Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

“Take off that hat,” Ardery said.

“As to time off, guv . . .”

“I’d like to remind you that you’ve just had time off,” the superintendent snapped. “How many days were you at the beck and call of Inspector Lynley while he was on his little sojourn up in Cumbria?”

Barbara couldn’t deny this. She had just finished assisting Lynley in a private endeavour in which he’d been engaged. He’d been tapped by Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier for a hush-hush matter near Lake Windermere, and Isabelle Ardery had discovered Barbara’s involvement in the matter. She’d not been pleased. Thus, she was going to embrace the idea of Detective Sergeant Havers having more time off to engage in an extracurricular round of policing with all the enthusiasm of a woman being asked to dance the Viennese waltz with a porcupine.

“Take off the hat,” Isabelle repeated. “Now.”

Barbara knew that way would lead to a very dark place. So she said, “Guv, this is an emergency. This is personal. This is family.”

“What part of your family would ‘this’ be? As I understand matters, you have one member to your family, Sergeant, and she’s in a nursing home in Greenford. You can’t be saying your mother wants some policing done for her, can you?”

“It’s not a nursing home. It’s a private residence.”

“Is there a carer present? And does she require care?”

“Of course there is and of course she does,” Barbara told her. “Obviously, you know that.”

“So the policing matter involving your mother is what, exactly?”

“All right.” Barbara sighed. “So it’s not my mother.”

“You said a family matter?”

“All right. It’s not my family either. It’s a friend, and he’s in trouble.”

“As are you. Now am I going to have to ask you again to remove that ridiculous hat?”

There was nothing for it. Barbara pulled the ski cap from her head.

Isabelle stared. She raised a hand as if to ward off an apocalyptic vision. “What,” she said tersely, “am I to make of this? A momentary slip of the scissors leading to a fatal disaster? Or an unspoken message to your superior officer, in this case that officer being me?”

“Guv, that’s not on,” Barbara said. “And it’s not why I’ve come to talk to you.”

“That’s obvious enough. But it’s what I wish to talk about. And we’re back to our previous manner of dress as well, I see. Let me ask again: What sort of message are you sending me, Sergeant? Because the one I’m getting has to do with your future as a traffic warden in the Shetland Islands.”

“You know you can’t make an issue of this,” Barbara told her. “My hair, my clothes. What difference do they make if I’m doing the job?”

“That’s just it, isn’t it?” Isabelle countered. “ If you’re doing the job. Which, as it happens, you haven’t been doing. Which, as it happens, you’ve just walked in here proposing not to do for a few more days or perhaps weeks. While, I expect, you plan to continue collecting your wages in order to keep the only member of your family ensconced in the care home into which she’s been placed. Now what is it exactly that you want, Sergeant? To continue to be employed and to be paid for being employed or to chase round aiding some nonexistent member of your family in an objective about which, by the way, you are being remarkably closemouthed.”

They were face-to-face across the acting superintendent’s desk. Outside her office, the buzz of activity rose and fell. Conversations were going on up and down the corridor. The occasional hush among Barbara’s fellow officers told her that sound of her argument with Superintendent Ardery was being heard. More gossip for the water cooler, she thought. DS Havers has blotted her copybook again.

She said, “Look, guv, a friend of mine has lost his kid. She’s been taken by her mother—”

“So she’s hardly lost, is she? And if she’s been taken against a ruling of the court, then this ‘friend’ of yours can ring up his solicitor or his local nick or anyone else who comes to mind because it is not your job to swan round the country assisting people in distress unless you are ordered to do so by your commanding officer. Have I made myself clear, Sergeant Havers?”

Barbara was silent. She was also steaming. Her brain was racing with what she wanted to say, which was along the lines of “What’s twisting your knickers, you bloody cow?” But she knew where a remark like that could get her. The Shetland Islands would seem like paradise compared to where she’d end up. She said reluctantly, “I s’pose you have.”

“Good,” Isabelle told her. “Now get back to work. And work consists of a meeting you have with the CPS. You can speak to Dorothea about it. She’s set it up.”

VICTORIA

LONDON

Dorothea Harriman was not only the departmental secretary but also the fashion plate upon whose image Barbara had been supposed to model her makeover. But from the first Barbara had failed to see how Dee Harriman managed to be so gorgeously done up on her paltry Met salary. She’d declared more than once that it was just a matter of knowing one’s colours—whatever that meant—and knowing how to accessorise. Plus, she’d revealed, it did help to keep a record of where the best consignment shops were. Anyone could do it, Detective Sergeant Havers. Really. I could teach you if you like.

Barbara didn’t like. She reckoned that Dee Harriman spent every free moment hiking up and down each high street in the capital, prowling for clothes. Who the bloody hell wanted to live like that?

Upon seeing Barbara on her way into Isabelle Ardery’s office, Dorothea had been kind enough not to say a word about her head and the ski cap covering it. She’d been an ardent admirer of the cut and the highlights that Barbara had received at the hands of a Knightsbridge stylist. But after wailing “Detective Sergeant Havers!” she’d seemed to read on Barbara’s face that the road to interpersonal hell was going to be paved with any questions she might ask about what Barbara had done to herself.

She’d come to whatever terms she needed to come to with regard to Barbara’s appearance when Barbara stopped at her desk. She’d obviously overheard the row in the superintendent’s office, and she was ready with the information that Isabelle had said she would hand over.

She was supposed to ring the number on this message, Harriman told Barbara. That clerk from the CPS that she’d been meeting with when she skipped out to help Detective Inspector Lynley up in Cumbria . . . ? He was waiting to take up business again. Those witness statements needed going over. The detective sergeant remembered, surely?

Barbara nodded because, of course, she did. The Crown Prosecutor was a Silk with chambers in Middle Temple. She would, she told Harriman, make the call and get on to this business without delay.

“Sorry.” Harriman tilted her head towards Isabelle’s office. “She’s not altogether herself today. Don’t know why, exactly.”

Barbara did. God only knew how many times a week Isabelle Ardery and Thomas Lynley had been doing their mutual knicker-trawling. But with that at an end, she wagered things round the Yard were going to get tense.

She went to her desk and plopped into its chair. She looked at the phone number Dee Harriman had handed to her. She picked up the handset of the phone and was about to punch in the number when she heard her name spoken—a simple “Barb”—and she looked up to see her fellow detective sergeant Winston Nkata towering over her. He was fingering the long scar on his cheek, the one that marked his formative years spent ganging on the streets of Brixton. He was, as always, impeccably groomed, a man who looked like someone who did his shopping with Harriman hovering at his side. Barbara wondered if he removed his shirt every half hour or so for a spot of pressing in a back room somewhere. Not an inch was wrinkled, not a seam was rucked.