This Body of Death

Chapter Fifteen

“WHAT’S THE DECISION ABOUT SUNDAY LUNCH, ISABELLE? I’ve mentioned it to the boys, by the way. They’re quite keen.”

Isabelle Ardery pressed her fingers to her forehead. She’d taken two paracetamol but they’d done nothing to ease her headache. Nor had they done much for her stomach. She knew she should have eaten something before gulping them down, but the thought of food on top of an already roiling gut was more than she could have managed.

She said, “Let me speak to them, Bob. Are they there?”

He said, “You don’t sound quite yourself. Are you unwell, Isabelle?” Which wasn’t what he meant, of course. Unwell was a euphemism, and only barely. Unwell stood in place of everything else he didn’t intend to ask but fully intended to communicate.

She said, “I was up late last night. I’m on a case. You might have read about it. A woman’s been murdered in a North London cemetery…?”

He clearly wasn’t interested in that part of her life, only in the other. He said, “Hitting it rather hard then, are you?”

“There are usually late nights when it comes to a murder investigation,” she replied, deliberately choosing to misunderstand him. “You know that, Bob. So may I speak to the boys? Where are they? Certainly they’re not out somewhere at this hour of the morning.”

“Still asleep,” he said. “I don’t like to wake them.”

“Surely they can go back to sleep if I just say hello.”

“You know how they are. And they need their rest.”

“They need their mother.”

“They have a mother, as things stand. Sandra’s quite-”

“Sandra has two children of her own.”

“You aren’t suggesting she treats them differently, I hope. Because, frankly, I’m not listening to that. Because, also frankly, she treats them a damn sight better than their natural mother does since she’s fully conscious and in possession of all her faculties when she’s round them. Do you really want to have this kind of conversation, Isabelle? Now, are you coming for lunch on Sunday or are you not?”

“I’ll send the boys a note,” she said quietly, beating down her incipient rage. “May I assume, Bob, that you and Sandra aren’t forbidding my sending a note to them?”

“We’re not forbidding anything,” he said.

“Oh please. Let’s not pretend.” She rang off without a goodbye. She knew she’d pay for that later-Did you actually hang up on me, Isabelle? Surely we must have been disconnected somehow, yes?-but at the moment, she could do nothing else. To remain on the line with him meant being exposed to an extended display of his ostensible paternal concern, and she wasn’t up to it. She wasn’t, in fact, up to much that morning, and she was going to have to do something to alter that before heading into work.

Four cups of black coffee-all right, it was Irish coffee, but she could be forgiven for that as she’d used only a dash of spirits-one slice of toast, and a shower later, she was feeling fit. She was actually in the middle of the morning briefing before she felt the urge once more. But then, it was easy to fight it off because she could hardly duck into the ladies’, and that was just how it was. What she could do instead was keep her mind on her work and vow to have a different kind of evening and night at the end of this day. Which, she decided, she could easily manage.

Sergeants Havers and Nkata had reported in first thing from the New Forest. They were staying in a hotel in Sway-Forest Heath Hotel, it was called, Havers said-and this bit of information was met with guffaws and remarks of the “Hope Winnie’s managed to get his own room” ilk, which Isabelle cut off with a sharp, “That’ll do,” while they assessed the information the two sergeants had unearthed so far. Havers appeared to be building up a head of steam over the fact that Gordon Jossie was a master thatcher and that thatching tools were not only deadly but made by hand. For his part, Nkata seemed to be more interested in the fact of another woman being present in Gordon Jossie’s life. Havers also mentioned Gordon Jossie’s letters of reference from a Winchester college and then brought up a thatcher called Ringo Heath. She concluded by listing the names of individuals still needing to be spoken to.

“C’n we get you lot on to background checks?” Havers then asked. “Hastings, Jossie, Heath, Dickens…” They’d spoken to the local rozzers, by the way, but there wasn’t a lot of joy to be had from that quarter. New Scotland Yard were welcome to nose round the locals’ patch, according to the CS in Lyndhurst, but as the murder was in London, it wasn’t the locals’ problem.

Ardery assured the sergeant that they’d get on things at this end, since she herself wished to know everything there was to know about anyone even remotely concerned with Jemima Hastings. “I want to know every detail there is, down to whether their bowels move regularly,” she told the team. She instructed Philip Hale to carry on with the names from Hampshire and she ticked off the additional London names in case he’d forgotten them: Yolanda the Psychic, aka Sharon Price; Jayson Druther; Abbott Langer; Paolo di Fazio; Frazer Chaplin; Bella McHaggis. “Alibis for everyone, with confirmation, and try for two sources. John, I’ll want you handling that part. Coordinate with SO7 as well. Light a fire over there. We need some good information.”

Stewart gave no indication that he’d heard her, so Isabelle said, “Did you get that, John?” to which he smiled sardonically and pointed an index finger to his temple.

“All in there…guv,” he noted, and, “Anything else?” as if he suspected that she was the one in need of a good prodding.

She narrowed her eyes. She was about to respond when Thomas Lynley did so. He was standing at the back of the room, politely keeping himself out of the way although she couldn’t decide if this was a benefit to her or merely a reminder to everyone else of what was likely the immense contrast between their styles. He said, “Perhaps Matt Jones? Sidney St. James’s partner? It’s likely nothing, but if he’d been to the cigar shop as Barbara indicated…”

“Matt Jones as well,” Isabelle said. “Philip, can someone on your team…?”

“Will do,” Hale said.

She told them all to get on with it, then, and said, “Thomas? If you’ll come with me…”

They would seek out Paolo di Fazio’s studio, she told him. Between their interview with the sculptor and Barbara Havers’ report of her conversation with Bella McHaggis about Paolo and the pregnancy test, there existed an ocean that wanted swimming.

Lynley nodded, amenable to anything, it seemed. She said she would meet him at her car. Five minutes for her to use the ladies’, she told him. He said certainly in that well-bred fashion of his and she felt him watching her as she walked off. She stopped in her office to grab her handbag, and she took it with her to the toilet. No one could possibly fault her for that, she thought.

As before, he was waiting patiently at her car, but this time on the passenger’s side. She raised an eyebrow, to which he said, “I expect you need the practice, guv. London traffic and all that…?”

She tried to read him for underlying meanings, but he was very good at a poker face. “Very well,” she told him. “And it’s Isabelle, Thomas.”

“Due respect, guv…”

She sighed impatiently. “Oh for God’s sake, Thomas. What did you call your last superintendent behind the scenes?”

“Sir, mostly. Other times it would have been guv.”

“Fine. Wonderful. Well, I’m ordering you to call me Isabelle when we’re alone together. Have you an aversion to that?”

He seemed to consider this, the aversion bit. He examined the door handle on which he’d already placed his hand. When he looked up, his brown eyes were candidly on her face and the sudden openness of his expression was disconcerting. “I think ‘guv’ gives a distance you might prefer,” he said. “All things considered.”

“What things?” she said.

“All things.”

The frank look they exchanged made her wonder about him. She said, “You play your cards quite close, don’t you, Thomas.”

He said, “I have no cards at all.”

She snorted at this and got into the car.

PAOLO DI FAZIO’S studio was near Clapham Junction. This was south of the river, he told her, not terribly far from Putney. Their best course was to drive along the Embankment. Did she want him to give her directions?

“I think I can just about manage the route to the river,” she told him.

Paolo di Fazio himself had indicated where to find him. Upon being contacted he’d declared that he had given them all the information there was to give about himself and Jemima Hastings, but if they wanted to spend their time going over old ground, then so be it. He’d be where he was most mornings, at the studio.

The studio turned out to be tucked into one of the many railway arches created by the viaducts leading out of Clapham railway station. Most of these had long ago been put to use, being converted from tunnels into wine cellars, clothing outlets, car repair shops, and-in one case-even a delicatessen selling imported olives, meats, and cheeses. Paolo di Fazio’s studio was between a picture framer and a bicycle shop, and they arrived to find its front doors open and its overhead lights brightly illuminating the space. This space was whitewashed and set up in two sections. One section appeared to be given over to the early work that went on when an artist took a sculpture from clay on its way to bronze, so there were masses of wax, latex, fibre glass, and bags of plaster everywhere, along with the grit and the grime one might associate with working with such substances. The other section accommodated workstations for four artists, whose pieces were currently shrouded in plastic and likely in varying stages of completion. Finished bronze sculptures had places in a row along the centre of the studio, and they ranged in style from the realistic to the fantastical.

When they came upon it, Paolo di Fazio’s style turned out to be figurative, but of a nature that favoured bulbous elbows, long limbs, and disproportionately small heads. Lynley murmured, “Shades of Giacometti,” and he paused in front of it, and Isabelle glanced at him sharply to gauge his expression. She had no idea what he was talking about, and she absolutely hated a show-off. But she saw he was taking out his spectacles to give the sculpture a closer look, and he seemed unaware that he’d even spoken. She wondered what it meant that he moved round the sculpture slowly, looking thoughtful. She realised yet again that he was impossible to read, and she additionally wondered if she could actually work with someone who’d so mastered the art of keeping his thoughts to himself.

Paolo di Fazio wasn’t in the studio. Nor was anyone else. But he entered as they were having a look at his work area, which was identifiable by more of the masks-similar to those he made in Jubilee Market Hall-that stood on dusty wooden pedestals upon shelves at the rear. Specifically, they were having a look at his tools and at his tools’ potential to do harm.

Di Fazio said, “Please touch nothing,” as he came in their direction. He was carrying a take-away coffee and a bag from which he brought out two bananas and an apple. These he placed carefully on one of the shelves as if arranging them for a still life. He was dressed as he’d been dressed when they’d earlier seen him: blue jeans, a T-shirt, and dress shoes, which as before, seemed an odd getup for someone at work with clay, particularly the dress shoes, as he somehow managed to keep them perfectly clean. They would have passed muster at a military inspection. He said, “I’m at work here, as you can see.” He gestured with his coffee in the direction of a shrouded piece.

Isabelle said, “And may we look at your work?”

He apparently needed to think about this for a moment before he shrugged and removed its swaddling of plastic and cloth. It was another elongated, knobby-limbed piece, apparently male and apparently in agony if the expression was anything to go by. A mouth gaped open, limbs stretched out, the neck curved back, and the shoulders arched. At its feet lay a grill of some sort, and to Isabelle it looked for all the world as if the figure were in anguish over a broken barbecue. She reckoned it all meant something deep and she readied herself to hear Lynley make an insufferably illuminating remark about it. But he said nothing, and di Fazio himself didn’t shed any light on matters for Isabelle when he identified the figure only as St. Lawrence. He went on to tell them that he was doing a series of Christian martyrs for a Sicilian monastery, by which Isabelle took it that St. Lawrence’s gruesome means of death had actually been by barbecue. This made her wonder what belief, if any, she’d be willing to die for, and this in turn made her wonder how or if the deaths of martyrs tied in with Jemima Hastings’ own end.

“I’ve done Sebastian, Lucy, and Cecilia for them,” di Fazio was saying. “This is the fourth of a series of ten. They’ll be placed in the niches in the monastery chapel.”

“You’re well known in Italy, then,” Lynley said.

“No. My uncle is well known in the monastery.”

“Your uncle’s a monk?”

Di Fazio gave a sardonic laugh. “My uncle is a criminal. He thinks he can buy his way into heaven if he makes enough donations to them. Money, food, wine, my art. It is all the same to him. And as he pays me for the work, I don’t question the…” He looked thoughtful, as if seeking the proper word. “…the effectiveness of his actions.”

At the street end of the studio, a figure appeared in the double doorway, silhouetted by the light outside. It was a woman, who called out, “Ciao, baby,” and strode over to one of the other work areas. She was short and rather plump, with an enormous shelflike bosom and coils of espresso-coloured hair. She whipped the protective covering off her piece of sculpture and set to work without another look in their direction. Nonetheless, her presence seemed to make di Fazio uneasy, for he suggested that they continue their conversation elsewhere.

“Dominique didn’t know Jemima,” he told them, with a nod at the woman. “She’d have nothing to add.”

But she knew di Fazio, Isabelle reckoned, and she might come in useful down the line. She said, “We’ll keep our voices down, if that’s what worries you, Mr. di Fazio.”

“She will want to concentrate on her work.”

“I daresay we won’t prevent her from doing so.”

Behind his gold-framed spectacles, the sculptor’s eyes narrowed. It was just a fractional movement, but Isabelle did not miss it. She said, “This actually won’t take long. It’s about your argument with Jemima. And about an at-home pregnancy test.”

Di Fazio gave no reaction to the remark. He looked briefly from Isabelle to Lynley as if evaluating the nature of their relationship. Then he said, “I had no argument with Jemima that I remember.”

“You were overheard. It would have taken place in your lodgings in Putney, and chances are very good it might have had to do with that pregnancy test, which was, by the way, found among your belongings.”

“You have no warrant-”

“As it happens, we aren’t the ones who found it.”

“Then it’s not evidence, is it. I know how these things work. There’s a procedure that must be followed. And this was not followed, so this pregnancy test or whatever it is cannot be evidence against me.”

“I applaud your knowledge of the law.”

“I’ve read enough of injustice in this country, madam. I’ve read how the British police work. People who have been unjustly accused and unjustly convicted. The Birmingham gentlemen. The Guildford group.”

“You may have done.” Lynley was the one to speak, and Isabelle noted that he didn’t bother to lower his voice to prevent Dominique from hearing. “So you’ll also know that in building a case against a suspect in a murder investigation, some things go down as background information and some as evidence. The fact that you had an argument with a woman who turned up dead may be neither here nor there, but if it is neither here nor there, it seems the wiser course to clear things up about it.”

“Which is another way of saying,” Isabelle noted, “that you have some explaining to do. You indicated that you and Jemima ultimately stopped having relations when she took up lodgings with Mrs. McHaggis.”

“That was the truth.” Di Fazio cast a look in Dominique’s direction. Isabelle wondered if the other artist had taken Jemima’s place.

“Had she become pregnant during the time when you and she were still lovers?”

“She had not.” Another look in Dominique’s direction. “Can we not have this conversation elsewhere?” he asked. “Dominique and I…We hope to marry this winter. She doesn’t need to hear-”

“Do you indeed? And this would be your sixth engagement, wouldn’t it?”

His face grew stormy, but he mastered this. He said, “Dominique doesn’t need to hear facts about Jemima. Jemima was done with.”

“That’s an interesting choice of words,” Lynley noted.

“I didn’t hurt Jemima. I didn’t touch Jemima. I wasn’t there.”

“Then you won’t mind telling us everything you’ve so far failed to tell us about her,” Isabelle said. “You also won’t mind providing us with an alibi for the time of Jemima’s death.”

“Not here. Please.”

“All right. Then at the local nick.”

Di Fazio’s face went completely rigid. “Unless you place me under arrest, I do not have to take a step out of this studio in your company, and this I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve read about my rights.”

“That being the case,” Isabelle said, “you’ll also know that the sooner you clear up this matter of you, Jemima, the pregnancy test, the argument, and your alibi, the better off you’ll be.”

Di Fazio cast another look in Dominique’s direction. She seemed intent upon her work, Isabelle thought, but who could really tell. They appeared to be at the point of impasse when Lynley made the move that resolved the situation: He went to Dominique’s area to examine her work, saying, “May I have a look? I’ve always thought that the lost-wax process…” and on he went till Dominique was fully engaged.

“So?” Isabelle said to di Fazio.

He turned his back on Lynley and Dominique, the better to prevent his intended bride’s reading of his lips, Isabelle reckoned. He said, “It was before Dominique. It was Jemima’s test, in the rubbish in the toilet. She’d told me there was no one else in her life. She’d said she wanted a break from men altogether. But when I saw the test, I knew that she’d lied. There was someone new. So I spoke with her. And it was hot, this conversation, yes. Because she would not be with me but I knew that she would be with him.”

“Who?”

“Who else? Frazer. She wouldn’t risk it with me. But with him…? If she lost her place in the lodging as a result of Frazer, it didn’t matter.”

“She told you it was Frazer Chaplin?”

He looked impatient. “She didn’t need to tell me. This is Frazer’s way. Have you seen him? Have you spoken to him? There’s no woman that he wouldn’t try to take because that’s who he is. Who else would it be?”

“He wasn’t the only man in her life.”

“She went to the ice rink. For lessons, she said, but I knew better. And sometimes she went to Duke’s Hotel as well. She wanted to see what Frazer was up to. And he was up to finding ladies.”

Isabelle said, “Perhaps. But there are other men whose lives touched hers. At her own place of employment, at the ice rink-”

“What? You suppose she was…what? With Abbott Langer? With Jayson Druther? She went to work, she went to the ice rink, she went to Duke’s Hotel, she went home. Trust me. She did nothing else.”

“If that’s the case,” Isabelle said, “you do see how this gives you a motive for murdering her, don’t you?”

Colour rushed into his face, and he grabbed up one of his tools and used it to gesture with. “Me? It’s Frazer who would want her dead. Frazer Chaplin. He would want to shake her away from him. Because she wouldn’t give him the freedom he required to do what he does.”

“Which is?”

“He fucks the ladies. All the ladies. And the ladies like it. And he makes them want it. And when they want it, they seek him out. So this is what she was doing.”

“You seem to know quite a lot about him.”

“I’ve seen him. I’ve watched them. Frazer and women.”

“Some might say he’s merely had better luck with women, Mr. di Fazio. What do you make of that?”

“I know what you’re trying to say. Don’t think I’m foolish. I’m telling you how it is with him. So I ask you this: If Frazer Chaplin wasn’t the man she’d taken as her lover, then who was it?”

It was an interesting question, Isabelle thought. But far more interesting at the moment was the fact that di Fazio had seemed to know what Jemima Hastings’ every movement had been.

TWO OF THEM hovered. Their form was different. One rose from an ashtray on a table, a cloud of grey that became a cloud of light from which he had to turn his head even as he heard the booming cry of The eighth choir stands before God.

He tried to block the words.

They are the messengers between man and man’s Deity.

The cries were loud, louder than they had ever been and even as he filled his ears with music, another cry came from another direction, saying Battlers of those who themselves were born of the bearer of light. Distort God’s plan and be thrown into the jaws of damnation.

Although he tried not to seek the source of this second shrieking, he found it anyway because a chair swept into the air before him and it began to take shape and it began to approach him. He shrank away.

What he knew was that they came in disguises. They were travelers, they were healers of the sick, they were inhabitants of the pool of Probatica at whose shores the infirm lay awaiting the movement of the water. They were the builders, the slave masters of demons.

He who healed was also present. He spoke from within the cloud of grey and he became flame and the flame burned emerald. He called not for righteous anger but for a flood of music to issue forth in praise.

But the other fought him. He who was destruction itself, known by Sodom, called Hero of God. But he was Mercy as well, and he claimed to sit at the left hand of God, unlike the other. Incarnation, conception, birth, dreams. These were his offerings. Come with me. But a price would be paid.

I am Raphael and it is you who are called.

I am Gabriel and it is you who are chosen.

Then there was a chorus of them, a veritable flood of voices, and they were everywhere. He worked against being taken by them. He worked and he worked till the sweat poured from him and still they came on. They descended till there was one mighty being above all, and he approached. He would not be denied. He would overcome. And to this there was no other answer that might be given so he had to escape he had to run he had to find a place of safety.

He himself gave the cry against the multitude that he now knew was indeed the Eighth Choir. There was a stairway that emerged from the light and he made for this, for wherever it headed. To the light, to God, to some other Deity, it didn’t matter. He began to climb. He began to run.

“Yukio!” came the cry from behind him.

“SO I HAVE the impression the engagement is all in Paolo di Fazio’s head,” Lynley said. “Dominique did a bit of eye rolling when I offered her my congratulations.”

“Now that’s an interesting bit,” Isabelle Ardery said. “Well, I did think six times engaged was rather pushing the envelope in the human relationship area. I mean, I’ve heard of six times married-well, perhaps only with American film stars in the days when they actually did get married-but it’s rather odd that with all the engagements, he’s never made it to the altar. It does make one wonder about him. How much is real and how much is imagined.”

“He may have done.”

“What?” Ardery turned to him. They’d stopped at the delicatessen, which occupied one of the railway arches. She was making a purchase of olives and meats. She’d already bought a bottle of wine at the wine cellar.

Lynley reckoned these would likely stand in place of her dinner. He knew the signs, having worked for so many years with Barbara Havers and having thus become accustomed to the single policewoman’s eating habits. He considered extending an invitation to the superintendent: dinner at his home in Eaton Terrace? He rejected the idea, as he couldn’t imagine as yet sharing his dining table with anyone.

“He may have made it to the altar,” he said. “Married. Philip Hale will be able to tell us. Or perhaps John Stewart. We’re developing a rather long list for the background checks. John can help out there if you’ve a mind to move him.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d adore that assignment.” The superintendent took her bag of goods, said thanks to the shop girl, and headed for her car. The day was heating up. Surrounded by and composed of bricks, concrete, and macadam, possessing all the possible charms that overfull wheelie bins and rubbish on the street could provide, the area immediately round the railway arches was like a wrestler’s armpit: steaming and malodorous.

They got into the car before Isabelle Ardery said more. She cranked down the window, cursed that she did not have air-conditioning, pardoned herself for cursing, and then said, “What d’you make of him, then?”

“Isn’t there a song about it?” Lynley said. “Looking for love in all the wrong places?” He wound down his window as well. They headed off. His mobile rang. He looked at the number and felt an unaccustomed moment of dread. Assistant Commissioner Hillier was phoning, or at least his office was.

Where was the inspector and could he come to the AC’s office? Hillier’s secretary wanted to know. And welcome back to New Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector. This is an unofficial meeting, by the way. No need to mention it to anyone.

Code for don’t mention this meeting to Isabelle Ardery, and why, accordingly, didn’t you let the assistant commissioner know you would be returning to work? Lynley didn’t much like the inference that could be drawn from it all. He said that he was out at the moment but he would come in to see the assistant commissioner as soon as he could. He included the words assistant commissioner with a slow deliberation. He felt Ardery glance in his direction.

He said to her as he ended the call, “Hillier. Wanting a word.”

She drove on, her gaze on the road. She said, “Thank you, Thomas. Are you always so decent?”

“Virtually never.”

She smiled. “I meant John Stewart, by the way.”

“Pardon?”

“When I asked what you make of him.”

“Ah. Right. Well. He and Barbara have nearly come to blows over the years, if that’s any help.”

“Women in general, then? Or women coppers?”

“That’s something I’ve never been able to work out. He was married once. It ended badly.”

“Ha. I expect we know who wanted to end it.” Isabelle said nothing more till they’d crossed over the river again. And then, “I’m going to want a warrant, Thomas.”

“Hmm. Yes. I expect that’s the only course. And he knows his rights rather too well, doesn’t he. Hillier would call it an unfortunate sign of the times.”

It came to Lynley as he spoke that he’d followed Ardery’s line of thought with ease. They’d gone smoothly from John Stewart to Paolo di Fazio without the need for clarification and without the further need for Ardery to explain why a search warrant was required: They were going to want to gather up the artist’s sculpting tools. Indeed, they were going to need the tools of every one of the artists with whom Paolo di Fazio shared space. Forensic examinations would have to be done on everything.

“Paolo,” Lynley noted, “isn’t going to be popular with his mates.”

“Not to mention what this will do to his ‘engagement’ to Dominique. Did she alibi him, by the way?”

“She didn’t. Except to say she reckoned he was at Covent Garden. If it’s afternoon you’re talking about, that’s where he usually is, she said, and someone there will have seen him. She also knew why I was asking. And contrary to what di Fazio said, she did know Jemima, at least by sight. She called her ‘Paolo’s ex.’”

“No jealousy? No concern?”

“Not that I could see. She seemed to know-or at least to believe-that it was finished between them. Between Jemima and Paolo, I mean.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence, and they were in the underground car park at New Scotland Yard when Isabelle Ardery spoke again, gathering up her purchases from the railway arches. She said, “What d’you make of Paolo’s declaration that Frazer Chaplin was involved with Jemima?”

“Anything’s possible at this point.”

“Yes. But it also supports what Sergeant Havers said about the bloke.” She slammed the door and locked it, adding, “And that, frankly, comes as something of a relief. I have my concerns about Barbara Havers and her reaction to men.”

“Do you?” Lynley walked at her side. He was unused to a woman so tall. Barbara Havers didn’t reach to his collarbone and while Helen had been of above-average height, she had not been nearly as tall as Isabelle Ardery. He and the acting superintendent were shoulder to shoulder. He said, “Barbara has very good instincts about people. You can generally rely on her input.”

“Ah. What about you, then?”

“My input is, I hope-”

“I meant your instincts, Thomas. How are they?” She looked at him. It was an even gaze.

He wasn’t sure what to make of her question. Nor was he sure how he felt about it. “When the wind is southerly, I generally know my hawks and handsaws,” he settled on saying.

Back in the incident room, bits of information were filtering in: Jayson Druther had indeed been present in the cigar shop when Jemima Hastings was killed in Stoke Newington, and he’d provided the names of three customers to confirm this. He’d gone on to alibi his father, if there was interest in that. “Betting lounge,” John Stewart reported, “in the Edgware Road.” Abbott Langer had finished up his afternoon lessons at the ice rink, walked dogs in Hyde Park, and then returned to the ice rink for his evening clients. But the dog-walking bit gave him a good-size window to get up to Stoke Newington because there was no dog owner to swear the family canine had been walked. Obviously, a dog walker was employed when no one was at home.

As to background information, progess had been made there as well. Although Yolanda the Psychic had been warned off stalking Jemima Hastings, Jemima Hastings hadn’t been the one to report her. That reporting had been done by Bella McHaggis

“McHaggis’s husband died at home, but there’s nothing suspicious associated with it,” Philip Hale reported. “His heart gave out while he was on the toilet. Yolanda’s daughter is dead. Starved herself slimming. Same age as Jemima.”

“Interesting,” Ardery said. “Anything else?”

Frazer Chaplin, born in Dublin, one of seven children, no record and no complaints. Shows up on time to the job, he reported.

“He has two jobs,” Isabelle told him.

Shows up on time to both of his jobs. He seems a bit too interested in money, but then, who isn’t? There’s something of a joke at Duke’s Hotel: him looking for a rich American-Brazilian-Canadian-Russian-Japanese-Chinese-anything to support him. Male or female. He doesn’t care. He’s a bloke with plans, according to the hotel manager, but no one faults him and he’s well liked. “One of those ‘That’s our lad Frazer’ types,” Hale said.

“Anything on Paolo di Fazio?” Isabelle asked.

It turned out that Paolo had an interesting background: born in Palermo, from which his family fled the Mafia. His sister had been married to a minor Mafioso there only to be beaten to death by him. The husband himself had been found hanged in his cell while awaiting trial, and no one thought it was a suicide.

As to the rest? Isabelle Ardery asked.

There was very little. Jayson Druther had an ASBO, apparently having to do with a relationship that went sour. But this was with a man, not a woman, for whatever good that piece of news could do them. Abbott Langer, on the other hand, was something of a puzzle. It was true that he was an Olympic ice skater turned coach and dog walker. It was completely bogus that he had ever been married, with children. He was fairly close to Yolanda the Psychic, apparently, but this didn’t seem to be a sinister connection, as it was looking more and more as if Yolanda the Psychic did as much trolling for surrogate children-adult or otherwise-as she did reading palms or getting in touch with the spirit world.

“We’ll want more on this marriage business,” Ardery noted. “He’s a real person of interest, then.”

Lynley slipped out of the meeting as the superintendent was giving further instructions having to do with confirming alibis and with the time of death, which was set between two o’clock and five o’clock. This should make it easy, she was saying. Most of these people have jobs. Someone saw something not quite right somewhere. Let’s find out who and what it is.

Lynley crossed over to Tower Block, and he made his way to the assistant commissioner’s office. Hillier’s secretary-in an uncharacteristic move-rose from her chair and came to greet him, her hand extended. Usually the soul of discretion when it came to things Hillier, Judi MacIntosh murmured, “Brilliant to see you, Inspector,” and added, “Don’t be fooled. He’s quite pleased about this.”

This was apparently Lynley’s return and he, naturally, was Sir David Hillier. The assistant commissioner, however, did not want to talk about Lynley’s return other than to say, “You’re looking fit. Good,” when Lynley entered his office. Then he got down to business. The business was, as Lynley suspected it might be, the permanent assignment of someone to the detective superintendent’s position, which was nearly nine months vacant.

Hillier broached the topic in his usual fashion, at an oblique angle. He said, “How’re you finding the job?” which, of course, Lynley might have taken any way he wished and which, of course, Hillier would use to steer the conversation any way he desired.

“Different and the same at once,” Lynley replied. “Everything’s a bit shaded with odd colours, sir.”

“She’s got a good mind, I daresay. She wouldn’t have climbed as fast as she’s climbed without that, would she.”

“Actually…” Lynley had been talking about returning to work with the world as he’d known it utterly transformed in an instant, on the street, at the hands of a child with a gun. He thought about making this point, but instead he said, “She’s clever and quick,” which seemed to him a good response, making a reply but saying little enough.

“How are the team responding to her?”

“They’re professionals.”

“John Stewart?”

“No matter who takes the job, there’ll be a period of adjustment, won’t there? John has his quirks, but he’s a good man.”

“I’m being pressed to name a permanent replacement for Malcolm Webberly,” Hillier said. “I tend to think Ardery’s a very good choice.”

Lynley nodded, but that was the extent of his response. He had an uneasy feeling where this was heading.

“Naming her will bring a lot of press.”

“Not necessarily a bad thing,” Lynley said. “I’d say the opposite, in fact. Promoting a female officer, indeed an officer from outside the Met…I can’t see how that could be interpreted as anything other than a positive move, fairly guaranteed to give the Met good press.” Which, he didn’t add, they rather badly needed. In recent years they’d faced charges of everything from institution-alised racism to gross incompetence and all points in between. A story in which there were no skeletons lurking in anyone’s closet would be a welcome one, no doubt about it.

“If it is a positive move,” Hillier noted. “Which brings me to the point.”

“Ah.”

Hillier shot him a look at that ah. He apparently decided to let it go. He said, “She’s good on paper, and she’s good from every verbal report about her. But you and I know there’s more than verbiage involved in being able to do this job well.”

“Yes. But weaknesses always come out eventually,” Lynley said. “Sooner or later.”

“They do. But the point is, I’m being asked to make this sooner, if you understand what I mean. And if I’m going to make it sooner, then I’m also going to make it right.”

“Understandable,” Lynley acknowledged.

“It seems she’s asked you to work with her.”

Lynley didn’t inquire as to how Hillier knew this. Hillier generally knew everything that was going on. He hadn’t got to his present position without developing an impressive system of snouts. “I’m not sure I’d call it ‘working with her,’” he said carefully. “She’s asked me to come on board and show her the ropes, to allow her to move more quickly into the job. She has her work cut out: not only new to London but new to the Met and having a murder case landing in her lap. If I can help her make a quick transition, I’m happy to.”

“So you’re getting to know her. Better than the rest, I daresay. That brings me to the point. I can’t put this delicately, so I’m not going to try: If you come across anything that gives you pause about her, I want to know what it is. And I do mean anything.”

“Actually, sir, I don’t think I’m the one to-”

“You’re exactly the one. You’ve been in the job, you don’t want the job, you’re working with her, and you’ve a very good eye for people. You and I have disagreed over the years-”

Which was putting it mildly, Lynley thought.

“-but I’d never deny that you’ve rarely been wrong about someone. You’ve a vested interest-we all have a vested interest-in this job going to someone good, to the best person out there, and you’re going to know if she’s that officer in very short order. What I’m asking you to do is to tell me. And, frankly, I’m going to need details because the last thing we need is a charge of sexism if she doesn’t get the job.”

“What is it exactly that you want me to do, sir?” If he was going to be asked to spy upon Isabelle Ardery, then the assistant commissioner, Lynley decided, was going to have to come out and say it. “Written reports? A regular briefing? Meetings like this?”

“I think you know.”

“As it happens, I-” His mobile rang. He looked at it.

“Let it go,” Hillier said.

“It’s Ardery,” Lynley replied. Still, he waited for the assistant commissioner’s sharp nod, telling him to take it.

“We’ve got an ID on the second e-fit,” Ardery told him. “He’s a violinist, Thomas. His brother identified him.”