He recognised her change of subject and lied to her blithely. “It could. I do know that.” But he didn’t see how that was truly possible. He was certain that his plan would have a brilliant conclusion that Havers would thank him for in the end.
“I’m glad to hear that. But really, Tommy. Did everyone have to be in on this?”
“It seemed less awkward that way,” he told her. “Beyond that, we do rather need Winston as a visual distraction, don’t we?”
“But his parents as well?”
“That was something I could not have stopped had I tried. Winston keeps no secrets from his parents and, evidently, Barbara Havers in tap shoes promised to be as entertaining as was Barbara Havers taking a cooking lesson from Alice Nkata.”
“And the others?”
“Others? Do you mean Denton?”
“Stop acting innocent. I mean Denton, Simon, Deborah, Philip Hale and his wife . . . Who else, Tommy?”
“I believe Dorothea’s family are going, but you can’t hold me responsible for that.”
“You’re quite impossible,” was her conclusion. “I’d no idea you had such a naughty streak in you.”
The dance recital was to be not far from where the lessons themselves were given. A community centre had provided its hall for the event. Havers, naturally, had been mute on the subject. Dorothea, on the other hand, was happy to direct him to the World Wide Web, where he gleaned every scrap of information she had regarding place, time, and number of tap routines they could expect to delight them.
And delighted they no doubt would be, he thought. No one was as ready as he to watch Barbara and Dorothea hoof their way into history.
SOUTHALL
LONDON
Barbara was beside herself. Not only had their bit been relegated to what was euphemistically being called Act II, it had also been placed as the penultimate performance of the event. This meant that her plan to escape the community centre within an hour of arriving at the community centre was completely scotched. What was worse, she’d spied Winston Nkata in the crowd when she’d peeked from backstage. It was difficult to miss him as he was six foot five and neither of his parents—both of whom were also apparently going to be witnesses to her humiliation—was much shorter.
That Winston had shown up was bad enough. No. That Winston had shown up was maddening enough. But then Barbara saw Simon St. James and his wife, Deborah—longtime friends of Lynley—and . . . was that Charlie Denton taking a seat near the aisle at the side of . . . that wasn’t Deborah’s father, was it, half hidden by three women wearing burkhas? At the sight of them, Barbara went from irritation with Lynley to jealousy of the three black-clad women. A large bedsheet of any colour on her own body wouldn’t have gone down half bad. Anything rather than having to be seen in the costumes Dorothea had designed.
She had wanted Roaring Twenties at first. To hear her tell it, she’d had her heart set on the Roaring Twenties, and she declared herself devastated when she’d been told that Cole Porter’s music was not part of that period of time. “Think thirties,” Kaz had informed her. “Art Deco and all the rest.”
So Dorothea had moved from flapper dresses to sailor suits. Barbara couldn’t see this as much of an improvement, but at least she wouldn’t have to show her legs.
They’d practised and practised since Barbara’s return from Shropshire. Dorothea had declared that doing the steps properly was all about muscle memory, and the way to achieve muscles with memory was to force those muscles into repeating the same action until they automatically reacted to the music as they’d been taught to. “It’s exactly like riding a bicycle,” Dorothea said.
“Another activity I never intend to perform in front of an audience,” had been Barbara’s reply. But now, here she was. Having endured Act I, the interval, and now practically all of Act II, the time was nigh.
The next hapless group of dancers were about to take to the stage. Barbara and Dorothea were to follow. They stood ready: in their sailor suits, their sailor hats, with walking sticks in their hands. Barbara had tried to talk Dee out of the walking sticks as they didn’t seem sailorly to her. What sailor went shipboard with a walking stick anyway? But they were an important part of the “overall effect, don’t you see?” according to Dorothea. Barbara didn’t see, but what was the point of fighting this any longer?
At least, she told herself, she wasn’t a part of the group of eight assembling—fully if oddly costumed—on the stage in what looked vaguely like a deflating life raft but was supposed to be an enormous bowl. Someone, potentially more clueless than talented, had come up with the idea of fruit coming to life to the tune of “Hooray for Hollywood.” Barbara would have felt sorry for the pineapple had she only possessed the emotional reserves required to feel sorry for someone other than herself.
When the audience cheered enthusiastically at the conclusion of the fruit bowl number—and this despite the fact that the melon and the banana crashed into each other and fell to the floor midway through—Dorothea was fast upon her. She clapped her hands, beamed, and cried, “This is it! It’s what we’ve been working towards!” which made Barbara want to tell her that she herself had been working towards breaking an ankle with only limited success. She’d managed to come up with an ingrown toenail, but that was it. “We’re going to be brilliant!” Dorothea exclaimed.
“Did you tell Winston where this was happening?” Barbara demanded.
Dorothea slapped her hand against her chest, saying, “What? Is Detective Sergeant Nkata here? Why would I tell him or anyone—”
“To ensure applause, I reckon.”
“Detective Sergeant Havers, we had, have, and will have no need of bringing our own supporters to this event. We’re going to be a sensation.”
“I’m taking note that you didn’t answer the question.”
“What question?”
“The one asking if you told Winston where this stellar event was taking place.”
Dorothea had bent to retie her tap shoes. She rose to say, “He probably learned from the detective inspector.”
“What?”
Dorothea clapped her hand over her mouth. She went on with, “How could I not at least give Detective Inspector Lynley a hint when he asked? Especially when he said he meant to bring along a surprise for you. Don’t you like surprises?”
“A surprise in the persons of Winston Nkata, his parents, and, I wager, everyone DI Lynley knows is not something I’ve been burning for. You’re lucky I don’t take off these shoes and throw them at you, Dee.”
“But I didn’t tell him. I mentioned the website, but that’s all. I swear it. I told him that he’d have to do everything else on his own.”
“Oh, he’s managed that, all right,” Barbara said.
“You’re being very silly,” Dorothea said. And then, “Ah. There’s our cue! Time to Cincinnati.”
Which was what they did, with Barbara asking herself how bad could it be to have her colleagues watch her make a fool of herself. They’d already seen her do so in other situations. What was one more?
A cheer went up as she and Dorothea Cincinnatied their way onto the stage to Cole Porter. That their costumes had nothing whatsoever to do with the lyrics appeared to make no difference to anyone. Someone started a chant of “Bar’bra, Bar’bra!” and while she wasn’t about to embrace this as a sign of approbation, at least she was confident that what her associates knew about tap dancing could fill a teaspoon. If she made errors, they would be clueless. All she had to do was remain upright and act as if everything she did was part of the show.
It all went as it went: not entirely well, not entirely disastrous. She managed to remember the order of the opening bit, only once confusing a riffle with a scuffle. Smiling through it all was a challenge since doing that while also saying “riff, jump, shim sham, cramp roll” was more than she could consistently manage. So instead o
f beaming at the audience as Dorothea was managing to do, she accomplished a glance or three in that general direction as they went along.
But then the glue of her determination gave way. Her steps faltered. Her steps failed. She saw who was sitting next to Charlie Denton, and it was not the father of Deborah St. James.
She Cincinnatied directly off the stage.
SOUTHALL
LONDON
There were no dressing rooms. She’d had to wear the bloody sailor suit to the event. Only the pieces of fruit had not come already in costume, since they could don their various bits of gear directly over their street clothing. As for the rest of them, there would be no way that they could leave the premises incognito.
So she had to get away. She had to do it quickly. She didn’t stop to wonder at the why of this. She was operating on rote fight or flight, and she was choosing flight.
Once backstage, she elbowed her way through a Fred-and-Ginger and a group of children wearing miniature top hats and tails. She heard Kaz behind her saying, “What is it?” but she didn’t pause. He could think it was delayed stage fright coming at her at a gallop or a planned revenge against Dorothea for getting her involved in this insanity in the first place. He could think she’d twisted an ankle, been struck by food poisoning, or been hit with a visitation of the plague. It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that Dorothea was left on the stage to complete the number and to pretend it was all part of the show that her partner had executed a hasty removal of herself. Of course when it came to the end and Barbara Havers did not show up to receive her share of the applause, it would look strange. But she didn’t care how it looked. She merely cared about absenting herself at once.
The worst was . . . She didn’t know why she was doing so. The worst was . . . She didn’t know what it meant that an Italian detective called Salvatore Lo Bianco was actually in the audience. He had to have been brought there by DI Lynley, and the absolutely bloody worst of this was . . . She did not understand why Lynley would seek to humiliate her in such a fashion.
She heard him call her name as she approached her Mini. He was no fool, Lynley. He might not have known a thing about tapping, but he knew a great deal about reading people. So he would have read her expression, followed by Dorothea’s expression, and he would have put those pieces together with the kind of speed for which he was known.
She whirled on him. “Why did you?” she shouted. “Did you think I’d be chuffed? Amused? Thrilled to bits? I asked you not to come. I told you not to come. And not only did you decide to come anyway, you also decided to invite Salvatore, didn’t you. And the rest of them as well: Simon, Deborah, Charlie . . . whoever else. Winston. Yes. Winston and his mum and his dad. What about my neighbours? Did you try them as well?”
He raised his hands in a defensive gesture, so she knew she’d got through to him at last. He said, “Barbara. Stop. Listen.”
“I won’t,” she cried. “I bloody well won’t. D’you think you know what’s best for me? Like everyone else? Well, you don’t, Inspector. You’ve just made me into a bloody joke in front of my colleagues, in front of friends, in front of . . .” She couldn’t say the rest. She found herself so far beyond anger that she didn’t even know the name for what she was feeling.
“I didn’t invite Salvatore,” Lynley said. And then, after a moment of glancing back at the building where the dancing continued, “No. That’s not entirely true. I did invite him, but not to travel all the way here from Italy. He was coming here anyway. He’s about to begin an English course.”
“An English course? What’s he want with a bloody English course?”
“I’ve no idea. You might want to ask him. I invited him to stay with me and once it was clear that he’d be here on this precise day—”
“You thought it was a perfect time to make me a laughingstock. That’s why you brought him and everyone else.”
“I can’t even begin to understand how you managed to arrive at that conclusion. Why in God’s name would I ever want to make you a laughingstock?”
“Because that’s what I am,” she cried, with a sudden knowledge of a truth she’d lived with and avoided for years. “Because that’s what I’ll always be.”
“You can’t possibly mean that.”
“Just look at me. Think about what it’s like to be who I am and where I’ve come from and how it feels to know that I have no chance ever . . . to ever . . . to . . .” She forced herself to stop because she knew she would begin to weep if she didn’t, and there was simply no way on earth, in heaven, or in hell that she intended to begin weeping in the car park of a Southall community centre in front of Thomas Lynley while dressed in a sailor costume.
“You come with me at once,” Lynley said. His voice had altered, not to the Voice, but to something that had an edge of roughness to it. When she didn’t move, he said, “I said come with me. I’m giving you an order.”
“And if I bloody well decide to refuse?” she said with a sneer.
“I wouldn’t take that option if I were you.”
That said, he turned. He did not look back to see if she was following him. She gave thought to disobeying his order, but there had been a flinty quality to his voice that suggested she might not want to do that. So she trudged in his wake.
By the time they got back inside, the curtain calls had begun. One by one, the dancing acts took the stage to applause and cheers from their families, friends, and supporters. Barbara had a feeling about what was coming, so she was not surprised when Lynley said to her, “When Dorothea comes out on the stage, you will join her, and you won’t be doing it for yourself. You will be doing it for her because she’s fond of you. As are we all, by the way, but I can see now is not the moment to argue that point with you.”
“I can’t go—”
“You damn well can and you damn well will,” Lynley said. “Use the centre aisle to do it, and if you don’t make the entire thing look intentional, you will be answering to me. Is that quite clear, Sergeant?”
She was stupefied. She wanted to say, How bloody dare you act in the right when you bloody well know you are in the wrong. She wanted to say, Don’t you bloody throw your lordshipness at me. She wanted to say, You don’t know me, you don’t know anything, you don’t know what’s inside me and you’ve never known.
Only . . . that wasn’t the reality, was it. That had never been the reality. Thomas Lynley knew more than anyone ever gave him credit for, and what he knew better than anything else was the nature of her struggle, and she knew he knew this for the simple reason that he never mentioned it, ever, even now. He spared her that. He had always done so.
Dorothea emerged from the wings, then. The crowd applauded. She smiled prettily but it had to be said, she looked tentative about it, which wasn’t like Dorothea at all.
Lynley said, “Go,” and Barbara understood that she could not hesitate.
She charged up the aisle. She leapt onto the stage with such momentum that she lost her balance. She fell and slid in Dorothea’s direction, ending up at Dorothea’s feet. And just as Lynley had instructed her to do, she made even that look like part of the show.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Whenever I begin the process of writing a Lynley novel, I locate the area of England that I would like to write about, I read about the area, and I spend time there scouting out locations and amassing information that I hope will help me in the development of the characters and the construction of the plot and the subplots.
For this novel, I must thank Chief Constable Anthony Bangham of the West Mercia police for allowing me to interview him, for explaining how the cutbacks in policing have affected the way the police now have to operate in that part of the country, and for graciously fielding and replying to follow-up emails when I ran into difficulties that only a member of the police force could solve.
Jon Hall, chairman of the Midland Gliding Club
at the Long Mynd, was wonderful about showing me around the airfield complex, demonstrating how a glider is assembled, and explaining the details of how one flies a glider as well as the various ways in which a glider is actually launched into the air. I do regret not taking up his offer of a flight.
The mayor of Ludlow, Paul Draper, met with me in the town council chambers and explained what the cutbacks in policing were doing to the towns in general and to Ludlow in particular.
Swati Gamble of Hodder & Stoughton was, as she always is, incredibly helpful when it came to winnowing out information that I needed, and my editor, Nick Sayers, set me straight when I went off track in British English.
In the United States, fellow writer (and tap dancer) Patricia Smiley was extremely helpful when it came to tapping, my assistant Charlene Coe was resourceful and amazing when it came to doing research on far too many topics to list here, my editor, Brian Tart, was the personification of patience as he waited for this novel’s completion, and my husband, Tom McCabe, could not have been more supportive or understanding of this lengthy process.
I’ve had additional loving support from my Sistahs as well: Karen Joy Fowler, Gail Tsukiyama, Nancy Horan, and Jane Hamilton. You four rock.
There will be mistakes herein, but they are mine alone.
Elizabeth George
Whidbey Island, Washington
27 August 2017
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
elizabeth george is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty psychological suspense novels, four young adult novels, one book of nonfiction, and two short-story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, two Edgar nominations, and both France’s and Germany’s first prize for crime fiction, as well as several other prestigious prizes. She lives in Washington State.
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