body.
Lynley flipped off the phone and looked at Havers. "Crucifix Lane," he said. "Do you know where it is?"
A vendor at a nearby stall answered the question. Right up Tower Bridge Road, he told them. Less than half a mile from where they stood.
A RAILWAY VIADUCT shooting out from London Bridge station comprised the north perimeter of Crucifix Lane. Bricks formed it, so deeply stained with more than a century of soot and grime that whatever their original colour had been, it was now a distant memory. What remained in that memory's place was a bleak wall done up in variations of carbonaceous sediment.
Into this structure's supporting arches had been built various places of business: lockups for hire, warehouses, wine cellars, car-repair establishments. But one of the arches created a tunnel through which ran a single lane that was Shand Street. The north part of this street served as the address of several small businesses closed at this hour of the morning and the south part of it-the longer part-curved under the railway viaduct and disappeared into the darkness. The tunnel here was some sixty yards long, a place of deep shadows whose cavernous roof was bandaged with corrugated steel plates from which water dripped, soundless against the consistent rumble of early morning trains heading into and out of London. More water ran down the walls, seeping from the rusty iron gutters at a height of eight feet, collecting in greasy pools below. The scent of urine made the tunnel's air rank. Broken lights made its atmosphere chilling.
When Lynley and Havers arrived, they found the tunnel completely sealed off at either end, with a constable at the Crucifix Lane end who-clipboard in hand-was restricting entrance. He had apparently met his match in the early representatives of the news media, however, those hungry journalists who monitored every police station's patch in the hope of being first with a breaking story. Five of them had already assembled at the police barrier, and they were shouting questions into the tunnel. Three photographers accompanied them, creating strobe-like lighting as they shot above and around the constable who was trying vainly to control them. As Lynley and Havers showed their identification, the first of the television news vans pulled up, disgorging camera and soundmen onto the pavement as well. A media officer was needed desperately.
"...serial killer?" Lynley heard one of the journalists call out as he crossed the barrier with Havers behind him.
"...kid? Adult? Male? Female?"
"Hang on, mate. Give us bloody something."
Lynley ignored them, Havers muttered, "Vultures," and they moved in the direction of a low-slung, paintless, and abandoned sports car sitting midway through the tunnel. Here, they learned, the body had been discovered by a taxi driver on his way from Bermondsey to Heathrow, from which he would spend the day driving transatlantic fares into London for an exorbitant price made more exorbitant by the perennial tailback on the east side of the Hammersmith Flyover. That driver was long gone, his statement taken. In his place the SOCO team already worked, and a DI from the Borough High Street station waited for Lynley and Havers to join him. He was called Hogarth, he said, and his DCI had given the word to make no moves till someone from Scotland Yard checked out the crime scene. It was clear he wasn't happy about that.
Lynley couldn't be troubled with unruffling the DI's feathers. If this was indeed another victim of their serial killer, there would be far greater concerns than someone's not liking having his patch invaded by New Scotland Yard.
He said to Hogarth, "What have we got?" as he donned a pair of latex gloves handed over by one of the scenes-of-crime officers.
"Black kid," Hogarth replied. "Boy. Young. Twelve or thirteen? Hard to tell. Doesn't fit the MO of the serial, you ask me. Don't know why you lot got a call."
Lynley knew. The victim was black. Hillier was covering his well-tailored backside in advance of his next press briefing. "Let's see him," he said, and he stepped past Hogarth. Havers followed.
The body had been deposited unceremoniously in the abandoned car, where the driver's seat had over time disintegrated down to metal frame and springs. There, with its legs splayed out and its head lolling to one side, it joined Coke bottles, Styrofoam cups, carrier bags of rubbish, McDonald's take-away containers, and a single rubber glove that lay on what had once been the rim of the car's back window. The boy's eyes were open,