Gordon walked towards the end of the driveway, so when Gina drove in, he was in the vicinity of the front garden. At heart, he knew that Cliff was right. She was the kind of woman blokes lined up to have the slightest chance of winning over, and he was a fool if he didn’t try to get her back.

She braked when she saw him. The car roof was down, and her hair was windblown from the drive. He wanted to touch it because he knew how it would feel, so soft against his hands.

He approached the car. “Can we talk?”

She was wearing her sunglasses against the brightness of another fine summer day, but she shoved them to the top of her head. Her eyes, he saw, were red rimmed. He was the one who’d brought this on, her crying. It was another burden, yet another failure to be the man he wanted to be.

“Please. Can we talk?” he repeated.

She looked at him warily. She pressed her lips together, and he could see her bite down on them. Not as if she wanted to keep herself from speaking but as if she feared what might happen if she did speak. He reached for the handle of the door, and she flinched slightly.

He said, “Oh, Gina.” He took a step back, in order to allow her to decide. When she opened the door, he felt he could breathe again. He said, “C’n we…? Let’s sit over here.”

“Over here” was the garden she’d made so lovely for them, with the table and chairs, the torches and the candles. “Over here” was where they’d had their suppers in the fine weather of the summer amid the flowers she’d planted and painstakingly watered. He walked to the table and waited for her. He watched her but said nothing. She had to make the decision on her own. He prayed she’d make the one that would give them a future.

She got out of the car. She glanced at his pickup, at the reeds he was loading into it, at the paddock beyond it. He saw her draw her eyebrows together. She said, “What’s happened to the horses?”

He said, “They’re gone.”

When she looked at him, her expression told him she thought he’d done this for her, because she was afraid of the animals. Part of him wanted to tell her the truth: that Rob Hastings had taken them because Gordon hadn’t the need-let alone the right-to hang on to them. But the other part of him saw how he could use the moment to win her and he wanted to win her. So he let her believe whatever she wanted to believe about the ponies’ removal.

She came to join him in the garden. They were separated from the lane by the hedge. They were also sequestered from Cliff Coward’s curious eyes by the cottage that stood between the front garden and the barn. They could speak here and not be heard or seen. This went some distance towards making Gordon easier although it seemed to have the opposite effect on Gina, who looked round, shivered as if with cold, and clasped her arms to her body.

“What’ve you done to yourself?” he asked her. For he saw deep bruises upon her arms, ugly marks that made him move towards her. “Gina, what’s happened?”

She looked down at her arms as if she’d forgotten. She said dully, “I hit myself.”

“What did you say?”

She said, “Have you never wanted to hurt yourself because nothing you do ever seems to come out right?”

“What? How did you-?”

“I pounded,” she said. “When it wasn’t enough, I used…” She’d not been looking at him, but now she did, and he saw her eyes were full.

“You used something to hurt yourself with? Gina…” He took a step towards her. She backed away. He felt struck. He said, “Why did you do this?”

A tear spilled over. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. “I’m so ashamed,” she said. “I did it.”

For a horrible moment he thought she meant that she’d killed Jemima, but she clarified with, “I took those tickets, that hotel receipt. I found them and I took them and I was the one who gave them to…I’m so sorry.”

She began to weep in earnest then, and he went to her. He drew her into his arms and she allowed this and because she allowed it, he felt his heart open to her as it had not ever opened to anyone, even to Jemima.

He said, “I shouldn’t have lied to you. I shouldn’t have said I was going to Holland. I should have told you from the first that I was seeing Jemima, but I thought I couldn’t.”

“Why?” She clenched her fist against his chest. “What did you think? Why don’t you trust me?”

“Everything I told you about seeing Jemima was true. I swear to God. I saw her, but she was alive when I left her. We didn’t part well, but we didn’t part in anger.”

“Then what?” Gina waited for his answer, and he struggled to give it, with his body, his soul, and his very life hanging in the balance of whatever words he chose. He swallowed and she said, “What on earth are you so afraid of, Gordon?”

He put his hands on either side of her lovely face. He said, “You’re only my second.” He bent to kiss her, and she allowed this. Her mouth opened to him and she accepted his tongue and her hands went to the back of his neck and held him to her so the kiss went on and on and on. He felt enflamed, and he-not she-was the one to break off. He was breathing so hard that he might have been running. “Only Jemima and you. No one else,” he said.

“Oh, Gordon,” she said.

“Come back to me. What you saw in me…that anger…the fear…”

“Shh,” she murmured. She touched his face with those fingers of hers, and where she touched he felt his skin take fire.

“You make it all disappear,” he said. “Come back. Gina. I swear.”

“I will.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

LYNLEY TOOK THE FIRST OF THE PHONE CALLS ON HIS MOBILE as he left Sheldon Pockworth Numismatics, heading for his car on his way to the British Museum. It was from Philip Hale. Initially, his message was positive. Yukio Matsumoto, he reported, was conscious, and Isabelle Ardery was interviewing him in the presence of his brother and sister. However, there was something more, and as Hale was the last of the detectives ever to raise a protest in the midst of an investigation, when he did so, Lynley knew the situation was serious. Ardery was ordering him to stay at the hospital when he could better be used elsewhere, he told Lynley. He’d tried to explain to her that guarding the suspect was something better left to constables so that he could return to more useful occupation, but she wouldn’t hear of it, he said. He was a team player as much as anyone, Tommy, but there came a time when someone had to protest. Obviously, Ardery was a micromanager and she was never going to trust her murder squad to take any initiative. She was-

“Philip,” Lynley cut in, “hang on. I can’t do anything about this. It’s just not on.”

“You can talk to her,” Hale replied. “If you’re showing her the ropes like she claimed you are, then show her that one. Can you see Webberly…or yourself…or even John Stewart, and God knows John’s obsessive enough…? Come on, Tommy.”

“She’s got a lot on her plate.”

“You can’t tell me she won’t listen to you. I’ve seen how she…Oh hell.”

“Seen how she what?”

“She got you to come back to work. We all know that. There’s a reason for it, and likely it’s personal. So use the reason.”

“There’s no personal-”

“Tommy. For God’s sake. Don’t play at being blind when no one else is.”

Lynley didn’t reply for a moment. He considered what had passed between himself and Ardery: how things looked and what they were. He finally said he’d see what he could do although he reckoned it would be little enough.

He phoned the acting superintendent, but Ardery’s mobile went immediately to her voice message. He asked her to ring him, and he kept onward to his car. She wasn’t his responsibility, he thought. If she asked his advice, he could certainly give it. But the point was to let her sink or swim without his interference, no matter what anyone else wanted from him. In what other way could she show that she was up to the job?