This Body of Death

Chapter Thirty-One

SHE’D SAID AFTERWARDS, “I’M NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU. IT’S just something that happened.”

He’d replied, “Of course. I understand completely.”

She’d gone on with, “No one can know about this.”

He’d said, “I think that might be the most obvious point.”

She’d said, “Why? Are there others?”

“What?”

“Obvious points. Other than I’m a woman, and you’re a man, and these things sometimes happen.”

Of course there were other points, he’d thought. Aside from raw animal instinct, there was his motivation to consider. There was hers as well. There was also what now, what next, and what do we do when the ground has shifted beneath our feet.

“Regret, I suppose,” he’d told her.

“And do you? Because I don’t. As I said, these things happen. You can’t say they haven’t happened to you, of all people. I won’t believe that.”

He wasn’t quite as she seemed to think him, but he didn’t disagree with her. He swung himself out of her bed, sat on the edge, and considered her question. The answer was yes and it was also no, but he didn’t speak either.

He’d felt her hand on his back. It was cool, and her voice had altered when she said his name. No longer clipped and professional, her voice was…Was it maternal? God, no. She was not in the least a maternal sort of woman.

She’d said, “Thomas, if we’re to be lovers-”

“I can’t just now,” had been his reply. Not that he couldn’t conceive of himself as the lover of Isabelle Ardery, but that he could conceive of it only too well, and that frightened him for all it implied. “I ought to leave,” he said.

“We’ll speak later,” she had responded.

He’d arrived home quite late. He’d slept very little. In the morning he spoke by mobile to Barbara Havers, a conversation he’d have preferred to avoid. As soon as he was able afterwards, he set upon the work of Frazer Chaplin and his alibi.

DragonFly Tonics had its offices in a mews behind Brompton Oratory and Holy Trinity Church. It faced the churchyard, although a wall, a hedge, and a path separated the two. Across the alley from the establishment, he saw that two Vespas were parked. One bright orange and the other fuchsia, each bore transfers with DragonFly Tonics printed upon them, much like those he’d seen on Frazer Chaplin’s motor scooter outside Duke’s Hotel.

Lynley parked the Healey Elliott directly in front of the building. He paused to look at the array of goods that were displayed in its front window. These consisted of bottles of substances with names like Wake-up Peach, Detox Lemon, and Sharpen-up Orange. He inspected these and thought wryly of the one he’d choose had they only manufactured it: Show Some Sense Strawberry came to mind. So did Get a Grip Grapefruit. He could have used two of those, he reckoned.

He went inside. The office was quite spare. Aside from some cardboard boxes with the DragonFly Tonics logo printed on the side, there was only a reception desk with a middle-aged woman sitting behind it. She wore a man’s seersucker suit. At least it looked like a man’s since its jacket hung loosely round her. It was a size that would have fitted Churchill.

She was stuffing brochures into envelopes, and she continued with this as she said, “Help you?” She sounded surprised. It seemed that her day was rarely interrupted by someone wandering in off the street.

Lynley asked her about their method of advertising, and she jumped to the conclusion that he meant to cover the Healey Elliott-visible through the window from within the reception area-with DragonFly Tonics transfers. He shuddered inwardly at the thought of such a desecration. He wanted to demand in outrage, “Are you quite mad, woman?” but instead he maintained an expression of interest. She pulled from her desk a crisp manila folder, from which she slid what appeared to be a contract. She spoke of rates paid for the size and number of transfers applied and the typical mileage expected from the driver of the vehicle. Obviously, she noted, black cabs received the most money, followed quite closely by motorcycle and motor scooter couriers. What sort of driving did he do? she asked Lynley.

This prompted him to correct her notion. He showed her his identification, and he asked her about the records kept of people who had vehicles of one sort or another decorated-and he used that term loosely-with the transfers from DragonFly Tonics. She told him that, of course, there were records because how else were people meant to be paid for swanning round London and regions beyond with advertising plastered to their vehicles?

Lynley was hoping to discover that there was no Frazer Chaplin with a contract to advertise DragonFly Tonics at all. From this, he had decided, it could be assumed that the Vespa Frazer had shown to Lynley outside Duke’s Hotel was not his at all but one produced on a moment’s inspiration and declared to be a Chaplin possession. He gave the receptionist Frazer’s name and asked if she could produce his contract.

Unfortunately, she did just that, and all of it was as Frazer had avowed. The Vespa was his. It was lime green. To it, transfers had been applied. They were, in fact, applied professionally in Shepherd’s Bush since DragonFly Tonics hardly wanted a slapdash job done with them. They were put on to last, not to be easily removed, and when they were removed at the end of the contract, the vehicle would be repainted.

Lynley sighed when he saw this. Unless Frazer had used a different vehicle to get up to Stoke Newington, they were back to any and all CCTV films from the area and the possibility that one of them had recorded his Vespa in the vicinity of the cemetery. They were also back to the door-to-door slog-which was going on anyway per Isabelle’s instructions-and the hope that someone had seen the scooter. Or, he reckoned, they were down to Frazer using someone else’s scooter or motorcycle to get there, because with ninety minutes to do what needed to be done and to get to Duke’s Hotel on time afterwards, he would have had to go to north London by that means. There was simply no other way that he could have managed the traffic.

Lynley was considering all this when his eyes lit upon the date of the contract: one week before Jemima died. This prompted him to dwell on dates in general, which made him realise there was a detail he had overlooked. There was indeed another way the murder of Jemima Hastings could have been managed, he thought.

HE WAS GETTING into his car when Havers rang him. He said, “Lynley,” whereupon the sergeant began babbling-there was no other word for it-about Victoria Street, a cash-point machine, the Home Office, and having a gin and tonic.

He thought at first that was what she’d done-had a gin and tonic or two or three-but then in the midst of her frantic monologue he picked up the word snout and from this he finally was able to decipher that she was asking him to meet someone at a cash-point in Victoria Street, although he still wasn’t sure why he was meant to do this.

As she finally drew breath, he said, “Havers, what’s this got to do with-”

“He was in London. The day she died. Jossie. And Whiting’s known it all along.”

That got his attention. “Who’s given you that information?”

“Hastings. The brother.” And then she banged on about Gina Dickens and someone called Meredith Powell, as well as tickets, receipts, Gordon Jossie’s habit of wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap and wasn’t that exactly how Yukio Matsumoto had described the man he’d seen in the cemetery and please, please, get down to Victoria Street to that cash-point because whatever Norman Whatsisname knows he isn’t spilling it on the phone and they need to know what it is. She herself was going to beard Whiting in his den or whatever the proper term was but before she could do that she needed to know what Norman had to say, so they were back to Norman and Lynley had to get to Victoria Street and where was he, anyway?

She took another breath, which gave Lynley the chance to tell her he was in Ennismore Gardens Mews, behind Brompton Oratory and Holy Trinity Church. He was working on the Frazer Chaplin end of things, and he reckoned-

“Sod Frazer Chaplin for a lark,” was her reply. “This is hot, this is Whiting, and this is the trail. For God’s sake, Inspector, I need you to do this.”

“What about Winston? Where is he?”

“It has to be you. Look, Winnie’s doing those CCTV films, isn’t he? The Stoke Newington films? And anyway, if Norman Whoever…God, why can’t I remember his bloody name…He’s a public school bloke. He wears pink shirts. He’s got that voice. He says every sentence so far back in his throat that you practically need to perform a tonsillectomy just to excavate the words. If Winnie shows up at the cash-point machine and starts talking to him…Winnie of all people…Winnie…Sir, think it through.”

“All right,” Lynley said. “Havers, all right.”

“Thank you, thank you,” she intoned. “This thing’s all a tangle, but I think we’re getting it sorted.”

He wasn’t so sure. For every time he made that his consideration, further facts seemed only to complicate matters.

He made good time over to Victoria Street by carving a route that took him ultimately through Belgrave Square. He parked in the underground car park at the Met and walked back over to Victoria Street, where he found the Barclay’s cash-point machine closest to Broadway, next to a Ryman’s stationery shop.

Havers’ snout was a case of by-his-clothes-shalt-thee-know-him. His shirt wasn’t pink. It was bright fuchsia, and his necktie featured ducklings. He clearly wasn’t cut out for a life of intrigue since he was pacing the pavement and pausing to peer into the window of Ryman’s as if studying which kind of filing tray he wished to purchase.

Lynley felt inordinately foolish, but he approached the man and said, “Norman?” When the other started, he said to him affably, “Barbara Havers thought I might interest you in a gin and tonic.”

Norman cast a look left and right. He said, “Christ, for a moment I thought you were one of them.”

“One of whom?”

“Look. We can’t talk here.” He looked at his watch, one of those multidial affairs useful for diving and, one presumed, going to the moon as well. He said as he did so, “Act like you’re asking me the time please. Reset your own watch or something…Christ, you carry a pocket watch? I’ve not seen one of those in-”

“Family heirloom.” Lynley looked at the time as Norman made much of showing him the face of his own piece. Lynley wasn’t sure which one of the dials he was meant to look at but he nodded cooperatively.

“We can’t talk here,” Norman said when they’d completed this part of the charade.

“Whyever-”

“CCTV,” Norman murmured. “We’ve got to go somewhere else. They’re going to pick us up on film and I’m dead if they do.”

This seemed wildly dramatic until Lynley realised Norman was talking about losing his job and not his life. He said, “I think that’s a bit of a problem, don’t you? There’re cameras everywhere.”

“Look, go up to the cash machine. Get some money. I’m going into Ryman’s to make a purchase. You do the same.”

“Norman, Ryman’s will likely have a camera.”

“Just bloody do it,” Norman said through his teeth.

It came to Lynley that the man was honestly afraid, not just playing at spies and spy masters. So he fished out his bank card and went to the cash-point machine cooperatively. He withdrew some money, ducked into Ryman’s, and found Norman looking at a display of sticky pads. He didn’t join him there, assuming that proximity would unnerve the man. Instead, he went to the greeting cards and studied them, picking up one then another then a third and fourth, a man intent upon finding something appropriate. When he saw Norman at last approach the till, he chose a card at random and did likewise. It was there they had their extremely brief tête-à-tête, spoken in a fashion that Norman seemed intent upon making look as casual as possible, if such was even conceivable, considering he spoke out of the side of his mouth.

He said, “There’s something of a scrum over there.”

“At the Home Office? What’s going on?”

“It’s definitely to do with Hampshire,” he said. “It’s something big, something serious, and they’re moving dead fast to deal with it before word gets out.”

ISABELLE ARDERY HAD spent a good number of years putting the details of her life into separate compartments. Thus, she had no difficulty doing just that on the day following Thomas Lynley’s call upon her. There was DI Lynley on her team, and there was Thomas Lynley in her bed. She had no intention of confusing the two. Besides, she was not stupid enough to consider their encounter as anything other than sex, mutually satisfying and potentially duplicable. Beyond that, her daytime dilemma at the Met did not allow for even a moment of recollection about anything, and especially about her previous night with Lynley. For this was Day One in the End of Days scenario that Assistant Commissioner Hillier had spelled out for her, and if she was going to be shown the door at New Scotland Yard, then it was her intention to go out of that door with a case sewn up behind her.

This was her thinking when Lynley arrived in her office. She felt a disagreeable jump of her heart at the sight of him, so she said briskly, “What is it, Thomas?” and she rose from her desk, brushed past him, and called into the corridor, “Dorothea? What’re we hearing from the Stoke Newington door-to-door? And where’s Winston got to with that CCTV footage?”

She got no reply and shouted, “Dorothea! Where the hell…!” and then said, “Damn it,” and returned to her desk where again she said, “What is it, Thomas?” but this time remained standing.

He started to close the door. She said, “Leave it open, please.”

He turned. “This isn’t personal,” he said. Nonetheless, he left the door as it was.

She felt herself flush. “All right. Go on. What’s happened?”

It was a mix of information from which she ultimately sorted that DS Havers-who seemed to have a bloody-minded bent for doing whatever the hell she felt like doing when it came to a murder investigation-had unearthed someone within the Home Office to do some digging on the topic of a policeman in Hampshire. He’d not got far-this snout of Havers’-when he was called into the office of a significantly placed higher-up civil servant whose proximity to the Home Secretary was rather more than disturbing. Why was Zachary Whiting on the mind of a Home Office underling? was the enquiry that was made of Norman.

“Norman did some fancy footwork to save his own skin,” Lynley said. “But he’s managed to come up with something we might find useful.”

“Which is what?”

“Whiting’s apparently been given the charge of protecting someone extremely important to the Home Office.”

“Someone in Hampshire?”

“Someone in Hampshire. It’s a high-level protection, the highest level. It’s the sort of level that causes bells and whistles to go off everywhere when anyone gets remotely close to it. The bells and whistles, Norman gave me to understand, go off directly within the Home Secretary’s office.”

Isabelle lowered herself into her chair. She nodded at a second chair, and Lynley sat. “What d’you expect we’re dealing with, Thomas?” She considered the options and saw the likeliest. “Someone who’s infiltrated a terrorist cell?”

“With the informer being protected now? That’s highly possible,” Lynley said.

“But there’re other possibilities as well, aren’t there?”

“Not as many as you’d think. Not at the highest level,” he said. “Not with the Home Secretary involved. There’s terrorism, as you’ve said, with an infiltrator going into hiding prior to a bust. There’s protection for a witness set to testify in a high-profile case coming to court. Like an organised crime case, a sensitive murder case where the repercussions-”

“A Stephen Lawrence thing.”

“Indeed. There’s also protection from hired killers-”

“A fatwa.”

“Or the Russian mafia. Or Albanian gangsters. But whatever it is, it’s something big, it’s something important-”

“And Whiting knows exactly what it is.”

“Right. Because whoever it is the Home Office is protecting, this person’s in Whiting’s patch.”

“In a safe house?”

“Perhaps. But he might also be living under a new identity.”

She looked at him. He looked at her. They were both silent, both evaluating the possibilities and comparing those possibilities to everything else they knew. “Gordon Jossie,” Isabelle said at last. “Protecting Jossie is the only explanation for Whiting’s behaviour. Those forged letters of recommendation from Winchester Technical College? Whiting’s knowledge of an apprenticeship for Jossie when Barbara showed those letters to him…?”

Lynley agreed. “Havers is on the trail of something else, Isabelle. She’s fairly certain Jossie was in London the day that Jemima Hastings was murdered.” He told her more about his phone call with Havers, her report to him on the subject of her conversation with Rob Hastings, Hastings’ revelation about the train tickets and the hotel receipt and Whiting’s assurances given to a woman called Meredith Powell that this information had been sent to London.

She said, “She’s called Meredith Powell? Why’ve we not heard about her before now? And why, frankly, is Sergeant Havers reporting to you and not to me?”

Lynley hesitated. His frank gaze shifted from her to the window behind her. It came to her that he’d occupied this office himself only a short time ago, and she wondered if he wanted it back now that she was done for. He was certainly in line to have it back if he so desired, and he could have little doubt that he was better equipped to have it back as well.

She said sharply, “Thomas, why is Barbara reporting to you and why’ve we not heard about this Meredith Powell before now?”

He returned his gaze to her. He answered only the second of her questions although an answer to the first was implied when he said, “You wanted Havers and Nkata to return to London.” He didn’t say it as an accusation. It was hardly his style to mention what a cock-up she’d made of things. But then, he didn’t need to when everything was so obvious now.

She swung her chair to the window. “God,” she murmured. “I’ve been wrong from the first about everything.”

“I wouldn’t say-”

“Oh, please.” She turned back to him. “Let’s not go easy on me, Thomas.”

“It’s not that. It’s a matter of-”

“Guv?” At the doorway, Philip Hale was standing. He had a slip of paper in his hand. “Found Matt Jones,” he told her. “The Matt Jones.”

“Are we sure of that?”

“Pieces seem to fit.”

“And?”

“Mercenary. Soldier of fortune. Whatever. Works for a group called Hangtower, most of the time in the Middle East.”

“Is anyone telling us what sort of work?”

“Just that it’s top secret.”

“For which we can read assassinations?”

“Probably.”

“Thank you, Philip,” Isabelle said. He nodded and left them, casting a glance at Lynley that needed no translation, so clearly did it telegraph Hale’s own conclusion about how their superintendent had deployed him in the investigation. Had she left him where he’d belonged, they’d have sorted out Matt Jones and everyone else days ago. Instead she’d forced him to remain at St. Thomas’ Hospital. It had been a punitive measure, she thought now, showing the worst kind of leadership. She said, “I can hear Hillier already.”

Lynley said, “Isabelle, don’t worry about Hillier. Nothing that we’ve learned so far today-”

“Why? Are you operating from the ‘what’s done is done’ school of thought with that bit of advice? Or is this a case of things about to get worse?” She eyed him and read on his face that there was something else he hadn’t yet told her.

His mouth curved in a half smile, a fond sort of expression that she didn’t much like.

She said, “What?”

“Last evening,” he began.

“We aren’t going to talk about that,” she said fiercely.

“Last evening,” he repeated firmly, “we’d worked it all out and it came down to Frazer Chaplin, Isabelle. Nothing we’ve learned today changes that. Indeed, what Barbara’s managed to come up with reinforces the direction we’re heading.” And as she was about to question this, he said, “Hear me out. If Whiting’s charge is to protect Gordon Jossie for whatever reason, we know two things that were stymieing us last evening.”

She considered this and saw where he was going. “The Roman treasure,” she said. “If there is one.”

“Let’s assume there is. We were asking ourselves why Jossie wouldn’t have immediately reported what he’d found, as he was meant to do, and now we know. Consider his position: If he digs up a Roman hoard or even part of a Roman hoard and phones the authorities, the next thing is that a pack of journalists show up to talk to him about the whys and the wherefores of what he’s found. This sort of thing can’t be kept under his hat. Not if it’s a hoard remotely like the Mildenhall or the Hoxne treasures. In very short order, the police turn up to cordon off the area, archaeologists arrive, experts from the BM show up. I daresay the BBC show up as well and there he is on the morning news. He’s supposed to be in hiding, and the gaffe is irredeemably blown. Isabelle, it’s the last thing he could have wanted.”

She said thoughtfully, “But Jemima Hastings doesn’t know that, does she, because she doesn’t know he’s being protected.”

“Exactly. He hasn’t told her. He hasn’t seen the need or perhaps he doesn’t want to tell her.”

“Perhaps she was with him when he found the treasure,” Isabelle said. “Or perhaps he brought something into their house because he himself didn’t yet know what he had. He cleans it off. He shows it to her. They return to the spot where he’s found it and-”

“And they find more,” Lynley finished. “Jemima knows it has to be reported. Or at least she assumes they’re supposed to do something besides dig it up, clean it off, and display it on the mantelpiece.”

“And they can hardly spend it, can they?” Isabelle said. “They’d want to do something with it. So she’d need to find out-anyone would-what one actually does with such a find.”

“This,” Lynley noted, “puts Jossie in the worst possible position. He can’t allow his discovery to be publicly known, so-”

“He kills her, Thomas.” Isabelle felt deflated. “Be reasonable. He’s the only one with motive.”

Lynley shook his head. “Isabelle, he’s practically the only one without a motive. The last thing on earth he wants is to have anyone’s attention focused on him, and it’s going to be focused on him intensely should he kill her because she lives with him. If he’s in hiding, he’s going to be desperate to remain in hiding, isn’t he? If Jemima is insistent upon dealing with the treasure appropriately-and why wouldn’t she be since selling it on the open market will bring them a fortune?-then the only way to stop this and to keep himself out of the public eye isn’t to kill her at all.”

“My God,” Isabelle murmured. Her glance locked on his. “It’s to tell her the truth. And that’s why she left him. Thomas, she knew who he was. He had to tell her.”

“And that’s why he came looking for her in London.”

“Because he was worried that she might tell someone else…?” Isabelle saw the pieces click neatly into place. “Which was what she did. She told Frazer Chaplin. Not at first, of course. But once she saw those postcards of her photo from the Portrait Gallery, with Gordon Jossie’s mobile number on them. But why? Why tell Frazer? Is she afraid of Jossie for some reason?”

“If she’s left him, I think we can assume she either wanted nothing more to do with him or she wanted time to consider what she was going to do. She’s afraid, she’s repulsed, she’s worried, she’s staggered, she’s concerned, she’s greedy for the treasure, she’s had her life fall to pieces, she knows that to continue living with him puts her in danger…It could be any number of things that send her to London. It could be one reason that morphed into another.”

“She runs away first. She meets Frazer second.”

“They become involved. She tells him the truth. So you see, it comes back to Frazer.”

Isabelle said, “Why doesn’t it come back to Paolo di Fazio, since she’s been lovers with him and he’s seen the postcards? Or Abbott Langer, for that matter, or-”

“She ended her relationship with Paolo prior to the postcards and Langer never saw them.”

“-Jayson Druther if it comes down to it. Frazer has a bloody alibi, Thomas.”

“Let’s break it, then. Let’s do it now.”

FIRST, LYNLEY TOLD her, they needed to stop in Chelsea for another call upon Deborah and Simon St. James. It was on the route they were going to take anyway, he said, and he reckoned the St. Jameses had in their possession something that might prove quite useful.

A pause in the incident room brought forth information from Winston Nkata that the CCTV tapes were showing nothing more than they had showed before, which was also nothing. Specifically, there was documented on film no lime-coloured Vespa belonging to Frazer Chaplin and shouting advertisements for DragonFly Tonics. Hardly a surprise, Isabelle thought.

She also discovered that like Lynley, DS Nkata had spoken to the maddening Barbara Havers that morning. “According to Barb, tip of the thatcher’s crook shows who made it,” he said. “But she says to cross the brother off the list. Robert Hastings’s got blacksmith clobber on his property, she says, but it’s not been used. ’N the other hand, Jossie’s got three kinds of crooks and one of the kinds’s like our weapon. She wants to know ’bout the e-fits ’s well.”

“I’ve asked Dee to send them down to her,” Lynley told him.

Isabelle told Nkata to carry on, and she followed Lynley to the car park.

At the St. James house, they found the couple at home. St. James himself came to the door with the family dachshund barking frantically round his ankles. He admitted Isabelle and Lynley and admonished the dog, who blithely ignored him and continued barking until Deborah called out, “Good Lord, Simon! Do something about her!” from a room to the right of the staircase. This turned out to be the dining room, a formal affair of the sort one found in creaking old Victorian houses. It was decorated as such as well, at least as far as the furniture went. There was, mercifully, no plethora of knickknacks and no William Morris wallpaper although the dining table was heavy and dark and a sideboard held a mass of English pottery.

When they joined her, Deborah St. James was apparently using the table to examine photographs, which she quickly gathered up as they entered. Lynley said to her, “Ah. No?” in some sort of reference to these.

Deborah said, “Really, Tommy. I’d be far happier if you read me less easily.”

“Teatime not being…?”

“My cup of tea. Right.”

“That’s disappointing,” Lynley said. “But I did think afternoon tea might not be…hmm…shall I say a strong enough vignette to display your talents?”

“Very amusing. Simon, are you going to allow him to make fun or do you plan to rise to my defence?”

“I thought I’d wait to discover how far the two of you could carry an appalling pun.” St. James had come only to the doorway, and he was leaning there against the jamb.

“You’re as merciless as he is.” Deborah said hello to Isabelle-calling her Superintendent Ardery-and she excused herself “to throw this wretched stuff” into the rubbish. Over her shoulder as she went out of the room, she asked if they wanted a coffee. She admitted that it had been sitting on the hot plate in the kitchen for hours but with the addition of milk and “several tablespoons of sugar” she reckoned it would be drinkable. “Or I could make fresh,” she offered.

“We’ve not got time,” Lynley said. “We were hoping to have a word with you, Deb.”

Isabelle heard this with some surprise, as she’d concluded they’d come to Chelsea not to pay a call on Deborah St. James but rather on her husband. Deborah seemed as surprised as Isabelle, but she said, “In here, then. It’s much more hospitable.”

“In here” was a library of sorts, Isabelle reckoned as she and Lynley entered. It was situated where one would normally expect to find a sitting room, with its window overlooking the street. There were masses of books-on shelves, on tables, and upon the floor-along with comfortable chairs, a fireplace, and an ancient desk. There were newspapers as well, piles of them. It looked to Isabelle as if the St. Jameses subscribed to every broadsheet in London. As a woman who liked to travel light and live unencumbered, Isabelle found the place overwhelming. Deborah appeared to note her reaction because she said, “It’s Simon. He’s always been like this, Superintendent. You c’n ask Tommy. They were at school together, and Simon was the despair of their housemaster. He’s not improved in the least since. Please just shove something to the floor and sit. And it’s not usually this bad. Well, you know that, Tommy, don’t you?” She glanced at Lynley as she said this last. Then her gaze went back to Isabelle, and she smiled quickly. It was not in amusement or friendliness, Isabelle realised, but to cover something.

Isabelle found a spot that required the least amount of removal. She said, “Please. It’s Isabelle, not superintendent,” and again that quick smile in return from Deborah followed by her glance at Lynley. She was reading something directly off him, Isabelle reckoned. She also reckoned that Deborah St. James knew Thomas far better than her airiness suggested.

“Isabelle, then,” Deborah said. And then to Lynley, “He’s got to have it tidied by next week at any rate. He’s promised.”

“Your mother’s paying a visit, I take it?” Lynley said to St. James.

All of them laughed.

It came to Isabelle once again that the group of them spoke some form of shorthand. She wanted to say, “Yes, well, let’s get on with things,” but something held her back and she didn’t like what that something told her: either about herself or about her feelings. She didn’t have feelings in this matter.

Lynley brought them round to the purpose of their call. He asked Deborah St. James about the National Portrait Gallery show. Might he have another copy of the magazine with pictures taken on the opening night? Barbara Havers had the magazine off him, but he recalled Deborah had another. Deborah said of course and went to one of the stacks of periodicals where she dug down to unearth a magazine. She handed this over. Then she found another-a different one, this-and handed that to Lynley as well. She said, “Really, I didn’t buy them all, Tommy. Simon’s brothers and his sister…And then Dad was rather proud…” Her face had coloured.

Lynley said solemnly, “In your position I’d have done exactly the same.”

“She’s claiming her fifteen minutes,” St. James said to Lynley.

“You’re both impossible,” Deborah said, and to Isabelle, “They like to tease me.”

St. James asked, not unreasonably, what Lynley wanted with the magazine. What was happening? he wanted to know. This had to do with the case, hadn’t it?

Indeed, Lynley told him. They had an alibi to break, and he reckoned the photos of the gallery opening were going to be helpful in breaking it.

With the magazines in their possession, they were ready to set out on the next phase of their journey. Isabelle couldn’t see how a set of society photographs were going to be useful, and that was what she told Lynley once they were out on the pavement again. They got into the Healey Elliott before he replied. He handed the magazines to her. He leaned over when she found the photos of the National Portrait Gallery’s opening show, and he pointed to one of them. Frazer Chaplin, he said. The fact that he was at the opening was going to serve as the wedge they needed.

“For what?”

“To separate a lie from the truth.”

She turned to him. He was, of a sudden, disturbingly close. He seemed to know this because he looked as if he was about to say something else or, worse, do something that both of them would come to regret.

She said, “And exactly what truth would that be?”

He moved away. He turned on the ignition. He said, “When I thought about it, the date on his contract didn’t mean anything.”

“What date? What contract?”

“The contract with DragonFly Tonics, Frazer Chaplin’s agreement to use his Vespa to advertise the product. The contract called for a bright colour of paint; it designated the number of transfers required. His signature makes it appear as if he went out directly and had the work done.”

“He didn’t,” she said, understanding now. “Winston’s watching those films for a lime green Vespa with transfers. The house to house is asking about a lime green Vespa with transfers.”

“Something likely to be seen and remembered.”

“When he didn’t use a lime green Vespa with transfers to get up to Stoke Newington at all.”

He nodded. “I rang the paint shop in Shepherd’s Bush after I spoke to Barbara about meeting her snout. Frazer Chaplin went there indeed to have the Vespa painted and the transfers applied. But he did it the day after Jemima died.”

BELLA MCHAGGIS WAS wrestling a new worm-composting bin from her car when Scotland Yard arrived. Her visitors comprised the two officers she’d spoken to at the Met, on the day when she’d found poor Jemima’s handbag. They parked across the street from Bella’s house in an antique motorcar, which was how she noticed them at first, because of the car itself. The appearance of such a vehicle in Oxford Road-or any road, she reckoned-was going to draw attention. It spoke of indulgence, money by the bucketful, and petrol swallowed down willy-nilly. Where was conservation? she wondered. Where was good sense? She couldn’t remember their names, but she nodded a greeting as they came across the street towards her.

The man-he politely reintroduced himself as DI Lynley and his companion as Superintendent Ardery-took over the removal of the composting bin from Bella’s car. He had manners. There was no doubt about it. Somebody had brought him up correctly, which was more than one could say about most people under the age of forty these days.

Obviously, they hadn’t come to Putney to help her with her worm composting, so Bella asked them into the house. The inspector needed to put the bin into the back garden anyway, and since the only way to get there was through the house, once they were inside Bella did the proper thing and offered them a cup of tea.

They demurred, but they did say-this was the woman, Superintendent Ardery-that they’d like a word. Bella said of course, of course, and she added stoutly that she hoped they’d come to tell her an arrest had been made in this terrible affair of Jemima’s death.

They were close, DI Lynley said.

They’d come to talk to her about Frazer Chaplin, the superintendent added.

She said it kindly, and the kindness made Bella’s antennae go up. She said, “Frazer? What’s this about Frazer? Haven’t you done anything at all about that psychic?”

“Mrs. McHaggis.” It was Lynley now. Bella didn’t half like the way he sounded, which was unaccountably regretful. Less did she like his expression because it suggested to her an element of…Was it pity? She felt her spine stiffen.

“What?” she barked. She felt like showing them the door. She wondered how many more times she was going to have to direct these stupid people where they needed directing, which was on to Yolanda the Flipping Psychic.

Lynley again. He began an explanation of sorts. It had to do with Jemima’s mobile and calls made to it on the day of her death and calls made to it after her death and pinging towers, whatever they were. Frazer had rung her within the time frame of her death, it seemed, but he had not rung her afterwards, which, apparently, was suggesting to the coppers that Frazer thus had murdered the poor girl! If there was ever anything more nonsensical than that, Bella McHaggis did not know what it was.

Then the woman copper chimed in. Her explanation had to do with Frazer’s motorbike. She banged on about its colour, the transfers he had put upon it to raise a bit of needed money, and how transporting oneself on a scooter like Frazer’s made getting round town a rather simple thing.

Bella said, “Hang on just a minute,” because she wasn’t as thick as they seemed to think and she suddenly understood where this was heading. She pointed out that if it was scooters they were interested in, had they thought about the fact that the scooter they were yammering about was an Italian scooter and Italian scooters could be hired for the day and she had an Italian living right there in her house, one who’d been thick as you know what with Jemima before Jemima had ended things between them? And didn’t that damn well suggest that they ought to be looking at Paolo di Fazio if they were so intent upon pinning this crime on someone in Bella’s house?

“Mrs. McHaggis.” Lynley again. Those soulful eyes. Brown. Why did the man have hair so blond and yet eyes so brown to go with it?

Bella didn’t want to listen and she certainly didn’t want to hear. She reminded them that nothing of what they were saying mattered because Frazer hadn’t been anywhere close to Stoke Newington on the day of Jemima Hastings’ death. He’d been exactly where he always was between his work at the ice rink and his job at Duke’s Hotel. He’d been here in this house, showering and changing. She’d told them that, she’d bloody well told them, how many more times was she going to have to-

“Has he seduced you, Mrs. McHaggis?” It was the woman who asked the question and she asked it baldly. They were all sitting at the kitchen table, and there was a set of condiment containers on it and Bella wanted to hurl them at the woman or perhaps at the wall, but she didn’t do so. She said instead, “How dare you!” which, she realised, was an antique remark that betrayed her age more than anything else she might have said. Young people-people like these two officers-talked about this sort of thing all the time. They didn’t use the word seduce either, when they talked about it among themselves, and they thought nothing of what it meant to invade someone’s privacy in such a way-

“It’s what he does, Mrs. McHaggis,” the superintendent said. “We already have confirmation on this from-”

“This house has rules,” Bella told them stiffly. “And I’m not that sort of woman. To suggest…even to think…even to begin to think…” She was sputtering, and she knew it. She expected this made her seem a perfect fool in their eyes, an old bag who’d somehow fallen victim to a smooth-talking Lothario come to remove her from her money when she had no money in the first place so why would he have even bothered with the likes of her? She gathered her wits. She gathered what dignity she had left. She said, “I know my lodgers. I make a habit of knowing my lodgers because I’m sharing a bloody house with them, and I’m not very likely to want to share my house with a murderer, am I?” She didn’t wait for them to reply to this question, which was largely rhetorical anyway. She said, “So you listen to me because I’m not going to repeat myself: Frazer Chaplin’s been here in this house from the first week I started letting rooms, and I think I’d have sorted out that he was…whatever you seem to think he is…a bloody long time before now, don’t you?”

The two cops exchanged a long look. It was the man who picked up the conversation next. He said, “You’re right. That wasn’t a particularly helpful direction. I think the superintendent merely meant that Frazer’s got something of an appeal for women.”

“What if he does?” she demanded. “It’s hardly his fault.”

“I wouldn’t disagree.” Lynley went on to ask could they just go back over what she’d told them about Frazer’s whereabouts on the day that Jemima Hastings died?

She said she’d told them. She’d told them and told them and telling them again was not going to change things. Frazer had done what he always did-

Which turned out to be their point. If one day looked exactly like another in the life of Frazer Chaplin, was there a possibility that she was mistaken, that she was merely telling them what she thought he’d done, that he had perhaps done or said something later on to make her believe or assume he’d been home during that time when he was usually home, while the truth of the matter was that he wasn’t at home at all? Did she always see him when he came home to shower and change between his two jobs? Did she always hear him? Was she always, in fact, here at that time? Did she sometimes go to the shops? Putter round the back garden? Meet a friend? Go out for a coffee? Become caught up in a phone conversation or a television programme or a commitment to something that took her out of the house or even to another part of the house, resulting in the possibility that she didn’t actually know, couldn’t swear to, hadn’t seen, couldn’t confirm…

Bella felt dizzy. They were spinning her round and round with all their possibilities. The truth of the matter was that Frazer was a good boy and they couldn’t see this about him because they were cops and she knew about cops, she did. Didn’t they all? Didn’t they all know that what cops did best was find a supposed killer and then massage the facts to pin guilt upon him? And hadn’t the newspapers shown that to the public time after time with the Met putting supposed IRA blokes away for years on spurious evidence and God, God, Frazer was Irish, God he was Irish and didn’t that make him guilty in their eyes?

Then Lynley started talking about the National Portrait Gallery. He mentioned Jemima and Jemima’s picture and Bella understood from this that the topic had changed, moving from Frazer to society photos and, frankly, she was only too happy to look at them.

“…something too coincidental for our liking,” Lynley was saying. He mentioned someone by the name of Dickens and he connected that person to Hampshire for some reason and then he said something more about Frazer and then Jemima and then it didn’t matter at all because, “What’s she doing there?” Bella demanded. She went quite light-headed, and her hands got icy.

“Who?” Lynley asked.

“Her. Her,” and Bella used her icy finger to point at the picture that was bringing reality home. It was coming at her fast, an express train from the truth. Its whistle blew fool, fool, fool and the sound was deafening as the train screamed towards her.

“That’s the woman we’re talking about,” the superintendent told her, leaning over to have a look at the woman in the photograph. “That’s Gina Dickens, Mrs. McHaggis. We’re assuming that Frazer met her that night-”

“Gina Dickens?” Bella said. “You’re both mad. That’s Georgina Francis large as life. I tossed her out last year for breaking one of my rules.”

“Which rule?” the superintendent asked.

“The rule about…” Fool, fool, fool.

“Yes?” the detective inspector urged her.

“Frazer. Her,” Bella said. Fool, fool, fool, fool. “He said she was gone. He said he never saw her once she left. He said she was the one who wanted him…but he didn’t want it at all…Not with her.”

“Ah. I expect he lied to you,” Lynley told her. “May we talk again about what you remember of the day that Jemima Hastings died?”