He said, “My God.”

Havers said, “I’ve been called worse.” She scratched her mop of badly cut and currently uncombed hair. “Are you always so chipper before breakfast, sir? Because if you are, this is the last time I’m sharing a bathroom with you.”

He could, for the moment, do nothing but stare, so unprepared was he for the sight of his former partner. She was wearing floppy sky blue socks in lieu of slippers and she had on pink flannel pyjamas printed everywhere with the image of vinyl records, musical notes, and the phrase “Love like yours is sure to come my way.” She seemed to realise he was examining her getup because she said, “Oh. A gift from Winston,” in apparent reference to it.

“Would that be the socks or the rest of it?”

“The rest. He saw this in a catalogue. He said he couldn’t resist.”

“I’ll need to speak to Sergeant Nkata about his impulse control.”

She chuckled. “I knew you’d love them if you ever saw them.”

“Havers, the word love does not do justice to my feelings.”

She nodded at the bathroom. “You finished your morning whatevers in there?”

He stepped aside. “Have at it.”

She passed him but paused before closing the door. “Tea?” she said. “Coffee?”

“Come to my room.”

He was ready for her when she arrived, dressed for her day. He himself was clothed and he’d made tea-he wasn’t desperate enough to face the provided coffee crystals-when she knocked on his door and said unnecessarily, “It’s me.”

He opened it to her. She looked round and said, “You demanded the more elegant accommodation, I see. I’ve got something that used to be the garret. I feel like Cinderella before the glass boot.”

He held up the tin teapot. She nodded and plopped herself onto his bed, which he’d made. She lifted the old chenille counterpane and inspected the job he’d done. “Hospital corners,” she noted. “Very nice, sir. Is that from Eton or somewhere else in your chequered past?”

“My mother,” he said. “Proper bed making and the correct use of table linens were at the heart of her child rearing. Should I add milk and sugar or do you want to do your own honours?”

“You can do it,” she said. “I like the idea of you waiting on me. This is a first, and it may be a last, so I think I’ll enjoy it.”

He handed her the doctored tea, poured his own, and joined her on the bed as there was no chair. He said, “What are you doing here, Havers?”

She gestured at the room with her teacup. “You invited me, didn’t you?”

“You know what I mean.”

She took a sip of tea. “You wanted information about Daidre Trahair.”

“Which you could easily have provided me on the phone.” He thought about this and recalled their conversation. “You were in your car when I phoned you on your mobile. Were you on your way down here?”

“I was.”

“Barbara…” He spoke in a fashion to warn her off: Stay out of my life.

She said, “Don’t flatter yourself, Superintendent.”

“Tommy. Or Thomas. Or whatever. But not superintendent.”

“‘Tommy’? ‘Thomas’? Not bloody likely. Are we fine with ‘sir’?” And when he shrugged, “Good. DI Hannaford has no MCIT blokes working the case for her. When she phoned the Met for your identification, she explained the situation. I got sent as a loan.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Lynley looked at her evenly. Her face was a blank, an admirable poker face that might have duped someone who knew her less well than he did. “Am I actually meant to believe that, Barbara?”

“Sir, there’s nothing else to believe.”

They engaged in a stare down. But ultimately there was nothing to be gained. She’d worked with him too long to be intimidated by any implications that might hang upon silence. She said, “By the way, no one ever put your resignation through channels. As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re on compassionate leave. Indefinitely, if that’s what it takes.” She sipped her tea again. “Is that what it takes?”

Lynley looked away from her. Outside, a grey day was framed by the window, and a sprig of the ivy that climbed on this side of the building was blowing against the glass. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m finished with it, Barbara.”

“They’ve posted the job. Not your old one but the one you were in when…You know. Webberly’s job: the detective superintendent’s position. John Stewart’s applying. Others as well. Some from outside and some from within. Stewart’s obviously got the inside track on it, and between you and me, that would be a disaster for everyone if he gets it.”

“It could be worse.”

“No, it couldn’t.” She put her hand on his arm. So rare a gesture it was that he had to look at her. “Come back, sir.”

“I don’t think I can.” He rose then, to distance himself not from her but from the idea of returning to New Scotland Yard. He said, “But why here, in the middle of nowhere? You could be staying in town, which makes far more sense if you’re working with Bea Hannaford.”

“I could ask the same of you, sir.”

“I was brought here the first night. It seemed easiest to stay. It was the closest place.”

“To what?”

“To where the body was found. And why are we turning this into an examination of me? What’s going on?”

“I’ve told you.”

“Not everything.” He studied her evenly. If she’d come to keep a watch over him, which was likely the case, Havers being Havers, there could be only one reason. “What did you learn about Daidre Trahair?” he asked her.

She nodded. “You see? You haven’t lost your touch.” She downed the rest of her tea and held out her cup. He poured her another and put in a packet of sugar and two of the thimbles of milk. She said nothing else until he’d handed the cup back and she’d taken a swig. “A family called Trahair are longtime residents of Falmouth, so that part of her story’s on the up-and-up. The dad sells tyres; he’s got his own company. The mum does mortgages for homes. No primary school records for a kid called Daidre, though. You were right about that. In some cases that might suggest she was sent off to school in the old way: booted out the door when she was five or whatever, home for half terms and the holidays but otherwise unseen and unheard till emerging from the great machine of proper”-she rolled the r to indicate her scorn-“education at eighteen or whatever.”

“Spare me the social commentary,” Lynley said.

“I speak purely from jealous rage, of course,” Havers said. “Nothing I would have liked better than to be packed off to boarding school directly after I learned to blow my nose.”

“Havers…”

“You haven’t lost that tone of martyred patience,” she noted. “C’n I smoke in here, by the way?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Just enquiring, sir.” She curved her palm around her teacup. “So while I reckon she could have gone off to primary school, it doesn’t seem likely to me because there she is in the local secondary comprehensive from the time she’s thirteen. Playing field hockey. Excelling at fencing. Singing in the school choir. Mezzo-soprano if that’s of interest.”

“And you’re rejecting the idea of earlier boarding school for what reason?”

“First of all, because it doesn’t make sense. I can see it done the reverse way: primary day school and then boarding school when she was twelve or thirteen. But boarding out through primary school and then returning home for secondary? This is a middle-class family. What middle-class family sends its kids off at that age and then has them back home when they’re thirteen?”

“It’s been known to happen. What’s the second of all?”

“The second of…? Oh. Second of all, there’s no record of her birth. Not a cracker, not a hint. Not in Falmouth, that is.”

Lynley considered the implications of this. He said, “She told me she was born at home.”

“The birth would still have to be registered within forty-two days. And if she was born at home, the midwife would have been there, yes?”