For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(129)

“Indeed,” Lynley said. “Moscow in the winter. That’s certainly my idea of heaven on earth.”

He glanced at his sergeant as he spoke. She’d arrived nearly half an hour late and he’d been in the process of gathering his things to start without her when she’d clumped down the corridor to his room in Ivy Court and rapped on his door.

“Sorry,” she’d said. “Bleeding fog this morning. The M11 was a glorified car park.” But despite the deliberately casual tone of her voice, he noted the fact that her face was drawn with weariness and she sauntered about the room restlessly as she waited for him to don his coat and his scarf.

“Rough night?” he asked her.

She settled the strap of her bag high on her shoulder in what seemed to be a metaphorical gathering of personal resources before she replied. “Just a bit of the old insomnia. I’ll survive it.”

“And your mother?”

“Her as well.”

“I see.” He draped his scarf round his neck and shrugged into his overcoat. At the mirror, he ran a brush through his hair, but it was just an excuse to observe Havers in reflection rather than doing so directly. She was staring down at his open briefcase on the desk. She didn’t appear to be taking note of anything in it. He stood at the mirror, giving her time, saying nothing, wondering if she would speak.

He felt a mixture of guilt and shame, faced with the diversity of their positions. Not for the first time, he was forced to acknowledge that the differences between them were not confined to birth, class, and money. For her struggles took their definition from a range of circumstances that far exceeded the family into which she had been born and the manner in which she pronounced her words. These circumstances rose from simple ill-fortune, dominoes of bad luck that had tumbled one upon the other so quickly in the last ten months that she had not been able to stop their progress. That she could stop them now with a simple phone call was the single fact he wished her to acknowledge. Yet he had to admit that that very phone call, so easy for him to recommend, represented to her a sloughing off of responsibility, coveted salvation rather than obvious solution. And he could not deny that, in similar circumstances, he would not have found himself as equally tied to the idea of filial obligation.

When he reached the point that only narcissism could possibly explain why he was still admiring his own reflection, he set down his brush and turned to her. She heard his movement and looked up from her study of the briefcase.

“Look, sorry I was late,” she said in a rush. “I know you’re covering for me in all this, sir. I know you can’t do it indefinitely.”

“That’s not the point, Barbara. We cover for each other when things get rough personally. That’s understood.”

She reached out for the back of an armchair, not so much for support, it seemed, but for something to do with her hands, because she watched her fingers pick at a frayed cord of its upholstery. She said, “The funny thing is she was right as rain this morning. Last night was a real horror, but this morning she was fine. I keep thinking that must mean something. I keep telling myself it’s a sign.”

“If you’re looking for signs, you can find them in anything. They don’t tend to change reality, however.”

“But if there’s a chance she’s taken a turn for the better..”

“What about last night? And what about you? What sort of turns are you taking here, Barbara?”

She was working an entire section of the cording loose, twisting it round and round her fingers. “How can I move her from her home when she doesn’t understand what’s even going on? How can I do that to her? She’s my mother, Inspector.”

“It’s not a punishment.”

“Then why does it feel like one? Worse, why do I feel like a criminal who’s getting away scot free while she takes the rap?”

“Because you want to do it in your heart, I expect. And what greater source of guilt could there be than the guilt that arises from finally trying to decide if what you want to do—which seems momentarily and superficially selfish—is also the right thing to do? How can you tell if you’re really being honest or just trying to talk yourself into dealing with the situation in a way that meets with your own desires?”

She looked utterly defeated. “That’s the question, Inspector. And I’ll never have the answer. The whole situation goes too far beyond me.”

“No, it doesn’t. It starts and stops with you. You hold the power. You can make the decision.”

“I can’t stand to hurt her. She won’t understand.”

Lynley snapped the briefcase closed. “And what does she understand as things are now, Sergeant?”

That put an end to it. As they walked to his car, which was shoe-horned into the same narrow space he’d used last night on Garret Hostel Lane, he told her about his conversation with Victor Troughton. When he was finished, she said before getting into the Bentley:

“D’you suppose Elena Weaver felt real love for anyone?”

He switched on the ignition. The heater sent out a stream of cold air on their feet. Lynley thought of Troughton’s final words about the girl—“Try to understand. She wasn’t evil, Inspector. She was merely angry. And I, for one, can’t condemn her for that.”

“Even though, in reality, you were little more than her choice of weapons?” Lynley had asked him.