Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

“Breakfast?” he asked mildly.

“Nicotine on toast.” She inhaled with pleasure and brushed some fallen ash off the left leg of her worsted trousers. “So. What’s up?”

He didn’t answer at once. Rather, he cracked the window a few inches to let in a bit of fresh air and turned back to observe her frankly earnest gaze. Her expression was resolutely cheerful, her manner of dress appropriately haphazard. Every necessary sign was there, painting the picture of all’s-right-with-theworld. But her hands gripped the steering wheel far too tightly and a tension round her mouth belied her casual tone.

“What happened at home?” he asked her.

She drew in on her cigarette again and gave its glowing tip her attention. “Nothing much. Mum had a spell. Mrs. Gustafson panicked. It was no big deal.”

“Havers-”

“Look, Inspector, you could reassign me and ask Nkata to come up and assist. I’d understand. I know it’s rotten with me coming and going and heading back to London so early in the evening. Webberly won’t like it much if you sack me on this, but if I make an appointment and go at it with him privately, he ought to understand.”

“I can cope, Sergeant. I don’t need Nkata.”

“But you’ve got to have someone. You can’t do it all alone. This flaming job requires assistance and you’ve every right to ask for it.”

“Barbara, this isn’t about the job.”

She stared out into the street. At the gate-house of St. Stephen’s College, the porter came out to help a middle-aged woman in a heavy coat and scarf who had climbed off a bicycle and was attempting to manoeuvre it into position among dozens of other bikes against the wall. She gave the handlebars over to him and watched, chatting with great animation, as he shoved the bike among the others and locked it up. They went inside the gatehouse together.

Lynley said, “Barbara.”

Havers stirred. “I’m dealing with it, sir. At least, I’m trying to. Let’s just get going, shall we?”

He sighed, reached for the seat belt, and brought it over his shoulder. “Head for the Fulbourn Road,” he said. “I want to drop in on Lennart Thorsson.”

She nodded, reversed the car into Trinity Passage, and turned them in the direction from which she’d come only moments before. All round them the city was coming to life. The occasional early-rising student pedalled off to begin a day of study, as bedders arrived to see to the rooms. On Trinity Street two sweepers unloaded brooms and dustpans from a yellow trolley while three workmen climbed a scaffolding nearby. The merchants in Market Hill were setting up their stalls for the day’s business, laying out fruit and vegetables, setting up bolts of bright material, folding T-shirts, blue jeans, and Indian dresses, gathering autumn flowers into dazzling bouquets. Buses and taxis vied for position on Sidney Street, and as Lynley and Havers headed out of town, they passed the morning commuters coming in from Ramsey Town and Cherry Hinton, no doubt ready to take their places behind desks, in the libraries, in the gardens, and before the kitchen stoves of the University’s twenty-eight colleges.

Havers didn’t speak until they were rumbling their way-with an extensive emission of exhaust and accompanying sputters and belches from the engine-past Parker’s Piece, across whose extensive green the police station squatted like an impassive guardian. Its double row of windows, reflecting the cloudless sky, turned it to a draughtboard of blue and grey.

“You got my message, then,” Havers said. “About Thorsson. You didn’t see him last night?”

“He was nowhere to be found.”

“Does he know we’re on our way?”

“No.”

She crushed her cigarette out, did not light another. “What do you think?”

“Essentially that he’s too good to be true.”

“Because we’ve got black fibres on the body? Because we’ve caught him with motive and opportunity?”

“He does seem to have both. And once we have an idea of what was used to bludgeon her, we may find he had the means as well.” He reminded her of the wine bottle which Sarah Gordon had said was left at the scene and told her of the impression of that same bottle which he had seen in the damp earth on the island. He offered his theory of how the bottle might have been used and left behind among the rest of the rubbish.

“But still you don’t like Thorsson as our killer. I can see it on your face.”

“It seems too clean a case, Havers. I’ve got to admit I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Why?”

“Because murder in general-and this one in particular-is a dirty business.”

She slowed for a traffic light and watched as a back-gnarled woman wearing a long black coat slowly negotiated her way across the street. Her eyes were on her feet. She pulled a collapsible luggage trolley behind her. Nothing was in it.

When the light changed, Havers spoke again. “I think Thorsson’s dirty as a dog, Inspector. It surprises me that you can’t see it as well. Or is seducing school girls not dirty to another man as long as the girls don’t complain?”

He was unruffled by the indirect challenge to argue. “These aren’t school girls, Havers. We can call them that for want of a better word. But that’s not what they are.”

“All right. Young women, then, in subordinate positions. Does that make it right?”

“No. Of course not. But we’ve no direct proof of seduction yet.”

“She was pregnant, for God’s sake. Someone seduced her.”

“Or she seduced someone. Or they seduced each other.”

“Or-as you said yourself yesterday-she was raped.”

“Perhaps. But I’m having second thoughts about that.”

“Why?” Havers’ tone was belligerent, a suggestion that Lynley’s response implied impossibility. “Or are you of the typical male opinion that she would have lain back and enjoyed the experience?”

He glanced in her direction. “I think you know better than that.”

“Then what’s your point?”

“She reported Thorsson for sexual harassment. If she was willing to do that and face the possibility of a potentially embarrassing investigation into her own behaviour, I can’t see that she’d let a rape go unmentioned.”

“What if it was date rape, Inspector? Some bloke she was seeing but didn’t expect or want to get involved with?”

“Then you’ve just put Thorsson out of the picture, haven’t you?”

“You do think he’s innocent.” Her fist hit the steering wheel. “You’re looking for a way to exonerate him, aren’t you? You’re trying to pin this on someone else. Who?” She flashed a knowing look at him a second after she asked the question. “Oh no! You can’t be thinking-”

“I’m not thinking anything. I’m looking for the truth.”

She swung the car to the left in the direction of Cherry Hinton, passing a common that was rich with yellow-leaved horse chestnuts wearing a new winter’s growth of moss on their trunks. Beneath them, two women pushed prams side by side, their heads tilted together, their eager conversation sending out rapid puffs of steam in the air.

It was just after eight when they drove into Thorsson’s housing estate. In the narrow drive of his house on Ashwood Court, a fully restored TR-6 was sitting, its bulbous green wings gleaming in the morning light. They pulled up behind it, so close that the front of the Mini nosed into its boot like a careful insult.

“Nice bit, that,” Havers said as she looked it over. “Just the sort of thing one expects one’s local Marxist to drive.”

Lynley got out and went to inspect the car. Aside from the windscreen, it was beaded with moisture. He pressed his hand to the smooth surface of the bonnet. He could feel the remnants of the engine’s warmth. “Another morning arrival,” he said.