This was proof that Mickey the Bone had been done in by the same method as Cyrus Wilkinson—if only I could figure out why.

I packaged up the lists for Leslie and gave them to Molly with strict instructions not to bite the courier when he came to call for them.

Back in the garage there was a note folded under the Jag’s windshield wiper. It read, in Nightingale’s surprisingly inelegant handwriting, Unsupervised use of the Jaguar is suspended until such time as the appropriate driving certification is presented. So Nightingale did know about the driving courses after all.

I took the Asbo—it gets better mileage anyhow.

CHEAM IS about as far southwest as you can get in London while officially staying in the capital. It’s another typical outer London village that acquired, in short order, a railway station, some posh detached villas in the late-Victorian style, and finally a smothering blanket of mock-Tudor semis built in the 1930s. Cheam is what the green belt was established to prevent happening to the rest of southeast England. Pictures of Cheam adorn the walls of planning offices of every Home County to serve as an awful warning. And that was before any black people moved into the area.

Chez Adjayi was a big detached Edwardian villa along a road lined with variations on that theme. Apart from a token oval of greenery, the front garden had been paved with concrete, the better to park a couple of big German cars conveniently in front of the house. I could read the family history in that house. Father and Mother had immigrated in the late 1960s, found jobs that they were wildly overqualified for, bought a run-down property in a relatively unfashionable area, and were now living off the fat of the property boom. Father would wear bespoke suits and be the man of the house; Mother would have a bedroom full of shoes and three mobile phones. The kids would be expected to become doctors, lawyers, or engineers in descending order of preference.

A young woman around my age opened the door and I guessed she was a sister or close cousin. She had the same big forehead, high cheekbones, and flat nose, although her face was plumper and rounder than Michael’s and she wore half-moon reading glasses with black enamel frames. She smiled when she opened the door and saw me, but the smile faded when I told her who I was. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms. I smelled perspiration and furniture polish. When she let me in I saw that the Hoover was sitting in the middle of the hallway and that the framed photographs that lined the walls had all been dusted and polished.

She invited me in and I asked her name.