give it a credence she couldn't afford.
They were attempting to negotiate Piccadilly Circus when her mobile rang. She barked,
"Ardery," into it, and Philip Hale spoke. They'd found the Japanese bloke with the violin, he told her. "Down a set of stairs in a courtyard just beyond - "
"The cigar shop," Isabelle said, for she recalled that she and Lynley had seen the damn busker themselves. He'd been playing to the accompaniment of a boom box. With long salt-and-pepper hair, he'd been wearing a tuxedo and standing in the lower courtyard in front of a wine bar. Why the hell hadn't she remembered the man?
That was the bloke, Philip Hale said when she'd described him.
"Have you uniforms with you?"
No. Everyone was in plainclothes. Two blokes were sitting at tables in the courtyard and the rest were -
Hale broke off. Then he said, "Damn. Guv, he's packing up. He's shut off the boom box and he's putting the violin ...You want us to nab him?"
"No. No. Do not approach him. Follow him, but keep everyone away. And keep well back. Do not let him see he's being tailed, all right?"
"Right."
"Good man, Philip. We'll be there presently." She said to Lynley, "He's on the move.
Get us there, for God's sake."
She could feel her nerves jangling to the tips of her toes. He, on the other hand, was perfectly calm. But once they made it through Piccadilly Circus, a tailback of taxis seemed to stretch into infinity.
She cursed. She said, "Bloody hell, Thomas. Get us out of here."
He gave no reply. But he made the virtue of being a longtime Londoner apparent when he began to take side streets, coolly, as if in possession of the Knowledge. He finally parked as Isabelle's mobile rang again.
Philip Hale's voice said, "There's a church at the southwest end of the square."
"Has he gone inside?"
He hadn't, Hale said. In front of the church was a garden and he had begun to play there, in the middle of the central path. There were benches lining this and people were listening and,
"Guv, there's quite a crowd gathered."
Isabelle said, "We'll be there." And to Lynley, "A church?"
"That would be St. Paul's Covent Garden." As they came into the vicinity of the old flower market, he took her arm briefly and pointed her towards it. She saw the building over the heads of the crowd, a classical structure of brick with quoins of pale stone. She headed towards it, but the route wasn't easy. There were buskers everywhere and hundreds of people enjoying them: magicians, balloon sellers, tap dancers, even a group of grey-haired women playing marimbas.
Isabelle was thinking it was the perfect spot for something dreadful to happen - anything from a terrorist attack to a runaway vehicle - when a sudden commotion to one side of the church caught her attention just as her mobile rang. A shout went up, and she snapped, "What's going on?" into the phone. For it was clear to her that something was happening and it wasn't what she wanted to happen and even as she thought this, she saw Yukio Matsumoto tearing through the crowd, his violin in one hand and sheer unmitigated panic on his face.
On the mobile Philip Hale said, "He clocked us, guv. Don't know how. We've got - "
"I see him," she said. "Get in pursuit. If we lose him here, we've lost him for good." And to Lynley, "Damn. Damn," as the violinist broke into a crowd. Cries of protest were followed almost at once by shouts of "Police! Stop! Stop that man!" and afterwards a form of madness ensued. For part of the dark history of the Metropolitan police in pursuit of anyone was a history that included the shooting death of an unarmed and innocent civilian in an underground train, and no one wanted to be in the line of fire. No matter that these plainclothes cops were not armed, the crowd wouldn't know that. People began running in all directions as mothers grabbed children, husbands grabbed wives, and those individuals with a score to settle against the police did what they could to get in the way.
"Where's he gone?" Isabelle demanded of Lynley.
He said, "There!" and indicated roughly the north. She followed his gesture and saw the bobbing head of the man and then the black of his tuxedo coat, and she set off after him, shouting into her phone, "Philip, he's going north on ...What is it?" to Lynley.
"James Street," Lynley said. "In the