Nkata swung round from the computer. If a black man could have been said to go pale, that was what happened. Barbara herself went empty. What was it with the bloody superintendent? she wondered. Was this about Lynley and where he was and why he wasn’t performing nightly between her legs? Or was it about holding the rest of them beneath her thumbnail, like insects about to be pinned to a board?
Winston stood slowly. He looked at Barbara. She said, “I borrowed Winston for a few minutes, guv. Something I needed to look up and he’s clever with this stuff. I can do it, but it takes me forever and I’m generally hopeless when it comes to figuring where to go next.”
Isabelle looked her over. Her gaze rested most meaningfully on Barbara’s tee-shirt, which was perfectly readable since she’d flung her donkey jacket on a nearby chair. Christ died for our sins… Let’s not disappoint him clearly did not amuse.
Ardery said, “Holiday’s over, Sergeant Havers. I want you back at work and wearing something appropriate within an hour.”
Barbara said, “Due respect, guv— ”
“Don’t push this, Barbara,” Isabelle told her. “You may have six days, six weeks, or six months of holiday time due, but it seems rather obvious that you’re not on holiday. That being the case, get back to work.”
“I was only going to say— ”
“Sergeant Havers!” Isabelle barked this time. “Do it now.”
Barbara said it in a rush. “Guv, I can’t get home and change my clothes and be back in an hour. It’s impossible. Plus I need to get over to University College. If you’ll let me have a day— this day, this one day more, I swear— I’m out of here in thirty seconds and I’m back tomorrow dressed like…” She couldn’t come up with a name. “Like whoever.” She wanted to add “Picture me gorgeous” but she reckoned the superintendent would respond with “I’d rather picture you dead,” so she let that one go. She did add, “I twisted Winston’s arm, guv. Please don’t take things out on him.”
“Things?” the superintendent snapped. “What things would those be, Sergeant Havers?”
Next to her, Barbara heard Winston moan, just a small sound that the superintendent didn’t take note of, thank God. She said, “I don’t know. Just… whatever… things. Stress of the job. Life.”
“Referring to what?” Isabelle was furious now. Barbara wondered how much further she could dig herself.
“Guv, I don’t know,” she said, although being without Lynley to bonk was fairly high on her list. “I didn’t mean anything by that, anyway. Just something to say.”
“Yes? Well, don’t play round with ‘just something to say,’ all right? Finish what you’re doing here, then get out of this building. I’ll see you here tomorrow morning and if I do not, you’ll be a traffic warden in Uzbekistan by tomorrow afternoon. Is that clear?”
“Don’t know how it could be clearer,” Barbara said.
“And you,” Isabelle said to Winston, “are coming with me.”
“No sign of knickers,” was what Nkata said in response, although he said it quickly and he said it to Barbara, adding, “Check out Raul Montenegro,” before he left her.
Barbara waited till the superintendent and Nkata had left the Met library. She cursed her bad luck when it came to Ardery. She was going to have to start walking the perfectly straight and the excruciatingly narrow with the superintendent. Failing that, she had little doubt that Isabelle would be only too happy to drop-kick her bum into another time zone.
She replaced Winston at the computer terminal. She gazed at the screen. She read what was there— damn if it wasn’t in bloody Spanish again— but she found the name Winston had mentioned before being carted off. Raul Montenegro popped out from a jumble of other words. Okay, Barbara thought, let’s follow that lead.
LAKE WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
Throughout the years, Manette had seen her younger brother in many different states, from stone-cold sober to barely conscious. She’d seen him regretful. She’d seen him earnest. She’d seen him manipulative, mournful, agitated, anxious, pleasantly high, and unpleasantly paranoid. But she’d never seen him as angry as he was when he burst through the door to Ireleth Hall, letting it crash back behind him.
As entrances went, it was damn effective. It left all of them gaping. Most conveniently, it left Bernard Fairclough in the welcome state of not having to answer any further questions about Vivienne Tully and the payments made into her bank account.
“Nicky, what’s wrong?” Valerie demanded.
“Are you all right?” Bernard said. “Where’s Alatea? Has something happened to her?”
“Nothing’s happened to Alatea.” Nicholas’s voice was brusque. “Let’s talk about Scotland Yard, all right? You won’t mind that, will you? Will you, Manette? What about you, Freddie? I s’pose I can assume the whole collection of you are in on this.”
Manette looked at her father. She wasn’t about to take this on. She closed her fingers over Freddie’s hand to indicate to him he wasn’t to say anything either. She felt him look at her, but he said nothing. Instead, his hand turned and he wove his fingers with hers.
Bernard said, “What are you talking about, Nick? Sit down. You look awful. Are you not sleeping?”
“Don’t start the bloody false concern with me,” he cried. “There’s someone up here from London to investigate me, and if you’re about to suggest you know nothing about it, that’s just not on.” He strode to the fireplace. He towered over his father. “What the hell did you think? That I wouldn’t notice? That I wouldn’t work it out? That I’m so bloody addle-brained from drugs and done up with booze that I wouldn’t wonder why… Christ in heaven, I ought to kill you and have done with it. It’d be easy enough, wouldn’t it? I’ve apparently got such talents in the area of homicide that one more dead body in the boathouse would hardly count.”
“Nicholas!” Valerie rose from the sofa. “Stop this at once.”
“Oh, you’re part of it, are you?” He sneered at her. “I would’ve thought you— ”
“Not part of it. All of it,” Valerie said. “Are you listening to me? I’m all of it.”
That brought him to silence. Manette felt the shock of her mother’s words, like a ball of ice forming within her stomach. But confusion replaced shock soon enough. It was easier to be confused by the declaration than it was to follow it to its logical conclusion.
“Valerie,” her husband said quietly. “This isn’t necessary.”
“I’m afraid it is at this point.” She said to Nicholas, “The police are here because of me. Your father fetched them at my request. It was not his idea. Do you understand? He went to London. He did the legwork because he knows someone at New Scotland Yard. But it was no more his idea than”— she gestured to Manette and Freddie, still holding each other’s hand on the sofa— “than it was your sister’s. Or Mignon’s. Or anyone else’s. I wanted this, Nicholas. No one else.”
Nicholas looked like a man who’d taken a mortal blow. He finally said, “My own bloody mother. Did you actually think… You thought…?”
“It’s not quite what you’re concluding,” she said.
“That I might… that I could have…” Then he hit his fist on the mantelpiece. Manette winced at the force he used. “I’d kill Ian? That’s what you think? That I was capable of murder? What’s the matter with you?”
“Nick. Enough.” Bernard had spoken. “If nothing else, you’ve a history of— ”