was past one in the morning, then, when she finally staggered down to her car. Then the blasted Mini choked on her, and she sat with her head on the steering wheel, willing the damn engine to turn over properly. In her head, she heard that same admonition from some mystical automotive dimension suggesting that she might want to get the car seen to before it conked out altogether. She muttered, "Tomorrow. All right? Tomorrow," and hoped that promise was enough.
It was. The engine finally started.
At this time of night, the streets of London were virtually empty. No sane taxi driver was out, trying to get a fare in Westminster, and the buses ran far less frequently. An occasional car was passing by, but largely the streets were as vacant as the pavements where the homeless tucked themselves into doorways. So she made quick time to the hospital.
As she drove, she realised that he might not be there, that he might have gone home and tried to get some sleep, in which case she would not disturb him. But when she arrived and pulled into a drop-off point directly down from Lambeth Palace Road, she saw his Bentley at the far end of the carpark. He was with Helen, then, as she'd reckoned he would be.
She gave passing thought to the risk of shutting the Mini's engine off after she'd finally got it going. But the risk was necessary because she wanted to be the one to tell Lynley about the boy. She felt a need to relieve at least some small portion of the guilt he was carrying round, so she turned the key in the ignition and waited for the Mini's hiccupping to come to an end.
She grabbed up her shoulder bag and got out of the car. She was just about to walk towards the entrance when she saw him. He'd come out of hospital, and the look of him-how he walked and how he held his shoulders-told her how permanently altered he was. She hesitated, then. How to approach a dearly loved friend...How to approach him in such a time of devastation? At the end, she didn't think she could. Because, after all, what difference did it actually make with his life now, as it was, in ruins?
He trudged across the carpark to the Bentley. There he looked up. Not at her but at a spot in the carpark out of her range of vision. It was as if someone had called his name. And then a figure quickly emerged from the darkness and things happened very swiftly after that.
Barbara saw that the figure wore all black. He moved over to Lynley. There was something in his hand. Lynley looked round. Then he turned in a flash back to his car. But he got no farther. For the figure reached him and pressed the object that he carried into Lynley's side. Not even a second passed before Barbara's superintendent was on the ground and the hand that held the object pressed to him again. His body jerked and the figure in black looked up. Even from a distance, Barbara saw she was gazing on Robbie Kilfoyle.
It had all taken three seconds, perhaps less. Kilfoyle grabbed Lynley by his armpits and dragged him quickly to what Barbara should have bloody well seen, she thought, if she hadn't been so focussed on Lynley. A van was parked deeply in the shadows, its sliding door open. In another second, he'd got Lynley inside.
Barbara said, "Bloody sodding hell," weaponless and for a moment utterly directionless. She looked to the Mini for something she could use...She reached for her mobile to phone for help. She punched in the first nine as, across the carpark, the van roared to life.
She dived for her car. She threw her bag and her mobile inside, phone call incomplete. She would punch in the last two nines in a moment, but in the meantime she had to get going, had to get on his tail, had to follow and shout the direction she was traveling into the mobile so that an armed unit could be sent on its way because the van, the bloody van, was moving, it was coming across the carpark now. It was red, as they'd suspected, and on its side were the faded letters they'd seen in the film.
Barbara shoved her key into the ignition and turned it. The engine ground. It did not engage. Across from her, the van was rumbling