Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

my poor mum . . . ? You’re outrageous, you are. As it happens, she was taken by a
private
ambulance to a
private
clinic because she has her own
private
insurance, and if you’d decided to sodding ask me about it instead of creeping round in the background like a third-rate housebreaker—”
    “And that’ll do as well,” Ardery said.
    But Barbara’s heart was pounding. No matter what she said, Stewart was going to be able to check her story, and her only hope was to make him look worse for his compulsion to put the thumbscrews to her than she looked doing a scarper from work because she’d had to deal with that damn louse Mitch Corsico and his determination to speak to Azhar’s son, Sayyid.
    She said to Ardery, “He’s been like this since you assigned me to him, guv. He’s got me under some bloody microscope like I’m an amoeba he wants to study.
And
he’s using me as a sodding typist.”
    “Are you actually trying to put the spotlight on me?” Stewart demanded. “You’re out of order, and you damn well know it.”
    “You deserve the sodding spotlight on you and you’ve needed it on you since your wife walked out and you decided to punish every female on earth because of it. And who the hell could blame the poor woman? Life with you would make anyone prefer life on the street with a dog.”
    “I want her written up for this,” Stewart said to Ardery. “I want it in her file and then I want a CIB1—”
    “Both of you are out of order,” Ardery snapped. She walked to her desk, jerked the chair out, and sank into it, looking from Stewart to Barbara to Stewart again. “I’ve had enough of whatever it is between the two of you. It stops here, in this office, this very minute or you’re both facing disciplinary action. Now get back to work. And if I hear anything more about you”—this to Barbara—“acting in
any
way that appears remotely dodgy, you’ll be facing not only disciplinary action but what follows it. Got it?”
    Stewart’s thin lips creased themselves into a smile. But it vanished soon enough when Ardery went on. “And you,” she said to him, “are an officer in charge of a robbery and murder enquiry so
act
like an officer in charge of a robbery and murder enquiry. Which, I’d like to remind you, John, means that you assign your people in a manner that utilises their talents and does
not
appease your need for . . . for whatever the hell it is that you apparently need. Am I being clear?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She picked up the phone, punched in a few numbers, and said in dismissal, “Now for God’s sake get out of here and get back to work.”
    They did the first but paused short of the second. In the corridor, DI Stewart grabbed Barbara’s arm. At his touch, she felt a surge of outrage steam through her veins and she was moments from applying her knee to a place on his body where he’d long remember the encounter. She said, “You bloody get your hand off me or I’ll have you charged with—”
    “You listen to me, you bleeding bovine,” he whispered. “Your move in there was clever as hell. But I’m holding cards you don’t even know about, and when I want to use them, I will. Understand that and act at your own peril, Sergeant Havers.”
    “Oh my God, you knot up my knickers,” Barbara said.
    She walked away, but her mind was like an arguing Greek chorus in her head. Part of it was shrieking to beware, to take heed, to walk the straight and narrow before it was too late. The other part was planning her next move and that part was quickly subdividing itself into the half dozen next moves that were possible.
    Into this mental embroilment, Dorothea Harriman called Barbara’s name. Barbara turned to see the departmental secretary cradling a telephone receiver in her hand. She said, “You’re wanted at once down below.”
    Barbara cursed quietly. What now? she thought.
Down below
meant Reception. She had a visitor and was intended to go fetch him. She said, “Who the hell . . . ?” to Dorothea.
    “Reception says it’s someone in a costume.”
    “A
costume
?”
    “Dressed like a cowboy?” Then Dorothea seemed to twig because Mitchell Corsico had been inside the Met offices before. Her cornflower-blue eyes got round as she said, “Detective Sergeant, it must be that bloke who was embedded—” But Barbara stopped her as fast as she could.
    “I’m on it,” she told Dorothea, and with a nod at the phone, “Tell them I’m on my way down,