as they passed it: rubbish on the pavements; bleak storefronts with grimy plastic signs naming each establishment; women dressed in black bedsheets with slits for their eyes; sad-looking displays of fruit and veg outside greengrocers; video rental shops; William Hill betting lounges ...Where the hell were they?
"Isabelle? Are you there?" Bob asked. "Have I lost you? Is the connection - "
Yes, she thought. That's exactly it. The connection's broken. She closed her phone.
When it rang again a moment later, she let it do so till her voice mail picked it up. Sunday lunch, she thought. She could picture it: Bob presiding over the joint of beef, Sandra simpering somewhere nearby - although truth to tell, Sandra didn't simper and she was a more than decent sort, for which Isabelle was actually grateful, all things considered - the twins scrubbed and shiny and perhaps just a little perplexed at this modern definition of family that they were experiencing with Mummy, Dad, and stepmum gathered round the dining table as if it happened every day of the week. Roast beef, Yorkshire pud, and sprouts being handed round and everyone waiting for everyone else to be served and grace to be said by whoever said it, because Isabelle didn't know and didn't want to know and damn well did know that there was no way in bloody hell she was going to put herself through Sunday lunch at her former husband's house, because he didn't mean well, he was out to punish her or to blackmail her further and she couldn't face that or face her boys.
You don't want to threaten me. You don't want to take this to court, Isabelle.
She said abruptly to Lynley, "Where in God's name are we, Thomas? How long did it take you to be able to find your way round this bloody place?"
A glance only. He was too well bred to mention the phone call.
He said, "You'll sort it out faster than you think. Just avoid the Underground."
"I'm a member of the hoi polloi, Thomas."
"I didn't mean it that way," he said easily. "I meant that the Underground - the map of the Underground, actually - bears no relation to the actual layout of the city. It's printed as it is to make it understandable. It shows things north, south, east, or west of each other when that might not necessarily be the case. So take the bus instead. Walk. Drive. It's not as impossible as it seems. You'll sort it out quickly enough."
She doubted that. It wasn't that one area looked exactly like the next. On the contrary, one area was generally quite distinct from the next. The difficulty was in sussing out how they related each to the other: why a landscape of dignified Georgian buildings should suddenly morph into an area of tenements. It simply made no sense.
When they came upon Stoke Newington, she was unprepared. There it was before her, recognisable by a flower shop that she remembered from her earlier journey, housed in a building with WALKER BROS. FOUNT PEN SPECIALISTS painted onto the bricks between its first and second floors. This would be Stoke Newington Church Street, so the cemetery was just up ahead. She congratulated herself on recalling that much. She said, "The main entrance is on the high street, to the left, on the corner."
That was where Lynley parked, and they went into the information office just outside the gates. There they explained their purpose to a wizened female volunteer, and Isabelle brought out the e-fit that had prompted the phone call to New Scotland Yard. This individual had not made the call - "That would likely have been Mr. Fluendy," she said, "I'm Mrs. Littlejohn" - but she recognised the e-fit herself.
"I expect that's the boy does the carving, that is," she said. "I hope you lot are here to arrest him cos we been ringing the local coppers 'bout that carving since my granny was a girl, let me tell you. You come 'ere, you two. I'll show you what I'm talking about."
She shooed them out of the information office, hung a sign on the door indicating to the nonexistent hordes of visitors that she'd return momentarily, and toddled into the cemetery. They followed. She took them to one of the trees that Isabelle had seen on her first visit to the place.
Its trunk was carved with an elaborate design of quarter moon and stars with clouds obscuring part of the latter. The carving went all the