This Body of Death (5 page)

“Y
OU’RE UP TO SPEED ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO
DI Lynley, I take it?” Hillier asked, and Isabelle Ardery considered the man as well as the question before she replied. They were in his office at New Scotland Yard, where banks of windows looked out on the rooftops of Westminster and some of the costliest real estate in the country. Sir David Hillier was standing behind his oceanic desk, looking crisp and clean and remarkably fit for a man his age. He had to be somewhere in his middle sixties, she decided.

At his insistence, she herself was seated, which she thought quite clever of him. He wanted her to feel his dominance on the chance that she might think herself his superior. This would be physically, of course. She was unlikely to conclude that she had some other sort of ascendancy over the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. She was taller than he by a full three inches—even more if she wore higher heels—however, there her advantage ended.

She said, “You’re referring to Inspector Lynley’s wife? Yes. I know what happened to her. I daresay everyone in the force knows what happened. How is he? Where is he?”

“Still in Cornwall, as far as I know. But the team want him back, and you’re going to feel it. Havers, Nkata, Hale …All of them. Even John Stewart. From detectives to filing clerks. The lot. Custodians as well, I have no doubt. He’s a popular figure.”

“I know. I’ve met him. He’s quite the gent. That would be the word, wouldn’t it?
Gent
.”

Hillier eyed her in a way she didn’t much like, suggesting he had some thoughts on the wheres and hows of her acquaintance with Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. She considered an elucidation on the subject, but she rejected the idea. Let the man think what the man would think. She had her chance to capture the job she wanted, and all that mattered was proving to him that she was worthy to be named
permanent
and not just
acting
detective superintendent.

“They’re professionals, the lot of them. They won’t make your life a misery,” Hillier said. “Still, there’re strong loyalties among them. Some things die hard.”

And some don’t die at all, she thought. She wondered if Hillier intended to sit or whether this interview was going to be conducted entirely in the headmaster/recalcitrant pupil mode that his present position seemed to indicate. She also wondered if she’d made some sort of professional faux pas in sitting herself, but it seemed to her that he
had
made an unambiguous gesture towards one of the two chairs that were positioned in front of his desk, hadn’t he?

“…won’t give you a problem. Good man,” Hillier was saying. “But John Stewart’s another matter. He still wants the superintendent’s position, and he didn’t take it well when he wasn’t named permanent superintendent at the end of his trial period.”

Isabelle brought herself round with a mental jolt. The mention of DI John Stewart’s name told her that Hillier had been speaking of the others who had worked temporarily in the detective superintendent’s job. He’d have been talking about the in-house officers, she concluded. Mentioning those who, like her, had auditioned—there was no other word for it—from outside the Met would have been pointless as she was unlikely to run into them in one or another of the endless, lino-floored corridors in Tower Block or Victoria Block. DI John Stewart, on the other hand, would be part of her team. His feathers were going to need smoothing out. This wasn’t one of her strengths, but she would do what she could.

“I understand,” she told Hillier. “I’ll tread carefully with him. I’ll tread carefully with them all.”

“Very good. How are you settling in? How are the boys? Twins, aren’t they?”

She made her lips curve as one would normally do when “the children” were mentioned, and she forced herself to think about them exactly like that, in inverted commas. The inverted commas kept them at a distance from her emotions, which was where she needed them. She said, “We’ve decided—their father and I—that they’re better off remaining with him for now, since I’m only here on trial. Bob’s not far from Maidstone, he has a lovely property in the countryside, and as it’s their summer holidays, it seemed wisest to have them live with their father for a while.”

“Not easy for you, I expect,” Hillier noted. “You’ll be missing them.”

“I’ll be busy,” she said. “And you know what boys are like. Eight years old? They need supervising and plenty of it. As both Bob and his wife are at home, they’re in a good position to keep them on the straight and narrow, a far better position than I’ll be in, I daresay. It should be fine.” She made the situation sound ideal: herself hard at work in London, nose to the metaphorical grindstone, while Bob and Sandra breathed copious amounts of fresh air in the countryside, all the time doting on the boys and feeding them home-cooked chicken pies filled with everything organic and served with ice-cold milk. And, truth be told, that wasn’t too far from how it likely would be. Bob, after all, adored his sons and Sandra was perfectly lovely in her own way, if a bit too school-marmish for Isabelle’s taste. She had her own two children, but that hadn’t meant she had no room in her home and her heart for Isabelle’s boys. For Isabelle’s boys were Bob’s boys as well, and he was a good dad and always had been. He kept his eye on the ball, did Robert Ardery. He asked the right questions at just the right time, and he never made a threat that didn’t sound like an inspiration he’d just been struck by.

Hillier seemed to be reading her, or at least attempting to, but Isabelle knew she was more than a match for anyone’s effort to see beyond the role she played. She’d made a virtual art of appearing cool, controlled, and completely competent, and this façade had served her so well for so many years that it was second nature by now to wear her professional persona like chain mail. Such was the result of having ambition in a world dominated by men.

“Yes.” Hillier drew out the word, making it less confirmation than calculation. “You’re right, of course. Good that you have a civilised relationship with the ex, as well. High marks for that. It can’t be easy.”

“We’ve tried to remain friendly throughout the years,” Isabelle told him, again with that curve of her lips. “It seemed best for the boys. Warring parents? That’s never good for anyone, is it.”

“Glad to hear it, glad to hear it.” Hillier looked towards the doorway as if expecting someone to enter. No one did. He seemed ill at ease, and Isabelle didn’t consider this a bad thing. Ill at ease could work to her advantage. It suggested that the AC wasn’t as dominant a male as he thought he was. “I expect,” he said, in the tone of a man concluding their interview, “you’d like to get to know the team. Be introduced formally. Get down to work.”

“I would,” she said. “I’m going to want individual conversations with them.”

“No time like the present,” Hillier said with a smile. “Shall I take you down to them?”

“Brilliant.” She smiled back and held his gaze long enough to see him colour. He was a florid man already, so he coloured easily. She tried to imagine what he looked like in a rage. “If I can just pop into the ladies’, sir … ?”

“Of course,” he said. “Take your time.”

Which, naturally, was the very last thing he actually wanted her to do. She wondered if he did that often, making remarks he didn’t mean. Not that it mattered, as it wasn’t her intention to spend a great deal of time with the man. But it was always helpful to know how people operated.

Hillier’s secretary—a severe-looking woman with five unfortunate facial warts in need of dermatological exploration—directed Isabelle towards the ladies’. Once inside, she checked carefully to ensure that she had the room to herself. She ducked into the stall farthest from the door and there she did her business. But this was merely for effect. Her real purpose lay within her shoulder bag.

She found the airline bottle where she’d earlier stowed it, and she opened it, drinking down the contents in two swift gulps. Vodka. Yes. It had long been just the ticket. She waited a few moments till she felt it take hold.

Then she left the stall and went to the basin, where she fished in her bag for her toothbrush and toothpaste. She brushed thoroughly, her teeth and her tongue.

Finished, she was ready to face the world.

T
HE TEAM OF
detectives she’d be supervising worked in close confines, so Isabelle met them together first. They were wary of her; she was wary of them. This was natural, and she wasn’t bothered by it. Introductions were made by Hillier and he offered them her background chronologically: community liaison officer, burglary, vice, arson investigation, and more recently MCIT. He didn’t add the period of time she’d spent in each of her positions. She was on the fast track, and they would know it by reckoning her age, which was thirty-eight although she liked to think she looked younger, the result of wisely having stayed away from cigarettes and out of the sun for most of her life.

The only one of them who looked impressed with her background was the departmental secretary, a princess-in-waiting type called Dorothea Harriman. Isabelle wondered how any young woman could look so put together on what her salary had to be. She reckoned Dorothea found her clothing in charity shops of the type where one could dig out timeless treasures if one was persistent, had an eye for quality, and looked hard enough.

She told the team she would like to have a word with each of them. In her office, she said. Today. She would want to know what each of them was working on at present, she added, so do bring your notes.

It went much as she expected. DI Philip Hale was cooperative and professional, possessing a wait-and-see attitude that Isabelle could not fault, his notes at the ready, currently at work with the CPS preparing a case involving the serial killing of young adolescent boys. She’d have no trouble with him. He hadn’t applied for the superintendent’s position and he seemed quite happy with his place on the team.

DI John Stewart was another matter. He was a nervy man if his bitten fingernails were anything to go by, and his focus on her breasts seemed to indicate a form of misogyny that she particularly detested. But she could handle him. He called her
ma’am
. She said
guv
would do. He let a marked moment pass before he made the switch. She said, I don’t plan to have difficulty with you, John. Do you plan to have difficulty with me? He said, No, not at all, guv. But she knew he didn’t mean it.

She met DS Winston Nkata next. He was a curiosity to her. Very tall, very black, scarred on the face from an adolescent street fight, he was all West Indies via South London. Tough exterior but something about the eyes suggested that inside the man a soft heart waited to be touched. She didn’t ask him his age, but she put him somewhere in his late twenties. He was one of two children who were yin and yang: His older brother was in prison for murder. This fact would, she decided, make the DS a motivated cop with something to prove. She liked that.

This was not the case for DS Barbara Havers, the last of the team. Havers slouched into the office—there could, Isabelle decided, be absolutely no other word for how the woman presented herself—reeking of cigarette smoke and carrying a chip on her shoulder the size of a steamer trunk. Isabelle knew that Havers had been DI Lynley’s partner for several years preceding the death of Lynley’s wife. She’d met the sergeant before, and she wondered if Havers remembered.

She did. “The Fleming murder,” were Havers’s first words to her when they were alone. “Out in Kent. You did the arson investigation on it.”

“Good memory, Sergeant,” Isabelle said to her. “May I ask what happened to your teeth? I don’t recall them like this.”

Havers shrugged. She said, “C’n I sit or what?” and Isabelle said, “Please.” She’d been conducting these interviews in AC Hillier mode—although she was seated, not standing, behind her desk—but in this case she rose and moved over to a small conference table where she indicated DS Havers should join her. She didn’t want to bond with the sergeant, but she knew the importance of having with her a relationship rather different from the relationship she had with the others. This had more to do with the sergeant’s partnership with Lynley than with the fact that they were both women.

“Your teeth?” Isabelle said again.

“Got in something of a conflict,” Havers told her.

“Really? You don’t look the sort to brawl,” Isabelle noted and while this was true, it was also true that Havers looked
exactly
the sort to defend herself if push came to shove, which was apparently how her front teeth had come to be in the condition they were in, which was badly broken.

“Bloke didn’t like the idea of my spoiling his kidnap of a kid,” Havers said. “We got into it, him and me. A bit of this with the fists, a bit of that with the feet, and my face hit the floor. It was stone.”

“This happened in the past year? While you were at work? Why’ve you not had them fixed? There haven’t been problems about the Met paying, have there?”

“I’ve been thinking they give my face character.”

“Ah. By which I take it you’re opposed to modern dentistry? Or are you afraid of dentists, Sergeant?”

Havers shook her head. “I’m afraid of turning myself into a beauty as I don’t much like the idea of fighting off hordes of admirers. ’Sides, world’s full of people with perfect teeth. I like to be different.”

“Do you indeed?” Isabelle decided to be rather more direct with Havers. “That must explain your clothing, then. Has no one ever remarked upon it, Sergeant?”

Havers adjusted her position in her seat. She crossed a leg over her knee, showing—God help us, Isabelle thought—a red high-top trainer and an inch of purple sock. Despite the hideous heat of summer, she’d combined this fashionable use of colour with olive corduroy trousers and a brown pullover. This last was decorated with specks of lint. She looked like someone involved in an undercover investigation into the horrors of life as a refugee. “Due respect, guv,” Havers said although her tone suggested there was something of grievance attached to her words, “’sides the fact that regulations don’t allow you to give me aggro about the clothes, I don’t think my appearance has much to do with how I—”