Hillier looked at Deacon another time. They communicated wordlessly. It was then that it came to Isabelle that something had already been decided between them, and she was in the room to hear that decision rather than to defend what had happened out in the street. Hillier finally spoke. “The press isn’t stupid, Isabelle. They’re fully capable of working on your time line and using it against you and, by extension, against the Met.”
“Sir?” She frowned.
Deacon leaned towards her. His voice was patient. “We try not to operate like our American cousins, my dear,” he said. “Shoot first and ask questions later? That’s not quite our style.”
At his patronising tone, she felt hairs rise on the back of her neck. “I don’t see how-”
“Then let me clarify,” Deacon interrupted. “When you gave chase, you had no idea the hairs from the body belonged to an Oriental, let alone to Mr. Matsumoto. You had less idea that he was indeed the person who’d been fleeing the crime scene.”
“That turned out to be-”
“Well, yes, it did. And isn’t that a relief. But the problem is the chase itself and your admission of culpability for it.”
“As I said, there were no witnesses to my conversation with-”
“And that’s what you would have me declare to the press? It’s our word against hers and so there? That’s actually the best response you have to offer?”
“Sir.” This she said to Hillier. “I had little choice in the matter at the hospital. We had Yukio Matsumoto conscious. We had his brother and his sister willing to let me talk to him. And we had him talking as well. We ended up with two e-fits, and if I hadn’t made a deal with the solicitor, we’d not have anything more than we had yesterday.”
“Ah, yes, the e-fits.” Deacon was the one to speak, and he opened the manila folder he’d brought with him. Isabelle saw he’d come to Hillier’s office armed: He’d already managed to get copies of the e-fits himself. He looked at them, then at her. He handed the e-fits over to Hillier. Hillier examined them. He took his time. He tapped the tips of his fingers together as he made his assessment of what Isabelle’s deal making with Zaynab Bourne had-and had not-gained them. He was no more a fool than she was herself, than Deacon was, than any of the investigating officers were. He drew his conclusion, but he didn’t speak it. He didn’t need to. Instead, he raised his eyes to her. Blue, soulless. Were they also regretful? And if they were, what did he regret?
“Two days to finish this up,” he told her. “After that, I believe we can assume that your time with us has come to an end.”
LYNLEY FOUND THE house without too much difficulty despite its being south of the river, where a single wrong turn could easily put one on the road to Brighton instead of, perhaps, the road to Kent or the road to Cambridgeshire. But in this case his clue to location was that, according to the A-Z, the street he wanted lay squarely between Wandsworth Prison and Wandsworth Cemetery. Insalubrious, his wife would have called it. Darling, the place has everything to recommend it to the suicidal or the permanently depressed.
Helen wouldn’t have been wrong, especially with regard to the structure in which Isabelle Ardery had established her digs. The house itself wasn’t entirely bad-despite the dying tree in front of it and the concrete pad that surrounded the dying tree and made it a dying tree in the first place-but Isabelle had taken the basement flat and, as the house faced north, the place was like a pit. It put Lynley immediately in mind of Welsh miners, and that was before he’d even got inside.
He saw Isabelle’s car in the street, so he knew she was at home. But she didn’t answer the door when he knocked. So he knocked again and then he banged. He called out her name and when that didn’t do it, he tried the knob and found that she hadn’t locked herself in, a foolhardy move. He entered.
There was little light, as would be the case in any basement flat. Dim illumination came through a crusty kitchen window, but that was supposed to provide daylight for not only the kitchen but the room that opened off it, which appeared to be the sitting room. This was furnished cheaply, with pieces suggesting a single hasty purchase trip to Ikea. Settee, chair, coffee table, floor lamp, a rug intended to hide the occupant’s household sins.
There was nothing personal anywhere, Lynley saw, save for one photograph, which he picked up from a shelf above the electric fire. This was a framed picture of Isabelle kneeling between two boys, her arms round their waists. She was obviously dressed for work, while they wore school uniforms, with their caps set jauntily on their heads, their arms slung round their mother’s shoulders. All three of them were grinning. First day at school? Lynley wondered. The age of the twins seemed right for it.
He put the picture back on the shelf. He looked round and wondered at Isabelle’s choice of habitation. He couldn’t imagine bringing the boys to live in this place, and he wondered why Isabelle had chosen it. Housing was expensive in London, but surely there had to be something better, a place where the boys could, if nothing else, see the sky when they looked out of a window. And where were they meant to sleep? he wondered. He went in search of bedrooms.
There was one, its door standing open. It was situated at the back of the flat, its window looking out on a tiny walled area from which, he supposed, access to the garden might be gained, if there was a garden. The window was closed and it looked as if it hadn’t been washed since the construction of the house itself. But the illumination it provided was enough to highlight a chair, a chest of drawers, and a bed. Upon this bed, Isabelle Ardery sprawled. She was breathing deeply, in the manner of someone who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. He was loath to awaken her, and he considered writing a note and leaving her in peace. But when he walked round the bed to ease open the window in order to give the poor woman a bit of fresh air, he saw the glint of a bottle on the floor, and he understood from this that she was not asleep at all as one would think of sleep. Rather, she was drunk.
“Christ,” he muttered. “Damn fool woman.” He sat on the bed. He heaved her upward.
She groaned. Her eyes fluttered open, then closed.
“Isabelle,” he said. “Isabelle.”
“How’d you ge’ in, eh?” She squinted at him, then closed her eyes again. “Hey, ’m a police officer, you.” Her head flopped against him. “I’ll ring some…someone…I’ll do…’f you don’t leave.”
“Get up,” Lynley told her. “Isabelle, get up. I must speak with you.”
“Done speaking.” Her hand reached up to pat his cheek although she didn’t look at him, so she missed her mark and hit his ear instead. “Finished. He said anyways and…” She seemed to fall back into a stupor.
Lynley blew out a breath. He tried to remember when he’d last seen anyone as drunk as this, but he couldn’t. She needed a purgative of some sort, or a pot of coffee, or something. But first she needed to be conscious enough to swallow, and there seemed to be only one way to manage that.
He pulled her to her feet. It was impossible, he knew, for him to carry her from the room in the fashion of a cinematic hero. She was virtually his own size, she was dead weight, and there was not enough room to manoeuvre her into position anyway, even if he’d been able to load her fireman style over his shoulder. So he had to drag her ingloriously from the bed and just as ingloriously into the bathroom. There he found no tub but only a narrow stall shower, which was fine by him. He propped her into this fully clothed and turned on the water. Despite the age of the house, the water pressure was excellent and the spray hit Isabelle directly in the face.
She shrieked. She flailed her arms. “Wha’ the hell…,” she cried out and then seemed to see him and recognise him for the first time. “My God!” She clutched her arms round her body as if in the expectation that she would find herself naked. Finding herself instead fully clothed-down to her shoes-she said, “Oh nooooo!”