A police car was parked by David Cartwright’s gate. Two other unmarked vehicles were nearby, one with a goon behind the wheel; the other empty, its hazards flashing. He felt its warmth as he passed. Cartwright’s front door was ajar, light puddling onto the driveway. A uniformed policeman stood there, observing Lamb’s approach with the wary contempt a street copper feels for the Funny Brigade. “Help you sir,” he said: three bare words, neither question nor statement. Lamb might as well have pulled a string on his back.
In place of an answer, Lamb produced the belch that had been brewing for the past five minutes.
“Very convincing, sir. But I’m going to need to see something laminated.”
Lamb sighed, and reached for his Service ID.
In the hallway a technician was dusting the banister for fingerprints, looking every inch an extra in a TV show. Star power was provided by the blonde in the black suit talking on her mobile. Her hair was bound in a severe back-knot, but if that was an attempt to dim her wattage, it failed; she could have painted a beard on and still sucked up all the local attention. When she saw Lamb she finished her conversation and slotted her phone into her jacket pocket. She was wearing a white blouse under the suit: her eyes were blue, her manner all business. But she didn’t offer her hand.
“You’re Lamb,” she told him.
“Thanks,” he said. “This time of night, I’m plagued by doubts.”
“We’ve not met. I’m Emma Flyte.”
“I guessed.”
Emma Flyte was the new Head Dog, in charge of the Service’s internal police squad. The Dogs sniffed out all manner of heresies, from the sale of secrets to injudicious sexual encounters: the honeytrap was older than chess, but stupidity was even older. So the Dogs were used to a long leash, roaming whatever corridors they chose, but were currently in the doghouse themselves: Dame Ingrid Tearney, erstwhile head of the Service, had used their offices to further her own interests, and while initiative was frequently applauded, getting caught exercising it was not. Emma Flyte, an ex-police officer, was the new administration’s clean-sheet appointment, though as more than one commentator had noted, if Regent’s Park was looking to the Met for an injection of integrity, it was in serious danger of an irony meltdown.
She said, “You know Mr. Cartwright?”
“Which one?”
“Either. Both.”
“The younger one works for me. His grandfather gave me a job once. You want to show me the damage?”
She handed him a pair of paper boots. “Treat it as a crime scene.”
Lamb left a lot of crime scenes in his wake. Arriving at one after the event was something of a novelty.
So was putting on a pair of paper boots, or so Flyte seemed to think. She watched with fascination as he attempted to slip the first one over his left shoe without bending over.
“It might help if you did your laces up.”
“I don’t suppose . . . ”
She didn’t grace that with so much as a smile.
Sighing, he got down to floor level and tied his laces. That done, the paper boots went on easily. When he regained his feet, his face was red and he was breathing heavily.
“I’d say you’re out of shape,” she told him. “But I’m not sure what shape you’re aiming for.”
He leered. “Offering to take me in hand?”
“Not even with these on.” She wore latex gloves. “It’s in the bathroom. That’s upstairs,” she added, as if his general knowledge wasn’t necessarily reliable in such matters.
Lamb led the way. The staircase was narrow for the size of the house, the pattern on its carpet a faded blurry mix of blue and gold. On the wall were a series of prints, pencil sketches of hands and faces, as if the artist was working up to something big but hadn’t got there yet. On the topmost one, an outstretched palm, the glass was smeared with blood. Lamb paused, then glanced down at the technician below. “Missed a bit.”
The landing was lined with books, shelved around a windowseat looking onto the front garden. The nearest open door was a bedroom, Lamb assumed the old man’s; lining a corridor were three other doors, one closed, with, at the far end, another set of stairs: attics and boxrooms, one-time servants’ quarters. On the wall opposite one of the open doors was another bloody handprint. You didn’t have to be a detective. He took the cigarette from his mouth, wedged it behind his ear, and jammed his hands into his pockets.
Behind him, she said, “Lamb?”
He paused.
“It’s bad in there.”
“I’ve seen bad before,” he told her, and entered the bathroom.
The body lay on the floor, which was where bodies usually ended up, in Lamb’s experience. He’d seen them hung in trees too, and washed up on shorelines, and a few snagged on barbed wire, dangling like broken puppets. But by and large, when you had a body, the floor was where it was going to finish. A little of this one had washed over the bathtub, too: its face was a pulped absence, a reminder that flesh and bone were temporary at best, and prone to rearrangement. He was probably imagining the smell of cordite in the air. Blood and shit were more prominent: besides, the trigger had been pulled on this scene easily a couple of hours ago.
“He was carrying this.” Flyte handed him a laminated card, much like the one he’d shown the policeman, but fresher, newer. When he held it at the right angle, its hologram configured into something like River Cartwright’s face.
“Uh-huh.”
He crouched down for a closer look, without any of the creaking or visible effort he’d made when tying his laces. The body wore jeans, black boots, a black V-neck over a white sweatshirt. It had had teeth once, and a nose, eyes, all the usual stuff, but none of that was currently available for identification purposes. The hair was carrying a lot of evidential weight, then: this was fairish, leaning towards brown, though substantially bloodied up at the moment. Cut short, but not excessively so, which fitted Lamb’s memory of his last sighting of River Cartwright. There were no rings on the fingers, no jewellery of any kind. That, too, was a match.
“Did he have any identifying marks?” Flyte asked.
“He used to have a face,” Lamb said. “That any help?”
“Tattoos? Scars? Piercings?”
“How the fuck should I know? I make them wear clothes round the office.”
“We’ll do blood work. But the faster we can do this, the better.”
“A mole,” Lamb said. “He had a mole on his upper lip.” He glanced at the bathtub. “You’re gunna need a pair of tweezers and a sieve.”
“So this is him.”
“What do you think?”
“I’d appreciate a response.”
Lamb passed a hand across his face, but when he took it away his expression hadn’t altered. “It’s him,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“It’s River Cartwright,” Lamb said, and rose easily and left the room.
She caught up with him in the garden. He was smoking a cigarette, though the one behind his ear was still in place. Way overhead, a tear in the clouds allowed moonlight through: this cast a silvery tint on damp grass and wet hedges. A set of cast-iron furniture was arranged on the crazy-paved patio. One of its matching chairs had toppled over: it lay in a mad position, legs in the air, like a stranded tortoise.