So what could she do? She was marooned in London for a few days, which wasn’t an unpleasant situation. Normally, she would invite Raymond down for a mini-break, but he was away in America for meetings in advance of an important US exhibition coming up soon. She could do some shopping, go to the Picasso exhibition at the Tate Modern, try to get some last-minute theater tickets. Shakespeare at The Globe, perhaps? But no. She remembered the last time she’d been there, trapped at the far end of a row, feeling claustrophobic and unable to escape a dreadful production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It had been more like a midsummer night’s nightmare.

Anyway, there were plenty of diversions for her in London, but the main thing, she realized, was to work out what she could do about Hawkins and Keane. Danvers and Deborah wouldn’t tell her anything, that was for certain, and she didn’t really know where to start. She had drawn a blank following Hawkins on those few occasions over the last months she had been able to do so, but perhaps if she applied herself now, with so much free time on her hands, she might be able to find out more. At least she could make a start by going to have a look at his burned-out house.

UNLIKE THE numerous television depictions of large open-plan offices crowded with scruffy detectives in a fug of cigarette smoke, shirtsleeves rolled up, ties askew, resting the backs of their thighs against desks overflowing with unfinished paperwork, Styrofoam coffee cups in hand and phones constantly ringing, there were only four people present at the Tuesday morning briefing in the boardroom of Eastvale Regional HQ, and all were seated, none smoking.

The room was wood-paneled with ornate ceiling cornices, a chandelier and a large and highly polished oval table. The accoutrements were all present—the large flat-screen TV set, the ubiquitous whiteboards plastered with photographs of the victim from all angles, indecipherable scrawls and arrows linking one thing to another. And the coffee cups, not Styrofoam but paper. From large gilt-framed oil paintings on the walls, nineteenth-century wool barons with mutton-chop sideboards and roast-beef complexions watched over the proceedings.

Banks gathered up his notes. He had enjoyed his dinner with Joanna MacDonald the previous evening. When she let her guard down even just a little, she was charming and entertaining company—funny, sharp, intelligent—wise, even. He wondered again, as he often had, why she so rarely allowed herself the lapse, kept herself on such a tight rein. After dinner, he had got home in time for a fairly early night, with very little to drink, and as a result he felt unusually refreshed that morning.

“As of now,” he began, “we still have nothing much to go on. The boy looks about thirteen years old, he’s dark-skinned, maybe of Middle Eastern heritage, but he could have grown up here, for all we know. He’s been stabbed four times, and we found a small amount of cocaine in his jeans pocket. Most likely he didn’t live locally, or the odds are that we’d have located someone who would have seen him around. I know, as you all do, that the East Side Estate in general can be pretty uncommunicative, if not actively against us on occasion, but though there are plenty of drugs circulating, there are few murders there, and it’s my sense that the people are in shock. I don’t believe everyone we’ve talked to so far is lying about not knowing the boy.”