Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

account of her dealings with Doughty and of her confrontations with that man’s associates. On the surface, it appeared that she was telling him everything. But she said nothing about airline tickets to Pakistan, and Lynley knew this damned her.
    That knowledge felt like a crack in his chest. He hadn’t actually understood until that moment how important his partnership with Barbara was to him. She was at most times a maddening woman whose personal habits set his teeth on edge. But she had always been a decent cop with a very good mind, and God knew he enjoyed her fractious company. And it had to be said: She had also saved his life on a night when he hadn’t cared in the least if that life was going to be taken from him by a serial killer.
    It wasn’t so much that he believed he owed Barbara Havers something, though. It was that he cared deeply for the bloody woman. She was more than a partner. She was a friend. As such, she was like the other people in his small circle of trusted intimates: She was part of the fabric of his life, and he wanted to keep that fabric as whole as he could make it considering the rent that he’d had to repair when Helen had been torn from him.
    She talked on and on. Her monologue had the appearance of the unburdening of one soul to another. He waited and hoped she would be totally frank with him. When she wasn’t, he had no further choice.
    He said at the end of her remarks, “Pakistan, Barbara. You’ve left that out.”
    She took a slurp of her coffee. Then she took three more gulps in rapid succession and looked round Peeler’s for a top-up. She said casually, “Pakistan, sir?”
    He said, “Airline tickets. One in the name of Taymullah Azhar. The other in the name of Hadiyyah Upman. Purchased in March for a flight in July. You’ve not mentioned that, but SO12 was happy to.”
    Her gaze met his. He tried to read her face, but he couldn’t tell if what he was looking at was defiance or chagrin. She said, “You bloody checked my work. I can’t believe that.”
    “SO12 raised questions. In my mind and, more important, in Isabelle’s.”
    “‘Isabelle,’” she repeated. “Not ‘the guv’ and not ‘the superintendent.’ I reckon I know what
that
means, don’t I?” Her words were bitter.
    “I reckon you don’t,” Lynley told her evenly. “SO12 was my own initiative.”
    They were eyeball to eyeball for a moment. “Sorry, sir,” she said at last, looking away from him.
    “Accepted,” he replied. “As to the airline tickets . . . ? You must see how it’s going to look when it comes out that you withheld this information. If I discovered it with a simple call upon Harry Streener, then it stands to reason that DI Stewart’s going to uncover the very same thing.”
    “I c’n handle Stewart.”
    “That’s where you go wrong. You want to ‘handle’ him and you think you can ‘handle’ him because I daresay you believe the truth will out and the truth will set you free and whatever other aphorisms you’d like to apply to this situation.”
    “The ‘truth’ is he hates me and everyone knows it, including, pardon me,
Isabelle
, sir. And if we want to look at how she positioned me into working for the bloke so that—as you and I both bloody well know—I’d eventually be kicked back down to uniform when I stepped out of order, then what
I
‘daresay’ is we’re going to see a master plan at work.”
    Lynley had not worked as a homicide detective for years to be unaware that Havers was attempting to wrest control of their conversation in order to divert it away from the more crucial matter onto something she could bear to speak about. So he said, “Pakistan, Barbara. Airline tickets. Let’s get back to that, shall we? Anything else takes us into the realm of speculation and wastes our time.”
    She ran a hand through her chopped-up hair. She said, “I don’t
know
what it means, all right?”
    “Which part? The fact that he’s holding tickets to Pakistan, the fact that he purchased them in March when he ostensibly didn’t know where his daughter was, or the fact that you’ve withheld this detail? Which part is the part whose meaning you don’t know, Barbara?”
    “You’re cheesed off,” she said. “You’ve a right to be.”
    “Don’t let’s go there. Just answer me.”
    “I don’t know what it means that he bought those tickets.”
    “He told me she’s coming to him in July, Barbara. Spending her holidays with him is the