Isabelle’s face was perfect stone. She said to Stewart, “In my office. Now.”
Stewart hesitated just long enough to signal his scorn. He and Isabelle engaged in a moment of locked gazes before the acting superintendent strode out of the room. Stewart rose in a lazy movement and followed her.
A tight silence ensued. Someone whistled low. Lynley approached the china board for a closer look at the photo of the yellow shirt. There was a movement next to him, and he saw that Havers had come to join him.
She said to him in a low voice, “You know she’s making the wrong decisions.”
“Barbara—”
“You know. No one wants to kick his arse into the next time zone as much as I do, but he’s right this time.”
She meant John Stewart. Lynley couldn’t disagree. Isabelle’s desperation to bend the facts to fit what she needed to believe about Matsumoto was truncating the investigation. She was in the worst position possible: her temporary status at the Met, her first investigation and its deterioration into a welter of inconceivable circumstances with a suspect in hospital because he’d done a runner, that suspect the brother of a famed cellist with access to a fiery solicitor, the press taking up the story, Hillier involved, and the abominable Stephenson Deacon on board to attempt to manipulate the media, and evidence pointing in every possible direction. Lynley wasn’t sure how things could get worse for Isabelle. Hers was turning out to be a baptism not by fire but rather by conflagration.
He said, “Barbara, I’m not sure what you’d have me do.”
“Talk to her. She’ll listen to you. Webberly would’ve and you’d’ve talked to Webberly if he’d been going at things like this. You know you would. And if you were in the same position as she is just now, you’d listen to us. We’re a team for a reason.” She drove her hands into her ill-cut hair in typical fashion, pulling on it roughly. “Why did she call us back from Hampshire?”
“She has limited resources. Every investigation has.”
“Oh bloody hell!” Havers stalked off.
Lynley called after her, but she was gone. He was left facing the china board, staring at the yellow shirt. He saw at once what it was telling him and what it should have told Isabelle. He realised he, too, was in an unenviable position. He considered how best to use the information before him.
BARBARA COULDN’T UNDERSTAND why Lynley wouldn’t take a stand. She could understand why he might not want to do that in front of the rest of the team since John bloody Stewart hardly needed encouragement to pull a Mr. Christian on the acting superintendent’s Captain Bligh. But why not have a word with her in private? That was the part that didn’t make sense. Lynley wasn’t a man intimidated by anyone—his thousand and one run-ins with AC Hillier surely gave testimony to that—so she knew he wasn’t unnerved by the prospect of going eyeball-to-eyeball with Isabelle Ardery. That being the case, what was stopping him? She didn’t know. What she did know was that for some reason, he wasn’t being himself when she needed him to be just that person, the one he’d always been, to her and to everyone else.
That he wasn’t being the Thomas Lynley she recognised and had worked with for years troubled her more than she wanted to admit. It seemed to mark the degree to which he’d changed and the degree to which things that had once mattered to him no longer did. It was as if he was floating out there in some sort of unnameable void, lost to them in ways that were crucial but undefined.
Barbara didn’t want to define them now. She just wanted to get home. Because Winston had driven them up from the New Forest, she was forced into a journey on the blasted Northern Line at the worst time of day in the worst possible weather, and she was additionally forced to make this journey crammed into the area in front of the carriage doors, wondering why the hell people would not move down the aisle into the bloody carriage itself as she was jostled into the broad backside of a woman shrieking into her mobile phone about “fooking get home an’ I mean it this time, Clive, or I swear I’m taking the knife and cutting them off” when she wasn’t being pushed into the odoriferous armpit of a T-shirted adolescent listening to something loud and obnoxious through his earphones.
To make matters worse, she had her holdall with her and when she finally reached the Chalk Farm station, she had to jerk it out of the carriage and in the process broke one of its straps. She swore. She kicked it. She scraped her ankle against one of its buckles. She swore again.
She trudged home from the station wondering when the weather would break, bringing a storm that would wash the dust from the tree leaves and scour the smog-laden air. Her mood grew even fouler as she lugged the holdall behind her, and everything that was infuriating her seemed to have as its source Isabelle Ardery. But considering Isabelle Ardery led her back to considering Thomas Lynley, and Barbara had had enough of that for one day.
I need a shower, Barbara decided. I need a fag. I need a drink. Hell on wheels, I need a life.
By the time she arrived home, she was dripping perspiration and her shoulders ached. She tried to tell herself it was the weight of the holdall, but she knew it was tension, plain and simple. She reached the front door of her bungalow with more relief than she’d felt in ages at being home. She didn’t even care that, inside the place, it was suitable for baking bread. She opened windows and dug her small fan from a cupboard. She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, blessed the mere existence of nicotine, fell into one of the plain kitchen chairs, and looked round her extremely humble little abode.
She’d dropped her holdall by the door, so she hadn’t seen what was on the daybed at first. But now, sitting at the kitchen table, she saw that her A-line skirt—that article best suited to a woman with a figure like hers, according to Hadiyyah—had been tailored. The hem had been taken up, the skirt had been ironed, and a complete outfit had been assembled upon the bed: the skirt, a crisp businesslike new blouse, sheer tights, a scarf, even a chunky bracelet. And her shoes had been polished as well. They fairly gleamed. The good fairy had been here.
Barbara rose and approached the bed. She had to admit, it all looked good together, especially the bracelet, which she never would have considered purchasing, let alone wearing. She picked it up for a closer inspection. A gift tag was tied to it with a purple ribbon.
“Surprise!” had been printed on the card along with “Welcome Home!” and the gift giver’s name, as if she had not known who had arranged these items for her: Hadiyyah Khalidah.
Barbara’s mood altered at once. Amazing, she thought, how such a little thing, a mere act of thoughtfulness …She stubbed out her cigarette and ducked into the tiny bathroom. A quarter of an hour saw her showered, refreshed, and dressed. She brushed some blusher on her face in a bow to Hadiyyah’s make-over efforts, and she left her bungalow. She went to the lower ground-floor flat of the Big House, which faced on to the summer-dry lawn.
The French windows were open, and cooking sounds along with conversation came from within. Hadiyyah was chatting to her father and Barbara could hear from her voice that she was excited.
She knocked and called out, “Anyone home?” to which Hadiyyah cried, “Barbara! You’re back! Brilliant!”
When Hadiyyah came to the door, she looked altered to Barbara. Taller, somehow, although that didn’t make sense, as Barbara had hardly been gone long enough for the little girl to have grown. “Oh, this is so lovely,” Hadiyyah cried. “Dad! Barbara’s here. C’n she stay for dinner?”
“No, no,” Barbara stammered. “Please, don’t, kiddo. I only came to say thank you. I’ve just got back. I found the skirt. And the rest. And what a bloody nice surprise it was.”
“I hemmed it myself,” Hadiyyah informed her proudly. “Well, maybe Mrs. Silver helped a bit ’cause sometimes I make my stitches crooked. But were you surprised? I ironed it as well. Did you find the bracelet?” She bounced from foot to foot. “Did you like it? When I saw it, I asked Dad could we buy it ’cause you know how you got to accessorise, Barbara.”
“From your lips to my
memory,” Barbara told her reverently. “But I couldn’t’ve found anything as perfect as that.”
“It’s the colour, isn’t it?” Hadiyyah said. “And part of what makes it so wonderful is the size. See, what I learned is that the size of the accessory depends upon the size of the person wearing it. But that has to do with one’s features and bones and body type, not with one’s weight and height, if you know what I mean. So if you look at your wrists—like if you compare them to mine—what you c’n see—”
“Khushi.” Azhar came to the door of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel.
Hadiyyah turned to him. “Barbara found the surprise!” she announced. “She likes it, Dad. And what about the blouse, Barbara? Did you like the new blouse? I wished I picked it out, but I didn’t. Dad picked it out, didn’t you, Dad? I wanted a different one.”
“Don’t tell me. You wanted one with a pussy bow.”
“Well …” She shifted on her feet, doing a little tap dancing in the doorway. “Not exactly. But it did have ruffles. Not a lot, you see. But there was a sweet little ruffle down the front hiding the buttons and I liked it awfully. I thought it was brilliant. But Dad said you wouldn’t ever wear ruffles. I said fashion is all about expanding one’s horizons, Barbara. But he said horizons can be expanded only so far, and he said the tailored blouse was better. I said the neckline of a blouse is meant to copy the shape your jawline makes and your face is rounded, isn’t it, not angular like the tailored blouse is. And he said let’s try it and you c’n always take it back if you don’t like it. And d’you know where we got it?”
“Khushi, khushi,” Azhar said warmly. “Why do you not invite Barbara inside?”
Hadiyyah laughed, hands to her mouth. “I got so excited!” She stepped back from the door. “We have fizzy lemonade to drink. D’you want some? We’re having a celebration, aren’t we, Dad?”
“Khushi,” Azhar said to her meaningfully.
Some sort of message passed between them, and Barbara realised that Azhar and his daughter had been in the midst of a private conversation. Her presence was clearly an interruption. She said hastily, “Anyway, I’m off, you two. I wanted to say thanks straightaway. It was awfully kind. C’n I pay you for the blouse?”
“You may not,” Azhar told her.
“It was a present,” Hadiyyah declared. “We even bought it in Camden High Street, Barbara. Not in the Stables or anything—”
“God no,” Barbara said. Uneasy personal experience had taught her how Azhar felt about Hadiyyah wandering round the warren comprising the Stables and Camden Lock Market.
“—but we did go into Inverness Street Market, and it was just lovely. I’ve never been there before.”
Azhar smiled. He cupped the back of his daughter’s head and jiggled it lightly in a fond gesture. He said, “How you chatter tonight.” And to Barbara, “Will you stay for dinner, Barbara?”
“Oh, do stay, Barbara,” Hadiyyah said. “Dad’s making chicken saag masala, and there’s dal and chapatis and mushroom dopiaza. I gen’rally don’t like mushrooms, you know, but I love them how Dad cooks. Oh, an’ he’s making rice pilau with spinach and carrots.”
“That sounds like quite a feast,” Barbara said.
“It is, it is! ’Cause—” She clapped her hands to her mouth. Her eyes fairly danced above them. She said against her palms, “Oh, I wish and wish I could say more. Only I can’t, you see. I promised.”
“Then you mustn’t,” Barbara said.
“But you’re such a friend. Isn’t she, Dad? C’n I … ?”
“You may not.” Azhar shot Barbara a smile. “Now, we have stood here chatting long enough. Barbara, we insist that you join us for dinner.”
“There’s lots of food,” Hadiyyah announced.
“Put that way,” Barbara told her, “I can hardly do anything but fall straight into it.”
She followed them inside, and she felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the day’s temperature, which had hardly been lessened by the cooking that had gone on within the flat. Indeed, the beastly heat of the waning day was something she hardly noticed at all. Instead, she noticed the manner in which her mood lifted, she no longer was caught up in considering what was happening to Thomas Lynley, and the concerns of the murder enquiry melted away.
THE CONFRONTATION WITH John Stewart left Isabelle rattled, a reaction she hadn’t expected. She was long used to dealing with men on the force, but theirs was generally a covert sexism, displayed by the sly innuendo whose interpretation could, conveniently, be attributed to everything from thin skin to complete misinterpretation on the part of the listener. Matters were different with John Stewart. Sly innuendo was not his style. At least Isabelle found that this was the case behind closed doors when Stewart knew very well that any move she made against him would be an instance of her-word-against-his with the higher-ups. And this in a situation in which the last thing she wanted to do was to go to her superior officers with a complaint about sexual harassment or anything else. John Stewart, she realised, was clever as the devil. He knew the ice she was skating on was thin. He was happy to shove her directly into the middle of the pond.
She wondered briefly how a man could be so shortsighted as to set himself in warfare with someone who might be selected as his superior officer. But she gave that consideration only a moment before she saw their standoff from Stewart’s point of view: Clearly, he didn’t expect her to be selected. And at the end of the day, she couldn’t blame him for believing she’d soon be shown the door.
What a cock-up, she thought. How could things possibly get any worse?
God, how she wanted a drink.
But she steeled herself not to have one, not even to look inside her handbag where her airline bottles nestled like sleeping infants. She didn’t need the stuff. She merely wanted it. Want was not need.
A knock on her office door and she swung round from the window, where she’d been standing to gaze at a view she did not even see. She called entrance, and Lynley stood there. He held a manila envelope in his hand.
He said, “I was out of order earlier. I’m terribly sorry.”
She laughed shortly. “You and everyone else.”
“Still and all—”
“It’s no matter, Thomas.”
He said nothing for a moment, observing her. He tapped the envelope against his palm, as if he was thinking how to go on. At last he said, “John is …,” but still he hesitated, perhaps looking for the proper word.
She said, “Yes. It’s hard to pin down, isn’t it? Just the right term to capture the essence of John Stewart.”
“I suppose. But I shouldn’t have reprimanded him, Isabelle. It was rather a knee-jerk reaction, I’m afraid.”
She waved him off. “As I said, it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s not you,” Lynley said. “You’re meant to know that. He and Barbara have been at it for years. He has difficulty with women. His divorce …I’m afraid it rather turned him. He’s not come back from it, and he’s not been able to see any fault on his part for what went on.”
“What did go on?”
Lynley entered, shutting the door behind him. “His wife had an affair.”
“Ask me if I’m surprised about that.”
“She had an affair with another woman.”
“I can hardly blame her. That bloke would make Eve choose the snake over Adam.”
“They’re a couple now, and they have custody of John’s two girls.” He observed her steadily as he said this. She shifted her gaze away.
“I can’t feel sorry for him.”
“Who could blame you? But sometimes these things are good to know, and I doubt his file said it.”
“You’re right. It didn’t. Are you thinking we have something in common, John Stewart and I?”
“People at odds often do.” And then in a shift, “Will you come with me, Isabelle? You’ll need to bring your car, as I won’t be coming back this way. There’s someone I want you to meet.?
??
She frowned. “What’s this about?”
“Not much, actually. But as it’s the end of the day …We can have a meal afterwards, if you’d like. Sometimes talking over a case brings out something not considered before. Arguing about it does the same.”
“Is that what you want to do? Argue?”
“We do have areas of disagreement, don’t we? Will you come with me?”
Isabelle looked round the office. She thought, Whyever not? and she nodded curtly. “Give me a moment to collect my things. I’ll meet you below.”
When he’d left her, she used the time to make a quick trip into the ladies’, where she observed herself in the mirror and saw the day playing out on her face, especially between her eyes where a deep line was making the sort of vertical incision that became permanent. She decided to repair her makeup, which gave her a reason to open her handbag. There she caught sight of those nestling infants. She knew it would take only a moment to toss one of them back. Or all of them. But she firmly closed the bag and went to join her colleague.
Lynley didn’t tell her where they were going. He merely nodded when she joined him and said he’d keep her within sight. That was the limit of their exchange before he set off in his Healey Elliott and gunned its engine as he headed upward, out of the underground car park and into the street. He manoeuvred over to the river. He was as good as his promise: He kept her within view. She was oddly comforted by this. She couldn’t have said why.
Unfamiliar with London as she was, she hadn’t a clue where they were going as they headed southwest along the river. It was only when she saw the golden orb atop a distant obelisk to her right that she realised they’d come to the Royal Hospital, which meant they’d reached Chelsea. The broad lawns of Ranelagh Gardens were desiccated from the weather, she saw, although a few brave souls gathered there anyway: A late-afternoon game of football was in progress.