Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

He cleared his throat.

She said, “Not exactly up to your standards, I expect. But it’s a bed, it’s only for the night, there’s an en suite bathroom, and the expense for the team is minimal. So . . . you know.”

He turned to look at her. She was backlit from a streetlamp near the car, and there was a nimbus of light round her hair, putting him in mind of Renaissance paintings of martyred saints. Only the palm leaf was missing from her hand. He said, “I rather hate to leave you here, Daidre.”

“It’s a bit grim, but I’ll survive. Believe me, this is far better than the last place we stayed. An entire cut above, it is.”

“That’s not actually what I meant,” he said. “At least not altogether.”

“I suppose I knew that.”

“What time do you leave in the morning?”

“Half past eight. Although we never quite manage to get off on time. Heavy partying the night before. I’m probably the first one back.”

“I’ve a spare room in my house,” he told her. “Why not sleep there? You could have breakfast with me, and I’d have you back here in time to ride with your teammates to Bristol.”

“Thomas . . .”

“Charlie does the breakfasts, by the way. He’s an exceptional cook.”

She let this one rest there for a minute before she said, “He’s your man, isn’t he?”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Thomas . . .”

He looked away. On the pavement a short distance from them, a girl and boy began to have an argument. They’d been holding hands, but she tossed his away like the wrapper from a takeaway burger.

Daidre said, “No one says deucedly any longer. At least not this side of a costume drama.”

Lynley sighed. “He does get carried away.”

“So is he your man?”

“Oh no. He’s definitely his own man. I’ve been trying to rein him in for years, but he enjoys acting the role of servant. I think he believes it’s extraordinarily good training. He’s probably right.”

“So he’s not a servant?”

“Lord no. I mean, yes and no. He’s an actor, or at least he would be if he had things his way. In the meantime, he works for me. I’ve no trouble with him going to auditions. He has no trouble with my failing to show up for a dinner he’s slaved over for hours in the afternoon.”

“Sounds like you fit hand in glove.”

“More like foot in sock. Or perhaps sockless foot in shoe.” Lynley looked away from the arguing couple who were now shaking their mobile phones at each other. He turned to Daidre. “So he’ll be there in the house, Daidre. He’ll act as chaperone. And, as I said, we’d have a chance to talk over breakfast. And during the ride back here. Although, of course, I could pop you into a taxi should you prefer that.”

“Why?”

“A taxi?”

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s just that . . . things seem unfinished between us. Or perhaps unsettled. Or merely uneasy. Frankly, I’m not sure what it is, but I expect you feel it as much as I do.”

She seemed to think about this for a moment, and from her silence Lynley took hope. But then she shook her head slowly and put her hand on the door handle. “I don’t think so,” she said. “And besides . . .”

“Besides?”

“Water off a duck’s back. That’s how I’d put it, Thomas. But I’m not a duck and things don’t work that way for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You do,” she said. “You know that you do.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I won’t lie, though. It was completely lovely to see you again. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the match.”

Before he could reply, she got out of the car. She hurried into the hotel. She did not look back.

BAYSWATER

LONDON

He was still sitting there in front of the hotel in his car when his mobile rang. He was still feeling the pressure of her lips against his cheek and the sudden warmth of her hand on his arm. So deep was he into his thoughts that the mobile’s ringing startled him. He realised at its sound that he’d not phoned Barbara Havers back as he’d said he would. He glanced at his watch.

It was one a.m. Couldn’t be Havers, he thought. And in the way that the mind will go spontaneously from one thought to another, in the time it took to fish the mobile from his pocket, he thought of his mother, he thought of his brother, he thought of his sister, he thought of emergencies and how they generally did occur in the middle of the night because no one made a friendly call at this hour.

By the time he had the mobile out, he’d decided it had to be a disaster in Cornwall, where his family home was, a heretofore unknown Mrs. Danvers in their employ having set the place alight. But then he saw it was Havers ringing again. He said into the phone hastily, “Barbara. I am so sorry.”

“Bloody hell,” she cried. “Why didn’t you ring back? I’ve been sitting here. And he’s alone over there. And I don’t know what to do or what to tell him because the worst of it is that there’s sod all anyone can do to help and I know it and I lied to him and said we’d do something and I need your help . Because there has to be something—”

“Barbara.” She sounded completely undone. It was so unlike her to babble like this that Lynley knew something was badly wrong. “ Barbara . Slow down. What’s happened?”

The story she told came out in disjointed pieces. Lynley was able to pick up very few details because she was speaking so fast. Her voice was odd. She’d either been weeping—which hardly seemed likely—or she’d been drinking. The latter made little sense, however, considering the urgency of the story she had to tell. Lynley put together what he could, just the salient details:

The daughter of her neighbour and friend Taymullah Azhar was missing. Azhar, a science professor at University College London, had come home from work to find the family flat stripped of nearly all possessions belonging to his nine-year-old daughter as well as to her mother. Only the child’s school uniform remained, along with a stuffed animal and her laptop, all of this lying on her bed.

“Everything else is gone,” Havers said. “I found Azhar sitting on my front step when I got home. She’d rung me, too, Angelina had done, sometime during the day. There was a message on my phone. Could I look in on him this evening? she’d asked me. ‘Hari’s going to be upset,’ she said. Oh yes, too right. Except he’s not upset. He’s destroyed. He’s wrecked, I don’t know what to do or to say, and Angelina even made Hadiyyah leave that giraffe behind and we both know why because it meant a time when he’d taken her to the seaside and he’d won it for her and when someone took it off her on the pleasure pier—”

“Barbara.” Lynley spoke firmly. “ Barbara .”

She breathed in raggedly. “Sir?”

“I’m on my way.”

CHALK FARM

LONDON

Barbara Havers lived in north London, not far from Camden Lock Market. At one in the morning, getting there was merely a matter of knowing the route, as there was virtually no traffic. She lived in Eton Villas, where parking one’s car depended upon very good luck. There was none of that at an hour when the residents of the area were all tucked up into their beds, though, so Lynley made do with blocking the driveway.

Barbara’s digs sat behind a conversion, a yellow Edwardian villa done into flats at some point during the late twentieth century. She herself occupied a structure behind it, a wood-framed building that had once done duty as God only knew what. It had a tiny fireplace, which suggested it had always been used as some sort of living space, but its size suggested that only a single occupant had ever lived there, and one needing very little room.