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clouds rolling across it like Nelson’s navy.
    â€œYou know, I thought it was always raining in London,” Josh remarked.
    â€œWe get our share,” said DS Paul. “But we’ve been having a dry spell. When your sister was found the river was very low, and her body was caught on a mudbank. Otherwise, you know, she might have been carried a lot further, even back out to sea.”
    â€œWho found her?”
    â€œSome anglers, digging in the mud for worms, at a place called Strand-on-the-Green. But we think she was dropped into the river much further downstream.”
    â€œDownstream?”
    â€œThe Thames is tidal, up as far as Teddington Lock. The pathologist estimates that she was in the water for approximately five to six hours, which means that she went into the river just before midnight. At that time, the tide was coming in, and her body would have been carried upstream. We’ve worked out how far she would have traveled before the tide began to turn, and we think that she was probably dropped into the river somewhere between Southwark Bridge and London Bridge.”
    â€œI see,” said Josh, although he had no idea of where any of these places were. Nancy, in the back seat, reached forward and touched his shoulder, just to comfort him. The morning sunlight flickered through the car as they drove over a long flyover with Victorian church spires on one side and glittering office blocks on the other. Then they descended into three lanes of solid traffic, and rows of apartment blocks and hotels and shops.
    Josh had never visited England before, but he had never imagined that London would feel so foreign. The buildings weren’t tall, but they had a grimy Imperial massiveness about them. The traffic was deafening and hair-raisingly fast, and the sidewalks were crowded with hordes of shoppers. The famous red buses didn’t drive sedately along, the way they always did in movies: they barged through the traffic at full speed, belching out clouds of diesel smoke, and the black taxicabs were just the same. DS Paul drove around Hyde Park Corner, where six lanes of traffic jostled to go in twelve different directions, and as they narrowly missed a white decorator’s van and turned into Grosvenor Place, all Josh could say was, “Jesus.”
    They arrived at last in DS Paul’s office in the bland 1960s office block of New Scotland Yard. It was a large untidy room which she shared with four other officers, with a view of the building next door. Phones kept ringing and people kept hurrying in and out, and in the far corner a detective was frowning at a computer as if he couldn’t understand what it was.
    â€œHow about a cup of coffee?” DS Paul suggested.
    â€œYou have decaf?” asked Nancy.
    â€œSorry. We’ve got black or white, with sugar or without. Or tea, if you’d rather. Or oxtail soup.”
    Josh and Nancy settled for two Cokes. They sat down next to the air-conditioning vent, which was uncomfortably hot, while the sun shone through the dusty windows into their eyes. DS Paul sat down at her desk and opened a file containing interview sheets and glossy color photographs.
    â€œYou realize that, now you’re here, I’m going to have to ask you to make a formal identification of your sister’s body.”
    â€œYes, well, I guessed you would.”
    â€œI have some photographs here. I wonder if you could look at them and confirm that it’s her.”
    Josh swallowed and Nancy reached out and held his arm. “OK,” he said, his mouth suddenly dry.
    DS Paul handed over one color print, and then another. In the first, which was taken from the neck up, Julia lay against a pale green background, her eyes open, her hair wet and bedraggled, her cheeks puffy and pale. It was true what they said about your soul leaving you, when you died. It looked like Julia, but Julia simply wasn’t there.
    The second print showed her right