as if for watchers just like Meredith, and then walked over and into the paddock to speak to Gina Dickens.
WHEN, AFTER A forty-minute wait, Gina Dickens had still not shown up at the Forest Heath Hotel in Sway, Barbara Havers reckoned that she was not coming. Sway was less than a ten-minute drive from Gordon Jossie's holding, and it was inconceivable that Gina had somehow got lost between the two locations. Barbara rang Gordon Jossie's mobile phone in an attempt to locate her, only to be told by Jossie that Gina had departed not fifteen minutes after phoning Barbara.
"She says it's not her in that magazine picture," he added.
Yeah right was Barbara's mental reply. She rang off and shoved her mobile into her bag.
There was always the unlikely possibility that Gina Dickens had run herself off the road somewhere along the route to Sway, so she thought a quick recce of the area wouldn't be entirely amiss.
It took Barbara little enough time to accomplish this. The entire journey from Sway to Jossie's holding required exactly two turns, and the most complicated part was making a quick jog when one came to Birchy Hill Road. This was hardly a complex manoeuvre. Nonetheless Barbara slowed to a crawl and peered round just in case there was a car upended into a hedge or catapulted into the sitting room of one of the nearby cottages.
There was nothing of the like, and nothing at all the entire way to Gordon Jossie's property. When Barbara arrived, she found the place deserted. Jossie had gone off to work, she reckoned, and she'd caught him on a rooftop when she'd rung his mobile. As for Gina Dickens, who the hell knew where she'd taken herself off to? What was interesting, though, was what her disappearing act implied.
Barbara had a look round the property to make sure that Gina's car was not hidden away somewhere, with Gina herself cowering behind the cottage curtains. Finding no other car but Jemima Hastings' Figaro in its usual place, Barbara returned to her Mini. Burley, she thought, was her next stop.
Her mobile rang midway to the village, at a point where she'd pulled to the side of the road to have a look at her map in order to make sense of the myriad lanes she was finding herself in. She flipped it open, assuming that she was finally hearing from Gina Dickens - no doubt with a ready excuse as to how she managed to get lost on the way to Barbara's hotel - but she found it was DI Lynley ringing her.
Superintendent Ardery, he informed her, was more or less on board with Barbara's unauthorised trip to Hampshire, but Barbara needed to make it a quick one and she needed to bring back some sort of result.
"What's that mean, exactly?" Barbara asked him. It was the more or less part she questioned.
"I assume it means she has a lot on her plate, and she'll deal with you later."
"Ah. That's bloody reassuring," Barbara said.
"She's getting rather a lot of pressure from Hillier and from the Directorate of Public Affairs," he told her. "It's to do with Matsumoto. She's come up with two e-fits, but I'm afraid they're not much use, and the manner in which she got them turned out to be questionable, so Hillier's had her on the carpet. He's given her two days to bring the case to a close. If she doesn't, she's finished. There's a chance she's finished regardless, as well."
"Lord. And she told the team this? That'll bloody well inspire confidence among the foot soldiers, eh?"
There was a pause. "No. Actually, the team haven't been told. I found out yesterday evening."
"Hillier told you? Christ. Why? He wants you back on, leading the team?"
Another pause. "No. Isabelle told me." Lynley went on quickly, saying something about John Stewart and a confrontation, but what Barbara had heard served to block her awareness of anything else. Isabelle told me.
Isabelle? she thought. Isabelle?
"When was this?" she finally asked him.
"At the briefing yesterday afternoon," he said. "I'm afraid it was one of John's typical - "
"I don't mean her face-off with Stewart," Barbara said. "I mean when did she tell you?
Why did she tell you?"
"I did say yesterday evening."
"Where?"
"Barbara, what does this have to do with anything? And, by the way, I'm telling you in confidence. I probably shouldn't be telling you at all. I hope you can keep the information to yourself."
She felt chilled at this, and she didn't particularly