For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(136)

“Do you run every morning?” Lynley asked the girl as they crossed Mill Lane and skirted the metal posts that kept vehicles off the pedestrian bridge which crossed the river at Granta Place. To their right, Laundress Green was obscured by the fog, an expanse of misty field intermittently disturbed by the hulking forms of crack willows. Beyond it, from across the pond, a single light winked from an upper floor in the Old Granary.

“Nearly,” she answered.

“Always the same time?”

“As close to a quarter past six as I can make it. Sometimes a bit later.”

“And on Monday?”

“Mondays are slower for me, getting out of bed. It was probably round six-twenty-five when I left Queens’ on Monday.”

“So you’d reach the island…”

“No later than half past.”

“You’re certain of that. It couldn’t have been later?”

“I was back in my room by half past seven, Inspector. I’m quick, it’s true, but I’m not that quick. And I did a good ten miles Monday morning, with the island at the start of it. It’s part of my training circuit.”

“For Hare and Hounds?”

“Yes. I fancy a blue this year.”

She hadn’t noticed anything unusual on the morning of her run, she told them. It was still quite dark when she left Queens’ College, and aside from overtaking a workman who was pushing a cart down Laundress Lane, she hadn’t seen another soul. Just the usual assortment of ducks and swans, some already floating on the river, others still placidly dozing on the bank. But the fog was heavy—“At least as heavy as it is today,” she said—so she had to admit that anyone might have been lurking in a doorway or waiting, hidden by the fog, on the green.

When they reached the island, they found a small fire burning, sending up weak puffs of acrid, soot-coloured smoke to melt into the fog. A man in a peaked cap, overcoat, and gloves was feeding autumn leaves, trash, and bits of wood into the blue-tipped flames. Lynley recognised him as Ned, the surlier of the two older boat repairmen.

Rosalyn indicated the footbridge that crossed not the Cam itself, but the secondary stream that the river became as it flowed round the west side of the island. “She was crossing this,” she said. “I heard her because she stumbled against something—she might have lost her footing, everything was quite damp—and she was coughing as well. I assumed she was out running like me and was feeling worn out, and frankly I was a bit peeved to come upon her like that because she didn’t appear to be watching where she was going and I nearly bumped into her. And—” She seemed embarrassed. “Well, I suppose I have the University mind set about townees, don’t I? What was she doing, I thought, invading my patch?”

“What gave you the impression she was a local?”

Rosalyn looked thoughtfully at the footbridge through the mist. The damp air was catching on her eyelashes, spiking them darkly. Childlike curls of hair were forming against her brow. “It was something about her clothes, I should guess. And perhaps her age, although I suppose she could have been from Lucy Cavendish.”

“What about her clothes?”

Rosalyn gestured at her own mismatched sweat suit. “University runners generally wear their college colours somewhere, their college sweatshirts as well.”

“And she wasn’t wearing a sweat suit?” Havers asked sharply, glancing up from her notebook.

“She was—a tracksuit actually—but it wasn’t from a college. I mean, I don’t recall seeing a college name on it. Although, now I think of it, considering the colour, she might have been from Trinity Hall.”

“Because she was wearing black,” Lynley said.

Rosalyn’s quick smile indicated affirmation. “You know the colleges’ colours, then?”

“It was just a good guess.”

He walked onto the footbridge. The wrought iron gate was partially open upon the south end of the island. The police line was gone now, the island available to anyone who wished to sit by the water, to meet surreptitiously, or—like Sarah Gordon—to attempt to sketch. “Did the woman see you?”

Rosalyn and Havers remained on the path. “Oh yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I nearly ran into her. She couldn’t have helped seeing me.”

“And you were wearing the same clothes you’re wearing now?”

Rosalyn nodded, and plunged her hands into the pockets of the anorak she’d taken from her room prior to their setting out into the fog. “Without this, of course,” she said with a lift of her shoulders to indicate the anorak. She added ingenuously, “One gets warm enough running. And”—her face brightened—“she didn’t have a coat or a jacket on, so that must have been another reason why I assumed she was a runner. Although..” A marked hesitation as she looked into the mist. “She might have been carrying one, I suppose. I can’t recall. But I think she was carrying something…I think.”

“What did she look like?”

“Look like?” Rosalyn frowned down at her gym shoes. “Slender. She wore her hair pulled back.”

“Colour?”

“Oh dear. It was light, I think. Yes, quite light.”

“Anything unusual about her? A feature perhaps? A mark on her skin? The shape of her nose? A large forehead? A pointed chin?”