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but … If you did,if you’d just think about it, you could be an adviser. Expert advisers are very popular these days, not to say trendy. And I do see you as an expert. Maybe I’m kidding myself but years and years ago I think you spotted some sort of aptitude for police work in me and now – well, I’m remembering a real talent for it in you. If you were my adviser you could come anywhere with me, have access to anything – well, almost anything. I expect you’re busy now, but if not …’
    ‘I’m not at all busy,’ said Wexford.
    ‘It’s the Orcadia Place case I’m talking about and if …’
    ‘Are you at your new HQ in Cricklewood?’
    ‘That’s it. Mapesbury Road. Strike while the iron is hot then.’ Tom paused, said with slight embarrassment, ‘There wouldn’t be any – er, emolument, I’m afraid. We have to tighten our belts in these hard times.’
    Wexford wasn’t surprised.
    He meant to walk all the way, but it was longer than he thought and carefully buying a ticket from a machine, he got on a bus. It was a beautiful day, June as it should be but seldom was, the sky a cloudless blue, the sun hot but cool in the shade of the trees. To think that before he came here, in spite of numerous visits, he had believed there were no gardens in London or if there were a few they would be arid plots of dry grass and dusty bushes. The flowers amazed him. Roses were everywhere, bush roses, standards, climbers and ramblers dripping blossom over ancient moss-grown brick walls.
    Even Shoot-up Hill had its share of flowers. The bus stopped near the end of Mapesbury Road where the new Met headquarters was a huge glass ziggurat in a street of big Victorian villas, and he felt glad he would be visiting and not working there. That word ‘working’ stimulated a rush of adrenalin and he speeded up his pace.
    Automatic doors, of course, and a huge foyer that seemed to be mostly windows and marble floor. It might have been a hospital or the offices of some large company. The house-plants standing about in black ceramic tubs were the kind you can’t tell are real or artificial unless you actually touch their leaves.
    A young woman sat behind the long boomerang-shaped counter, engrossed by the screens of three desktop computers. He was so used to presenting his warrant card that he was feeling in his pocket for it before he remembered that he no longer had it, that he was no longer
entitled
to have it. He gave his name, said Detective Superintendent Ede was expecting him.
    ‘Take the lift,’ she said, scarcely looking up. ‘Third floor, turn left and it’s the third door on the right.’
    While he waited for the lift to come he was transported back in time to when, in very different surroundings, he had started his first day as Detective Constable Wexford with the Brighton Police. Years, decades, had gone by, yet he thought he felt much the same, apprehensive, excited, wondering what the coming weeks would bring.

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘Y ou’ll have read about it or seen it on TV. God knows it’s had enough media coverage. It’s one of those cases where people start asking if they’ve found any more bodies.’
    ‘Except that these were all in the same place,’ said Wexford.
    ‘That’s true. We don’t even know if they were murdered – well, one was. Probably.’
    ‘Only probably?’
    ‘Three of them have been there so long we can’t tell how long they’ve been dead, let alone what they died of.’
    Detective Superintendent Thomas Ede was sitting in his chair behind his desk in his glass-walled box of an office, the glass being the kind you can see out of but no one can see in. Laminated wood floor with a faux fur rug, the fur looking like the skin of a hybrid tiger and giraffe. Ede was a tall, thin man with a small head and tense, sharp features. He wore a dark grey suit and a white shirt, but no tie, a style of dressing Wexford thought looked fine on women, less ‘right’ on men, though it was