Just One Evil Act

“Or two. Honestly, Thomas, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

A waitress came to them, a girl who had the look of a student and the accent of a recent arrival from the Eastern Bloc. He ordered wine for himself—the same plonk that Daidre was drinking—and when the girl took herself off to fetch it, he said, “Whether you’re nervous or not, I’m quite glad you rang me. Not only is it a fine thing to see you again, but frankly, I was in need of a drink.”

“Work?” she asked.

“Barbara Havers. I had an encounter with her that disturbed me rather more than I like to be disturbed by Barbara—and believe me she’s been disturbing me in one way or another for years—and getting thoroughly soused seems like a reasonable reaction to the entire mess she’s in. Either that or being diverted by your presence.”

Daidre took up her own wine but waited till he had been served his. They clinked glasses and drank to each other’s health, whereupon she said, “What sort of mess? It’s not my business, of course, but I’m available to listen should you have a mind to talk about it.”

“She’s gone her own maddening way in an investigation and not for the first time.”

“This is a problem?”

“She’s skirting far too close to ignoring her ethical responsibility as a police officer. It’s a complicated matter. Enough said on the subject. For the moment, I’d like to forget all about it. So tell me, then. What are you doing in London?”

“Interviewing for a job,” she said. “Regent’s Park. London Zoo.”

He found himself brightening, sitting up straighter all at once. Regent’s Park, the zoo . . . He had a thousand questions about what it all meant that Daidre Trahair was thinking of making a change from Bristol, but all he could manage was, stupidly, “As veterinarian?”

She smiled. “It is, more or less, what I do.”

He shook his head sharply. “Sorry. Stupid of me.”

She laughed. “Not at all. They might have wanted me to teach the gorillas to play chess or to train the parrots. One never knows.” She took more wine and gazed at him with something that looked to him like fondness. “I was contacted by a head hunter, someone employed by the zoo. I didn’t seek the position out, and I’m not altogether sure I’m interested in it.”

“Because . . . ?”

“I’m quite happy in Bristol. And, of course, Bristol is that much closer to Cornwall and I do love my cottage there.”

“Ah, yes, the cottage,” Lynley said. It was where they had first met, himself an intruder who’d broken a window to get to a phone, herself the owner of the place who’d arrived for a getaway only to find an unknown man tramping mud on her floors.

“And then, there’s my commitment to Boadicea’s Broads as well as my regular darts tournaments.”

Lynley lifted an eyebrow at this.

She laughed and said, “I’m quite serious, Thomas. I take my discretionary time to heart. Besides, the Broads rather depend on me—”

“A good jammer being difficult to find.”

“You’re teasing, of course. And I do know that I could join the Electric Magic. But then I’d be skating on occasion against my former teammates, and I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“These are serious matters,” he said. “I suppose it must come down to the job itself, then. As well as the benefits attached to taking it, should it be offered.”

They gazed at each other for a moment in which he saw the colour rise appealingly to her cheeks. He liked the look of her when she blushed. He said, “Have you listed them?”

“What?”

“The benefits. Or is it early days for that? I assume they’re interviewing other large animal vets as well. It’s an important position, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they’ve done the interviews. All of the interviews. The initial ones, the secondary ones. The paper screening and checking of documents and references and all of that.”

“So this is something that’s been going on for a while,” he said.

“Since early March. That’s when I was first contacted.”

He frowned. He observed the ruby colour of his wine. He asked himself how he felt about this: that since early March she’d been part of a process that might bring her to London but she’d not told him. He said, “Since early March? You haven’t mentioned it. How am I to take that?”

Her lips parted.

He said, “Never mind. Terrible question. My ego was speaking for me. So where are you in the process, then? Tertiary interviews? Who knew so much was involved in vetting a vet, if you’ll pardon the pun. Is it a pun? I don’t quite know. You’re leaving me at sixes and sevens, Daidre.”

She smiled. “It’s made difficult by—”

“What is?”

“My decision. They’ve offered me the job, Thomas.”

“Have they indeed? That’s wonderful! Isn’t it?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Of course. Moving house is always complicated, and you’ve already listed your other concerns.”

“Yes. Well.” She took up her wine and drank. Looking for courage? he wondered. She said, “That’s not exactly what I mean by complicated.”

“Then what?”

“You, of course. But you know that already, I expect. You’re a complication. You. Here. London.”

His heart had begun to beat more heavily. He tried for lightness in his response. “It’s a disappointment for me, of course. If you take the job, I won’t have the opportunity of enjoying the personal tour of the zoo in Bristol that you once promised me. But I assure you we’ll be able to soldier on under the burden of my disappointment. Rest your mind on that score.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“Yes. Of course. I suppose I do.”

She looked away from him, across the wine bar to where a couple had just been seated. They reached spontaneously for each other’s hand, twined fingers, and gazed into each other’s eyes across the candlelight. They looked to be somewhere in their twenties. They looked to be somewhere in the first stages of love.

She said, “You see, I don’t want to see you, Thomas.”

He felt himself blanch, her words unexpectedly like a blow to him.

She moved her gaze from the young couple to him, apparently saw something on his face, and said quickly, “No, no. I’ve said that badly. What I mean is that I don’t want to want to see you. There’s too much danger in that for me. There’s . . .” Again she diverted her gaze from him, but this time she put it on the candle’s flame. It guttered as someone new entered the wine bar. Voices called out a greeting to the young lovers at the table. Someone said, “Don’t trust that bastard, Jennie,” and someone else laughed.

Daidre said, “There’re too many possibilities for pain here. And I promised myself some time ago . . . It’s that I’ve had enough of pain. And I hate saying that to you, of all people, because what you’ve endured and what you’ve somehow come out whole from having endured makes anything I’ve gone through in my little life a very paltry thing and believe me, I know it.”

It was her honesty that he admired, Lynley realised as she spoke. It was her honesty that he knew he could grow to love. Understanding this, he was in that moment as afraid as she was, and he wanted to tell her this. But instead he said, “Dear Daidre—”

“God, that sounds like the beginning of the end,” she declared. “Or something very like.”

He laughed, then. “Not at all,” he said. He considered their predicament from several different angles as he took up his wineglass and drank. He said, “What if you and I screw up our courage and approach the precipice?”

“What precipice would that be exactly?”