Lynley thought he knew. It was a logical leap that Havers was making. It was just the wrong one.
Outside, she was striding towards her car, on the far side of the car park in the direction of the petrol pumps. He was parked nearer the Little Chef than she, so he got into the Healey Elliott and drove after her. He came up alongside her. She was smoking furiously, muttering to herself. She tossed a glance his way and increased her speed.
He said, “Havers, get in.”
“I’d rather walk.”
“Don’t be stupid. Get in. That’s an order.”
“I don’t obey orders.”
“You will now, Sergeant.” And then, seeing her face and reading the pain that he knew was at the heart of why she was acting as she was, he said, “Barbara, please get into the car.”
She stared at him. He stared at her. Finally, she tossed away her cigarette and climbed into the car. He said nothing until he’d driven across the car park to the only spot of shade available, provided by an enormous lorry the driver of which was likely inside the Little Chef as they themselves had just been.
Havers groused, “This car must’ve cost you a mint. Why’s it not got air-conditioning, for God’s bloody sake?”
“It was built in 1948, Barbara.”
“Stupid excuse.” She didn’t look at him, nor did she look straight ahead of them into the shrubbery beyond which the M3 offered a broken view of traffic whizzing towards the south. Instead, she looked out of her side window, offering him the sight of the back of her head.
“You’ve got to stop cutting your own hair,” he told her.
“Shut up,” she said quietly. “You sound like her.”
A moment passed. He raised his head and looked at the pristine ceiling of the car. He thought about praying for guidance, but he didn’t really need it. He knew what had to be said between them. Yet it constituted the Great Unmentionable that had been governing his life for months. He didn’t want to mention it. He just wanted to get on.
He said quietly, “She was the light, Barbara. That was the most extraordinary thing about her. She had this…this ability that was simply at the core of who she was. It wasn’t that she made light of things-situations, people, you know what I mean-but that she was able to bring light with her, to uplift merely by virtue of who she was. I saw her do this time and again, with Simon, with her sisters, with her parents, and then of course with me.”
Havers cleared her throat. Still she did not look at him.
He said, “Barbara, do you believe-do you honestly believe-that I could walk away from that so easily? That, so desperate to get out of the wilderness, because I admit I am desperate to get out of it, I would take any route that appeared before me? Do you believe that?”
She didn’t reply. But her head lowered. He heard a small sound emanate from her, and he knew what it meant. God, how he knew.
He said, “Let it go, Barbara. Stop worrying so. Learn to trust me, because if you don’t, how will I learn to trust myself?”
She began to weep in earnest, then, and Lynley knew what her show of emotion was costing her. He said nothing else, for there was, indeed, nothing more to say.
Moments passed before she turned to him, and then it was to say, “I don’t have a damn tissue.” She began to scramble round her seat, as if looking for something. He fished out his handkerchief and handed it over. She used it, saying, “Ta. Trust you to have the linen ready.”
“The curse of my upbringing,” he told her. “It’s even ironed.”
“I noticed,” she said. “I expect you didn’t iron it, though.”
“God, no.”
“Figures. You don’t even know how.”
“Well, I admit that ironing isn’t among my talents. But I expect if I knew where the iron was kept in my house-which, thank God, I don’t-I could put it to use. On something simple like a handkerchief, mind you. Anything more complicated would completely defeat me.”
She chuckled wearily. She leaned back in the seat and shook her head. Then she seemed to examine the car itself. The Healey Elliott was a saloon with room for four, and she squirmed round for a look in the back. She noted, “This’s the first time I’ve been in your new motor.”
“The first of many, I hope, as long as you don’t smoke.”
“Wouldn’t dare. But I can’t promise I won’t eat. Nice bit of fish and chips to make the insides smell sweet. You know what I mean. What’s this then? Up for some light reading?” She fished something from the backseat and brought it to the front. It was, he saw, the copy of Hello! he’d had from Deborah St. James. Havers looked from it to him and cocked her head. “Checking up on the social scene, are you? Not what I’d expect you to do ’less you take this with you when you go for your manicures. You know. Something to read while the nails are being buffed?”
“It’s Deborah’s,” he said. “I wanted to have a look at the photos from the Portrait Gallery opening.”
“And?”
“Lots of people holding champagne glasses and looking well turned out. That’s about it.”
“Ah. Not my crowd, then?” Havers opened the magazine and began flipping through it. She found the appropriate set of pages, where the photos of the portrait competition’s opening show were spread out. “Right,” she said, “not a hoisted pint anywhere, more’s the pity. ’Cause a decent ale’s better than some thimbleful of champagne any day of the-” Her hand tightened on the magazine. She said, “Holy hell,” and she turned to him.
“What is it?” Lynley asked.
“Frazer Chaplin was there,” Havers said, “and in the picture-”
“Was he?” Then Lynley remembered how in person Frazer had seemed so familiar to him. That was it, then. He’d obviously seen the Irishman in one of the pictures of the Gallery opening, forgetting about it later. Lynley glanced at the magazine and saw that Havers was indeed indicating a photo of Frazer. He’d been the swarthy man in the picture of Sidney St. James. “More evidence he was involved with Jemima,” Lynley said, “no matter that he’s posing with Sidney.”
“No, no,” Havers said. “Frazer’s not the point. It’s her. Her.”
“Sidney?”
“Not Sidney. Her.” Havers pointed to the rest of the crowd and specifically to another woman, this one young, blond, and very attractive. Some socialite, he reckoned, the wife or daughter of a gallery sponsor, likely. But Havers disabused him of that notion when next she spoke. “It’s Gina Dickens, Inspector,” she said, and she added unnecessarily, because at that point he knew quite well who Gina Dickens was, “She lives in Hampshire, with Gordon Jossie.”
Much has been made not only of the British criminal justice system but also of the trial that followed the boys’ confessions. Words such as barbaric, Byzantine, archaic, and inhuman have been used, and commentators around the globe have taken strong positions on both sides of the matter, some of them passionately arguing that inhumanity, no matter its source, should be met with like inhumanity (invoking Hammurabi), and others of them just as passionately contending that nothing is served by the public pillorying of children and, indeed, further damage is done to them. What remains is this singular fact: Governed by a law that makes children responsible for their behaviour at the age of ten in the case of capital crimes, Michael Spargo, Reggie Arnold, and Ian Barker had to be tried as adults. Thus, they faced trial by judge and jury.
What is also worthy of note is that, when a serious crime has been committed by children, they are forbidden by law to have any therapeutic access to psychiatrists or psychologists prior to trial. While such professionals are tangentially involved in the developing proceedings against children, their examination of the accused is strictly limited to determining two things: whether the child in question was-at the time of the crime-capable of distinguishing between right and wrong and whether such child was responsible for his acts.