Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

“Do you really think Thorsson would have handed his things over this morning-no matter his frame of mind-had he had even the slightest concern that forensic could match them to the fibres from Elena Weaver’s body?” Lynley closed an open text on the desk. “He knows he’s clear on that, Havers. We need something else.”

“The primary weapon used on Elena.”

“Did you get St. James on the phone?”

“He’ll be up sometime round noon tomorrow. He was in the middle of messing about with some sort of a polymorphic what-haveyou, mumbling about isoenzymes and getting generally bleary-eyed from having looked through his microscopes for more than a week. He’ll be glad of the diversion.”

“That’s what he said?”

“No. Actually, he said, ‘Tell Tommy he owes me,’ but that’s pretty much par for the course with you two, isn’t it?”

“Quite.” Lynley was looking at Georgina’s engagement diary. She was less active than Elena Weaver had been, but like Elena she had kept a record of her appointments. Seminars and supervisions were listed, by subject and by name of supervisor. Hare and Hounds had its places as well. But it took only a moment for him to ascertain that Lennart Thorsson’s name appeared nowhere. Nor was there anything that resembled the small fi sh that Elena had regularly sketched upon her calendar. Lynley riffled through all the pages of the book to find something that suggested the sort of intrigue implied by that fish, but it was completely straightforward. If Georgina Hig-gins-Hart had secrets, she hadn’t hidden them here.

They had little enough to go on, he realised. Mostly a series of unprovable conjectures. Until Simon Allcourt-St. James arrived in Cambridge and unless he gave them something else to work with, they would have to rely on the evidence at hand.

With a heaviness of heart and a growing sense that the inevitable was fast approaching between them, Rosalyn Simpson watched as Melinda continued stuffing a mishmash of belongings into two rucksacks. She grabbed knee socks, underwear, stockings, three night gowns from one drawer; a silk scarf, two belts, four T-shirts from another; her passport, a worn Michelin guide to France from a third. Then she went on to the wardrobe where she removed two pairs of blue jeans, a pair of sandals, and a quilted skirt. Her face was blotched from crying, and all the time she packed, she snuffled. Occasionally she withheld a fractured sob.

“Melinda.” Rosalyn tried to sound soothing. “You’re not being rational.”

“I thought it was you.” This had been her most frequent response for the last hour, an hour which had begun with her terrorised screaming, moved quickly on to wildly distraught weeping, and concluded with blind determination to leave Cambridge at once with Rosalyn in tow.

There had been no way to talk to her reasonably, and even if there had been, Rosalyn felt as if she lacked the energy to do it. She had spent a miserable night thrashing round in her bed while guilt spread like a prickly rash on the flesh of her conscience, and the last thing she wanted now was a scene of reproach, recrimination, and reassurance with Melinda. But she was wise enough not to mention any of that at the moment. Rather, she told Melinda only part of the truth: she hadn’t slept well the previous night; upon returning from a morning’s practical, she’d come to Melinda’s room with nowhere else to go to get a bit of rest when the porter had barred her from climbing her own staircase; she’d fallen asleep and hadn’t awakened until the door crashed against the wall and Melinda herself had begun screaming unaccountably. She hadn’t known that a runner had been shot that morning. The porter had said nothing, telling her only that the staircase would be closed for a while. And no word had yet gone out among the members of college about the murder, so no one was in front of the building at the time to pass on gossip or information. But if it was someone from her staircase who had been shot, she knew it had to be Georgina Higgins-Hart, the only other member of Hare and Hounds who lived in that part of the building.

“I thought it was you,” Melinda sobbed. “You promised you wouldn’t run alone but I thought you ran anyway to spite me because you were angry that I’d insisted you tell your parents about us so I thought it was you.”

Rosalyn realised that she did feel some anger. It was a bubbling bit of real resentment that promised to boil over into outright dislike. She tried to ignore it, saying, “Why would I want to spite you like that? I didn’t run alone. I didn’t run at all.”

“He’s after you, Ros. He’s after us both. He wanted you but he got her instead but he’s not done with us and we’ve got to get away.”

She’d taken a tin of money from its hiding place in a shoe carton. She’d rustled up her rucksacks from the back of one of the wardrobe shelves. She’d swept her copious supply of cosmetics into a plastic case. And now she was rolling the blue jeans into cylindrical shapes preparatory to ramming them into the canvas sack with everything else. When she was in this state, there was no real talking to her, but Rosalyn still felt the need to try.

“Melinda, this just doesn’t make sense.”

“I told you last night not to talk to anyone about it, didn’t I? But you wouldn’t listen. You’ve always got to do your precious little duty. And now look where it’s got us.”

“Where?”

“Here. Needing to clear off, and having nowhere to go. But if you’d thought a bit first…If you’d just thought for once…And now he’s waiting, Ros. He’s just biding his time. He knows where to find us. You as good as invited him to blow us both to bits. Well, it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to wait round to have him come for me. And neither are you.” She took another two pullovers from a drawer. “We’re nearly the same size. You won’t need to go to your room for clothes.”

Rosalyn walked to the window. One lone senior member of the college strolled across the lawn below. The crowd of the curious had long since dispersed, as had all obvious signs of the police, making it difficult to believe that another runner had been murdered that morning, making it impossible to believe that this second killing was tied in any way to the conversation she’d had with Gareth Randolph last night.

She and Melinda-glowering, protesting, and arguing against it every step of the way- had walked the few blocks to DeaStu and found him in his cubicle of an offi ce. With no one there to interpret for them, they’d used the screen of a word processor to communicate. He’d looked awful, Rosalyn recalled. His eyes were rheumy; his skin was unshaven and pinched on his skull. He looked devastated by illness. He looked exhausted and torn. But he didn’t look like a killer.

Somehow, she thought, she would have sensed it if Gareth had presented any danger to her. Certainly, there would have been an air of tension surrounding him. He would have shown signs of panic as she told him what she knew about the previous morning’s murder. But instead, he evidenced only anger and grief. And faced with that, she had known for a certainty that he had been in love with Elena Weaver.

Quite without warning, she had felt an irrational twist of jealousy. To have someone-all right, a man, she admitted it-love her so much that he would dream about her, think about her, and hope for a life together…

Looking at Gareth Randolph, watching his hands move over the keyboard as he typed his questions and responded to hers, she felt overcome by the sudden knowledge that she wanted a conventional future like everyone else. This unexpected desire brought an attendant rush of guilt. It swarmed busily round the issue of betrayal. Yet feeling the tricks and twinges of her conscience, she was roused to anger. For how could there be the slightest degree of treachery in yearning for the simplest prospect that life offered everyone?