Believing the Lie

30 OCTOBER

BELGRAVIA

LONDON

Forewarned being forearmed, Lynley had spent the next two days following his meeting with Hillier and Bernard Fairclough doing what research he was able to do on the man, his family, and his situation. He didn’t wish to walk into this covert investigation blind and as things turned out, there was a fair amount of information available on Fairclough, who had not been born Bernard Fairclough at all but rather Bernie Dexter of Barrow-in-Furness. His initial appearance on earth took place at home, in a two-up and two-down terrace house in Blake Street. This turned out to be a short distance from the railway tracks upon the figurative wrong side of which the Dexter domicile lay.

How he’d morphed from Bernie Dexter into Bernard Fairclough, first Baron of Ireleth, was the kind of tale with by which Sunday newspaper magazines justify their existences. As Bernie Dexter at fifteen years of age, he’d finished with what schooling he was ever to have and had gone to work for Fairclough Industries in a lowly position defined by the mindless job of packing chrome bathroom fixtures into shipping containers for eight hours each day. Although it was a job guaranteed to bleed soul, hope, and ambition from an ordinary worker, Bernie Dexter of Blake Street had been no ordinary worker. Cheeky from the first was how his wife described him in a post-knighthood interview, and she ought to have known for she had been born Valerie Fairclough, the great-granddaughter of the firm’s founder. She’d met the fifteen-year-old when she herself was eighteen and he was performing in the company’s Christmas panto. She was there for duty’s sake; he was there for fun’s sake. They encountered each other in a receiving line: the Fairclough owners doing a yearly bit of noblesse oblige and their employees— among whom was Bernie— moving along the line with an appropriate amount of forelock tugging, downcast eyes, and aye, sir, thank you, sir in best Dickensian manner as Christmas bonuses were handed out. This applied to all except Bernie Dexter, who told Valerie Fairclough straightaway and with a wink that he intended to marry her. “A real beauty, you are,” he said, “so I reckon I’ll set you up for life.” He declared this last with utter confidence, as if Valerie Fairclough were somehow not set up for life already.

He’d gone on to keep his word, however, for he had no qualms at all about approaching Valerie’s father, telling him, “I could make this firm into something better, you know, you give me half a chance.” And so he had done. Not all at once, of course, but over time, and during that time he also managed to impress Valerie with the persistence of his devotion to her. He also managed to impregnate the young woman when she was twenty-five, which resulted in an elopement. In short order, then, he took her family name as his own, improved the efficiency of Fairclough Industries, modernised its products, one of which was— of all things— an entire line of state-of-the-art lavatories, from which he amassed an impressive fortune.

His son Nicholas had always been the fly in the ointment of Bernie’s otherwise ideal life. Lynley found volumes of information on the bloke. For when Nicholas Fairclough went periodically bad, he did it in a very public manner. Public drunkenness, brawls, break-ins, football hooliganism, drunk driving, car theft, arson, indecent exposure while under the influence… The man had a past that read like that of the prodigal son on steroids. He’d played out his dissolution before God and everyone and in particular before the eyes of the local press in Cumbria, and the stories generated from his behaviour caught the eyes of the national tabloids always on the prowl for sensation to feature on their cover pages, especially when the sensation is generated by the scion of someone notable.

Early death was the usual outcome of a life led in the manner Nicholas Fairclough had led his, but in his case love supervened in the person of a young Argentine woman with the impressive name of Alatea Vasquez y del Torres. Fresh out of yet another rehab programme— this one in America, in the state of Utah— Nicholas had taken himself to a former mining town called Park City for what he apparently believed was a well-deserved spate of R & R, financed as usual by his desperate father. The old mining town served this purpose well, for it was nestled in the Wasatch Mountains and into its embrace every year from late November till April came avid skiers from round the world, along with scores of young men and women hired to service their needs.

Alatea Vasquez y del Torres had been among this latter group, and she and Nicholas Fairclough— according to the more breathless reports Lynley was able to scavenge— locked eyes over the till in one of the ski resort’s many eateries. The rest, as is generally said, was history. What ensued was a whirlwind courtship, a courthouse marriage effected in Salt Lake City, a final descent into a drug-fuelled pyre of dissolution on Nicholas’s part— odd way to celebrate matrimony, but there you have it, Lynley thought— from which the phoenix that was apparently the man’s amazing physical constitution arose. The arising of this phoenix, however, had little to do with Fairclough’s determination to get the better of the beast on his back and everything to do with Alatea Vasquez y del Torres’s decision to walk out on him barely two months into their marriage.

“I’d do anything for her,” Fairclough had later declared. “I’d die for her. To take the cure for her was child’s play.”

She’d returned to him, he’d stuck with sobriety, and everyone was happy. So it seemed from all the accounts that Lynley was able to glean in his twenty-four hours of research into the family. Thus if Nicholas Fairclough had been involved some way in his cousin’s death, at this point in his life it seemed wildly out of character, for it was hardly reasonable to assume that his wife would remain loyally at the side of a murderer.

Lynley went on to read about the rest of the family from whatever sources he could find. But information on them was vague, considering how dull they were in comparison to the son of Lord Fairclough. One sister divorced, one sister a spinster, one cousin— this would be the dead man— the master of the Fairclough money, that cousin’s wife a homemaker and their two children respectable… The Fairclough family were a disparate group but on the surface they all seemed clean.

At the end of his second day of exploration, Lynley stood at the window of his library in Eaton Terrace and looked out at the street, the gas fire burning brightly behind him in the late afternoon. He didn’t much like the situation he was in, but he wasn’t sure what he could do about it. In his line of work, the objective was to gather evidence in proof of someone’s guilt, not to gather evidence in proof of their innocence. If the coroner had declared the death accidental, there seemed little point delving further into the matter. For coroners knew what they were about, and they had evidence and testimony to bolster their findings. That the coroner had deemed the death of Ian Cresswell an accident— unfortunate and untimely as all accidents were, but still an accident— seemed a conclusion that ought to have satisfied everyone, no matter the grief attendant on the sudden loss of a man from the bosom of his family.

It was interesting, though, that Bernard Fairclough wasn’t satisfied, Lynley thought. Despite the inquest and its results, Fairclough’s doubts in the matter suggested that he might well know more than he’d mentioned at their meeting at Twins. And this suggested there was more to the death of Ian Cresswell than met the superficial eye.

Lynley wondered if someone had dropped a word to Fairclough about the local investigation into the drowning. He also wondered if Fairclough had himself had a word with someone inside of it.

Lynley turned from the window and gazed at his desk, spread out on it were notes, printouts from his computer, the laptop itself. There was, he reckoned, more than one avenue to unearth additional information regarding Ian Cresswell’s death— if, indeed, there was additional information— and he was on his way to the phone to make a call in the service of gathering more details when it rang. He thought about allowing the answer machine to take it— that reaction to the phone had become habitual over recent months— but he decided to pick up, and when he did, it was to hear Isabelle say, “What on earth are you doing, Tommy? Why haven’t you been at work?”

He’d thought Hillier would handle this detail. Obviously, he’d been wrong.

He said, “It’s a small matter Hillier asked me to deal with. I thought he’d tell you.”

“Hillier? What sort of matter?” Isabelle sounded surprised, as well she might. He and Hillier didn’t rub congenial elbows very often, and if push came to shove, Lynley was surely the last person at the Met to whom Hillier would turn.

“It’s confidential,” he told her. “I’m not at liberty— ”

“What’s going on?”

He didn’t reply at once. He was trying to think of a way to tell her what he was doing without actually telling her what he was doing, but she apparently took his silence for avoidance because she said tartly, “Ah. I see. Is this to do with what happened?”

“With what? What happened?”

“Please. Don’t. You know what I’m saying. With Bob. That night. The fact that we’ve not been together since— ”

“Lord, no. It’s nothing to do with that,” he cut in, although the truth of the matter, if he had to admit it, was that he wasn’t exactly sure.

“Then why’ve you been avoiding me?”

“I’m not aware that I have been avoiding you.”

There was a silence that greeted this. He found himself wondering where she was. The time of day suggested she might still be at the Yard, perhaps in her office, and he could see her there at her desk with her head lowered to speak into the phone and her smooth hair— rather the colour of amber— tucked behind one ear to show a conservative but fashionable earring. One shoe off, perhaps, and there she was leaning down to rub her calf as she thought what she would say to him next.

What she said surprised him. “Tommy, I told Bob yesterday. Not who exactly because, as I explained, I do know very well he’d use it against me at some time when he believes I’m out of order. But that. I told him that.”

“That what?”

“That I’m involved with someone. That you’d come to the door when he and Sandra were there, that I’d sent you off because I thought the boys weren’t ready to meet… after all, they’d come into London for the first time to see me and they needed to adjust to my being in London and to the flat itself and everything that goes along with it. To have a man there as well… I told him I felt it was too soon and I’d asked you to leave. But I wanted him to know that you do exist.”

“Ah. Isabelle.” Lynley knew what it had cost her: telling her former husband about him when the man held such power over her life and now telling him that she’d done so when she was a proud woman and God how he knew that about her.

“I’m missing you, Tommy. I don’t want us to be at odds.”

“We’re not at odds.”

“Are we not?”

“We are not.”

Another pause. Perhaps she was at home after all, he thought, sitting on the edge of the bed in that claustrophobic bedroom of hers with its single window virtually sealed against anyone’s attempt to open it fully and its bed too small to accommodate both of them comfortably for an entire night. Which could or could not have been the point of it, he realised. And what would that mean to him if she admitted to that?

“Things are complicated,” he said. “They always are, aren’t they?”

“After a certain age, yes. There’s so much bloody baggage.” And then after an indrawn breath, “I want you tonight, Tommy. Will you come to me?” And most remarkably, “Have you the time?”

He wanted to say that it wasn’t at all a matter of time. It was a matter of how he felt and who he wanted to be. But this, too, was complicated. So he said, “I can’t say exactly.”

“Because of the Hillier thing. I was hoping you’d notice I hadn’t insisted on knowing what’s going on. And I won’t. You’ve my promise on it. Even afterwards, I won’t, and you know what that means because I do know how you are afterwards. Sometimes I think I could get anything out of you afterwards, you know.”

“And why don’t you?”

“Well, it doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? Besides, I like to think I’m not that sort of woman. I don’t scheme. Well, not much at least.”

“Are you scheming now?”

“Only to have you and it can’t be a scheme if I’m admitting to it, can it?”

He smiled at that. He felt a softening towards her and he recognised this as the desire he continued to feel for her, despite the fact that the timing of their relationship was wretched and they were ill matched anyway and always would be. He wanted her. Still.

“It might be late when I arrive,” he said.

“That hardly matters. Will you come to me, Tommy?”

“I will,” he told her.

CHELSEA

LONDON

He had arrangements to make first, however. While he could have made them over the phone, he decided that making them in person would allow him to gauge whether what he was asking was an inconvenience to the people he needed. For they would never tell him so.

The fact that this was not to be a formal police investigation hobbled him considerably. It also called for a creative approach to appease the demands for secrecy. He could have insisted that Hillier allow him the services of another officer, but the only officers he cared to work with were unlikely candidates for a surreptitious crawl round Cumbria. At six feet four inches tall and with skin the colour of very strong tea, DS Winston Nkata would hardly fade into the autumn scenery of the Lake District. And as for DS Barbara Havers— who under other circumstances would have been Lynley’s first choice, despite her score of maddening personal habits— the idea of Barbara chain-smoking her belligerent way round Cumbria under the pretext that she was, perhaps, a walker out for a bracing week on the fells… It was too ludicrous to contemplate. She was a brilliant cop, but discretion was not her strong suit. Had Helen been alive, she would have been perfect for the job. She would have loved it, as well. Tommy darling, we’ll be incognito! Lord, how delicious. I’ve spent my life absolutely longing to do a Tuppence. But Helen was not alive, was not alive. The very thought of her sent him on his way as rapidly as he could manage.

He drove to Chelsea, choosing the route that took him down the King’s Road. It was the most direct way to get to Cheyne Row but not the quickest as the narrow road led him through the area’s trendy shopping district with its fashion boutiques, shoe shops, antiques markets, pubs, and restaurants. There were crowds on the pavements as always, and seeing them— especially seeing their youth— made him melancholy and filled him with what felt like regret. He couldn’t have said what he regretted, though. He didn’t much want to try to find out.

He parked in Lawrence Street, near Lordship Place. He walked back the way he’d come but rather than going on to Cheyne Row, he went in through the garden gate of the tall brick house that stood on the corner.

The garden was showing its autumn colours and readying itself for the winter. The lawn was strewn with leaves needing gathering while the herbaceous borders offered plants whose flowers were long gone now and whose stalks leaned perilously, as if weighted towards the ground by an unseen hand. The wicker furniture wore canvas shrouds. Moss grew between the bricks. Lynley followed a path of these, which led to the house. There, steps descended to the basement kitchen. A light was on there against the coming evening. He could see a shape moving behind the window, itself steamed from the heat inside.

He knocked sharply twice and when the usual barking of the dog commenced, he opened the door and said, “It’s me, Joseph. I’ve come in the back way.”

“Tommy?” It was a woman’s voice, however, not the voice Lynley had been expecting but rather the man’s daughter. “Are you playing at Victorian tradesman?”

She came round the corner from the kitchen in the wake of the dog, a long-haired dachshund with the unlikely name of Peach. Peach barked, jumped, and did her usual by way of greeting him. She was as undisciplined as always, living proof of what Deborah St. James often declared: that she required a dog she could pick up as she was utterly hopeless at training anything.

“Hullo, you,” Deborah said to Lynley. “What a very nice surprise.” She scooted the dog to one side and hugged him. She brushed a kiss against his cheek. “You’re staying for dinner,” she announced. “For many reasons but most of all because I’m cooking it.”

“Good Lord. Where’s your father?”

“Southampton. Anniversary. He didn’t want me to go this year. I expect it’s because it’s the twentieth.”

“Ah.” He knew Deborah wouldn’t say more, not because it pained her to speak of her mother’s death, which, after all, had occurred when Deborah was seven years old, but because of him and the fact of what death might remind him of.

“Anyway,” she said, “he’ll be back tomorrow. But meanwhile that leaves poor Simon in my culinary clutches. Are you wanting him, by the way? He’s only upstairs.”

“I’m wanting you both. What’re you cooking, then?”

“Shepherd’s pie. The mash is instant. More than that I wasn’t willing to attempt and besides, potatoes are potatoes, aren’t they? I’m doing broccoli for the veg, Mediterranean style. Swimming in olive oil and garlic. And a side salad as well, also swimming in olive oil and garlic. You’ll stay? You must. If it’s terrible, you can lie and tell me everything tastes like ambrosia. I’ll know you’re lying, of course. I always know when you lie, by the way. But it won’t matter because if you say everything’s wonderful, Simon’ll be forced to do likewise. Oh yes, and there’s pudding as well.”

“That’ll be the deciding factor.”

“Ah. You see? I know you’re lying, but I’ll play along. It’s actually a French tart.”

“Leaping out of a cake or something?”

She laughed. “Very amusing, Lord Asherton. Are you staying or not? It’s apple and pear, by the way.”

“How can I refuse?” Lynley glanced towards the stairs that led up to the rest of the house. “Is he…?”

“In the study. Go up. I’ll join you once I check to see how things look in the oven.”

He left her. Upstairs, he walked down the corridor. He heard the sound of Simon St. James’s voice coming from his study at the front of the house. This took the place of a normal sitting room, and it was crammed floor to ceiling with books on three walls with a fourth dedicated to Deborah’s photographs. When Lynley entered the room, his friend was seated at his desk, and the fact that he was driving his hand into his hair with his head bent to the task as he spoke on the phone told Lynley that difficulty was afoot in the other man’s life.

St. James was saying, “I thought so as well, David. I still think so. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the answer we’re looking for… Yes, yes. I completely understand… I’ll speak to her again… How much time exactly?… When would she want to see us?… Yes, I see.” He glanced up then, saw Lynley, and nodded a hello. He said, “All right, then. Best to Mother and your family,” before ringing off. His final remark told Lynley that he’d been speaking to his eldest brother, David.

St. James rose awkwardly, shoving away from his desk to get purchase on its edge so that he could rise more easily, despite the disability of a leg that hadn’t functioned without a brace for years. He greeted Lynley and moved to the drinks trolley beneath the window. “Whisky’s the answer,” he said to Lynley. “Taller than usual and straight. What about you?”

“Pour away,” Lynley said to him. “Trouble?”

“My brother David’s come across a girl in Southampton who wants to put up her baby for adoption, a private arrangement made through a solicitor.”

“That’s excellent news, Simon,” Lynley said. “You must be delighted after all this time.”

“Under normal circumstances. It’s like a gift we weren’t expecting.” He uncapped a bottle of Lagavulin and poured a good three fingers for each of them. Lynley raised an eyebrow as St. James handed one over to him. “We deserve it,” St. James said. “At least I do, and I expect you do as well.” He gestured towards the leather armchairs in front of the fireplace. They were worn and cracked, suitable for sinking into and getting properly sloshed.

“What are the circumstances then?” Lynley asked.

St. James glanced at the doorway, suggesting the conversation was meant to take place without Deborah’s knowledge. “The mother wants an open adoption. Not only herself involved in the baby’s life but the father as well. She’s sixteen. He’s fifteen.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Deborah’s reaction was that she doesn’t want to share her child.”

“Not entirely unreasonable, is it?”

St. James continued. “And decidedly, she doesn’t want to share her child with two teenagers. She says it would be like adopting three children instead of one and besides that, there are both extended families to consider and how they’d fit in as well.” He took a gulp of the whiskey.

“Actually,” Lynley said, “I rather see her point.”

“As do I. The situation’s far from ideal. On the other hand, it seems… Well, she’s had the rest of the tests, Tommy. It’s definite. It’s highly unlikely she’d ever be able to carry a child to term.”

Lynley knew this. He’d known for over a year, and it seemed that Deborah had finally told her husband the truth she’d carried alone— aside from his own knowledge of it— for the past twelve months.

Lynley said nothing. Both of them meditated on their glasses of Lagavulin. From the corridor, the clicking of dog nails against wood indicated that Peach was coming to them and if Peach was coming, she was no doubt accompanied by her mistress. Lynley said quietly, “Deborah’s asked me to stay to dinner, but I can make an excuse if it’s awkward for you tonight.”

St. James replied with, “God no. I’d prefer it. You know me. Anything to avoid a difficult conversation with the woman I love.”

“I’ve brought us some pre-dinner goodies,” Deborah said as she entered the room. “Cheese straws. Peach has already had one, so I can tell you they’re delicious, at least to a dog. Don’t get up, Simon. I’ll fetch my own sherry.” She put a plate of the cheese straws on an ottoman between the two chairs, shooed the dachshund away from them, and went to the drinks trolley. She said to her husband, “Tommy’s told me he wants to see both of us. I reckon it’s either business or an announcement or both and if it has to do with the Healey Elliott, I vote that we buy it off him straightaway, Simon.”

“Clear your mind of that proposition,” Lynley said. “I’ll be buried in that car.”

“Damn.” St. James smiled.

“I did try,” his wife told him. She came to perch on the arm of his chair and said to Lynley, “What, then, Tommy?”

He thought about how to approach the matter. He settled on saying, “I’m wondering how you two might feel about an autumn’s jaunt up to the Lakes.”

CHELSEA

LONDON

She always brushed the day’s tangles out of her hair before she came to bed. Sometimes he did it for her, and sometimes he watched. Her hair was long and thick and curly and red, ungovernable at most times, which was why he loved it. Tonight he watched from the bed, where he rested against the pillows. She stood across from him at the chest of drawers. There was a mirror above this and she could see him watching her in its reflection.

“Are you sure you can take the time away from work, Simon?”

“It’s only a few days. Question is, can you and how do you feel about doing it?”

“Dissembling not being my stock in trade, you mean?” She put down her brush and crossed to the bed. She wore a thin cotton nightgown, but she shed this, as usual, before joining him. He liked that she preferred to sleep naked. He liked turning to find her, warm and soft, while he was dreaming. “It’s the sort of thing Helen would have loved,” she noted. “I wonder Tommy’s not thought of that.”

“Perhaps he has.”

“Hmm. Yes. Well, I’m ready to help him, for whatever good I can do. I’ll want to track down that sidebar about Nicholas Fairclough that Tommy mentioned. I c’n use that as my jumping-off point, I daresay. ‘Having read about you and your project in that magazine article on your parents’ topiary garden…’ Et cetera, et cetera. And at least there’s a reason that already exists for someone to want a documentary film made. If there weren’t, I’d be completely out of my depth. What about you?”

“The inquest material won’t present a problem. Nor will the forensic data. As to the rest, I’m not sure. It’s an odd situation any way you look at it.” And speaking of odd situations, he thought, there was another that remained to be dealt with. He said, “David phoned. I was talking to him when Tommy arrived.”

He could actually feel the change in her. Her breathing altered, one slow intake followed by one very long pause. He said, “The girl would like to meet us, Deborah. Her parents and the boy would be there as well. She prefers it that way, and the solicitor indicated— ”

“I can’t,” Deborah said. “I’ve thought about it, Simon. I’ve looked at it every possible way. Truly, I have. You must believe me. But no matter how I try to twist it, I do think that the bad outweighs the good.”

“It’s irregular, but other people manage it.”

“They may do, but I’m not other people. We’d be asked to share a baby with its birth mother, its birth father, its natural grandparents, and God knows who else, and I know this is trendy and modern, but I don’t want it. I can’t make myself want it.”

“They might well lose interest in the child,” St. James pointed out. “They’re very young.”

Deborah looked at him. She’d been sitting up in bed— not at rest against the pillow— and she swung round and said incredulously, “Lose interest? This is a child, not a puppy. They’re not going to lose interest. Would you?”

“No, but I’m not a fifteen-year-old boy. And anyway, there would be arrangements. They’d be drawn up by the solicitor.”

“No,” she said. “Please don’t ask me again. I just can’t.”

He let a moment pass. She’d turned away. Her hair tumbled down her back nearly to her waist, and he touched a lock of it, saw how it curled naturally round his fingers. He said, “Will you just think about it a bit longer before you decide? As I said, she’d like to meet us. We could do that much if nothing else. You might well like her, her family, the boy. You know, the fact that she wants to keep contact with the child… That’s not a bad thing, Deborah.”

“How is it good?” she asked, still turned from him.

“It indicates a sense of responsibility. She doesn’t just want to walk away and get on with her life as if nothing ever happened to change it. In a way she wants to provide for the child, be there to answer questions should questions come up.”

“We could answer questions. You know that very well. And why on earth— if she wants to be involved in the child’s life— would she choose a couple from London to be the parents anyway, instead of a couple from Southampton? That doesn’t make sense. She’s from Southampton, isn’t she?”

“She is.”

“So you see…”

He reckoned she couldn’t bear another disappointment and he didn’t blame her. But if they didn’t continue to push forward, if they didn’t follow whatever avenue opened up before them, an opportunity could easily be missed and if they wanted a child, if they truly wanted a child …

That was, of course, the real question. Asking it, however, constituted a mine field, and he’d been married to Deborah long enough to know that some fields were too dangerous to venture into. Still, he said, “Have you another solution, then? Another possibility?”

She didn’t reply at once. He had the sense, though, that she did have something else in mind, something she was reluctant to mention. He repeated the question. She quickly responded with, “Surrogacy.”

He said, “Good God, Deborah, that route’s fraught with— ”

“Not a donor mother, Simon, but a host mother. Our embryo, our baby, and someone willing to carry it. It wouldn’t be hers. She’d have no attachment. Or at least she’d have no right to an attachment.”

His spirits plummeted. He wondered how something that for other people was so damnably natural could have, for them, turned into such a mire of appointments, doctors, specialists, procedures, solicitors, questions, answers, and more questions. And this, now? Months and months would pass while a surrogate was sought and interviewed and checked out in every possible way while Deborah took drugs that would do God only knew what to her system in order to harvest (God, what a word) eggs while he disappeared into a lavatory stall with container in hand to make the required, passionless, and loveless deposit and all of this to result— perhaps, if they were lucky, if nothing went wrong— in a child that was biologically their own. It seemed wildly complicated, inhumanly mechanised, and only partially guaranteed of success.

He blew out a breath. He said, “Deborah,” and he knew that she recognised in his tone a form of hesitation that she would not want to hear. That it had to do with his desire to protect her would not occur to Deborah. And that was just as well, he thought. For she hated him to protect her from life, even as she felt life’s blows more than he thought either necessary or good.

She said in a low voice, “I know what you’re thinking. And this puts us at an impasse, doesn’t it?”

“We just see things differently. We’re coming at it from different directions. One of us sees an opportunity where the other sees an insurmountable difficulty.”

She thought about this. She said slowly, “How odd. It seems there’s nothing to be done, then.”

She lay next to him, then, but her back was to him. He switched out the light and put his hand on her hip. She didn’t respond.

WANDSWORTH

LONDON

It was nearly midnight when Lynley arrived. Regardless of his promise to her, he knew he should have gone home instead and slept however he was meant to sleep on this particular night, which would be fitfully, no doubt. But instead he made his way to Isabelle’s, and he let himself in with his key.

She met him at the door. He’d expected she would have long gone to bed, and it did seem she’d been there at first. But a light was on next to the sofa in the sitting area of her flat, and he saw a magazine spread out there, evidently discarded when she’d heard his key in the lock. She’d left her dressing gown on the sofa as well, and as she wore nothing beneath, she came to him nude and when he closed the door behind him, she stepped into his arms and lifted her mouth to his.

She tasted of lemons. For a moment he allowed himself to wonder if the taste of her indicated that she was trying to hide the fact that she’d been drinking again. But then he didn’t care as his hands travelled the distance from her hips to her waist to her breasts.

She began to undress him. She murmured, “This is very bad, you know.”

He whispered, “What is?”

“That I’ve thought of little else all day.” His jacket fell to the floor and she worked the buttons of his shirt. He bent to her neck, her breasts.

“That,” he said, “is very bad in your line of work.”

“In yours as well.”

“Ah, but I’ve more discipline.”

“Have you indeed?”

“I have.”

“And if I touch you here, like this?” She did so. He smiled. “What happens to your discipline then?”

“The same thing, I daresay, that happens to yours if I kiss you here, if I decide on more, if I use my tongue… rather like this.”

She drew in a sharp breath. She chuckled. “You’re an evil man, Inspector. But I’m fully able to match evil for evil. Rather, as you say, like this.” She lowered his trousers. She made him as naked as she was herself. She used her nakedness to force action from him.

She was, he found, as slick and as ready as he was. He said, “The bedroom?”

She said, “Not tonight, Tommy.”

“Here, then?”

“Oh yes. Right here.”