“I’m thinking of giving it up entirely.”

She grinned. “My dining habits inspire you that much, do they, sir?”

“Havers,” he replied solemnly, “believe me, words fail.”

She chuckled and rooted out her cigarettes from her shoulder bag. She would know, of course, that smoking was forbidden inside the eatery. He waited to see if she would light up anyway and wait to be thrown out of the place. She did not. Instead, she set the Players to one side and did some further excavation, which produced a roll of Polos. She dislodged one for herself and offered him another. He demurred.

“Bit more on Whiting,” she told him, with a nod at her mobile on the table between them.

“And?”

“Oh, I definitely think we’re heading where we need to be heading when it comes to that bloke. Just you wait. Heard from Ardery yet? D’we have an e-fit from Matsumoto on either of the blokes he saw in the cemetery?”

“I think that’s in hand, but I haven’t heard.”

“Well, I c’n tell you if one of them’s a ringer for Jossie then the other will be Whiting’s identical twin if it’s not Whiting himself.”

“And what are you basing this inference upon?”

“That was Ringo Heath I was talking to. You know. The bloke-”

“-under whom Gordon Jossie learned his trade. Yes. I know who he is.”

“Right. Well. Seems our Ringo’s had more than one visit from Chief Superintendent Whiting over the years, and the first of them came before Gordon Jossie ever signed on as Ringo’s apprentice.”

Lynley considered what Havers was saying. To him, she was sounding rather more triumphant than the information seemed to call for. He replied with, “And this is important because…?”

“Because of what he wanted to know when he first came to see him: Did Ringo Heath take on apprentices. And, by the way, what was Mr. Heath’s familial situation?”

“Meaning?”

“Did he have a wife, kids, dogs, cats, mynah birds, the whole cricket match. Two weeks later-p’rhaps three or four, but who knows as it was a long time ago, he says-along comes this bloke Gordon Jossie with, it turns out and we bloody well know this, phony letters from Winchester Technical College Two in hand. So Ringo-who’s already told Whiting he takes on apprentices, remember-hires our Gordon and that should’ve been that.”

“I take it that that wasn’t that?”

“Too bloody right. On the odd occasion, Whiting shows up. Sometimes he runs into Ringo at his local, even. Which, you can bet, isn’t Whiting’s local. He makes enquiries, casual ones. They’re in the nature of how’s-the-work-coming-along-my-friend, but Ringo isn’t exactly dead between the ears, is he, so he reckons this has to do with more than just a friendly enquiry from one of the local rozzers as he hoists a pint. ’Sides, who likes to have the local rozzers being friendly? That’d make me dead nervous and I’m one of them.” She drew in a breath. It seemed to Lynley the first time she’d done so. Clearly, she was heading for the peroration of her remarks because she said, “Now. Like I told you, I’ve got a snout in place at the Home Office looking into our Zachary Whiting. Meantime, there’s the thatching crook to be dealt with. None of the principles in London’re going to have got their mitts on a thatching tool-”

“Hang on,” Lynley said. “Why not?”

That stopped her in her tracks. She said, “What d’you mean ‘Why not?’ You can’t expect these things to be growing in flower beds.”

“Havers, this particular tool was old and rusty,” Lynley said. “What does that suggest to you?”

“That it was old and rusty. Left lying about. Taken from an old roof. Discarded in a barn. What else is it supposed to mean?”

“Sold in a London market by a dealer in tools?”

“No bloody way.”

“Why not? You know as well as I do that there are antique markets in every part of town, from formal markets to casual affairs set up on Sunday afternoons. If we come down to it, there’s a market right inside Covent Garden where one of the suspects-you do remember Paolo di Fazio, don’t you?-actually has a stall. The crime was committed in London, not Hampshire, and it stands to reason-”

“No bloody way!” Havers’ voice was loud. Several diners in the Little Chef glanced in their direction. She saw them do so and said, “Sorry,” to Lynley, adding in a hiss, “Sir. Sir. You can’t be telling me that the use of a thatching tool to kill Jemima Hastings was an absolute and completely incredible coincidence. You can’t, you just can’t, be saying that our killer conveniently picked out something to do away with her and that ‘something’ just happened to be one of the very same somethings that Gordon Jossie uses in his work? That horse won’t run once round the track, and you bloody well know it.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“Then what? What?”

He considered this. “Perhaps it was used to frame Gordon Jossie. Can we believe that Jemima never told a soul in London about the man she left behind in Hampshire, about the fact that her former lover was a master thatcher? Once Jossie came looking for her, once he began putting up those cards with his phone number on them round the streets, doesn’t it stand to reason that she would have told someone-Paolo di Fazio, Jayson Druthers, Frazer Chaplin, Abbott Langer, Yolanda, Bella McHaggis…someone-who this person was?”

“What would she have told them?” Havers said. “Okay, my ex-boyfriend, p’rhaps. I’ll give you that. But my ex-boyfriend the thatcher? Why would she tell someone he was a thatcher?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

Havers threw herself back in her seat. She’d been leaning forward, intent upon making her every point, but now she observed him. Round them, the noise of the Little Chef rose and fell. When Havers finally spoke again, Lynley was unprepared for the direction she took.

She said, “It’s Ardery, isn’t it, sir?”

“What’s Ardery? What are you talking about?”

“You know bloody well. You’re talking like this because of her, because she thinks this’s a London situation.”

“It is a London situation. Havers, I hardly need remind you that the crime was committed in London.”

“Right. Excellent. Bloody brilliant of you. You don’t need to remind me. And I don’t think I need to remind you that we aren’t living in the age of transportation by horseback. You seem to think that no one from Hampshire-and for that you c’n read Jossie or Whiting or Hastings or Father Bleeding Christmas-could’ve got up to London in any number of ways, done the deed, and then gone home.”

“Father Christmas hardly comes from Hampshire,” Lynley said dryly.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“Havers, listen. Don’t be-”

“What? Absurd? That’s the word you’d use, isn’t it. But at the end of the day the real issue here is you’re protecting her and we both know it although only one of us knows why you’re doing it.”

“That’s outrageous and untrue,” Lynley replied. “And, might I add, although it’s never stopped you before, now you’re out of order.”

“Don’t you bloody pull rank on me,” Barbara told him. “From the first, she’s wanted to think this is a London case. She had it that way when she decided Matsumoto did it, and she’ll have it that way once she gets an e-fit off him, just you wait for that. Meantime, Hampshire’s crawling with nasties that no one’s beginning to want to look at-”

“For the love of God, Barbara, she sent you to Hampshire.”

“And she ordered me back before I was finished. Webberly would’ve never done that. You wouldn’t have done it. Even that wanker Stewart wouldn’t ever have done it. She’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and-” Havers stopped abruptly. She seemed to have run out of steam. She said, “I need a fag,” and she grabbed up her belongings. She strode towards the doors of the place. He followed her, weaving between the tables of onlookers who’d become understandably curious about what was going on between them.