Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

“Then what?” Gina waited for his answer, and he struggled to give it, with his body, his soul, and his very life hanging in the balance of whatever words he chose. He swallowed and she said, “What on earth are you so afraid of, Gordon?”

He put his hands on either side of her lovely face. He said, “You’re only my second.” He bent to kiss her, and she allowed this. Her mouth opened to him and she accepted his tongue and her hands went to the back of his neck and held him to her so the kiss went on and on and on. He felt enflamed, and he-not she-was the one to break off. He was breathing so hard that he might have been running. “Only Jemima and you. No one else,” he said.

“Oh, Gordon,” she said.

“Come back to me. What you saw in me…that anger…the fear…”

“Shh,” she murmured. She touched his face with those fingers of hers, and where she touched he felt his skin take fire.

“You make it all disappear,” he said. “Come back. Gina. I swear.”

“I will.”

LYNLEY TOOK THE FIRST OF THE PHONE CALLS ON HIS MOBILE as he left Sheldon Pockworth Numismatics, heading for his car on his way to the British Museum. It was from Philip Hale. Initially, his message was positive. Yukio Matsumoto, he reported, was conscious, and Isabelle Ardery was interviewing him in the presence of his brother and sister. However, there was something more, and as Hale was the last of the detectives ever to raise a protest in the midst of an investigation, when he did so, Lynley knew the situation was serious. Ardery was ordering him to stay at the hospital when he could better be used elsewhere, he told Lynley. He’d tried to explain to her that guarding the suspect was something better left to constables so that he could return to more useful occupation, but she wouldn’t hear of it, he said. He was a team player as much as anyone, Tommy, but there came a time when someone had to protest. Obviously, Ardery was a micromanager and she was never going to trust her murder squad to take any initiative. She was-

“Philip,” Lynley cut in, “hang on. I can’t do anything about this. It’s just not on.”

“You can talk to her,” Hale replied. “If you’re showing her the ropes like she claimed you are, then show her that one. Can you see Webberly…or yourself…or even John Stewart, and God knows John’s obsessive enough…? Come on, Tommy.”

“She’s got a lot on her plate.”

“You can’t tell me she won’t listen to you. I’ve seen how she…Oh hell.”

“Seen how she what?”

“She got you to come back to work. We all know that. There’s a reason for it, and likely it’s personal. So use the reason.”

“There’s no personal-”

“Tommy. For God’s sake. Don’t play at being blind when no one else is.”

Lynley didn’t reply for a moment. He considered what had passed between himself and Ardery: how things looked and what they were. He finally said he’d see what he could do although he reckoned it would be little enough.

He phoned the acting superintendent, but Ardery’s mobile went immediately to her voice message. He asked her to ring him, and he kept onward to his car. She wasn’t his responsibility, he thought. If she asked his advice, he could certainly give it. But the point was to let her sink or swim without his interference, no matter what anyone else wanted from him. In what other way could she show that she was up to the job?

He made his way over to Bloomsbury. The second call on his mobile came while he was stuck in traffic in the vicinity of Green Park station. This time it was Winston Nkata ringing him. Barb Havers, he said, in “best Barb fashion” was on her way to defying the superintendent’s instructions that she remain in London. She was, he went on, driving down to Hampshire. He had not been able to talk her out of it. “You know Barb” was how Winston put it.

“She’ll listen to you, man,” Nkata said. “Cos she bloody well i’n’t listening to me.”

“Christ,” Lynley muttered, “she’s a maddening woman. What’s she up to, then?”

“The weapon,” Nkata said. “She recognised it.”

“What d’you mean? She knows who it belongs to?”

“She knows what it is. So do I. We di’n’t see the picture of it till today. Di’n’t have a look at the china board before this morning. And what it is narrows the field to Hampshire.”

“It’s not like you to keep me in suspense, Winston.”

“Called a crook,” Nkata told him. “We saw ’em by the crate in Hampshire, when we talked to that bloke Ringo Heath.”

“The master thatcher.”

“Tha’s the bloke. Crooks’s what’s used to hold reeds in place when you’re putting them on a roof. Not exactly something we’d be used to seeing in London, eh, but in Hampshire? Any place they got thatched roofs and thatchers, you’re goin’ to see crooks.”

“Jossie,” Lynley said.

“Or Hastings. Cos these’re made by hand. Crooks, that is.”

“Hastings? Why?” Then Lynley remembered. “He trained as a blacksmith.”

“And blacksmiths’re the ones who make the crooks. Each one makes ’em different, see. They end up-”

“Like fingerprints,” Lynley concluded.

“Tha’s about it. Which’s why Barb’s heading down there. She said she’d ring Ardery first, but you know Barb. So I thought you might…you know. Barb’ll listen to you. Like I said, she wasn’t having anything off me.”

Lynley cursed beneath his breath. He rang off. Traffic began moving, so he continued on his way, determined to track down Havers via mobile as soon as he could. He hadn’t managed this when his mobile rang again. This time it was Ardery.

“Where’ve you got with the coin dealer?” she asked.

He briefed her, telling her he was on his way to the British Museum. She said, “Excellent. It’s a motive, isn’t it? And we’ve found no coin among her things, so someone took it off her at some point. We’re getting somewhere at last. Good.” She went on to tell him what Yukio Matsumoto had informed her: There had been two men in the vicinity of the chapel in Abney Park Cemetery, not just one. Indeed, there had been three, if they wanted to include Matsumoto himself. “We’re working with him on an e-fit. His solicitor showed up while I was talking to him and we had something of a set-to-God, that woman’s like a pit bull-but she’s on board for the next two hours. As long as the Met admits culpability in Yukio’s accident.”

Lynley drew in a sharp breath. “Isabelle, Hillier’s never going to go for that.”

“This,” Isabelle said, “is more important than Hillier.”

It would, Lynley thought, be a very snowy day in hell before David Hillier saw things that way. Before he could tell the acting superintendent as much, however, she had rung off. He sighed. Hale, Havers, Nkata, and Ardery. Where to begin? He chose the British Museum.

There at last, he tracked down a woman called Honor Robayo who had the powerful build of an Olympic swimmer and the handshake of a successful politician. She said frankly and with an appealing grin, “Never thought I’d be talking to a cop. Read masses of mysteries and detective novels, I do. Who d’you reckon you’re more like, then, Rebus or Morse?”

“I have a fatal proclivity for vintage vehicles,” Lynley admitted.

“Morse it is.” Robayo crossed her arms on her chest, high up, as if her biceps wouldn’t allow her arms to get closer to her body. “So. What c’n I do for you, then, Inspector Lynley?”

He told her why he’d come: to talk to the curator about a coin from the time of Antoninus Pius. This coin would be an aureus, he said.

“Got one you want to show me?” she asked.