desk: a crucial decision to be reached about postcards, a good-humoured debate about the next day's activities. Lynley listened, longing for that sweet normality of a holiday from home with someone he loved.
Lady Helen stirred. "I must change for dinner." She began to move towards the lift.
"Why did you come here?" Lynley asked abruptly.
She paused but did not look at him. "I wanted to see Skye in the dead of winter. I needed to see what it was like to be here alone."
He put his hand on her arm. Her warmth was like an infusion of life. "And have you seen enough of it? Alone, I mean."
Both of them knew what he was really asking. But instead of replying, she walked to the lift and pressed the button, watching its light single-mindedly, as if she were observing an amazing act of creative genius. He followed and barely heard her when she fi nally spoke.
"Please. I can't bear to cause either of us any more pain."
Somewhere above them, the machinery whirred. And he knew then that she would go on to her room, seeking the solitude she had come for, leaving him behind. But he saw that she intended this to be no few minutes' separation between them. Instead, this was something indeterminate, endless, something not to be borne. He knew it was the worst possible time to speak. But there would probably not be another opportunity.
"Helen." When she looked at him, he saw that her eyes were liquid with tears. "Marry me."
A small bubble of laughter escaped her, not a sound of humour but one of despair. She made a tiny gesture, eloquent in its futility.
"You know how I love you," he said. "Don't tell me it's too late."
She bowed her head. In front of her the lift doors opened. As if they beckoned her to do so, she put into words what he had been afraid-and had known-she might say. "I don't want to see you, Tommy. Not for a while."
He felt wrenched by the words, managed only, "How long?"
"A few months. Perhaps longer."
"That feels like a sentence of death."
"I'm sorry. It's what I need." She walked into the lift, pushed the button for her fl oor.
"Even after this, I still can't bear to hurt you. I never could, Tommy."
"I love you," he said. And then again, as if each word could serve as its own painful act of contrition. "Helen. Helen. I love you."
He saw her lips part, saw her fl eeting, sweet smile before the lift doors closed and she was gone.
BARBARA HAVERS was in the public bar of the King's Arms not far from New Scotland Yard, moping into her weekly pint of ale. She'd been nursing it along for the past thirty minutes. It was an hour before closing, long after the time when she should have made her way back to her parents and Acton, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to that yet.The paperwork was filed, the reports completed, the conversations with Macaskin at an end for now. But as always, at the conclusion of a case, she had a sense of her own uselessness. People would go on brutalising one another, despite her meagre efforts to stop them.
"Buy a bloke a drink?"
At Lynley's voice, she looked up. "I thought you'd gone to Skye! Holy God, you look done in."
He did indeed. Unshaven, his clothes rumpled, he looked like last year's Christmas wish.
"I am done in," he admitted, making a pathetically visible effort to smile. "I've lost count of the hours I've spent in the car over the last few days. What're you drinking? Not tonic water tonight, I take it?"
"Not tonight. I've moved up to Bass. But now you're here, I may change my poison. Depends on who's paying."
"I see." He took off his overcoat, threw it down carelessly on the next table, and sank into a chair. Feeling in his pocket, he produced cigarette case and lighter. As always she helped herself, regarding him over the flame that he held for her.
"What's up?" she asked him.
He lit a cigarette. "Nothing."
"Ah."
They smoked companionably. He made no move to get himself a drink. She waited.
Then with his eyes on the opposite wall he said, "I've asked her to marry me, Barbara."
It was as she expected. "You don't exactly look like the bearer of glad tidings."
"No. I'm not." Lynley cleared his throat, studying the tip of his cigarette.
Barbara sighed, felt the weighty, sore blanket of his unhappiness, and found to her surprise that she wore it as her own. At the nearby bar Evelyn, the blowsy barmaid, was fi ngering her way, bleary-eyed, through the night's receipts and doing her best to ignore the leering advances of two of the establishment's regular patrons. Barbara called out her name.
"Aye?" Evelyn responded with a yawn.
"Bring on two Glenlivets. Neat." Barbara eyed Lynley and added, "And keep them coming, will you?"
"Sure, luv."
When they were delivered to the table and Lynley reached for his wallet, Barbara spoke again.
"It's on me tonight, sir."
"A celebration, Sergeant?"
"No. A wake." She tossed back her whisky. It lit her blood like a flame. "Drink up, Inspector. Let's get ourselves soused."