HAVERS HAD stopped for both petrol and sustenance when her mobile rang. Otherwise, she would have religiously ignored it. As it was, she'd just pulled into the vast car park of a services area and she was striding towards the Little Chef - first things first, she'd told herself, and first things meant a decent fry-up to see her through the rest of the day - when she heard "Peggy Sue" emanating from her shoulder bag. She rooted out the mobile to see that DI Lynley was ringing her. She took the call as she marched towards the promise of food and air-conditioning.
"Where are you, Sergeant?" Lynley asked without preamble.
His tone told her that someone had sneaked on her, and it could only have been Winston Nkata since no one else knew what she was up to and Winnie was nothing if not scrupulous about obeying orders, no matter how maddening they were. Winnie, in fact, even obeyed non-orders. He anticipated orders, damn the man.
She said, "About to sink my teeth into a major food group that's been dipped into batter and thoroughly fried, and let me tell you I don't much care which food group it is at this point.
Peckish doesn't begin to describe, if you know what I mean. Where are you?"
"Havers," Lynley said, "you didn't answer my question. Please do so."
She sighed. "I'm at a Little Chef, sir."
"Ah. Centre for all that's nutritious. And where might this particular branch of that fine eating establishment be?"
"Well, let me see ..." She considered how to dress up the information but she knew it was useless to make it sound like anything other than what it was. So she finally said, "Along the M3."
"Where along the M3, Sergeant?"
Reluctantly she gave him the nearest exit number.
"And does Superintendent Ardery know where you happen to be going?"
She didn't reply. This was, she knew, a rhetorical question. She waited for what was coming next.
"Barbara, is professional suicide really your intention?" Lynley enquired politely.
"I rang her, sir."
"Did you."
"It went to her voice mail. I told her I was on to something. What else was I supposed to do?"
"Perhaps what you were meant to be doing? In London?"
"That's hardly the point. Look, sir, did Winnie tell you about the crook? It's a thatching tool and - "
"He did indeed tell me. And your intention in heading off to Hampshire is what, exactly?"
"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Jossie's got thatching tools. Ringo Heath's got thatching tools. Rob Hastings likely once made thatching tools, which're probably lying round his barn.
Then there's the bloke that works with Jossie - Cliff Coward - who could put his mitts on a thatching tool, and there's that cop Whiting as well because something's not right with him, in case you're about to tell me I should've rung up the Lyndhurst station and given him the news about the crook. I've got a snout at the Home Office, by the way, looking into Whiting." Which is more than you were able to do, she wanted to say but did not.
If she thought Lynley would be impressed with the leaps and bounds she was making while he'd been swanning round London doing whatever Isabelle Ardery had asked him to do, she was proven wrong almost at once. He said, "Barbara, I want you to stay where you are."
She said, "What? Sir, listen to me - "
"You can't take matters - "
"...into my own hands? That's what you're going to say, isn't it? Well, I wouldn't have to if the superintendent - the acting superintendent, mind you - had something other than tunnel vision. She's dead wrong about that Japanese bloke and you know it."
"And she knows it now as well." He told her what Ardery had managed to get from her interview with Yukio Matsumoto.
Barbara said, "Two men in the cemetery with her? Aside from Matsumoto? Bloody hell, sir. Don't you see that one of them - and possibly both of them - came up from Hampshire?"
"I don't disagree in the least," Lynley told her. "But you've only got one part of this puzzle under your pillow, and you know as well as I that if you play that part too soon, you've lost the game."
Barbara smiled then, in spite of herself. "Are you aware of how many metaphors you just mixed?"
She could hear the smile in his own voice when he said, "Call it the passion of the moment. It prevents me from thinking cleverly."