There, Wood Lane veered to the northeast, bisecting the southern portion of the park. The local police made a strong presence at the scene, having blocked off the end of the street with sawhorses where four police constables kitted out in rain gear held back the curious who were bobbing round beneath their umbrellas like a collection of mobile mushrooms.
Lynley showed his ID to one of the constables, who signaled to the others to move the roadblock long enough for the Bentley to pass. Before he did so, Lynley said to the man, "Don't let anyone other than SOCO inside. Anyone. I don't care who they are or what they tell you. No one passes who isn't police with proper police ID."
The constable nodded. The flash of camera lights told Lynley that the press was already hot on the story.
The first stretch of Wood Lane comprised housing: an amalgamation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings that consisted of conversions, apartments, and single homes. Perhaps two hundred yards along, however, the buildings stopped abruptly and on either side of the street the woods spread out, completely unfenced, utterly accessible, looking in this weather both brooding and dangerous.
"Good choice," Havers muttered as she and Lynley alighted from the car. "He has a way, hasn't he? You've got to give him that." She turned up the collar of her donkey jacket against the rain. "Like a set from a thriller film, this is."
Lynley didn't disagree. In the summer, the area was probably a paradise, a natural oasis that afforded an escape from the prison of concrete, stone, brick, and tarmac that had long ago enveloped the rest of the native environment. But in the winter, it was a melancholy spot in which everything was in the process of decay. Layers of decomposing leaves covered the ground and sent forth the odour of peat. Beeches toppled by storms over the years lay in various stages of rot right where they had fallen, while branches severed from trees by the wind punctuated the slope, growing moss and lichen.
Activity centred on the south side of Wood Lane, where the park dipped down towards the allotments and then up again towards Priory Gardens, which was the street beyond them. A large square of translucent plastic suspended from poles formed a rough shelter for an area perhaps fifty yards to the west of the allotments. There, an enormous beech had been torn from the ground more recently than the others, for where its roots had been there was still a hollow that time, earth, wind, small creatures, ferns, and bracken had not yet filled in.
The killer had placed the body in this hollow. At the moment, a forensic pathologist was attending it while a SOCO team worked with silent efficiency in the immediate area. Beneath a tall beech some thirty yards away, an adolescent boy was watching the activity, one trainer-shod foot up on the trunk behind him to prop him up and a rucksack at his feet. A ginger-haired man in a trench coat stood with him, and he jerked his head at Lynley and Havers in a signal to come over and join him.
Ginger Hair introduced himself as DI Widdison from the Archway police station. His companion, he said, was Ruff.
"Ruff?" Lynley glanced at the boy, who glowered at him from beneath the hood of a sweatshirt that was covered by an outsize anorak.
"No surname at present." Widdison walked five paces away from the boy and took Lynley and Havers with him. "Found the body," he said. "He's a tough little bugger, but it's shaken him up. Sicked up on his way to get help."
"Where did he go for that?" Lynley asked.
Widdison tossed a nonexistent ball back in the direction of Wood Lane. "Walden Lodge. Eight or ten flats in there. He leaned on the bells till someone let him inside to use the phone."
"What was he doing here, anyway?" Havers asked.
"Tagging," Widdison told her. "Course, he doesn't want us to know that, but he was shaken up and gave us his tag by mistake, which is why he doesn't want to give us his real name now. We've been trying to catch him for some eight months. He's put 'Ruff' on every available surface round here: signs, dustbins, trees. Silver."
"Silver?"
"His tagging colour. Silver. He's got the cans of paint in that rucksack of his. Didn't have the presence of mind to chuck them before he phoned us."
Lynley said, "What's he given you?"
"Sod all. You can talk