Elizabeth George - For the Sake of Elena

She looked utterly defeated. “That’s the question, Inspector. And I’ll never have the answer. The whole situation goes too far beyond me.”

“No, it doesn’t. It starts and stops with you. You hold the power. You can make the decision.”

“I can’t stand to hurt her. She won’t understand.”

Lynley snapped the briefcase closed. “And what does she understand as things are now, Sergeant?”

That put an end to it. As they walked to his car, which was shoe-horned into the same narrow space he’d used last night on Garret Hostel Lane, he told her about his conversation with Victor Troughton. When he was fi nished, she said before getting into the Bentley:

“D’you suppose Elena Weaver felt real love for anyone?”

He switched on the ignition. The heater sent out a stream of cold air on their feet. Lynley thought of Troughton’s final words about the girl-“Try to understand. She wasn’t evil, Inspector. She was merely angry. And I, for one, can’t condemn her for that.”

“Even though, in reality, you were little more than her choice of weapons?” Lynley had asked him.

“Even though,” he’d replied.

Now, Lynley said, “We can never really come to know any victim’s heart completely, can we, Sergeant? In this sort of job, we look at a life backwards, starting with death and working forward from there. We patch pieces together and try to make truth from them. And with that truth we can only hope for an understanding of who the victim was and what provoked her murder. But as to her heart-as to the real, lasting truth of her-we can never really get to that. In the end, we have only facts and whatever conclusions we draw from them.” The little street was too narrow to turn the Bentley around, so he slowly reversed towards Trinity Lane, braking for a shadowy, well-bundled group of students who came out the side gate of Trinity Hall. Beyond them, fog lapped eagerly at the college garden.

“But why would he want to marry her, Inspector? He knew she wasn’t faithful. She didn’t love him. How could he believe that a marriage between them would have ever worked out?”

“He thought his love would be enough to change her.”

Havers scoffed at this. “People never change.”

“Of course they do. When they’re ready to grow.” He headed the car past St. Stephen’s Church and on towards Trinity College. The headlamps fought with the heavy bank of fog, and their illumination bounced uselessly back into the car. They moved at the pace of a somnolent insect. “It would be a fine and certainly less complicated world if people only had sex with those they loved, Sergeant. But the reality is that people use sex for a variety of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with love, marriage, commitment, intimacy, procreation, or any other lofty motive. Elena was one of them. And Troughton, evidently, was willing to accept that.”

“But what kind of marriage could he have expected to have with her?” Havers asked in protest. “They were starting life with a lie.”

“Troughton wasn’t bothered by that. He wanted her.”

“And she?”

“No doubt she wanted that triumphant moment of seeing her father’s face when she broke the news to him. But there would have been no news to break if she hadn’t been able to manoeuvre Troughton into marrying her in the fi rst place.”

“Inspector.” Havers’ voice sounded thoughtful. “D’you think there’s a chance that Elena told her father? She got the news on Wednesday. She didn’t die till Monday morning. His wife was out running. He was home alone. D’you think…?”

“We certainly can’t discount it, can we?”

That appeared to be as close as the sergeant was willing to come to voicing her suspicions, for she went on in a more decided tone with, “They couldn’t have expected to be happy together, Elena and Troughton.”

“I think you’re right. Troughton was deluding himself about his ability to heal her anger and resentment. She was deluding herself into believing she’d get lasting pleasure from dealing her father such an excruciating blow. One can’t build a marriage on that sort of foundation.”

“Are you saying, in effect, that one can’t get on with living unless one puts ghosts from the past to rest?”

He glanced at her warily. “That’s a quantum leap, Sergeant. I think one can always muddle on through life. Most people do. I just couldn’t tell you how well they do it.”

Because of the fog, the traffi c, and the capricious nature of Cambridge’s one-way streets, it took them just over ten minutes to drive to Queens’ College, the same time it would have taken them to walk it. Lynley parked in the same spot he had used the day before, and they entered the college through the turreted passage.

“So you think this is the answer to everything?” Havers asked, looking round Old Court as they walked across its central path.

“I think it may be one of them.”

They found Gareth Randolph in the college dining hall, a hideously unappealing combination of linoleum, long cafeteria tables, and walls panelled in what appeared to be mock golden oak. It was a modern architect’s salute to the utterly banal.

Although there were other students present, Gareth was at a table by himself, hunching disconsolately over the remains of a late breakfast which consisted of a half-eaten fried egg with its yolk punched out and a bowl of cornfl akes and bananas grown, respectively, soggy and grey. A book was open on the table in front of him, but that seemed mostly for show since he wasn’t reading. Nor was he writing in the notebook next to it although he held a pencil poised as if to do so.

His head raised with a jerk when Lynley and Havers took seats across from him. He glanced round the hall as if for quick escape or assistance from the other members of the college who were present. Lynley took his pencil and dashed nine words across the top of the notebook: You were the father of her baby, weren’t you?

Gareth raised a hand to his forehead. He squeezed his temples, then brushed the lank hair from his brow. His chest heaved once before he seemed to draw himself together by standing and canting his head in the direction of the door. They were meant to follow.

Like Georgina Higgins-Hart’s, Gareth’s bed-sitting room was tucked into Old Court. On the ground floor, it was a perfectly square room of white walls upon which were hung four framed posters advertising the London Philharmonic and three photographic enlargements of theatrical performances: Les Miserables, Starlight Express, Aspects of Love . The former featured the name Sonia Raleigh Randolph prominently above the words at the piano . The latter featured an attractive young woman in appropriate costume, singing.

Gareth pointed first to the posters, then to the photographs. “Mutha,” he said in his strange guttural voice. “Sisser.” He watched Lynley shrewdly. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction to the irony of his mother’s and sister’s modes of employment. Lynley merely nodded.

On a wide desk beneath the room’s only window, a computer sat. It was also, Lynley saw, a Ceephone, identical to the others he had already seen in Cambridge. Gareth switched the unit on and drew a second chair to the desk. He gestured Lynley into it and quickly accessed a word processing programme.

“Sergeant,” Lynley said, when he saw how Gareth intended them to communicate, “you’re going to have to make notes from the screen.” He took off his coat and scarf and sat at the desk. Havers came to stand behind him, the hood of her coat thrown back, her pink cap removed, a notebook in her hand.

Were you the father? Lynley typed.

The boy looked long at the words before he replied with: Didn’t know she was pg. She never said. Told you already .