a dagger-like insight, he remembered Detective Inspector Macaskin, who was awaiting their arrival at the police station, no doubt with his usual brand of tense, hall-pacing impatience.
"Van's over here" replaced his scintillating observation about the distortion of teeth marks kept preserved on fl esh in formaldehyde. He jerked his head towards the police vehicle, and, as they gave their attention to it, his features settled into a non-verbal apology. He hadn't thought there would be three of them.
Nor had he thought they would bring St. James. Had he known, he would have insisted upon driving something more suitable in which to fetch them, perhaps Inspector Macaskin's new Volvo which, if nothing else, had a front and rear seat and a heater that worked. The vehicle he was leading them towards had only two front seats-both belching forth stuffing and springs-and a single folding chair that was wedged in the back among two crime-scene kits, three lengths of rope, several folded tarpaulins, a ladder, a toolbox, and a pile of greasy rags. It was an embarrassment. Yet, if the trio from London noticed, they didn't comment. They merely arranged themselves logically with St. James in the front and the two others riding in the rear, Lynley taking the chair at Sergeant Havers' insistence.
"Wouldn't want you to get your pretty topcoat dirty," she said, before fl opping down on the tarpaulins, where she unwound a good thirty inches of muffler from her face.
Lonan took the opportunity of getting a better look at Sergeant Havers when she did so. Homely sort, he thought, surveying her snubby features, heavy brows, and round cheeks. She certainly hadn't got herself into this kind of exalted company on her looks. He decided that she had to be some sort of criminological wunderkind, and he gave serious consideration to watching her every move.
"Thank you, Havers," Lynley was responding placidly. "God knows a spot of grease would reduce me to uselessness in less than a minute."
Havers snorted. "Let's have a fag on it, then."
Lynley obliged by producing a gold cigarette case, which he handed to her, following it with a silver lighter. Lonan's heart sank. Smokers, he thought, and resigned himself to a bout of stinging eyes and clogged sinuses. Havers did not light up, however, because hearing their conversation, St. James opened his window and let in a sharp waft of freezing air, which struck her right in the face.
"Enough. I get the picture," Havers groused. She pocketed six cigarettes unashamedly and gave the case back to Lynley. "Has St. James always been this subtle?"
"Since the day he was born," Lynley replied.
Lonan started the van with a lurch, and they headed towards the CID office in Oban.
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR Ian Macaskin of Strathclyde CID was driven in life by a single fuel: pride. It took a number of distinct and unrelated forms, the first being familial. He liked people to know that he had beaten the odds. Married at twenty to a seventeen-year-old girl, he had stayed married to her for the next twenty-seven years, had raised two sons, had seen them through university and on to careers, one a veterinarian and the other a marine biolo-gist.Then there was physical pride.At fi ve feet nine inches tall, he weighed no more than he had as a twenty-one-year-old constable. His body was trim and fit from rowing back and forth across the Sound of Kerrera every night in the summer and doing much the same on a rowing machine he kept in his sitting room all winter long. Although his hair was completely grey and had been for the last ten years, it was still thick, shining like silver in the fl uorescent lights of the police station. And that same police station was his last source of pride. In his career, he had never once closed a case without making an arrest, and he expended considerable energy making certain that his men could say the same about themselves. He operated a tight investigations unit in which his officers ran every detail to ground like hounds after a fox. He saw to that. As a result, he was omnipresent in the office. Nervous energy personifi ed, he bit his fi ngernails down to the quick, sucking on breath mints or chewing gum or eating sacks of potato crisps in an effort to break himself of this single bad habit.
Inspector Macaskin met the London party not in his office but in a conference room, a ten-by-fifteen-foot cubicle with uncomfortable furniture, inadequate