detail about the investigation proper will be in the story if you don’t want it there.”

“I’ve no time to be interviewed by anyone,” Lynley said.

Corsico held up a hand. “Not to worry,” he said. “I’ve considerable information already-the assistant commissioner has seen to that-and all I ask of you is your permission to be the fly on your wall.”

“I can’t give you that.”

“I can,” Hillier told him. “Can and do. I have confidence in you, Mitch. I know you’re aware of how delicate this situation is. Come along and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the squad. You’ve not seen an incident room, have you? I think you’ll find it interesting.”

With that, Hillier left with Corsico in tow. Incredulous, Lynley watched them go. He’d stood when the assistant commissioner and the journalist had entered the room, but now he sat. He wondered if everyone in the Directorate of Public Affairs had gone mad.

Who to phone? he asked himself. How to protest? He thought about Webberly, wondering if the superintendent could intercede from his convalescence. He didn’t see how. Hillier was being used by the higher-ups now, and he didn’t appear able to question that. The only person who might put the brakes on this lunacy was the commissioner himself, but what would that gain in the long run save Lynley most likely being pulled from the case?

Profiles of the investigators, he said to himself in derision. God in heaven, what would it be next? Glossy photos in Hello! or an appearance on some inane chat show?

He took up the SO7 report, knowing only that the squad of investigators would be just about as happy with this development as he was. He put on his glasses to see what forensics had for him.

Davey Benton’s fingernails had yielded skin beneath them, product of his desperate fight with his killer. The sexual assault had yielded semen. There would be DNA evidence from both of these results, the first DNA evidence to be gleaned from any one of the bodies.

The corpse had also yielded an unusual hair-Lynley’s heart leapt when he read the word unusual and his thoughts went at once to Barry Minshall’s-and this was currently undergoing analysis. It did not, however, appear to be a human hair, so consideration would have to be given to whether it might have come from the location in which the body had been dumped.

Finally, the shoe prints at the site in Queen’s Wood had been identified. They were from a Church’s, size nine. The style was called Shannon.

Lynley read this last bit gloomily. That narrowed the point of purchase down to every high street in London.

He punched in the extension for Dorothea Harriman. Would she get a set of this latest SO7 paperwork over to Simon St. James? he asked her.

Ever efficient, she’d already done so, adding that he had a phone call coming in from the Holmes Street station. Did he want to take it? And, by the way, was she meant to ignore this Mitchell Corsico bloke when he asked questions about what it was like to have an aristo for a guv? Because, she confessed, when it came to having an aristo for a guv, she’d been thinking that there was a way to hoist the assistant commissioner upon…“his own whatever,” was how she put it.

“Petard,” Lynley said, and he saw her point. That was the answer, and it was simplicity itself, requiring no higher-up to do anything at all. “Dee, you’re a genius. Yes. Feel free to give him grist by the bushel. That should keep him occupied for days on end, so ladle it on. Mention Cornwall. The family pile. A row of servants playing Manderley under the direction of a brooding housekeeper. Phone my mother and ask her to arrange to have my brother look suitably drug addled should Corsico appear on her doorstep. Phone my sister and warn her to bolt her doors lest he show up in Yorkshire and want to examine her dirty linen. Can you think of anything else?”

“Eton and Oxford? A rowing blue?”

“Hmm. Yes. Rugby would have been better, wouldn’t it? More laddish. But let’s stay with the facts, the better to keep him occupied and away from the incident room. We can’t rewrite history no matter how much we’d like to.”

“Shall I call you his lordship? The earl? What?”

“Don’t go too far or he’ll see what we’re doing. He doesn’t seem stupid.”

“Right.”

“Now for Holmes Street station. Put them through, if you will.”