Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

Hanken strode out of it, along the path beneath the birches.

“Start a perimeter search,” he told his team. “We're looking for a second body.”

New Scotland Yard's Barbara Havers took the lift up to the twelfth floor of Tower Block. This housed the extensive library of the Metropolitan Police, and among the scores of reference books and police reports she knew that she would be safe. She very much needed safety at the moment. She also needed privacy and time to recover.

In addition to more volumes than anyone had time to count-much less to look at-the library offered the finest view of London in the entire building. This view spread to the east, encompassing everything from the neo-Gothic spires of the Houses of Parliament to the south bank of the River Thames. It spread to the north, where the dome of St. Paul's dominated the City skyline. And on a day like this one, when the bright hot sunlight of summer was finally altering to the subtle glow of autumn, the sheer scope of the view became secondary to the beauty of everything touched by that light.

Here on the twelfth floor, Barbara thought that if she concentrated on identifying as many of the buildings below her as she could, she might be able to calm herself and forget the humiliation through which she'd just lived.

After three months of a suspension from work, she'd finally received a cryptic phone call at half past seven that morning. It was an order thinly disguised as a request. Would Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers join Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier in his office at ten A.M.? The voice was scrupulously polite and even more scrupulously careful to betray no knowledge of what lay behind the invitation.

Barbara, however, had little doubt about the purpose of the meeting. She'd been the object of an enquiry by the Police Complaints Authority for the last twelve weeks, and once the Crown Prosecution Service had declined to instigate legal proceedings against her, the machinery of the Metropolitan Police's internal affairs division had begun to grind. Witnesses to her behaviour had been called. Statements from those witnesses had been taken. Evidence-a high-powered motor-boat, one MP5 carbine, and a Glock semiautomatic pistol-had been examined and evaluated. And Barbara's fate had long been due to be revealed.

So when the phone call had finally come, interrupting her increasingly fitful sleep, she should have been prepared. After all, she had known all summer that two aspects of her behaviour as an officer were under scrutiny. Facing criminal charges of assault and attempted murder, facing disciplinary charges that ran the gamut from abuse of authority to failure to obey an order, she should have begun the process of putting her professional life in order prior to what anyone with a teaspoonful of sense would have called its ineluctable demise. But police work had been Barbara's life for a decade and a half, and she couldn't imagine her world without it. So she had spent her suspension telling herself that every day that passed without her being sacked made it more likely that she would emerge from the investigation unscathed. That hadn't been the case, of course, and a more realistic officer would have known what to expect when she walked into the assistant commissioner's office.

She'd dressed with care, eschewing her usual drawstring trousers for a skirt and jacket. She was hopeless with clothes, so the colour didn't suit her, and the faux pearl necklace was a ludicrous touch that merely emphasised the thickness of her neck. Her shoes, at least, were polished. But getting out of her old Mini in the Yard's underground car park, she'd scraped her calf on a rough edge of door metal and a ladder in her tights had been the result.

Not that perfect tights, a decent piece of jewellery, and a suit of a hue more flattering to her complexion would have altered the inevitable. Because as soon as she'd entered AC Hillier's office, with its four windows indicating the Olympian heights to which he'd risen, she'd seen the writing on the wall.

Still, she hadn't expected the castigation to be so vituperative. AC Hillier was a pig-had always been and would be to the end of his days-but Barbara had never before been on the receiving end of his particular brand of discipline. He'd seemed to feel that a vigorous upbraiding wasn't sufficient to relay his displeasure with her comportment. Nor was sufficient a blistering letter that utilised such terms as “disgracing the reputation of the entire Metropolitan Police” and “bringing the service of thousands of officers into disrepute” and “a disgraceful brand of insubordination unlike anything in the history of the force,” which would be placed in her permanent file and left there through the years for every officer with suzerainty over Barbara to see. AC Hillier had also felt the need to interject his personal commentary on the activities that had brought about her suspension. And knowing that, without witnesses, he could be as free as he wanted to reprimand Barbara in whatever language he chose, Hillier had included in that commentary the sort of risky invective and innuendo that another subordinate officer-with less at stake-might well have taken as crossing over the line that separated the professional from the personal. But the assistant commissioner was nobody's fool. He was perfectly aware that, thankful her punishment did not include being sacked, Barbara would adopt the wise course of action and take whatever he chose to dish out to her.

But she didn't have to like hearing herself referred to as a “bloody stupid slag” and a “sodding minge bag.” And she didn't have to pretend that she was unaffected by having her physical appearance, her sexual proclivities, and her potential as a woman brought into Hillier's ugly monologue.

So she was shaken. And as she stood by the window in the library and observed the buildings that rose between New Scotland Yard and Westminster Abbey, she tried to control the trembling of her hands. She also tried to eliminate the waves of nausea that kept causing her breath to come in great gulps, as if she were drowning.

A cigarette would have helped, but in coming to the library, where she wouldn't be found, she'd also come to one of the many locations in New Scotland Yard where smoking was prohibited. And while at one time she would have lit up anyway and damned the consequences, she wouldn't do that now.

“Once more out of order and you're finished,” Hillier had shouted in conclusion, his florid face grown as maroon as the tie that he wore with his bespoke suit.

That she hadn't been finished already-considering the level of Hillier's animosity-was a mystery to Barbara. Throughout his speech, she'd prepared herself for her inevitable sacking, but it hadn't materialised. She'd been dressed down, slagged off*, and vilified. But the peroration of Hillier's remarks hadn't included her termination. That Hillier wanted to sack her as much as he wanted to abuse her was clear as could be. That he didn't do so told her that someone of influence had taken her part.

Barbara wanted to be grateful. Indeed, she knew she ought to be grateful. But at the moment all that she could feel was a monumental sense of betrayal that her superior officers, the disciplinary tribunal, and the Police Complaints Authority hadn't seen things her way. When the facts are in, she'd thought, everyone would see that she'd had no choice but to take up the nearest weapon to hand and fire it in order to save a life. But that wasn't the way her actions had been viewed by those in power. Except for someone. And she had a fairly good idea who that someone was.

Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley had been on his honeymoon during the birth of Barbara's troubles. Her longtime partner, he'd come home with his bride from ten days on Corfu to find Barbara suspended with an investigation mounted into her conduct. Understandably confounded, he'd driven across town that same night, seeking an explanation from Barbara herself. While their initial conversation hadn't gone as smoothly as she would have wished, Barbara had known at heart that, at the end of the day, DI Lynley would never stand by and let an injustice be done if there was any way that he could prevent it.