In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

“Not at all. I’m only saying you’re mistaken if you think—”

  “Mistaken’s no different from lying, dear. Mistaken’s the word we use in place of lying.”

  “Maybe you do, but I—”

  “Don’t argue with me.” Corrine’s breath caught raspily in her chest. “And don’t deny. I know what I’ve heard and I know what it means. And if you think that you can open your legs and take my Robbie from the girl he’s meant to marry—”

  “Mrs. Payne. Corrine.”

  “—then you had better think again. Because I’m not going to stand for it. Celia’s not going to stand for it. And Robbie…Robbie…” She gasped for a breath.

  “You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing,” Barbara said. “You’re going red in the face. Please. Sit down. I’ll talk if you want to. I’ll try to explain. Just settle down or you’ll make yourself ill.”

  “And wouldn’t you like that?” Corrine waved the scissors in a way that set Barbara’s nerves on edge. “Isn’t that just what you’ve had planned from the first? With his mum out of the way, no one else would be here to make him realise he’s about to throw his entire life away for a piece of rubbish when he could have…” The scissors clattered to the table. She reached for her chest.

  “Hell,” Barbara said. She made a move towards Corrine. Gasping stertorously, Corrine motioned her off. Barbara said, “Mrs. Payne, be rational. I met Robin just two nights ago. We’ve spent a grand total of about six hours in each other’s company because we’ve not been working the same part of the case. So think about it, won’t you? Do I look like a femme fatale to you? Do I look like someone Robin would want to sneak in to in the middle of the night? And after an acquaintance of only six hours? Does that make sense?”

  “I’ve been watching the two of you.” Corrine struggled for breath. “I’ve seen. And I know. I know because I phoned to—” Her fingers grasped her chest.

  Barbara said, “It’s nothing. Please. Try to stay calm. If you don’t, you’re going to—”

  “Sam and I…We set the date and I thought he’d want to be…first one…” She wheezed. “To know…” She coughed. She wouldn’t give in. “But he wasn’t there, was he, and we both know why and aren’t you ashamed—ashamed, ashamed—to be stealing another woman’s man.” The sentence drained her. She crumpled over the table. Her breathing sounded as if she were sucking in air through the eye of a needle. She grabbed on to the length of material she’d been cutting. She dragged it with her as she sank to the floor.

  “Flaming hell!” Barbara leapt forward. She shouted, “Mrs. Payne! Hell! Mrs. Payne!” She grabbed the other woman and turned her onto her back.

  Corrine’s face had altered from red to white. Blue edged her lips. “Air,” she panted. “Breathe…”

  Barbara dropped her back to the floor without ceremony. She surged to her feet and began to search. “The inhaler. Mrs. Payne, where is it?”

  Corrine’s fingers weakly moved in the direction of the stairway.

  “Upstairs? In your room? In the bathroom? Where?”

  “Air…please…stairs…”

  Barbara tore up the stairs. She chose the bathroom. She flung open the medicine cabinet. She swept a half dozen medications into the basin beneath it. She flung out toothpaste, mouthwash, plasters, dental floss, shaving cream. There was no inhaler.

  She tried Corrine’s room next. She pulled drawers from the chest and dumped out their contents. She did the same with the bedside table. She looked on the bookshelves. She went to the clothes cupboard. Nothing.

  She raced into the corridor. She could hear the woman’s agonised breathing. It seemed to be slowing. She shouted, “Shit! Shit!” and hurled herself at a cupboard, where she drove in her arms and began throwing everything onto the floor. Sheets, towels, candles, board games, blankets, photo albums. She’d emptied the cupboard in less than twenty seconds with no more success than she’d had anywhere else.

  But she’d said stairs. Hadn’t she said stairs? Hadn’t she meant…?

  Barbara raced back down the stairs. At the foot of them stood a half-moon table. And there among the day’s post, a lush potted plant, and two pieces of decorative crockery sat the inhaler. Barbara snatched it up and dashed back to the dining room. She placed it into the woman’s mouth and pumped frantically. She said, “Come on. Oh God. Come on,” and she waited for the medical magic to work.

  Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Corrine’s respiration finally eased. She kept breathing with the assistance of the inhaler. Barbara kept holding her lest she slip away somehow.

  And that’s how Robin came upon them, less than five minutes later.

  Lynley ate his dinner at his desk, courtesy of the fourth floor. He’d phoned Havers three times—twice at Amesford CID and once at Lark’s Haven, where he’d left a message with a woman who’d said, “Rest assured, Inspector, I’ll make certain she gets it,” in the sort of deadly polite tone that suggested what Barbara was going to get might include far more than his request that she phone London with her day’s summary of her part of the investigation.

  He’d phoned St. James as well. There, he’d spoken only to Deborah who said her husband hadn’t been home when she herself had returned from a day’s shooting in St. Botolph’s Church just a half hour before. She said, “Seeing the homeless there…It puts everything in perspective, doesn’t it, Tommy?” Which gave him an opportunity to say, “Deb, about Monday afternoon. I have no excuse other than to say I was acting like a boor. No, I was a boor. That whole bit about killing children was inexcusable. I’m terribly sorry.” To which, after a thoughtful and entirely Deborah-like pause, she replied, “I’m sorry as well. I’m rather vulnerable when it comes to that sort of thing. Children. You know.” To which he said, “I know. I know. Forgive me?” To which she replied, “Ages ago, dear Tommy,” although it had only been forty-eight hours since the harsh words had passed between them.

  After speaking to Deborah, he’d phoned Hillier’s secretary to give an approximate time when the AC might expect his report. Then he’d phoned Helen. She’d told him what he already knew—that St. James wanted to speak to him and had been wanting to speak to him since noon that day. She’d said, “I don’t know what it’s all about. But it has something to do with that picture of Charlotte Bowen. The one you left at Simon’s. On Monday.”

  Lynley said, “I’ve spoken to Deborah about that. I’ve apologised. I can’t unsay what I said, but she seems willing to forgive me.”

  “That’s quite like her.”

  “It is. Are you? Willing, that is.”

  There was a pause. He picked up a pencil and used it to doodle on top of a manila folder. He sketched out her name like a schoolboy. He imagined her gathering resources for a reply. He heard the sound of crockery at the other end of the line and realised that he’d interrupted her dinner, which was the first reminder he’d had that he hadn’t thought much about eating since breakfast.

  He said, “Helen?”

  She said, “Simon tells me I must decide. Into the fire or off the stove altogether. He’s an into-the-fire man himself. He says he likes the excitement of an uncertain marriage.”

  She’d gone right to the heart of the matter between them, which was unlike her. Lynley couldn’t decide if this was good or bad. Helen tended to use indirection to find her direction out. But he knew there was truth to what St. James had told her. They couldn’t go on like this indefinitely, one of them hesitant to make a complete commitment, the other willing to accept that hesitation rather than having to face rejection. It was ridiculous. They weren’t in the frying pan. For the last six months they hadn’t even got close to the burner.

  He said, “Helen, are you free at the weekend?”

  “I’d planned a lunch with Mother. Why? Won’t you be working, darling?”

  “Possibly. Probably. Definitely, if this case isn’t closed.”

  “Then what—?”

  “I thought we might get married. We have the licence. I think it’s t
ime that we used it.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Directly into the fire.”

  “But what about your family? What about my family? What about guests, the church, a reception…?”

  “What about getting married?” he persisted. His voice was light enough, but his heart was full of trepidation. “Come along, darling. Forget about the frippery. We can do that part of it later if you like. It’s time to make the leap.”

  He could almost feel her weighing her options, attempting to explore in advance every possible outcome of permanently and publicly tying her life to his. When it came to making decisions, Helen Clyde was the least impetuous woman he knew. Her ambivalence maddened him, but he’d long ago learned that it was part of who she was. She could spend quarter of an hour trying to decide what stockings to don in the morning and an additional twenty minutes poring over her earrings for the perfect pair. Was it any wonder that she’d spent the last eighteen months trying to decide first if, then when, she would marry him?

  He said, “Helen, this is it. I realise the decision is difficult and frightening. God knows I have doubts myself. But that’s only natural, and there comes a time when a man and a woman have to—”

  “Darling, I know all that,” she said reasonably. “There’s no real need to give me a pep talk.”

  “There isn’t? Then, for God’s sake, why won’t you say—?”

  “What?”

  “Say yes. Say that you will. Say something. Say anything to give me a sign.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you needed a sign. I was only considering.”

  “What, for God’s sake?”

  “The most important detail.”

  “Which is?”

  “Heavens. I expect you know that as well as you know me: What on earth shall I wear?”

  He told her he didn’t care what she wore. He didn’t care what she wore for the rest of their lives. Sackcloth and ashes, if she chose. Blue jeans, leotards, satin and lace. She laughed and said she would hold him true to his words. “I have just the accessories to go with sackcloth.”

  Afterwards, he realised just how hungry he was, and he went to the fourth floor, where the special sandwich of the day was avocado and prawn. He bought one, along with an apple, and he took both back to his office with the apple balanced on a cup of coffee. He’d downed half of this makeshift meal when Winston Nkata came to the door, a piece of notebook paper in his hand. He looked perplexed.

  “What is it?” Lynley asked.

  Nkata ran his finger along the scar on his cheek. He said, “I don’t know what to make of it.” He lowered his lanky frame into one of the chairs and referred back to his paper. “I just got off the phone with the Wigmore Street station. They been working on the specials since yesterday. Remember?”

  “The special constables?” When Nkata nodded, Lynley said, “What about them?”

  “You remember that none of the Wigmore Street regulars rousted that bloke from Cross Keys Close last week?”

  “Jack Beard? Yes. So we assumed it was one of the volunteers at the station. Have you located him?”

  “Can’t be done.”

  “Why not? Aren’t their records accurate? Has there been a change in personnel? What’s happened?”

  “No to both and nothing to the last,” Nkata said. “Their records are fine. And the same person coordinates the specials as always has done. In the last week, there’s no one quit. And no one added onto the roster.”

  “So what are you telling me?”

  “That Jack Beard wasn’t rousted by a special constable. Or by a regular Wigmore Street constable either.” He leaned forward in his chair, crumpled up the paper, tossed it into the rubbish. “I got the feeling that Jack Beard wasn’t rousted by anyone at all.”

  Lynley thought about this. It didn’t make sense. They had two independent corroborative statements—aside from the tramp’s own—that Beard had indeed been shooed off from those Marylebone mews the very same day Charlotte Bowen had disappeared. While both of the statements had initially been gathered by Helen, officers on the case had taken formal statements from the very same people who had witnessed the exchange between the vagrant and the constable who’d run him out of the close. So unless there was a conspiracy among Jack Beard and the inhabitants of Cross Keys Close, there had to be another explanation. Such as, Lynley supposed, someone posing as a constable. Police uniforms weren’t impossible to come by. They could be hired in a costume shop.

  The implications behind this line of thought made Lynley uneasy. He said more to himself than to Nkata, “We’ve an open field.”

  “It looks to me like we got a field with nothing on it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Lynley looked at his watch. It was too late to start phoning costume shops now, but how many could there be in London? Ten? Twelve? Less than twenty, surely, and first thing tomorrow morning—

  The telephone rang. It was reception. A Mr. St. James was waiting below. Would the inspector see him? Lynley said he would. Indeed he would. He sent Nkata to fetch him.

  St. James didn’t bother with the social niceties when he entered Lynley’s office with Winston Nkata five minutes later. He merely said, “Sorry. I couldn’t wait any longer for you to return my calls.”

  Lynley said, “It’s been madness round here.”

  “Right.” St. James took a seat. He was carrying a large manila envelope, which he set on the floor, balanced against his chair leg. He said, “Where are you with it? The Evening Standard was concentrating on an unnamed suspect in Wiltshire. Is that the mechanic you were telling me about last night?”

  “Courtesy of Hillier,” Lynley said. “He wants the public to know how well their taxes are being spent in the area of law enforcement.”

  “What else do you have?”

  “A great number of loose ends. We’re looking for a way to tie them together.”

  He brought St. James up-to-date on the case, both the London end of it and the Wiltshire end of it. St. James listened intently. He interjected the occasional question: Was Sergeant Havers certain that the photograph she’d seen at Baverstock was of the same windmill where Charlotte Bowen had been held? Was there a connection between the church fête at Stanton St. Bernard and anyone associated with the case? Had any of Charlotte’s other belongings been found—the rest of her uniform, her schoolbooks, her flute? Could Lynley identify the regional accent of whoever it was who had phoned Dennis Luxford’s home that afternoon? Had Damien Chambers any relations in Wiltshire, specifically any relations involved in policework there?

  “We haven’t gone that route with Chambers,” Lynley said. “His politics put him in the IRA camp, but his connection to the Provos is fairly remote.” Lynley outlined the facts that they had gathered on Chambers. He ended with, “Why? Have you something on Chambers?”

  “I can’t forget the fact that he was the only person, aside from her schoolmates, who called her Lottie. And because of that, he’s the only link that I can make between Charlotte and whoever killed her.”

  “But there’s lots of folks who might’ve known what the bird was called without calling her that themselves,” Nkata pointed out. “If her schoolmates called her Lottie, her teachers would’ve known it. Her mates’ parents would’ve known it. Her own parents would’ve known it. And that’s not even taking into account her dancing teacher, the leader of her choir, the minister where she went to church. As well as anyone who might’ve heard someone yelling her name when she was walking down the street.”

  “Winston has a point,” Lynley said. “Why are you focused so firmly on the name, Simon?”

  “Because I think that revealing his knowledge of Charlotte’s nickname was one of the mistakes the killer made,” St. James said. “Another was the thumbprint—”

  “—inside the tape recorder,” Lynley concluded. “Are there more mistakes?”

  “One more, I think,” St. James reached for the manila envelope. He opened it
and slid its contents onto Lynley’s desk.

  Lynley saw that the contents comprised the photograph of Charlotte Bowen’s dead body. It was the photograph he had tossed at Deborah and then left behind after their row.

  St. James said, “Have you the kidnapping notes?”

  “Copies only.”

  “Those’ll do.”

  The notes came easily to Lynley’s hand since he’d made use of them only a few hours earlier when Eve Bowen and Dennis Luxford had been in his office. He took them up and set them next to the photograph. He waited for his brain to make a connection between them. As he did so, St. James came round to his side of the desk. Nkata leaned forward.

  “I had a long look at the notes last week,” St. James said. “On Wednesday night, after seeing both Eve Bowen and Damien Chambers. I was restless, trying to fit pieces together. So I spent some time assessing the writing.” As he spoke, he indicated each point he was making by placing the rubber end of a pencil against it. “Look at the way he forms his letters, Tommy, the t and the f especially. The crosspiece of each leads into the formation of the letter behind it. And look at the w’s, always alone, unconnected to the rest of the word. And notice the e’s. They’re always connected to what follows them, but never connected to what precedes them.”

  “I can see the two notes are the work of the same hand,” Lynley said.

  “Yes,” St. James said. “And now look at this.” He turned over the photograph of Charlotte Bowen, exposing her name, which had been written on the back. “Look at the t’s,” he said. “Look at the e’s. Look at the w.”

  “Christ,” Lynley whispered.

  Nkata got to his feet. He joined St. James, on the other side of Lynley’s chair.

  “That’s the reason I asked about Damien Chambers’ connection to Wiltshire,” St. James said. “Because it seems to me that someone—like Chambers—passing along the information to an accomplice in Wiltshire is the only way that whoever wrote her name on the back of this picture could have known her nickname when he wrote these two notes as well.”

  Lynley considered all of the facts they had. They led, it seemed, to one reasonable, frightening, and ineluctable conclusion. Winston Nkata straightened from his examination of the notes and gave that conclusion voice.