the forehead, the missing navel, and what hadn't been noted or photographed until the body was moved for the very first time: the palms of the hands burned so thoroughly that the flesh was black.
He shifted his gaze to the list of actions he'd already assigned on the previous long night of setting up the team: There were men and women knocking on doors in the vicinity where every one of the first three bodies had been found; additional officers were studying prior arrests to see if any lesser crimes had been documented that bore the hallmark of escalating behaviour which might lead to such murders as they now had on their hands. This was well and good, but they also needed to get someone on to the loincloth that had dressed the final body, someone to deal with the bicycle and the pieces of silver that had been left at the scene, someone to triangulate and analyse all of the crime scenes, someone to run down all sex offenders and their alibis, and someone to check throughout the rest of the country to see if there were similar unsolved murders elsewhere. They knew they had four, but there was every possibility that they had fourteen. Or forty.
Eighteen police detectives and six police constables were working the case at this moment, but Lynley knew without a doubt they were going to need more. There was only one way to get them.
Sir David Hillier, Lynley thought sardonically, was going to love and hate that fact simultaneously. He'd be pleased as punch to announce to the press that thirty-plus officers were working the case. But he'd hate like the dickens having to authorise the overtime for them all.
Such, however, was Hillier's lot in life. Such were the disadvantages of ambition.
BY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Lynley had in hand from SO7 the complete autopsies of the first three victims and the preliminary postmortem information from the most recent killing. He combined this with an extra set of photographs from all four of the murder scenes. He packed this material into his briefcase, went for his car, and set out from Victoria Street in a light mist that was blowing in from the river. Traffic was stop and start, but when he finally got over to Millbank, he had the river to contemplate...or what he could see of it, which was mostly the wall built along the pavement and the old iron street lamps that cast a glow against the gloom.
He veered to the right when he came to Cheyne Walk, where he found a place to park that was being vacated by someone leaving the King's Head and Eight Bells at the bottom of Cheyne Row. It was a short distance from there to the house at the corner of this street and Lordship Place. Less than five minutes found him ringing the bell.
He anticipated the barking of one very protective long-haired dachshund, but that didn't happen. Instead the door was opened by a tallish red-haired woman with a pair of scissors in one hand and a roll of yellow ribbon in the other. Her face brightened when she saw him.
"Tommy!" Deborah St. James said. "Perfect timing. I need help and here you are."
Lynley entered the house, shedding his overcoat and setting his briefcase by the umbrella stand. "What sort of help? Where's Simon?"
"I've already roped him into something else. And one can only ask husbands for so much assistance before they run off with the local floozy from the pub."
Lynley smiled. "What am I to do?"
"Come with me." She led him to the dining room, where an old bronze chandelier was lit over a table spread with wrapping materials. A large package there was already brightly wrapped, and Deborah seemed to have been caught in the midst of designing a complicated bow for it.
"This," Lynley said, "is not going to be my metier."
"Oh, the plans are laid," Deborah told him. "You're only going to need to hand over the Sellotape and press where indicated. It shouldn't defeat you. I've started with the yellow, but there's green and white to add."
"Those are the colours Helen's chosen..." Lynley stopped. "Is this for her? For us? By any chance?"
"How vulgar, Tommy," Deborah said. "I never saw you as someone who'd hint round for a present. Here, take this ribbon. I'm going to need three lengths of forty inches each. How's work, by the way? Is that why you've come? I expect you're wanting Simon."
"Peach will do.