“It’s not exactly that,” she replied, gratefully accepting the glass of sherry which St. James brought her. “I’ve the information we want. It’s only that…”

“It doesn’t go far to helping Rhys,” St. James guessed.

She shot him a smile that she knew was at best only tremulous. His words pained her unaccountably, and feeling the force of a sudden wretchedness, she realised how she had been depending upon her interview with Lord Stinhurst’s secretary to attenuate everyone’s suspicion of Rhys. “No, it doesn’t help Rhys.

It doesn’t do much of anything, I’m afraid.”

“Tell us,” St. James said.

There was, after all, so little to tell. Lord Stinhurst’s secretary had been willing enough to talk about the telephone calls she had placed for her employer, once she realised how essential those calls might be in exonerating him of any complicity in the death of Joy Sinclair. So she had spoken openly to Lady Helen, going so far as to produce the notebook into which she had jotted down the message that Stinhurst had wished her to repeat for every call she made. It was straightforward enough. “Am unavoidably delayed in Scotland due to an accident. Will be in touch the moment I’m available.”

Only one call differed from that repeated message, and although it was decidedly odd, it did not seem to wear the guise of guilt. “Resurfacing forces me to put you off a second time this month. Terribly sorry. Telephone me at Westerbrae if this presents a problem.”

“Resurfacing?” St. James repeated. “Odd choice of words. Are you certain about that, Helen?”

“Completely. Stinhurst’s secretary had written it down.”

“Some theatre term?” Deborah suggested.

St. James eased himself awkwardly into the chair near her. She moved on the ottoman to give him room for his leg. “Who received that last, Helen?”

She referred to her notes. “Sir Kenneth Willingate.”

“A friend? A colleague?”

“I’m not altogether sure.” Lady Helen hesitated, trying to decide how to present her last piece of information in such a way that St. James would be drawn into its singularity. She knew how flimsy a detail it was, knew also how she was clinging to it in the hope that it would take them in any direction other than towards Rhys. “I’m probably grasping at straws, Simon,” she continued ingenuously. “But there was one thing about that last call. All the others had been made to cancel appointments that Stinhurst had over the next few days. His secretary merely read the names to me right out of his engagement book. But that last call to Willingate had nothing to do with his engagement book at all. The name wasn’t even written there. So it was either an appointment that Stinhurst had arranged on his own without telling his secretary…”

“Or it wasn’t in reference to an appointment at all,” Deborah finished for her.

“There’s only one way we’re going to know,” St. James remarked. “And that’s to bully the information from Stinhurst. Or to track down Willingate ourselves. But we can’t go any further without involving Tommy, I’m afraid. We’re going to have to give him what little information we have and let him take it from there.”

“But Tommy won’t take it up! You know that!” Lady Helen protested. “He’s looking for a tie to Rhys. He’s going to dog whatever facts he believes will allow him to make an arrest. Nothing else matters to Tommy right now! Or wasn’t this past weekend enough of a demonstration for you? Apart from that, if you involve him, he’s bound to discover that Barbara’s gone her own way on the case…with our help, Simon. You can’t do that to her.”

St. James sighed. “Helen, you simply can’t have it both ways. You can’t protect them both. It’s going to come down to a decision. Do you take the chance of sacrifi cing Barbara Havers? Or do you sacrifi ce Rhys?”

“I sacrifi ce neither.”

He shook his head. “I know how you feel, but I’m afraid that won’t wash.”

WHEN COTTER showed Barbara Havers into the study, she sensed the tension at once. The room felt alive with it. An abrupt silence, followed by a quick burst of welcoming conversation, revealed the discomfort that the three others were feeling. The atmosphere among them was charged and taut.

“What is it?” she asked.

They were, she had to admit, nothing if not an honest group.

“Simon feels we can’t go further without Tommy.” Lady Helen went on to explain the peculiar telephone message that Stinhurst had sent to Sir Kenneth Willingate.

“We have no authority to pop into these people’s lives and question them, Barbara,” St. James put in when Lady Helen fi nished. “And you know they don’t have an obligation to talk to us. So unless Tommy takes it on, I’m afraid we’ve met with a dead end.”

Barbara reflected on this. She knew quite well that Lynley had no intention of turning away from the East Anglian lead. It was too enticing. He would brush off an abstruse telephone message to an unknown Londoner named Willingate as a waste of his time. Especially, she thought with resignation, since Lord Stinhurst was the man who had sent it. The others were right. They’d come to a dead end. But if she couldn’t persuade them to go on without Lynley, Stinhurst would get away cleanly, without a scratch.

“Of course, we know that if Tommy discovers you’ve taken part of the case in another direction without his authorisation…”

“I don’t care about that,” Barbara said brusquely, surprised to find that it was the perfect truth.

“You may be suspended. Or sent back to uniform. Even sacked.”

“That isn’t important right now. This is. I’ve spent the whole filthy day chasing spectres in East Anglia without a hope of any of it coming to any good. But we’re onto something here, and I’ve no intention of letting it die simply because someone might put me in uniform again. Or sack me. Or anything else. So if we have to tell him, we tell him. Everything.” She faced them squarely. “Shall we do it now?”

In spite of her decision, the others hesitated. “You don’t want to think about it?” Lady Helen asked.

“I don’t need to think about it,” Barbara replied. Her words were harsh, and she didn’t temper them as she continued. “Look, I saw Gowan die. He’d pulled a knife out of his back and crawled across the scullery floor, trying to get help. His skin looked like boiled meat. His nose was broken. His lips were split. I want to find who did that to a sixteen-year-old boy. And if it costs me my job to track the killer down, that’s a very minor cost as far as I’m concerned. Who’s coming with me?”

Loud voices in the hallway precluded an answer. The door swung open and Jeremy Vinney pushed past Cotter. He was breathless, red-faced. His trouser legs were soaked up to his knees, and his ungloved hands looked raw from the cold.

“Couldn’t get a taxi,” he panted. “Ended up running all the way from Sloane Square. Was afraid I might miss you.” He stripped off his coat and threw it down on the couch. “Found out who the fellow in the photograph was. Had to let you know at once. Name’s Willingate.”

“Kenneth?”

“The same.” Vinney bent with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Not all. Not who the bloke is that makes it so interesting. It’s what he is.” He flashed a quick smile. “Don’t know what he was in 1963. But right now he’s the head of MI5.”