Watching over is nothing. Watching over is watching evil, and evil destroys.

Destruction destroys. Destruction begets more destruction. Learning is meant. Guarding means learning.

Guarding means fear.

Fear means hate. Fear means anger. Guarding means love.

Guarding means hiding.

Hiding means standing watch which means guarding which means love. I am meant to guard.

You are meant to kill. Warriors defeat. You are called upon to war. I call upon you. Legions upon legions call upon you.

I guarded. I guard.

You killed.

He wanted to strike his mind where the voices were. They were louder today than they’d ever been, louder than shouting, louder than music. He could see the voices as well as hear them, and they filled his vision so that he finally made out the wings. They were hidden angels but their wings betrayed them, and they watched him and bore witness from above. They lined up one right next to the other with their mouths opening and their mouths closing and celestial singing should have come from those mouths but what came instead was wind. There was a howling upon it and after the wind came the voices that he knew but would not listen to, so he gave himself to the warriors and the guardians and their determination to win him to causes so unlike himself.

He squeezed his eyes shut but still he saw them and still he heard them and still he kept on and on and on till perspiration wetted his cheeks, till he realised it was not perspiration but tears, and then the sound of bravo coming from somewhere but not from the angels this time, for they were gone and then so was he. He was stumbling, climbing, making his way to the churchyard and then to the quiet that was not quiet at all for there was no quiet, not for him.

LYNLEY WASN’T BOTHERED by the part he was playing in the investigation, something between chauffeur and dogsbody to Isabelle Ardery. The role allowed him to ease his way back into police work, and if he was going to return to police work, it definitely had to be a gradual movement.

“Bit of a wanker,” was Ardery’s assessment of Jayson Druther once they left the tobacco shop.

Lynley couldn’t disagree. He indicated the route they needed to take to get to Jubilee Market Hall, across the cobbles from the main area of Covent Garden.

Inside the hall, the noise was ear popping, coming from hawkers, from boom boxes set within the stalls, from shouted conversations, and from buyers attempting to broker deals with sellers of everything from souvenir T-shirts to works of art. They found the mask maker’s stall after elbowing their way up and down three aisles. He had a good position near a far doorway, making him either the first or the last stall one came to but in any case a stall one would unquestionably see, for it sat at an angle with nothing on either side of it. It was large as well, larger than most, and this was due to the fact that the mask making itself appeared to go on within it. A stool for the artist’s subject sat beneath a tall light, and next to it a table held bags of plaster and several other containers. Unfortunately, what the stall did not hold at the present moment was the artist himself, although the heavy plastic sheeting that formed its rear wall bore photographs of the masks he produced along with their subjects posed next to them.

A sign on a makeshift counter indicated the time when the artist would return. Ardery glanced at this and then at her watch, after which she said to Lynley, “Let’s have some refreshment.”

They sought said refreshment back the way they’d come, down below the tobacconist in the courtyard. The violinist who’d played there earlier was gone, and it was just as well, because Ardery apparently wanted conversation along with her refreshment. This turned out to be a glass of wine, at which Lynley lifted an eyebrow.

She saw this. “I’ve no objection to a glass of wine on duty, Inspector Lynley. We deserve one after J-a-y-s-o-n. Please join me. I hate to feel like a lush.”

“I think I won’t,” he said. “I hit it rather hard after Helen died.”

“Ah. Yes. I expect you did.”

Lynley ordered mineral water in turn at which Ardery lifted her own eyebrow. She said to him, “Not even a soft drink? Are you always this virtuous, Thomas?”

“Only when I want to impress.”

“And do you?”

“Want to impress you? Don’t we all? If you’re to be the guv, then it serves the rest of us to begin jockeying for positions of prominence, doesn’t it?”

“I have serious doubts that you’ve spent much time jockeying for any position.”

“Unlike yourself? You’re climbing quickly.”

“That’s what I do.” She looked round the courtyard in which they sat. It wasn’t as crowded as the area above them since here there was only the restaurant cum wine bar at the base of a wide stairway. But it was crowded enough. Every table was taken. They’d been lucky to find a spot to sit. “God, what a mass of humanity,” she said. “Why d’you reckon people come to places like these?”

“Associations,” he said. She turned back to him. He fingered a crockery bowl holding cubes of sugar, rotating it in his fingers as he went on. “History, art, literature. The opportunity to imagine. Perhaps a revisiting of a place from childhood. All sorts of reasons.”

“But not to buy T-shirts saying ‘Mind the gap’?”

“An unfortunate by-product of rampant capitalism.”

She smiled at this. “You can be mildly amusing.”

“So I’ve been told, generally with the stress on mildly.”

Their drinks arrived. He noticed that she took hers up with some alacrity. She apparently noticed him noticing. “I’m trying to drown the memory of Jayson. It was the appalling earlobes.”

“An interesting stylistic choice,” he admitted. “One wonders what the next fad will be now that bodily mutilation is in vogue.”

“Branding, I daresay. What did you make of him?”

“Aside from his earlobes? I’d say his alibi will be simple enough to confirm. The copies of receipts from the till will have the time of day printed on them-”

“Someone could have stood in his place in the shop, Thomas.”

“-and likely there’s going to be a regular customer or two, not to mention another shopkeeper hereabouts, who’ll be able to confirm he was here. I don’t see him as likely to tear open someone’s jugular vein, do you?”

“Admittedly, no. Paolo di Fazio?”

“Or whoever might be at the other end of the postcards. That was a mobile number on it.”

Isabelle reached for her handbag and brought the postcards out. Jayson had given them over with a “happy to be rid of them, darling,” upon her request. She said to Lynley, “They make things interesting,” and then observing him, “which brings us to Sergeant Havers.”

“Speaking of interesting,” he noted wryly.

“Have you been happy working with her?”

“I have been, very.”

“Despite her…” Ardery seemed to search for a word.

He supplied her with several. “Recalcitrance? Obstinate refusal to toe the line? Lack of finesse? Intriguing personal habits?”

Ardery brought her wine to her lips, and she examined him over the glass rim as she drank. “You’re rather oddly paired. One wouldn’t expect it. I think you know what I mean. I do know she’s had professional difficulties. I’ve read her personnel file.”

“Just hers?”

“Of course not. I’ve read everyone’s. Yours as well. I mean to have this job, Thomas. I mean to have a team that works like a well-oiled machine. If Sergeant Havers turns out to be a loose screw in the works, I’m going to get rid of her.”

“Is that why you’re advising change?”

She frowned. “Change?”

“Barbara’s clothing. The makeup. I expect to see her with her teeth repaired and sporting a designer hairdo next.”

“It doesn’t hurt a woman to look her best. I’d advise a man on my team to do something about his appearance if he came to work looking like Barbara Havers. As it happens, she’s the only one who comes to work looking like she’s slept rough the night before. Hasn’t anyone ever spoken to her before? Didn’t Superintendent Webberly? Didn’t you?”