Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

And there it was again, that word heart and everything it implied about the underlying reasons behind a person's actions. Hearing his wife use it, Lynley was reminded of another's use of it so many years before, of a woman weeping and saying to him, “My God, Tommy, what's become of your heart?” when he refused to see her, to speak to her even, in the aftermath of discovering her adultery.

And then he finally knew. He understood for the very first time, and the understanding made him recoil from who he had been and what he had done for the last twenty years. “I couldn't control her,” he said quietly, far more to himself than to his wife. “I couldn't mould her into the image I'd had of her. She went her own way and I couldn't bear it. He's dying, I thought, and she should damn well act like a wife whose husband is dying.”

Helen understood. “Ah. Your mother.”

“I thought I'd forgiven her long ago. But perhaps I haven't forgiven her at all. Perhaps she's always there-in every woman I have to deal with-and perhaps I keep trying to make her be someone she doesn't want to be.”

“Or perhaps you've simply never forgiven yourself for not being able to stop her.” Helen set down her lotion and came to him. “We carry such baggage, don't we, darling? And just when we think we've finally unpacked, there it all is again, waiting in front of our bedroom door, ready to trip us when we get up in the morning.”

She'd had her head wrapped in a turban, and she took this off and shook her hair out. She hadn't completely dried herself, so drops of water glistened on her shoulders and gathered in the hollow of her throat.

“Your mother, my father,” she said as she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “It's always someone. I was all in a muddle because of that ridiculous wallpaper. I'd decided that if I hadn't become the woman my father intended me to be-the wife of a man in possession of a title-I'd have known my own mind with regard to that paper. And because I didn't know my own mind, I blamed him. My father. But the truth of the matter is that I could always have gone my own way, as Pen and Iris did. I could have said no. And I didn't because the path laid out was so much easier and so much less frightening than forging my own would have been.”

Lynley smoothed her cheek fondly He traced her jaw and the length of her long and lovely neck.

“Sometimes I hate being a grown-up,” Helen told him. “There's so much more freedom in being a child.”

“Isn't there,” he agreed. He put his fingers to the towel that wrapped her body. He kissed her neck, her shoulders, and her mouth. “But there's more advantage in adulthood, I think.”

He loosened the towel and drew her to him.

At the sound of her alarm the next morning, Barbara Havers rolled out of bed with a blazing headache. She stumbled to the bathroom, where she rattled round for several aspirin and fumbled with the handles of the shower. Bollocks, she thought. She'd obviously been leading much too exemplary a life in the last few years. As a result, she'd become grossly out of condition in the partying arena.

It hadn't even been that much of a celebration. After they'd finished taking Matthew King-Ryder's statement, she and Nkata had gone out for a minor frolic. They'd visited only four pubs, and neither one of them had drunk the truly hard stuff. But what they'd drunk had been enough to do the trick. Barbara felt like a lorry had driven over her head.

She stood under the shower and let the water beat against her until the aspirin began to take effect. She scrubbed her body and washed her hair, swearing off everything even remotely alcoholic on week nights henceforth. She thought about phoning Nkata to see if he was experiencing a morning-after as well. But she considered how his mother would react to her favourite child's receiving a phone call from an unknown woman before seven in the morning, and she abandoned the idea. No need to worry Mrs. Nkata about her darling Winnie's purity of flesh and spirit. Barbara would see him at the Yard soon enough.

Her morning ablutions performed, Barbara padded over to her wardrobe and pondered what sartorial statement she could make today. She opted for discretion and pulled out a trouser suit that she hadn't thought to wear for at least two years.

She flung it onto the rumpled bed and went to the kitchen. The electric kettle plugged in and watermelon Pop-Tarts in the toaster, she toweled her hair dry and threw on her clothes. She turned on the BBC breakfast news to see that road works were delaying traffic into the City, there was a pile-up on the Ml just south of junction four, and a burst water main on the A23 had created a lake to the north of Streatham. It was another day of commuting hell.

The kettle clicked off, and Barbara toddled to the kitchen to spoon some coffee powder into a mug decorated with a caricature of the Prince of Wales: chinless head, bulbous nose, and flapping ears sitting on a diminutive tartan-clad body She grabbed her Pop-Tarts, plopped them onto a kitchen towel, and carried this well-balanced nutritional masterpiece over to the dining table.

The velvet heart sat in the centre, where Barbara had placed it when Hadiyyah had presented it to her on Sunday evening. There it waited for her reflections upon it, a self-satisfied little valentine of sorts, edged with white lace and filled with implication. Barbara had avoided thinking about it for more than thirty-six hours, and since she'd not seen either Hadiyyah or her father during that time, she'd been able to skip mentioning it in all conversations as well. But she couldn't exactly do that forever. Good manners, if nothing else, demanded that she make some sort of remark to Azhar the next time she saw him.

What would it be? After all, he was a married man. True, he wasn't living with his wife. True, the woman he'd been living with since he'd been living with his wife was not his wife. True, that woman had apparently done a permanent runner, leaving behind a charming eight-year-old girl and a sombre-albeit thoughtful and kind-thirty-five-year-old man in need of adult female companionship. However, none of that went any distance towards making the situation into something that could be addressed easily under the time-honoured rules of etiquette. Not that Barbara had ever bothered to concern herself with the time-honoured rules of etiquette. But that was because she'd never really been in a spot where rules applied. Not man-woman rules, that is. And not man-woman-child rules. And certainly not man-wife-nonwife-child-additionalwoman rules. But still, when she next saw Azhar, she needed to be prepared. She needed to have something quick, useful, direct, meaningful, casual, and reasonable to say. And it had to spring from her tongue spontaneously, as if the thought that prompted it had come upon her that instant.

So… What would it be? Thanks awfully much, old bean … just what are your intentions? . … How sweet of you to think of me.

Bloody hell, Barbara thought, and crammed the rest of her Pop-Tart into her mouth. Human relationships were murder.

A sharp knock sounded once on her door. Barbara started and looked at her watch. It was far too early for religious zealots to be out on the streets, and the British Gas meter reader had been the social highlight of her previous week. So who…?

Chewing, she got to her feet. She opened the door. Azhar was standing there.

She blinked at him and wished she'd taken her rehearsal of grateful remarks more seriously. She said, “Hullo. Er… Morning.”

He said, “You returned quite late last night, Barbara.”

“Well… yeah. The case was tied up. I mean, it was tied up as much as these things can be tied up when we make an arrest. Which is to say the materials have to be drawn together still, in order to give them to the Crown Prosecutors. But as for the actual investigation-” She forced herself to stop. “Yeah. We made an arrest.”