In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(141)

Deborah laughed and mock-sprayed him. She caught sight of Barbara just outside the kitchen door. She said, “Brilliant. Just what I need. A witness. Hullo, Barbara! Please take note of which partner is slaving away in the garden and which is not. My solicitor will want a statement from you later.”

“Don't believe a word she says,” St. James said. “I've only sat down this moment.”

“Something about your posture says you're lying,” Barbara told him as she crossed the lawn to the chaise longue. “And your father-in-law just suggested that I light a stick of dynamite under your bum, by the way.”

“Did he?” St. James enquired, frowning at the kitchen window through which Joseph Cotter's form could be seen moving round.

“Thanks, Dad,” Deborah called out in the direction of the house.

Barbara smiled at their quiet, fond sparring. She pulled a deck chair up and sank into it. She handed over the file to St. James, saying, “His Lordship would like you to make a study of this.”

“What is it?”

“The Derbyshire post-mortems. Both the girl and the boy. The inspector'd tell you to have the closer look at the data on the girl, by the way.”

“You wouldn't tell me that?”

Barbara smiled grimly. “I think my thoughts.”

St. James opened the file. Deborah crossed the lawn to join them, trailing the spray pump behind her. “Pictures,” St. James warned her.

She hesitated. “Bad?”

“Multiple stab wounds on one of the victims,” Barbara told her.

She blanched and sat on the chaise longue near to her husband's feet. St. James gave the photographs a glance only, before he placed them face down on the lawn. He flipped through the report, pausing to read here and there. He said, “Is there something particular that Tommy's looking for, Barbara?”

“The inspector and I aren't communicating directly. I'm currently his gofer. He told me to bring you the report. I tugged my forelock and did his bidding.”

St. James looked up. “Things still bad between you? Helen did tell me you were on the case.”

“Marginally.”

“He'll come round.”

“Tommy always does,” Deborah added. Husband and wife exchanged a look. Deborah said uneasily, “Well. You know.”

“Yes,” St. James said after a moment, and with a brief, kind smile in her direction. Then to Barbara, “I'll have a look at the paperwork, Barbara. I expect he wants inconsistencies, anomalies, discrepancies. The usual. Tell him I'll phone.”

“Right,” she said. And then she added delicately, “I'm wondering, Simon …”

“Hmm?”

“Could you phone me as well? I mean, if you unearth something.” When he didn't reply at once, she rushed on with “I know it's irregular. And I don't want to get you into a bad spot with the inspector. But he won't tell me much and it's always, ‘Get back to the computer, Constable,’ if I make a suggestion. So, if you were willing to keep me in the picture … I mean, I know he'd be cheesed off if he knew, but I swear I'd never tell him that you—”

“I'll phone you as well,” St. James interrupted. “But there may be nothing. I know Sue Myles. She's nothing if not thorough. Frankly, I don't see why Tommy wants me to look her work over in the first place.”

Neither do I, Barbara wanted to tell him. Still, his promise to phone her buoyed her spirits, so she ended the day in far better a frame of mind than she'd begun it.

When she saw Hadiyyah's note, however, an unhappy twinge pricked at her mood. The little girl had no mother to speak of—at least no mother who was present or likely to become present any time soon—and while Barbara didn't expect to take her mother's place, she had struck up a friendship with Hadiyyah that had been a source of pleasure to them both. Hadiyyah had hoped that Barbara would attend her sewing lesson that afternoon. And Barbara had failed her. It didn't feel good.

So when she'd dropped her bag on the dining room table and listened to her messages—Mrs. Flo reporting on her mum, her mum reporting on a jolly trip to Jamaica, Hadiyyah telling her she'd left a note on the door and did Barbara find it?—she wandered up to the front of the big Edwardian house where the ground floor flat's french windows were open from the sitting room onto the flagstones of the area and within the room itself, a child's voice was declaring, “But they don't fit, Dad. Honest.”

Hadiyyah and her father were just inside, Hadiyyah seated on a cream-puff-shaped ottoman and Taymullah Azhar kneeling next to her like a lovesick Orsino. The object of their attention appeared to be the shoes that Hadiyyah was wearing. These were black lace-ups of school-uniform appearance, and Hadiyyah was squirming round in them as if they were a new device for extracting information from double agents.

“My toes're all squished up. My toe knuckles hurt.”

“And you are certain this pain has nothing to do with the desire to follow a fad of fashion, khushi?.”

“Dad.” Hadiyyah's tone was martyred. “Please. These're school shoes, you know.”

“And as we both recall,” Barbara said from the flagstones, “school shoes are never cool, Azhar. They always defy fashion. That's why they're school shoes.”