Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

under the watchful eye of neighbours only too happy to express their opinions on the topic of the mild-mannered university professor and what was turning out to be a veritable stable of women willing to partner him.
    The article followed the same pattern as so many stories featured in the daily tabloids. Their meat and potatoes had for generations consisted of destroying reputations. They built someone up one week as a hero or a sympathetic victim or a luck-struck winner of a national lottery or a grand success in the arts or an admirable self-made man . . . only to tear him down the next week when every slighted friend or colleague he had in his life crawled out of their personal rubbish tip to report “new facts” about him. Just to bring him down a few pegs, of course.
    Lynley looked up when he completed his reading of the article. He wasn’t quite sure where to go with any remark he might make because he wasn’t quite sure what Isabelle knew about Barbara and Taymullah Azhar. Nor, he had to admit, was he.
    She said, “What am I to make of this, Tommy?”
    He took off his glasses and returned them to his jacket pocket. “It looks to me like an officer of the police coming to the aid of an adolescent boy being struck about the head by an older man.”
    “Oh, I can see that. I can even tell myself that all this photo depicts is a moment in which DS Barbara Havers happened upon a conflict in the street and stepped in to sort it like the Good Samaritan we know her to be. I could do all that happily, but what prevents me is the fact that this adolescent boy is the son of Taymullah Azhar. Not to mention the fact that the older man is the father of Taymullah Azhar. I’m not to make a coincidence of that, am I, Tommy?”
    “The picture could have a thousand and one interpretations, Isabelle, as can the article. Anyone reading it and looking at the picture can see that much.”
    “Naturally. And one of those interpretations is that Barbara Havers may very well have a vested interest—a deeply personal and not an objective professional interest—in matters that should not concern someone involved in an investigation.”
    “You can’t possibly think that Barbara—”
    “I don’t know what the hell to think about Barbara,” Isabelle cut in sharply. “But I do know what I see with my eyes and I do know what I hear with my ears, and—”
    “‘Hear’? From whom? What? About Barbara?” Lynley studied her for a moment before he went on. She watched him do so and she met his gaze steadily. He finally looked away from her and at the paper still spread on her desk.
    Lynley knew she wasn’t a tabloid reader. He didn’t flatter himself in thinking he knew everything about her from the months they’d spent naked in each other’s beds, but he did know that much. She didn’t read tabloids. So how had this one fallen into her hands? He said, “Where did you get this?” with a gesture at the paper.
    “That’s hardly as important as the ‘news’ it contains.”
    Lynley glanced over his shoulder at the closed door and what lay beyond it. And then, quite simply, he knew. “John Stewart,” he said. “And now he’s waiting to see what you intend to do about her. While all along what you should be intending to do is something about John.”
    “I plan to deal with John in due time, Tommy. Just now we’re dealing with the issue of Barbara.”
    “There is no issue of Barbara. She may know Azhar, but as to there being the slightest indication of a romantic involvement, a physical involvement,
any
involvement between them other than simple friendship . . . It’s just not on, Isabelle.”
    She considered this for a very long moment. Outside her office, the sounds of a typical day’s activities were ongoing. Someone called out for “a copy of that article on peat preservation Philip was going on about,” and a trolley rattled by. Inside her office, they engaged in a stare-down which Isabelle finally broke by speaking.
    “Tommy, we all have blind spots,” she said.
    “Barbara doesn’t,” he returned as firmly as he could. “Not in this matter.”
    She looked infinitely sad when she dismissed him with the reply, “I’m not talking about Barbara, Inspector.”
    VICTORIA
    LONDON
    He wasn’t as certain about Barbara Havers as his words had been. He wasn’t, in fact, certain about anything. For this reason, he read the activity reports Barbara had turned in during the time she’d worked on John