This Body of Death

Chapter Twelve

THE NEXT MORNING IT WAS LARGELY BECAUSE OF WHAT Barbara didn’t want to think about that she went about packing a bag for the trip she’d been assigned to take by making sure that not a single item she placed within it would have met with Isabelle Ardery’s approval. This was a job that took little time and less thought, and she was just finishing up when a knock on her door told her that Winston Nkata had arrived. He’d wisely suggested they take his motor, as hers was notoriously unreliable and, besides, fitting his rangy frame into an ancient Mini would have created an excruciating ride for him.

She said, “’S open,” and she lit up a fag because she knew she was going to need to toke up on the nicotine since Nkata was, she also knew, not about to let her foul the interior of his perfectly maintained Vauxhall with cigarette smoke, not to mention-horrors!-a microscopic bit of ash.

“Barbara Havers, you know you’re meant to stop smoking,” Hadiyyah announced.

Barbara swung round from the daybed where she’d placed her holdall. She saw not only her little neighbour but Hadiyyah’s father, both of them framed in the doorway of her cottage: Hadiyyah with her brown arms crossed and one foot stuck out, as if she was about to begin tapping it like an aggrieved schoolteacher faced with a recalcitrant pupil. Azhar stood behind her, three plastic food boxes stacked in his hands. He used them to gesture with as he smiled and said, “From last night, Barbara. We decided the chicken jalfrezi was one of my better attempts, and as Hadiyyah herself made the chapatis…Perhaps for your own dinner tonight?”

“Brilliant,” Barbara said. “Definitely better than the jar of Bolognese mince with cheddar on toast, which was what I’d had planned.”

“Barbara…” Hadiyyah’s voice was saintly, even in nutritional remonstration.

“Except…” Barbara asked would it keep in the fridge as she was actually heading off for a day or so. Before she could explain matters further, Hadiyyah cried out in horror and dashed across the room, where she scooted behind the television set and picked up what Barbara had mindlessly hurled there. “What’ve you done with your nice A-line skirt?” she demanded, shaking it out. “Barbara, why’re you not wearing it? Aren’t you meant to be wearing it? Why’s it behind the telly? Oh look! It’s got slut’s wool all over it now.”

Barbara winced. She tried to play for time by taking the plastic containers from Azhar and stowing them in her fridge without allowing him to see its interior condition, which looked rather like an experiment in creating a new life form. She drew in on her cigarette and kept it clamped between her lips as she managed this manoeuvre, inadvertently spilling ash onto her T-shirt, which asked the world “How many toads does one girl have to kiss?” She brushed it off, making a smear, swore quietly, and faced the fact that she was going to have to answer at least one of Hadiyyah’s questions.

“Got to have it altered,” she told the little girl. “Bit overlong, which is what we decided when I tried it on, remember? You said it needed to be middle of the knee, and it’s definitely not that. Dangling round my legs in a bloody unattractive fashion, it is.”

“But why’s it behind the telly?” Hadiyyah asked, not illogically. “’Cause if you mean to have it altered-”

“Oh. That.” Barbara did one or two mental gymnastics and came up with, “I’ll forget to do it if I put it in the wardrobe. But there, behind the telly…? Turn the telly on and what do I see? That skirt reminding me it needs making shorter.”

Hadiyyah didn’t look convinced. “What about the makeup? You’re not wearing your makeup today either, are you, Barbara? I c’n help you with it, you know. I used to watch Mummy all the time. She wears makeup. Mummy wears all sorts of makeup, doesn’t she, Dad? Barbara, d’you know that Mummy-”

“That will do, khushi,” Azhar told his daughter.

“But I was only going to say-”

“Barbara is busy, as you can see. And you and I have an Urdu lesson to go to, do we not?” He said to Barbara, “As I have only one lecture at the university today, we were going to invite you to come with us after Hadiyyah’s lesson. A canal trip to Regent’s Park for an ice. But it seems…” He gestured at Barbara’s holdall, still unzipped upon her bed.

“Hampshire,” she said, and glimpsing Winston Nkata approaching from beyond the cottage door, which still stood open, “and here’s my date.”

Nkata had to duck to enter the cottage and when he was inside, he seemed to fill the place. Like her, he was wearing something that would be more comfortable than his usual getup. Unlike her, he still managed to look professional. But then, his sartorial mentor was Thomas Lynley, and Barbara couldn’t imagine Lynley ever looking anything but well put together. Nkata was in casual trousers and a pale green shirt. The trousers had creases that would have made a military man weep with joy, and he’d somehow managed to drive across London without getting a single wrinkle in his shirt. How, Barbara wondered, was that even possible?

Seeing him, Hadiyyah’s eyes grew round and her face solemn. Nkata nodded a hello to her father and said to the little girl, “I expect you’re Hadiyyah, eh?”

“What happened to your face?” she asked him. “You’ve got a scar.”

“Khushi!” Azhar sounded appalled. His face spoke of a rapid assessment being made of Barbara’s visitor. “Well-brought-up young ladies do not-”

“Knife fight,” Nkata told her in a friendly fashion. And he said to Azhar, “It’s okay, mon. Get asked all the time. Hard not to notice, innit, girl?” He squatted to give her a better look. “One of us had a knife, see, and th’ other had a razor. Now, thing is this: razor, she’s fast and she does damage. But the knife? She’s gonna win in the end.”

“Important piece of knowledge, that,” Barbara said. “Very useful in gang warfare, Hadiyyah.”

“You’re in a gang?” Hadiyyah asked as Nkata resumed his full height. She looked up at him, her expression awed.

“Was,” he said. “Tha’s where this came from.” And to Barbara, “Ready? Want me to wait in the car?”

Barbara wondered why he asked the question and what he thought his immediate absence was meant to accomplish: a fond farewell between herself and her neighbour? What a ludicrous idea. She considered the reasons Winston might be thinking that and she took note of Azhar’s expression, which spoke of a level of discomfort that she couldn’t remember having ever seen in him.

She sifted through various possibilities suggested by three plastic containers of leftover dinner, Hadiyyah’s Urdu lesson, a canal trip, and Winston Nkata’s appearance at her cottage, and she came up with something too stupid to consider in the light of day. She quickly rejected it, then went on to realise she’d referred to Winston as her date, and that, in combination with her packing a bag, must have made Azhar-as proper as a Regency gentleman-think she was heading off for a few days in the country with her tall, nice-looking, well-built, athletic, and likely delicious-in-all-the-right-ways lover. The very thought made her want to guffaw. Herself, Winston Nkata, candlelit dinners, wine, roses, romance, and a few nights of bouncy-bounce in a hotel heavily hung with wisteria…She snorted and covered the snort with a cough.

She made a quick introduction between the two men, casually adding, “DS Nkata. We’ve got a case in Hampshire,” once she’d said Winston’s full name. She turned to the daybed before Azhar responded, hearing Hadiyyah say, “You’re a policeman as well? Like Barbara, you mean?”

“Just like,” Nkata said.

Barbara heaved her holdall to her shoulder as Hadiyyah said to her father, “C’n he come on the canal boat as well, Dad?”

To which Azhar replied, “Barbara herself said they’re going to Hampshire, khushi.”

They left the cottage, all of them together. They set off towards the front of the house. Barbara and Winston were behind the others but Barbara still heard Hadiyyah say, “I forgot. About Hampshire, I mean. But if they weren’t? What if they weren’t, Dad? Could he come as well?”

Barbara couldn’t hear Azhar’s reply.

LYNLEY DROVE THEM once again in Isabelle’s car. And once again, the arrangement seemed fine with him. He didn’t attempt to hold the door open for her another time-he hadn’t done so since she’d corrected him about this-and again he gave the driving his complete attention. She’d lost the plot on where in London they were just after Clerkenwell, so when her mobile phone rang as they were coursing by a nameless park, she took the call.

“Sandra wants to know do you want a visit.” It was Bob, speaking without preamble as usual. Isabelle cursed herself for not having examined the number of the incoming call although, knowing Bob, he likely would be ringing her from a phone she couldn’t identify anyway. He’d like to do that. Stealth was his main weapon.

She said, with a glance at Lynley, who wasn’t paying attention to her anyway, “What d’you have in mind?”

“Sunday lunch. You could come out to Kent. The boys will be happy to-”

“With them, d’you mean? Alone? In a hotel restaurant or something?”

“Obviously not,” he said. “I was going to say that the boys will be happy to have you join us. Sandra’ll do a joint of beef. Ginny and Kate actually have a birthday party to go to on Sunday so-”

“So it would be the five of us, then?”

“Well, yes. I can hardly ask Sandra to leave her own house, can I, Isabelle?”

“A hotel would be better. A restaurant. A pub. The boys could-”

“Not going to happen. Sunday lunch with us is the best offer I’ll make.”

She said nothing. She watched what went for London scenery as they passed it: rubbish on the pavements; bleak storefronts with grimy plastic signs naming each establishment; women dressed in black bedsheets with slits for their eyes; sad-looking displays of fruit and veg outside greengrocers; video rental shops; William Hill betting lounges…Where the hell were they?

“Isabelle? Are you there?” Bob asked. “Have I lost you? Is the connection-”

Yes, she thought. That’s exactly it. The connection’s broken. She closed her phone. When it rang again a moment later, she let it do so till her voice mail picked it up. Sunday lunch, she thought. She could picture it: Bob presiding over the joint of beef, Sandra simpering somewhere nearby-although truth to tell, Sandra didn’t simper and she was a more than decent sort, for which Isabelle was actually grateful, all things considered-the twins scrubbed and shiny and perhaps just a little perplexed at this modern definition of family that they were experiencing with Mummy, Dad, and stepmum gathered round the dining table as if it happened every day of the week. Roast beef, Yorkshire pud, and sprouts being handed round and everyone waiting for everyone else to be served and grace to be said by whoever said it, because Isabelle didn’t know and didn’t want to know and damn well did know that there was no way in bloody hell she was going to put herself through Sunday lunch at her former husband’s house, because he didn’t mean well, he was out to punish her or to blackmail her further and she couldn’t face that or face her boys.

You don’t want to threaten me. You don’t want to take this to court, Isabelle.

She said abruptly to Lynley, “Where in God’s name are we, Thomas? How long did it take you to be able to find your way round this bloody place?”

A glance only. He was too well bred to mention the phone call.

He said, “You’ll sort it out faster than you think. Just avoid the Underground.”

“I’m a member of the hoi polloi, Thomas.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said easily. “I meant that the Underground-the map of the Underground, actually-bears no relation to the actual layout of the city. It’s printed as it is to make it understandable. It shows things north, south, east, or west of each other when that might not necessarily be the case. So take the bus instead. Walk. Drive. It’s not as impossible as it seems. You’ll sort it out quickly enough.”

She doubted that. It wasn’t that one area looked exactly like the next. On the contrary, one area was generally quite distinct from the next. The difficulty was in sussing out how they related each to the other: why a landscape of dignified Georgian buildings should suddenly morph into an area of tenements. It simply made no sense.

When they came upon Stoke Newington, she was unprepared. There it was before her, recognisable by a flower shop that she remembered from her earlier journey, housed in a building with WALKER BROS. FOUNT PEN SPECIALISTS painted onto the bricks between its first and second floors. This would be Stoke Newington Church Street, so the cemetery was just up ahead. She congratulated herself on recalling that much. She said, “The main entrance is on the high street, to the left, on the corner.”

That was where Lynley parked, and they went into the information office just outside the gates. There they explained their purpose to a wizened female volunteer, and Isabelle brought out the e-fit that had prompted the phone call to New Scotland Yard. This individual had not made the call-“That would likely have been Mr. Fluendy,” she said, “I’m Mrs. Littlejohn”-but she recognised the e-fit herself.

“I expect that’s the boy does the carving, that is,” she said. “I hope you lot are here to arrest him cos we been ringing the local coppers ’bout that carving since my granny was a girl, let me tell you. You come ’ere, you two. I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”

She shooed them out of the information office, hung a sign on the door indicating to the nonexistent hordes of visitors that she’d return momentarily, and toddled into the cemetery. They followed. She took them to one of the trees that Isabelle had seen on her first visit to the place. Its trunk was carved with an elaborate design of quarter moon and stars with clouds obscuring part of the latter. The carving went all the way down the trunk of the tree, entirely baring it of bark. It was not the sort of thing one could have done quickly or easily. The carving measured at least four feet high and took up perhaps two feet of the tree’s circumference. The defacing of the tree aside, it was actually quite good.

“He’s done this everywhere,” the woman declared. “We been trying to catch him at it, but he lives over Listria Park, he does, and that backs onto the cemetery. I ’spect he just comes over the wall, so we never know he’s here. Easy as pie when you’re young, eh?”

Listria Park was not, as Isabelle had first supposed, an actual park. It was instead a street comprising a curve of buildings that had once been individual homes but now were flats with windows overlooking Abney Park Cemetery and gardens over the wall from it, as Mrs. Littlejohn had described. It took some doing to find the building in which Marlon Kay lived, but once they’d done so, they discovered themselves in luck as the boy was at home. So was his father, and it was apparently this individual whose disembodied voice replied when they rang the buzzer next to the name D. W. Kay.

He barked out, “Yeah? Wha’ you want?”

Isabelle nodded at Lynley, who did the honours. “Metropolitan police. We’re looking for-”

Even through the crackling connection from the street to the flat, they could hear the commotion Lynley’s words provoked: a crash of furniture, a pounding of feet, a “Wha’ the bloody hell…Where you think you’re…Wha’d you do?” And then the buzzer went to open the door, and they pushed their way inside.

They headed for the stairs just as a heavyset boy came storming down them. He ploughed towards them, wild eyed and sweating, making for the door to the street. It was an easy matter for Lynley to stop him. One arm did that much. The other secured him.

“Lemme go!” the boy shrieked. “He’ll murder me, he will!” while above a man roared, “Get your bum back up ’ere, rotten little lout.”

Little was hardly an accurate adjective. While the boy wasn’t obese, he was still a sterling example of modern youth’s proclivity for victuals deep fried, fast, and loaded with various kinds of fats and sugars.

“Marlon Kay?” Isabelle said to the struggling youth being detained by Lynley’s grip upon him.

“Let me go!” he screamed. “He’ll beat me bloody. You don’ unnerstan!”

D. W. Kay came hurtling down the stairs at that point, cricket bat in his hands. He was swinging this wildly as he shouted, “Wha’d you fooking do? You fooking better tell me ’fore these coppers do or I’ll smack your head from here to Wales and make no mistake!”

Isabelle put herself squarely in his path. She said sharply, “That will do, Mr. Kay. Put that cricket bat down before I have you in the nick for assault.”

Perhaps it was her tone. It stopped the man in his tracks. He stood before her, breathing like a defeated racehorse-with breath, however, that smelled like teeth decaying straight up to his brain. He blinked at her.

She said, “I assume you are Mr. Kay. And this is Marlon? We want a word with him.”

Marlon whimpered. He shrank back from his father. He said, “He’ll bash me, he will.”

“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” Isabelle told the boy. “Mr. Kay, lead us up to your flat. I’ve no intention of having a discussion in the corridor.”

D.W. looked her up and down-she could tell he was the sort of man who had what pop psychologists would refer to as “woman issues”-and then he looked at Lynley. His expression said that as far as he was concerned, Lynley wore lace panties if he let a woman give orders in his presence. Isabelle wanted to smack him into Wales. What century did he think they were living in? she wondered.

She said, “Do I have to tell you again?” He snarled but cooperated. Back up the stairs he went, and the rest of them followed, Marlon cowering in Lynley’s grip. A middle-aged woman in cycling gear was standing at the top of the first flight of stairs. She made a moue that combined dislike, distaste, and disgust and said, “About time, you ask me,” to Mr. Kay. He shoved her out of the way and she said, “Did you see that? Did you see that?” to Lynley, ignoring Isabelle altogether. Her cry of, “Are you finally going to do something about him?” was the last they heard from her as they shut the door behind them.

Inside the flat, the windows were open, but as there was no cross ventilation, their gaping apertures did nothing to mitigate the temperature. The place itself was, remarkably, not a pigsty, as Isabelle had been expecting. There was a suspicious white layer upon nearly everything, but this turned out to be plaster dust, as they discovered that D. W. Kay was a plasterer by trade, and he’d been setting out to work when they’d rung the buzzer.

Isabelle told him they needed a word with his son, and she asked Marlon how old he was. Marlon said sixteen, and he winced, as if anticipating that his age was cause for corporal punishment. Isabelle sighed. What his age was cause for was the presence of an adult who was not police, preferably a parent, which meant that they were going to have to question the boy either in the presence of his glowering and explosive father or with a social worker.

She looked at Lynley. Appropriately, his expression said it was her call, as she was his superior. She said to the boy’s father, “We’re going to have to question Marlon about the cemetery. I take it you know that there’s been a murder there, Mr. Kay?”

The man’s face became inflamed. His eyes bulged. He was, Isabelle thought, a massive stroke waiting to happen. She went on. “We can question him here or at the local nick. If we do it here, you’ll be required not only to keep quiet but also to keep your hands off this boy from now until eternity occurs. If you do not, you’ll be arrested at once. One phone call from him, from a neighbour, from anyone, and in you go. A week, a month, a year, ten years. I can’t tell you what the judge will throw at you, but I can tell that what I just witnessed below is something that I will testify to. And I expect your neighbours will be happy to do likewise. Am I being clear or do you require further elucidation on this topic?”

He nodded. He shook his head. Isabelle assumed he was answering both questions and said, “Very well. Sit down and keep quiet.”

He skulked to a grey sofa, which was part of a sad-looking three-piece suite of a sort Isabelle hadn’t seen in years, complete with a tasseled fringe. He sat. Round him, plaster dust rose in a cloud. Lynley deposited Marlon in one of the two chairs and himself went to the window where he remained standing, resting against the sill.

Everything in the room faced a huge flat-screen television, which was featuring a cooking programme at the moment although the sound was muted. A remote lay beneath it, and Isabelle picked this up and switched the set off, which, for some reason, caused Marlon to whimper once again, as if a lifeline had been cut. His father curled a lip at him. Isabelle shot him a look. The man rearranged his features. She nodded sharply and went to sit in the other armchair, dusty like everything else.

She told Marlon the bare facts: He’d been seen emerging from the shelter next to the ruined chapel inside the cemetery. Within that shelter, a young woman’s body had been found. A magazine with one person’s fingerprints on it had been dropped in the vicinity of that body. An e-fit had been generated by the persons who’d seen him coming out of that shelter, and should an identity parade be needed, there was little doubt that he’d be picked from it, although because of his age, they’d likely use photographs and not require him to stand in a line. Did he want to talk about any of this?

The boy began to blub. His father rolled his eyes but said nothing.

“Marlon?” Isabelle prompted.

He sniveled and said, “It’s only cos I hate school. They bully me. It’s cos my bum’s like…It’s big, innit, an’ they make fun and it’s allas been tha’ way an’ I hate it. So I won’t go. I got to leave here, though, don’t I, so I go there.”

“Into the cemetery rather than to school?”

“Tha’s it, innit.”

“It’s summer holidays,” Lynley pointed out.

“I’m talkin ’bout school time, innit,” Marlon said. “Now I go th’ cemetery cos tha’s what I do. Nuffink else round here and I don’t got friends, do I.”

“So you go to the cemetery and you carve on the trees?” Isabelle said.

Marlon shifted round on his barrel of a bum. “Di’n’t say-”

“Have you wood carving tools?” Lynley said.

“I di’n’t do nuffink to that tart! She was dead when I got there, wa’n’t she.”

“So you did go into the shelter by the chapel?” Isabelle said to the boy. “You admit you’re the person our witnesses saw coming out of the shelter four days ago?”

The boy didn’t confirm, but he didn’t deny. Isabelle said, “What were you doing there?”

“I do the trees,” he said. “An’ there’s no harm in it. Makes ’em pretty is all.”

“I don’t mean what were you doing in the cemetery,” Isabelle told him. “I mean in the shelter. Why’d you go into the shelter?”

The boy swallowed. This was, it seemed, the crux of the matter. He looked at his father. His father looked away.

Marlon whispered, “Magazine. It was…See, I bought it an’ wanted to have a glance and…” He gazed at her desperately, casting a glance at Lynley as well. “It was only tha’ when I saw them pitchers in the magazine…them women…You know.”

“Marlon, are you trying to tell me you went into the shelter to masturbate over pictures of naked women?” Isabelle asked baldly.

He began to weep in earnest. His father said, “Fooking twat,” and Isabelle shot him a look. Lynley said, “That’ll do, Mr. Kay.”

Marlon hid his face in his hands, pinching his cheeks with his fingers, saying, “I jus’ wanted…So I went inside there to-you know-but there she was an’ I got scared an’ I run off. I could see she was dead, couldn’t I. There was bugs an’ things an’ her eyes were open an’ the flies were crawling…I know I shoulda done summat but I couldn’t cos I…cos I…Cops would’ve asked what I was doing, like you’re askin now, and I’d have to say like I’m sayin now and he already hates me and he would find out. I won’t go to school. I won’t go. I won’t. But she was dead when I got there. She was dead. She was.”

He was likely speaking the truth, Isabelle reckoned, as she couldn’t imagine the boy having the bottle to commit an act of violence. He seemed the least aggressive child she’d ever encountered. But even a boy such as Marlon could snap, and one way or another he needed to be eliminated as a suspect.

She said, “All right, Marlon. I tend to think you might be telling the truth.”

“I am!”

“I’m going to ask you further questions, though, and you’re going to need to be calmer. Can you manage that?”

His father blew a breath of air from his mouth. Not bloody likely would have been his words.

Marlon cast a fearful look at his father and then nodded, his eyes welling with more tears. But he wiped his cheeks-he somehow made this a heroic gesture-and he sat up straight.

Isabelle went through the questions. Did he touch the body? No, he did not. Did he remove anything from the site? No, he did not. How near did he get to the body? He didn’t know. Three feet? Four? He took a step or two inside the shelter but that was all cos he saw her an’…Fine fine, Isabelle said, hoping to avoid another descent into hysteria. What happened then? He dropped the magazine and ran. He didn’t mean to drop it. He didn’t even know he’d dropped it. But when he saw he didn’t have it with him, he was too scared to go back cos “I never seen a dead person. Not like that.” He went on to say that she was all bloody down the front of her. Did he see a weapon? Isabelle asked him. He didn’t even see where she was cut up, he told her. As far as he could tell, it looked to him like she was sliced up everywhere cos there was so much blood. Wouldn’t a person have to be sliced up everywhere to have so much blood on ’em?

Isabelle redirected him, from inside the shelter to outside the shelter. True, it was at least a day after the killing itself when Marlon had come upon the body, as things turned out, but whomever he’d seen in the vicinity-whatever he’d seen in the vicinity-could be important to the investigation.

But he’d seen nothing. And when it came to Jemima Hastings’ handbag or anything else she might have possessed, the boy swore he’d not taken a thing. If she had a bag with her, he knew nothing of it. It might’ve been right there next to her, he avowed, and he wouldn’t’ve even known it was there cos all he saw was her, he said. An’ all that blood.

“But you didn’t report this,” Isabelle said. “The only report we had was from the young couple who saw you, Marlon. Why didn’t you report it?”

“Them carvings,” he said. “An’ the magazine.”

“Ah.” Defacing public property, buying pornographic magazines, masturbating-or at least intending to do so-in public: These had been his considerations, as had no doubt been the displeasure of his father, and the fact that his father seemed to express that displeasure by means of a cricket bat. “I see. Well, we’re going to need a few things from you. Will you cooperate with us?”

He nodded vigorously. Cooperation? No problem. Anything at all.

They would need a sample of his DNA, which a swab from his mouth would happily provide. They would also require his shoes, and his fingerprints, which would be easy enough to obtain. And his carving tools were going to have to be handed over for inspection by forensics. “I expect,” Isabelle said, “you’ve got any number of sharp objects among them? Yes? Well, we need to test them all, Marlon.”

The welling of eyes, the whimper, the father’s impatient and bull-like breath.

“It’s all to prove you’re telling the truth,” she assured the boy. “Are you, Marlon? Are you telling the truth?”

“Swear,” he said. “Swear, swear, swear.”

Isabelle wanted to tell him that one swearing was enough, but she reckoned she’d be wasting her time.

AS THEY WALKED back to the car, the superintendent asked Lynley what he was thinking. She said to him, “It’s not entirely necessary for you to keep silent in that sort of situation, you know.”

He glanced at her. Considering the heat of the day and their encounter with the Kays, she was managing to look remarkably collected, unruffled, professional, even cool in the blasting sun. Wisely-if unusually-she wore not a summer suit but a sleeveless dress, and Lynley realised it served more than one purpose in that it likely made her more comfortable at the same time as it made her less intimidating when she questioned people. People like Marlon, he thought, an adolescent boy whose trust she needed to garner.

He said, “I didn’t think you needed my-”

“Help?” she cut in sharply. “That’s not what I was implying, Thomas.”

Lynley looked at her again. “Actually, I was going to say my participation,” he told her.

“Ah. Sorry.”

“You’re prickly about it, then.”

“Not at all.” She fished in her bag and brought out a pair of dark glasses. Then she sighed and said, “Well, that’s not true. I am prickly. But one has to be, in our line of work. It’s not easy for a woman.”

“Which part isn’t easy? The investigation? Promoting? Navigating the corridors of power in Victoria Street, dubious though they may be?”

“Oh, it’s easy for you to have the odd chuckle at my expense,” she noted. “But I don’t expect any man comes up against the kinds of things a woman has to cope with. Especially a man…” She seemed unwilling to finish her thought.

He did it for her. “A man like me?”

“Well, really, Thomas. You can hardly argue that a life of privilege-the family pile in Cornwall, Eton, Oxford…remember I do know a bit about you-has made it difficult for you to succeed in your line of work. And why do you do it, anyway? Certainly you don’t need to be a policeman. Doesn’t your sort of man generally do something less-” She seemed to be searching for the right term and she settled on, “Less elbow rubbing with the great unwashed?”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Sit on boards of hospitals and universities? Breed thoroughbred horses? Manage property-his own, naturally-and collect rent from farmers wearing flat caps and Wellingtons?”

“Those would be the ones who come to the kitchen door and keep their eyes cast downward? The ones who hastily remove those flat caps in my presence? Pulling on their forelocks and all the rest?”

“What in God’s name is a forelock?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered. I mean, it’s clear that it’s hair and it’s in the front but how much of it constitutes a ‘fore’ of it and why on earth would someone pull it?”

“It’s all part of the bowing and scraping,” he said solemnly. “Part of the general peasant-and-master routine that comprises life for my sort of man.”

She looked at him. “Damn you, your eyes are actually twinkling.”

He said, “Sorry,” and he smiled.

She said, “It’s bloody hot, isn’t it. Look, I need something cool to drink, Thomas. And we could use the time to talk. There’s got to be a pub nearby.”

He reckoned there was, but he also wanted to have a look at the spot where the body had been found. They’d arrived back at her car at the front of the cemetery, and he made his request: Would she take him to the chapel where Jemima Hastings’ body had been found? Even as he spoke the words, he recognised another step being taken. Five months since his wife’s murder on the front steps of their house. In February even a hint that he might be willing to look upon a place where someone had died had been unthinkable.

As he reckoned she might, the superintendent asked why he wanted to see it. She sounded suspicious, as if she thought he was checking up on her work. She pointed out that the site had been checked, had been cleared, had been reopened to the public, and he told her that it was curiosity and nothing more. He’d seen the pictures; he wanted to see the place.

She acquiesced. He followed her inside the cemetery and along paths that twisted into the trees. It was cooler here, with foliage sheltering them from the sun and no concrete pavements sending the heat upward in unavoidable waves. He noticed that she was what once would have been called “a fine figure of a woman” as she strode ahead of him, and she walked as she seemed to do everything else: with confidence.

At the chapel, she directed him round the side. There the shelter stood and beyond it the baked grass of a clearing gave onto more of the graveyard, a stone bench on the edge of this. Another stone bench was across from the first, with three overgrown tombs and one crumbling mausoleum behind it.

“Fingertip, perimeter, and a grid, producing a diligent search,” Ardery told him. “Nothing except what you’d expect in this kind of place.”

“Which would be…?”

“Soft drink cans and other assorted rubbish, pencils, pens, plans of the park, crisp bags, chocolate wrappers, old Oyster cards-yes, they’re being checked into-and enough used condoms to give one hope that sexually transmitted diseases might one day be a thing of the past.” And then, “Oh. Sorry. That wasn’t appropriate.”

He’d been standing in the doorway to the shelter, and he turned to see that a dark flush was climbing up her neck.

She said, “The condom thing. Other way round, it could be construed as sexual harassment. I apologise for the comment.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, no offence taken. But I’ll be on guard in the future, so take care, guv.”

“Isabelle,” she said. “You can call me Isabelle.”

“I’m on duty,” he said. “What d’you make of the graffito?” He indicated the wall of the shelter where GOD GOES WIRELESS and the eye in the triangle were rendered in black.

“Old,” she said. “Placed here long before her death. And smacking of the Masons. You?”

“We’re of the same mind.”

“Good,” she said. And when he turned back to her, he saw that the flush on her skin was receding. She said, “If you’ve seen enough, then, I’d like that drink. There’re cafés on Stoke Newington Church Street, and I expect we can find a pub as well.”

They left the cemetery by a different route, this one taking them past the monument which Lynley recognised as the background that Deborah St. James had used for her photograph of Jemima Hastings. It sat at the junction of two paths: a marble life-size male lion on a plinth. He paused and read the monument’s inscription that they “would all meet again on some happy Easter morning.” Were that only the truth, he thought.

The superintendent was watching him, but she said nothing other than, “It’s this way, Thomas,” and she led him to the street.

They found both a café and a pub in very short order. Ardery chose the pub. Once inside, she disappeared into the ladies’, telling him to order her a cider and saying, “For God’s sake, it’s mild, Thomas,” when he apparently looked surprised at her choice, as they would be on duty for hours. She told him that she wasn’t about to police her team regarding their choice of liquid refreshment. If someone wanted a lager in the middle of the day, she didn’t care. It’s the work that matters, she informed him, and the quality of that work. Then off she went to the ladies’. For his part, he ordered her cider-“And make it a pint, please” she’d said-and got a bottle of mineral water for himself. He took these to a table tucked away in a corner, then he changed his mind and chose another one, more suitable, he thought, for two colleagues at work.

She proved herself a typical woman, at least in matters pertaining to her disappearance into the ladies’. She was gone at least five minutes and when she returned, she’d rearranged her hair. It was behind her ears now, revealing earrings, he saw. They were navy, edged in gold. The navy matched the colour of her dress. He wondered about the little vanities of women. Helen had never merely dressed in the morning: She had put together entire ensembles.

For God’s sake, Helen, aren’t you only going out to buy petrol?

Darling Tommy, I might actually be seen!

He blinked, poured water into his glass. There was lime with it, and he squeezed the wedge hard.

Ardery said, “Thank you.”

He said, “They had only one brand.”

“I didn’t mean the cider. I meant thank you for not standing up. I expect you usually do.”

“Ah. That. Well, the manners are beaten into one from birth, but I reckoned you’d rather I eschewed them at work.”

“Have you ever had a female superior officer before?” And when he shook his head, “You’re coping rather well.”

“It’s what I do.”

“You cope?”

“Yes.” When he said it, though, he saw how it could lead to a discussion he didn’t want to have. So he said, “And what about you, Superintendent Ardery?”

“You won’t call me Isabelle, will you?”

“I won’t.”

“Whyever not? This is private, Thomas. We’re colleagues, you and I.”

“On duty.”

“Will that be your answer for everything?”

He thought about this, how convenient it was. “Yes. I expect it will.”

“And should I be offended?”

“Not at all. Guv.”

He looked at her and she held the look. The moment became a man-woman thing. That was always the risk when the sexes mixed. With Barbara Havers it had always been something so far out of the question as to be nearly laughable. With Isabelle Ardery, this was not the case. He looked away.

She said lightly, “I believed him. You? I realise he could have been going back to the scene of the crime, checking on the body to see if she’d been found yet, but I don’t think it’s likely. He doesn’t seem clever enough to have thought it all through.”

“You mean taking the magazine with him so it would appear he had a reason to duck into the shelter?”

“That’s what I mean.”

Lynley agreed with her. Marlon Kay was an unlikely killer. The superintendent had gone the way of wisdom in dealing with the situation, though. Before they’d left the boy and his surly father, she made the arrangements for his fingerprints to be taken and his mouth to be swabbed, and she’d had a look through his clothing. There was nothing yellow among it. As for the trainers he’d worn that day in the cemetery, they were devoid of visible signs of blood but would be sent to forensics anyway. In all of this Marlon had been completely cooperative. He seemed anxious to please them at the same time as he was eager to show he had nothing to do with the death of Jemima Hastings.

“So we’re left with the sighting of the Oriental man, and let’s hope that something comes of it,” Ardery said.

“Or that something comes of this bloke in Hampshire,” Lynley noted.

“There’s that as well. How d’you expect Sergeant Havers will cope with that part of the investigation, Thomas?”

“In her usual fashion,” he replied.