Marlon shifted round on his barrel of a bum. "Di'n't say - "
"Have you wood carving tools?" Lynley said.
"I di'n't do nuffink to that tart! She was dead when I got there, wa'n't she."
"So you did go into the shelter by the chapel?" Isabelle said to the boy. "You admit you're the person our witnesses saw coming out of the shelter four days ago?"
The boy didn't confirm, but he didn't deny. Isabelle said, "What were you doing there?"
"I do the trees," he said. "An' there's no harm in it. Makes 'em pretty is all."
"I don't mean what were you doing in the cemetery," Isabelle told him. "I mean in the shelter. Why'd you go into the shelter?"
The boy swallowed. This was, it seemed, the crux of the matter. He looked at his father.
His father looked away.
Marlon whispered, "Magazine. It was ...See, I bought it an' wanted to have a glance and ..." He gazed at her desperately, casting a glance at Lynley as well. "It was only tha' when I saw them pitchers in the magazine ...them women ...You know."
"Marlon, are you trying to tell me you went into the shelter to masturbate over pictures of naked women?" Isabelle asked baldly.
He began to weep in earnest. His father said, "Fooking twat," and Isabelle shot him a look. Lynley said, "That'll do, Mr. Kay."
Marlon hid his face in his hands, pinching his cheeks with his fingers, saying, "I jus'
wanted ...So I went inside there to - you know - but there she was an' I got scared an' I run off.
I could see she was dead, couldn't I. There was bugs an' things an' her eyes were open an' the flies were crawling ...I know I shoulda done summat but I couldn't cos I ...cos I ...Cops would've asked what I was doing, like you're askin now, and I'd have to say like I'm sayin now and he already hates me and he would find out. I won't go to school. I won't go. I won't. But she was dead when I got there. She was dead. She was."
He was likely speaking the truth, Isabelle reckoned, as she couldn't imagine the boy having the bottle to commit an act of violence. He seemed the least aggressive child she'd ever encountered. But even a boy such as Marlon could snap, and one way or another he needed to be eliminated as a suspect.
She said, "All right, Marlon. I tend to think you might be telling the truth."
"I am!"
"I'm going to ask you further questions, though, and you're going to need to be calmer.
Can you manage that?"
His father blew a breath of air from his mouth. Not bloody likely would have been his words.
Marlon cast a fearful look at his father and then nodded, his eyes welling with more tears.
But he wiped his cheeks - he somehow made this a heroic gesture - and he sat up straight.
Isabelle went through the questions. Did he touch the body? No, he did not. Did he remove anything from the site? No, he did not. How near did he get to the body? He didn't know. Three feet? Four? He took a step or two inside the shelter but that was all cos he saw her an' ...Fine fine, Isabelle said, hoping to avoid another descent into hysteria. What happened then? He dropped the magazine and ran. He didn't mean to drop it. He didn't even know he'd dropped it. But when he saw he didn't have it with him, he was too scared to go back cos "I never seen a dead person. Not like that." He went on to say that she was all bloody down the front of her. Did he see a weapon? Isabelle asked him. He didn't even see where she was cut up, he told her. As far as he could tell, it looked to him like she was sliced up everywhere cos there was so much blood. Wouldn't a person have to be sliced up everywhere to have so much blood on 'em?
Isabelle redirected him, from inside the shelter to outside the shelter. True, it was at least a day after the killing itself when Marlon had come upon the body, as things turned out, but whomever he'd seen in the vicinity - whatever he'd seen in the vicinity - could be important to the investigation.
But he'd seen nothing. And when it came to Jemima Hastings' handbag or anything else she might have possessed, the boy