mistakes had nothing to do with the Home Office and whatever mad secrets they were keeping over there."
He nodded. "It was useful, nonetheless. Had everything been straightforward from the first, the ending to this story would be different, I daresay."
She was still astonished. But astonishment slowly gave way to realisation. The assistant commissioner, at the end of the day, would hardly have granted her a stay of professional execution merely because the Home Office hadn't told her the real identity of Gordon Jossie.
There was more involved, and she had a very good idea that the additional bargaining to keep her in place had to do with promises made by Lynley. She said, "Exactly what did you agree to, Tommy?"
He smiled. "You see? You're learning quickly."
"What did you agree to?"
"Something I was likely to do anyway."
"You're coming back permanently."
"For my sins. Yes."
"Why?"
"As I said, I was likely - "
"No. I mean why did you do this for me?"
He fixed his eyes on her. She didn't look away. "I'm not sure," he finally said.
They sat in silence for another moment, observing each other. At last, she opened the centre drawer of her desk. She took out a metal ring that she'd placed there earlier in the day.
From this dangled a single key. She'd had it made but hadn't been sure and she still wasn't sure, if the truth had to be told. But she'd long been adept at avoiding truths, so she did so now.
She slid the ring across her desk to him. He looked from it to her.
"There can never be more between us than there is just now," she told him. "We need to understand that from the first. I want you, but I'm not in love with you, Tommy, and I never will be."
He looked at the key. Then her. Then the key again.
She waited for him to make his decision, telling herself it didn't matter, knowing the truth was that it always would.
Finally, he reached for what she'd offered. "I understand," he said.
THE LOOSE ENDS took hours, so Barbara Havers didn't arrive back in London till quite late. She'd considered staying the night in Hampshire, but at the last moment she decided that home was more appealing despite the fact that her bungalow was likely to be the temperature of a sauna after being closed up in the heat for two days. On the drive back, she replayed what had occurred in the paddock, and she looked at it from every angle, wondering if any other ending had been possible.
At first, she hadn't recognised the name. She'd been a young teenager at the time of John Dresser's murder and while the name Ian Barker was not completely unfamiliar to her, she had not immediately connected it with that death in the midlands and with the man standing in the paddock with a gun in his hand. Her more immediate concern had been Meredith Powell's injury, Frazer Chaplin's condition, and the distinct possibility that Gordon Jossie was going to shoot someone else.
She hadn't expected him to turn the gun on himself. Afterwards, however, his reason for doing so was more than clear. He was, at that point, hemmed in on all sides. There would be no escaping the public revelation of his true identity in one way or another. When that occurred, the incomprehensible evil act of his childhood would be once more dissected before a public who always, eternally, and understandably, demanded payment.
With the dog barking, herself shouting, Whiting roaring, and Georgina Francis screaming, he'd put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. And then utter silence. The poor damn dog crawled on its belly then, like a soldier in battle. She reached her master, whimpering, while the rest of them raced to look to the injured.
A helicopter came from the air support unit near Lee-on-Solent to fetch Meredith to hospital. Officers arrived from the Lyndhurst station. Hot on their heels, as always, came the journalists, and to attend to them the duty press officer manned a position at the end of Paul's Lane. Georgina Francis was taken off to the custody suite at the Lyndhurst station, while everyone waited two hours for the forensic pathologist to arrive. Eventually, matters came to a close as far as Barbara's participation was concerned. She spent some time on her mobile with Lynley in London, some time with Whiting going over the situation in Hampshire, and then she was finished. Time to stay the night or time to go.