For the Sake of Elena

14

Lynley saw Sergeant Havers’ old Mini trundling its way down Trinity Lane at seven-forty the next morning. He had just left his room in Ivy Court and was walking to his car, which he’d parked in a small space on Trinity Passage, when the familiar rust-eaten sardine-tin-on-wheels that served as Havers’ transportation made the turn at the far end of Gonville and Caius College, sending out a noxious cloud of exhaust fumes into the cold air as Havers changed gear round the curve. Seeing him, she tooted the horn once. He lifted a hand in acknowledgement and waited for her to pull to a stop. When she did so, he opened the passenger door without word or ceremony and folded his lengthy frame into the confines of the cramped front seat. Its upholstery was shiny with age and wear. A broken spring bulged against the material.

The Mini’s heater was roaring with ineffectual enthusiasm against the morning cold, creating a palpable pool of warmth that rose from the floor to the level of his kneecaps. From his waist up, however, the air was ice tinctured with the odour of the cigarette smoke which had long ago altered the vinyl ceiling from beige to grey. Havers, he saw, was doing her best to contribute to the vinyl’s continuing metamorphosis. As he banged the car door shut, she stubbed one cigarette out in the ashtray and immediately lit another.

“Breakfast?” he asked mildly.

“Nicotine on toast.” She inhaled with pleasure and brushed some fallen ash off the left leg of her worsted trousers. “So. What’s up?”

He didn’t answer at once. Rather, he cracked the window a few inches to let in a bit of fresh air and turned back to observe her frankly earnest gaze. Her expression was resolutely cheerful, her manner of dress appropriately haphazard. Every necessary sign was there, painting the picture of all’s-right-with-theworld. But her hands gripped the steering wheel far too tightly and a tension round her mouth belied her casual tone.

“What happened at home?” he asked her.

She drew in on her cigarette again and gave its glowing tip her attention. “Nothing much. Mum had a spell. Mrs. Gustafson panicked. It was no big deal.”

“Havers-”

“Look, Inspector, you could reassign me and ask Nkata to come up and assist. I’d understand. I know it’s rotten with me coming and going and heading back to London so early in the evening. Webberly won’t like it much if you sack me on this, but if I make an appointment and go at it with him privately, he ought to understand.”

“I can cope, Sergeant. I don’t need Nkata.”

“But you’ve got to have someone. You can’t do it all alone. This flaming job requires assistance and you’ve every right to ask for it.”

“Barbara, this isn’t about the job.”

She stared out into the street. At the gate-house of St. Stephen’s College, the porter came out to help a middle-aged woman in a heavy coat and scarf who had climbed off a bicycle and was attempting to manoeuvre it into position among dozens of other bikes against the wall. She gave the handlebars over to him and watched, chatting with great animation, as he shoved the bike among the others and locked it up. They went inside the gatehouse together.

Lynley said, “Barbara.”

Havers stirred. “I’m dealing with it, sir. At least, I’m trying to. Let’s just get going, shall we?”

He sighed, reached for the seat belt, and brought it over his shoulder. “Head for the Fulbourn Road,” he said. “I want to drop in on Lennart Thorsson.”

She nodded, reversed the car into Trinity Passage, and turned them in the direction from which she’d come only moments before. All round them the city was coming to life. The occasional early-rising student pedalled off to begin a day of study, as bedders arrived to see to the rooms. On Trinity Street two sweepers unloaded brooms and dustpans from a yellow trolley while three workmen climbed a scaffolding nearby. The merchants in Market Hill were setting up their stalls for the day’s business, laying out fruit and vegetables, setting up bolts of bright material, folding T-shirts, blue jeans, and Indian dresses, gathering autumn flowers into dazzling bouquets. Buses and taxis vied for position on Sidney Street, and as Lynley and Havers headed out of town, they passed the morning commuters coming in from Ramsey Town and Cherry Hinton, no doubt ready to take their places behind desks, in the libraries, in the gardens, and before the kitchen stoves of the University’s twenty-eight colleges.

Havers didn’t speak until they were rumbling their way-with an extensive emission of exhaust and accompanying sputters and belches from the engine-past Parker’s Piece, across whose extensive green the police station squatted like an impassive guardian. Its double row of windows, reflecting the cloudless sky, turned it to a draughtboard of blue and grey.

“You got my message, then,” Havers said. “About Thorsson. You didn’t see him last night?”

“He was nowhere to be found.”

“Does he know we’re on our way?”

“No.”

She crushed her cigarette out, did not light another. “What do you think?”

“Essentially that he’s too good to be true.”

“Because we’ve got black fibres on the body? Because we’ve caught him with motive and opportunity?”

“He does seem to have both. And once we have an idea of what was used to bludgeon her, we may find he had the means as well.” He reminded her of the wine bottle which Sarah Gordon had said was left at the scene and told her of the impression of that same bottle which he had seen in the damp earth on the island. He offered his theory of how the bottle might have been used and left behind among the rest of the rubbish.

“But still you don’t like Thorsson as our killer. I can see it on your face.”

“It seems too clean a case, Havers. I’ve got to admit I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Why?”

“Because murder in general-and this one in particular-is a dirty business.”

She slowed for a traffic light and watched as a back-gnarled woman wearing a long black coat slowly negotiated her way across the street. Her eyes were on her feet. She pulled a collapsible luggage trolley behind her. Nothing was in it.

When the light changed, Havers spoke again. “I think Thorsson’s dirty as a dog, Inspector. It surprises me that you can’t see it as well. Or is seducing school girls not dirty to another man as long as the girls don’t complain?”

He was unruffled by the indirect challenge to argue. “These aren’t school girls, Havers. We can call them that for want of a better word. But that’s not what they are.”

“All right. Young women, then, in subordinate positions. Does that make it right?”

“No. Of course not. But we’ve no direct proof of seduction yet.”

“She was pregnant, for God’s sake. Someone seduced her.”

“Or she seduced someone. Or they seduced each other.”

“Or-as you said yourself yesterday-she was raped.”

“Perhaps. But I’m having second thoughts about that.”

“Why?” Havers’ tone was belligerent, a suggestion that Lynley’s response implied impossibility. “Or are you of the typical male opinion that she would have lain back and enjoyed the experience?”

He glanced in her direction. “I think you know better than that.”

“Then what’s your point?”

“She reported Thorsson for sexual harassment. If she was willing to do that and face the possibility of a potentially embarrassing investigation into her own behaviour, I can’t see that she’d let a rape go unmentioned.”

“What if it was date rape, Inspector? Some bloke she was seeing but didn’t expect or want to get involved with?”

“Then you’ve just put Thorsson out of the picture, haven’t you?”

“You do think he’s innocent.” Her fist hit the steering wheel. “You’re looking for a way to exonerate him, aren’t you? You’re trying to pin this on someone else. Who?” She flashed a knowing look at him a second after she asked the question. “Oh no! You can’t be thinking-”

“I’m not thinking anything. I’m looking for the truth.”

She swung the car to the left in the direction of Cherry Hinton, passing a common that was rich with yellow-leaved horse chestnuts wearing a new winter’s growth of moss on their trunks. Beneath them, two women pushed prams side by side, their heads tilted together, their eager conversation sending out rapid puffs of steam in the air.

It was just after eight when they drove into Thorsson’s housing estate. In the narrow drive of his house on Ashwood Court, a fully restored TR-6 was sitting, its bulbous green wings gleaming in the morning light. They pulled up behind it, so close that the front of the Mini nosed into its boot like a careful insult.

“Nice bit, that,” Havers said as she looked it over. “Just the sort of thing one expects one’s local Marxist to drive.”

Lynley got out and went to inspect the car. Aside from the windscreen, it was beaded with moisture. He pressed his hand to the smooth surface of the bonnet. He could feel the remnants of the engine’s warmth. “Another morning arrival,” he said.

“Does that make him innocent?”

“It certainly makes him something.”

They went to the door where Lynley rang the bell as his sergeant dug through her shoulder bag and brought forth her notebook. When there was no immediate answer and no apparent movement in the house, he rang the bell a second time. A distant shout drifted down to them, a man’s voice calling out the words, “A moment.” More than one moment passed as they stood waiting on the sliver of concrete that served as the front step, watching two sets of neighbours hurry off to work and a third usher two children into an Escort that idled in the drive. Then behind the five opaque shafts of glass in the door, a shadow moved as someone approached.

The deadbolt turned. Thorsson stood in the entry. He wore a black velour dressing gown which he was in the process of belting. His hair was damp. It hung loose round his shoulders. He had nothing on his feet.

“Mr. Thorsson,” Lynley said by way of greeting.

Thorsson sighed, looked from Lynley to Havers. “Christ,” he said. “Wonderful. We’ve got snuten again.” Roughly, he ran a hand back through his hair. It fell onto his forehead in a boyish tangle. “What is it with you two? What do you want?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he turned from the door and walked down a short corridor towards the rear of the house where a door opened into what appeared to be the kitchen. They followed and found him pouring himself a mug of coffee from an impressive-looking coffee maker that sat on the work top. He began to drink, making a great deal of noise, first blowing then slurping. His moustache quickly became beaded with the liquid.

“I’d offer you some, but I require the whole pot to wake up in the morning.” That said, he added more to his cup.

Lynley and Havers took places at a glass and chrome table sitting in front of French doors. These led into a small rear garden where flagstones formed a terrace which held a set of outdoor furniture. One of the pieces was a wide chaise longue. A rumpled blanket lay across it, limp with the damp.

Lynley looked thoughtfully from the chaise to Thorsson. The other man glanced out the kitchen window in the direction of the furniture. Then he looked back to Lynley, his face a perfect blank.

“We seem to have taken you from your morning bath,” Lynley said.

Thorsson swallowed some coffee. He was wearing a flat gold chain round his neck. It glittered like snakeskin against his chest.

“Elena Weaver was pregnant,” Lynley said.

Thorsson leaned against the work top, holding his coffee mug balanced against his arm.

He looked uninterested, overcome with ennui. “And to think I had no opportunity to join her in celebrating the future blessed event.”

“Was a celebration in order?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“I thought you might.”

“Why?”

“You were with her Thursday night.”

“I wasn’t with her, Inspector. I went to see her. There’s a difference. Perhaps too subtle for you to grasp, but a difference all the same.”

“Of course. But she’d got the results of the pregnancy test on Wednesday. Did she ask to see you? Or did you take it upon yourself to see her?”

“I went to see her. She didn’t know I was coming.”

“Ah.”

Thorsson’s fingers tightened their grip on the mug. “I see. Of course. I was the anxious father-to-be waiting to hear the results. Did the rabbit live, precious, or should we start stockpiling disposable nappies? Is that how you have it?”

“No. Not exactly.”

Havers flipped over a page in her notebook. She said, “You’d want to know about the test results, I imagine, if you were the father. All things considered.”

“What things considered?”

“The harassment charges. A pregnancy is rather convincing evidence, wouldn’t you say?”

Thorsson barked a laugh. “What am I supposed to have done, dear Sergeant? Rape her? Tear off her knickers? Ply her with drugs and have at her afterwards?”

“Perhaps,” Havers said. “But seduction seems so much more in your line.”

“No doubt you could fill volumes with your knowledge of that subject.”

Lynley said, “Have you ever had a problem with a female student before?”

“What do you mean problem? What kind of problem?”

“An Elena Weaver kind of problem. Have you ever been charged with harassment before?”

“Of course not. Never. Ask at the college if you don’t believe me.”

“I’ve spoken to Dr. Cuff. He confi rms what you say.”

“But his word’s not good enough for you, it seems. You’d prefer to believe the stories cooked up by a little deaf tart who would have spread her legs-or opened her mouth-for any idiot willing to give her a try.”

“A little deaf tart, Mr. Thorsson,” Lynley said. “Curious choice of words. Are you suggesting that Elena had a reputation for promiscuity?”

Thorsson went back to his coffee, poured another mugful, took his time about drinking it. “Things get around,” he settled on saying. “The college is small. There’s always gossip.”

“So if she was a”-Havers made a production of squinting down at her notes-“‘a little deaf tart,’ why not poke her yourself along with all the other blokes? What more reasonable conclusion for you to reach than to assume she’d-what was it?-” Again, the deliberately concentrated look at her notes. “Ah yes, here it is…spread her legs or open her mouth for you? After all, she should have been willing. A man like you could no doubt offer her a real cut above her usual bit of spare.”

Thorsson’s face washed scarlet. It did battle with the elegant red-gold of his hair. But he said only and with perfect ease, “I am sorry, Sergeant. I can’t oblige you, no matter how much you’d like the encounter. I prefer women who weigh under ten stone.”

Havers smiled with neither pleasure nor amusement, but rather with the knowledge of having trapped her quarry. “Like Elena Weaver?”

“Djävla skit! Give it up!”

Lynley said, “Where were you Monday morning, Mr. Thorsson?”

“At the English Faculty.

“I mean early Monday morning. Between six and half past.”

“In bed.”

“Here?”

“Where else would I be?”

“I thought you might tell us. One of your neighbours saw you arriving home just before seven.”

“Then one of my neighbours is mistaken. Who was it, anyway? That cow next door?”

“Someone who saw you drive up, get out of the car, and go into your house. All of it done in a bit of a hurry. Can you elucidate on that? I’m sure you agree that your Triumph would be a difficult car to mistake.”

“Not in this instance. I was here, Inspector.”

“And this morning?”

“This…? I was here.”

“The car’s engine was still warm when we arrived.”

“And that makes me a killer? Is that how you read it?”

“I don’t read it in any particular fashion. I just want to know where you were.”

“Here. I told you. I can’t help what a neighbour saw. But it wasn’t me.”

“I see.” Lynley looked across the table at Havers. He felt wearied by and bored with the necessity for endless sparring with the Swede. He felt the need for truth. And it appeared there would only be one way to get it. He said, “Sergeant, if you will.”

Havers was only too delighted to do the honours. With great ceremony, she fl ipped her notebook open to the inside of the cover where she kept a copy of the official caution. Lynley had heard her give it hundreds of times, so he was well aware that she knew the words by heart. Her use of the notebook added drama to the occasion, and given his own growing antipathy for Lennart Thorsson, he didn’t deny her the pleasure of milking the moment for personal satisfaction.

“Now,” Lynley said when Havers had fi nished. “Where were you Sunday night, Mr. Thorsson? Where were you in the early hours of Monday morning?”

“I demand a solicitor.”

Lynley gestured towards the phone which hung on the wall. “Please,” he said. “We’ve plenty of time.”

“I can’t get one at this hour of the morning and you know it.”

“Fine. We can wait.”

Thorsson shook his head in an eloquent-if clearly apocryphal-display of disgust. “All right,” he said. “I was heading to St. Stephen’s early Monday morning. One of the undergraduates wanted to meet with me. I’d forgotten her paper and was in a rush to come back and get it and get to the meeting on time. Is that what you’re so determined to know?”

“Her paper. I see. And this morning?”

“Nothing this morning.”

“Then how do you explain the condition of the Triumph? Aside from being warm, it’s covered with damp. Where was it parked last night?”

“Here.”

“And you want us to believe that you went out this morning, wiped off only the windscreen for purposes unknown, and returned to the house to have a bath?”

“I don’t much care what either of you-”

“And that perhaps you idled the engine for a bit to get the car warmed up although you aren’t apparently going anywhere at the moment?”

“I’ve already said-”

“You’ve already said a great deal, Mr. Thorsson. And none of it meshes with anything else.”

“If you think I murdered that fucking little cunt-”

Lynley got to his feet. “I’d like to have a look at your clothes.”

Thorsson shoved his coffee mug the length of the work top. It crashed into the sink. “You need a warrant for that. You damn well know it.”

“If you’re an innocent man, you have nothing to fear, do you, Mr. Thorsson? Just produce the undergraduate you met with on Monday morning, and hand over everything black that you own. We’ve found black fibres on the body, by the way, but as they’re a mixture of polyester, rayon, and cotton, we should be able to eliminate one or two of your garments right off the top. That ought to cover it.”

“That covers skit. If you want black fi bres, give a thought to trying the academic gowns. Oh, but you won’t go sniffing in that direction, will you? Because everyone in the fucking University owns one.”

“An interesting point. Is the bedroom this way?”

Lynley headed back in the direction of the front door. In a sitting room at the front of the house, he found the stairway and began to climb. Thorsson followed him with Havers quickly at his heels.

“You bastard! You can’t-”

“This is your bedroom?” Lynley said at the doorway closest to the top of the stairs. He walked into the room and opened the clothes cupboard built into one of the walls. “Let’s see what we have. Sergeant, a sack.”

Havers tossed him a plastic rubbish sack as he began his examination of the clothes.

“I’ll have your job for this!”

Lynley looked up. “Where were you Monday morning, Mr. Thorsson? Where were you this morning? An innocent man has nothing to fear.”

Sergeant Havers added, “If he’s innocent in the first place. If he lives an honest life. If he has nothing to hide.”

Every vein on Thorsson’s neck swelled. His pulse was throbbing like a drumbeat in his temple. His fingers jerked at the belt of his dressing gown. “Take it all,” he said. “You have my bloody permission. Take every rotten piece. But don’t forget this.”

He ripped the dressing gown from his body. He wore nothing underneath it. He put his hands on his hips.

“I have nothing to hide from you lot,” he said.

“I didn’t know whether to laugh, applaud, or make an arrest on the spot for indecent exposure,” Havers said. “That bloke takes everything right over the top.”

“He’s in a class all his own,” Lynley agreed.

“I wonder if that’s what the University environment does.”

“Encourages the senior fellows to disrobe before police officers? I don’t think so, Havers.”

They had stopped at a bakery in Cherry Hinton where they picked up two fresh currant buns and two tepid coffees. These they drank from Styrofoam cups on their way back into the town, Lynley cooperatively operating the gear shift to leave his sergeant with at least one free hand.

“Still, it was a telling sort of thing to do, wasn’t it, sir? I don’t know about you, but I think he actually was looking for the opportunity to…I mean I think he was all hot to display…Well, you know.”

Lynley crumpled the flimsy paper in which his currant bun had been wrapped. He deposited it in the ashtray among what appeared to be at least two dozen cigarette butts. “He was eager enough to make a show of his equipment. There’s no doubt of that, Havers. You provoked him to it.”

Her head whipped in his direction. “Me? Sir, I didn’t do a thing and you know it.”

“You did, I’m afraid. You’ve indicated from the first that you aren’t about to be dazzled by either his position at the University or any of his accomplishments-”

“Dubious though they probably are.”

“-so he felt compelled to give you an adequate idea of the size of the pleasure he was going to withhold as your punishment.”

“What a berk.”

“In a word.” Lynley took a sip of his coffee and changed down into second gear as Havers rounded a corner and stepped on the clutch. “But he did something more, Havers. And if you’ll pardon the expression, that’s the beauty of it all.”

“What, besides provide me with the best morning’s entertainment I’ve had in years?”

“He verified the story Elena told Terence Cuff.”

“How? What?”

Lynley changed to third and then fourth before replying. “According to what Elena told Dr. Cuff, Thorsson’s approach to her had included, among other things, references to the diffi culties he’d had when he was engaged to be married.”

“What sort of diffi culties?”

“Sexual ones, centring round the size of his erection.”

“Too much man for the poor woman to handle? That sort of thing?”

“Exactly.”

Havers’ eyes lit. “And how would Elena have known about his size unless he’d actually told her himself? He was probably hoping to get her interested in having a look. Perhaps he even gave her one to get her juices fl owing.”

“Indeed. And taken as a whole it’s not the sort of veiled invitation to intercourse that a twenty-year-old girl would cook up on her own, is it? Especially when it so exactly matches the truth. If the story were invention, she’d have been more likely to come up with something far more blatant on Thorsson’s part. And he’s capable of blatancy, as we’ve just seen.”

“So he was lying about the harassment situation. And”-Havers smiled with undisguised pleasure-“if he was lying about that, why not about everything else as well?”

“He’s definitely back in the running, Sergeant.”

“I’d say he’s about to win the race by a length.”

“We’ll see.”

“But, sir-”

“Drive on, Sergeant.”

They headed back into town where, after a minor snarl of traffic created by a collision between two taxis at the top of Station Road, they drove to police headquarters and unloaded the sack of clothing which they’d taken from Thorsson’s house. The uniformed receptionist buzzed them through the interior lobby doors with a nod at Lynley’s identifi cation. They took the lift up to the superintendent’s offi ce.

They found Sheehan standing next to his secretary’s vacant desk, the telephone receiver pressed to his ear. His conversation consisted mostly of grunts and damn’s and blast it all’s. He finally said impatiently, “You’ve had him jumping through hoops with that girl’s body for two days now and we’re getting nowhere, Drake…If you don’t agree with his conclusions, call in a specialist from the Met and have done with it…I don’t care what the CC thinks at this point. I’ll handle him. Just do it…Listen to me. This isn’t an enquiry into your competence as department head, but if you can’t in conscience sign off on Pleasance’s report and if he won’t change it, there’s nothing else to be done…I don’t have the power to give him the sack…That’s the way it is, man. Just phone the Met.” When he rang off, he didn’t appear pleased to see the representatives from New Scotland Yard standing in the doorway as further testimony to the outside help which the circumstances of Elena Weaver’s murder had forced him and his police force to endure.

“Trouble?” Lynley asked.

Sheehan picked up a batch of folders from his secretary’s desk and riffled through a stack of papers in her IN tray. “What a woman,” he said with a nod at her empty chair. “She called in ill this morning. She has a real sixth sense about when things are going to heat up, does Edwina.”

“And things are heating up?”

Sheehan grabbed three papers from the tray, stuck them with the folders under his arm, and lumbered into his offi ce. Lynley and Havers followed. “I’ve got my CC at Huntingdon breathing down my neck about devising a strategy for what he calls ‘renewed community relations’-a fancy title for coming up with a way to keep the nobs at the University happy so that you lot don’t start making regular appearances here in the future. I’ve got the funeral home and the parents asking after the Weaver girl’s body every quarter hour. And now”-with a look at the plastic sack dangling from Havers’ fi ngers- “I expect you’ve brought me something else to play with.”

“Clothes for forensic,” Havers said. “We’d like to make a match with the fibres on the body. If you can give us something positive, we might have what we need.”

“To make an arrest?”

“It’s looking possible.”

Sheehan nodded grimly. “I hate to give those two bickering old biddies something else to fight over, but we’ll have a go. They’ve been sniping over the weapon since yesterday. Maybe this’ll take their minds off that for a bit.”

“They’ve still reached no conclusion?” Lynley asked.

“Pleasance has done. Drake doesn’t agree. He won’t sign the report, and he’s been dragging his heels about calling in the Met for another opinion since yesterday afternoon. Professional pride, if you catch my drift, not to mention competence. He’s afraid at this point that Pleasance is in the right. And since he’s made such an issue about getting rid of the bloke, he stands to lose a lot more than just face if anyone confirms Pleasance’s conclusions.” Sheehan threw the folders and the papers down on his desk where they mingled with a stack of pages from a computer printout. He rooted through his top drawer and brought out a roll of mints. He offered them round, sank into his chair, and loosened his tie. Outside, in Edwina’s office, the phone began to ring. He ignored it. “Love and death,” he said. “Mix up pride with either of them and you’re done for, aren’t you?”

“Is it the Met’s involvement that’s bothering Drake or the involvement of any outsider?”

The double ringing of the telephone continued in the outer office. Sheehan continued to let it go unanswered. “It’s the Met,” he said. “Drake’s got himself in a dither over the implication that he’s got to be rescued by his London betters. The fact that you’re here has our CID boys in a rumble. Drake doesn’t want the same to happen in forensic where he already has trouble enough keeping Pleasance in line.”

“But Drake wouldn’t object if someone else-someone uninvolved with the Yard- had a look at the body? Especially if that someone worked directly with the two of them-Drake and Pleasance-gave them the information verbally, and allowed them to create the report.”

Sheehan’s features sharpened with interest. “What do you have in mind, Inspector?”

“An expert witness.”

“That’s not on. We don’t have the funding to pay an outsider.”

“You won’t have to pay.”

Footsteps rang against the floor in the outer office. A breathless voice answered the phone.

Lynley said, “We’ll have the information we need without the Met’s presence telegraphing to everyone that Drake’s competence is being questioned.”

“And what happens when the time comes for someone to testify in court, Inspector? Neither Drake nor Pleasance can get in the box and give evidence that isn’t his.”

“Either one can if he assists, and if his conclusions are the same as the expert’s.”

Thoughtfully, Sheehan played the roll of mints back and forth on the top of his desk. “Can it be arranged discreetly?”

“So that no one aside from Drake and Pleasance knows the expert witness was here in the first place?” When Sheehan nodded, Lynley said, “Just hand me the phone.”

A woman’s voice called out to Sheehan from the outer office, a diffi dent “Superintendent?” and nothing more. Sheehan got to his feet, joined the uniformed constable who had answered his phone. As they spoke together, Havers turned to Lynley.

“You’re thinking of St. James,” she said. “Will he be able to come up?”

“Faster than someone from the Met, I dare say,” Lynley replied. “Without the attendant paperwork and without the politics. Just pray he’s not scheduled to give testimony anywhere within the next few days.”

He looked up as Sheehan plunged back into the office, making for the metal stand upon which his overcoat was hanging. He grabbed this, snatched up the plastic sack which sat next to Havers’ chair, and flung it to the constable who had followed him to the door.

“See the forensic boys get this,” he said. And then to Lynley and Havers, “Let’s go.”

Lynley knew without asking what the set expression on Sheehan’s face meant. He’d seen it too many times to wonder what had provoked it. He’d even felt his own features take on the manifestation of that grim anger that always attended the revelation of a crime.

So he was prepared for the inevitable announcement that Sheehan made as they got to their feet. “We’ve got another body.”