A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(204)

“That’s not your concern, Mother.” He fished out his cigarettes and took five tries to light one in the wind. Anyone else would have given up after the second match went out, but not her son. He was, in at least this way, so like his mother.

She said, “Adrian, I’m fast running out of patience with you.”

“Go home,” he told her. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“What exactly are you planning to do, then? If you’re not coming home with me.”

He smiled without pleasure before striding round to his side of the car. He spoke to her over its bonnet. “Believe me, I’ll think of something,” he said.

St. James parted with Deborah as they climbed the slope from the car park towards the hotel. She’d been thoughtful all the way back from Le Reposoir. She’d driven the route with her usual care, but he could tell that her mind wasn’t on the traffic or even on the direction they were traveling. He knew she was thinking about her proffered explanation to a priceless painting’s being cached in a prehistoric, stone-lined mound of earth. He certainly couldn’t fault her for that. He was thinking of her explanation as well, simply because he couldn’t discount it. He knew that just as her predilection for seeing the good in all people might lead her to ignore basic truths about them, so could his penchant for distrusting everyone lead him to see things as they were not. So neither of them spoke on the drive back to St. Peter Port. It was only as they approached the hotel’s front steps that Deborah turned to him as if she’d reached some sort of decision.

“I won’t come in just yet. I’ll have a walk first.”

He hesitated before replying. He knew the peril of saying the wrong thing. But he also knew the greater peril of not saying anything in a situation in which Deborah knew more than she ought to know as a party who was not disinterested.

He said, “Where are you going? Wouldn’t you rather have a drink? A cup of tea or something?”

Her expression altered round the eyes. She knew what he was really saying despite his efforts to pretend otherwise. She said, “Perhaps I need an armed guard, Simon.”

“Deborah...”

She said, “I’ll be back soon enough,” and headed off, not in the direction they had come but down towards Smith Street, which led to the High Street and the harbour beyond.

He could do nothing but let her go, admitting as he did so that he knew no better than she at this moment what the truth was about the death of Guy Brouard. All he had were suspicions, which she appeared to be bound and determined not to share.

Upon entering the hotel, he heard his name called and saw the receptionist standing behind the counter with a slip of paper extended towards him. “Message from London,” she told him as she gave him the paper as well as his room key. He saw that she’d written “Super Linley” on a message chit in apparent reference to his friend’s position at New Scotland Yard but nonetheless looking like a characterisation that would no doubt have amused the acting superintendent, despite the misspelling of his name. “He says to get a mobile phone,” she added meaningfully. Up in the room, St. James didn’t return Lynley’s call at once. Instead, he went to the desk beneath the window and punched in a different number.

In California, Jim Ward was engaged in a “meeting of the partners,”

St. James was told when the call went through. Alas, the meeting was being held not in the office but at the Ritz Carlton hotel. “On the coast,” he was told with some importance by a woman who’d identified herself as “Southby, Strange, Willow, and Ward. Crystal speaking.”

“They’re all uncommunico,” she added. “But I could take a message.”

St. James didn’t have time to wait for a message to get through to the architect, so he asked the young woman—who seemed to be munching on celery sticks—if she could help him.

“Do what I can,” she said cheerfully. “I’m studying to be an architect myself.”

Good fortune looked down on him when he asked her about the plans which Jim Ward had sent to Guernsey. It hadn’t been that long ago that the documents had left the offices of Southby, Strange, Willow, and Ward, and as it so happened, Crystal herself was in charge of all post, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and even Internet transmittals of drawings. Since this particular situation had differed so radically from their usual procedure, she remembered it all and would be only too happy to explain it to him...i f he could wait just a moment “ ’cause the other line is ringing.”

He waited, and in due course her cheerful voice came back on the line. In the normal way things were done, she told him, the plans would have gone overseas via the Net to another architect, who’d carry the project on from there. But in this case, the plans were just samples of Mr. Ward’s work and there was no rush to get them there. So she packaged them “like always” and handed them over to an attorney who showed up to claim them. That, she’d discovered, was an arrangement that had been made between Mr. Ward and the client overseas.

“A Mr. Kiefer?” St. James asked. “Mr. William Kiefer? Was that who came for them?”

She couldn’t remember the name, Crystal said. But she didn’t think it was Kiefer. Although...wai t. Come to thi nk of i t, she didn’t recall the guy’s giving a name at all. He just said he was there to pick up the plans that were going to Guernsey so she’d handed them over.