A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,103

Keldale barn.

There was Havers to be dealt with. But beyond Havers, there was the truth. For underneath her bitter, unfounded accusations, her ugliness and hurt, the words she spoke rang with veracity. Had he not indeed spent the last year of his life fruitlessly seeking a replacement for Deborah? Not in the way Havers had suggested, but in a way far more dishonest than an inconsequential coupling in which two bodies meet, experience momentary pleasure, and separate to lead their individual lives, untouched and unchanged by the encounter. That, at least, was an expression of some sort, a giving of the moment no matter how brief. But for the last year of his life he had given nothing to anyone.

Behind his behaviour, wasn't the reality that he had maintained his isolated celibacy this last, long year not because of Deborah but because he had become high priest in a religion of one: a celebrant caught up in devotion to the past? In this twisted religion, he had held up every woman in his life to unforgiving scrutiny and had found each one wanting in comparison to Deborah, not the real Deborah but a mystical goddess who lived only in his mind.

He saw now that he had not wished to forget the past, that he had done everything instead to keep it alive, as if his intention had always been to make it, not Deborah, his bride. He was sick at heart.

With the sickness came the realisation that there were facts to be faced about Stepha as well. But he could not bring himself to them. Not yet.

As the final movement of the symphony came to a close, he turned down the winding road from the moors into Keldale. Autumn leaves flew from under the car's wheels, leaving a cloud of red, gold, and yellow billowing behind him, promising winter. He pulled in front of the lodge and spent a moment gazing at the windows, numbly wondering how and when he was going to piece together the fragments of his life.

Havers must have been watching for him from the lounge, for she came to the door as soon as he switched off the car's ignition. He groaned and steeled himself to another confrontation, but she gave him no chance to make preliminary remarks.

"I've found Gillian," she announced.
Chapter 13
She had somehowsurvived the morning. The dreadful row with Lynleyfollowed by the horrors of Roberta's bedroom had served to wear down her anger and wretchedness, abrading them both into a dull detachment. She knew he was going to sack her anyway. She certainly deserved it. But before he did, she would prove to him that she could be a decent DS. In order to do that, however, there was this one last meeting to get through, this one last opportunity to show her stuff.

She watched Lynley's eyes roam over the unusual collection of items spread out on one of the tables in the lounge: the album containing the defaced family pictures, a dog-eared and well-thumbed novel, the photograph from Roberta's chest of drawers, the additional one of the two sisters, and a collection of six yellowed newspaper pages, all folded and shaped to the identical size, seventeen by twenty-two inches.

Lynley absently felt in his pocket for his cigarettes, lit one, and sat down on the couch.

"What is this, Sergeant?" he asked.

"I think these are the facts on Gillian," she responded. Her voice was carefully modulated, but a slight quaver in it caught his attention. She cleared her throat to hide it.

"You're going to need to enlighten me, I'm afraid," he said. "Cigarette?"

Her fingers itched to feel the cylinder of tobacco; her body ached for the soothing smoke.

But she knew, if she lit one, it would betray her shaking hands. "No, thank you," she replied. She took a breath, kept her eyes on his noncommittal face, and went on. "How does your man Denton line your chest of drawers?"

"With some sort of paper, I should guess. I've never noticed."

"But it isn't newspaper, is it?" She sat down opposite him, squeezing her hands into fists in her lap, feeling the sharp crescent pain of nails biting palms. "It wouldn't be, because the newsprint would come off on your clothes."

"True."

"So I was intrigued when you mentioned that Roberta's drawers were lined with newspapers. And I remembered Stepha saying that Roberta used to come every day for the Guardian."

"Until Paul Odell died. Then she stopped."

Barbara pushed her hair back behind her ears. It was quite unimportant, she told