Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

“Of course,” he said. “Take your time.”

Which, naturally, was the very last thing he actually wanted her to do. She wondered if he did that often, making remarks he didn’t mean. Not that it mattered, as it wasn’t her intention to spend a great deal of time with the man. But it was always helpful to know how people operated.

Hillier’s secretary-a severe-looking woman with five unfortunate facial warts in need of dermatological exploration-directed Isabelle towards the ladies’. Once inside, she checked carefully to ensure that she had the room to herself. She ducked into the stall farthest from the door and there she did her business. But this was merely for effect. Her real purpose lay within her shoulder bag.

She found the airline bottle where she’d earlier stowed it, and she opened it, drinking down the contents in two swift gulps. Vodka. Yes. It had long been just the ticket. She waited a few moments till she felt it take hold.

Then she left the stall and went to the basin, where she fished in her bag for her toothbrush and toothpaste. She brushed thoroughly, her teeth and her tongue.

Finished, she was ready to face the world.

THE TEAM OF detectives she’d be supervising worked in close confines, so Isabelle met them together first. They were wary of her; she was wary of them. This was natural, and she wasn’t bothered by it. Introductions were made by Hillier and he offered them her background chronologically: community liaison officer, burglary, vice, arson investigation, and more recently MCIT. He didn’t add the period of time she’d spent in each of her positions. She was on the fast track, and they would know it by reckoning her age, which was thirty-eight although she liked to think she looked younger, the result of wisely having stayed away from cigarettes and out of the sun for most of her life.

The only one of them who looked impressed with her background was the departmental secretary, a princess-in-waiting type called Dorothea Harriman. Isabelle wondered how any young woman could look so put together on what her salary had to be. She reckoned Dorothea found her clothing in charity shops of the type where one could dig out timeless treasures if one was persistent, had an eye for quality, and looked hard enough.

She told the team she would like to have a word with each of them. In her office, she said. Today. She would want to know what each of them was working on at present, she added, so do bring your notes.

It went much as she expected. DI Philip Hale was cooperative and professional, possessing a wait-and-see attitude that Isabelle could not fault, his notes at the ready, currently at work with the CPS preparing a case involving the serial killing of young adolescent boys. She’d have no trouble with him. He hadn’t applied for the superintendent’s position and he seemed quite happy with his place on the team.

DI John Stewart was another matter. He was a nervy man if his bitten fingernails were anything to go by, and his focus on her breasts seemed to indicate a form of misogyny that she particularly detested. But she could handle him. He called her ma’am. She said guv would do. He let a marked moment pass before he made the switch. She said, I don’t plan to have difficulty with you, John. Do you plan to have difficulty with me? He said, No, not at all, guv. But she knew he didn’t mean it.

She met DS Winston Nkata next. He was a curiosity to her. Very tall, very black, scarred on the face from an adolescent street fight, he was all West Indies via South London. Tough exterior but something about the eyes suggested that inside the man a soft heart waited to be touched. She didn’t ask him his age, but she put him somewhere in his late twenties. He was one of two children who were yin and yang: His older brother was in prison for murder. This fact would, she decided, make the DS a motivated cop with something to prove. She liked that.

This was not the case for DS Barbara Havers, the last of the team. Havers slouched into the office-there could, Isabelle decided, be absolutely no other word for how the woman presented herself-reeking of cigarette smoke and carrying a chip on her shoulder the size of a steamer trunk. Isabelle knew that Havers had been DI Lynley’s partner for several years preceding the death of Lynley’s wife. She’d met the sergeant before, and she wondered if Havers remembered.

She did. “The Fleming murder,” were Havers’s first words to her when they were alone. “Out in Kent. You did the arson investigation on it.”

“Good memory, Sergeant,” Isabelle said to her. “May I ask what happened to your teeth? I don’t recall them like this.”

Havers shrugged. She said, “C’n I sit or what?” and Isabelle said, “Please.” She’d been conducting these interviews in AC Hillier mode-although she was seated, not standing, behind her desk-but in this case she rose and moved over to a small conference table where she indicated DS Havers should join her. She didn’t want to bond with the sergeant, but she knew the importance of having with her a relationship rather different from the relationship she had with the others. This had more to do with the sergeant’s partnership with Lynley than with the fact that they were both women.

“Your teeth?” Isabelle said again.

“Got in something of a conflict,” Havers told her.

“Really? You don’t look the sort to brawl,” Isabelle noted and while this was true, it was also true that Havers looked exactly the sort to defend herself if push came to shove, which was apparently how her front teeth had come to be in the condition they were in, which was badly broken.

“Bloke didn’t like the idea of my spoiling his kidnap of a kid,” Havers said. “We got into it, him and me. A bit of this with the fists, a bit of that with the feet, and my face hit the floor. It was stone.”

“This happened in the past year? While you were at work? Why’ve you not had them fixed? There haven’t been problems about the Met paying, have there?”

“I’ve been thinking they give my face character.”

“Ah. By which I take it you’re opposed to modern dentistry? Or are you afraid of dentists, Sergeant?”

Havers shook her head. “I’m afraid of turning myself into a beauty as I don’t much like the idea of fighting off hordes of admirers. ’Sides, world’s full of people with perfect teeth. I like to be different.”

“Do you indeed?” Isabelle decided to be rather more direct with Havers. “That must explain your clothing, then. Has no one ever remarked upon it, Sergeant?”

Havers adjusted her position in her seat. She crossed a leg over her knee, showing-God help us, Isabelle thought-a red high-top trainer and an inch of purple sock. Despite the hideous heat of summer, she’d combined this fashionable use of colour with olive corduroy trousers and a brown pullover. This last was decorated with specks of lint. She looked like someone involved in an undercover investigation into the horrors of life as a refugee. “Due respect, guv,” Havers said although her tone suggested there was something of grievance attached to her words, “’sides the fact that regulations don’t allow you to give me aggro about the clothes, I don’t think my appearance has much to do with how I-”

“Agreed. But your appearance has to do with your looking professional,” Isabelle cut in, “which you don’t at the moment. Let me be frank, regulations or not, professional is how I expect my team to look. I advise you to have your teeth fixed.”

“What, today?” Havers asked.

Did she sound borderline insolent? Isabelle narrowed her eyes. She responded with, “Please don’t make light of this, Sergeant. I also recommend you alter your manner of dress to something more appropriate.”