“You’ll get no objection from me.”
But she knew he objected to something and she pressed him. “I daresay you have a better approach?”
“Not at all.”
“God damn it, Thomas, if we’re to work together, you’re going to be frank with me even if I have to twist your arm.”
They were at the car and he hesitated before unlocking his door. At least, she thought, she’d apparently cured him of opening her door for her. He said, “You’re certain about that?”
“Well, of course I’m certain. Why else would I say it? I want to know what you think and I want to know it when you think it.”
“Have you a drinking problem, then?” he asked her.
It wasn’t what she’d been expecting, but she knew she should have been prepared. The fact that she hadn’t been caused her to explode. “I had a bloody vodka and tonic. Do I look like I’m staggering drunk to you?”
“And before the vodka and tonic?” he asked. “Guv, I’m not a fool. I expect you’ve got it in your bag. Likely it’s vodka because most people think that has no odour. You’ve got breath mints as well, or chewing gum, or whatever else you use to hide the smell.”
She said in automatic response, gone icy to her fingertips, “You’re out of order, Inspector Lynley. You are so bloody far out of order that I ought to send you packing to walk a patch in South London.”
“I can understand that.”
She wanted to strike him. It came to her that it didn’t matter to him and that likely it had never mattered to him: what threats were used against him to control him as a cop. He was unlike the rest because he didn’t need the job, so if they took it from him or threatened to take it from him or acted in a way that met with his aristocratic displeasure, he could walk away and do whatever it was that earls of the bloody realm did if they were not otherwise gainfully employed. And this was more than maddening, she realised. It made him a loose cannon, with loyalties to no one.
“Get in the car,” she told him. “We’re going to Covent Garden. Now.”
They drove in absolute silence, along the south side of Kensington Gardens and then Hyde Park. And she wanted a drink. The vodka and tonic had been a typical hotel bar vodka and tonic: a meagre finger and a half of vodka in the glass with the tonic provided alongside in a bottle so she could make the drink as strong or as weak as she wished. Because of Lynley’s presence, she’d used the entire tonic, and now she regretted it. She bloody, sodding regretted it. She also went over her movements feverishly, in her mind. She’d been perfectly careful. He was making a guess and waiting to see what she would do about it.
She said to him, “I’m going to forget we had that exchange on the pavement, Thomas.”
He said, “Guv,” in a tone that telegraphed as you wish.
She wanted to go further. She wanted to know what, if anything, he would say to Hillier. But to make any additional mention of the topic could give it a credence she couldn’t afford.
They were attempting to negotiate Piccadilly Circus when her mobile rang. She barked, “Ardery,” into it, and Philip Hale spoke. They’d found the Japanese bloke with the violin, he told her. “Down a set of stairs in a courtyard just beyond—”
“The cigar shop,” Isabelle said, for she recalled that she and Lynley had seen the damn busker themselves. He’d been playing to the accompaniment of a boom box. With long salt-and-pepper hair, he’d been wearing a tuxedo and standing in the lower courtyard in front of a wine bar. Why the hell hadn’t she remembered the man?
That was the bloke, Philip Hale said when she’d described him.
“Have you uniforms with you?”
No. Everyone was in plainclothes. Two blokes were sitting at tables in the courtyard and the rest were—
Hale broke off. Then he said, “Damn. Guv, he’s packing up. He’s shut off the boom box and he’s putting the violin …You want us to nab him?”
“No. No. Do not approach him. Follow him, but keep everyone away. And keep well back. Do not let him see he’s being tailed, all right?”
“Right.”
“Good man, Philip. We’ll be there presently.” She said to Lynley, “He’s on the move. Get us there, for God’s sake.”
She could feel her nerves jangling to the tips of her toes. He, on the other hand, was perfectly calm. But once they made it through Piccadilly Circus, a tailback of taxis seemed to stretch into infinity.
She cursed. She said, “Bloody hell, Thomas. Get us out of here.”
He gave no reply. But he made the virtue of being a longtime Londoner apparent when he began to take side streets, coolly, as if in possession of the Knowledge. He finally parked as Isabelle’s mobile rang again.
Philip Hale’s voice said, “There’s a church at the southwest end of the square.”
“Has he gone inside?”
He hadn’t, Hale said. In front of the church was a garden and he had begun to play there, in the middle of the central path. There were benches lining this and people were listening and, “Guv, there’s quite a crowd gathered.”
Isabelle said, “We’ll be there.” And to Lynley, “A church?”
“That would be St. Paul’s Covent Garden.” As they came into the vicinity of the old flower market, he took her arm briefly and pointed her towards it. She saw the building over the heads of the crowd, a classical structure of brick with quoins of pale stone. She headed towards it, but the route wasn’t easy. There were buskers everywhere and hundreds of people enjoying them: magicians, balloon sellers, tap dancers, even a group of grey-haired women playing marimbas.
Isabelle was thinking it was the perfect spot for something dreadful to happen—anything from a terrorist attack to a runaway vehicle—when a sudden commotion to one side of the church caught her attention just as her mobile rang. A shout went up, and she snapped, “What’s going on?” into the phone. For it was clear to her that something was happening and it wasn’t what she wanted to happen and even as she thought this, she saw Yukio Matsumoto tearing through the crowd, his violin in one hand and sheer unmitigated panic on his face.
On the mobile Philip Hale said, “He clocked us, guv. Don’t know how. We’ve got—”
“I see him,” she said. “Get in pursuit. If we lose him here, we’ve lost him for good.” And to Lynley, “Damn. Damn,” as the violinist broke into a crowd. Cries of protest were followed almost at once by shouts of “Police! Stop! Stop that man!” and afterwards a form of madness ensued. For part of the dark history of the Metropolitan police in pursuit of anyone was a history that included the shooting death of an unarmed and innocent civilian in an underground train, and no one wanted to be in the line of fire. No matter that these plainclothes cops were not armed, the crowd wouldn’t know that. People began running in all directions as mothers grabbed children, husbands grabbed wives, and those individuals with a score to settle against the police did what they could to get in the way.
“Where’s he gone?” Isabelle demanded of Lynley.
He said, “There!” and indicated roughly the north. She followed his gesture and saw the bobbing head of the man and then the black of his tuxedo coat, and she set off after him, shouting into her phone, “Philip, he’s going north on …What is it?” to Lynley.
“James Street,” Lynley said. “In the direction of Long Acre.”
“James Street,” she repeated. “In the direction …where?” to Lynley. And then, “Bloody hell. You talk to him.” She thrust her mobile at Lynley and began to run, forcing her way through the crowd with shouts of “Police! Police! Get out of the way!”
Matsumoto had made it to the top of the street, charging down the middle of it with no regard for whom or what he ran into. Fallen children, one upended kiosk, and trampled shopping bags lay in his wake, but to her cries of “Stop him!” no one did a thing.
In pursuit, she and Lynley had the advantage over Philip Hale and his men. But Matsumoto was fast. He was driven by fear and by whatever demons were inside his head. In f
ront of her, she saw him dash directly into Long Acre, where the blast of a horn told her he’d nearly missed being hit by a car. She redoubled her speed in time to see him go roaring up another street. He ran as if his life depended upon escape, his violin clutched to his chest, its bow long discarded. Isabelle cried, “Where does that go?” to Lynley. “Where’s he heading?”
“Shaftesbury Avenue,” Lynley told her, and into the phone, “Philip, can you head him off by another route? He’s about to cross Shelton Street. He’s not attending to where he’s running or what’s around him. If he makes it as far as Shaftesbury …Yes. Yes. Right.” And to Isabelle, “There’ll be uniforms somewhere nearby. He’s got the Met on it.”
“Christ, we don’t want uniforms, Thomas.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
They raced after him. Matsumoto knocked pedestrians right and left. He stumbled against a placard for the Evening Standard. She thought they had him because the vendor jumped forward and managed to grab his arm, yelling, “Just you bloody wait.” But he shoved the irate man into the window of a shop front with tremendous force. The glass cracked, then exploded and showered the pavement in shards.
He made it into Shaftesbury Avenue. He veered to the right. In vain, Isabelle hoped for a uniformed constable or anything else because as she and Lynley rounded the corner, she could see the danger, and she understood in a flash what was likely to happen if they didn’t stop him at once.
Which they could not do. They could not do.
“What is this place?” she called to Lynley. He’d gained upon her and was surging ahead, but she was close after him.
“High Holborn, Endell, New Oxford …” His breathing was heavy. “We can’t let him cross.”
She saw that well enough. Cars, taxis, lorries, and buses were all debouching into this one spot and from every direction.
But cross he intended and cross he attempted, without a glance to the right or the left, as if he were running in a park and not upon a congested street.
The taxi that hit him had no chance to stop. It came from the northeast, and like every other means of transport in the vast confluence of streets that hurled vehicles by the dozens and in every direction, it came fast. Matsumoto flung himself off the pavement, intent upon crossing, and the taxi slammed into him, sending his body in a horrifying arc of flight.
“Jesus God!” Isabelle heard Lynley cry. And then he was shouting into her mobile, “Philip! Philip! He’s been hit. Get an ambulance at once. Top of Shaftesbury Avenue, near St. Giles High Street,” as everywhere round them the screech of brakes and the blaring of horns filled the air, as the taxi driver burst out of his vehicle and—hands to his head—ran towards the crumpled body of Yukio Matsumoto as a bus driver joined him and then three others, till the violinist was hidden from view as Lynley shouted, “Police! Keep back! Don’t move him!”
And as she herself realised, she’d made the wrong decision—the very worst decision—to have a team go after the man.
WHEN HE’D AGREED to be part of Isabelle Ardery’s murder squad for this investigation, the last spot Lynley would have considered as one of the locations in which he might have to put in an appearance was St. Thomas’ Hospital, Accident and Emergency, the very rooms and corridors in which he’d had to make the decision to let go of Helen and their child. But that was where the ambulance took Yukio Matsumoto, and when Lynley walked through the doors into the hushed urgency of the casualty ward, it was as if no time at all had passed between this moment and the aftermath of what had happened to his wife. The smells were the same: antiseptics and cleansers. The sights were as they had been before: the institutional blue chairs linked together and lining the walls, the notice boards about AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and the importance of frequent hand washing. The sounds remained universal: the arrival of ambulances, the rush of feet, exigent orders being barked as trolleys wheeled the injured into examining areas. Lynley saw and heard all of this and was swept back to the moment he’d walked in and learned that his wife had been shot on the front steps of their house, that help did not arrive for twenty minutes, and that in that time Helen had gone without oxygen as her heart pumped blood uselessly into the cavity of her chest. It was all so real that he gasped, stopped abruptly, and did not come round till he heard Isabelle Ardery say his name.
Her tone cleared his head. She was saying to him, “…uniforms down here, round the clock, wherever he is, wherever they move him. Christ, what a cock-up. I bloody well told him not to approach.”
He noticed that she was wringing her hands and he thought inanely how he’d never seen someone do that although he’d read the expression often enough in books as an indication of someone’s anxiety. Doubtless, she’d be feeling anxiety in spades. The Metropolitan police in pursuit of someone who ends up in hospital? No matter that they were identifying themselves as they pursued him. It wouldn’t play that way in the newspapers, and she’d know that. She would also know that the ultimate head to roll—if it came down to it—was going to be hers.
The doors opened. Philip Hale came in, his expression distraught. Sweat made rivulets from his temples and beaded on his forehead. He’d removed his jacket. His shirt clung to his body.
Ardery moved. She had him by the arm and then against the wall and she was inches from his face before he had even noted her location in the room. She hissed, “Do you ever bloody listen? I told you not to approach the man.”
“Guv, I didn’t—”
“If we lose him, Philip, you’re taking the blame. I’ll see to it personally.”
“But, guv—”
“Under review, in the dock, in the box. Whatever it takes to get your attention because when I say you are not to approach a suspect, I do not sodding mean anything else, so you tell me—you God damn bloody tell me, Philip—which part of that you didn’t understand because we’ve got a man who’s been hit by a car and likely to die and if you think anyone’s about to let this go and pretend it didn’t happen, then you’d better have another God damn think about the matter and you’d better do it now.”
The DI glanced Lynley’s way. There could not be, Lynley knew, a better cop and more decent person than Philip Hale. Given an order, he’d follow it to the letter, which was what he’d done and all of them knew it.
Hale said, “Something spooked him, guv. One moment he was playing the violin and the next he was on the run. I don’t know why. I swear to God—”
“You swear to God, do you?” She shook his arm. Lynley could see the tension in her fingers, and her grasp had to be a raw one because the tips of her fingers were red and the skin beneath her nails had gone crimson. “Oh, that’s very pretty, Philip. Step onto the pitch. Take responsibility. I’ve no time for men who snivel like—”
“Guv,” Lynley intervened quietly. “That’ll do.”
Ardery’s eyes widened. He saw that she’d eaten the lipstick from her mouth and what replaced it for colour on her face were two circles of red fury high on her cheeks. Before she could reply, he said to her urgently, “We need to get to his brother and let him know what’s happened.”
She began to speak and he added, “We don’t want him to hear this from a news report. We don’t want anyone significant learning it that way.” By which he meant Hillier and she had to know that, even as she was driven by demons he well recognised but had never actually understood.
She released Hale’s arm. “Get back to the Yard,” she said and then to Lynley, “That’s twice now. You’re warned.”
“Understood,” he said.
“And it makes no bloody difference, does it?” Then she swung on Philip Hale once again. “Are you an idiot, Philip? Did you not hear me? Get back to the Yard!”
Philip Hale looked from Ardery to Lynley and back to Ardery. He said, “Guv,” with a nod and he left them. Lynley saw him shake his head as he went.
Ardery said to Lynley, “Get on to the brother, then,” and she began to pace. As Lynley made the necessary c
alls, he watched her and he wondered at what point she’d make another trip to the ladies’, because there was little doubt in his mind that she desperately needed a drink.
However, during the forty minutes they waited for Hiro Matsumoto’s solicitor to find the cellist and to bring him to St. Thomas’ Hospital, the acting superintendent remained in the waiting area and Lynley developed a reluctant respect for the manner in which she mastered herself. She made the appropriate phone calls to the Yard, putting the press office into the picture and passing along information to AC Hillier’s office as well. Hillier, Lynley reckoned, would ultimately give Isabelle Ardery an earful. There was nothing the assistant commissioner hated more than bad press. Half of London could shoot the other half in the street and Hillier would not be as bothered as he would be by a tabloid screaming MORE BRUTALITY FROM THE MET.
When they finally arrived, Hiro Matsumoto was far calmer than his solicitor, who breathed fire and threatened lawsuits, neither of which was unexpected. She was interrupted only when they were joined by the physician who’d initially seen to the violinist’s injuries. He was a gnomelike man with overlarge and oddly translucent ears and a nametag reading HOGG. He spoke directly to Hiro Matsumoto, obviously recognising him as the party probably most intimately connected to the injured man. He ignored the others.
A broken shoulder and a broken hip constituted the initial information, which sounded hopeful considering how bad things could have been. But then Mr. Hogg added fractured skull and acute subdural haematoma to the mix, as well as the fact that the size of the injury was going to cause a dangerous increase in intracranial pressure, which in turn would result in damage to delicate brain tissue if something was not done immediately. That something was decompression, effected only by surgery, and Yukio Matsumoto was being prepared for the operating theatre as they spoke.
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