Just One Evil Act

on which it had been perched. When his desk phone rang at last, he snatched it up.

“Barbara,” he said.

“Me.” It was Dorothea. “Coast is clear. Detective Inspector Stewart has just left her office. He’s looking grim.”

“With triumph?”

“Couldn’t say, Detective Inspector Lynley. Raised voices for a moment or two in there, but that was it. She’s alone now. I thought you might like to know.”

He went to Isabelle at once. On his way, he met John Stewart in the corridor. As Harriman had indicated earlier, the other DI carried a tabloid with him. He had it rolled into a tube, and when Lynley nodded at him and began to pass by, Stewart stopped him. It was a sharp move in which he slapped the rolled tabloid against Lynley’s chest. He moved in far too close, and when he spoke, Lynley could smell the acrid scent of his breath. He felt rising in himself the inclination to shove the other man against the wall by means of his hand on Stewart’s throat, but he quelled this inclination and said, “Is there a problem, John?”

Stewart’s voice was a hiss. “You think you were discreet, the two of you. You think no one knew you were fucking her, don’t you? We’re going to see about that one, you and I. This isn’t over, Tommy.”

Lynley felt his muscles go so tight that the only release for the energy that made them that way would have been to throw Stewart to the floor and throttle him. But there was too much at stake here, and the truth of the matter was that he hadn’t the slightest idea what was actually going on. So he said, “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s right, mate,” Stewart sneered. “You go all public school on me. That’s just what I would expect of you. Now get out of my way or—”

“John, I believe you’re in my way,” Lynley said quietly. He took the tabloid from the other man’s hand, where still it pressed against his own chest. “Thank you for this, however. A little light reading over dinner tonight.”

“You piece of shit. The two of you. The three of you. All of you directly up to the top.” This said, Stewart pushed past him.

Lynley went on his way, but as he did so, he opened the tabloid to see the front page. Mitchell Corsico’s by- line was no surprise. Neither was the headline Kidnap Dad Behind It All. He didn’t need to read the article to see that he had been outplayed by Dwayne Doughty. The private investigator was a master, he realised, the mouse who could wrest the cheese from the trap without even coming close to the neck snap that would kill him.

When he got to Dorothea Harriman, he nodded at Isabelle’s closed door. She said she would check and she spoke into her phone. Would the detective superintendent be available to see Detective Inspector Lynley? she enquired. She listened for a moment and then told Lynley to give his superior five minutes.

The five minutes that passed stretched to ten and then fifteen before Isabelle opened her office door. She said, “Come in, Tommy. Close the door behind you,” and when he’d done so, she gave a tremendous sigh. She gestured to her mobile and said, “It shouldn’t take such an effort to plan a holiday to the Highlands. Bob wants to argue that it’s ‘out of the country’ and as he has custody, et cetera, et cetera. Is it any wonder I took to drink?” And when he shot her a look, she said, “I’m joking, Tommy.”

She went to her desk and dropped into her chair. Uncharacteristically, she removed her simple necklace, dropped it on the desk, and rubbed the back of her neck. “Pinched nerve,” she told him. “Stress, I think. Well, it’s been a rough time.”

“I saw John in the corridor.”

“Ah. Well. He was taken aback. Who can blame him? He wasn’t to know he was being looked into, but honestly, what else could the man have been expecting?”

Lynley watched her. Her face was nothing if not completely what it ought to be. He said, “I’m not sure I understand.”

She continued to see to the tight muscles in her neck. “I wasn’t sure how it would work out, of course, once I assigned her to him and then reassigned her elsewhere, but I did think his antipathy towards both of us would do him in, which of course it did. She ran him on a merry chase all over London, and he ran after her. Doubtless there’s some fox-hunting metaphor that a man of your background might come up with—”

“I don’t hunt,” he told her. “Well, once, but once was quite enough for me.”

“Hmm. Yes. I suppose that’s in order, isn’t it? I daresay you’ve always been a traitor to your class.” She smiled at him. “How are you, Tommy?” she asked. “You’ve seemed . . . lighter these days. Have you met someone?”

“Isabelle, what’s going on, exactly? Hillier, CIB1, the DAC from police personnel management . . .”

“John Stewart’s been transferred, Tommy,” she said. “I thought you understood what I was talking about.” She returned her necklace to her neck and rebuttoned her blouse. She said, “Barbara’s brief was to suss him out. She would misuse her time left, right, and centre, and we would see if he misused his authority by setting up an unauthorised investigation of her. Of course, that’s exactly what he did as his reports to me proved from the very first. Naturally, ridding ourselves of the man entirely is a virtual impossibility, but CIB1, Hillier, and personnel management came to believe that a spate in Sheffield might be just the ticket for John. To learn how to operate effectively within the confines of a hierarchy, I mean.”

The release he felt was enormous. So was the gratitude. He said, “Isabelle . . .”

She said, “At any rate, Barbara played her part well. One would almost believe she was seriously out of order. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Why?” he said quietly. “Isabelle, why? With so much at risk for you . . .”

She looked at him quizzically. “You’re confusing me, Tommy. I’m not at all sure what you’re talking about. At any rate, it’s not important, I suppose. The crux of the matter is that John’s been dealt with. The coast is clear, as they say, for Barbara’s return and for a private celebration for a job well done.”

He saw that she was not going to relent. She would have this her way or not at all. He said, “I don’t know what to . . . Isabelle, thank you. I want to say that you won’t regret this, but God knows that’s not likely.”

She regarded him evenly for a very long moment. For a flash he saw in her face the woman whose body he’d so enjoyed in bed. Then that woman was gone and, he reckoned, she was gone forever. Her next words made this so.

“It’s guv, Tommy,” she told him quietly. “Or it’s ma’am. Or it’s superintendent. It’s not Isabelle, though. I hope we’re clear on that.”

20 May

CHALK FARM

LONDON

She hadn’t returned a single call from Lynley. What the fallout was going to be was something she didn’t want to know just yet. So when she’d returned, she’d dragged herself into her bungalow and dumped the contents of her duffel onto the floor. She’d looked at the dismal collection of dirty clothing, and she’d decided that the next step was to lug it all to the launderette. She’d done so, sitting inside the place with its saunalike temperature and its unmistakable odour of mildew. She’d washed and she’d dried and then she’d folded. When it could no longer be avoided, she’d returned home.

The aloneness of the place seeped inside her skin. Given, she’d been alone for years, but it had been an alone she’d managed to deny through work, through the obligatory visits to her mother’s care home, where the poor woman’s mind was being taken from her by the tablespoonful, and through the unexpected but always welcome interactions with her neighbours. Those neighbours she didn’t want to think about, but when she passed by their flat with its closed and curtained French windows, it was impossible to think of anything else.

It hadn’t been a wrenching parting at the Pisa airport. That was the stuff of films. Instead, it had been something of a rush in which Azhar acquired tickets for, as things turned out, a flight to Zurich, from where he would begin the process of getting himself and Hadiyyah to Pakistan. This flight was soon to depart, and Barbara worried that, in these days of international terrorists, he would be denied a ticket by virtue of being Muslim, dark- skinned, and seeking to go one way only. But perhaps it was the presence of his charming daughter, clearly thrilled