“Neither one gives me pleasure. And I’m not always right. In matters of science I feel fairly certain that the ground I’m walking on is solid. But in matters of the heart, in matters affecting you and me… Believe me, I have no idea, Deborah. I’m a wanderer in the dark.”
“It was Conception. It became some sort of obsession for me. I saw a sisterhood forming between us because of that magazine and I let that thought— the thought that someone was as determined as I was, as… as empty as I was— dominate everything else. So I’m responsible for her death. If I hadn’t made her feel so vulnerable. If I hadn’t frightened her. If I hadn’t pursued her. I thought she was talking about that mad journalist from The Source when all along she thought I’d come from the man who’d been searching for her.”
“The man she thought had been searching for her.” Simon corrected her gently. “When you hold your truths as close as she did, those truths can undermine your life. The world becomes a suspicious place. You were there at Tommy’s request, Deborah. The rest came from her.”
“But we both know that’s not quite the truth,” Deborah said. “I made more of what I saw in Arnside House because I wanted to. And both of us, Simon, know exactly why I did that.” She went to one of the armchairs and sat. Peach settled into her lap. Deborah caressed the dog and then said to her husband, “Why’s she not sleeping with Dad?”
“I required her presence. I didn’t want to wait for you alone.”
Deborah took this in. “How strange,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t have thought alone would bother you. You’ve always been so self-contained, so sure.”
“That’s how I’ve seemed to you?”
“Always. How else could you seem? So cool, so rational, so confident. Sometimes I just want you to explode, Simon, but you never do. And now even with this… There you stand. You’re waiting for something from me— I can feel that— but I simply don’t know what it is— ”
“Do you not?”
“— or how to give it to you.”
Simon sat then, not in the chair where he’d been sitting when she’d entered the room, but rather on the arm of hers. She couldn’t see his face, and he couldn’t see hers. She said, “I simply must get past this. I do understand that. But I don’t know how to do it. Why can I not get past this, Simon? How can I not be obsessed with something I want so much?”
“Perhaps to want it less,” he said.
“How do I manage that?”
“Through resignation.”
“But that means I’ve given up, that we’ve given up. So where does that leave me?”
“Wandering,” he said.
“Hungry,” she said. “That’s what it’s like. Inside of me, always. This… this hunger that nothing is able to assuage. It’s horrible. It’s why I always feel… well, empty. I know I can’t keep living this way, but I don’t know how to make the hunger stop.”
“Perhaps you’re not meant to,” he said. “Perhaps you’re meant to cope with it. Either that or to come to realise that the hunger and the appeasement of the hunger are two entirely different things. They’re unrelated. One will never quell the other.”
Deborah thought about this. She considered how much of herself— and the way in which she’d lived so long— had been tied up with a single unfulfilled desire. She finally said, “This is not who I want to be, my love.”
“Then be someone else.”
“Where on earth do I begin with that project?”
He touched her hair. “With a good night’s sleep,” he said.
WANDSWORTH
LONDON
Lynley had thought about going directly home from Chelsea. His town house in Belgravia was less than five minutes by car from the St. Jameses’ home. But as if of its own volition, the Healey Elliott had taken him to Isabelle’s, and he was putting his key in the lock and letting himself inside before he truly thought about why he was doing so.
The flat was dark, as it would be at this time of night. He went to the kitchen and turned on the dim light above the sink. He examined the contents of the fridge and after this, hating himself for doing so but doing it anyway, he looked through the rubbish in its bin, opened and closed the cupboards quietly, and glanced into the oven to make sure it was empty.
He was doing this last when Isabelle came into the room. He didn’t hear her. She’d flipped on the overhead lights before he was aware of her presence, so he had no idea how long she’d watched him prowling through her kitchen on his search.
She said nothing. Nor did he. She merely looked from him to the open oven door before she turned and went back to her bedroom.
He followed her, but in the bedroom it was more of the same and he couldn’t help himself. His glance went to the bedside table, to the floor next to the bed, to the top of the chest of drawers. It was as if an illness had come over him.
She watched him. That he’d awakened her from sleep was obvious. But what sort of sleep, how it had been induced, if it had been induced… These were suddenly troubling matters that he had to sort out. Or so he’d thought until he saw her expression: Acceptance, along with its clansman resignation, was in her eyes.
He said, “In a thousand different ways, I’m sorry.”
“As am I,” she replied.
He went to her. She wore only a thin nightgown and this she lifted over her head. He put his hand on the back of her neck— warm with sleep, it was— and he kissed her. She tasted of sleep interrupted and of nothing else. He broke from her, looked at her, then kissed her again. She began to undress him and he joined her in the bed, pulling the covers away, off, to the floor, so that nothing could come between them.
But it was there nonetheless. Even as their bodies joined, even as she rose above him and his hands sketched curves from her breasts, to her waist, to her hips, even as they moved together, even as he kissed her. It was all still there. No avoiding, he thought, no running, no escape. The pleasure of their connection was a celebration. It was also, however, a pyre that bore the touch of a torch and then did what pyres always do.
Afterwards, their bodies slick and satisfied, he said, “That was the last time, wasn’t it?”
She said, “Yes. But we both knew that.” And after a moment, “It couldn’t have worked, Tommy. But I have to say how I wanted it to.”
He sought her hand, which lay palm-down on the mattress. He covered it, and her fingers spread. His curved into hers. “This isn’t about Helen,” he told her. “You must know that.”
“I do.” She turned her head and her hair fell against her cheek for a moment. It had become mussed during their lovemaking, and he smoothed it for her, brushing it back and behind her ear. “Tommy, I want you to find someone,” she said. “Not to replace her, for who could replace her? But someone to continue your life with. Because that’s all life is, isn’t it? Just continuing, going on.”
“I want that as well,” he said. “I wasn’t sure at first and it’s likely there’ll be days when I step backwards another time and tell myself there’s no real life without Helen in it. But that will be a moment’s thought only. I’ll come through it and out of it. I’ll move on.”
She reached up and used the back of her fingers against his cheek. Her expression was fond. She said, “I can’t say that I love you. Not with my demons. And not with yours.”
“Understood,” he said.
“But I wish you well. Please know that. No matter what happens. I do wish you well.”
BELGRAVIA
LONDON
It was half past three in the morning when Lynley finally returned to his home in Eaton Terrace. He let himself inside the silent house, felt for the light switch to the right of the heavy oak door, and flipped it on. His eyes lit on a pair of women’s gloves that had been resting in place against the newel post at the bottom of the stairway for the last nine months. He studied them for a moment before he crossed the entry, took them in hand, and held them briefly to his nose for a final scent of her, faint but there, t
he smell of citrus. He felt the gloves’ softness against his cheek before he placed them in a small drawer of the coat tree near the door.
It came to him that he was very hungry. The feeling was odd. It had been many months since he’d experienced real, honest hunger in the pit of his stomach. Mostly, he’d been going through the motions of eating just to keep his body alive.
He went to the kitchen. There, he opened the refrigerator and saw that it was well stocked as always. God knew he was pathetic as a cook, but he reckoned he could manage scrambled eggs and toast without burning the house to the ground.
He removed what he would need for his makeshift meal, and he began to search for the proper utensils with which to cook it. He had not got far before Charlie Denton stumbled into the room in his dressing gown and slippers, wiping his spectacles on his belt.
Denton said, “What’re you doing in my kitchen, m’ lord,” to which Lynley replied as he always had done with a patient, “Denton…”
“Sorry,” Denton said. “Half-asleep. What the bloody hell are you doing, sir?”
“Obviously, I’m making something to eat,” Lynley told him.
Denton came to the worktop and examined what Lynley had laid out: eggs, olive oil, marmite, jam, sugar. “What, exactly, would that be?” he enquired.
“Scrambled eggs and toast. Where do you keep the frying pan, for God’s sake? And where’s the bread? That shouldn’t require a search party, should it?”
Denton sighed. “Here. Let me. You’ll only make a bloody mess of everything and I’ll be cleaning it up. What were you intending with the olive oil?”
“Doesn’t one need something… So the eggs don’t stick?”
“Sit, sit.” Denton waved at the kitchen table. “Look at yesterday’s paper. Go through the post. I’ve not put it on your desk yet. Or do something useful like setting the table.”
“Where’s the cutlery?”
“Oh for God’s sake. Just sit.”
Lynley did so. He began to go through the post. There were bills, as always. There was also a letter from his mother and another from his aunt Augusta, both of whom refused to have anything to do with e-mail. Indeed, his aunt had only recently begun resorting to a mobile to make her pronouncements from on high.
Lynley set both letters to one side and unfurled a handbill from the elastic band that had kept it rolled. He said, “What this?” and Denton glanced his way.
“Don’t know. Something on the doorknob,” he replied. “They were up and down the street yesterday. I hadn’t looked at it yet.”
Lynley did the looking. He saw that it was an advertisement for an event at Earl’s Court in two days’ time. Not the normal sort of event, he found, but rather an exhibition of a sport. The sport was flat track roller derby, and he saw that Boadicea’s Broads from Bristol— love the alliteration, he thought— were going to meet London’s Electric Magic in an exhibition match-up that was described with large print that read The Spills! The Chills! The Thrills! Come to witness the spectacular artistry and skate-to-kill drama of the women who live for the jam!
Below this were the names of the sportswomen, and Lynley couldn’t stop himself from reading through the list, from looking for one name in particular, a name he had certainly never thought he’d see again. And there it was: Kickarse Electra, the nom de guerre of a large animal veterinarian from the zoo in Bristol: one Daidre Trahair, a woman who took the occasional country weekend in Cornwall, where he had met her.
Lynley smiled at this. Then he chuckled. Denton looked up from the scrambling of eggs and said, “What?”
“What do you know about flat track roller derby?”
“What in hell is that, if one might ask?” Denton enquired.
“I think we ought to find out, you and I. Shall I purchase tickets for us, Charlie?”
“Tickets?” Denton looked at Lynley as if he’d gone half-mad. But then he fell back against the stove, and he struck a pose, one arm lifted to his forehead. He said, “My God. Has it actually come to this? Are you— dare I say— asking me out on a date?”
Lynley laughed in spite of himself. “I appear to be doing so.”
“What have we come to?” Denton sighed.
“I’ve absolutely no idea,” Lynley answered.
15 NOVEMBER
CHALK FARM
LONDON
The day hadn’t been an easy one for Barbara Havers. It had largely depended upon the use of two skills that she possessed, alas, in minuscule proportion. The first was an ability to ignore the obvious. The second was the production of compassion for persons unknown.
Ignoring the obvious meant saying nothing to DI Lynley about whatever it was that had happened between him and Superintendent Ardery. From what Barbara could tell, their personal relationship was finished. There was a sadness in both of them that they each attempted to mask with courtesy and kindness, and from this Barbara took the fact that their breakup was a mutual decision, which was, at least, all to the good. It would have been a real nightmare in the workplace had one of them wished to end their affair while the other continued to cling like a starfish to a piling. At least this way, they both could forge onward without blameful glances and meaningful remarks being flung about by the aggrieved party for the next six months. But they were feeling the end of things. There was so much melancholy in the air round them that Barbara decided that avoidance was the better part of valour in this situation.
Her lack of skill in the compassion department didn’t relate to Lynley and Superintendent Ardery, though. Neither of them was about to unburden a heavy heart onto her shoulders, so she was relieved about that. She was less relieved when she met Engracia in the wine bar near Gower Street a second time and asked the Spanish student to place another phone call to Argentina.
While Engracia spoke to Carlos, the brother of Alatea Vasquez y del Torres, Barbara fed her the information. He happened to be there at his parents’ home, making a call upon his mother, and in his company was his cousin Elena Maria, with whom Engracia also spoke. She went between what Barbara was telling her and what the Argentines were saying in reply, and in this manner they navigated the waters of a family’s sorrow.
Please tell them Alatea has drowned… please let them know that as of yet there is no body… because of the conditions in Morecambe Bay where she was lost… the sands shift due to the tide… it has to do with various elements… rivers running into it, something that’s called the tidal bore, mudflats, quicksand… we do believe the body will turn up and we’ve been given a good idea where… will be buried by her husband… yes, she was married… yes, she was very happy… she’d merely gone for a walk… so terribly sorry… I’ll see about photos, yes… so understandable that you’d want to know… definitely an accident… definitely an accident… absolutely no doubt that it was a terrible and tragic accident.
Whether it was or wasn’t an accident didn’t matter, Barbara thought. In the final analysis, dead was dead.
She and Engracia parted outside the wine bar, both of them feeling the regret of having to pass along the news of Alatea’s death. Engracia had wept as she’d spoken to Carlos and then to Elena Maria, and Barbara had marvelled at this: at the idea of weeping over the death of someone she had never met, in fellow feeling with individuals thousands of miles away whom she would also never meet. What was it that prompted such a rush of compassion within one? she wondered. What was wrong with her that she didn’t feel it? Or was this separation of self from event merely part and parcel of the career she’d chosen?
She didn’t want to think about any of it: Lynley’s gloom, Isabelle Ardery’s melancholy, an Argentine family’s grief. So on the way home that evening, she thought instead of something more pleasant, which was her upcoming dinner. This would comprise steak and kidney suet-topped pie thrown into the microwave, a can of red wine popped open, toffee cheesecake, and a cup of reheated morning coffee afterwards. Then an evening propped up on the daybed with Passion’s Sweet Promise open on her lap
and an hour or two to discover if Grey Mannington would finally embrace his love for Ebony Sinclair in typical romance novel fashion having much to do with heaving bosoms, muscular thighs, probing tongues, and searing pleasures. She’d turn the electric fire on within the mousehole fireplace as well, she thought. For it had been bitterly cold all day, and the promise of a deadly winter was being made each morning, written in the frost on her windowpanes. It was going to be a bad one and a long one, she thought. Best get out the woolies and prepare to sleep nightly between brushed cotton sheets.
At home, she saw that Azhar’s car was in the driveway, but the lights were not on in the family’s flat. They were probably out to dinner, she reckoned, having walked the short distance to Chalk Farm Road or Haverstock Hill. Perhaps everything had worked out after all, she thought. Perhaps Azhar’s other children and his never-divorced wife were at this moment dining en famille at the local Chinese with Azhar, Hadiyyah, and Angelina. Perhaps they’d all come to terms with a brilliant way to share in each other’s lives, the wife forgiving the husband for having walked out on her for a university student whom he’d impregnated, the husband abjuring guilt for having done so, the former university student proving her worth as mother and quasi-stepmother to all of the children, everyone living in one of the odd family situations becoming so prevalent in their society …It could have happened, Barbara thought. Of course, all the pigs in England could have taken to the air today as well.
Meantime, it was as cold as the heart of a serial killer and she hurried down the path alongside the Edwardian house. It was very dimly lit as two of the five garden lights had burnt out and no one had replaced them yet, and it was darker still at the front of her bungalow since she’d not thought to turn the porch light on when she’d left that morning.
There was enough illumination, however, to see that someone was sitting on the single step in front of her door. This was a hunched figure, forehead on knees, fists raised to temples. The figure rocked slightly and when he raised his head at her approach, Barbara saw that it was Taymullah Azhar.