scene. Lynley lowered the window as the DI hurried over.
"We've had a call from the Hornsey Road station," Widdison said when he reached the car. "A boy's gone missing, reported by his parents last night. He fits the general description of our victim."
"We'll take it," Lynley said as Havers emptied her shoulder bag on the floor to find her notebook and take down the address.
IT WAS IN Upper Holloway, on a small housing estate just off Junction Road. There, round the corner from William Beckett Funeral Directors and Yildiz Supermarket, they found a serpentine stretch of tarmac splendidly called Bovingdon Close. It was a pedestrian precinct, so they left the Bentley on Hargrave Road where a bearded vagrant with a guitar in one hand and a wet sleeping bag dragging on the pavement behind him offered to keep an eye on the car for the price of a pint. Or a bottle of wine, if they felt so inclined and he did a good job of keeping the local riffraff away from "s'ch a fine motor as yairs is, master." He wore a large green rubbish bag as a mackintosh in the rain, and he sounded like a character from a costume drama, someone who'd spent far too much of his youth tuned in to BBC1. "They's ferrinners plenty round here," he informed them. "You can't leave nothin' lying 'bout what they don't put their mitts on it, sir." He appeared to search vaguely in the direction of his head for something to tug respectfully as he concluded. When he spoke, the air became heavy with the scent of teeth in need of extraction.
Lynley told the man he was welcome to keep his eyes glued to the car. The vagrant hunkered down on the nearest stairs to one of the terrace houses, and-rain or not-he began to pluck at the three strings remaining on his guitar. Sourly, he eyed a pack of young black kids wearing rucksacks on their backs, trotting along the pavement across the street.
Lynley and Havers left the man to it and set off into Bovingdon Close. They accessed this by means of a tunnel-like opening in the cinnamon-coloured brick buildings that comprised the housing estate itself. They were looking for number 30, and they found it not far from the estate's sole recreational area: a triangular green with dormant rosebushes languishing in each of the three corners and a small bench set against one side. Other than four saplings struggling for life in the green's patch of lawn, there were no trees in Bovingdon Close, and the houses that didn't face the tiny recreational area faced each other across a width of tarmac that didn't measure more than fifteen feet. In the summer when the windows were open, everyone would doubtless be into everyone else's business.
Each of the houses had been given a sandwich-size plot of earth in front of its door that the more optimistic inhabitants were treating as their gardens. In front of number 30, the patch of earth in question was a rough triangle of dying grass, and a child's bike lay on its side upon it, next to a green plastic garden chair. Near this a tattered shuttlecock looked as if a dog had been chewing on it. The accompanying racquets leaned against the wall by the front door, most of their strings broken.
When Lynley rang the bell, a man in miniature opened the door. He was not even eye to eye with Havers, top heavy with the look of someone who weight trained to compensate for his lack of height. He was red eyed and unshaven, and he glanced from them to the tarmac beyond them as if expecting someone else.
He said, "Cops," like the answer to a question no one had asked.
"That's who we are." Lynley introduced himself and Havers and waited for the man-they knew only that his name was Benton-to ask them in. Beyond him, Lynley could see the doorway to a darkened sitting room and the shapes of people seated inside. A child's querulous voice asked why couldn't they open the curtains, why couldn't he play, and a woman shushed him.
Benton said harshly over his shoulder in that direction, "You mind what I told you." Then he gave his attention back to Lynley. "Where's the uniform?"
Lynley said they weren't part of the uniformed patrol but rather they worked in a different department and were from New Scotland Yard. "May we come in?" he asked. "It's your son