A Banquet of Consequences (26 page)

“Of course. A zoo,” he said, the solution to the problem of Arlo in front of him. “It’s for a brief time only. I have a place for him to go.”

“See to it, then.”

“As to the other . . . ? Guv, you made the arrangement for Berwick-upon-Tweed with a single phone call, and I know you can do the same for this. Beyond that . . . Barbara’s intent upon proving herself to you. She’d like very much to allay your concerns about her.”

“She’d like very much for me to shred the transfer request. And that, I must tell you, is not going to happen.”

He sighed. They were going round and round and ending up each time where they began. He reached for a roll that had been left on their table. He pocketed it as he nodded at the waiter for the bill.

“What are you doing with that roll?” Isabelle asked him sharply.

“I’m giving it to the dog,” he told her.

BELSIZE PARK

LONDON

H
e’d had to have Arlo with him on the following day at work, but he’d managed this with the help of his colleagues. Between enjoying walkies in the company of whoever was available, having surreptitious snacks beneath one desk or another, and being dashed off into the ladies’ or gents’ when the coast looked to become unclear, the dog had remained a secret from the detective superintendent. That additional day keeping Arlo at the Met was all that Lynley needed, as it happened: He had an engagement with Daidre for dinner in the evening.

This particular night promised to be the unveiling of Daidre’s new kitchen in which, she declared, she was going to prepare him a celebratory gourmet meal that matched the beauties she’d managed to bring about in the renovation of the room. Aside from one brief glimpse, he hadn’t yet seen it as she’d not let him set a foot near it once she’d begun what she’d referred to as “the serious part of the work,” and because of this, he’d brought champagne along for a proper christening, in addition to Arlo.

She saw the dog at his side at once when she opened the door. She said, “What have we here? How sweet! What a face! Have you a dog now, Tommy?” which he adroitly sidestepped by
presenting the champagne, kissing her hello, and telling the truth: “I’ve missed you.”

Daidre said, “Have you? It’s been only a week. Or is it ten days? No matter. I’ve missed you as well. It was this final push in the kitchen. I needed every free moment. And now it’s completed. You must see it at once.”

He followed her, stood in the kitchen doorway, and simply admired. Aside from the electrical work and the plumbing, Daidre had as usual done everything. She was, he thought, a most remarkable woman. Everything about her kitchen was state-of-the-art. Stainless steel appliances, granite work tops, tiled backsplashes, sleek cupboards, modern lighting, six-burner cooker, microwave, espresso maker . . . The flooring was hardwood, the windows were double glazed, the walls were replastered and perfectly painted, and the comfortable eating area looked out of the French windows and onto the garden-yet-to-be.

Lynley turned to her. “I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything you can’t do, Daidre. You never needed me to repair the glazing in that window in Cornwall, did you?”

“The one that you broke to get into my cottage?” She smiled. “Actually? No. But it
did
give you employment and I saw you needed that.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But perhaps I needed you rather more.”

“That’s the sort of remark that tends to lead men and women directly to the bedroom.”

“Does it indeed? Tell me you’ve completed it, then.”

“The bedroom? Not yet.”

He did wonder about that, whether she was putting off the bedroom for reasons having to do not with the logic of completing the more difficult projects first but rather with keeping him at a safe distance from her. He didn’t mind so much that she was still insisting upon sleeping inside a sleeping bag on a camp bed. But it did prevent him spending the night, which he minded a great deal. He also minded that she was still refusing to spend a night beneath his own roof. She’d dine with him. She’d allow herself to be seduced into an hour or more in his bedroom, but that was it. It wasn’t owing to
Helen, she told him. It was rather the idea that she might actually become too comfortable spending time in his home.

“What’s the problem with becoming comfortable?” he’d asked her.

“I think you know the answer to that.”

When she gestured round his Eaton Terrace townhouse, he forced himself to see it through her eyes. It was no matter that the antiques had been in his family since they weren’t antiques, and it was no matter that the same applied to the paintings on the walls, the silver on the sideboard, and the porcelain in the cabinets. The very presence of these items marked the difference between them, a form of Rubicon that—in Daidre’s mind—neither of them could cross.

Now she took the champagne from him and fetched two flutes for it. From the fridge, she brought forth a tray of various toppings meant, she told him, to give them something she called “a bruschetta buffet.” She announced that she’d not had lunch that day, and she’d be cross if he wasn’t famished. She poured the champagne, clicked glasses with him, put her hand to his cheek and said, “It
is
so lovely to see you, Tommy,” and then asked him about the dog.

“Ah. Arlo.” He made as quick a job of it as he could, telling her what little he knew of Arlo’s purpose in the life of Rory Statham. He told her of Rory’s condition in hospital and of the earlier death of her friend Clare Abbott. He explained how he himself had come to have Rory’s dog in his possession, touching upon Barbara Havers’ part in everything. Daidre already knew how tenuous was Barbara’s position at New Scotland Yard, and Lynley had many weeks earlier put her into the picture of the potential transfer to the north of England that Barbara had ostensibly “requested.” What he hadn’t told her was his own part in the most recent knot in the skein that comprised the death in Cambridge and the poisoning in London, if such it was. This had involved a second and far less official telephone call to Detective Chief Superintendent Daniel Sheehan of the Cambridge police.

Isabelle, he’d assured himself before contacting Sheehan, had brought it all on. She was being as bloody-minded about Barbara Havers as Barbara Havers was being bloody-minded about inserting herself into an investigation that did not belong to the Met. But
between the two of them, Barbara’s bloody-mindedness did at least seem to Lynley to have a potential positive outcome, whereas Isabelle’s obdurate refusal to allow Barbara enough slack to give her wiggle room seemed absolutely destined to take the detective sergeant once more afoul of her duty.

He’d been honest with Daniel Sheehan. Eschewing Oscar Wilde, he’d resorted to the plain and simple truth. Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers needed to work on the Clare Abbott death in some fashion in order to prove herself to Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery, he’d explained to Sheehan. She also needed to work on the Clare Abbott death in some fashion in order to prove herself to herself. This had to involve an exercise in police work in which she was able to operate within guidelines she’d been given by her superintendent: obeying orders as she was given them but at the same time following her own instincts, within the boundaries of regular police work, of course.

Sheehan had remembered Barbara Havers, which was no surprise to Lynley since he and Havers had spent several days on Sheehan’s patch as intermediaries between the Cambridge Constabulary and the officials at St. Stephen’s College when one of their female students was murdered. Once Lynley explained to him the complexities of the case in hand—one death, an ostensible poisoning by means of the same substance, two locations, a third location which had housed the first victim—Sheehan had been willing to do what he could to get Barbara involved.

When this had been accomplished, Isabelle’s fury had been, admittedly, somewhat unnerving. Her shout of “In
spec
tor Lynley, in my office—
now
” reminded him of his school days although he’d never been one to be hauled into the headmaster’s domain for a proper dressing-down, so cooperative a pupil had he always been. When Isabelle refused to allow him to shut her office door—the better to discipline him at a volume guaranteed to display her displeasure to his colleagues—he bore with their meeting as his just due.

“You’ve deliberately orchestrated this in defiance of my orders,” she hissed, “and I goddamn well ought to have paperwork drawn up for your transfer to the Hebrides.”

To his mild and completely spurious “Guv . . . I’ve not the least idea—” she picked up a holder for pens and pencils and threw it at him.

“Don’t you say a bloody word,” she shouted. “I’ve heard from Sheehan, he’s made his request, he’s paved the way, and the rest is history. But you listen to me and you hear me well, Detective Inspector. If you
ever
again defy me on a matter of personnel or anything else, I’ll have you up before CIB2 so fast you won’t know what hit you. How dare you go behind my back and make arrangements for
anyone
—let alone that infuriating undisciplined
excuse
of a police detective—to work a case that is not in our jurisdiction let alone—”

“Isabelle.” He’d walked towards the door to shut it.

“Stay where you are!” she shrieked. “I did not give you leave to move a single inch and I don’t intend to until I’ve finished with you. Is that clear?”

He shot her a look and then took a breath to calm himself.

She evidently caught this and said, “Not used to it, are you? His mighty lordship hasn’t been dressed down in his entire career, has he? Well, you listen to me. The next time you take it upon yourself to machinate an assignment, it will be your last. I’m in charge here. You are not. This isn’t a game, Inspector. No one is your chess piece. Now get the hell out of my sight and stay there.”

He walked to the door, having been given leave to do so, but instead of leaving he closed it.

She fairly howled, “Get out!”

He said, “Isabelle.”

“Guv!” she shouted. “Boss. Ma’am. Superintendent. Do you ever do
anything
you prefer not to do?”

He walked over to her. She was behind her desk, but he made no attempt to join her there, just stood in front of her and spoke quietly. “You see me as wanting my way in things that don’t concern me.”

“Bloody damn well right.”

“What you don’t see is that she’s useless at the moment.”

“She’s
always
been useless.”

“That’s not the case. That’s never been the case. She’s difficult. She requires a deft hand. She—”

“You’re mad.”

“—thinks just now that she can’t please you unless she keeps her thoughts to herself, limits herself to the precise letter of what she’s been told to do, and operates in so narrow a field that she offers nothing of what made her a decent cop in the first place: her doggedness and her willingness to take risks, a bit of creativity, if you will. She needs to be able to take the bit in her mouth and prove to herself and to you that she can do two things at once: be a fine cop and
still
obey an order when she hears it. You know this, guv. I know you know it because you’re a fine cop yourself.”

“She can’t obey orders when she doesn’t hear them in the first place,” Isabelle snapped.

“That’s been the issue,” he agreed. “You’ll get no argument from me on that. But I’d like to see—”

“It’s not your place to see anything. You’re becoming as bad as she is, and I’m not having
any
officer under my command—”

“I was out of order,” he said. “Guv, I know that. If you want to have me up before CIB2, I quite understand and I’ll take the medicine.”

“Oh please. Don’t give me noblesse oblige on top of everything else. I’ll sick up on my desktop.”

He gazed at her. She glared at him. He finally said, “What would you have me do?”

“I’d have you set an example,” she told him. “I’d have you listen. I’d have you display just a modicum of the respect that . . .” She turned from him to the windows, more a whirl of movement than a deliberate pivot away from him. Her hands both clenched. He knew what this meant. She wanted a drink. She’d have it in her bag or in her desk drawer: two or three airline bottles of vodka or gin or God only knew what and he’d driven her to it.

He said, “Isabelle. Forgive me.”

She lowered her head and shook it. She took a moment. He said nothing else.

Finally, she turned back to him. “I’m putting you in charge of all this, and don’t even think about arguing. I want no corners cut. The instant she talks to a single member of the press—”

“She won’t.”

“Get out of here, then. Leave me, Tommy.”

“Isabelle . . .”

“Guv,” she said wearily. “Guv.”

“You won’t—”

“Regret it?” She arched an eyebrow. “Is that what you were going to say?”

It wasn’t and they both knew that.
You won’t drink, will you?
was in the air between them.

“I apologise,” he told her. “And I
will
dog every move she makes.”

“See that you do or face the consequences.”

“Accepted,” he said.

“Dismissed,” she told him.

He related all of this to Daidre, ending with, “Praise God she didn’t know the dog was with me.”

“You were very naughty, Tommy. I do see her point.”

“That’s the devil of it,” he admitted. “I see it as well.”

“As to the dog . . . ?”

Arlo had found a pile of dust sheets in the sitting room and had fluffed them and sorted them. With a mighty sigh, he’d deposited his furry body for a snooze. It had been a long and trying day at the Met: having walkies and snacks and being generally coddled.

“Ah, yes, the dog,” Lynley said. “Arlo, he’s called. I couldn’t face taking him anywhere but with me. I’ve not the first clue what sort of dog he is, but he’s extremely well trained. More like one’s shadow than a dog.”

Daidre went to squat in front of him. Arlo cocked his head and blinked at her. She extended her fingers. He sniffed them and lowered his head to his paws. He still looked up at her, though. He was, Lynley thought, very difficult to resist.

Daidre did not even make the attempt. She said, “Of course, Tommy.”

“What?”

“I’ll keep him till his owner is able to have him back. As he’s trained, he can come to work with me. What’s one more animal when one works at a zoo? He can ride in the basket on the bike, I daresay. It’ll be a bit of a squeeze for him, but I expect he’ll manage.” She
caressed the little dog’s head. “What kind of dog are you?” she asked him. “We’ll have to sort that out.”

“He’s not a mongrel?” Lynley asked.

Daidre covered the dog’s ears and glanced over her shoulder at Lynley. “Please!” she said. “Do not insult him.” And then to the dog, “He didn’t mean it, Arlo. Men are sometimes . . . How can I put it? . . . They can be so terribly ignorant when it comes to one’s breeding.”

Lynley said, “I like to think I’m not that sort.”