no time at all had passed between this moment and the aftermath of what had happened to his wife. The smells were the same: antiseptics and cleansers. The sights were as they had been before: the institutional blue chairs linked together and lining the walls, the notice boards about AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and the importance of frequent hand washing. The sounds remained universal: the arrival of ambulances, the rush of feet, exigent orders being barked as trolleys wheeled the injured into examining areas. Lynley saw and heard all of this and was swept back to the moment he'd walked in and learned that his wife had been shot on the front steps of their house, that help did not arrive for twenty minutes, and that in that time Helen had gone without oxygen as her heart pumped blood uselessly into the cavity of her chest. It was all so real that he gasped, stopped abruptly, and did not come round till he heard Isabelle Ardery say his name.
Her tone cleared his head. She was saying to him, "...uniforms down here, round the clock, wherever he is, wherever they move him. Christ, what a cock-up. I bloody well told him not to approach."
He noticed that she was wringing her hands and he thought inanely how he'd never seen someone do that although he'd read the expression often enough in books as an indication of someone's anxiety. Doubtless, she'd be feeling anxiety in spades. The Metropolitan police in pursuit of someone who ends up in hospital? No matter that they were identifying themselves as they pursued him. It wouldn't play that way in the newspapers, and she'd know that. She would also know that the ultimate head to roll - if it came down to it - was going to be hers.
The doors opened. Philip Hale came in, his expression distraught. Sweat made rivulets from his temples and beaded on his forehead. He'd removed his jacket. His shirt clung to his body.
Ardery moved. She had him by the arm and then against the wall and she was inches from his face before he had even noted her location in the room. She hissed, "Do you ever bloody listen? I told you not to approach the man."
"Guv, I didn't - "
"If we lose him, Philip, you're taking the blame. I'll see to it personally."
"But, guv - "
"Under review, in the dock, in the box. What ever it takes to get your attention because when I say you are not to approach a suspect, I do not sodding mean anything else, so you tell me - you God damn bloody tell me, Philip - which part of that you didn't understand because we've got a man who's been hit by a car and likely to die and if you think anyone's about to let this go and pretend it didn't happen, then you'd better have another God damn think about the matter and you'd better do it now."
The DI glanced Lynley's way. There could not be, Lynley knew, a better cop and more decent person than Philip Hale. Given an order, he'd follow it to the letter, which was what he'd done and all of them knew it.
Hale said, "Something spooked him, guv. One moment he was playing the violin and the next he was on the run. I don't know why. I swear to God - "
"You swear to God, do you?" She shook his arm. Lynley could see the tension in her fingers, and her grasp had to be a raw one because the tips of her fingers were red and the skin beneath her nails had gone crimson. "Oh, that's very pretty, Philip. Step onto the pitch. Take responsibility. I've no time for men who snivel like - "
"Guv," Lynley intervened quietly. "That'll do."
Ardery's eyes widened. He saw that she'd eaten the lipstick from her mouth and what replaced it for colour on her face were two circles of red fury high on her cheeks. Before she could reply, he said to her urgently, "We need to get to his brother and let him know what's happened."
She began to speak and he added, "We don't want him to hear this from a news report.
We don't want anyone significant learning it that way." By which he meant Hillier and she had to know that, even as she was driven by demons he well recognised but had never actually understood.
She released Hale's arm. "Get back to the Yard," she said and