Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(193)

“Yes. Pete wasn’t an idea. He was?he is?a person.”

Ray didn’t avoid her gaze or her comment. Bea marked this as the first time he’d actually done neither. “You’re right.” He smiled at her in fond if rueful acknowledgement. “He wasn’t an idea. Can we talk about it, Beatrice?”

“Not now,” she said. “I’ve work. As you know.” She didn’t add what she wanted to add: that the time to talk was fifteen years gone. Nor did she add that he’d chosen his moment with scant consideration for her situation, which was damn well typical of how he’d always been. She didn’t think what it meant that she let such an opportunity pass, though. Instead, she went into morning mode and got ready for work.

Nonetheless, on her drive even Radio Four didn’t divert her enough that she failed to realise Ray had just as good as admitted his inadequacy as a husband at long last. She wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge, so she was grateful when she walked into the incident room to a ringing phone that she scooped up from its receiver before anyone from the team could do likewise. They were milling round, waiting for their assignments. She was hoping that someone on the end of the phone was going to give her an idea of what to tell them to do next.

It turned out that Duke Clarence Washoe from Chepstow was on hand with the preliminaries about the comparison of hairs she’d provided him. Was she ready for that?

“Regale me,” she told him.

“Microscopically, they’re close,” he said.

“Just close? No match?”

“Can’t do a match with what we have. We’re talking cuticle, cortex, and medulla. This isn’t a DNA thing.”

“I’m aware of that. So what can you say?”

“They’re human. They’re similar. They might be from the same person. Or a member of the same family. But ‘might’ is as far as we go. I’ve got no problem putting myself on record with the microscopic details, mind. But if you want further analysis, it’s going to take time.”

And money, Bea thought. He wasn’t saying that, but both of them knew it.

“Shall I carry on, then?” he was asking her.

“Depends on the chock stone. What d’you have on that?”

“One cut. It went straight through without hesitation. No multiple efforts involved. No identifying striations, either. You’re looking for a machine, not a hand tool. And its blade is quite new.”

“Certain about that?” A machine for cutting cable narrowed the field considerably. She felt a mild stirring of excitement.

“You want chapter and verse?”

“Chapter will do.”

“Aside from possibly leaving striations, a hand tool’s going to depress both the upper and the lower parts of the cable, crimping them together. A machine’s going to make a cleaner cut. Resulting ends’ll be shiny as well.” He was, he said, expressing this unscientifically to her. Did she want the proper lingo?

Bea nodded a good morning to Sergeant Havers as she came into the room. Bea looked for Lynley to walk in behind her, but he didn’t appear. She frowned.

“Inspector?” Washoe said at his end of the line. “D’you want?”

“What you’ve given me is fine,” she told him. “Save the science for your formal report.”

“Will do.”

“And…Duke Clarence?” She grimaced at the poor sod’s name.

“Guv?”

“Thanks for rushing things with that hair.”

She could hear that he was pleased with her expression of gratitude as he rang off. She gathered her team, such as it was. They were looking for a machine tool, she told them and gave them the details on the chock stone as Washoe had related them to her. What were their options on finding one? Constable McNulty? she enquired.

McNulty seemed to be feeling his oats this morning, perhaps as a result of the success he’d had tracking down unhelpful photos of dead surfers. He pointed out that the erstwhile air station was a good possibility. There were any number of businesses set up in the old buildings and doubtless a machine shop was going to be one of them.

Auto-body shop would do as well, someone else suggested.

Or a factory of some sort, came another suggestion.

Then the ideas emerged quickly. Metal worker, iron worker, even a sculptor. What about a blacksmith? Well, that wasn’t likely.

“My mum-in-law could do it with her teeth,” someone said.

Guffaws all round. “That’ll do,” Bea said. She gave Sergeant Collins the nod to make the assignments: set out and find the tool. They knew their suspects. Consider them, their homes, and their places of employment. And anyone who might have done work for them at their homes or their places of employment as well.

Then she said to Havers, “I’d like a word, Sergeant,” and she had that word in the corridor. She said, “Where’s our good superintendent this morning? Having a bit of a lie-in?”

“No. He was at breakfast. We had it together.” Havers smoothed her hands on the hips of her baggy corduroy trousers. They remained decidedly baggy.

“Did you indeed? I hope it was delicious and I’m thrilled to know he’s not missing his meals. So where is he?”

“He was still at the inn when I?”