“I see I have your attention at last,” Lynley told her dryly. “Stay in here till you sober up sufficiently to speak in coherent sentences. I’m going to make some coffee.”
He left her. He went back to the kitchen and began a search. He found a coffee press along with an electric kettle and everything else he needed. He spooned a copious amount of coffee into the press and filled the kettle with water. He plugged in its flex. By the time the coffee was ready and he’d put mugs, milk, and sugar on the table-along with two pieces of toast which he buttered and cut into neat triangles-Isabelle had emerged from the bathroom. Her sodden clothing removed, she was wearing a toweling dressing gown, her feet were bare, and her hair clung wetly to her skull. She stood at the door to the kitchen and observed him.
“My shoes,” she said, “are ruined.”
“Hmm,” he replied. “I daresay they are.”
“My watch wasn’t waterproof either, Thomas.”
“An unfortunate oversight when it was purchased.”
“How did you get in?”
“Your door was unlocked. Also an unfortunate oversight, by the way. Are you sober, Isabelle?”
“More or less.”
“Coffee, then. And toast.” He went to the doorway and took her arm.
She shook him off. “I can bloody walk,” she snapped.
“We’ve made progress, then.”
She moved with some care to the table, where she sat. He poured coffee into both the mugs and pushed hers towards her, along with the toast. She made a moue of distaste at the food and shook her head. He said, “Refusal is not an option. Consider it medicinal.”
“I’ll be sick.” She was speaking with the same kind of care she’d used in moving from the doorway to the table. She was fairly good at feigning sobriety, Lynley saw, but he reckoned she’d had years of practice.
“Have some coffee,” he told her.
She acquiesced and took a few sips. “It wasn’t the entire bottle,” she declared, apropos of what he’d found on the floor of her bedroom. “I just drank what was left of it. That’s hardly a crime. I wasn’t planning on driving anywhere. I wasn’t planning to leave the flat. It’s no one’s business but my own. And I was owed, Thomas. There’s no need to make such an issue out of it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I do see your point. You could be right.”
She eyed him. He kept his face perfectly bland. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Who the hell sent you?”
“No one.”
“Not Hillier wanting to know how I was coping with my defeat, eh?”
“Sir David and I are hardly on those kinds of terms,” Lynley said. “What’s happened?”
She told him about her meeting with the assistant commissioner and the head of the press bureau. She appeared to feel there was no point to obfuscating because she told him everything: from her bargain with Zaynab Bourne in order to maintain access to Yukio Matsumoto, through her acknowledgement that the e-fits they’d had off Matsumoto were completely useless despite what she’d said to the team in the incident room, to Stephenson Deacon’s thinly disguised condescension-“He actually called me my dear, if you can believe it, and what’s worse is that I didn’t smack his smug face”-to the end of it all, which was Hillier’s dismissal of her.
“Two days,” she said. “And then I’m finished.” Her eyes brightened, but she shrugged off the emotion. “Well, John Stewart will be delighted, won’t he?” She gave a weak chuckle. “I forgot him in my office, Thomas. He’s probably still waiting there. D’you think he’ll spend the night? God, I need another drink.” She looked round the kitchen as if preparing to rise and fetch another bottle of vodka. Lynley wondered where she kept her supplies. They needed to be poured down the drain. She’d only get more, but at least her immediate desire for oblivion would be thwarted.
“I’ve made a dog’s dinner of this,” she said. “You wouldn’t have done. Malcolm Webberly wouldn’t have done. Even that blasted Stewart wouldn’t have done.” She crossed her arms on the table and put her head upon them. “I’m completely useless and hopeless and buggered and-”
“Self-pitying as well,” Lynley put in. Her head jerked up and he added pleasantly, “With all due respect, guv.”
“Is that remark part of being his ermine-clad lordship or just part of being a judgmental arse?”
Lynley made a show of thinking about this. “As wearing ermine gives me nettle rash, I suspect the latter.”
“Just as I thought. You’re out of order. If I want to say I’m useless, hopeless, and buggered, I’m damn well going to say it, all right?”
He added coffee to her mug. “Isabelle,” he said, “it’s time to buck up. You’ll get no argument from me that Hillier’s a nightmare to work for or that Deacon would sell his own sister to a New York pimp if it meant keeping the Met looking good. But that’s hardly the point just now. We’ve got a killer needing to be arrested and a case against that killer needing to be built for the CPS. Neither is going to happen if you don’t pull yourself together.”
She picked up her mug of coffee and Lynley wondered briefly if she intended to throw it at him. But rather than that, she drank from it and looked at him over the rim as she did so. She finally seemed to realise that he’d never answered her question about his presence in her flat because she said, “What the hell are you doing here, Thomas? Why did you come? This isn’t exactly your part of town, so I dare say you weren’t just passing by. And how’d you find out where I live, anyway? Did someone tell you…? Did that Judi MacIntosh overhear…? Did she send you? I wouldn’t put it past her to listen in at doorways. There’s something about her-”
“Control your paranoia for five minutes,” Lynley said. “I said from the first that I wanted to talk to you. I waited more than an hour in the incident room. Dee Harriman finally told me you’d gone home. All right?”
“Talk to me about what?” she asked.
“Frazer Chaplin.”
“What about him?”
“I’ve had most of the day to think about this from every angle. I reckon Frazer’s our man.”
SHE WAITED FOR Lynley’s explanation. She drank more coffee and decided to make an attempt with the toast. Her stomach didn’t recoil altogether at the thought of food, so she lifted one of the triangles Lynley had made for her, and she took a bite. She wondered if this was the extent of the inspector’s culinary talents. She thought it likely. He’d used far too much butter.
As he’d done earlier in the incident room, Lynley spoke of a magazine he’d had from Deborah St. James. Frazer Chaplin was in one of the pictures. That could indicate several things, he told her: Paolo di Fazio had been claiming from the first that Jemima had been involved with Frazer, despite the household rules that Mrs. McHaggis had put up for all her tenants to see. Abbott Langer had said much to support this claim, and Yolanda-at a stretch, Lynley admitted-had also indicated an involvement of some kind on Jemima’s part with a dark man.
So we’re going to listen to a psychic now? Isabelle wailed.
Just hang on, Lynley told her. They knew Jemima’s involvement wasn’t with di Fazio since she’d asked Yolanda repeatedly about whether her new lover returned her affections and she’d hardly be asking that about di Fazio after she’d ended her relationship with him. So wasn’t it safe to assume that Frazer Chaplin-his denials to the contrary-was the man they were looking for?
How the hell did that follow? Isabelle demanded. Even if he was involved with Jemima, that hardly meant he’d murdered her.
Wait, Lynley told her. If she would just hear him out please…?
Oh bloody all right. Isabelle was weary. She waved at him to continue.
Let’s assume a few things, he said. First, let’s assume that prior to her death Jemima was indeed involved romantically with Frazer Chaplin.
Fine. Let’s assume, Isabelle said.
Good. Next, let’s assume her possession of a gold coin and a carved carnelian are indications not that she carried a good luck charm or is sentimental about her father’s belongings or anything of the like. Let’s assume from these items that a Roman treasure hoard has been found. Then, let’s assume that she and Gordon Jossie are the individuals who found that hoard and they found it on their holding in Hampshire. Finally, let’s assume that prior to reporting that hoard-which must be done by law-something occurred between Jemima and Jossie that brought their relationship to a precipitate halt. She decamped to London, but all the time she knew there was a treasure to be had and that treasure was worth a fortune.