This Body of Death

Chapter Twenty-Nine

ISABELLE HAD REMAINED AT ST. THOMAS’ HOSPITAL FOR MOST of the afternoon, excavating for information in the twisted passageways that comprised the mind of Yukio Matsumoto when she wasn’t sparring with his solicitor and making promises that she was not remotely authorised to make. The result was that, by the end of the day, she had a disjointed scenario of what had happened in Abney Park Cemetery along with two e-fits. She also had twelve voice messages on her mobile.

Hillier’s office had rung three times, which wasn’t good. Stephenson Deacon’s office had rung twice, which was just as bad. She skipped those five messages plus two from Dorothea Harriman and one from her ex-husband. That left her with messages from John Stewart, Thomas Lynley, and Barbara Havers. She listened to Lynley’s. He’d phoned twice, once about the British Museum, once about Barbara Havers. Although she took note of the fact that the sound of the inspector’s well-bred baritone was vaguely comforting, Isabelle paid scant attention to the messages. For unrelated to the fact of his messages was the additional fact that her insides felt as if they wanted to become her outsides, and while she knew very well that there was one quick way to settle both her stomach and her nerves, she did not intend to employ it.

She drove back to Victoria Street. On the way she phoned Dorothea Harriman and told her to have the team in the incident room for her return. Harriman tried to bring up the subject of AC Hillier-as Isabelle reckoned she might-but Isabelle cut her off with, “Yes, yes, I know. I’ve heard from him as well. But first things first.” She rang off before Harriman told her the obvious: that in Hillier’s head first things first meant attending to Sir David’s desires. Well, that couldn’t matter at the moment. She had to meet with her team, and that took priority.

They were assembled when she arrived. She said, “Right,” as she walked into the room, “we’ve got e-fits on two individuals who were in the cemetery and seen by Yukio Matsumoto. Dorothea’s running them through the copier, so you’ll each have one shortly.” She went over what Matsumoto had told her about that day in Abney Park Cemetery: Jemima’s actions, the two men he’d seen and where he had seen them, and Yukio’s attempt to help Jemima upon finding her wounded in the chapel annex. “Obviously, he made the wound worse when he removed the weapon,” she said. “She would have died anyway, but removing the weapon hastened things. It also got him drenched in her blood.”

“What about his hair in her hand?” It was Philip Hale who asked the question.

“He doesn’t remember her reaching up to him, but she may have done.”

“And he may be lying,” John Stewart noted.

“Having talked to him-”

“Sod talking to him.” Stewart threw a balled-up piece of paper onto his desk. “Why didn’t he phone the police? Go for help?”

“He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, John,” Isabelle said. “I don’t think we can expect rational behaviour from him.”

“But we can expect usable e-fits?”

Isabelle clocked the restless movement among those gathered in the room. Stewart’s tone was, as usual, bordering on snide. He was going to have to be sorted out eventually.

Harriman entered the room, the stack of duplicated e-fits in hand. She murmured to Isabelle that AC Hillier’s office had phoned again, apparently with the knowledge that Acting Superintendent Ardery was now in the building. Should she…?

She was in a meeting, Isabelle told her. Tell the assistant commissioner she would get to him in good time.

Dorothea looked as if that way lies madness was the response on the tip of her tongue, but she scurried off as well as she could scurry on her ridiculous high heels.

Isabelle handed out the e-fits. She’d already anticipated the reactions she was going to get once the officers looked at what Yukio Matsumoto had come up with, so she began talking to head them off. She said, “We’ve got two men. One of them our victim met in the vicinity of the chapel, in the clearing, on a stone bench where she apparently had been waiting for him. They spoke at some length. He then left her and when he left her, she was alive and unharmed. Matsumoto says that Jemima took a phone call from someone at the conclusion of her conversation with this bloke. Shortly after that she disappeared round the side of the chapel, out of Yukio’s view. It was only when man number two appeared, coming from the same direction that Jemima had herself taken, that Yukio went to see where she was. That was when he saw the annex to the chapel and discovered her body within it. Where are we with the mobile phone towers, John? If we can triangulate where that phone call came from just before she was attacked-”

“Jesus. These e-fits-”

“Hang on,” Isabelle cut in. John Stewart was the one who had spoken-no surprise there that he went his own way rather than answer her question-but she could tell from the expression on Winston Nkata’s face that he wished to speak as well. Philip Hale moved restlessly and Lynley had gone to stand by the china boards for a look at something or, perhaps, to hide his own expression, which she had no doubt was deeply concerned. As well he might be. She was concerned herself. The e-fits were nearly useless, but that was not a subject she intended to countenance. She said, “This second man is dark. Dark is consistent with three of our suspects: Frazer Chaplin, Abbott Langer, and Paolo di Fazio.”

“All with alibis,” Stewart managed to put in. He counted them off with his fingers. “Chaplin at home, confirmed by McHaggis; di Fazio inside Jubilee Market at his regular stall, confirmed by four other stall holders and no doubt seen by three hundred people; Langer walking dogs in the park, confirmed by his customers.”

“None of whom saw him, John,” Isabelle snapped. “So we’ll break the goddamn alibis. One of these blokes put a spike through a young woman’s neck, and we’re going to get him. Is that clear?”

“’Bout that spike,” Winston Nkata said.

“Hang on, Winston.” Isabelle continued her previous line of thought. “Let’s not forget what we already know about the victim’s mobile phone calls either. She’s rung Chaplin three times and Langer once on the day of her death. She’s taken one call from Gordon Jossie, another from Chaplin, and another from Jayson Druther-our cigar shop bloke-on the same day and within our window of time when she was killed. After her death, her mobile took messages from her brother, Jayson Druther again, Paolo di Fazio, and Yolanda, our psychic. But not Abbott Langer and not Frazer Chaplin, both of whom fit the description of the man seen leaving the area of the murder. Now, I want the neighbourhoods canvassed again. I want those e-fits shown at every house. Meantime, I want the CCTV films we’ve got from the area looked over once again for a Vespa motorbike, lime green, with transfers advertising DragonFly Tonics on it. And I want that to be part of the house to house as well. Philip, coordinate the house to house with the Stoke Newington station. Winston, I want you on the CCTV films. John, you’ll-”

“Bloody hell, this is stupid,” John Stewart said. “The sodding e-fits are worthless. Just look at them. Are you trying to pretend there’s a single defining characteristic…? The dark bloke looks like a villain in a television drama and the one in the cap and glasses could be a bloody woman, for all we know. D’you actually believe this slant-eye’s tale that-”

“That’ll do, Inspector.”

“No, it won’t. We’d have an arrest if you hadn’t run this bugger into traffic and then hung about waiting to find out he wasn’t the killer in the first place. You’ve bloody well mishandled this case from the first. You’ve-”

“Give it a rest, John.” Of all people, it was Philip Hale speaking. Winston Nkata joined him, saying, “Hang on, man.”

“You lot might start thinking about what’s going on,” was Stewart’s reply. “You’ve been tiptoeing round every mad thing this woman’s said, like we owe the bloody slag allegiance.”

“Jesus, man…” This came from Hale.

“You pig!” was the cry from one of the female constables.

“And you wouldn’t know a killer if he stuck his in you and tickled you with it,” was Stewart’s reply to her.

At this, chaos erupted. Aside from Isabelle, there were five young women in the room, three constables and two typists. The nearest constable came out of her chair as if propelled, and one typist threw her coffee cup at Stewart. He shot up and went for her. Philip Hale held him back. He swung at Hale. Nkata grabbed him. Stewart turned on him.

“You fucking nig-”

Nkata slapped his face. The blow was hard, fast, and loud like a crack. Stewart’s head flew back.

“When I say hang on, I mean it,” Nkata told him. “Sit down, shut your gob, act like you know something, and be glad I didn’t punch your lights and break your goddamn nose.”

“Well done, Winnie,” someone called out.

“That’ll do, all of you,” Isabelle said. She could see that Lynley was watching her from his place by the china board. He hadn’t moved. She was grateful for this. The last thing she wanted was his intervention. It was bad enough that Hale and Nkata had had to sort out Stewart when it was her job to do the sorting. She said to Stewart, “In my office. Wait there.” She said nothing more until he’d slammed his way out of the room. Then, “What else do we have, then?”

Jemima Hastings had possessed a gold coin-currently missing from her belongings-and a carnelian that were Roman in origin.

Barbara Havers had recognised the murder weapon and-

“Where is Sergeant Havers?” Isabelle asked, realising for the first time that the dowdy woman wasn’t among the officers in the room. “Why isn’t she here?”

There was silence before Winston Nkata said, “Gone to Ham’shire, guv.”

Isabelle felt her face go rigid. She said, “Hampshire,” simply because she could not think of another response in the circumstances.

Nkata said, “Murder weapon’s a crook. Barb an’ I, we saw ’ em in Ham ’shire. It’s a thatcher’s tool. We got two thatchers on our radar down there, and Barb thought-”

“Thank you,” Isabelle said.

“’Nother thing is crooks’re made by blacksmiths,” Nkata continued. “Rob Hastings’s a blacksmith and since-”

“I said thank you, Winston.”

The room was silent. Phones were ringing in another area, and the sudden sound of them served as an unwelcome reminder of how out of control their afternoon briefing had become. Into this silence, Thomas Lynley spoke, and it became immediately apparent that he was defending Barbara Havers.

“She’s unearthed another connection among Ringo Heath, Zachary Whiting, and Gordon Jossie, guv,” he said.

“And how do you come to know this?”

“I spoke with her on her way to Hampshire.”

“She rang you?”

“I rang her. I managed to catch her when she’d stopped on the motorway. But the important thing is-”

“You’re not in charge here, Inspector Lynley.”

“I understand.”

“By which I take it that you also understand how out of order you were to encourage Sergeant Havers to do anything other than to get her bum back to London. Yes?”

Lynley hesitated. Isabelle locked eyes with him. The same silence came over the room again. God, she thought. First Stewart, now Lynley. Havers gallivanting to Hampshire. Nkata coming to blows with another officer.

Lynley said carefully, “I see that. But there’s another connection Barbara’s come up with, and I think you’ll agree it’s worth looking at.”

“And this connection is?”

Lynley told her about a magazine and its photos of the opening of the Cadbury Photographic Portrait of the Year show. He told her about Frazer Chaplin in those pictures, and there, in the background, Gina Dickens. He concluded with, “It seemed best to let her go to Hampshire. If nothing else, she can get us photos of Jossie, Ringo Heath, and Whiting to show round Stoke Newington. And to show to Matsumoto. But, knowing Barbara, she’s likely to come up with more than that.”

“Is she indeed,” Isabelle said. “Thank you, Inspector. I’ll chat with her later.” She looked at the rest of them and read on their faces the varying degrees of discomfort. She said to them, “The lot of you have your activities for tomorrow. We’ll speak again in the afternoon.”

She left them. She heard her name called as she strode to her office. She recognised Lynley’s voice but she waved him off. “I need to deal with DI Stewart,” she told him, “and then with Hillier. And that, believe me, is all I can cope with today.” She turned quickly before he could reply. She’d not made it to her office door when Dorothea Harriman told her that the assistant commissioner had personally just phoned-the emphasis she placed on personally expressing the urgency of the communication-and he was giving the superintendent a choice: She could either come to his office at once or he could come to hers.

“I took the liberty…,” Dorothea said meaningfully. “Because with all due respect, Detective Superintendent Ardery, you don’t want the assistant commissioner coming-”

“Tell him I’m on my way.”

John Stewart, Isabelle decided, would have to wait. Briefly, she wondered how her day could possibly become worse, but she reckoned she was about to find out.

THE KEY WAS to hold things together for another hour or so. Isabelle told herself she was capable of that. She didn’t need to fortify herself for a final sixty minutes at the Yard. She might have wanted to but she didn’t need to. Want and need were completely different.

At AC Hillier’s office, Judi MacIntosh told her to go straight in. The assistant commissioner was expecting her, she said, and did she want tea or a coffee? Isabelle accepted tea with milk and sugar. She reckoned that being able to drink it without her hands shaking would make a statement about the control she was maintaining over the situation.

Hillier was sitting behind his desk. He nodded towards his conference table, and he told her they would wait for Stephenson Deacon’s arrival. Hillier joined her there when Isabelle sat. He had several telephone messages in his hand, slips of paper that he laid out on the table in front of him and made a show of studying. The office door opened after two minutes’ tense silence, and Judi MacIntosh came in with Isabelle’s tea: cup and saucer, milk jug and sugar, stainless steel spoon. These would be trickier to handle than a plastic or Styrofoam cup. This teacup would rattle on its saucer when she lifted it, sounding a betrayal. Very clever, Isabelle thought.

“Please enjoy your tea,” Hillier told her. She reckoned his tone was similar to that which Socrates heard prior to the hemlock.

She took milk but decided against the sugar. Sugar would have required her dexterous use of the spoon, and she didn’t think she could manage that. As it was, when she stirred the milk into the tea, the sound of steel hitting china seemed earsplitting. She didn’t dare raise the cup to her lips. She set the spoon in the saucer and waited.

It was less than five minutes before Stephenson Deacon joined them although it seemed much longer. He nodded at her and sank into a chair, placing a manila folder in front of him. His hair was thin and the colour of mouse fur and he ran his hands through it as he said, “Well,” after which he leveled a gaze at her and added, “We do have something of a problem, Superintendent Ardery.”

The problem had two parts and the head of the press bureau shed light upon them without further prefatory remarks. The first part constituted unauthorised deal making. The second part constituted the result of that unauthorised deal making. Both were equally damaging to the Met.

“Damaging to the Met” had nothing to do with real damage, Isabelle quickly discovered. It did not mean the police had lost any power over the criminal element. Rather, damage to the Met meant damage to the image of the Met, and whenever the Met’s image was sullied, the sullying generally came from the press.

In this case, what the press were reporting appeared to have come verbatim from Zaynab Bourne. She had embraced the deal offered by Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery at St. Thomas’ Hospital: unfettered access to Yukio Matsumoto in exchange for the Met’s admission of culpability for the Japanese man’s flight and his subsequent injuries. The final edition of the Evening Standard was leading with the story, but unfortunately the Standard was leading with only half of it and that was the culpability half. “Met Admits Wrongdoing” was how the paper was phrasing it, and they were doing their phrasing in a three-inch banner below which were printed photos of the accident scene, photos of the solicitor at the press conference where she’d made this announcement, and a publicity shot of Hiro Matsumoto and his cello, as if he and not his brother were the victim of the accident in question.

Now that Scotland Yard had admitted its part in causing the terrible injuries from which Yukio Matsumoto was heroically trying to recover, Mrs. Bourne had said, she would be exploring the monetary compensation owed to him. They could all thank God that no armed officers had been involved in chasing the poor man, by the way. Had the police been wielding guns, she had little doubt that Mr. Matsumoto would now be awaiting burial.

Isabelle reckoned that the real reason she was sitting in Hillier’s office with the assistant commissioner and Stephenson Deacon had to do with the monetary compensation that Zaynab Bourne had mentioned. Feverishly, she went back over her conversation with the solicitor-held in the corridor outside of Yukio Matsumoto’s room-and she recognised an element of that conversation that Bourne had not taken into account prior to speaking to the press.

She said, “Mrs. Bourne is exaggerating, sir.” She spoke to Hillier. “We had a conversation about what led up to Mr. Matsumoto’s injuries, but that was the extent of it. I no more agreed to her assessment of the circumstances than I offered to slash my wrists in front of television cameras.” She winced inwardly as soon as she’d spoken. Bad choice of visual image, she thought. From the expression on the assistant commissioner’s face, she reckoned that he would have been only too happy had she slashed her wrists or any other part of her body, for that matter. She said, “The two of us talked alone as well,” and she hoped they’d fill in the blanks from there so that she would not have to do so: There were no witnesses to their conversation. It mattered little what Zaynab Bourne said. The Met could simply deny it.

Hillier looked at Deacon. Deacon raised an eyebrow. Deacon looked at Isabelle. Isabelle went on.

“Beyond that,” she said, “there’s the not inconsiderable matter of public safety to be looked at.”

“Explain.” Hillier was the one to speak. He glanced at the phone messages fanned out on the table. Isabelle assumed they were from Bourne, the media, and Hillier’s own superior officer.

“There were hundreds of people in Covent Garden when Mr. Matsumoto bolted,” Isabelle said. “It’s true we gave chase and Mrs. Bourne can certainly argue that we did so despite knowing the man is a paranoid schizophrenic. But we can counter that claim with the weightier claim that we gave chase for precisely that reason. We knew he was unstable, but we also knew he was involved in a murder. His own brother had identified him from the e-fit in the newspapers. Beyond that, we had hairs on the body that we knew were Oriental in origin and that, in conjunction with a description of this very man running from the scene of a violent murder, clothing disheveled…” She let the remainder of the sentence dangle for a moment. It seemed to her that the rest was implicit: What option had the police possessed other than to give chase? “We had no idea if he was armed,” she concluded. “He might very well have struck again.”

Hillier looked at Deacon another time. They communicated wordlessly. It was then that it came to Isabelle that something had already been decided between them, and she was in the room to hear that decision rather than to defend what had happened out in the street. Hillier finally spoke. “The press isn’t stupid, Isabelle. They’re fully capable of working on your time line and using it against you and, by extension, against the Met.”

“Sir?” She frowned.

Deacon leaned towards her. His voice was patient. “We try not to operate like our American cousins, my dear,” he said. “Shoot first and ask questions later? That’s not quite our style.”

At his patronising tone, she felt hairs rise on the back of her neck. “I don’t see how-”

“Then let me clarify,” Deacon interrupted. “When you gave chase, you had no idea the hairs from the body belonged to an Oriental, let alone to Mr. Matsumoto. You had less idea that he was indeed the person who’d been fleeing the crime scene.”

“That turned out to be-”

“Well, yes, it did. And isn’t that a relief. But the problem is the chase itself and your admission of culpability for it.”

“As I said, there were no witnesses to my conversation with-”

“And that’s what you would have me declare to the press? It’s our word against hers and so there? That’s actually the best response you have to offer?”

“Sir.” This she said to Hillier. “I had little choice in the matter at the hospital. We had Yukio Matsumoto conscious. We had his brother and his sister willing to let me talk to him. And we had him talking as well. We ended up with two e-fits, and if I hadn’t made a deal with the solicitor, we’d not have anything more than we had yesterday.”

“Ah, yes, the e-fits.” Deacon was the one to speak, and he opened the manila folder he’d brought with him. Isabelle saw he’d come to Hillier’s office armed: He’d already managed to get copies of the e-fits himself. He looked at them, then at her. He handed the e-fits over to Hillier. Hillier examined them. He took his time. He tapped the tips of his fingers together as he made his assessment of what Isabelle’s deal making with Zaynab Bourne had-and had not-gained them. He was no more a fool than she was herself, than Deacon was, than any of the investigating officers were. He drew his conclusion, but he didn’t speak it. He didn’t need to. Instead, he raised his eyes to her. Blue, soulless. Were they also regretful? And if they were, what did he regret?

“Two days to finish this up,” he told her. “After that, I believe we can assume that your time with us has come to an end.”

LYNLEY FOUND THE house without too much difficulty despite its being south of the river, where a single wrong turn could easily put one on the road to Brighton instead of, perhaps, the road to Kent or the road to Cambridgeshire. But in this case his clue to location was that, according to the A-Z, the street he wanted lay squarely between Wandsworth Prison and Wandsworth Cemetery. Insalubrious, his wife would have called it. Darling, the place has everything to recommend it to the suicidal or the permanently depressed.

Helen wouldn’t have been wrong, especially with regard to the structure in which Isabelle Ardery had established her digs. The house itself wasn’t entirely bad-despite the dying tree in front of it and the concrete pad that surrounded the dying tree and made it a dying tree in the first place-but Isabelle had taken the basement flat and, as the house faced north, the place was like a pit. It put Lynley immediately in mind of Welsh miners, and that was before he’d even got inside.

He saw Isabelle’s car in the street, so he knew she was at home. But she didn’t answer the door when he knocked. So he knocked again and then he banged. He called out her name and when that didn’t do it, he tried the knob and found that she hadn’t locked herself in, a foolhardy move. He entered.

There was little light, as would be the case in any basement flat. Dim illumination came through a crusty kitchen window, but that was supposed to provide daylight for not only the kitchen but the room that opened off it, which appeared to be the sitting room. This was furnished cheaply, with pieces suggesting a single hasty purchase trip to Ikea. Settee, chair, coffee table, floor lamp, a rug intended to hide the occupant’s household sins.

There was nothing personal anywhere, Lynley saw, save for one photograph, which he picked up from a shelf above the electric fire. This was a framed picture of Isabelle kneeling between two boys, her arms round their waists. She was obviously dressed for work, while they wore school uniforms, with their caps set jauntily on their heads, their arms slung round their mother’s shoulders. All three of them were grinning. First day at school? Lynley wondered. The age of the twins seemed right for it.

He put the picture back on the shelf. He looked round and wondered at Isabelle’s choice of habitation. He couldn’t imagine bringing the boys to live in this place, and he wondered why Isabelle had chosen it. Housing was expensive in London, but surely there had to be something better, a place where the boys could, if nothing else, see the sky when they looked out of a window. And where were they meant to sleep? he wondered. He went in search of bedrooms.

There was one, its door standing open. It was situated at the back of the flat, its window looking out on a tiny walled area from which, he supposed, access to the garden might be gained, if there was a garden. The window was closed and it looked as if it hadn’t been washed since the construction of the house itself. But the illumination it provided was enough to highlight a chair, a chest of drawers, and a bed. Upon this bed, Isabelle Ardery sprawled. She was breathing deeply, in the manner of someone who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. He was loath to awaken her, and he considered writing a note and leaving her in peace. But when he walked round the bed to ease open the window in order to give the poor woman a bit of fresh air, he saw the glint of a bottle on the floor, and he understood from this that she was not asleep at all as one would think of sleep. Rather, she was drunk.

“Christ,” he muttered. “Damn fool woman.” He sat on the bed. He heaved her upward.

She groaned. Her eyes fluttered open, then closed.

“Isabelle,” he said. “Isabelle.”

“How’d you ge’ in, eh?” She squinted at him, then closed her eyes again. “Hey, ’m a police officer, you.” Her head flopped against him. “I’ll ring some…someone…I’ll do…’f you don’t leave.”

“Get up,” Lynley told her. “Isabelle, get up. I must speak with you.”

“Done speaking.” Her hand reached up to pat his cheek although she didn’t look at him, so she missed her mark and hit his ear instead. “Finished. He said anyways and…” She seemed to fall back into a stupor.

Lynley blew out a breath. He tried to remember when he’d last seen anyone as drunk as this, but he couldn’t. She needed a purgative of some sort, or a pot of coffee, or something. But first she needed to be conscious enough to swallow, and there seemed to be only one way to manage that.

He pulled her to her feet. It was impossible, he knew, for him to carry her from the room in the fashion of a cinematic hero. She was virtually his own size, she was dead weight, and there was not enough room to manoeuvre her into position anyway, even if he’d been able to load her fireman style over his shoulder. So he had to drag her ingloriously from the bed and just as ingloriously into the bathroom. There he found no tub but only a narrow stall shower, which was fine by him. He propped her into this fully clothed and turned on the water. Despite the age of the house, the water pressure was excellent and the spray hit Isabelle directly in the face.

She shrieked. She flailed her arms. “Wha’ the hell…,” she cried out and then seemed to see him and recognise him for the first time. “My God!” She clutched her arms round her body as if in the expectation that she would find herself naked. Finding herself instead fully clothed-down to her shoes-she said, “Oh nooooo!”

“I see I have your attention at last,” Lynley told her dryly. “Stay in here till you sober up sufficiently to speak in coherent sentences. I’m going to make some coffee.”

He left her. He went back to the kitchen and began a search. He found a coffee press along with an electric kettle and everything else he needed. He spooned a copious amount of coffee into the press and filled the kettle with water. He plugged in its flex. By the time the coffee was ready and he’d put mugs, milk, and sugar on the table-along with two pieces of toast which he buttered and cut into neat triangles-Isabelle had emerged from the bathroom. Her sodden clothing removed, she was wearing a toweling dressing gown, her feet were bare, and her hair clung wetly to her skull. She stood at the door to the kitchen and observed him.

“My shoes,” she said, “are ruined.”

“Hmm,” he replied. “I daresay they are.”

“My watch wasn’t waterproof either, Thomas.”

“An unfortunate oversight when it was purchased.”

“How did you get in?”

“Your door was unlocked. Also an unfortunate oversight, by the way. Are you sober, Isabelle?”

“More or less.”

“Coffee, then. And toast.” He went to the doorway and took her arm.

She shook him off. “I can bloody walk,” she snapped.

“We’ve made progress, then.”

She moved with some care to the table, where she sat. He poured coffee into both the mugs and pushed hers towards her, along with the toast. She made a moue of distaste at the food and shook her head. He said, “Refusal is not an option. Consider it medicinal.”

“I’ll be sick.” She was speaking with the same kind of care she’d used in moving from the doorway to the table. She was fairly good at feigning sobriety, Lynley saw, but he reckoned she’d had years of practice.

“Have some coffee,” he told her.

She acquiesced and took a few sips. “It wasn’t the entire bottle,” she declared, apropos of what he’d found on the floor of her bedroom. “I just drank what was left of it. That’s hardly a crime. I wasn’t planning on driving anywhere. I wasn’t planning to leave the flat. It’s no one’s business but my own. And I was owed, Thomas. There’s no need to make such an issue out of it.”

“Yes,” he said. “I do see your point. You could be right.”

She eyed him. He kept his face perfectly bland. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Who the hell sent you?”

“No one.”

“Not Hillier wanting to know how I was coping with my defeat, eh?”

“Sir David and I are hardly on those kinds of terms,” Lynley said. “What’s happened?”

She told him about her meeting with the assistant commissioner and the head of the press bureau. She appeared to feel there was no point to obfuscating because she told him everything: from her bargain with Zaynab Bourne in order to maintain access to Yukio Matsumoto, through her acknowledgement that the e-fits they’d had off Matsumoto were completely useless despite what she’d said to the team in the incident room, to Stephenson Deacon’s thinly disguised condescension-“He actually called me my dear, if you can believe it, and what’s worse is that I didn’t smack his smug face”-to the end of it all, which was Hillier’s dismissal of her.

“Two days,” she said. “And then I’m finished.” Her eyes brightened, but she shrugged off the emotion. “Well, John Stewart will be delighted, won’t he?” She gave a weak chuckle. “I forgot him in my office, Thomas. He’s probably still waiting there. D’you think he’ll spend the night? God, I need another drink.” She looked round the kitchen as if preparing to rise and fetch another bottle of vodka. Lynley wondered where she kept her supplies. They needed to be poured down the drain. She’d only get more, but at least her immediate desire for oblivion would be thwarted.

“I’ve made a dog’s dinner of this,” she said. “You wouldn’t have done. Malcolm Webberly wouldn’t have done. Even that blasted Stewart wouldn’t have done.” She crossed her arms on the table and put her head upon them. “I’m completely useless and hopeless and buggered and-”

“Self-pitying as well,” Lynley put in. Her head jerked up and he added pleasantly, “With all due respect, guv.”

“Is that remark part of being his ermine-clad lordship or just part of being a judgmental arse?”

Lynley made a show of thinking about this. “As wearing ermine gives me nettle rash, I suspect the latter.”

“Just as I thought. You’re out of order. If I want to say I’m useless, hopeless, and buggered, I’m damn well going to say it, all right?”

He added coffee to her mug. “Isabelle,” he said, “it’s time to buck up. You’ll get no argument from me that Hillier’s a nightmare to work for or that Deacon would sell his own sister to a New York pimp if it meant keeping the Met looking good. But that’s hardly the point just now. We’ve got a killer needing to be arrested and a case against that killer needing to be built for the CPS. Neither is going to happen if you don’t pull yourself together.”

She picked up her mug of coffee and Lynley wondered briefly if she intended to throw it at him. But rather than that, she drank from it and looked at him over the rim as she did so. She finally seemed to realise that he’d never answered her question about his presence in her flat because she said, “What the hell are you doing here, Thomas? Why did you come? This isn’t exactly your part of town, so I dare say you weren’t just passing by. And how’d you find out where I live, anyway? Did someone tell you…? Did that Judi MacIntosh overhear…? Did she send you? I wouldn’t put it past her to listen in at doorways. There’s something about her-”

“Control your paranoia for five minutes,” Lynley said. “I said from the first that I wanted to talk to you. I waited more than an hour in the incident room. Dee Harriman finally told me you’d gone home. All right?”

“Talk to me about what?” she asked.

“Frazer Chaplin.”

“What about him?”

“I’ve had most of the day to think about this from every angle. I reckon Frazer’s our man.”

SHE WAITED FOR Lynley’s explanation. She drank more coffee and decided to make an attempt with the toast. Her stomach didn’t recoil altogether at the thought of food, so she lifted one of the triangles Lynley had made for her, and she took a bite. She wondered if this was the extent of the inspector’s culinary talents. She thought it likely. He’d used far too much butter.

As he’d done earlier in the incident room, Lynley spoke of a magazine he’d had from Deborah St. James. Frazer Chaplin was in one of the pictures. That could indicate several things, he told her: Paolo di Fazio had been claiming from the first that Jemima had been involved with Frazer, despite the household rules that Mrs. McHaggis had put up for all her tenants to see. Abbott Langer had said much to support this claim, and Yolanda-at a stretch, Lynley admitted-had also indicated an involvement of some kind on Jemima’s part with a dark man.

So we’re going to listen to a psychic now? Isabelle wailed.

Just hang on, Lynley told her. They knew Jemima’s involvement wasn’t with di Fazio since she’d asked Yolanda repeatedly about whether her new lover returned her affections and she’d hardly be asking that about di Fazio after she’d ended her relationship with him. So wasn’t it safe to assume that Frazer Chaplin-his denials to the contrary-was the man they were looking for?

How the hell did that follow? Isabelle demanded. Even if he was involved with Jemima, that hardly meant he’d murdered her.

Wait, Lynley told her. If she would just hear him out please…?

Oh bloody all right. Isabelle was weary. She waved at him to continue.

Let’s assume a few things, he said. First, let’s assume that prior to her death Jemima was indeed involved romantically with Frazer Chaplin.

Fine. Let’s assume, Isabelle said.

Good. Next, let’s assume her possession of a gold coin and a carved carnelian are indications not that she carried a good luck charm or is sentimental about her father’s belongings or anything of the like. Let’s assume from these items that a Roman treasure hoard has been found. Then, let’s assume that she and Gordon Jossie are the individuals who found that hoard and they found it on their holding in Hampshire. Finally, let’s assume that prior to reporting that hoard-which must be done by law-something occurred between Jemima and Jossie that brought their relationship to a precipitate halt. She decamped to London, but all the time she knew there was a treasure to be had and that treasure was worth a fortune.

“What on earth brought their relationship to such a halt that she actually went into hiding from him?” Isabelle asked.

“We don’t know that yet,” Lynley admitted.

“Wonderful,” Isabelle muttered. “I can hardly wait to let Hillier know. For God’s sake, Thomas, this is too much assuming. What sort of arrest d’ you expect we can manage from all this speculation?”

“No arrest at all,” Lynley said. “Not yet at least. There are pieces missing. But if you think about it for a moment, Isabelle, motive isn’t one of them.”

Isabelle considered this: Jemima Hastings, Gordon Jossie, and a buried treasure. She said, “Jossie has a motive, Thomas. I don’t see how Frazer Chaplin has.”

“Of course he has. If there’s a buried treasure and if Jemima Hastings told him about it.”

“Why would she have done?”

“Why wouldn’t she? If she’s in love with him, if she hopes he’s ‘the one,’ there’s a good possibility that she told him about the treasure to make sure he stayed ‘the one.’”

“All right. Fine. So. She told him about the treasure. Doesn’t it stand to reason that he’d want to get rid of Gordon Jossie and not Jemima Hastings?”

“That would secure him the treasure only if he could hold on to Jemima’s affections. Her various visits to the psychic indicate she may well have been having second thoughts about Frazer. Why else keep asking if he was ‘the one’? Suppose he knew she was having doubts. Suppose he saw the handwriting on the wall. Lose Jemima and he loses the fortune. The only way to prevent this would be to get rid of them both-Jemima and Jossie-and he doesn’t have to worry about anything.”

Isabelle considered this. As she did so, Lynley rose from the table and went to the sink. He leaned against it and was silent, watching her and waiting.

She finally said, “It’s such a leap, Thomas. There’s too much to account for. He’s been alibied-”

“McHaggis could be lying. She could also be mistaken. She says he was home taking a shower but that’s what he always did, didn’t he? She was asked days later, Isabelle, and she could well want to protect him anyway.”

“Why?”

“She’s a woman.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, what’s that supposed to-”

“Everyone agrees he has a way with women. Why not with Bella McHaggis as well?”

“What, then? He’s sleeping with her? With her, with Jemima, with…who else, Thomas?”

“With Gina Dickens, I dare say.”

She stared at him. “Gina Dickens?”

“Think about it. There she is in the magazine pictures of the Portrait Gallery’s opening show. If Frazer was there-and we know he was-how impossible is it to believe he met Gina Dickens that night? How impossible is it to believe that, meeting Gina Dickens, he fell for her? Wanted to add her to his list of conquests? Ultimately decided to replace Jemima with her? Sent her down to Hampshire to get herself involved with Jossie so that-”

“D’you realise how many things are unaccounted for in all of this?” She put her head in her hands. Her brain felt sodden. “We can suppose this and suppose that, Thomas, but we have no evidence that anything you’re saying actually happened, so what’s the point?”

Lynley went on, seeming undeterred. They did have evidence, he pointed out, but he reckoned they hadn’t been putting it together correctly.

“What, for example?”

“The handbag and the bloodstained shirt from the Oxfam bin, just to begin,” he said. “We’ve assumed someone planted them there to implicate one of the inhabitants of Bella McHaggis’s house. We haven’t considered that, knowing the bin wasn’t emptied regularly, one of the inhabitants of the house put the items there merely to store them.”

“Store them?”

“Until they could be taken down to Hampshire, handed over to Gina Dickens, and placed somewhere on Gordon Jossie’s property.”

“God. This is madness. Why wouldn’t he just-”

“Listen.” Lynley returned to the table and sat. He leaned across it and put his hand over her arm. “Isabelle, it’s not as mad as it seems. This crime depended upon two things. First, the killer had to have knowledge of Jemima’s past, her present, and her intentions towards Gordon Jossie. Second, the killer couldn’t have worked alone.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because he had to gather what evidence was going to be necessary to frame Gordon Jossie for this murder and that evidence was to be found in Hampshire: the murder weapon and a yellow shirt from Jossie’s clothes cupboard, I expect. At the same time the killer had to know what Jemima was doing with regard to Jossie. If Frazer was indeed her lover, isn’t it reasonable to assume that she showed him those postcards that Jossie had put up round the gallery in an attempt to locate her? Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that, learning about these cards and already being involved with Gina Dickens, Frazer Chaplin began to see a way in which he could have everything: the treasure that he’d learned about, a means to get to that treasure, and Gina Dickens as well?”

Isabelle thought about this. She tried to see how it had been managed: a phone call made to the number on the postcard that would tell Gordon Jossie where to find Jemima; Jemima’s decision to meet Jossie in a private location; someone in Hampshire to keep an eye on Jossie and monitor his movements and someone in London doing the same with Jemima, and both of these someones intimately involved with Jossie and with Jemima, privy to the nature of the relationship they’d had with each other; both of these someones additionally in contact; both of these someones engaged in a delicate minuet of timing…?

“It makes my head swim,” she finally said. “It’s impossible.”

“It isn’t,” he said, “especially if Gina Dickens and Frazer knew each other from the night of the gallery opening. And it would have worked, Isabelle. Carefully planned as it was, it would have worked perfectly. The only thing they didn’t take into account was Yukio Matsumoto’s presence in the cemetery that day. Frazer didn’t know Matsumoto was being Jemima’s guardian angel. Jemima likely didn’t know it herself. So neither Frazer nor Gina Dickens took into account that someone would see Jemima meet Gordon Jossie and also see Gordon Jossie leave her, very much alive.”

“If that was Gordon Jossie at all.”

“I don’t see how it could have been anyone else, do you?”

Isabelle considered this from every angle. All right, it could have happened that way. But there was a problem with everything Lynley had said, and she couldn’t ignore it any more than he could. She said, “Jemima left Hampshire ages ago, Thomas. If there’s a Roman treasure hoard sitting down there on the property she shared with Gordon Jossie, why the hell in all that time did neither one of them-Jossie or Jemima-do a single thing about it?”

“That’s what I’d like to find out,” he said. “But I’d like to break Frazer’s alibi first.”

STILL IN HER dressing gown, she walked outside with him. She didn’t look much better than when he dumped her into the shower, but it seemed to Lynley that her spirits were raised enough that she was unlikely to drink again that evening. He was reassured by this thought. He didn’t like to think why.

She came as far as the narrow stairs that led from her basement flat up to the street. He’d mounted the first two steps when she said his name. He turned. She stood beneath him with one hand on the rail as if she intended to follow him up and the other hand at her throat, holding her dressing gown closed.

She said, “All of this could have waited till morning, couldn’t it.”

He thought about it for a moment before he said, “I suppose it could.”

“Why, then?”

“Why now instead of the morning, d’you mean?”

“Yes.” She tilted her head towards the flat, the door standing open but no lights on within. “Did you suspect?”

“What?”

“You know.”

“I thought there was a chance of it.”

“Why bother, then?”

“To sober you up? I wanted to toss round ideas with you, and I could hardly do that if you were in a stupor.”

“Why?”

“I like the give and take of a partnership. It’s how I work best, Isabelle.”

“You were meant to do this.” She touched her fingers to her chest, seeming to indicate with this gesture that she was referring to the superintendent’s job. “I wasn’t,” she added. “That’s clear enough now.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You made the point yourself: The case is complicated. You’ve been handed something with a learning curve steeper than any curve I’ve had to travel.”

“I don’t believe that at all, Thomas. But thank you for saying it. You’re a very good man.”

“Often, I think the opposite.”

“You’re thinking nonsense then.” Her eyes held his. “Thomas,” she said, “I…” But then she seemed to lose the courage to say anything more. This seemed uncharacteristic of her, so he waited to hear what she wanted to conclude with. He came down one step. She was directly below him, no longer virtually eye to eye with him but instead her head reaching just beneath his lips.

The silence between them stretched too long. It evolved from quiet into tension. It moved from tension into desire. The most natural thing in the world became the simple movement to kiss her, and when her mouth opened beneath his, that was as natural as the kiss itself. Her arms slipped round him and his round her. His hands slid beneath the dressing gown’s folds to touch her cool, soft skin.

“I want you,” she murmured at last, “to make love to me.”

“I don’t think that’s wise, Isabelle,” he said.

“I don’t care in the least,” she replied.