This Body of Death

Chapter Twenty-Seven

LYNLEY TOOK THE FIRST OF THE PHONE CALLS ON HIS MOBILE as he left Sheldon Pockworth Numismatics, heading for his car on his way to the British Museum. It was from Philip Hale. Initially, his message was positive. Yukio Matsumoto, he reported, was conscious, and Isabelle Ardery was interviewing him in the presence of his brother and sister. However, there was something more, and as Hale was the last of the detectives ever to raise a protest in the midst of an investigation, when he did so, Lynley knew the situation was serious. Ardery was ordering him to stay at the hospital when he could better be used elsewhere, he told Lynley. He’d tried to explain to her that guarding the suspect was something better left to constables so that he could return to more useful occupation, but she wouldn’t hear of it, he said. He was a team player as much as anyone, Tommy, but there came a time when someone had to protest. Obviously, Ardery was a micromanager and she was never going to trust her murder squad to take any initiative. She was-

“Philip,” Lynley cut in, “hang on. I can’t do anything about this. It’s just not on.”

“You can talk to her,” Hale replied. “If you’re showing her the ropes like she claimed you are, then show her that one. Can you see Webberly…or yourself…or even John Stewart, and God knows John’s obsessive enough…? Come on, Tommy.”

“She’s got a lot on her plate.”

“You can’t tell me she won’t listen to you. I’ve seen how she…Oh hell.”

“Seen how she what?”

“She got you to come back to work. We all know that. There’s a reason for it, and likely it’s personal. So use the reason.”

“There’s no personal-”

“Tommy. For God’s sake. Don’t play at being blind when no one else is.”

Lynley didn’t reply for a moment. He considered what had passed between himself and Ardery: how things looked and what they were. He finally said he’d see what he could do although he reckoned it would be little enough.

He phoned the acting superintendent, but Ardery’s mobile went immediately to her voice message. He asked her to ring him, and he kept onward to his car. She wasn’t his responsibility, he thought. If she asked his advice, he could certainly give it. But the point was to let her sink or swim without his interference, no matter what anyone else wanted from him. In what other way could she show that she was up to the job?

He made his way over to Bloomsbury. The second call on his mobile came while he was stuck in traffic in the vicinity of Green Park station. This time it was Winston Nkata ringing him. Barb Havers, he said, in “best Barb fashion” was on her way to defying the superintendent’s instructions that she remain in London. She was, he went on, driving down to Hampshire. He had not been able to talk her out of it. “You know Barb” was how Winston put it.

“She’ll listen to you, man,” Nkata said. “Cos she bloody well i’n’t listening to me.”

“Christ,” Lynley muttered, “she’s a maddening woman. What’s she up to, then?”

“The weapon,” Nkata said. “She recognised it.”

“What d’you mean? She knows who it belongs to?”

“She knows what it is. So do I. We di’n’t see the picture of it till today. Di’n’t have a look at the china board before this morning. And what it is narrows the field to Hampshire.”

“It’s not like you to keep me in suspense, Winston.”

“Called a crook,” Nkata told him. “We saw ’em by the crate in Hampshire, when we talked to that bloke Ringo Heath.”

“The master thatcher.”

“Tha’s the bloke. Crooks’s what’s used to hold reeds in place when you’re putting them on a roof. Not exactly something we’d be used to seeing in London, eh, but in Hampshire? Any place they got thatched roofs and thatchers, you’re goin’ to see crooks.”

“Jossie,” Lynley said.

“Or Hastings. Cos these’re made by hand. Crooks, that is.”

“Hastings? Why?” Then Lynley remembered. “He trained as a blacksmith.”

“And blacksmiths’re the ones who make the crooks. Each one makes ’em different, see. They end up-”

“Like fingerprints,” Lynley concluded.

“Tha’s about it. Which’s why Barb’s heading down there. She said she’d ring Ardery first, but you know Barb. So I thought you might…you know. Barb’ll listen to you. Like I said, she wasn’t having anything off me.”

Lynley cursed beneath his breath. He rang off. Traffic began moving, so he continued on his way, determined to track down Havers via mobile as soon as he could. He hadn’t managed this when his mobile rang again. This time it was Ardery.

“Where’ve you got with the coin dealer?” she asked.

He briefed her, telling her he was on his way to the British Museum. She said, “Excellent. It’s a motive, isn’t it? And we’ve found no coin among her things, so someone took it off her at some point. We’re getting somewhere at last. Good.” She went on to tell him what Yukio Matsumoto had informed her: There had been two men in the vicinity of the chapel in Abney Park Cemetery, not just one. Indeed, there had been three, if they wanted to include Matsumoto himself. “We’re working with him on an e-fit. His solicitor showed up while I was talking to him and we had something of a set-to-God, that woman’s like a pit bull-but she’s on board for the next two hours. As long as the Met admits culpability in Yukio’s accident.”

Lynley drew in a sharp breath. “Isabelle, Hillier’s never going to go for that.”

“This,” Isabelle said, “is more important than Hillier.”

It would, Lynley thought, be a very snowy day in hell before David Hillier saw things that way. Before he could tell the acting superintendent as much, however, she had rung off. He sighed. Hale, Havers, Nkata, and Ardery. Where to begin? He chose the British Museum.

There at last, he tracked down a woman called Honor Robayo who had the powerful build of an Olympic swimmer and the handshake of a successful politician. She said frankly and with an appealing grin, “Never thought I’d be talking to a cop. Read masses of mysteries and detective novels, I do. Who d’you reckon you’re more like, then, Rebus or Morse?”

“I have a fatal proclivity for vintage vehicles,” Lynley admitted.

“Morse it is.” Robayo crossed her arms on her chest, high up, as if her biceps wouldn’t allow her arms to get closer to her body. “So. What c’n I do for you, then, Inspector Lynley?”

He told her why he’d come: to talk to the curator about a coin from the time of Antoninus Pius. This coin would be an aureus, he said.

“Got one you want to show me?” she asked.

“I was hoping for the opposite,” he replied. And could Ms. Robayo tell him what such a coin might be worth? “I’d heard between five hundred and a thousand pounds,” Lynley said. “Would you agree?”

“Let’s just have a quick look.”

She took him to her office where amid books, magazines, and documents on her desk, she also kept her computer. It was a small matter to access a site on which coins were sold and a smaller matter to find on this site an aureus from the time of Antoninus Pius offered for bidding on the open market. The amount being asked was given in dollars, three thousand, six hundred. More than Dugué had thought likely. Not a huge sum, but a sum to kill for? Possibly.

“Do coins like these need a provenance?” Lynley asked.

“Well, they’re not like art, are they? No one’s going to care who’s owned it in the past unless, I suppose, it was some Nazi who took it off a Jewish family. The real questions about it will circle round its authenticity and its material.”

“Meaning?”

She indicated the computer screen on which the aureus for sale was pictured. “It’s either an aureus or it’s not an aureus: It’s pure gold or not. And that’s not something that’d be tough to sort out. As to its age-is it really from the period of Antoninus Pius?-I suppose someone could fake one, but any coin expert would be able to spot that. Besides, there’s the question of why one would go to all the trouble of faking a coin like this. I mean, we’re not talking about faking a ‘newly discovered’ painting by Rembrandt or van Gogh. You c’n imagine what something like that would be worth if someone could pull the wool successfully. Tens of millions, eh? But a coin? One would have to ask if thirty-six hundred dollars makes it worth the effort.”

“Over time, however?”

“You mean, if someone had faked a lorry load of coins to sell in dribs and drabs? Possibly, I s’pose.”

“May I have a look at one?” Lynley asked. “Aside from on the computer screen, I mean. D’you have any here in the museum?”

They did indeed, Honor Robayo told him. If he’d follow her…? They’d have to toddle over to the collection itself, but it wasn’t far and she expected Lynley would find it interesting.

She led him back through time and place in the museum-ancient Iran, Turkey, Mesopotamia-until they got to the Roman collection. Lynley had been here but not in years. He’d forgotten the extent of the treasure.

Mildenhall, Hoxne, Thetford. They were called the hoards because that was how they had each been found, as a hoard hidden through burial during the time of the Romans’ occupation of Britain. Things hadn’t always gone swimmingly for the Romans as they attempted to subdue the people whom they’d come to rule. Since those people hadn’t generally taken well to being vanquished, rebellions occurred. During these intermittent periods of revolt, Roman riches were concealed to keep them safe. Sometimes the owners of these riches were unable to return for them, so they remained buried for centuries: in sealed jars, in wooden cases lined with straw, in whatever was available at the time.

This had been the case for the Mildenhall, Hoxne, and Thetford Hoards, which comprised the main treasures that had been found. Buried for more than one thousand years, each had been unearthed during the twentieth century and they included everything from coins to vessels, from body ornaments to religious plaques.

There were minor treasure hoards in the collection as well, each representing a different area of Britain where the Romans had settled. The most recently discovered was the Hoxne Hoard, Lynley saw, which had been uncovered in Suffolk on county council land in 1992. The discoverer-a bloke called Eric Lawes-had miraculously left the treasure exactly where and as it lay and had phoned the authorities at once. Out they came to scoop up more than fifteen thousand gold and silver coins; silver tableware; and gold jewellery in the form of necklaces, bracelets, and rings. It was a sensational find. Its value, Lynley reckoned, was incalculable.

“Much to his credit,” Lynley murmured.

“Hmm?” Honor Robayo said.

“The fact that Mr. Lawes turned it in. The treasure and this gentleman who found it.”

“Well, of course,” she said. “But really, less to his credit than you might think.” She and Lynley were standing in front of one of the cases that contained the Hoxne Hoard, where a reconstruction of the chest in which the hoard had been buried was rendered in acrylic. She moved from this across the room to the immense silver platters and trays from the Mildenhall Hoard. She leaned against the case and said, “Remember, this bloke Eric Lawes was out there looking for metal objects anyway. And as that’s what he was doing in the first place, he likely would’ve known the law. ’Course the law’s been changed round a bit since this hoard was found, but at the time, a hoard like Hoxne would’ve become the property of the Crown.”

“Doesn’t that indicate he’d have had a motive to hang on to it?” Lynley asked.

She shrugged. “What’s he supposed to do with it? Especially when the law said a museum could purchase it from the Crown-at fair market value, mind you-and whoever found it would get that money as a reward. That’s some considerable dosh.”

“Ah,” Lynley said. “So someone would be motivated to hand it over, not to hang on to it.”

“Right.”

“And now?” He smiled, feeling rather foolish for the last question. He said, “Forgive me. I probably ought to know the law about this, as a policeman.”

“Bah,” was her reply. “I doubt you come across many cases of people unearthing treasures in your particular line of work. Anyway, the law’s not much changed. Finder has fourteen days to report the treasure-if he knows it’s a treasure-to the local coroner. He actually could be prosecuted if he doesn’t ring up the coroner, as a matter of fact. Local coroner-”

“Hang on,” Lynley said. “What d’you mean, if he knows it’s a treasure.”

“Well, that’s the thing about the 1996 law, you see. It defines what a treasure is. One coin, f’r instance, does not a treasure make, if you know what I mean. Two coins, however, and you’re on shaky ground if you don’t get on the phone and let the proper authorities know.”

“So that they can do what?” Lynley asked. “On the off chance that all you’ve found is two coins and not twenty thousand?”

“So that they can bring out an archaeological team and dig the hell out of your property, I expect,” Honor Robayo said. “Which, to be frank, most people don’t mind because they end up with fair market value for the treasure.”

“If a museum wants to buy it.”

“Right.”

“And if no one does? If the Crown claims it?”

“That’s another interesting bit about the change in law. The Crown can only put its mitts on treasures from the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster. As to the rest of the country…? While it’s not exactly a case of finders keepers/losers weepers, the finder will end up with a reward when the treasure is finally sold, and if the treasure is anything like these”-with a nod at the cases of silver and gold and jewellery in room 49-“you can lay good odds on the reward being hefty.”

“So what you’re saying,” Lynley said, “is that the finder of something like this has absolutely no motivation for keeping the news to himself or to herself.”

“None at all. Of course, I s’pose he could hide it under his bed and bring it out at night and run his hands through it gleefully, for all that’s going to get him. Sort of a Silas Marner kind of thing, if you know what I mean. But at the end of the day, most people’d prefer the cash, I expect.”

“And if all that’s been found is a single coin?”

“Oh, he can keep that. Which bring us to…Over here. We’ve got the aureus you were looking for.”

It was inside one of the smaller cases, one in which various coins were displayed and identified. The aureus in question looked no different from the one he’d seen on the screen of James Dugué’s computer at Sheldon Pockworth Numismatics a short time earlier. Lynley gazed at it, willing the coin to tell him something about Jemima Hastings, who’d supposedly had it in her possession at some point. If, as Honor Robayo had so colourfully indicated, one coin did not a treasure make, then there was every chance that Jemima had possessed it merely as a memento or a good luck charm that she was considering selling, perhaps to help her with her finances in London once she came to live in town. She would have needed to know what it was worth first. There was nothing unreasonable about that. But part of what she’d told the coin dealer had been a lie: Her father hadn’t died recently. From Havers’ report on the matter, as he recalled, Jemima’s father had been dead for years. Did that lie matter? Lynley didn’t know. But he did need to talk to Havers.

He moved away from the case containing the aureus, thanking Honor Robayo for her time. She seemed to think she’d disappointed him in some way because she apologised and said, “Well. Anyway. I do wish there was something…Have I helped at all?”

Again, he didn’t really know. It was certain that he had more information than he’d had earlier in the day. But as to how it reflected a motive for killing Jemima Hastings-

He frowned. The Thetford treasure caught his attention. They’d not looked so closely at that one because it comprised not coins but rather tableware and jewellery. The former was mostly done in silver. The latter was gold. He went for a look.

It was the jewellery that interested him: rings, buckles, pendants, bracelets, and necklaces. The Romans had known how to adorn themselves. They’d done so with precious and semiprecious stones, for the larger pieces along with some of the rings contained garnets, amethysts, and emeralds. Among these nestled one stone in particular, reddish in colour. It was, he could see at once, a carnelian. But what caught his eye was not so much the stone’s presence among the others but what had been done with it: Venus, Cupid, and the armour of Mars were engraved upon it, according to the description given. And it was, in short, nearly identical to the stone that had been found on Jemima’s body.

Lynley swung round to look at Honor Robayo. She raised an eyebrow as if to say, What is it?

He said, “Not two coins but a coin and a gemstone together. Do we have a treasure? Something that has to be reported to that local coroner you were mentioning a moment ago?”

“Something governed by the law?” She considered this, scratching her head. “I s’pose that could be argued. But you could equally argue that someone who happens to find two superficially unrelated objects might merely clean them up, set them aside, and not think about them in relation to the law. I mean, how many people out there actually know this law? Find a treasure like the Hoxne Hoard and you’re highly likely to make a few enquiries as to what you’re supposed to do next, right? Find a single coin and a stone-both of which probably needed massive cleaning, mind you-and why would you jump to the phone over that? I mean, it’s not like newsreaders are announcing on the telly once a week that their viewers must ring up the coroner on the off chance that they’ve unearthed a treasure chest while they’re planting their tulips. Besides, people think of coroners and death, don’t they, not coroners and treasure hoards.”

“Yet according to law, two items constitute treasure, don’t they?”

“Well…Right. They do. Yes.”

It was little enough, Lynley thought, and Honor Robayo could certainly have sounded more robust in her agreement. But at least it was something. If not a torch then at least a match, and as he knew, a match was better than nothing when one was wandering in the dark.

BARBARA HAVERS HAD stopped for both petrol and sustenance when her mobile rang. Otherwise, she would have religiously ignored it. As it was, she’d just pulled into the vast car park of a services area and she was striding towards the Little Chef-first things first, she’d told herself, and first things meant a decent fry-up to see her through the rest of the day-when she heard “Peggy Sue” emanating from her shoulder bag. She rooted out the mobile to see that DI Lynley was ringing her. She took the call as she marched towards the promise of food and air-conditioning.

“Where are you, Sergeant?” Lynley asked without preamble.

His tone told her that someone had sneaked on her, and it could only have been Winston Nkata since no one else knew what she was up to and Winnie was nothing if not scrupulous about obeying orders, no matter how maddening they were. Winnie, in fact, even obeyed non-orders. He anticipated orders, damn the man.

She said, “About to sink my teeth into a major food group that’s been dipped into batter and thoroughly fried, and let me tell you I don’t much care which food group it is at this point. Peckish doesn’t begin to describe, if you know what I mean. Where are you?”

“Havers,” Lynley said, “you didn’t answer my question. Please do so.”

She sighed. “I’m at a Little Chef, sir.”

“Ah. Centre for all that’s nutritious. And where might this particular branch of that fine eating establishment be?”

“Well, let me see…” She considered how to dress up the information but she knew it was useless to make it sound like anything other than what it was. So she finally said, “Along the M3.”

“Where along the M3, Sergeant?”

Reluctantly she gave him the nearest exit number.

“And does Superintendent Ardery know where you happen to be going?”

She didn’t reply. This was, she knew, a rhetorical question. She waited for what was coming next.

“Barbara, is professional suicide really your intention?” Lynley enquired politely.

“I rang her, sir.”

“Did you.”

“It went to her voice mail. I told her I was on to something. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Perhaps what you were meant to be doing? In London?”

“That’s hardly the point. Look, sir, did Winnie tell you about the crook? It’s a thatching tool and-”

“He did indeed tell me. And your intention in heading off to Hampshire is what, exactly?”

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Jossie’s got thatching tools. Ringo Heath’s got thatching tools. Rob Hastings likely once made thatching tools, which’re probably lying round his barn. Then there’s the bloke that works with Jossie-Cliff Coward-who could put his mitts on a thatching tool, and there’s that cop Whiting as well because something’s not right with him, in case you’re about to tell me I should’ve rung up the Lyndhurst station and given him the news about the crook. I’ve got a snout at the Home Office, by the way, looking into Whiting.” Which is more than you were able to do, she wanted to say but did not.

If she thought Lynley would be impressed with the leaps and bounds she was making while he’d been swanning round London doing whatever Isabelle Ardery had asked him to do, she was proven wrong almost at once. He said, “Barbara, I want you to stay where you are.”

She said, “What? Sir, listen to me-”

“You can’t take matters-”

“…into my own hands? That’s what you’re going to say, isn’t it? Well, I wouldn’t have to if the superintendent-the acting superintendent, mind you-had something other than tunnel vision. She’s dead wrong about that Japanese bloke and you know it.”

“And she knows it now as well.” He told her what Ardery had managed to get from her interview with Yukio Matsumoto.

Barbara said, “Two men in the cemetery with her? Aside from Matsumoto? Bloody hell, sir. Don’t you see that one of them-and possibly both of them-came up from Hampshire?”

“I don’t disagree in the least,” Lynley told her. “But you’ve only got one part of this puzzle under your pillow, and you know as well as I that if you play that part too soon, you’ve lost the game.”

Barbara smiled then, in spite of herself. “Are you aware of how many metaphors you just mixed?”

She could hear the smile in his own voice when he said, “Call it the passion of the moment. It prevents me from thinking cleverly.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

She listened then to what he had to say about Roman treasure hoards, about the British Museum, about the law, about finders of treasures and what they were owed. When he was finished, she whistled and said, “Brilliant. Whiting must know this. He has to.”

“Whiting?” Lynley sounded incredulous. “Barbara-”

“No. Listen. Someone unearths a treasure. Jossie, let’s say. In fact, it’s got to be Jossie. He doesn’t know what to do, so he rings the coppers. Who else to ring if you don’t know the law, eh? Word gets up the food chain at the Lyndhurst station to Whiting and Bob’s your uncle: Out he trots. He lays eyes on the booty; he sees what the future could hold for him if he manages to claim it as his own-cops’ pensions being what they are-and then-”

“What?” Lynley demanded. “He scarpers up to London and kills Jemima Hastings? Might I ask why?”

“’Cause he’s got to kill anyone who knows about the treasure, and if she went to see this Sheldon Mockworth bloke-”

“Pockworth,” Lynley said. “Sheldon Pockworth. And he doesn’t exist. That’s just the name of the shop.”

“Whatever. She goes to see him. She verifies what the coin is. She knows there’s more-lots more, piles of more-and now she knows it’s the real thing. Vast amounts of lolly all waiting to be scooped up. And Whiting bloody knows it as well.” Barbara was building a real head of steam on the topic. They were so close to cracking what was going on. She could feel her entire body tingling with the knowledge.

Lynley said patiently, “Barbara, are you at all aware of how much you’re actually ignoring with all this?”

“Like what?”

“Just to begin, why did Jemima Hastings abruptly leave Hampshire in the first place if there was a vast treasure of Roman coins sitting there waiting for her to share in it? Why, after she identified the coin-months and months ago, by the way-did she apparently do nothing more about it? Why, if the man she lived with in Hampshire had dug up an entire Roman treasure, did she never mention the slightest thing about this to anyone, including, mind you, a psychic whom she apparently visited numerous times to ask about her love life instead?”

“There’s an explanation, for God’s bloody sake.”

“All right. Do you have it?”

“I damn well would if you-”

“What?”

If you would work with me. That was the answer. But Barbara couldn’t bring herself to say it because of what the declaration implied.

He knew her well, though. Far too well. He said in that most reasonable tone of his, “Listen, Barbara. Will you wait for me? Will you stay where you are? I can be there in less than an hour. You were about to have a meal. Have it. Then wait. Will you do that much?”

She thought about this, even though she knew what her answer would be. He was, after all, still her longtime partner. He was, after all, still and always Lynley.

She sighed. “All right. I’ll wait,” she told him. “Have you had lunch? Sh’ll I order you a fry-up?”

“Good God, no,” he replied.

LYNLEY KNEW THAT the last thing Barbara Havers was was a woman given to cooling her heels merely because she’d agreed to hold off momentarily on a course of action she was determined to take. So he was unsurprised when he walked into the Little Chef some ninety minutes later-frustratingly delayed by a burst water main in South London-to discover that she was burning up minutes on her mobile phone. The remains of her meal lay before her. In typical Havers fashion, it was a veritable monument to arterial blockage. To her credit, at least a few of the chips remained uneaten, but the presence of a bottle of malt vinegar told him that the rest of the meal had likely consisted-as she’d promised-of cod deep fried and sealed in copious amounts of batter. She’d followed this up with sticky toffee pudding, it seemed. He looked at all this and then at her. She was incorrigible.

She nodded a hello as he examined the plastic chair opposite her for the remains of a previous diner’s meal. Finding it free of grease and food scraps, he sat. She said, “Now that’s interesting,” to whoever was the recipient of her phone call, and when she had at last ended the conversation, she jotted a few lines in her tattered spiral notebook. She said to Lynley, “Something to eat?”

“I’m thinking of giving it up entirely.”

She grinned. “My dining habits inspire you that much, do they, sir?”

“Havers,” he replied solemnly, “believe me, words fail.”

She chuckled and rooted out her cigarettes from her shoulder bag. She would know, of course, that smoking was forbidden inside the eatery. He waited to see if she would light up anyway and wait to be thrown out of the place. She did not. Instead, she set the Players to one side and did some further excavation, which produced a roll of Polos. She dislodged one for herself and offered him another. He demurred.

“Bit more on Whiting,” she told him, with a nod at her mobile on the table between them.

“And?”

“Oh, I definitely think we’re heading where we need to be heading when it comes to that bloke. Just you wait. Heard from Ardery yet? D’we have an e-fit from Matsumoto on either of the blokes he saw in the cemetery?”

“I think that’s in hand, but I haven’t heard.”

“Well, I c’n tell you if one of them’s a ringer for Jossie then the other will be Whiting’s identical twin if it’s not Whiting himself.”

“And what are you basing this inference upon?”

“That was Ringo Heath I was talking to. You know. The bloke-”

“-under whom Gordon Jossie learned his trade. Yes. I know who he is.”

“Right. Well. Seems our Ringo’s had more than one visit from Chief Superintendent Whiting over the years, and the first of them came before Gordon Jossie ever signed on as Ringo’s apprentice.”

Lynley considered what Havers was saying. To him, she was sounding rather more triumphant than the information seemed to call for. He replied with, “And this is important because…?”

“Because of what he wanted to know when he first came to see him: Did Ringo Heath take on apprentices. And, by the way, what was Mr. Heath’s familial situation?”

“Meaning?”

“Did he have a wife, kids, dogs, cats, mynah birds, the whole cricket match. Two weeks later-p’rhaps three or four, but who knows as it was a long time ago, he says-along comes this bloke Gordon Jossie with, it turns out and we bloody well know this, phony letters from Winchester Technical College Two in hand. So Ringo-who’s already told Whiting he takes on apprentices, remember-hires our Gordon and that should’ve been that.”

“I take it that that wasn’t that?”

“Too bloody right. On the odd occasion, Whiting shows up. Sometimes he runs into Ringo at his local, even. Which, you can bet, isn’t Whiting’s local. He makes enquiries, casual ones. They’re in the nature of how’s-the-work-coming-along-my-friend, but Ringo isn’t exactly dead between the ears, is he, so he reckons this has to do with more than just a friendly enquiry from one of the local rozzers as he hoists a pint. ’Sides, who likes to have the local rozzers being friendly? That’d make me dead nervous and I’m one of them.” She drew in a breath. It seemed to Lynley the first time she’d done so. Clearly, she was heading for the peroration of her remarks because she said, “Now. Like I told you, I’ve got a snout in place at the Home Office looking into our Zachary Whiting. Meantime, there’s the thatching crook to be dealt with. None of the principles in London’re going to have got their mitts on a thatching tool-”

“Hang on,” Lynley said. “Why not?”

That stopped her in her tracks. She said, “What d’you mean ‘Why not?’ You can’t expect these things to be growing in flower beds.”

“Havers, this particular tool was old and rusty,” Lynley said. “What does that suggest to you?”

“That it was old and rusty. Left lying about. Taken from an old roof. Discarded in a barn. What else is it supposed to mean?”

“Sold in a London market by a dealer in tools?”

“No bloody way.”

“Why not? You know as well as I do that there are antique markets in every part of town, from formal markets to casual affairs set up on Sunday afternoons. If we come down to it, there’s a market right inside Covent Garden where one of the suspects-you do remember Paolo di Fazio, don’t you?-actually has a stall. The crime was committed in London, not Hampshire, and it stands to reason-”

“No bloody way!” Havers’ voice was loud. Several diners in the Little Chef glanced in their direction. She saw them do so and said, “Sorry,” to Lynley, adding in a hiss, “Sir. Sir. You can’t be telling me that the use of a thatching tool to kill Jemima Hastings was an absolute and completely incredible coincidence. You can’t, you just can’t, be saying that our killer conveniently picked out something to do away with her and that ‘something’ just happened to be one of the very same somethings that Gordon Jossie uses in his work? That horse won’t run once round the track, and you bloody well know it.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“Then what? What?”

He considered this. “Perhaps it was used to frame Gordon Jossie. Can we believe that Jemima never told a soul in London about the man she left behind in Hampshire, about the fact that her former lover was a master thatcher? Once Jossie came looking for her, once he began putting up those cards with his phone number on them round the streets, doesn’t it stand to reason that she would have told someone-Paolo di Fazio, Jayson Druthers, Frazer Chaplin, Abbott Langer, Yolanda, Bella McHaggis…someone-who this person was?”

“What would she have told them?” Havers said. “Okay, my ex-boyfriend, p’rhaps. I’ll give you that. But my ex-boyfriend the thatcher? Why would she tell someone he was a thatcher?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

Havers threw herself back in her seat. She’d been leaning forward, intent upon making her every point, but now she observed him. Round them, the noise of the Little Chef rose and fell. When Havers finally spoke again, Lynley was unprepared for the direction she took.

She said, “It’s Ardery, isn’t it, sir?”

“What’s Ardery? What are you talking about?”

“You know bloody well. You’re talking like this because of her, because she thinks this’s a London situation.”

“It is a London situation. Havers, I hardly need remind you that the crime was committed in London.”

“Right. Excellent. Bloody brilliant of you. You don’t need to remind me. And I don’t think I need to remind you that we aren’t living in the age of transportation by horseback. You seem to think that no one from Hampshire-and for that you c’n read Jossie or Whiting or Hastings or Father Bleeding Christmas-could’ve got up to London in any number of ways, done the deed, and then gone home.”

“Father Christmas hardly comes from Hampshire,” Lynley said dryly.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“Havers, listen. Don’t be-”

“What? Absurd? That’s the word you’d use, isn’t it. But at the end of the day the real issue here is you’re protecting her and we both know it although only one of us knows why you’re doing it.”

“That’s outrageous and untrue,” Lynley replied. “And, might I add, although it’s never stopped you before, now you’re out of order.”

“Don’t you bloody pull rank on me,” Barbara told him. “From the first, she’s wanted to think this is a London case. She had it that way when she decided Matsumoto did it, and she’ll have it that way once she gets an e-fit off him, just you wait for that. Meantime, Hampshire’s crawling with nasties that no one’s beginning to want to look at-”

“For the love of God, Barbara, she sent you to Hampshire.”

“And she ordered me back before I was finished. Webberly would’ve never done that. You wouldn’t have done it. Even that wanker Stewart wouldn’t ever have done it. She’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and-” Havers stopped abruptly. She seemed to have run out of steam. She said, “I need a fag,” and she grabbed up her belongings. She strode towards the doors of the place. He followed her, weaving between the tables of onlookers who’d become understandably curious about what was going on between them.

Lynley thought he knew. It was a logical leap that Havers was making. It was just the wrong one.

Outside, she was striding towards her car, on the far side of the car park in the direction of the petrol pumps. He was parked nearer the Little Chef than she, so he got into the Healey Elliott and drove after her. He came up alongside her. She was smoking furiously, muttering to herself. She tossed a glance his way and increased her speed.

He said, “Havers, get in.”

“I’d rather walk.”

“Don’t be stupid. Get in. That’s an order.”

“I don’t obey orders.”

“You will now, Sergeant.” And then, seeing her face and reading the pain that he knew was at the heart of why she was acting as she was, he said, “Barbara, please get into the car.”

She stared at him. He stared at her. Finally, she tossed away her cigarette and climbed into the car. He said nothing until he’d driven across the car park to the only spot of shade available, provided by an enormous lorry the driver of which was likely inside the Little Chef as they themselves had just been.

Havers groused, “This car must’ve cost you a mint. Why’s it not got air-conditioning, for God’s bloody sake?”

“It was built in 1948, Barbara.”

“Stupid excuse.” She didn’t look at him, nor did she look straight ahead of them into the shrubbery beyond which the M3 offered a broken view of traffic whizzing towards the south. Instead, she looked out of her side window, offering him the sight of the back of her head.

“You’ve got to stop cutting your own hair,” he told her.

“Shut up,” she said quietly. “You sound like her.”

A moment passed. He raised his head and looked at the pristine ceiling of the car. He thought about praying for guidance, but he didn’t really need it. He knew what had to be said between them. Yet it constituted the Great Unmentionable that had been governing his life for months. He didn’t want to mention it. He just wanted to get on.

He said quietly, “She was the light, Barbara. That was the most extraordinary thing about her. She had this…this ability that was simply at the core of who she was. It wasn’t that she made light of things-situations, people, you know what I mean-but that she was able to bring light with her, to uplift merely by virtue of who she was. I saw her do this time and again, with Simon, with her sisters, with her parents, and then of course with me.”

Havers cleared her throat. Still she did not look at him.

He said, “Barbara, do you believe-do you honestly believe-that I could walk away from that so easily? That, so desperate to get out of the wilderness, because I admit I am desperate to get out of it, I would take any route that appeared before me? Do you believe that?”

She didn’t reply. But her head lowered. He heard a small sound emanate from her, and he knew what it meant. God, how he knew.

He said, “Let it go, Barbara. Stop worrying so. Learn to trust me, because if you don’t, how will I learn to trust myself?”

She began to weep in earnest, then, and Lynley knew what her show of emotion was costing her. He said nothing else, for there was, indeed, nothing more to say.

Moments passed before she turned to him, and then it was to say, “I don’t have a damn tissue.” She began to scramble round her seat, as if looking for something. He fished out his handkerchief and handed it over. She used it, saying, “Ta. Trust you to have the linen ready.”

“The curse of my upbringing,” he told her. “It’s even ironed.”

“I noticed,” she said. “I expect you didn’t iron it, though.”

“God, no.”

“Figures. You don’t even know how.”

“Well, I admit that ironing isn’t among my talents. But I expect if I knew where the iron was kept in my house-which, thank God, I don’t-I could put it to use. On something simple like a handkerchief, mind you. Anything more complicated would completely defeat me.”

She chuckled wearily. She leaned back in the seat and shook her head. Then she seemed to examine the car itself. The Healey Elliott was a saloon with room for four, and she squirmed round for a look in the back. She noted, “This’s the first time I’ve been in your new motor.”

“The first of many, I hope, as long as you don’t smoke.”

“Wouldn’t dare. But I can’t promise I won’t eat. Nice bit of fish and chips to make the insides smell sweet. You know what I mean. What’s this then? Up for some light reading?” She fished something from the backseat and brought it to the front. It was, he saw, the copy of Hello! he’d had from Deborah St. James. Havers looked from it to him and cocked her head. “Checking up on the social scene, are you? Not what I’d expect you to do ’less you take this with you when you go for your manicures. You know. Something to read while the nails are being buffed?”

“It’s Deborah’s,” he said. “I wanted to have a look at the photos from the Portrait Gallery opening.”

“And?”

“Lots of people holding champagne glasses and looking well turned out. That’s about it.”

“Ah. Not my crowd, then?” Havers opened the magazine and began flipping through it. She found the appropriate set of pages, where the photos of the portrait competition’s opening show were spread out. “Right,” she said, “not a hoisted pint anywhere, more’s the pity. ’Cause a decent ale’s better than some thimbleful of champagne any day of the-” Her hand tightened on the magazine. She said, “Holy hell,” and she turned to him.

“What is it?” Lynley asked.

“Frazer Chaplin was there,” Havers said, “and in the picture-”

“Was he?” Then Lynley remembered how in person Frazer had seemed so familiar to him. That was it, then. He’d obviously seen the Irishman in one of the pictures of the Gallery opening, forgetting about it later. Lynley glanced at the magazine and saw that Havers was indeed indicating a photo of Frazer. He’d been the swarthy man in the picture of Sidney St. James. “More evidence he was involved with Jemima,” Lynley said, “no matter that he’s posing with Sidney.”

“No, no,” Havers said. “Frazer’s not the point. It’s her. Her.”

“Sidney?”

“Not Sidney. Her.” Havers pointed to the rest of the crowd and specifically to another woman, this one young, blond, and very attractive. Some socialite, he reckoned, the wife or daughter of a gallery sponsor, likely. But Havers disabused him of that notion when next she spoke. “It’s Gina Dickens, Inspector,” she said, and she added unnecessarily, because at that point he knew quite well who Gina Dickens was, “She lives in Hampshire, with Gordon Jossie.”

Much has been made not only of the British criminal justice system but also of the trial that followed the boys’ confessions. Words such as barbaric, Byzantine, archaic, and inhuman have been used, and commentators around the globe have taken strong positions on both sides of the matter, some of them passionately arguing that inhumanity, no matter its source, should be met with like inhumanity (invoking Hammurabi), and others of them just as passionately contending that nothing is served by the public pillorying of children and, indeed, further damage is done to them. What remains is this singular fact: Governed by a law that makes children responsible for their behaviour at the age of ten in the case of capital crimes, Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker had to be tried as adults. Thus, they faced trial by judge and jury.

What is also worthy of note is that, when a serious crime has been committed by children, they are forbidden by law to have any therapeutic access to psychiatrists or psychologists prior to trial. While such professionals are tangentially involved in the developing proceedings against children, their examination of the accused is strictly limited to determining two things: whether the child in question was-at the time of the crime-capable of distinguishing between right and wrong and whether such child was responsible for his acts.

Six child psychiatrists and three psychologists examined the boys. Interestingly, they reached identical conclusions: Michael Spargo, Ian Barker, and Reggie Arnold were of average to above-average intelligence; they were fully cognizant of the difference between right and wrong; they were well aware of the notion of personal responsibility, despite (or perhaps because of) their attempts to blame each other for John Dresser’s torture and death.

In the climate that surrounded the investigation into John Dresser’s abduction and murder, what other conclusions could have been drawn? As has already been noted, “Blood will have blood.” Yet the sheer enormity of what was done to John Dresser begged for a disinterested approach from all parties involved in the investigation, the arrest, and the trial. Without that kind of approach in these matters, we are doomed to cling to our ignorance, believing that the torture and murder of children by children is somehow normal, when no rational mind would accept this as the case.

We do not need to forgive the crime, nor do we need to excuse it. But we do need to see the reason for it so as to prevent its ever occurring again. Yet whatever the true cause was that lay at the root of the three boys’ heinous behaviour that day, it was not presented at their trial because it did not need to be presented. The police’s function was not to delve into the psychological makeup of the boys once they were arrested. Rather, their function was to make that arrest and to organise the evidence, the witnesses’ statements, and the boys’ confessions for the prosecution. For their part, the prosecution’s function was to obtain a conviction. And because any therapeutic psychological or psychiatric attention to the boys prior to their trial was forbidden by law, whatever defence could be mounted on their behalf had to rely upon their counsels’ attempts to shift blame from one boy on to another or to chip away at what testimony and evidence the CPS presented to the jury.

In the end, of course, none of this mattered. The preponderance of evidence against the three boys made the outcome of their trial ineluctable.

Abused children carry abuse forward through time. This is the unthinkable gift that keeps on giving. Study after study underscores this conclusion, yet that salient piece of information was not part of the trial of Reggie Arnold, Michael Spargo, and Ian Barker. It could not have been, based not only on criminal law but also on the thirst (we might call it “blood thirst”) for some form of justice to be handed down. Someone had to pay for what had happened to little John Dresser. The trial established guilt beyond any doubt. It was up to the judge to determine punishment.

Unlike many more socially advanced countries in which children accused of crimes are remanded into the custody of their parents, foster parents, or some sort of care pending what is usually a hearing held in camera, child criminals in the UK are placed in “secure units” designed to house them prior to facing a court of law. During their trial, the three boys daily came and went from three separate secure units-in three armed vans that had to be protected from surging crowds waiting for them at the Royal Court of Justice-and while court was in session, they sat in the company of their individual social workers inside a dock designed especially for them and built so that they could see over the side in order to watch the proceedings. They were well behaved throughout, although occasionally restless. Reggie Arnold had been given a colouring book with which to entertain himself during tedious moments; the other boys had pads of paper and pencils. Ian Barker was stoic throughout the first week, but by the end of the second week, he continually looked around the courtroom as if seeking his mother or grandmother. Michael Spargo spoke frequently to his social worker, who often had her arm around him and who allowed him to rest his head on her shoulder. Reggie Arnold cried. Frequently, as testimony was given, members of the jury observed the accused. Sworn to do their duty, they could not have helped wondering what exactly their duty was in the situation they faced.

The verdict of guilty took only four hours. The decision on punishment would take two weeks.