“Someone in Hampshire?”

“Someone in Hampshire. It’s a high-level protection, the highest level. It’s the sort of level that causes bells and whistles to go off everywhere when anyone gets remotely close to it. The bells and whistles, Norman gave me to understand, go off directly within the Home Secretary’s office.”

Isabelle lowered herself into her chair. She nodded at a second chair, and Lynley sat. “What d’you expect we’re dealing with, Thomas?” She considered the options and saw the likeliest. “Someone who’s infiltrated a terrorist cell?”

“With the informer being protected now? That’s highly possible,” Lynley said.

“But there’re other possibilities as well, aren’t there?”

“Not as many as you’d think. Not at the highest level,” he said. “Not with the Home Secretary involved. There’s terrorism, as you’ve said, with an infiltrator going into hiding prior to a bust. There’s protection for a witness set to testify in a high-profile case coming to court. Like an organised crime case, a sensitive murder case where the repercussions-”

“A Stephen Lawrence thing.”

“Indeed. There’s also protection from hired killers-”

“A fatwa.”

“Or the Russian mafia. Or Albanian gangsters. But whatever it is, it’s something big, it’s something important-”

“And Whiting knows exactly what it is.”

“Right. Because whoever it is the Home Office is protecting, this person’s in Whiting’s patch.”

“In a safe house?”

“Perhaps. But he might also be living under a new identity.”

She looked at him. He looked at her. They were both silent, both evaluating the possibilities and comparing those possibilities to everything else they knew. “Gordon Jossie,” Isabelle said at last. “Protecting Jossie is the only explanation for Whiting’s behaviour. Those forged letters of recommendation from Winchester Technical College? Whiting’s knowledge of an apprenticeship for Jossie when Barbara showed those letters to him…?”

Lynley agreed. “Havers is on the trail of something else, Isabelle. She’s fairly certain Jossie was in London the day that Jemima Hastings was murdered.” He told her more about his phone call with Havers, her report to him on the subject of her conversation with Rob Hastings, Hastings’ revelation about the train tickets and the hotel receipt and Whiting’s assurances given to a woman called Meredith Powell that this information had been sent to London.

She said, “She’s called Meredith Powell? Why’ve we not heard about her before now? And why, frankly, is Sergeant Havers reporting to you and not to me?”

Lynley hesitated. His frank gaze shifted from her to the window behind her. It came to her that he’d occupied this office himself only a short time ago, and she wondered if he wanted it back now that she was done for. He was certainly in line to have it back if he so desired, and he could have little doubt that he was better equipped to have it back as well.

She said sharply, “Thomas, why is Barbara reporting to you and why’ve we not heard about this Meredith Powell before now?”

He returned his gaze to her. He answered only the second of her questions although an answer to the first was implied when he said, “You wanted Havers and Nkata to return to London.” He didn’t say it as an accusation. It was hardly his style to mention what a cock-up she’d made of things. But then, he didn’t need to when everything was so obvious now.

She swung her chair to the window. “God,” she murmured. “I’ve been wrong from the first about everything.”

“I wouldn’t say-”

“Oh, please.” She turned back to him. “Let’s not go easy on me, Thomas.”

“It’s not that. It’s a matter of-”

“Guv?” At the doorway, Philip Hale was standing. He had a slip of paper in his hand. “Found Matt Jones,” he told her. “The Matt Jones.”

“Are we sure of that?”

“Pieces seem to fit.”

“And?”

“Mercenary. Soldier of fortune. Whatever. Works for a group called Hangtower, most of the time in the Middle East.”

“Is anyone telling us what sort of work?”

“Just that it’s top secret.”

“For which we can read assassinations?”

“Probably.”

“Thank you, Philip,” Isabelle said. He nodded and left them, casting a glance at Lynley that needed no translation, so clearly did it telegraph Hale’s own conclusion about how their superintendent had deployed him in the investigation. Had she left him where he’d belonged, they’d have sorted out Matt Jones and everyone else days ago. Instead she’d forced him to remain at St. Thomas’ Hospital. It had been a punitive measure, she thought now, showing the worst kind of leadership. She said, “I can hear Hillier already.”

Lynley said, “Isabelle, don’t worry about Hillier. Nothing that we’ve learned so far today-”

“Why? Are you operating from the ‘what’s done is done’ school of thought with that bit of advice? Or is this a case of things about to get worse?” She eyed him and read on his face that there was something else he hadn’t yet told her.

His mouth curved in a half smile, a fond sort of expression that she didn’t much like.

She said, “What?”

“Last evening,” he began.

“We aren’t going to talk about that,” she said fiercely.

“Last evening,” he repeated firmly, “we’d worked it all out and it came down to Frazer Chaplin, Isabelle. Nothing we’ve learned today changes that. Indeed, what Barbara’s managed to come up with reinforces the direction we’re heading.” And as she was about to question this, he said, “Hear me out. If Whiting’s charge is to protect Gordon Jossie for whatever reason, we know two things that were stymieing us last evening.”

She considered this and saw where he was going. “The Roman treasure,” she said. “If there is one.”

“Let’s assume there is. We were asking ourselves why Jossie wouldn’t have immediately reported what he’d found, as he was meant to do, and now we know. Consider his position: If he digs up a Roman hoard or even part of a Roman hoard and phones the authorities, the next thing is that a pack of journalists show up to talk to him about the whys and the wherefores of what he’s found. This sort of thing can’t be kept under his hat. Not if it’s a hoard remotely like the Mildenhall or the Hoxne treasures. In very short order, the police turn up to cordon off the area, archaeologists arrive, experts from the BM show up. I daresay the BBC show up as well and there he is on the morning news. He’s supposed to be in hiding, and the gaffe is irredeemably blown. Isabelle, it’s the last thing he could have wanted.”

She said thoughtfully, “But Jemima Hastings doesn’t know that, does she, because she doesn’t know he’s being protected.”

“Exactly. He hasn’t told her. He hasn’t seen the need or perhaps he doesn’t want to tell her.”

“Perhaps she was with him when he found the treasure,” Isabelle said. “Or perhaps he brought something into their house because he himself didn’t yet know what he had. He cleans it off. He shows it to her. They return to the spot where he’s found it and-”

“And they find more,” Lynley finished. “Jemima knows it has to be reported. Or at least she assumes they’re supposed to do something besides dig it up, clean it off, and display it on the mantelpiece.”

“And they can hardly spend it, can they?” Isabelle said. “They’d want to do something with it. So she’d need to find out-anyone would-what one actually does with such a find.”

“This,” Lynley noted, “puts Jossie in the worst possible position. He can’t allow his discovery to be publicly known, so-”

“He kills her, Thomas.” Isabelle felt deflated. “Be reasonable. He’s the only one with motive.”

Lynley shook his head. “Isabelle, he’s practically the only one without a motive. The last thing on earth he wants is to have anyone’s attention focused on him, and it’s going to be focused on him intensely should he kill her because she lives with him. If he’s in hiding, he’s going to be desperate to remain in hiding, isn’t he? If Jemima is insistent upon dealing with the treasure appropriately-and why wouldn’t she be since selling it on the open market will bring them a fortune?-then the only way to stop this and to keep himself out of the public eye isn’t to kill her at all.”