Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

wonder Bryan wants a romp with you.”
    “Please. He puts me off my work, he does.”
    “I thought you liked men wanting to give you a length.”
    “Some men. A bloke like Bryan Smythe . . .” She shuddered and tossed Tweety Bird back on the desk. “Give him an inch—which is probably all he has anyway—and stalking’s going to be his next career choice. I don’t like men making what they want so obvious.”
    “I’m going to make a note of that.” He pretended to do so on his palm. “‘Bry, try subterfuge.’” And then, nodding at her telephone, “I’ll let you get on with it, then. Mother’s maiden name first. How long d’you expect that’ll take?”
    “Give me ten minutes.”
    “Have at it, then.” He headed for the door and had his hand on the knob before she spoke again. She said his name. He turned. “Say what?”
    “You didn’t answer the question. Good diversion with Bryan, but you have to know it didn’t work.”
    “What question was that?” he asked her, putting on his all-innocence expression for her.
    She laughed. “Please. Whatever you’re up to, or how much you’re planning to charge the poor bloke for it, can I suggest we keep it all legal for once?”
    “On my honour,” he told her solemnly.
    “Oh,
that’s
reassuring,” she replied.

17 December
    SOHO AND CHALK FARM
    LONDON
    B arbara Havers was in her third hour of dragging herself into shops in Oxford Street when she wondered whether it would have been wiser to shoot Bing Crosby before he could have recorded it or to shoot the person who composed “The Little Drummer Boy” before he had a chance to dream it up. She reckoned the latter would have been the better choice. If not Bing, then someone else would have ended up crooning a-rum-pa-pum-pum at least once an hour from the first of November until the twenty-fourth of December.
    The damn song had been accosting her from the moment she’d got off the Underground at Tottenham Court Road. There she’d been greeted by a busker singing the carol into a microphone at the bottom of the escalator, and the same bloody song had been blaring inside Accessorize, outside Starbucks, and at the entry to Boots. The blind violin player who’d been fiddling for the past few decades in front of Selfridges was also sawing through the sentimental ditty. It was like a form of Chinese water torture.
    She was doing her Christmas shopping. With one member of what went for family to buy for, this was generally a simple matter usually conducted via catalogue and telephone. Her mother’s needs were simple, her wants practically nonexistent. She spent her days watching videos featuring Laurence Olivier—the younger the version of that actor the better—and when she wasn’t doing that, she was engaged in whatever craft her carer had going that day for the lodgers in her home in Greenford. This was a woman called Florence Magentry—Mrs. Flo to those who engaged her services—and she, too, was someone for whom Barbara was shopping. Generally, Barbara would have been looking for a gift for her neighbours as well, especially Hadiyyah. But still there had been no word of her whereabouts, and every day that passed made hope of finding her that much more distant.
    Barbara tried not to think about Hadiyyah. The private investigator Doughty was working away on the problem of the little girl’s whereabouts, she told herself. When there was word, she would be the first to hear it from Azhar.
    She was shopping for him as well. She wanted something that might cheer him up, however briefly. He’d become more and more silent in the weeks that had passed since Hadiyyah’s disappearance with her mother, and he’d begun staying away from his flat as much as possible. Barbara couldn’t blame him for this. What else was the man to do? There
was
nothing else unless he wanted to set out after Hadiyyah on his own. And then, where would he even look? The world was vast and Angelina Upman had planned her flight from Chalk Farm in such a way as to leave no trace of herself behind.
    Barbara had tried to stay positive about Dwayne Doughty’s being able to locate Hadiyyah and her mother. But here in Oxford Street what came sweeping back to her was the memory of the last time she’d been in this part of town. Summer and under orders from Isabelle Ardery to do something about her lack of fashion sense, she and Hadiyyah had come here together to purchase some sort of preliminary building block for a new