For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(100)

“Trouble?” Lynley asked.

Sheehan picked up a batch of folders from his secretary’s desk and riffled through a stack of papers in her IN tray. “What a woman,” he said with a nod at her empty chair. “She called in ill this morning. She has a real sixth sense about when things are going to heat up, does Edwina.”

“And things are heating up?”

Sheehan grabbed three papers from the tray, stuck them with the folders under his arm, and lumbered into his office. Lynley and Havers followed. “I’ve got my CC at Huntingdon breathing down my neck about devising a strategy for what he calls ‘renewed community relations’—a fancy title for coming up with a way to keep the nobs at the University happy so that you lot don’t start making regular appearances here in the future. I’ve got the funeral home and the parents asking after the Weaver girl’s body every quarter hour. And now”—with a look at the plastic sack dangling from Havers’ fingers—“I expect you’ve brought me something else to play with.”

“Clothes for forensic,” Havers said. “We’d like to make a match with the fibres on the body. If you can give us something positive, we might have what we need.”

“To make an arrest?”

“It’s looking possible.”

Sheehan nodded grimly. “I hate to give those two bickering old biddies something else to fight over, but we’ll have a go. They’ve been sniping over the weapon since yesterday. Maybe this’ll take their minds off that for a bit.”

“They’ve still reached no conclusion?” Lynley asked.

“Pleasance has done. Drake doesn’t agree. He won’t sign the report, and he’s been dragging his heels about calling in the Met for another opinion since yesterday afternoon. Professional pride, if you catch my drift, not to mention competence. He’s afraid at this point that Pleasance is in the right. And since he’s made such an issue about getting rid of the bloke, he stands to lose a lot more than just face if anyone confirms Pleasance’s conclusions.” Sheehan threw the folders and the papers down on his desk where they mingled with a stack of pages from a computer print-out. He rooted through his top drawer and brought out a roll of mints. He offered them round, sank into his chair, and loosened his tie. Outside, in Edwina’s office, the phone began to ring. He ignored it. “Love and death,” he said. “Mix up pride with either of them and you’re done for, aren’t you?”

“Is it the Met’s involvement that’s bothering Drake or the involvement of any outsider?”

The double ringing of the telephone continued in the outer office. Sheehan continued to let it go unanswered. “It’s the Met,” he said. “Drake’s got himself in a dither over the implication that he’s got to be rescued by his London betters. The fact that you’re here has our CID boys in a rumble. Drake doesn’t want the same to happen in forensic where he already has trouble enough keeping Pleasance in line.”

“But Drake wouldn’t object if someone else—someone uninvolved with the Yard—had a look at the body? Especially if that someone worked directly with the two of them—Drake and Pleasance—gave them the information verbally, and allowed them to create the report.”

Sheehan’s features sharpened with interest. “What do you have in mind, Inspector?”

“An expert witness.”

“That’s not on. We don’t have the funding to pay an outsider.”

“You won’t have to pay.”

Footsteps rang against the floor in the outer office. A breathless voice answered the phone.

Lynley said, “We’ll have the information we need without the Met’s presence telegraphing to everyone that Drake’s competence is being questioned.”

“And what happens when the time comes for someone to testify in court, Inspector? Neither Drake nor Pleasance can get in the box and give evidence that isn’t his.”

“Either one can if he assists, and if his conclusions are the same as the expert’s.”

Thoughtfully, Sheehan played the roll of mints back and forth on the top of his desk. “Can it be arranged discreetly?”

“So that no one aside from Drake and Pleasance knows the expert witness was here in the first place?” When Sheehan nodded, Lynley said, “Just hand me the phone.”

A woman’s voice called out to Sheehan from the outer office, a diffident “Superintendent?” and nothing more. Sheehan got to his feet, joined the uniformed constable who had answered his phone. As they spoke together, Havers turned to Lynley.

“You’re thinking of St. James,” she said. “Will he be able to come up?”

“Faster than someone from the Met, I dare say,” Lynley replied. “Without the attendant paperwork and without the politics. Just pray he’s not scheduled to give testimony anywhere within the next few days.”

He looked up as Sheehan plunged back into the office, making for the metal stand upon which his overcoat was hanging. He grabbed this, snatched up the plastic sack which sat next to Havers’ chair, and flung it to the constable who had followed him to the door.

“See the forensic boys get this,” he said. And then to Lynley and Havers, “Let’s go.”

Lynley knew without asking what the set expression on Sheehan’s face meant. He’d seen it too many times to wonder what had provoked it. He’d even felt his own features take on the manifestation of that grim anger that always attended the revelation of a crime.