Out in the sitting room, she heard Morag's key scratching at the lock. There was no time for anything else but a quick look at the bedsheets beneath the counterpane, catching the faint scent of lavender upon them. They offered no visible secrets to her, so she moved to the chest of drawers on the other side of the room.
And there it was: everything she needed. In one of the two photographs, a woman posed in her wedding gown with her bespectacled groom. In the other, a much older version of the same woman stood on Brighton Pier. With her was a younger man. He was bespectacled like his father.
Barbara picked this latter picture up and took it over to the window for a better look. In the sitting room, Morag's voice called out, "Are you in here, Constable?" and Mandy gave her Siamese yowl.
In the bedroom, Barbara murmured, "Bloody hell," at what she was looking at. Hastily, she shoved the Brighton Pier photograph into her shoulder bag. She composed herself as best she could and called out, "Sorry. Having a look round. Got reminded of my mum. She goes for this sixties stuff in a very big way."
Complete casuistry but it couldn't be helped. Truth was, in her present state, Mum wouldn't know the sixties from a basket of potatoes.
"She'd run out of water," Barbara said helpfully when she joined the building manager in the sitting room. The sound of Mandy lapping came from the kitchen. "I refilled her bowl. She's got plenty of food, though. I think she'll be set for a while."
Morag gave Barbara a shrewd look, which suggested she wasn't entirely convinced of the constable's heartfelt concern for the cat. But she didn't make a move to frisk Barbara's person, so the end result was a round of farewells after which Barbara hotfooted it outside and dug round in her shoulder bag for her mobile.
It rang just as she was about to punch in the numbers for Lynley. A Scotland Yard extension was calling.
"Detective Con...Constable Havers?" Dorothea Harriman was on the other end. She sounded terrible.
"Me," Barbara said. "Dee, what's wrong?"
Harriman said, "Con...Detect..." And Barbara realised she was sobbing.
She said, "Dee. Dee, get a grip. For the love of God, what's going on?"
"It's his wife," she cried.
"Whose wife? What wife?" Barbara felt the fear coming upon her in a rush because there was only one wife that she could conceive of in that moment, one woman only about whom the department's secretary might be calling her. "Has something happened to Helen Lynley? Has she lost her baby, Dee? What's going on?"
"Shot." Harriman keened the word. "The superintendent's wife has been shot."
LYNLEY SAW that St. James had come to him not in his old MG but in a panda car, driven from St. Thomas' Hospital with lights flashing and siren blaring. He assumed this much because that was how they returned to the other side of the river, riding in the back with two grim-faced Belgravia constables in the front, the entire journey made in a matter of minutes which nonetheless felt like hours to him, all the time with traffic parting like Red Sea waters before them.
His old friend kept a hand on his arm, as if expecting Lynley to bolt from the car. He said, "They've got a trauma team with her. They've given her blood. O-negative, they said. It's universal. But you'll know that, won't you. Of course you will." St. James cleared his throat and Lynley looked at him. He thought at that moment, unnecessarily, that St. James had once loved Helen, had so many years ago intended to be her husband himself.
"Where?" Lynley's voice was raw. "Simon, I told Deborah...I said that she was to-"
"Tommy." St. James's hand tightened.
"Where, then? Where?"
"In Eaton Terrace."
"At home?"
"Helen was tired. They parked the car and unloaded their parcels at the front door. Deborah took the Bentley round to the mews. She parked it, and when she got back to the house-"
"She didn't hear anything? See anything?"
"She was on the front step. At first, Deborah thought she'd fainted."
Lynley raised his hand to his forehead. He pressed in on his temples as if this would allow him to understand. He said, "How could she have thought-"
"There was virtually no blood. And her coat-Helen's coat-it was dark. Is it navy? Black?"
Both of them knew the colour was meaningless, but it was something to cling to and they had to cling to it