In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 3

New Scotland Yard's Barbara Havers took the lift up to the twelfth floor of Tower Block. This housed the extensive library of the Metropolitan Police, and among the scores of reference books and police reports she knew that she would be safe. She very much needed safety at the moment. She also needed privacy and time to recover.

In addition to more volumes than anyone had time to count-much less to look at-the library offered the finest view of London in the entire building. This view spread to the east, encompassing everything from the neo-Gothic spires of the Houses of Parliament to the south bank of the River Thames. It spread to the north, where the dome of St. Paul's dominated the City skyline. And on a day like this one, when the bright hot sunlight of summer was finally altering to the subtle glow of autumn, the sheer scope of the view became secondary to the beauty of everything touched by that light.

Here on the twelfth floor, Barbara thought that if she concentrated on identifying as many of the buildings below her as she could, she might be able to calm herself and forget the humiliation through which she'd just lived.

After three months of a suspension from work, she'd finally received a cryptic phone call at half past seven that morning. It was an order thinly disguised as a request. Would Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers join Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier in his office at ten A.M.? The voice was scrupulously polite and even more scrupulously careful to betray no knowledge of what lay behind the invitation.

Barbara, however, had little doubt about the purpose of the meeting. She'd been the object of an enquiry by the Police Complaints Authority for the last twelve weeks, and once the Crown Prosecution Service had declined to instigate legal proceedings against her, the machinery of the Metropolitan Police's internal affairs division had begun to grind. Witnesses to her behaviour had been called. Statements from those witnesses had been taken. Evidence-a high-powered motor-boat, one MP5 carbine, and a Glock semiautomatic pistol-had been examined and evaluated. And Barbara's fate had long been due to be revealed.

So when the phone call had finally come, interrupting her increasingly fitful sleep, she should have been prepared. After all, she had known all summer that two aspects of her behaviour as an officer were under scrutiny. Facing criminal charges of assault and attempted murder, facing disciplinary charges that ran the gamut from abuse of authority to failure to obey an order, she should have begun the process of putting her professional life in order prior to what anyone with a teaspoonful of sense would have called its ineluctable demise. But police work had been Barbara's life for a decade and a half, and she couldn't imagine her world without it. So she had spent her suspension telling herself that every day that passed without her being sacked made it more likely that she would emerge from the investigation unscathed. That hadn't been the case, of course, and a more realistic officer would have known what to expect when she walked into the assistant commissioner's office.

She'd dressed with care, eschewing her usual drawstring trousers for a skirt and jacket. She was hopeless with clothes, so the colour didn't suit her, and the faux pearl necklace was a ludicrous touch that merely emphasised the thickness of her neck. Her shoes, at least, were polished. But getting out of her old Mini in the Yard's underground car park, she'd scraped her calf on a rough edge of door metal and a ladder in her tights had been the result.

Not that perfect tights, a decent piece of jewellery, and a suit of a hue more flattering to her complexion would have altered the inevitable. Because as soon as she'd entered AC Hillier's office, with its four windows indicating the Olympian heights to which he'd risen, she'd seen the writing on the wall.

Still, she hadn't expected the castigation to be so vituperative. AC Hillier was a pig-had always been and would be to the end of his days-but Barbara had never before been on the receiving end of his particular brand of discipline. He'd seemed to feel that a vigorous upbraiding wasn't sufficient to relay his displeasure with her comportment. Nor was sufficient a blistering letter that utilised such terms as “disgracing the reputation of the entire Metropolitan Police” and “bringing the service of thousands of officers into disrepute” and “a disgraceful brand of insubordination unlike anything in the history of the force,” which would be placed in her permanent file and left there through the years for every officer with suzerainty over Barbara to see. AC Hillier had also felt the need to interject his personal commentary on the activities that had brought about her suspension. And knowing that, without witnesses, he could be as free as he wanted to reprimand Barbara in whatever language he chose, Hillier had included in that commentary the sort of risky invective and innuendo that another subordinate officer-with less at stake-might well have taken as crossing over the line that separated the professional from the personal. But the assistant commissioner was nobody's fool. He was perfectly aware that, thankful her punishment did not include being sacked, Barbara would adopt the wise course of action and take whatever he chose to dish out to her.

But she didn't have to like hearing herself referred to as a “bloody stupid slag” and a “sodding minge bag.” And she didn't have to pretend that she was unaffected by having her physical appearance, her sexual proclivities, and her potential as a woman brought into Hillier's ugly monologue.

So she was shaken. And as she stood by the window in the library and observed the buildings that rose between New Scotland Yard and Westminster Abbey, she tried to control the trembling of her hands. She also tried to eliminate the waves of nausea that kept causing her breath to come in great gulps, as if she were drowning.

A cigarette would have helped, but in coming to the library, where she wouldn't be found, she'd also come to one of the many locations in New Scotland Yard where smoking was prohibited. And while at one time she would have lit up anyway and damned the consequences, she wouldn't do that now.

“Once more out of order and you're finished,” Hillier had shouted in conclusion, his florid face grown as maroon as the tie that he wore with his bespoke suit.

That she hadn't been finished already-considering the level of Hillier's animosity-was a mystery to Barbara. Throughout his speech, she'd prepared herself for her inevitable sacking, but it hadn't materialised. She'd been dressed down, slagged off*, and vilified. But the peroration of Hillier's remarks hadn't included her termination. That Hillier wanted to sack her as much as he wanted to abuse her was clear as could be. That he didn't do so told her that someone of influence had taken her part.

Barbara wanted to be grateful. Indeed, she knew she ought to be grateful. But at the moment all that she could feel was a monumental sense of betrayal that her superior officers, the disciplinary tribunal, and the Police Complaints Authority hadn't seen things her way. When the facts are in, she'd thought, everyone would see that she'd had no choice but to take up the nearest weapon to hand and fire it in order to save a life. But that wasn't the way her actions had been viewed by those in power. Except for someone. And she had a fairly good idea who that someone was.

Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley had been on his honeymoon during the birth of Barbara's troubles. Her longtime partner, he'd come home with his bride from ten days on Corfu to find Barbara suspended with an investigation mounted into her conduct. Understandably confounded, he'd driven across town that same night, seeking an explanation from Barbara herself. While their initial conversation hadn't gone as smoothly as she would have wished, Barbara had known at heart that, at the end of the day, DI Lynley would never stand by and let an injustice be done if there was any way that he could prevent it.

He'd be waiting in his office now to hear about her meeting with Hillier. As soon as she recovered from that meeting, she'd go to see him.

Someone came into the quiet library. A woman said, “I'm telling you he was born in Glasgow, Bob. I remember the case because I was at the comprehensive and we were doing reports on current events.”

Bob replied, “You're daft. He was born in Edinburgh.”

The woman said, “Glasgow. I'll prove it.”

Proving it meant having a browse through the library. Proving it meant that Barbara's solitude was at an end.

She left the library and descended by the stairs, buying more time to recover and to come up with the words to thank Inspector Lynley for interceding. She couldn't imagine how he'd done it. He and Hillier were at each other's throats most of the time, so he must have asked a favour of someone above Hillier's head. She knew that doing so would have cost him dearly in professional pride. A man like Lynley wasn't used to going, cap in hand, to anyone. Going cap in hand to those who openly begrudged him his aristocratic birth would have been especially trying.

She found him in his office in Victoria Block. He was on the phone with his back to the door, his chair swung round to face the window. He was saying lightly, “Darling, if Aunt Augusta's declared that a visit's in order, I don't know how we can actually avoid it. It's rather like trying to stop a typhoon… Hmm, yes. But we should be able to keep her from rearranging the furniture if Mother's agreed to come with her, shouldn't we?” He listened, then laughed at something his wife said on the other end of the line. “Yes. All right. We'll announce the wardrobes off-limits in advance… Thank you, Helen… Yes. She does mean well.” He rang off and swiveled his chair to face his desk. He saw Barbara in the doorway.

“Havers,” he said, surprise in his tone. “Hullo. What're you doing here this morning?”

She entered, saying, “I had the word from Hillier.”

“And?”

“A letter in my file and a quarter of an hour's speech that I'd like to forget. Cast your thoughts to Hillier's propensity for seizing the moment and throttling it and you'll have a good idea of how things played out. He's a flamer, our Dave.”

“I'm sorry,” Lynley said. “But that was all? A lecture and a letter in your file?”

“Not all. I've been demoted to detective constable.”

“Ah.” Lynley reached for a magnetic container of paper clips sitting on his desk. Restlessly, his fingers explored the tops of the clips while he apparently gathered his thoughts. He said, “It could have been worse. It could have cost you everything.”

“Right. Yes. I know.” Barbara tried to sound expansive. “Well,

Hillier had his fun. No doubt he'll replay his speech for the big boys at lunch with the commissioner. I thought about telling him to screw himself about halfway through, but I held my tongue. You would've been proud of me.”

At this, Lynley moved his chair away from the desk and stood at the window, looking out at its indifferent view of Tower Block. Barbara saw a muscle move in his jaw. She was about to venture into the arena of gratitude-his uncharacteristic reserve suggested the price he'd paid interceding on her behalf-when he finally spoke, introducing the topic himself by saying, “Barbara, I'm wondering if you know what had to be gone through to keep you from getting the sack. The meetings, the phone calls, the agreements, the compromises.”

“I reckoned as much. Which is why I wanted to say-”

“And all of it to keep you from getting what half of Scotland Yard think you richly deserve.”

Barbara shifted uncomfortably on her feet. “Sir, I know you put yourself out for me. I know I would have been given the sack if you hadn't interceded. And I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you recognised my actions for what they were. I wanted to tell you that you won't have any reason to regret taking my part. I won't give you a reason. Or anyone else, for that matter. I won't give anyone a reason.”

“I wasn't the one,” Lynley said, turning back to her.

Barbara looked at him blankly. “You…? What?”

“I didn't take your part, Barbara.” To his credit after making the admission, he kept his eyes on hers. She would think of that later and grudgingly admire it. Those brown eyes of his-so kind and so at odds with his head of blond hair-settled on hers and just stayed there, openly.

Barbara frowned, trying to assimilate what he'd said. “But you… you know all the facts. I told you the story. You read the report. I thought… You just now said the meetings and the phone calls-”

“They weren't mine,” he cut in. “In conscience, I can't let you think that they were.”

So she'd jumped to a conclusion. She'd presumed their years of partnership meant that Lynley would automatically take her part. She said, “Are you with them, then?”

“Them? Who?”

“The half of the Yard that thinks I got what I deserve. I only ask because I s'pose we ought to know where we stand with each other. I mean, if we're going to work-” Her words were starting to tumble together, and she forced herself to slow down, to be deliberate. “So are you? With them? That half? Sir?”

Lynley went back to his desk and sat. He regarded her. She could easily read the regret on his face. She just couldn't tell where it was directed. And that frightened her. Because he was her partner. He was her partner. She said again, “Sir?”

He said, “I don't know if I'm with them.”

She felt deflated. Just a shriveled bit of her skin remained, lying quietly on the office floor.

Lynley must have read this because he continued, his voice not unkind. “I've looked at the situation from every angle. All summer long, I've examined it, Barbara.”

“That's not part of your job,” she told him numbly. “You investigate murders, not… not what I did.”

“I wanted to understand. I still want to understand. I thought if I went at it on my own, I could see how it happened, through your eyes.”

“But you couldn't manage that.” Barbara tried to keep the desolation from her voice. “You couldn't see that a life was at stake. You couldn't get your mind round the fact that I wasn't able to let an eight-year-old drown.”

“That's not the case,” Lynley told her. “I understood that much and I understand it now. What I couldn't get round was that you were out of your jurisdiction, and, given an order to-”

“So was she,” Barbara broke in. “So was everyone. The Essex police don't patrol the North Sea. And that's where it happened. You know that. On the sea.”

“I do know that. All of it. Believe me. I know. How you were chasing a suspect, how that suspect dropped a child from his boat, what you were ordered to do when he took that action, and how you reacted when you heard the order.”

“I couldn't just toss her a life belt, Inspector. It wouldn't have reached her. She would have drowned.”

“Barbara, please hear me out. It wasn't your place-or your responsibility-to make decisions or to reach conclusions. That's why we have a chain of command. Arguing about the order you'd been given would have been bad enough. But once you fired a weapon at a superior officer-”

“I expect you're afraid I'll do that to you next, given half a chance,” she said bitterly.

Lynley let the words hang there between them. In the silence, Barbara found herself wanting to reach into the air and unspeak them, so untrue did she know them to be. “Sorry,” she said, feeling that the huskiness in her voice was a worse betrayal than any action she herself had taken earlier that summer.

“I know,” he said. “I do know you're sorry. I'm sorry as well.”

“Detective Inspector Lynley?”

The quiet interruption came from the door. Lynley and Barbara swung to the voice. Dorothea Harriman, secretary to their divisional superintendent, stood there: well-coifed with a helmet of honey-blonde hair, well-dressed in a pin-striped suit that would have done service in a fashion advert. Barbara all at once felt what she always was in the presence of Dorothea Harriman, a sartorial nightmare.

“What is it, Dee?” Lynley asked the younger woman.

“Superintendent Webberly,” Harriman replied. “He's asked for you. As soon as you can make it. He's had a call from Crime Operations. Something's come up.” And with a glance and a nod at Barbara, she was gone.

Barbara waited. She found that her pulse had begun throbbing painfully. The request from Webberly couldn't have come at a more terrible time.

Something's come up was Harriman shorthand for the fact that the game was afoot. And in the past that summons from Webberly had generally preceded an invitation from the inspector to accompany him in his discovery of what the game was.

Barbara said nothing. She just watched Lynley and waited. She knew very well that the next few moments would constitute the stand he took on their partnership.

Outside his office, business went on as usual. Voices echoed in the lino-floored corridor. Telephones rang in departments. Meetings began. But here, inside, it seemed to Barbara as if she and Lynley had taken themselves into another dimension altogether, one into which much more than merely her professional future was tied.

He finally got to his feet. “I'll need to see what Webberly has going.”

She said, “Shall I…?” despite his use of the singular pronoun that had already said it all. But she found that she couldn't complete the question because she couldn't face the answer at the moment. So she asked another. “What would you like me to do, sir?”

He thought about it, looking away from her at last, seeming to study the picture that hung by the door: a laughing young man with a cricket bat in his hand and a long rip in his grass-stained trousers. Barbara knew why Lynley kept the photo in his office: It served as a daily reminder of the man in the photo and what Lynley had done to him on a long-ago drunken night in a car. Most people put what was unpleasant out of their minds. But DI Thomas Lynley didn't happen to be most people.

He said, “I think it's best that you lie low for a while, Barbara. Let the dust settle. Let people get past this. Let them forget.”

But you won't be able to, will you? she asked silently. What she said, however, was a bleak “Yes, sir.”

“I know that isn't easy for you,” he said, and his voice was so gentle that she wanted to howl. “But I haven't got any other answer to give you at the moment. I only wish that I had.”

And again, the few words she could manage were “Sir. I see. Yes sir.”

“Demotion to detective constable,” Lynley said to Superintendent Malcolm Webberly when he joined him. “That's marks to you, isn't it, sir?”

Webberly was ensconced behind his desk, smoking a cigar. Mercifully, he'd kept the door to his office closed to spare the other officers, the secretaries, and the clerks from the fumes emanating from the noxious tube of tobacco. This consideration, however, did little to deliver anyone who had to enter from experiencing and breathing the fug of smoke. Lynley tried to inhale as little as possible. Webberly used his lips and tongue to move the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. It was the only response he gave.

“Can you tell me why?” Lynley asked. “You've gone out on a limb for officers before. No one knows that better than I. But why in this case, when it seems so cut and dried? And what're you going to have to pay for having saved her?”

“We all have favours,” the superintendent said. “I called a few in. Havers was in the wrong, but her heart was in the right.”

Lynley frowned. He'd been trying to work himself round to this same conclusion from the moment he'd learned about Barbara Havers’ disgrace, but he hadn't been able to manage the feat. Every time he came close, the facts reared up at him, demanding acknowledgement. And he'd gathered a number of those facts himself, driving out to Essex to talk to the principal officer involved. Having talked to her, he couldn't understand how-let alone why-Webberly was able to condone Barbara Havers’ decision to fire a rifle at DCI Emily Barlow. Disregarding his own friendship with Havers, even disregarding the very basic issue of chain of command, weren't they responsible for asking what sort of professional mayhem they were encouraging if they failed to punish a member of the force who'd taken part in such an egregious action? “But to shoot at an officer… Even to pick up a rifle in the first place when she had no authority…”

Webberly sighed. “These things just aren't black and white, Tommy I wish they were, but they never are. The child involved-”

“The DCI ordered a life belt thrown to her.”

“But there was doubt as to whether the girl could swim. And beyond that…” Webberly removed the cigar from his mouth and examined its tip as he said, “She's someone's only child. Evidently, Havers knew it.”

And Lynley knew what that fact meant to his superintendent. Webberly himself had a single light in his life: his one daughter, Miranda. He said, “Barbara owes you on this one, sir.”

“I'll see that she pays.” Webberly nodded at a yellow pad that lay before him on the desk. Lynley glanced at it to see the superintendent's scribbling rendered in black felt-tip pen. Webberly said, “Andrew Maiden. D'you remember him?”

At the question-the name-Lynley sat in a chair near Webberly's desk and said, “Andy? Of course. I'd not be likely to forget him.”

“I thought not.”

“One operation in SO10 and I made a hash of it. What a nightmare that was.”

SO 10 was the Crime Operations Group, the most secret and secretive collection of officers in the Met. They were responsible for hostage negotiation, witness and jury protection, the organisation of informants, and undercover operations. Lynley had once aimed to work among them in the latter group. But at twenty-six, he hadn't possessed either the sangfroid or the performance ability to adopt a persona other than his own. “Months of preparation went straight down the drain,” he recalled. “I expected Andy to string me up.”

Andy Maiden hadn't done so, however. That wasn't his style. The SO 10 officer was a man who knew how to cut his losses, and that's what he'd done, not assigning blame where it was owed but instead matching his moves to the moment's need: He quickly withdrew his men from the undercover operation and waited for another opportunity to introduce them, months later, when he could join them and assure that no outrageous faux pas such as Lynley's could undermine their efforts again.

He'd been called Domino-Andy Maiden-so adept had he been at assuming the character of everyone from hit men to American backers of the IRA. His primary field had ultimately become drug operations, but before he arrived there, he made his mark in murder for hire and organised crime as well.

“I used to run into him from time to time on the fourth floor,” Lynley told Webberly. “But I lost track of him once he left the Met. That was… when? Ten years ago?”

“Just over nine.”

Maiden, Webberly said, had taken early retirement and moved his family to Derbyshire. In the Peaks, he'd poured his life savings and his energy into the renovation of an old hunting lodge. It was a country hotel now, called Maiden Hall. Quite the spot for walkers, holiday-makers, mountain bikers, or anyone looking for an evening out and a decent meal.

Webberly referred to his yellow pad. “Andy Maiden brought more louts to justice than anyone else in SO 10, Tommy.”

“It doesn't surprise me to hear that, sir.”

“Yes. Well. He's asking for our help, and we owe him.”

“What's happened?”

“His daughter was murdered in the Peaks. Twenty-five years old and some bastard left her in the middle of nowhere in a place called Calder Moor.”

“Christ. That's rough. I'm sorry to hear it.”

“There was a second body as well-a boy's-and no one knows who the devil he is. No ID on him. The girl-Nicola-had gone camping and she was geared up for the works: rain, fog, sun, or anything else. But the boy at the site hadn't got any gear at all.”

“Do we know how they died?”

“No word on that.” And when Lynley raised an eyebrow in surprise, Webberly said, “This is coming our way via SO 10. Name the time those bastards made fast and free with their information.”

Lynley couldn't do so. Webberly went on.

“What I know is this: Buxton CID's got the case, but Andy's asking for more and we're giving it to him. He's asked for you in particular.”

“Me?”

“That's right. You may have lost track of him over the years, but it seems he hasn't lost track of you.” Webberly plugged his cigar into his mouth, clamping it into the corner and referring to his notes. “A Home Office pathologist is on his way up there for a formal by-the-books with scalpel and recorder. He's set to do the post-mortem sometime today. You'll be on the patch of a bloke called Peter Han-ken. He's been told that Andy's one of us, but that's all he knows.” He removed the cigar from his mouth again and looked at it instead of at Lynley as he concluded, “Tommy, I'll make no pretence about this. It could turn dicey. The fact that Maiden's asked for you by name…” Webberly hesitated before finishing with, “Just keep your eyes open and move with caution.”

Lynley nodded. The situation was irregular. He couldn't remember another time when a relative of a victim of a crime had been allowed to name the officer who would investigate it. That Andy Maiden had been allowed to do so suggested spheres of influence that could easily encroach upon Lynley's efforts to manage a smooth investigation.

He couldn't handle the case alone, and Lynley knew that Webberly wouldn't expect him to do so. But he had a fairly good idea of what officer the superintendent, given half the chance, would assign as his partner. He spoke to circumvent that assignment. She wasn't ready yet. Neither-if it came down to it-was he.

“I'd like to see who's on rota to take with me,” he told Webberly. “Since Andy's a former SO 10 officer, we're going to want someone with a fair amount of finesse.”

The superintendent regarded him directly. Fifteen seconds ticked by before he spoke. “You know best who you can work with, Tommy,” he finally said.

“Thank you, sir. I do.”

Barbara Havers made her way to the fourth floor canteen, where she bought a bowl of vegetable soup which she took to a table and tried to eat while all the time imagining that the word pariah hung from her shoulders on a sandwich board. She ate alone. Every nod of recognition she received from other officers seemed imbued with a silent message of contempt. And while she tried to bolster herself with an interior monologue informing her shrinking ego that no one could possibly yet know of her demotion, her disgrace, and the dissolution of her partnership, every conversation going on round her-particularly those flavoured by light-hearted laughter-was a conversation mocking her.

She gave up on the soup. She gave up on the Yard. She signed herself out-“going home ill” would doubtless be welcomed by those who clearly saw her as a form of contagion anyway-and made her way to her Mini. One half of her was ascribing her actions to a mixture of paranoia and stupidity. The other half was trapped in an endless repetition of her final encounter with Lynley, playing the game of what-I-could-have-would-have-and-should-have-said after learning the outcome of his meeting with Webberly.

In this frame of mind, she found herself driving along Millbank before she knew what she was doing, not heading for home at all. Her body on automatic pilot, she came up to Grosvenor Road and the Battersea Power Station with her brain engaged in a mental castigation of DI Lynley. She felt like a shattered mirror, useless but dangerous with broken edges. How easy it had been for him to cut her loose, she thought bitterly. And what an idiot she had been, believing for weeks that he was on her side.

Obviously, it hadn't been enough for Lynley that she'd been demoted and humiliated by a man whom both of them had loathed for years. It seemed now that he'd also needed an opportunity to do some disciplining on his own. As far as she was concerned, he was wrong wrong wrong taking the direction he'd chosen. And she needed an ally straightaway who would agree with her point of view.

Spinning along the River Thames in the light midday traffic, she had a fairly good idea where to find just such a confederate. He lived in Chelsea, little more than a mile from where she was driving.

Simon St. James was Lynley's oldest friend, his schoolmate from Eton. A forensic scientist and an expert witness, he was regularly called upon by defence counsel as well as Crown Prosecutors to bolster one side or the other of a criminal case that was relying on evidence rather than eyewitnesses to win a conviction. Unlike Lynley, he was a reasonable man. He had the ability to stand back and observe, disinterested and dispassionate, without becoming personally embroiled in whatever situation was roiling round him. He was exactly the person she needed to talk to. He'd see Lynley's actions for what they were.

What Barbara didn't consider in the midst of her turbulent mental gymnastics was that St. James might not be alone in his house in Chelsea's Cheyne Row. However, the fact that his wife was also at home-working in the darkroom that adjoined his own top floor laboratory-didn't make the situation nearly as delicate as did the presence of St. James's regular assistant. And Barbara didn't know that St. James's regular assistant was there until she was climbing the stairs behind Joseph Cotter: father-in-law, housekeeper, cook, and general factotum to the scientist himself.

Cotter said, “All three of them's at work, but it's time to break for lunch and Lady Helen, for one, ‘11 be glad of the diversion. Likes her meals regular, always ’as done. No change there, married or not.”

Barbara hesitated on the second floor landing, saying, “Helen's here?”

“She is.” Cotter added with a smile, “'S nice to know some things's the same as ever was, isn't it?”

“Damn,” Barbara muttered under her breath.

For Helen was also Countess of Asherton, titled in her own right, but also the wife of Thomas Lynley who-although he made no bones about preferring it otherwise-was the other half of the Asherton equation: the official, belted, velvet-and-ermine-clad Earl. Barbara could hardly expect St. James and his wife to join her in a round of denigration doo-dah with the wife of the object of denigration in the room. She realised that retreat was in order.

She was about to beat a hasty one, when Helen came onto the top floor landing, laughing over her shoulder into the lab as she said, “All right, all right. I'll fetch a new roll. But if you'd claw your way into the current decade and replace that machine with something more up-to-date, we wouldn't be out of fax paper at all. I'd think you'd notice these things occasionally, Simon.” She turned away from the door, began to come down the stairs, and spied Barbara on the landing below her. Her face lit. It was a lovely face, not beautiful in any conventional sense, but tranquil and radiant, framed by a smooth fall of chestnut hair.

“Heavens, what a wonderful surprise! Simon. Deborah. Here's a visitor for us, so you'll absolutely have to break for lunch now. How are you, Barbara? Why haven't you called round in all these weeks?”

There was nothing for it but to join her. Barbara nodded her thanks to Cotter, who called up, “I'll lay another place at the table, then,” in the general direction of the lab and headed back down the way they'd come. Barbara climbed upwards and took Helen's extended hand. The handshake turned into a swift kiss on the cheek, a welcome so warm that Barbara knew Lynley hadn't yet contacted his wife about what had occurred at Scotland Yard that day.

Helen said, “This is brilliant timing. You've just saved me from a slog down the King's Road in search of fax paper. I'm famished, but you know Simon. Why stop for anything as incidental as a meal when one has the opportunity to slave for a few more hours? Simon, detach yourself from the microscope, please. Here's someone more interesting than fingernail scrapings.”

Barbara followed Helen into the lab where St. James regularly evaluated evidence, prepared reports as well as professional papers, and organised materials for his recently acquired position as a lecturer at the Royal College of Science. Today he appeared to be in expert-witness mode, because he was perched on a stool at one of the work tables, and he was assembling slides from the contents of an envelope that he'd unsealed. The aforementioned fingernail scrapings, Barbara thought.

St. James was a largely unattractive man, no longer the laughing cricket player but disabled now and hampered by a leg brace that made his movements awkward. His best features were his hair, which he always wore overlong with complete disregard for whatever current fashion dictated, and his eyes, which changed from grey to blue depending on his clothing, which was itself nondescript. He looked up from the microscope as Barbara entered the lab. His smile humanised a lined and angular face.

“Barbara. Hullo.” He eased himself off the stool and came across the room to greet her, calling out to his wife that Barbara Havers had joined them. At the far end of the room, a door swung open. In cutoff blue jeans and a olive T-shirt, St. James's wife stood beneath a line of photographic enlargements that hung from a cord running the length of her darkroom and dripped water onto the rubber-matted floor.

Deborah looked quite well, Barbara noted. Renewing her commitment to her art-instead of brooding and mourning the string of miscarriages that had plagued her marriage-obviously agreed with her. It was nice to think of something going well for someone.

Barbara said, “Hullo. I was in the area and…” She glanced at her wrist to see that she'd forgotten her watch at home that morning in her haste to get to the Yard for her meeting with Hillier. She dropped her arm. “Actually, I didn't think about what time it was. Lunch and everything. Sorry.”

“We were about to stop,” St. James told her. “You can join us for a meal.”

Helen laughed. “‘About to stop?’ What outrageous casuistry. I've been begging for food these last ninety minutes and you wouldn't consider it.”

Deborah looked at her blankly. “What time is it, Helen?”

“You're as bad as Simon” was Helen's dry reply.

“You'll join us?” St. James asked Barbara.

“I just had something,” she said. “At the Yard.”

All three of the others knew what that last phrase meant. Barbara could see the underlying connotation register on their faces. It was Deborah who said, “Then you've finally had word,” as she poured chemicals from their trays into large plastic bottles that she took from a shelf beneath her photographic enlarger. “That's why you've come by, isn't it? What happened? No. Don't explain yet. Something tells me you could do with a drink. Why don't the three of you go downstairs? Give me ten minutes to sort things out here and I'll join you.”

Downstairs meant Simon's study, and that's where St. James took Barbara and Helen, with Barbara wishing that Helen and not Deborah had been the one to stay above and continue working. She thought about denying that her visit to Chelsea had anything to do with the Yard, but she realised that her tone of voice had probably given her away. There was certainly nothing buoyant about it.

An old drinks trolley stood beneath the window that overlooked Cheyne Row, and St. James poured them each a sherry as Barbara made much of inspecting the wall on which Deborah always hung a changing display of her photographs. Today these were more of the suite she'd been working on for the last nine months: oversize enlargements of Polaroid portraits taken in locations like Covent Garden, Lincoln's Inn Fields, St. Botolph's Church, and Spitalfields Market.

“Is Deborah going to show them?” Barbara asked, gripping the sherry she'd been given and stalling for time. She nodded towards the pictures.

“In December.” St. James handed Helen her sherry. She slid out of her shoes and sat in one of the two leather chairs by the fireplace, drawing her slender legs underneath her. She was, Barbara noted, watching her steadily. Helen read people the way other people read books. “So what's happened?” St. James was saying as Barbara wandered from the photo wall to the window and looked out at the narrow street. There was nothing to hold her attention there: just a tree, a row of parked cars, and a line of houses, two of which were currently fronted by scaffolding. Barbara wished she'd gone into that line of work. Considering how frequently it was employed in everything from gentrification projects to washing windows, erecting scaffolding as a career would have kept her busy, out of trouble, and extremely well-oiled with lolly.

“Barbara?” St. James said. “Have you heard something from the Yard this morning?”

She turned from the window. “A letter in my file and demotion,” she replied.

St. James grimaced. “Are you back on the street, then?”

Which had happened to her once before in what had felt like another lifetime during the last three years of working with Lynley. She said, “Not quite,” and went on to explain, leaving out the nastier details of her meeting with Hillier and mentioning Lynley not at all.

Helen did it for her. “Does Tommy know? Have you seen him yet, Barbara?”

Which brings us to the point, Barbara thought morosely. She said, “Well. Yes. The inspector knows.”

A fine line appeared between Helen's eyes. She placed her glass on the table next to her chair. “I've a very bad feeling about what's happened.”

Barbara was surprised at her own response to the quiet sympathy in Helen's voice. Her throat tightened. She felt herself reacting as she might have reacted in Lynley's office that morning had she not been so stunned when he'd returned from his meeting with Webberly and explained that he was setting out on a case. It wasn't the fact of his assignment to a case that stunned and struck her momentarily wordless, however. It was the choice he'd made of a partner to accompany him, a partner who was not herself.

“Barbara, this is for the best,” he'd told her, gathering materials from his desk.

And she'd gulped down what she wanted to say in protest and stared at him, realising that she'd never actually known him before that moment.

“He doesn't seem to agree with the outcome of the internal investigation,” Barbara concluded her story for St. James and Helen. “Demotion and all. I don't think he believes I've been punished enough.”

“I'm so sorry,” Helen said. “You must feel as if you've lost your best friend.”

The authenticity of her compassion stung the backs of Barbara's eyelids. She hadn't expected Helen-of all people-to be the source. So deeply did it touch her to have the sympathy of Lynley's wife that she heard herself stammering, “It's just that his choice… To replace me with… I mean…” She fumbled for the words and instead encountered that rush of pain all over again. “It felt like such a slap in the face.”

All Lynley had done, of course, was to make a selection among the officers available to work with him on an investigation. That his choice was itself a wound to Barbara wasn't a problem he was required to address.

Detective Constable Winston Nkata had done a fine job on two cases in town on which he'd worked with both Barbara and Lynley. It wasn't unreasonable that the DC would be offered an opportunity to demonstrate his talents outside London on the sort of special assignment that had previously gone to Barbara herself. But Lynley couldn't have been blind to the fact that Barbara saw Nkata as the competition nipping at her heels at the Yard. Eight years her junior, twelve years younger than the inspector, he was more ambitious than either Lynley or Barbara had ever been. He was a self-starter, a man who anticipated orders before they were spoken and seemed to fulfill them with one hand tied behind his back. Barbara had long suspected him of showboating for Lynley, trying to outdo her own efforts in order to replace her at the inspector's side.

Lynley knew this. He had to know it. So his choice of Nkata seemed less a logical selection made by a man who weighed the respective gifts of his subordinates and used them according to the needs of a case than it appeared to be an instance of outright in-your-face cruelty.

“Is this Tommy in a temper?” St. James asked.

But it hadn't been anger behind Lynley's actions, and desolate as she was, Barbara wouldn't accuse him of that.

Deborah joined them then, saying, “What's happened?” and fondly kissing her husband on the cheek as she passed him and poured herself a small sherry.

The story was repeated, Barbara telling it, St. James adding details, and Helen listening in thoughtful silence. Like Lynley, the others were in possession of the facts connected to Barbara's professional insubordination and her assault on a superior officer. Unlike Lynley, however, they appeared capable of seeing the situation as Barbara herself had seen it: unavoidable, regrettable, but fully justified, the only course open to a woman who was simultaneously under pressure and in the right.

St. James even went so far as to say, “Tommy'll doubtless come round to your way of thinking at the end of the day, Barbara. It's rough that you have to go through this though.” And the other two women murmured their agreement.

All of this should have been intensely gratifying. After all, their sympathy was what Barbara had come to Chelsea in order to gather. But she found that their sympathy merely enflamed her pain and the sense of betrayal that had driven her to Chelsea in the first place. She said, “I guess it boils down to this: The inspector wants someone he knows he can trust to work with him.”

And no matter the ensuing protests of Lynley's wife and Lynley's friends, Barbara knew she was not, at the present time, anywhere close to being that someone.