Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

He stood up immediately afterwards, cleaning himself on her shorts and tossing them back to her. He zipped his jeans and said, “This place smells like a toilet. I’ve got to get out of here.” And out he went.

He didn’t answer her letters. He responded with silence when she phoned the school and wept out a tedious declaration of her love. Of course, she hadn’t loved him at all. But she had to believe that she did. For nothing else excused that mindless invasion of her body which she had allowed without protest on that summer afternoon.

In her studio, Sarah moved away from the answering machine. For a smokescreen memory, she couldn’t have chosen better than to conjure Douglas Hampson up out of the pit. He wanted her now. Forty-four years old, twenty years married, an insurance adjuster well on his way into midlife crisis, he wanted her now.

Come on, Sarah, he would say when they met for lunch as they often did. I can’t just sit here and look at you and pretend I don’t want you. Come on. Let’s do it.

We’re friends, she’d respond. You’re my brother, Doug.

Bugger the brother business. You didn’t think about that once.

And she would smile at him fondly- because she was fond of him now-and not try to explain what that once had cost her.

It was not enough-the memory of Douglas. In spite of herself, she moved across the studio to the covered easel and gazed at the portrait she’d begun all those months ago to act as companion piece to the other. She’d intended it as a Christmas present for him. She hadn’t yet known there would be no Christmas.

He was leaning forward as she so often had seen him, one elbow on his knee, his spectacles dangling from his fingers. His face was lit with the zeal which always came upon him when he talked about art. His head cocked to one side, himself caught in the act of arguing a fine point of composition, he looked boyish and happy, a man living fully for the fi rst time in his life.

He wore no three-piece suit but a paint-splattered work shirt with half the collar turned up and a rip in the cuff. And as often as not when she stood close in front of him to study the way the light hit his hair, he’d reach out and pull her to him and laugh at her protest which wasn’t much of a protest and hold her in his arms. His mouth on her neck and his hands on her breasts and the painting forgotten in the shedding of clothes. And the way he looked at her, beautifying her body, every moment of the act his eyes upon hers. And his voice that whisper oh my god my dear love…

Sarah steeled herself against the force of the memory and made herself evaluate the painting as a simple piece of art. She thought about finishing it, dwelling on the idea of a possible exhibition and of finding a way to put paint to canvas and making it mean something beyond a neophyte’s obedient exercise in technique. She could do it, after all. She was a painter.

She reached towards the easel. Her hands were shaking. She drew them back, fists clenched into balls.

Even if she filled her mind with a dozen other thoughts, her body still betrayed her. At the end of everything, it would neither avoid nor deny.

She looked back at the answering machine, heard his voice and his plea.

But her hands still trembled. Her legs felt hollow.

And her mind had to accept what her body was telling her. There are things far worse than finding a dead body.

Lynley was just tucking into his shepherd’s pie when Sergeant Havers came into the pub. The temperature had begun to fall outside and the wind to rise, and Havers had reacted to the weather accordingly, wrapping one of her scarves three times round her head and pulling up the other to cover her mouth and nose. She looked like a bandit from Iceland.

She paused in the doorway, eyes sweeping over the considerable-and boisterous- lunchtime crowd seated beneath the collection of antique scythes, hoes, and pitchforks which decorated the pub walls. She nodded in Lynley’s direction when she saw him and went to the bar, where she divested herself of her outer garments, ordered her meal, and lit a cigarette. Tonic water in one hand and a bag of vinegar crisps in the other, she wove her way through the tables and joined him in the corner. Her cigarette dangled between her lips, growing ash.

She dumped her coat and scarves next to his on the bench and slumped into a chair facing him. She shot a look of irritation at the stereo speaker directly above them which was currently offering “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack at a disturbing volume. Havers was no lover of musical trips down memory lane.

Over the din created by music, conversation, and clattering crockery, Lynley said, “It’s better than Guns and Roses.”

“Only just,” Havers replied. Using her teeth for a start, she tore open her crisps and spent the next few moments munching, while her cigarette’s smoke wafted into Lynley’s face.

He looked at it meaningfully. “Sergeant…”

She scowled. “I wish you’d take it up again. We’d get on better if you did.”

“And I thought we were marching blissfully arm-in-arm towards retirement.”

“Marching, yes. I don’t know about bliss.” She moved the ashtray to one side. It began offering its smoke to a blue-haired woman with six noticeable hairs growing out of her chin. From the table she was sharing with a three-legged wheezing Corgi and a gentleman in only marginally better condition, she scathed Havers with a glare over the top of her gin and bitters. Havers muttered in defeat, took a final hit of the cigarette, and crushed it out.

“So?” Lynley said.

She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue. “She checks out completely with two of her neighbours. The woman next door”-she grabbed her notebook from her shoulder bag and flipped it open-“a Mrs. Stamford…Mrs. Hugo Stamford, she insisted, and spelled it out just in case I’d fluffed my O-levels. She saw her loading up the boot of her car sometime round seven yesterday morning. In a real hurry, Mrs. Stamford said. Preoccupied as well because when she went out for the morning milk, she called a hello but Sarah didn’t hear her. Then”-she turned the notebook to read it sideways-“a bloke called Norman Davies who lives across the road. He saw her fly by in her car round seven as well. He remembers because he was walking his collie and the dog was doing its business on the pavement instead of in the street. Our Norman was all in a flutter about that. He didn’t want Sarah to think he’d just blithely allow Mr. Jeffries-that’s the dog-to foul the footpath. He nattered on for a bit about her being in the car in the first place. Not good for her, he wanted me to know. She needs to get back to walking. She was always a walker. What’s happened to the g’el? What’s she doing in the car? He didn’t much like your motor, by the way. Gave it a bit of a sneer and said whoever drove it is sending the country straight to Arab-dominated oil hell, never mind the North Sea. Quite a talker. I’m lucky I got away before teatime.”

Lynley nodded but didn’t reply. “What’s up?” she asked him.

“Havers, I’m not sure.”

He said nothing more as a teenaged girl dressed like one of Richard Crick’s milkmaids delivered the sergeant’s meal to the table. It was cod, peas, and chips which Havers doused thoroughly with vinegar while she eyed the waitress and said, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I’m old for my looks,” the girl replied. She wore a large garnet stud through her right nostril.

Havers snorted. “Right.” She dug into her fish. The girl disappeared with a fl ounce of her petticoats. Havers said in reference to his last comment, “I don’t like the sound of that, Inspector. I’ve got the feeling you’re keyed in to Sarah Gordon.” She looked up from her food as if in the expectation of reply. When he said nothing, she went on with, “I expect it’s because of that St. Cecilia business. Once you found out she’s an artist, you decided that she arranged the body unconsciously.”