Thus she let him seduce her once she read the signs that he wanted to do so: the earnest looks, the warm hand on the back of her neck as they walked back from their meal at the pub, the fingers gently brushing her hair from her cheeks. When he said without the hesitant preamble she’d come to learn was his style, “D’you want to make love with me, Lily?” she admired that new courage in him that gave voice to desire instead of sidling into the act as if it was the expected thing between them. This made her consider that perhaps it had been her own lusty approach which had, all along, been the source of his troubles. So this time, she followed his lead and let him guide her as he wished. They lay together afterwards on their sides with their hands intertwined on her hip.
“I love you,” he said. “Now and always.”
She smiled, but she didn’t say the words he wanted to hear. She thought he might protest at this, asking for more as he’d done in the past, but he didn’t. Instead he smiled back at her and said, “So . . . How was it for you?”
“You know very well how it was for me. But, William . . .” She waited for him to steel himself, but he didn’t do so behind that open and generous expression on his face. She said, “It doesn’t change anything. It’s lovely here. I recognise that. But I don’t want to leave London.”
“Yet,” he said. “Add ‘yet.’ You know it’s there, waiting to be said.”
“I don’t know that.”
“Yet,” he said.
She saw the compromise he was offering her so she went along. “I don’t know that yet.”
He reached out then. His fingers brushed lightly against her nipple, and she felt what she was meant to feel, the answering rush of blood between her legs that said how quickly she could be ready for him.
“You’re very naughty,” she told him.
“I can be naughtier still,” he replied.
15 APRIL
SEATOWN
DORSET
Lily slept far better than she would have supposed possible in a tent, on the ground, in the ax-wielding cold. She slept dreamlessly and deeply, and when she awoke she could see the sun’s halo on the canvas of the tent. She rolled onto her side to watch William in his sleep, but she found he was gone.
For a moment she felt like Juliet in the tomb, but “No friendly drop for me” related to her powerful thirst and not to a desire for oblivion. She was parched and she was also famished, the latter unusual as she normally did not wake with a need to eat. She stretched, yawned, and reached for whatever discarded clothing came to hand. She could see her breath from her nose like a snorting bull, and she had no intention of emerging from the warmth of the duvet and the bag till she was clothed.
No easy feat, she discovered, but she accomplished this with various grunts and groans. She called for William several times, but to no avail. She worked her way to the tent’s zippered opening and stuck her head out into a brilliant morning. Not a cloud in the sky but still no birds. They’d taken off for Spain, she decided. She couldn’t blame them.
She called William’s name again and blinked in the morning light. No one was up and about near the other tents. It was either too cold or too early or both. A glance at her watch said half past seven. She grumbled and ducked back into the tent.
Her mouth and throat felt coated with a film of sand. There had to be something to drink nearby, and she needed to get to it. She also needed to have a wee, but that could come later.
Will’s rucksack was the answer for drink. Lily crawled over to it. Inside was an orange left over from their snack on Golden Cap, some almonds, part of a chocolate bar, and—praise God—one quarter left of the bottle of water. She brought these treasures forth by dumping the rucksack’s contents onto one of the sleeping bags. What tumbled out with them was a thin bound book.
Without a thought other than that William had begun putting his garden ideas onto paper prior to realising them, she opened the book. She uncapped the water, drank it all, and then glanced at the pages exposed before her. Several hasty sketches indicated a fountain here, a pond there, a rock course forming a dry streambed. But then the use of the bound book altered. It became a journal in William’s hand.
She would think later that what she should have done at once was carefully put the journal back, allowing William his private thoughts. But the same curiosity that had driven at least part of her willingness to be sexual with William on the previous night drove her now to read his words.
She could see that he had written in haste, feverish thoughts that effectively mirrored the Wording when it came upon him. But unlike the Wording, there was nothing of an execrable nature within the writing.
recovering. a process. not something that happens in a day. process means movement and something changing. live through it and always hold on to better days coming.
Lily frowned, but she got it. Early days for him and he’d struggled. Who wouldn’t have done? He’d lost his fledging business, and he’d also lost her. It had been bad for him. She flipped two pages, past another sketch, this a set of urns planted with gracious abundance. Then:
happened again. Talk over dinner like always but Lily comes up and then I go off and nothing stops it till what stops it stops it. then again later and if there isn’t another way what do I do no fucking good bloody useless
Lily felt the chill of warning. Then:
charlie rang. he says theres answers to everything come on Will he says you don’t always have to be so afraid but it’s not fear and he doesn’t know that it’s never been fear it’s all inside where the twisting happens
Outside in the distance, a dog barked. Closer by, a car’s engine turned over and someone stepped on the accelerator hard to rev it five times as someone else shouted to bloody well stop it as people were sleeping, you sodding fool. Lily dimly heard this as well as a child beginning to cry. Then:
so I looked close and it was there all along contempt like he said it would be and he must have always known only he doesn’t know it all what I can’t work out is how when I never saw it before only now I see it all the time and I want to die
Lily felt the sure grip of fear when she reached those words. “I want to die” seemed to shimmer on the page. So she turned to the next one and she began her descent into the mind of a man she had never known at all.
SEATOWN
DORSET
William left the little shop with his breakfast purchases. He’d had to wait until eight for their opening time, but it had been no bother. He’d sat on the stoop and he’d watched the morning sunlight striking the bay. He’d followed the progress of two early walkers who were crossing the emerald expanse of slope that rose to form the eastern cliff that hulked above the shingle beach. This one was far more friable than Golden Cap, signs posting its dangers. Keep to the path. Dangerous cliff. Unstable ground. The problem with it was that it looked so innocent: a steady upswing of cropped meadow grass leading towards a view and the azure sky. The occasional bench allowed for resting from one’s exertions, but the wind-twisted hazels along the way offered no shelter from the weather.
Will breathed deeply of the morning air. He was completely back to himself. He hadn’t had a seizure in weeks, and this wasn’t entirely due to the religious taking of his medications. It was due to recovering from London, from the intrusion of people into his design process, from the pressure of being surrounded on all sides by individuals he didn’t know and could not trust. It was also due, he knew this, to the fact that he’d established a residence away from his mum.
Lily had been correct about that. She’d also been incorrect about that. He’d had to get home to Dorset in order to recover, but he’d also had to strike out on his own and to prove to himself that he could be on his own. No living with Mum in Dorset. No living with Charlie and India in London. No clinging to Lily like a man going under and dragging her with him.
What he knew was that he needed the
peace of the countryside, whether it be the rolling green downs with their patchwork farms, the shore with its magnificent cliffs and astounding geologic crumples, the deep pockets of woodland, the great distinguished overturned blue bowl of sky. He needed this place in order to live as a whole man and not as some blathering nincompoop afraid of his shadow and of everyone else’s. There were no monsters in the cupboard or under the bed in the countryside. There was only the countryside itself.
His mum had known this. Lily would come to know it as well.
Lily, he thought. With her in this last day, he’d felt fully capable of winning her back. It would take time but they did have time, for they were young and the years stretched out ahead of them.
She could close up her shop in London. She could come to Dorset. He’d actually found her a place for her shop, although he wouldn’t tell her that yet. Given time and the gentle urging of which he now found himself so fully capable, Lily would see what was meant to be. He’d put her through a terrible time, but he knew that love didn’t die so easily for a woman like Lily.
When the shop opened, he made his purchases. He had to linger a bit in order to get them each a freshly made coffee as well. He saw to this and added what he knew she liked—milk and no sugar—and he headed with his purchases back to their camp.
When he arrived, he saw that she still wasn’t up. He set his bag of breakfast goodies on the ground, put the two coffees on a flat stone, and knelt to the tent. He thought of the ways in which he could awaken her: the caress, the kiss on the back of her neck.
But she was awake, he saw, when he opened the tent. She was also dressed. She was sitting cross-legged on her sleeping bag, with her sweet neck bent so that her ginger hair parted to reveal the soft white flesh.
He said, “Ah, you’re—” but her startled cry stopped his words. Her hands fell to her lap to try to cover what she’d been looking at. He saw it then. She said his name.
Then “Oh my God” came after that, and her expression broke as if a hammer had hit it.
He backed from the tent with a strangled cry. Where to go what to see what to do who to ask . . .
He began to run up the slope, towards the sea.
TWO MONTHS BEFORE
20 JULY
VICTORIA
LONDON
What took DI Thomas Lynley to the office of Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery had nothing to do with an investigation. Instead, it had to do with the very last thing he would ever have expected to bother him: Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers actually keeping herself in order for two months and counting. Forever had it been his most ardent wish that his longtime colleague would see the light of reason and begin to dress, talk, and otherwise comport herself in a manner designed to win the approval of those superior officers in control of her fate. But now he found that the version of Barbara Havers he’d been praying to see for years was simply no match for the Barbara Havers whose maddening company had always ended up inspiring the work they did together.
True, she’d been infuriating from the day she’d been assigned to him. But the fact of the matter was that even on her best days, with attitude seeping from her every pore, Barbara Havers was twice the officer of anyone else, with the possible exception of DS Winston Nkata, who, admittedly, equaled her but in no way surpassed her except in dress sense. This new, putatively improved, toeing-the-line version of DS Barbara Havers, though . . . ? It didn’t serve anyone’s interests to have her keep her every thought to herself until she knew which way the wind was blowing. Least of all did it serve the interests of getting to the truth in an investigation. But so far she’d had absolutely no choice in the matter of her behaviour. For Isabelle Ardery held in her desk a transfer request that Barbara had signed, which could catapult her to the north of England. One wrong move and the date would be filled in, guaranteeing her a stunning new life in Berwick-upon-Tweed. No job was open up there, of course. But Isabelle Ardery knew people in high places, and a favour given was a favour owed. There were very few chief constables in the land who would turn away from the prospect of a favour owed them by a detective superintendent at the Met. Because of this, Lynley made the decision to have a word with the superintendent. He wanted to have a go at talking her into removing the sword of Damocles that was fixed above Barbara’s head.
At Ardery’s office, he asked politely if he could have a word, guv. Isabelle was dealing with some paperwork, but she set it aside. She gave him the eye at his tone of deference. She would, Lynley knew, be immediately suspicious.
She pushed back from her desk and rose. She went to a rather shabby credenza against the far wall and poured herself a glass of water from a jug that she held up in offer to him. He demurred. She said, “Do sit, Tommy,” but she didn’t do so herself.
Lynley saw that sitting at her command was going to please her. But he also understood that it would diminish him in both of their eyes. So he engaged in an eye-lock moment with her as she waited for him to make up his mind. He did, saying, “I’ll stand if it’s all the same,” to which she said, “As you wish, of course.”
They were an identical height. His was by virtue of genetics. Hers was by virtue of wearing shoes with a modest two-inch heel. They brought her to six feet, two inches, just like him, and when he stood in front of her desk with his fingertips on it, they were able to eyeball each other.
He knew he couldn’t go at his subject directly. Still, there was no point to a quarter hour of social niceties, so he said, “I’ve some concerns about Barbara Havers, guv.”
Isabelle’s gaze on him narrowed. “What’s the exasperating woman done now?”
“Not a thing. I’m finding that a problem.”
“Because . . .”
“Because how she is just now—these last two months, actually—isn’t how she does her best work.”
“She’ll adjust.”
“That’s what concerns me. Who she was and how she worked . . . That’s disappearing a bit more every day. This new iteration of her—”
“I quite like this new iteration of her,” Ardery cut in. “It’s jolly good to know I can come into my office in the morning and not have someone storming along or ringing me up to demand my presence on high in order to discuss her latest misadventure.”
“But that’s just it,” Lynley said. “To do a decent job, one has to stumble now and again. If one becomes too cautious, too afraid of being disciplined or dragged into court or put through an internal investigation or . . .” He hesitated because if he said the rest, she would know instantly what he had in mind and he wasn’t sure this was the route to go. Isabelle didn’t take lightly to being offered advice.
“Or?” She lifted her glass and drank. Her gold button earrings caught the light as her blond hair swept back briefly and then fell neatly into place.
“Or being forced to transfer,” he said, as finally there was simply nowhere else he could go.
“Ah.” She set her glass down on the desk. She herself sat, and she gestured him to do likewise. He did so this time as she said, “That’s why you’ve come. Let’s jump ahead and save ourselves five or ten minutes of potential metacommunicating with each other as I get enough of that when speaking to the father of my boys. You would like me to withdraw Sergeant Havers’ transfer request.”
“I think it would help.”
“As before, Tommy, I like things as they are.”
He leaned towards the desk. In unconscious response, she leaned away from it. He said, “It’s that transfer request that you had her sign that’s keeping her from doing her best work, and I’d think you would have known that would be the consequence when you had her sign it.”
“We define ‘her best work’ differently, then, as I don’t see ‘her best work’ as becoming a filthy tabloid’s snout—”
“Guv, she intended—”
“Don’t take me for a fool. You know as well as I t
hat Barbara provided The Source with information, that she used her rank as an officer of the Met to set up and pursue a completely unauthorised investigation of her own, that she defied orders and left without leave—left the bloody country, for God’s sake—and involved herself in a foreign incident.”
“I don’t deny she did all of that. But you of all people know what it’s like to try to work while under constant scrutiny from the higher-ups. When you’re under the magnifying glass, when you believe that the least little unguarded moment can result in your being taken to task or given the sack—”
“Sergeant Havers should have thought of that before she headed off to Italy without leave to do so, before she leaked details of an investigation to that loathsome journalist pal of hers, and before she forced me to transfer another DI simply because she and he could no longer coexist in the same department.”
“I think you know he’s not her ‘pal.’”
“Who?”
“The journalist. And as to your transferring John Stewart, wouldn’t you agree that he hanged himself?”
“She’s taken a baker’s dozen of fully mad actions that have alienated me and every officer above me in rank. You know this.”
“A bit of an exaggeration, I daresay,” he pointed out.
“Do not go public school on me, Tommy. It’s unbecoming.”
A Banquet of Consequences Page 4