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to understand.
    ‘Where did you first see him?’
    Tub pointed to the wall between Cardigan Street and Alma Terrace, to where odd bits of houses still stood, to where a few dozen bricks remained in the order the brickie had lain them.
    ‘Show me,’ said Troy. The same ritually structured procession moved off towards Alma Terrace. Troy looked over the stump of wall. The morning’s fall of snow had covered any tracks the dog might have left.
    ‘George,’ he said, ‘we’re looking for a needle in a bloody haystack.’ He felt Bonham’s size fourteen tap sharply against his shoe, telling him to watch his language. ‘We’re going to have to search it all.’
    ‘Freddie, you’ve got to be joking. I don’t have the men for that.’
    ‘How else are we going to find anything?’
    ‘What do you expect to find?’
    ‘The rest of the body. Well, to be precise, bits of the rest of the body.’
    Troy glanced at the boys, wondering how much they heard and how much they understood. Eight cherubic faces, and sixteen hard, ruthless eyes looked back at him. Preserving innocence seemed a fruitless ideal.
    ‘How would you like to make some money?’ he said.
    ‘How much?’ said the biggest.
    ‘A shilling,’ said Troy.
    ‘Half a crown,’ said the boy.
    ‘You don’t know what it’s for yet!’
    ‘It’ll still cost you half a dollar,’ the boy replied.
    ‘OK, OK,’ said Troy, ‘half a crown to the boy who finds the rest.’
    ‘Freddie, for God’s sake,’ Bonham cut in. ‘You can’t!’
    He gripped Troy by the shoulder and swung him round into a huddled attempt at privacy.
    ‘Are you off yer chump?’
    ‘George, can you think of any other way?’
    ‘For Christ’s sake, they’re kids. They should be in school!’
    ‘Well, they clearly have no intention of going. And they don’t exactly look like Freddie Bartholomew do they?’
    ‘Jesus Christ,’ Bonham said again.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Troy.
    ‘On your own head be it.’
    Troy turned back to the boys, ranged in front of him in a wide semi-circle. ‘I want you to look for … ’ he hesitated, uncertain what to call a corpse. ‘For anything to do with what Tub found. OK?’
    They nodded as one.
    ‘And if you find it don’t touch it. You come straight back and tell Mr Bonham, and nobody, I mean nobody, goes near it till he’s seen what you’ve found. Understood?’
    They nodded again.
    ‘Or the half-crown’s forfeit,’ Troy concluded.
    Tub spoke up. ‘An’ a bob for me for findin’ and sixpence each for all of us for lookin’ or you can just bugger off,’ he said.
    ‘Done,’ said Troy, glad that things were now on a clearly established business footing.
    ‘I must get out to Hendon,’ he said to Bonham. ‘The sooner we get a forensics report the better.’
    ‘You’re leaving me in charge of this lot?’
    ‘Sorry, George.’
    ‘It’s a scandal, Freddie. If the mums kick up … ’
    ‘You know them, George. Is it likely?’
    ‘You know, Freddie,’ Bonham said softly, ‘there are times when I think there’s nothing like a long spell at the Yard for putting iron in the soul.’
    ‘Just doing my job. Call me at the Yard this afternoon if anything turns up.’
    Troy picked his way across the bombsite back to his Bullnose Morris and the gruesome parcel in the boot. The boys scattered to the points of the compass, dreaming of riches beyond belief. Behind him Troy could hear Bonham offering the carrot-top sixpence for his hand-warmer.

§ 7
    Ladislaw Kolankiewicz had been a senior pathologist at the Police Laboratory in Hendon since it opened in 1934. One of the first recruits to the science of the gruesome, and bearing the recommendation of no less a figure than Sir Bernard Spilsbury, there were many who considered Kolankiewicz to be appropriately gruesome himself. Troy had come across him in 1937 and since then had watched his hairline recede to nothing only to re-emerge sprouting vigorously from his ears and nostrils and coursing