Isabelle? she thought. Isabelle?

“When was this?” she finally asked him.

“At the briefing yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I’m afraid it was one of John’s typical-”

“I don’t mean her face-off with Stewart,” Barbara said. “I mean when did she tell you? Why did she tell you?”

“I did say yesterday evening.”

“Where?”

“Barbara, what does this have to do with anything? And, by the way, I’m telling you in confidence. I probably shouldn’t be telling you at all. I hope you can keep the information to yourself.”

She felt chilled at this, and she didn’t particularly want to consider what lay behind his remark. She said politely, “So why are you telling me, sir?”

“To bring you into the picture. So you understand the need…the need to…well, I suppose the best way to put it is the need to…to lasso information and bring it back as quickly as possible.”

At this, Barbara was utterly gobsmacked. She had no words with which to frame a reply. Hearing Lynley stumble round in such a manner…Lynley, of all people…Lynley who’d learned what he knew on the previous evening from Isabelle…Barbara didn’t want to venture another inch closer to the subject that she was inferring from his remarks, his tone, and his awkward language. She also didn’t want to think about why she didn’t want to venture into that subject.

She said briskly, “Well. Right. C’n you get those e-fits down to me? C’n you ask Dee Harriman to send them by fax? I expect the hotel has a machine and you c’n ask Dee to ring them for the number. Forest Heath Hotel. They’ve probably got a computer as well if e-mail’s better. D’you think there’s any chance that one of the e-fits could be a woman? Disguised as a man?”

Lynley seemed relieved at this change in direction. He matched her briskness when he said, “Truth to tell, I think anything’s possible. We’re relying on descriptions supplied by a man who’s drawn seven-foot-tall angels on the walls of his bed-sitting room.”

“Bloody hell,” Barbara murmured.

“Quite.”

She brought him up to date on Gordon Jossie, his crooks, and whether they matched up with the sort of crook that was used by the killer, his reaction to the photo of Gina Dickens, and the phone call she’d had from that same woman. She told him she was heading to Burley for another conversation with Rob Hastings as well. Crooks and blacksmithing would be among her topics, she said. What, she asked Lynley, was on for him?

Frazer Chaplin, he told her, and an earnest attempt at alibi breaking.

Didn’t he think that was akin to spitting in the wind? she enquired.

When in doubt, go back to the beginning, he replied. He said something about ending up in the beginning at the end of a journey and knowing the place for the first time, but she reckoned this was some sort of mad quote come into his mind so she said, “Yes. Well. Right. Whatever,” and rang off to go about her business. Going about her business, she decided, was the best balm for the disturbance she was feeling towards whatever business was going on with Lynley.

She found Rob Hastings at home. He was doing some kind of major cleaning of his Land Rover, for he seemed to have it stripped of everything it could be stripped of without removing its engine, tyres, steering wheel, and seats. What had been inside it now lay on the ground round the vehicle and he was sorting through it. He didn’t exactly keep a pin-neat Land Rover. From the amount of clobber, it looked to Barbara as if the bloke used it as a mobile home.

“Late spring cleaning?” she asked him.

“Something like.” His Weimaraner had come loping round the side of the house at the sound of Barbara’s Mini, and he told the dog to sit, which it did at once, although it panted and looked pleased to have a visitor on the property.

Barbara asked Hastings if he would show her his blacksmithing equipment, and logically Hastings asked her why. She thought about deflecting his question, but she decided his reaction to the truth might be more revealing. She said that the weapon used upon his sister had likely been handmade by a blacksmith, although she didn’t tell him what the weapon was.

At this, he didn’t move. His gaze fixed on her. He said, “D’you think I killed my own sister now?”

“We’re looking for someone with access to blacksmith’s equipment or to tools made by blacksmith’s equipment,” Barbara told him. “Everyone who fits the bill and knew Jemima is going to be examined. I can’t think you’d want it any other way.”

Hastings dropped his gaze. He admitted that he wouldn’t.

She could see, however, when he showed her the equipment, that it hadn’t been used in years. She knew little enough about the workings of a smithy, but everything he owned that was related to his training and time as a blacksmith suggested that neither he nor anyone else had interfered with so much as its placement since it had first been deposited in the outbuilding where he kept it now. Everything was shoved and piled together with no room to move among it. A heavy bench held most of the equipment: tongs, preens, chisels, forks, and punches. Wrought-iron bars lay disused to one side of this in a hotchpotch pile, and two anvils were upended against the front of the bench as well. There were several old tubs, three vices, and what looked like a grinder. There was, tellingly however, no forge. Even had this last not been the case, the unmolested dust upon everything bore not a mark of having been disturbed in ages. Barbara saw all this at once but still took her time with an examination of everything there. She finally nodded and thanked the agister. She said, “I’m sorry. It had to be done.”

“What was used to kill her, then?” Hastings sounded numb.

Barbara said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Hastings, but I can’t-”

“It was a thatching tool, wasn’t it?” he said. “It has to be. It was a thatching tool.”

“Why?”

“Because of him.” Hastings looked towards the broad doorway through which they’d entered the old building in which his equipment was stored. His face hardened.

Barbara said, “Mr. Hastings, Gordon Jossie’s not the only thatcher we’ve spoken to in the investigation. He has thatching equipment, indeed. No doubt. But so does a bloke called Ringo Heath.”

Hastings thought about this. “Heath trained Jossie.”

“Yes. We’ve spoken to him. My point is that every connection we make has to be tracked down and ticked off the list. Jossie’s not the only-”

“What about Whiting?” he asked. “What about that connection?”

“Between him and Jossie? We know there’s something, but that’s all at this point. We’re still working on it.”

“As well you might. It’s taken Whiting to Jossie’s holding to have more than one heart-to-heart with the bloke.” Hastings told Barbara about Jemima’s old friend and schoolmate Meredith Powell, about what Meredith Powell had revealed to him about Whiting’s trips to see Jossie. She had the information from Gina Dickens, he said, and he ended with, “And Jossie was in London on the day Jemima died. Or isn’t that one of the connections you’ve made? Gina Dickens found the rail tickets. She got her hands on the hotel receipt.”

Barbara felt her eyes widen, and her breath hissed in. “How long have you known this? You had my card. Why didn’t you ring me in London, Mr. Hastings? Or DS Nkata. You had his card as well. Either one of us-”

“Because Whiting said it was all in hand. He told Meredith the information had been sent up to London. To you lot. To New Scotland Yard.”

A DIRTY COP. She wasn’t surprised. Barbara had known from the first that something was off with Zachary Whiting, right from the moment he’d looked at those forged letters in praise of Gordon Jossie’s performance as a student at Winchester Technical College II. He’d slipped up there, with his remark about the apprenticeship, and now she and the good chief superintendent were going to have a little chat about it.