to know nothing about it, and a look at the shrubbery supported their claim. It was freshly broken up. In the other gardens along the way as well."
"Footprints?"
"Everywhere. Belgravia are going to catch them, Tommy. Soon."
"Them?"
"There were definitely two of them. One of them was mixed race. The other...They're not sure yet."
"The au pair?"
"Belgravia have spoken to her. She says she was with the baby she looks after when she heard a window being broken down below, at the back of the house. By the time she got down to see what was going on, they were inside and she met them at the bottom of the stairs. One of them was already at the front door, heading out. She thought they'd burgled the house. She started screaming, but she also tried to stop them from getting away, God only knows why. One of them lost his hat."
"Is someone getting an e-fit made?"
"I'm not sure that's going to be necessary."
"Why?"
"The house on Cadogan Lane with the CCTV cameras? They've got images. They're being enhanced. Belgravia are going to run them on television and the papers will print the best of the lot. This is..." St. James raised his head ceilingward. Lynley saw how difficult this was for his friend. Not only the knowledge of what had happened to Helen but also the gathering of information to pass on to Helen's husband and her family. The effort left him no time for grief. "They're putting everything they have into this, Tommy. They've more volunteers than they can use, from stations all over town. The papers...You've not seen them, have you? It's been an enormous story. Because of who you are, who she is, your families, everything."
"Just the sort of thing the tabloids love," Lynley said bitterly.
"But they're carrying the public along with them, Tommy. Someone is going to see the pictures from the CCTV camera and turn the boys in."
Lynley said, "The boys?"
St. James nodded. "At least one of them, apparently, was a boy. The au pair says he looked about twelve years old."
"Oh my God." Lynley looked away, as if this would prevent his mind from making the inescapable connection.
St. James made it anyway. "One of the Colossus boys...? In the company of the serial killer but without knowing his companion is the serial killer?"
"I gave him-them-an invitation to my home. Right in the pages of The Source, Simon."
"But there was no address, no street name. A killer looking for you couldn't have found you through that article. It's impossible."
"He knew who I was, what I look like as well. He could have followed me home from the Yard on any day. And then all that would be left for him was laying his plan and waiting for an appropriate time."
"If that's the case, why take a boy with him?"
"To give him a sin. So he could be his next victim when the job on Helen was done."
THEY'D DECIDED to let Hamish Robson stew for a night in lockup. It would be something of a taste of the future. So they'd taken the profiler to the Shepherdess Walk police station which, while it wasn't the closest lockup to his flat near the Barbican, allowed them to avoid negotiating a route which would take them deeper into the City to get to the Wood Street station.
Search warrant in hand, they spent most of the following day in Robson's flat, building their case against the psychologist. One of the first bits of evidence they found was his laptop computer squirreled away in a cupboard, and Barbara made short work of tripping along the trail of electronic bread crumbs that Robson had left upon it.
"Kiddy porn," she said to Nkata over her shoulder when she found the first of the images. "Boys and men, boys and women, boys and animals, boys and boys. He's a real piece of work, our Hamish."
For his part, Nkata found an old A to Z with the location of St. Lucy's Church circled on the corner of Courtfield Road. And tucked into its pages was the name and address of the Canterbury Hotel as well as a business card with "Snow" and a phone number printed on it.
This, along with Barry Minshall's earlier identification of Robson's photograph and 2160 as part of the phone number of the doctor's employer, was enough to bring a SOCO team onto the scene and to send another to Walden Lodge. The first would be looking for further evidence in Robson's car. The