This Body of Death

Chapter Twenty-Three

WHOEVER HAD KILLED JEMIMA HASTINGS, AS THINGS TURNED out, was someone who’d worn a yellow shirt to do it. Lynley learned the details of this article of clothing upon his return to New Scotland Yard, where the team was meeting in the incident room and a photo of the shirt-now in the possession of forensics-was newly up on one of the china boards.

Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata had arrived from the New Forest, Lynley saw, and he also saw from Barbara’s expression that she wasn’t happy about being recalled to London, blood-stained yellow shirt or not. She was fighting back a need to speak, which in her case meant fighting back a need to argue with the acting superintendent. Nkata, on the other hand, seemed acquiescent enough, displaying the easiness of disposition that had long been an integral part of his character. He lounged at the back of the room, sipping from a plastic cup. He nodded at Lynley and tilted his head towards Havers. He, too, knew she was itching to walk on the wrong side of whatever line Isabelle Ardery had drawn for her.

“…still unconscious,” Ardery was saying. “But the surgeon indicates he’ll be brought round tomorrow. When that happens, he’s ours.” And to Lynley, bringing him fully into the picture, “The shirt was among the clobber in the Oxfam bin. It’s got a significant bloodstain on the front of it, right side, and on the right sleeve and cuff. It’s with forensics, but for the moment we’re assuming the blood is our victim’s. Agreed?” She didn’t wait for Lynley’s reply. “Right, then. Let’s put a few things together. We’ve two Oriental hairs in the victim’s hand, no defensive wounds on her, a pierced carotid artery, and a Japanese man in possession of the murder weapon and with her blood on his clothing. What’ve you got to add from today, Thomas?”

For the team, Lynley recapped what he’d learned from Yolanda. He added for them, and for Isabelle as well, the details he’d had off Abbott Langer, the bartender Heinrich, and Frazer Chaplin. He knew he was about to devastate Isabelle’s position, but there was no way round it: He concluded by saying, with a nod at the large photo of the shirt, “I think we have two individuals interacting with Jemima in Abney Park Cemetery, guv. There was nothing in Matsumoto’s wardrobe even vaguely resembling that shirt. He wears black and white-not bright colours-and even if that weren’t the case, the clothing he had on that day, a tuxedo, was itself stained with her blood, as you’ve just said. He can’t have been wearing both the tuxedo and the yellow shirt. So with yet another article of clothing bloodstained and with Jemima going to the cemetery to speak with a man, we’ve got two blokes there instead of one.”

“That’s how I’ve got it figured,” Barbara Havers put in quickly. “So, guv, it seems to me that recalling Winnie and me to London-”

“One bloke to kill her and the other to…what?” John Stewart asked.

“To watch over her, I suspect,” Lynley said. “Something at which Matsumoto, seeing himself as her guardian angel, failed miserably.”

“Hang on, Thomas,” Ardery said.

“Hear me out,” Lynley replied. He saw her eyes widen slightly and he knew she wasn’t pleased. He was going in a completely different direction, and God knew she had very good reason for the investigation’s maintaining its progress towards Matsumoto as the killer. “A bloke met her there to hear her hard truths,” Lynley said. “We’ve got this from the psychic and, her profession aside, I think she’s to be believed. If we ignore all Yolanda’s additional maundering about Jemima and the house in Oxford Road, she’s merely relating to us her own encounters with the woman. So from her we know that a man in Jemima’s life needed to hear something and Yolanda suggested a ‘place of peace’ for their meeting. Jemima knew about the cemetery, as she’d been photographed there. That was the spot she chose.”

“With Matsumoto just happening to be there?” Ardery demanded.

“He likely followed her.”

“All right. But let’s assume this wasn’t the only time he followed her. Why would it have been? Why only on this particular day? That makes no sense. So if he was stalking her, he likely was the man who needed to hear the hard truths, those being leave me alone or I’ll have you for stalking. But he anticipates this is the way the conversation will go and, like all mad stalkers, he’s come with a weapon. Yellow shirt or not, bloodstained tuxedo or not, how do you explain that weapon in his possession, Thomas?”

“How do you explain the blood on two kinds of clothing?” John Stewart put in.

Glances were exchanged among the others present. It was his tone. He was taking sides. Lynley didn’t want this. It was not his intention to turn the investigation into a political intrigue. He said, “He sees her meet someone in the cemetery. They decamp to the chapel annex for a more private word.”

“Why?” Isabelle asked. “They’re already in a private spot. Why does it need to be more private?”

“Because whoever she’s there to meet is there to kill her,” Havers put in. “So he makes the request. ‘Let’s go over there. Let’s go in that building.’ Guv, we need to-”

Lynley held up a hand. “Perhaps they’re arguing. One of them gets up, begins to pace. The other follows. They go inside but only the killer emerges. Matsumoto sees this. He waits for Jemima to come out as well. When she doesn’t, he goes to investigate.”

“For God’s sake, wouldn’t he notice the other bloke had blood on his shirt?”

“He may have done. Perhaps that’s why he went to investigate. But I think it’s more likely that the other bloke would have taken that shirt off and stowed it. He’d have to have done so. He can’t leave the cemetery with blood all over him.”

“Matsumoto did.”

“Which is what suggests to me that he didn’t kill her, not that he did.”

“This is bollocks,” Ardery said.

“Guv, it isn’t,” Havers broke in, and her tone declared she was serious this time. She would be heard and damn the consequences. “There’s something not right in Hampshire. We need to get back there. Winnie and I-”

“Oh you two lovebirds,” John Stewart put in.

Lynley said automatically, “That’ll do, John,” forgetting his return from acting superintendent to inspector.

“Sod off,” Havers told Stewart, undeterred. “Guv, there’s more to be looked into in the New Forest. This bloke Whiting…? Something’s not right about him. There’re contradictions all over the place.”

“Such as?” Isabelle asked.

Havers began leafing through her disaster of a notebook. She shot a look at Winston, saying Get involved here, mate. Winston stirred and came to her aid. “Jossie’s not what he seems, guv,” he said. “He and Whiting are connected somehow. We’ve not got to the root of things, but the fact that Whiting knew ’bout Jossie’s apprenticeship suggests to us-to Barb an’ me-that he was behind Jossie getting it in the first place. An’ that suggests he forged those letters from the technical college. We can’t see who else might’ve done it.”

“For God’s sake, why would he do that?”

“Could be Jossie’s got something on him,” Nkata said. “We don’t know what. Yet.”

Havers said, “But we could find out if you’d let us-”

“You’ll stay here in London as you’ve been ordered.”

“But, guv-”

“No.” And to Lynley, “It’s just as easy to work this the other way round, Thomas. She meets Matsumoto in the cemetery. She goes with Matsumoto into the chapel annex. They have their words, he uses the weapon on her, and he flees. The other, wearing a yellow shirt, sees this. He goes into the annex. He comes to her aid but she has a wound that’s beyond aid. He gets her blood on him. He panics. He knows how this is going to look once his history with Jemima comes to light. He knows the cops look hard at whoever first comes upon the victim and reports it, and he can’t afford that. So he runs.”

“And then what?” John Stewart asked. “He puts that shirt in McHaggis’s Oxfam bin? Along with the handbag? And what about the handbag? Why take it?”

“Could be Matsumoto took the handbag. Could be he put it in the bin. He’d want to cast blame, to muddy the waters.”

“So,” Stewart said acerbically, “let me get this straight. This Matsumoto and the other bloke-damn well unbeknownst to each other-both put a piece of incriminating evidence in the very same bin? In an entirely different area of London from where the crime was committed? Bloody hell, woman. Jesus God. What exactly d’you think are the odds of that?” He blew out a derisive breath and looked at the others. Idiot cow, his expression said.

Isabelle’s face was perfect stone. She said to Stewart, “In my office. Now.”

Stewart hesitated just long enough to signal his scorn. He and Isabelle engaged in a moment of locked gazes before the acting superintendent strode out of the room. Stewart rose in a lazy movement and followed her.

A tight silence ensued. Someone whistled low. Lynley approached the china board for a closer look at the photo of the yellow shirt. There was a movement next to him, and he saw that Havers had come to join him.

She said to him in a low voice, “You know she’s making the wrong decisions.”

“Barbara-”

“You know. No one wants to kick his arse into the next time zone as much as I do, but he’s right this time.”

She meant John Stewart. Lynley couldn’t disagree. Isabelle’s desperation to bend the facts to fit what she needed to believe about Matsumoto was truncating the investigation. She was in the worst position possible: her temporary status at the Met, her first investigation and its deterioration into a welter of inconceivable circumstances with a suspect in hospital because he’d done a runner, that suspect the brother of a famed cellist with access to a fiery solicitor, the press taking up the story, Hillier involved, and the abominable Stephenson Deacon on board to attempt to manipulate the media, and evidence pointing in every possible direction. Lynley wasn’t sure how things could get worse for Isabelle. Hers was turning out to be a baptism not by fire but rather by conflagration.

He said, “Barbara, I’m not sure what you’d have me do.”

“Talk to her. She’ll listen to you. Webberly would’ve and you’d’ve talked to Webberly if he’d been going at things like this. You know you would. And if you were in the same position as she is just now, you’d listen to us. We’re a team for a reason.” She drove her hands into her ill-cut hair in typical fashion, pulling on it roughly. “Why did she call us back from Hampshire?”

“She has limited resources. Every investigation has.”

“Oh bloody hell!” Havers stalked off.

Lynley called after her, but she was gone. He was left facing the china board, staring at the yellow shirt. He saw at once what it was telling him and what it should have told Isabelle. He realised he, too, was in an unenviable position. He considered how best to use the information before him.

BARBARA COULDN’T UNDERSTAND why Lynley wouldn’t take a stand. She could understand why he might not want to do that in front of the rest of the team since John bloody Stewart hardly needed encouragement to pull a Mr. Christian on the acting superintendent’s Captain Bligh. But why not have a word with her in private? That was the part that didn’t make sense. Lynley wasn’t a man intimidated by anyone-his thousand and one run-ins with AC Hillier surely gave testimony to that-so she knew he wasn’t unnerved by the prospect of going eyeball-to-eyeball with Isabelle Ardery. That being the case, what was stopping him? She didn’t know. What she did know was that for some reason, he wasn’t being himself when she needed him to be just that person, the one he’d always been, to her and to everyone else.

That he wasn’t being the Thomas Lynley she recognised and had worked with for years troubled her more than she wanted to admit. It seemed to mark the degree to which he’d changed and the degree to which things that had once mattered to him no longer did. It was as if he was floating out there in some sort of unnameable void, lost to them in ways that were crucial but undefined.

Barbara didn’t want to define them now. She just wanted to get home. Because Winston had driven them up from the New Forest, she was forced into a journey on the blasted Northern Line at the worst time of day in the worst possible weather, and she was additionally forced to make this journey crammed into the area in front of the carriage doors, wondering why the hell people would not move down the aisle into the bloody carriage itself as she was jostled into the broad backside of a woman shrieking into her mobile phone about “fooking get home an’ I mean it this time, Clive, or I swear I’m taking the knife and cutting them off” when she wasn’t being pushed into the odoriferous armpit of a T-shirted adolescent listening to something loud and obnoxious through his earphones.

To make matters worse, she had her holdall with her and when she finally reached the Chalk Farm station, she had to jerk it out of the carriage and in the process broke one of its straps. She swore. She kicked it. She scraped her ankle against one of its buckles. She swore again.

She trudged home from the station wondering when the weather would break, bringing a storm that would wash the dust from the tree leaves and scour the smog-laden air. Her mood grew even fouler as she lugged the holdall behind her, and everything that was infuriating her seemed to have as its source Isabelle Ardery. But considering Isabelle Ardery led her back to considering Thomas Lynley, and Barbara had had enough of that for one day.

I need a shower, Barbara decided. I need a fag. I need a drink. Hell on wheels, I need a life.

By the time she arrived home, she was dripping perspiration and her shoulders ached. She tried to tell herself it was the weight of the holdall, but she knew it was tension, plain and simple. She reached the front door of her bungalow with more relief than she’d felt in ages at being home. She didn’t even care that, inside the place, it was suitable for baking bread. She opened windows and dug her small fan from a cupboard. She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, blessed the mere existence of nicotine, fell into one of the plain kitchen chairs, and looked round her extremely humble little abode.

She’d dropped her holdall by the door, so she hadn’t seen what was on the daybed at first. But now, sitting at the kitchen table, she saw that her A-line skirt-that article best suited to a woman with a figure like hers, according to Hadiyyah-had been tailored. The hem had been taken up, the skirt had been ironed, and a complete outfit had been assembled upon the bed: the skirt, a crisp businesslike new blouse, sheer tights, a scarf, even a chunky bracelet. And her shoes had been polished as well. They fairly gleamed. The good fairy had been here.

Barbara rose and approached the bed. She had to admit, it all looked good together, especially the bracelet, which she never would have considered purchasing, let alone wearing. She picked it up for a closer inspection. A gift tag was tied to it with a purple ribbon.

“Surprise!” had been printed on the card along with “Welcome Home!” and the gift giver’s name, as if she had not known who had arranged these items for her: Hadiyyah Khalidah.

Barbara’s mood altered at once. Amazing, she thought, how such a little thing, a mere act of thoughtfulness…She stubbed out her cigarette and ducked into the tiny bathroom. A quarter of an hour saw her showered, refreshed, and dressed. She brushed some blusher on her face in a bow to Hadiyyah’s make-over efforts, and she left her bungalow. She went to the lower ground-floor flat of the Big House, which faced on to the summer-dry lawn.

The French windows were open, and cooking sounds along with conversation came from within. Hadiyyah was chatting to her father and Barbara could hear from her voice that she was excited.

She knocked and called out, “Anyone home?” to which Hadiyyah cried, “Barbara! You’re back! Brilliant!”

When Hadiyyah came to the door, she looked altered to Barbara. Taller, somehow, although that didn’t make sense, as Barbara had hardly been gone long enough for the little girl to have grown. “Oh, this is so lovely,” Hadiyyah cried. “Dad! Barbara’s here. C’n she stay for dinner?”

“No, no,” Barbara stammered. “Please, don’t, kiddo. I only came to say thank you. I’ve just got back. I found the skirt. And the rest. And what a bloody nice surprise it was.”

“I hemmed it myself,” Hadiyyah informed her proudly. “Well, maybe Mrs. Silver helped a bit ’cause sometimes I make my stitches crooked. But were you surprised? I ironed it as well. Did you find the bracelet?” She bounced from foot to foot. “Did you like it? When I saw it, I asked Dad could we buy it ’cause you know how you got to accessorise, Barbara.”

“From your lips to my memory,” Barbara told her reverently. “But I couldn’t’ve found anything as perfect as that.”

“It’s the colour, isn’t it?” Hadiyyah said. “And part of what makes it so wonderful is the size. See, what I learned is that the size of the accessory depends upon the size of the person wearing it. But that has to do with one’s features and bones and body type, not with one’s weight and height, if you know what I mean. So if you look at your wrists-like if you compare them to mine-what you c’n see-”

“Khushi.” Azhar came to the door of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel.

Hadiyyah turned to him. “Barbara found the surprise!” she announced. “She likes it, Dad. And what about the blouse, Barbara? Did you like the new blouse? I wished I picked it out, but I didn’t. Dad picked it out, didn’t you, Dad? I wanted a different one.”

“Don’t tell me. You wanted one with a pussy bow.”

“Well…” She shifted on her feet, doing a little tap dancing in the doorway. “Not exactly. But it did have ruffles. Not a lot, you see. But there was a sweet little ruffle down the front hiding the buttons and I liked it awfully. I thought it was brilliant. But Dad said you wouldn’t ever wear ruffles. I said fashion is all about expanding one’s horizons, Barbara. But he said horizons can be expanded only so far, and he said the tailored blouse was better. I said the neckline of a blouse is meant to copy the shape your jawline makes and your face is rounded, isn’t it, not angular like the tailored blouse is. And he said let’s try it and you c’n always take it back if you don’t like it. And d’you know where we got it?”

“Khushi, khushi,” Azhar said warmly. “Why do you not invite Barbara inside?”

Hadiyyah laughed, hands to her mouth. “I got so excited!” She stepped back from the door. “We have fizzy lemonade to drink. D’you want some? We’re having a celebration, aren’t we, Dad?”

“Khushi,” Azhar said to her meaningfully.

Some sort of message passed between them, and Barbara realised that Azhar and his daughter had been in the midst of a private conversation. Her presence was clearly an interruption. She said hastily, “Anyway, I’m off, you two. I wanted to say thanks straightaway. It was awfully kind. C’n I pay you for the blouse?”

“You may not,” Azhar told her.

“It was a present,” Hadiyyah declared. “We even bought it in Camden High Street, Barbara. Not in the Stables or anything-”

“God no,” Barbara said. Uneasy personal experience had taught her how Azhar felt about Hadiyyah wandering round the warren comprising the Stables and Camden Lock Market.

“-but we did go into Inverness Street Market, and it was just lovely. I’ve never been there before.”

Azhar smiled. He cupped the back of his daughter’s head and jiggled it lightly in a fond gesture. He said, “How you chatter tonight.” And to Barbara, “Will you stay for dinner, Barbara?”

“Oh, do stay, Barbara,” Hadiyyah said. “Dad’s making chicken saag masala, and there’s dal and chapatis and mushroom dopiaza. I gen’rally don’t like mushrooms, you know, but I love them how Dad cooks. Oh, an’ he’s making rice pilau with spinach and carrots.”

“That sounds like quite a feast,” Barbara said.

“It is, it is! ’Cause-” She clapped her hands to her mouth. Her eyes fairly danced above them. She said against her palms, “Oh, I wish and wish I could say more. Only I can’t, you see. I promised.”

“Then you mustn’t,” Barbara said.

“But you’re such a friend. Isn’t she, Dad? C’n I…?”

“You may not.” Azhar shot Barbara a smile. “Now, we have stood here chatting long enough. Barbara, we insist that you join us for dinner.”

“There’s lots of food,” Hadiyyah announced.

“Put that way,” Barbara told her, “I can hardly do anything but fall straight into it.”

She followed them inside, and she felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the day’s temperature, which had hardly been lessened by the cooking that had gone on within the flat. Indeed, the beastly heat of the waning day was something she hardly noticed at all. Instead, she noticed the manner in which her mood lifted, she no longer was caught up in considering what was happening to Thomas Lynley, and the concerns of the murder enquiry melted away.

THE CONFRONTATION WITH John Stewart left Isabelle rattled, a reaction she hadn’t expected. She was long used to dealing with men on the force, but theirs was generally a covert sexism, displayed by the sly innuendo whose interpretation could, conveniently, be attributed to everything from thin skin to complete misinterpretation on the part of the listener. Matters were different with John Stewart. Sly innuendo was not his style. At least Isabelle found that this was the case behind closed doors when Stewart knew very well that any move she made against him would be an instance of her-word-against-his with the higher-ups. And this in a situation in which the last thing she wanted to do was to go to her superior officers with a complaint about sexual harassment or anything else. John Stewart, she realised, was clever as the devil. He knew the ice she was skating on was thin. He was happy to shove her directly into the middle of the pond.

She wondered briefly how a man could be so shortsighted as to set himself in warfare with someone who might be selected as his superior officer. But she gave that consideration only a moment before she saw their standoff from Stewart’s point of view: Clearly, he didn’t expect her to be selected. And at the end of the day, she couldn’t blame him for believing she’d soon be shown the door.

What a cock-up, she thought. How could things possibly get any worse?

God, how she wanted a drink.

But she steeled herself not to have one, not even to look inside her handbag where her airline bottles nestled like sleeping infants. She didn’t need the stuff. She merely wanted it. Want was not need.

A knock on her office door and she swung round from the window, where she’d been standing to gaze at a view she did not even see. She called entrance, and Lynley stood there. He held a manila envelope in his hand.

He said, “I was out of order earlier. I’m terribly sorry.”

She laughed shortly. “You and everyone else.”

“Still and all-”

“It’s no matter, Thomas.”

He said nothing for a moment, observing her. He tapped the envelope against his palm, as if he was thinking how to go on. At last he said, “John is…,” but still he hesitated, perhaps looking for the proper word.

She said, “Yes. It’s hard to pin down, isn’t it? Just the right term to capture the essence of John Stewart.”

“I suppose. But I shouldn’t have reprimanded him, Isabelle. It was rather a knee-jerk reaction, I’m afraid.”

She waved him off. “As I said, it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s not you,” Lynley said. “You’re meant to know that. He and Barbara have been at it for years. He has difficulty with women. His divorce…I’m afraid it rather turned him. He’s not come back from it, and he’s not been able to see any fault on his part for what went on.”

“What did go on?”

Lynley entered, shutting the door behind him. “His wife had an affair.”

“Ask me if I’m surprised about that.”

“She had an affair with another woman.”

“I can hardly blame her. That bloke would make Eve choose the snake over Adam.”

“They’re a couple now, and they have custody of John’s two girls.” He observed her steadily as he said this. She shifted her gaze away.

“I can’t feel sorry for him.”

“Who could blame you? But sometimes these things are good to know, and I doubt his file said it.”

“You’re right. It didn’t. Are you thinking we have something in common, John Stewart and I?”

“People at odds often do.” And then in a shift, “Will you come with me, Isabelle? You’ll need to bring your car, as I won’t be coming back this way. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

She frowned. “What’s this about?”

“Not much, actually. But as it’s the end of the day…We can have a meal afterwards, if you’d like. Sometimes talking over a case brings out something not considered before. Arguing about it does the same.”

“Is that what you want to do? Argue?”

“We do have areas of disagreement, don’t we? Will you come with me?”

Isabelle looked round the office. She thought, Whyever not? and she nodded curtly. “Give me a moment to collect my things. I’ll meet you below.”

When he’d left her, she used the time to make a quick trip into the ladies’, where she observed herself in the mirror and saw the day playing out on her face, especially between her eyes where a deep line was making the sort of vertical incision that became permanent. She decided to repair her makeup, which gave her a reason to open her handbag. There she caught sight of those nestling infants. She knew it would take only a moment to toss one of them back. Or all of them. But she firmly closed the bag and went to join her colleague.

Lynley didn’t tell her where they were going. He merely nodded when she joined him and said he’d keep her within sight. That was the limit of their exchange before he set off in his Healey Elliott and gunned its engine as he headed upward, out of the underground car park and into the street. He manoeuvred over to the river. He was as good as his promise: He kept her within view. She was oddly comforted by this. She couldn’t have said why.

Unfamiliar with London as she was, she hadn’t a clue where they were going as they headed southwest along the river. It was only when she saw the golden orb atop a distant obelisk to her right that she realised they’d come to the Royal Hospital, which meant they’d reached Chelsea. The broad lawns of Ranelagh Gardens were desiccated from the weather, she saw, although a few brave souls gathered there anyway: A late-afternoon game of football was in progress.

Just beyond the gardens, Lynley turned right. He coursed along Oakley Street and then went left and left again. They were in an established Chelsea neighbourhood now, and it was characterised by quite tall redbrick homes, wrought-iron railings, and leafy trees. He pointed out a parking space to her, and he pulled ahead to wait for her to fit her car into it. When she joined him in his own car, he drove a bit farther. She saw the river up ahead of them again, along with a pub, which was where he parked. He said he’d be a moment and he went inside. He had an arrangement with the publican, he told her when he returned. When there was no parking available in Cheyne Row, which appeared to be the street’s usual condition, he left his car alongside the pub and his keys with the barman as security.

He said, “It’s just this way,” and he directed her to one of the houses, this one at the junction of Cheyne Row and Lordship Place. She expected this building, like the others, to be a conversion as she couldn’t imagine someone actually owning an entire piece of this pricey London real estate. But then she saw from the doorbell that she was wrong, and when Lynley rang it, a dog began barking almost at once, quieting only when a man’s rough voice said, “Enough! ’ell, you’d think we ’as gettin’ invaded,” as he swung the door open. He saw Lynley even as the dog rushed out, a long-haired dachshund who did not attack but rather leapt round their legs, as if wanting to be noticed.

“Watch out for Peach,” the man said to Isabelle. “She’s wanting food. Fact, she’s always and only wanting food.” And with a nod to Lynley, “Lord Ash’rton,” in something of a mumble, as if he knew Lynley preferred another way of being addressed but was reluctant to be less formal with him. Then he said with a smile, “I was doing a tray of G and T. You as well?” as he held open the door.

“Planning to get addled, are they?” Lynley enquired as he gestured for Isabelle to precede him inside.

The man chuckled. “S’pose miracles can happen,” he replied and he said, “That pleased, Superintendent,” when Lynley introduced Isabelle.

He was called Joseph Cotter, she discovered, and while he didn’t appear to be a servant-despite his making drinks for someone-he also didn’t appear to be the primary resident of the house. That was someone they would apparently “find above,” as Joseph Cotter said. He himself went into a room just to the left at the front of the house. “G and T, then, m’lord?” he called over his shoulder. “Superintendent?”

Lynley said he would gladly have one. Isabelle demurred. “A glass of water would be lovely, though,” she replied.

“Will do,” he said.

The dachshund had been sniffing around their feet as if in the hope they’d brought something edible in on their shoes. Finding nothing, she’d scarpered up the stairs, and Isabelle could hear her paws clicking against the wooden risers as she ascended higher and higher in the house.

They did likewise. She wondered where on earth they were going and what the man Joseph Cotter had meant by above. They passed floor after floor of dark wainscoting below pale cream walls on which hung dozens of black-and-white photos, mostly portraits although some interesting landscapes were also scattered among them. On the final level of the house-Isabelle had lost count of the number of flights of stairs they’d climbed-there were two rooms only and no corridor although even more of the photos hung here, and in this spot they hung straight to the ceiling. The effect was like being in a photographic museum.

Lynley called out, “Deborah? Simon?” to which a woman’s voice replied with, “Tommy? Hullo!” and a man’s voice said, “In here, Tommy. Mind the puddle there, my love,” and her reply, “Let me see to it, Simon. You’ll only make a bigger mess.”

Isabelle preceded Lynley into the room, which took most of its illumination from an enormous skylight that comprised the greater part of the ceiling. Beneath this, a redheaded woman knelt on the floor sopping up liquid. Her gaunt-faced companion stood nearby, a few towels in his hands. These he passed to her as she said, “Two more and I think we’ve got it. Lord, what a mess.”

She could have been referring to the room itself, which looked like the den of a mad scientist, with worktables cluttered with files and documents being blown about by fans that stood in the room’s two windows in a futile attempt to mitigate the heat. There were bookshelves crammed with journals and volumes, racks of tubes and beakers and pipettes, three computers, china boards, video machines, television monitors. Isabelle couldn’t imagine how anyone was able to function in the place.

Neither, apparently, could Lynley, for he looked round, said, “Ah,” and exchanged a look with the man whom he introduced as Simon St. James. The woman was St. James’s wife, Deborah, and Isabelle recognised the name as that of the photographer who’d taken the portrait of Jemima Hastings. She recognised St. James’s name as well. He was a longtime expert witness, an evaluator of forensic data who worked equally for the defence or for the prosecution when a case of homicide came to trial. She could tell from their interaction that Lynley knew Simon and Deborah St. James rather well, and she wondered why he had wanted her to meet them.

St. James said to Lynley, “Yes, as you see,” in answer to his ah. He employed an even tone in which something about the state of the room was communicated between them.

Beyond this workplace, a second door opened into what was apparently a darkroom, and it was from this space that liquid pooled out. Fixer, Deborah St. James explained as she finished mopping it up. She’d spilled an entire gallon of the stuff. “One never spills when a container is nearly empty, have you noticed?” she asked. Job done, she stood and shook back her hair. She reached in the pocket of the bib overalls she was wearing-these were olive linen, wrinkled, and they suited her in ways that would have seemed ridiculous on another woman-and she brought out an enormous hair slide. She was the kind of woman who could gather up her hair in a single deft movement and make it look fashionably disheveled. She wasn’t at all beautiful, Isabelle thought, but she was natural and that was her appeal.

That she appealed to Lynley was something he didn’t hide. He said, “Deb,” and hugged her, kissing her on the cheek. Briefly, Deborah’s fingers touched the back of his neck. “Tommy,” she said in reply.

St. James watched this, his face perfectly unreadable. Then he removed his gaze from his wife and Lynley to Isabelle and said lightly, “How’re you getting on with the Met, then? You’ve been thrown in feetfirst, I dare say.”

“I suppose that’s better than headfirst,” Isabelle replied.

Deborah said, “Dad’s doing us drinks. Did he offer you…? Well, of course he did. Let’s not have them up here. There’s got to be air in the garden. Unless…” She looked from Lynley to Isabelle. “Is this business, Tommy?”

“It can be done in the garden as easily as here.”

“With me? With Simon?”

“Simon this time,” and to St. James, “if you’ve a moment. It shouldn’t take long.”

“I was finished here anyway.” St. James looked round the room and added, “She had the maddest system of organising things, Tommy. I swear to you, I still can’t work it out.”

“She meant to be indispensable to you.”

“Well, she was that.”

Isabelle looked between them once again. Some sort of code, she reckoned.

Deborah said, “It’ll come right eventually, don’t you think?” but it seemed that she wasn’t speaking of the files. Then she smiled at Isabelle and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

The little dog had settled on a tattered blanket in one corner of the room, but she heroically scuttled back down the stairs she’d just come up when she realised their intentions. At the ground floor, Deborah called, “Dad, we’re going to the garden,” and Joseph Cotter replied, “Be there in a tic, then,” from the study where the sound of glass clinking against metal suggested that drinks were being placed on a tray.

The garden comprised lawn, brick patio, herbaceous borders, and an ornamental cherry tree. Deborah St. James led Isabelle to a table and chairs beneath this, chatting about the weather. When they’d sat, she changed gears, directing a long look at Isabelle. “How’s he getting on?” she asked frankly. “We worry about him.”

Isabelle said, “I’m not the best judge, as I’ve not worked with him before. He seems to be doing perfectly well as far as I can tell. He’s very kind, isn’t he?”

Deborah didn’t reply at first. She gazed at the house as if seeing the men within it. After a moment she said, “Helen worked with Simon. Tommy’s wife.”

“Did she? I’d no idea. She was a forensic specialist?”

“No, no. She was…Well, she was rather uniquely Helen. She helped him when he needed her, which usually worked out to be three or four times each week. He misses her terribly, but he won’t talk about it.” She removed her gaze from the house back to Isabelle. “Years ago, they intended to marry-Simon and Helen-but they never did. Well, obviously, they didn’t,” she added with a smile, “and Helen eventually married Tommy. Bit of a difficult situation, isn’t it, making the change from lovers to friends.”

Isabelle didn’t ask why Lynley’s wife and Deborah’s husband had not married. She wanted to do so, but the arrival of the two men supervened, and on their heels came Joseph Cotter with the tray of drinks and the household dog who bounded across the lawn with a yellow ball in her mouth that she proceeded to chew on, plopping herself at Deborah’s feet.

More conversation about the weather followed, but soon enough, Lynley brought up the ostensible reason for this visit to Chelsea. He handed to Simon the manila envelope he’d been carrying in Isabelle’s office. Simon opened it and drew out its contents. Isabelle saw it was the photograph of the yellow shirt from the Oxfam bin.

“What d’you make of it?” Lynley asked his friend.

St. James studied it for a minute in silence before he said, “I should think it’s arterial blood. The pattern on the front of the shirt? It’s a spray.”

“Suggesting?”

“Suggesting this was worn by the killer, and he stood quite close to the victim when he struck the fatal blow. Look at the spray on the collar of the shirt.”

“What d’you reckon that means?”

St. James thought about this, his expression distant. He responded with, “Oddly enough…? I’d say in the midst of an embrace. Anything else and the heaviest spray would surely be on the sleeve, not on the collar and the front of the shirt. Let me show you. Deborah?”

He rose from his chair, no easy business for him because he was disabled. Isabelle hadn’t noticed this earlier. He wore a leg brace, which made his movements awkward.

His wife rose as well and stood as directed by her husband. He put his left arm round her waist and drew her to him. He bent as if to kiss her, and as he did so, he lifted his right hand and brought it down on her neck. The demonstration completed, he touched his wife lightly on the hair and said to Lynley with an indication of the photo, “You can see the heaviest part of the spray is high on the right breast of the shirt. He’s taller than she was, but not by much.”

“Not a defensive wound on her, Simon.”

“Suggesting she knew him well.”

“She was there with him willingly?”

“I dare say.”

Isabelle said nothing. She saw the purpose of this call upon the St. Jameses, and she didn’t know whether to be grateful that Lynley hadn’t made these points-which she reckoned he’d already deduced from the photo-during the team’s meeting at the Met or angry that he had decided to do it this way, in the presence of his friends. She was hardly likely to argue with him here, and he must have known that. It was yet another nail in the coffin of Matsumoto as killer. She had to regroup and she had to do it in haste.

She stirred in her seat. She nodded sagely and made noises about being grateful for their time and, unfortunately, having to be on her way. There were various things to see to, an early morning, the expectation of a witness to be interviewed, undoubtedly a meeting with Hillier…? They would understand, of course.

Deborah was the one to see her to the door. Isabelle thought to ask her if, on the day of the photo, she remembered anything, anyone, any circumstance remotely unusual?

Deborah said the expected. It had been more than six months ago. She could remember virtually nothing about it other than Sidney-“Simon’s sister”-St. James being present. “Oh, and there would be Matt as well,” Deborah added. “He was there.”

“Matt?”

“Matt Jones. Sidney’s partner. He brought her to the cemetery and watched for a few minutes. But he didn’t stay. Sorry. I should have mentioned it earlier. I hadn’t really considered him till now.”

Isabelle was thinking about this as she began to trace the route back to her car. But she hadn’t got far in her speculation when she heard her name called. She turned to see Lynley coming towards her down the pavement. She said when he reached her, “Matt Jones.”

He said, “Who?” He had the manila envelope in his possession again. She gestured for it. He handed it over.

“Sidney St. James’s boyfriend. Her partner. Whatever. He was there that day, in the cemetery, according to Deborah. She’d forgotten till now.”

“When?” And then he put it together. “The day she took the photo?”

“Right. What do we know about him?”

“So far, we know that there’re hundreds of Matthew Joneses. Philip was on it but-”

“All right, all right. I take your meaning, Thomas.” She sighed. She’d pulled Hale off and forced him to stand watch at St. Thomas’ Hospital. If there was critical information out there about Matt Jones, it was still out there, waiting to be uncovered.

Lynley looked towards the river. He said, “Are you interested in dinner, Isabelle? I mean, are you hungry? We could have something in the pub. Or, if you prefer, I don’t live far from here. But you know that, don’t you, as you’ve been to the house.” He sounded rather awkward with the invitation, which Isabelle-despite her growing concerns about the investigation-found a bit charming. She recognised the immediate dangers of getting to know Thomas Lynley better, however. She didn’t particularly want to expose herself to any of them.

He said, “I’d like to talk to you about the case.”

She said, “That’s all?” and she was very surprised to see him flush. He didn’t strike her as a flushing kind of man.

He said, “Of course. What else?” Then he added, “Well, I suppose there’s Hillier as well. The press. John Stewart. The situation. And then there’s Hampshire.”

“What about Hampshire?” She asked the question sharply.

He indicated the pub. “Come to the King’s Head,” he said. “We need to take a break.”

THEY STAYED THREE hours. Lynley told himself it was all in the service of the case in hand. Still, there was more to their elongated sojourn at the King’s Head and Eight Bells than sorting out the various aspects of the investigation. There was the matter of getting to know the acting superintendent and seeing her somewhat differently.

She was careful with what she revealed about herself, like most people, and what she did reveal was painted in positives: an older brother sheep farming in New Zealand, two parents alive and well near Dover where Dad was a ticket agent for a ferry line and Mum was a housewife who sang in the church choir; education in RC schools although she was not now a member of any religion; former husband a childhood sweetheart whom she married too young, unfortunately, before either of them was really prepared for what it takes to make a marriage work.

“I hate to compromise,” she admitted. “I want what I want and there you have it.”

He said, “And what do you want, Isabelle?”

She looked at him frankly before she answered. It was a long look that could have communicated any one of a number of things, he supposed. She said at last with a shrug, “I expect I want what most women want.”

He waited for more. Nothing more was offered. Round them in the pub the noise of the nighttime drinkers seemed suddenly muted, until he realised what muted them was his heartbeat, which was unaccountably loud in his ears. “What’s that?” he asked her.

She fingered the stem of her glass. They’d had wine, two bottles of it, and he’d pay the price the following morning. But they’d stretched the drinking over the hours, and he didn’t feel in the least drunk, he told himself.

He said her name to prompt her to reply, and he repeated his question. She said, “You’re an experienced man, so I think you know very well.”

His heartbeat again, and this time it occluded his throat, which didn’t make sense. But it did prevent him from giving a reply.

She said, “Thank you for dinner. For the St. Jameses as well.”

“There’s no need-”

She rose from the table then, adjusted her bag over her shoulder, and laid her hand on his as she made ready to depart. She said, “Oh, but there is. You could have presented what you’d already concluded about that shirt during our meeting. I’m not blind to that, Thomas. You could have made a perfect fool of me and forced my hand with regard to Matsumoto, but you chose not to. You’re a very kind and decent man.”