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criminal record and had served three years in his early twenties for gang-related crimes and then another four for similar activities not long afterwards. If he was no longer alive the Met had no knowledge of it. The name Hudson only featured in connection with three shoplifting sisters, a couple of murderers who had been dead for ten and twelve years respectively, an animal rights teenager who had been party to the bombing of a laboratory and a seventy-five-year-old man who had driven the getaway car in a jewellery shop robbery.
    The address for Downton at the time of his conviction had been in Bethnal Green, London, but I looked at more recent listings and discovered that his café bar business was given as the most recent known address. It was pointless to examine local registry records as if his common-law wife had not registered his death, who would? Not whoever had finished him off, that’s for sure.
    I changed tack and looked in the Metropolitan Police records with regard to bodies recovered from rivers and other associated watercourses that remained unidentified. I was a little shocked to discover how many there were. I emailed the force with the physical details and a mugshot of Downton, this unfortunately taken at the time of his first offences so probably completely useless by now. I did not get a reply for over twenty-four hours, by which time it was Friday afternoon.
    â€˜There’s one extremely dead body with a bullet hole in its skull in a mortuary in East London that just might be that of Sulyn Li Grant’s husband,’ I disclosed to Patrick later after he had arrived, had his shower and was relaxing with Vicky on his lap, something she was making her routine.
    â€˜By that I presume you mean there’s not a lot left.’
    â€˜Yes. It was disinterred from a flooded ditch on waste ground during the re-development of a warehouse at Woolwich. Having been put into a large plastic bag pierced with holes the body had then been weighted down with bricks, possibly because it wouldn’t sink. It had probably been there for several months.’
    â€˜How long ago did he disappear?’
    â€˜About a year.’
    â€˜And when was the body found?’
    â€˜Three months ago.’
    â€˜Fits, then.’
    â€˜So we have the corpse of a white male who wore dentures thought to have been in his fifties when he died. Otherwise it remains impossible to identify unless someone can produce some DNA to compare the remains with.’
    â€˜I take it these folk don’t have any kids.’
    â€˜That’s fairly safe to assume but we can check. How’s the job going?’
    â€˜I might finish it next week – unless someone else screws up.’ Patrick smiled. ‘Perhaps I ought to go and take a pot-shot at Greenway to make him change his mind.’
    I wagged a forefinger at him.
    â€˜I wasn’t all that serious, although the theory has a lot going for it. But mobsters so far have concentrated mostly on getting bent cops to delete files or give them info on witnesses and so forth. James’s problem with Cooper and Mallory a while back took it several stages further but as far as I know no one’s gone in for that kind of personal attack on the police since.’
    â€˜Unless Cooper’s given the idea to his new buddy, Kingsland, Hamsworth or whatever he’s calling himself now.’
    â€˜It would still be an amazing coincidence as far as Greenway’s concerned.’
    The house phone rang and Patrick, who was sitting nearest, answered it. I could hear that it was a female caller and that she was agitated but not speaking all that loudly.
    â€˜OK,’ Patrick said. ‘Act quite normally. We’ll be there in a few minutes. Don’t mention that you’ve called us and when you answer the door act as if we’re friends expected for supper.’
    He slapped the phone down, gathered up Vicky, who was almost asleep and said, ‘The