In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(23)

“Barbara, this is for the best,” he'd told her, gathering materials from his desk.

And she'd gulped down what she wanted to say in protest and stared at him, realising that she'd never actually known him before that moment.

“He doesn't seem to agree with the outcome of the internal investigation,” Barbara concluded her story for St. James and Helen. “Demotion and all. I don't think he believes I've been punished enough.”

“I'm so sorry,” Helen said. “You must feel as if you've lost your best friend.”

The authenticity of her compassion stung the backs of Barbara's eyelids. She hadn't expected Helen—of all people—to be the source. So deeply did it touch her to have the sympathy of Lynley's wife that she heard herself stammering, “It's just that his choice … To replace me with … I mean …” She fumbled for the words and instead encountered that rush of pain all over again. “It felt like such a slap in the face.”

All Lynley had done, of course, was to make a selection among the officers available to work with him on an investigation. That his choice was itself a wound to Barbara wasn't a problem he was required to address.

Detective Constable Winston Nkata had done a fine job on two cases in town on which he'd worked with both Barbara and Lynley. It wasn't unreasonable that the DC would be offered an opportunity to demonstrate his talents outside London on the sort of special assignment that had previously gone to Barbara herself. But Lynley couldn't have been blind to the fact that Barbara saw Nkata as the competition nipping at her heels at the Yard. Eight years her junior, twelve years younger than the inspector, he was more ambitious than either Lynley or Barbara had ever been. He was a self-starter, a man who anticipated orders before they were spoken and seemed to fulfill them with one hand tied behind his back. Barbara had long suspected him of showboating for Lynley, trying to outdo her own efforts in order to replace her at the inspector's side.

Lynley knew this. He had to know it. So his choice of Nkata seemed less a logical selection made by a man who weighed the respective gifts of his subordinates and used them according to the needs of a case than it appeared to be an instance of outright in-your-face cruelty.

“Is this Tommy in a temper?” St. James asked.

But it hadn't been anger behind Lynley's actions, and desolate as she was, Barbara wouldn't accuse him of that.

Deborah joined them then, saying, “What's happened?” and fondly kissing her husband on the cheek as she passed him and poured herself a small sherry.

The story was repeated, Barbara telling it, St. James adding details, and Helen listening in thoughtful silence. Like Lynley, the others were in possession of the facts connected to Barbara's professional insubordination and her assault on a superior officer. Unlike Lynley, however, they appeared capable of seeing the situation as Barbara herself had seen it: unavoidable, regrettable, but fully justified, the only course open to a woman who was simultaneously under pressure and in the right.

St. James even went so far as to say, “Tommy'll doubtless come round to your way of thinking at the end of the day, Barbara. It's rough that you have to go through this though.” And the other two women murmured their agreement.

All of this should have been intensely gratifying. After all, their sympathy was what Barbara had come to Chelsea in order to gather. But she found that their sympathy merely enflamed her pain and the sense of betrayal that had driven her to Chelsea in the first place. She said, “I guess it boils down to this: The inspector wants someone he knows he can trust to work with him.”

And no matter the ensuing protests of Lynley's wife and Lynley's friends, Barbara knew she was not, at the present time, anywhere close to being that someone.





[page]CHAPTER 4


ulian Britton could picture exactly what his cousin was doing on the other end of the telephone line. He could hear a steady thwack thwack thwack punctuating her sentences, and that sound told him that she was in the old, ill-lit kitchen of Broughton Manor, chopping up some of the vegetables that she grew at the bottom of one of the gardens. “I didn't say that I was unwilling to help you out, Julian.” Samantha's comment was accompanied by a thwack that sounded more decisive than the earlier ones. “I merely asked what's going on. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?”

He didn't want to reply. He didn't want to tell her what was going on: Samantha, after all, had never made a secret of her aversion for Nicola Maiden.

So what could he say? Little enough. By the time the police in Buxton had made the assessment that it might behoove them to phone the force headquarters in Ripley, by the time Ripley had sent two panda cars to examine the location in which Nicola's Saab and an old Triumph motorcycle were parked, and by the time Ripley and Buxton in conjunction reached the obvious conclusion that Mountain Rescue was needed, an old woman on a morning stroll with her dog had stumbled into the hamlet of Peak Forest, pounded on a door, and told a tale about a body she'd come across in the ring of Nine Sisters Henge. The police had gone there at once, leaving Mountain Rescue waiting at their meeting point for further directions. When those directions came, they were ominous enough: Mountain Rescue would not be needed.

Julian knew all this because as a member of Mountain Rescue, he'd gone to his team's rendezvous site once the call had come through—passed along that morning by Samantha, who intercepted it in his absence at Broughton Manor. So he was standing among the members of his team, checking his equipment as the leader read from a dog-eared checklist, when the mobile rang and the equipment check was first interrupted and then canceled altogether. The team leader passed on the information he was given—the old woman, her dog, their morning walk, the body, Nine Sisters Henge.