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swimming and then, on Wednesdays, he goes to a special unit at Camden."
"Is your son ill? I mean, is he disabled?"
"No."
"I would like to talk to him."
"He doesn't know anything."
"He might."
"I just don't want him upset. This has all been very stressful for him, you know. I’ll try and keep him as calm as I can. But when these things happen, he gets very upset. He's afraid they might come after me because I called the police."
"Mrs. Webster, I assure you since the shooting, I doubt very much there will be any activity there again."
"Well, I have to say, since it happened it's been quiet, apart from all the police, and the neighbors trying to find out what is going on."
"It must be a very difficult time for you." Anna closed her notebook and stood up. "May I meet your son now?"
Mrs. Webster glanced at the clock on the mantel and licked her lips. "Jeremy has autism. Sometimes he can be a bit difficult. Other times he's fine. Can you give me a few minutes?"
Anna nodded and smiled as Mrs. Webster left the room.
"It's not right, is it?" Gordon said quietly.
Anna looked at him, as if to say. "What isn't?"
"Forced to live in this place, son dependent on you, having junkies day and night just up the corridor. It's disgusting."
"It looks as if the council is making moves to rehouse everyone."
"In the meantime, they have to put up with junkies and dealers."
Anna listened: she heard raised voices. Mrs. Webster was trying to persuade her son to dress; he was refusing, as he was watching something on television. They could hear a low, almost growling voice muttering, and Mrs. Webster trying to cajole him.
Anna stood up and looked over to Gordon. "Maybe we should come back."
Jeremy was refusing to come out of his room. Mrs. Webster was apologetic. "You see, he does the trolleys in our big Waitrose—you know.
    collecting them from the car park. It's just a couple of mornings, but he wants to finish watching his DVD."
    Anna and Gordon made visits to the neighbors, but without much success. Everyone said virtually the same thing: they locked their front doors at night and stayed inside. A number had complained about the drug dealing and a few had called the police out many times.
    They returned to the station and added to the incident board the times that Mrs. Webster believed the gunshots had been fired. Anna was keen to know more about their victim, but they were still waiting on the forensic and pathology reports. For lunch she had a sandwich in her office as she typed up her report. She was surprised when her door was tapped and opened before she could say anything.
    Cunningham closed the door behind her. "Tell me what you know about Frank Brandon."
    Anna licked her lips. This would obviously mean discussing the case the two of them had been on together, which meant the possibility of mentioning DCI Langton's name. She hated the fact that, after all this time—almost eighteen months—the sound of his name still made her heart and head ache.
    "We were on a really horrific case. The bodies were found in the pigpens."
    "Ah yes, I remember that. So Frank was with you on it, was he?"
    "Yes. 1 didn't really know him on a personal level."
    "He took early retirement.. .something about a knee injury."
    "I didn't know that."
    "Before that, he had been with the Drug Squad."
    "I didn't know that either."
    Cunningham had an unnerving way of standing with her arms folded, looking around the room rather than making eye contact. "So you wouldn't know if he was using?"
    "Drugs? No. I only worked with him once, but I truthfully didn't see any sign of him using drugs. But then I had no idea he was married, or that the children in the photograph were his."
    "We're checking that out. We still don't have a formal ID." Cunningham
pursed her lips. "Doesn't make sense, does it? What would he be doing in that shithole? If he needed to score, then he would have had a lot of easier contacts."
"I would think so," Anna said.
"You got nothing from the neighbor who