“Was the car locked when you left it, sir?”

“Yes. No. Look—I’m not sure. I already told you…”

“You’re not sure? Had you been drinking, sir?”

“No. I goddamn well hadn’t been drinking. What is this? I already told you. I was driving back to London, from here, and—and I got taken short. I needed to take a leak. L-e-a-k—you’ve got that?”

The constable made a note of this information, his face impassive. Rowland listened with closer attention. This was a war of attrition, and he knew who would win.

“So I get out to take a quick piss, okay?” Mitchell went on. “I’ve driven off the main road. I’m on this track, in the middle of nowhere. Up ahead of me is this barn. I can see lights, hear music—so I think I’ll check it out, see what’s going on. What do I find? The place is crawling with hippies. I take one look—I’ve left the car maybe two, three minutes—and what do I find when I get back? The sodding car’s gone. So I do the obvious. I go back. I ask around. I make some inquiries—like have any of you deadbeats seen a thirty-thousand-quid BMW recently? I get nowhere. There’s all these bleeding kids milling around. I give up, start walking back down the track, and what do I find? They’ve pinched my sodding wallet as well. No money. No plastic. Put it this way—it didn’t improve my mood. So, what I’d like to know now is—are you going to report this vehicle as stolen, or piss around—”

The constable made a note. He said: “Time, sir? This would have been when exactly?”

Rowland, watching with keen interest now, knew the question was not idle. Mitchell sensed it as well. His manner at once became evasive.

“Time? I’m not sure. Midnight—maybe a bit before.”

“It’s past nine now, sir.”

“So?”

“Why didn’t you report the matter earlier?”

“Because I was stuck miles up some sodding track, in the dark. Because I had to damn well walk miles, because when I got here, when I finally got here, a whole lot of jerks kept me hanging around—”

Mitchell stopped. During this last peroration, the constable had picked up a telephone and said a few words. Replacing the receiver, he emerged from behind his counter and took Mitchell by the arm.

“If you’d come through here. One of the detective sergeants would like a word.”

Mitchell began protesting loudly. Rowland saw him eye the door, as if wondering whether to bolt for it. Clearly, he thought better of it. He disappeared into an adjoining room. Through the closed door his voice could be heard for a while, blustering. Then he fell silent. Rowland thought: they’re telling him about the girl.

He leaned back against the wall and stared dully at the posters. Mitchell had been lying, that was obvious. He wondered whether he would prove to know anything useful, but his mind would not fix on that question, or any other. He felt a deepening black despondency, and he knew where this would lead his thoughts next if he did not guard against it: back to Washington, D.C., to a street near Dupont Circle, and to a different kind of drug killing that had happened six years before.