Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(27)

“At the Breakwater.”

“That was courageous. I can imagine your arteries hardening even as we speak. Well, I haven't had a bite since breakfast and I'm heading home. Come along. We can talk while I have my dinner.”

They wouldn't need the car, she added as Barbara fished her keys from her lumpy shoulder bag. Emily lived just at the top of the street, where Martello Road became the Crescent.

It took them less than five minutes to walk there, at a brisk pace that Emily Barlow set. Her house stood at the near end of the Crescent. It was the last in a row of nine terraced dwellings that appeared to be in various stages of either renaissance or decay. Emily's belonged to the former group: Three storeys of scaffolding fronted it.

“You'll have to pardon the mess.” Emily led Barbara up the eight cracked front steps and onto a shallow porch that was walled with chipped Edwardian tiles. “It'll be a real showpiece when I've got it done, but right now finding the time to work on it is the biggest problem.” She shouldered open a paint-stripped front door. “Back here,” she said, heading down a steamy corridor that was redolent of sawdust and turpentine. “It's the only part that I've managed to get into remotely livable condition.”

If Barbara had had any thoughts of dossing down with Emily Barlow, she gave them a decent burial when she saw what back here was. Emily appeared to be living entirely in the airless kitchen. Not much more than a cupboard-sized room, it contained a refrigerator, a spirit stove, and the requisite sink and work tops. But in addition to these features typical to a kitchen, crammed into the room with them were a camp bed, a card table, two folding metal chairs, and an antique bathtub of the sort once used before the days of indoor plumbing. Barbara didn't want to ask where the toilet was.

A single bare bulb from the ceiling served as illumination, although a torch and a copy of A Brief History of Time by the camp bed indicated that Emily did some recreational reading—if one could actually call astrophysics recreational reading—by additional light while in bed. And bed consisted of a sleeping bag and plump pillow with a case decorated with Snoopy and Woodstock flying the World War I doghouse above the fields of France.

It was as odd a living environment as any Barbara could have imagined for the Emily Barlow she'd known at Maidstone. If she'd taken the time to picture anything in the way of digs for the DCI, it would have been something spare and modern with an emphasis on glass, metal, and stone.

Emily seemed to read her thoughts, because she dumped her hold-all on the work top and leaned against it with her hands in her pockets, saying, “It takes my mind off the job. When I finish renovating this place, I'll get another. That and having a regular bonk with a willing bloke are what keep me sane.” She cocked her head. “I haven't yet asked. How's your mother, Barb?”

“Speaking of sane … or otherwise?”

“Sorry. I didn't mean the connection.”

“Don't apologise. I didn't take offence.”

“Do you still have her with you?”

“I couldn't cope.” Barbara sketched the details for the other woman, feeling as she always felt when reluctantly revealing that she'd confined her mother to a private home: guilty, ungrateful, selfish, unkind. It made no difference that her mother was in better hands than she'd ever been in living with Barbara. She was still her mother. The debt of birth would always hang between them, no matter that no child ever seeks to incur it.

“That must have been a rough go,” Emily said when Barbara concluded. “You can't have made the decision easily.”

“I didn't. But it still feels like payback.”

“What for?”

“I don't know. For life, I guess.”

Emily nodded slowly. She seemed to be examining Barbara, and under her scrutiny, Barbara felt her skin begin itching beneath the bandages. It was miserably hot in the room and although the single window was open—and painted black for some reason—not even the faint promise of a breeze came into the kitchen.

Emily roused herself. “Dinner,” she said. She went to the fridge and squatted in front of it, bringing forth a container of yoghurt. She took a large bowl from a cupboard and spooned yoghurt into it in three huge globs. She reached for a packet of dried fruit and nuts. “This heat,” she said, pausing to fork her fingers through her hair. “God Almighty. This bloody heat.” She ripped the packet open with her teeth.

“The worst kind of weather for a CID investigation,” Barbara said. “No one has the patience for anything. Tempers go fast.”

“Tell me about it,” Emily agreed. “I haven't done much more in the last two days besides trying to keep the local Asians from burning down the town and my guv from assigning his golfing mate to take over the case.”

Barbara was gratified that her fellow officer had given her an opening. “Today's demonstration made ITV. Did you know?”

“Oh yes.” Emily dumped half the packet of nuts and fruit on top of the yoghurt and patted everything in place with her spoon before reaching for a banana from a bowl of fruit on the work top. “We had a score of Asians at a town council meeting, howling like werewolves about their civil liberties. One of them alerted the media and when a camera crew showed up, they started lobbing chunks of concrete. They've imported outsiders to help in the cause. And Ferguson—that's my guv—has taken to getting on the blower once or twice an hour to tell me how to do my job.”