As she finally drew breath, he said, “Havers, what’s this got to do with-”

“He was in London. The day she died. Jossie. And Whiting’s known it all along.”

That got his attention. “Who’s given you that information?”

“Hastings. The brother.” And then she banged on about Gina Dickens and someone called Meredith Powell, as well as tickets, receipts, Gordon Jossie’s habit of wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap and wasn’t that exactly how Yukio Matsumoto had described the man he’d seen in the cemetery and please, please, get down to Victoria Street to that cash-point because whatever Norman Whatsisname knows he isn’t spilling it on the phone and they need to know what it is. She herself was going to beard Whiting in his den or whatever the proper term was but before she could do that she needed to know what Norman had to say, so they were back to Norman and Lynley had to get to Victoria Street and where was he, anyway?

She took another breath, which gave Lynley the chance to tell her he was in Ennismore Gardens Mews, behind Brompton Oratory and Holy Trinity Church. He was working on the Frazer Chaplin end of things, and he reckoned-

“Sod Frazer Chaplin for a lark,” was her reply. “This is hot, this is Whiting, and this is the trail. For God’s sake, Inspector, I need you to do this.”

“What about Winston? Where is he?”

“It has to be you. Look, Winnie’s doing those CCTV films, isn’t he? The Stoke Newington films? And anyway, if Norman Whoever…God, why can’t I remember his bloody name…He’s a public school bloke. He wears pink shirts. He’s got that voice. He says every sentence so far back in his throat that you practically need to perform a tonsillectomy just to excavate the words. If Winnie shows up at the cash-point machine and starts talking to him…Winnie of all people…Winnie…Sir, think it through.”

“All right,” Lynley said. “Havers, all right.”

“Thank you, thank you,” she intoned. “This thing’s all a tangle, but I think we’re getting it sorted.”

He wasn’t so sure. For every time he made that his consideration, further facts seemed only to complicate matters.

He made good time over to Victoria Street by carving a route that took him ultimately through Belgrave Square. He parked in the underground car park at the Met and walked back over to Victoria Street, where he found the Barclay’s cash-point machine closest to Broadway, next to a Ryman’s stationery shop.

Havers’ snout was a case of by-his-clothes-shalt-thee-know-him. His shirt wasn’t pink. It was bright fuchsia, and his necktie featured ducklings. He clearly wasn’t cut out for a life of intrigue since he was pacing the pavement and pausing to peer into the window of Ryman’s as if studying which kind of filing tray he wished to purchase.

Lynley felt inordinately foolish, but he approached the man and said, “Norman?” When the other started, he said to him affably, “Barbara Havers thought I might interest you in a gin and tonic.”

Norman cast a look left and right. He said, “Christ, for a moment I thought you were one of them.”

“One of whom?”

“Look. We can’t talk here.” He looked at his watch, one of those multidial affairs useful for diving and, one presumed, going to the moon as well. He said as he did so, “Act like you’re asking me the time please. Reset your own watch or something…Christ, you carry a pocket watch? I’ve not seen one of those in-”

“Family heirloom.” Lynley looked at the time as Norman made much of showing him the face of his own piece. Lynley wasn’t sure which one of the dials he was meant to look at but he nodded cooperatively.

“We can’t talk here,” Norman said when they’d completed this part of the charade.

“Whyever-”

“CCTV,” Norman murmured. “We’ve got to go somewhere else. They’re going to pick us up on film and I’m dead if they do.”

This seemed wildly dramatic until Lynley realised Norman was talking about losing his job and not his life. He said, “I think that’s a bit of a problem, don’t you? There’re cameras everywhere.”

“Look, go up to the cash machine. Get some money. I’m going into Ryman’s to make a purchase. You do the same.”

“Norman, Ryman’s will likely have a camera.”

“Just bloody do it,” Norman said through his teeth.

It came to Lynley that the man was honestly afraid, not just playing at spies and spy masters. So he fished out his bank card and went to the cash-point machine cooperatively. He withdrew some money, ducked into Ryman’s, and found Norman looking at a display of sticky pads. He didn’t join him there, assuming that proximity would unnerve the man. Instead, he went to the greeting cards and studied them, picking up one then another then a third and fourth, a man intent upon finding something appropriate. When he saw Norman at last approach the till, he chose a card at random and did likewise. It was there they had their extremely brief tête-à-tête, spoken in a fashion that Norman seemed intent upon making look as casual as possible, if such was even conceivable, considering he spoke out of the side of his mouth.

He said, “There’s something of a scrum over there.”

“At the Home Office? What’s going on?”

“It’s definitely to do with Hampshire,” he said. “It’s something big, something serious, and they’re moving dead fast to deal with it before word gets out.”

ISABELLE ARDERY HAD spent a good number of years putting the details of her life into separate compartments. Thus, she had no difficulty doing just that on the day following Thomas Lynley’s call upon her. There was DI Lynley on her team, and there was Thomas Lynley in her bed. She had no intention of confusing the two. Besides, she was not stupid enough to consider their encounter as anything other than sex, mutually satisfying and potentially duplicable. Beyond that, her daytime dilemma at the Met did not allow for even a moment of recollection about anything, and especially about her previous night with Lynley. For this was Day One in the End of Days scenario that Assistant Commissioner Hillier had spelled out for her, and if she was going to be shown the door at New Scotland Yard, then it was her intention to go out of that door with a case sewn up behind her.

This was her thinking when Lynley arrived in her office. She felt a disagreeable jump of her heart at the sight of him, so she said briskly, “What is it, Thomas?” and she rose from her desk, brushed past him, and called into the corridor, “Dorothea? What’re we hearing from the Stoke Newington door-to-door? And where’s Winston got to with that CCTV footage?”

She got no reply and shouted, “Dorothea! Where the hell…!” and then said, “Damn it,” and returned to her desk where again she said, “What is it, Thomas?” but this time remained standing.

He started to close the door. She said, “Leave it open, please.”

He turned. “This isn’t personal,” he said. Nonetheless, he left the door as it was.

She felt herself flush. “All right. Go on. What’s happened?”

It was a mix of information from which she ultimately sorted that DS Havers-who seemed to have a bloody-minded bent for doing whatever the hell she felt like doing when it came to a murder investigation-had unearthed someone within the Home Office to do some digging on the topic of a policeman in Hampshire. He’d not got far-this snout of Havers’-when he was called into the office of a significantly placed higher-up civil servant whose proximity to the Home Secretary was rather more than disturbing. Why was Zachary Whiting on the mind of a Home Office underling? was the enquiry that was made of Norman.

“Norman did some fancy footwork to save his own skin,” Lynley said. “But he’s managed to come up with something we might find useful.”

“Which is what?”

“Whiting’s apparently been given the charge of protecting someone extremely important to the Home Office.”