The driver doesn't speak, but he has no trouble understanding her directions in English. The car heads south, slowly winding its way through the evening streets. Mo busies herself with the laptop, a route finder program, and a small charm on the end of a necklace, which she dangles above the screen: a ward, taken from around her neck. "It's along here, somewhere," she says as the car cruises yet another twisting residential street, where large houses are set back behind tall hedges. "Whoa, we've gone past it. Okay, pull in here." She pulls out her phone and speed-dials a number.

"Yes?" Angleton is alert.

"I'm in Hazlehurst Road, near Lambeth cemetery, with Nikolai and his driver. Tracking Bob's personal phone. How soon can you meet me here?"

"Hold on." Pause. "We'll be there in fifteen minutes. Rolling now. Can you wait?"

Mo glances sidelong at Panin, who shakes his head slowly. "I don't think so," she says. "Nikolai has urgent business elsewhere." She pulls the door latch, and it swings open with the sluggish momentum of concealed armor plate. She extends one foot to touch the pavement: "I'll be discreet."

"Good-bye, Dr. O'Brien. And good luck."

Most of the houses on this road are detached, sitting in pricey splendor on plots of their own, a few down-market Siamese-twin semis lowering the millionaire row tone. It's London, but upmarket enough that the houses have private drives and garages. Mo walks slowly back along the pavement until she comes level with the hedge outside a semi with a built-in garage, probably dating to the mid-1930s. The ward throbs in her hand as she reluctantly fastens the fine silver chain around her neck and tucks it in. This is the place. She's sure of it.

She pulls out her phone, dials again, says, "Number thirty-four," then puts it away. Then she opens her go-bag and pulls out a pair of goggles. She pulls them on and flicks a switch. Then she stalks around the side of the house.

There is a bad smell from the drains out back, and the lawn is un-mown. The hedge has not been trimmed: it looms over the over-long grass like the dark and wild beard of the god of neglect. The windows of the house are dark, and not merely because no lights shine within. It's strangely difficult to see anything inside. Mo stares at the flagstoned patio beneath the French doors through her goggles. They are goggles of good and evil, part of the regular working equipment of the combat epistemologist, and their merciless contrast reveals the stains of an uneasy conscience mixed with the cement that binds the stones: it's an upmarket Cromwell Street scene, she realizes, her stomach churning. The police forensic teams will be busy here later in the week, as the tabloid reporters buzz round their heads like bluebottles attracted to the rotting cadavers beneath their feet.