For the first time, Lynley considered an altogether new idea.
“Havers,” he said to the constable when they were out of the interview room again, “there’s another way to go with this. It’s one that we’ve not looked at yet.”
“Which is?” she asked, stowing her notebook in her bag.
“Two men,” he said. “One procures and the other kills. One procures to give the other the opportunity to kill. The dominant and the submissive partners.”
She thought about this. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said. “A twist on Fred and Rosemary, on Hindley and Brady.”
“More than that,” Lynley said.
“How?”
“It explains why we’ve got someone buying that van in Middlesex while someone else waits for him in a ‘minicab’ just outside Muwaffaq Masoud’s house.”
WHEN LYNLEY arrived home, it was quite late. He’d stopped in Victoria Street for a word with TO9 about MABIL, and he’d given the child-protection-team officers what information he had about the organisation. He told them about St. Lucy’s Church, near Gloucester Road underground station, and he asked what the possibilities were of closing the group down.
The news he received in return was grim. A meeting of like-minded people to discuss their like-mindedness did not constitute a breach of the law. Was there something else going on besides talk in the basement of St. Lucy’s Church? If not, Vice had too few officers and too many other ongoing illicit activities with which they had to contend.
“But these are paedophiles,” Lynley countered in frustration upon hearing this assessment from his colleague.
“May be,” was the reply. “But the CPS aren’t going to drag anyone into court based on his conversation, Tommy.” Still, TO9 would send someone undercover to a meeting of MABIL when their burdens were lighter round the Yard. Barring a complaint or hard evidence of criminal activities, that was the best TO9 could do.
So Lynley was feeling gloomy when he drove into Eaton Terrace. He parked in the garage in the mews and trudged down the cobblestone alley and round the corner to his home. The day had left him with the distinct sensation of being unclean: from his skin right through to his spirit.
Inside the house, the ground floor was mostly dark, with a dim light shining at the foot of the stairway. He climbed up and went to their bedroom to see if his wife had gone to bed. But the bed was undisturbed, so he went on, first to the library and ultimately to the nursery. There he found her. She’d bought a rocking chair for the room, he saw, and she was sitting in it, asleep, with an oddly shaped pillow in her lap. He recognised it from one of their many trips to Mothercare in the past few months. It was meant to be used when nursing a baby. The infant rested on it beneath the mother’s breast.
Helen stirred as he crossed the room to her. She said, as if they’d only just been speaking moments before, “So I decided to practise. Well, I suppose it’s more like seeing what it will feel like. Not the actual feeding, but just having him here. It’s odd when you think about it, I mean when you actually stretch the thought out.”
“What is?” The rocking chair was beneath the window, and he leaned against the sill. He watched her fondly.
“That we have actually created a little human being. Our own Jasper Felix, happily floating round inside me, waiting for his introduction to the world.”
Lynley shuddered at the latter part of her thought: introducing their son to a world that often seemed filled with violence and was indeed a place of great uncertainty.
Helen must have seen this because she said, “What is it?”
“Bad day,” he told her.
She extended her hand to him and he took it. Her skin was cool, and he could smell the scent of citrus upon her. She said, “I had a phone call from a man called Mitchell Corsico, Tommy. He said he was from The Source.”
“God,” Lynley groaned. “I’m sorry. He is from The Source.” He explained how he was attempting to thwart Hillier’s plan by keeping Corsico occupied with the minutiae of his own personal life. “Dee should have warned you he might be in touch. I didn’t think he’d be quite that fast. She was intent upon giving him an earful to keep him away from the incident room.”
“Ah.” Helen stretched and yawned. “Well, I did assume there was something going on when he called me Countess. He’d spoken to my father as well, as things turn out. I’ve no idea how he tracked him down.”
“What did he want to know?”
She began to get to her feet. Lynley helped her rise. She set the pillow into the baby’s cot and put a stuffed elephant on top of it. “Daughter of an earl, married to an earl. Obviously, he loathed me. I tried to amuse him with my astounding mindlessness and my sad, fading It-girl proclivities, but he didn’t seem as charmed as I would have liked. Lots of questions about why a blue blood—this is you, darling—would become a cop. I told him I hadn’t the slightest idea as I’d much prefer it if you were available to lunch with me daily in Knightsbridge. He asked to come and visit me here at home, a photographer in tow. I drew the line at that. I hope that was the right thing to do.”
“It was.”
“I’m glad. Of course, it was hard to resist the idea of posing artfully on the drawing-room sofa for The Source, but I managed it.” She slipped her arm round his waist and they headed for the door. “What else?” she asked him.
“Hmmm?” He kissed the top of her head.
“Your bad day.”
“God. It’s nothing I want to talk about now.”
“Have you had dinner?”
“No appetite,” he said. “All I want is to collapse. Preferably on something soft and relatively pliant.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “I know just what you need.” She took his hand and led him towards the bedroom.
He said, “Helen, I couldn’t manage it tonight. I’m done for, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “I never thought I’d hear that from you, but fear not. I have something else in mind.” She told him to sit on the bed, and she went to the bathroom. He heard the snick of a match. He saw its flare. A moment later, water began to run in the tub, and she returned to him. “Do nothing,” she said. “Avoid thinking, if you can. Just be,” and she began to undress him.
There was a ceremonial quality to how she did it, in part because she removed his clothes without haste. She set his shoes carefully to one side, and she folded trousers, jacket, and shirt. When he was nude, she led him into the bathroom, where the bathtub’s water was fragrant and the candles she’d lit cast a soothing glow that was doubled by the mirrors and arced against the walls.
He stepped into the water, sank down, and stretched out until he was covered to his shoulders. She fixed a towelling pillow for his head, and she said, “Close your eyes. Just relax. Don’t do a thing. Try not to think. The scent should help you. Concentrate on that.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Helen’s special potion.”
He heard her moving round the bath: the door swinging shut, the sound of garments dropping to the floor. Then she was next to the tub and her hand was dipping into the water. He opened his eyes. She’d changed into a soft towelling dressing gown, its olive colour warm against her skin. She held a natural sponge and she was applying a bathing gel to it.
She began to wash him. He murmured, “I’ve not asked about your day.”
“Shhh,” she replied.
“No. Tell me. It’ll give me something to think about that’s not Hillier or the case.”
“All right,” she said, but her voice was low and she ran the sponge the length of his arm with a gentle pressure that made him close his eyes once again. “I had a day of hope.”
“I’m glad someone did.”
“After much research, Deborah and I have targeted eight shops for the christening clothes. We’ve a date tomorrow, devoted entirely to the excursion.”
“Excellent,” he said. “An end to conflict.”
“That’s what
we think. May we use the Bentley, by the way? There may be more packages than can fit in my car.”
“We’re talking about a baby’s clothes, Helen. An infant’s clothes. How much room can they take up?”
“Yes. Of course. But there may be other things, Tommy…”
He chuckled. She took his other arm. “You can resist anything but temptation,” he told her.
“In a good cause.”
“What else would it be?” But he told her to take the Bentley and to enjoy the excursion. He himself settled in to enjoy her ministration to his body.
She did his neck and kneaded the muscles of his shoulders. She told him to lean forward so that she could see to his back. She washed his chest and she used her fingers to press at points on his face in a way that seemed to drain all tension from him. Then she did the same on his feet till he felt like warm putty. She saved his legs for last.
The sponge glided up them, up them, up them. And then it was not the sponge at all but her hand, and she made him groan.
“Yes?” she murmured.
“Oh yes. Yes.”
“More? Harder? How?”
“Just do what you’re doing.” He caught his breath. “God, Helen. You’re a very naughty girl.”
“I can stop if you like.”
“Not on your life.” He opened his eyes and met hers to see she was smiling gently and watching him. “Take off the robe,” he said.
“Visual stimulation? You hardly need it.”
“Not that sort,” he replied. “Just take off the robe.” And when she did so, he shifted so that she could join him in the water. She put a foot on either side of him and he reached for her hands to help her down. “Tell Jasper Felix to move over,” he said.
“I think,” she replied, “that he’ll be happy to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BARBARA HAVERS TURNED ON THE TELEVISION TO ACCOMPANY her morning ritual of Pop-Tarts, a fag, and coffee. It was cold as the dickens in her bungalow, and she went to the window to see if snow had fallen during the night. It hadn’t, but a sheen of ice on the concrete path from the front of the house gleamed with black menace in the security light that hung from the roof. She returned to her crumpled bed and considered dropping back into it while the electric fire did something to ward off the chill, but she knew she couldn’t spare the time, so she ripped the top blanket off and wrapped it round herself before she shivered her way to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
Behind her, The Big Breakfast was regaling its viewers with the latest celebrity gossip. This mostly involved who was currently who else’s partner—always a burning question for the British public, it seemed—and who had thrown over whom for whom else.
Barbara scowled and poured boiling water into the coffee press. She bent over the sink and tapped her finger against the fag that dangled from her lips, dislodging ash in the vicinity of the drain. God, they were obsessed, she thought. Partner this, partner that. Did anyone stay alone for five minutes…other than she herself, of course? It seemed that the national pastime was moving from one relationship to the next with as little downtime in between as possible. A single woman was an accepted failure as a human being, and everywhere you looked, the message blasted you between the eyes.
She carried her Pop-Tart to the table and went back for the coffee. She directed the remote at the television screen and she punched it off. She felt raw, far too close to the point of having to think of her partnerless life. She could hear the remark Azhar had made about whether she would ever find herself in the fortunate position of having children, and she did not want to venture within fifty yards of thinking of that. So she took a large bite of Pop-Tart and went in search of something to distract her from the consideration of her neighbour, his comment about her marital and maternal state, and the memory of that front door which had not opened when she had last knocked upon it. She found this distraction in her man from Lubbock. She put the CD on and cranked up the volume.
Buddy Holly was still raving on at the end of her second Pop-Tart, and her third cup of coffee. Indeed, he was celebrating his short life with such passion—and at such a volume—that as she headed for the bathroom and her morning shower, she nearly missed hearing the telephone’s ring.
She quieted Buddy and answered, to find a familiar voice saying her name. “Barbara, dear, is that you?” It was Mrs. Flo—Florence Magentry, to the general public—at whose Greenford home Barbara’s mother had been living for the past fifteen months with several other elderly ladies in similar need of care.
“Me and none other,” Barbara said. “Hi, Mrs. Flo. You’re up and about early. Everything okay with Mum?”
“Oh it is, it is,” Mrs. Flo said. “We’re all dandy out here. Mum’s asked for porridge this morning, and she’s tucked right into it. Lovely appetite, she’s got today. She’s been mentioning you since yesterday lunchtime.”
It was not Mrs. Flo’s way to induce guilt in the relatives of her ladies, but Barbara felt it anyway. She hadn’t been out to see her mum in several weeks—she looked at the calendar and realised it had actually been five—and it didn’t take much to make her feel like a selfish cow who’d abandoned her calf. So she felt the need to excuse herself to Mrs. Flo and she said, “I’ve been working on these murders…the young boys? You might have read about it. It’s been a rough case, and time’s dead crucial. Has Mum—”
“Barbie, dear, you’re not to go on like that,” Mrs. Flo said. “I just wanted you to know Mum’s had a few good days. She’s been here, and she still is. So I thought that as she’s a bit more in the present and out of the Blitz, it might be good to take time for an examination of her personals. We might be able to do it without sedating her, which I always think is preferable, don’t you?”
“Bloody hell, yes,” Barbara said. “If you’ll make the appointment, I’ll take her.”
“Of course, dear, there’s no guarantee that she’ll be herself when you have to take her. As I said, there have been a few good days recently, but you know how it is.”
“I do,” Barbara said. “But make the appointment anyway. I can cope if we have to sedate her.” She could steel herself to it, she told herself: her mum slumped into the passenger seat of the Mini, slack of jaw and bleary of eye. That would be nearly unbearable to behold, but it would be infinitely preferable to trying to explain, to her disintegrating ability to understand, what was about to happen to her when she was asked to put her legs into the ghastly stirrups in the doctor’s surgery.
So Barbara and Mrs. Flo reached an agreement, which consisted of a range of days when Barbara could drive out to Greenford for the appointment. Then they rang off, and Barbara was left with the rueful knowledge that she wasn’t as childless as she looked to the outside world. For certainly her mother stood in place of progeny. Not exactly what Barbara had in mind for herself, but there it was. The cosmic forces governing the universe were always willing to give you a variation of what you thought your life was meant to be like.
She headed for the bathroom again, only to have the telephone ring a second time. She decided to let her answer machine take the call, and she left the room to turn the shower on. But from the bathroom, the voice she heard was male this time, which suggested the night had brought another development in the case, so she hurried back out in time to hear Taymullah Azhar saying, “…the number up here should you need to get in touch with us.”
She snatched up the receiver, saying, “Azhar? Hello? Are you there?” And where was there? she wondered.
“Ah, Barbara,” he said. “I hope I did not awaken you? Hadiyyah and I have come to Lancaster for a conference at the university, and I realised that I did not ask anyone to collect our post prior to our leaving. Could you—”
“Shouldn’t she be at school? Is she on holiday? Half-term?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “That is to say, she should be at school. But I could not leave her alone in London, so we’ve brought her schoolwork with us. She does it here in t
he hotel room while I’m at my meetings. It is, I know, not the best arrangement, but she’s safe and she keeps the door locked while I’m gone.”
“Azhar, she shouldn’t…” Barbara stopped herself. That way led to disagreement. She said instead, “You could have left her with me. I would have been happy to have her here. I’d always be happy to have her here. I knocked you up the other morning. No one came to the door.”
“Ah. We would have been here in Lancaster,” he said.
“Oh. I heard music—”
“My meagre attempt to thwart burglars.”
Barbara felt unaccountably relieved by this information. “D’you want me to check the flat, then? Have you left a key? Because I could collect the post and go in and…” She realised how bloody happy she was to hear his voice and how much she wanted to accommodate him. She didn’t like this at all, so she stopped herself from going on. He was, after all, still the man who thought her unfortunately unpartnered in life.
He said, “You are very kind, Barbara. If you would claim our mail, I’d ask nothing more of you.”
“Will do, then,” she said cheerfully. “How’s my mate?”
“I believe she misses you. She is still asleep or I would bring her to the phone.”
Barbara was grateful for the information. She knew he hadn’t needed to give it to her. She said, “Azhar, about the CD, about the row…you know…what I said about your…about Hadiyyah’s mum being gone…” She wasn’t sure where to go with this, and she didn’t want to reiterate her remarks in order to remind him of what she was about to apologise for. She said, “I was out of order with what I said. Sorry.”
There was a silence. She could imagine him in some hotel room in the north, frost on the window and Hadiyyah a small lump in the bed. There would be two beds, with a nightstand between them and he would be sitting on the edge of his. A lamp would be on, but not on the nightstand because he wouldn’t want its light to shine on his daughter and awaken her. He’d be wearing…what? Dressing gown? Pyjamas? Or was he dressed for the day? And were his feet bare or clothed in socks and shoes? Had he combed his dark hair? Shaved? And…And bloody hell, dolly, get a grip, for God’s sake.