“Yes, a lot of people would have been afraid to come forward at that point.”

“I hope you get your hands on the motherfucker. We’re behind you all the way.”

Macdonald had the impression Anderton was including everyone in the former British Empire.

Macdonald made his way through the traffic to Clapham Common South Side and entered the Dudley Hotel at the corner of Cautley Avenue -twenty-five pounds a night, up front. He broke the seal on the door and walked to the middle of the room. The stench of blood was everywhere. You’re used to blood, he told himself, but nothing like this. He’d grown up on a farm and seen a thousand pigs slaughtered, but it didn’t turn his stomach the same way. Human blood has a cloying sweetness that throws you off balance, he thought.

So this is where they were going. It might have been right after Anderton saw them. Assuming it was them. The kid had been here for two days. Why had he chosen this hotel, of all places? What would make a Swedish kid stay down here in Clapham? Nothing wrong with Clapham, but you’d think someone his age would have found a cheap joint up in Bayswater. Or Paddington. He would have had plenty of other young foreigners there to hang out with.

The wallpaper, off-white originally, was now a sickening orange.

Macdonald closed his eyes and concentrated on the echoes from the walls. Before long he heard a muffled scream and the sound of a body writhing on the floor.

His right eye ached, forcing him back to the present.

How had the man convinced the kid to bring him here? Was it only sex? Or had he promised something else? Drugs?

Why here? Did he know people in Clapham or up in Battersea? Or over in Brixton?

He’d been robbed, but that wasn’t the motive. All that had happened afterward.