Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

breasts. “You’re protecting her by stitching up evidence yourself, I take it?”
    “I am not,” he said.
    “So what am I to think . . . ?”
    “That I don’t know everything yet, Isabelle. And until I know it, I saw no reason to worry you.”
    “You mean to protect her, don’t you? No matter the cost. God in heaven, what’s wrong with you, Tommy? This is your bloody career we’re talking about.” And when he didn’t answer, she said, “Never mind. It
isn’t
, is it? What was I thinking? The earldom awaits. Is that what they call it, by the way, an earldom? And the family pile in Cornwall is always there ready for you to decamp to if you want to throw all of this over. You don’t need to do this kind of work. It’s all a lark for you. It’s a walk in the park. It’s a bloody joke. It’s—”
    “Isabelle,
Isabelle
.” He took a step towards her.
    She held up her hand. “Don’t.”
    “Then what?” he asked her.
    “Can you not for one moment
see
where this is heading, for all of us? Can you not look beyond Barbara Havers for a bloody instant and realise the position she’s putting us in? Not only herself, but us as well.”
    He had to see it because, like her, he was not a fool. But he also had to admit to himself that before this moment he hadn’t thought about the impact Barbara’s behaviour would have upon Isabelle herself should all of what she had done come out into the open. Hearing Isabelle’s voice tinged as it was with despair, he felt as if the clouds were parting and where the sun was shining was not, at this moment, upon Barbara. For Isabelle Ardery was in charge of all the officers, and the responsibility for what the members of her squad did and did not do ultimately rested upon her shoulders.
    Cleaning house
was what it was generally called in the aftermath of corruption’s coming to light. The rubbish got tossed to appease the public, and Isabelle Ardery stood in very good stead to be part of that rubbish.
    He said to her, “This situation . . . It’s not going to come to that, Isabelle.”
    “Oh, you know that, do you?”
    “Look at me,” he said. And when she finally did so and when he read the fear in her eyes, he said, “I do. I won’t allow you to be damaged. I swear it.”
    “You don’t have that power. No one does.”
    Now as Lynley guided the Healey Elliott into Cheyne Walk, he tried to put his promise to Isabelle from his mind. There were bigger issues even than Barbara’s involvement with Taymullah Azhar, Dwayne Doughty, and Bryan Smythe, and those needed to be dealt with as soon as possible. Still, his heart was heavy as he parked the car near the top of Lawrence Street. He walked the distance back to Lordship Place and went in through the gate that led to a garden he knew as well as he knew his own.
    They were in the last stages of an alfresco lunch beneath a cherry tree in magnificent bloom in the centre of the lawn: his oldest friend, that friend’s wife, and her father. They were watching an enormous grey cat slinking along an herbaceous border thick with lunaria, bellis, and campanula. They were apparently hot into a discussion on the subject of Alaska—said cat—and whether his best mousing days were over.
    When they heard the squeak of the garden gate, they turned. Simon St. James said, “Ah, Tommy. Hullo.”
    Deborah said, “You’re just in time to settle an argument. How are you on the subject of cats?”
    “Nine lives or otherwise?”
    “Otherwise.”
    “Not an expert, I’m afraid.”
    “Damn.”
    Deborah’s father, Joseph Cotter, rose to his feet and said, “Afternoon, m’lord. A coffee?”
    Lynley waved Cotter back to his seat. He fetched another chair from the terrace at the top of the steps that led to the house’s basement kitchen. He joined them at the table and took a look at the remains of their meal. Salad, a dish with green beans and almonds, lamb bones littering their plates, the tail end of a loaf of crusty bread, a bottle of red wine. Cotter had been cooking, obviously. Deborah’s talents were artistic, but her artistry was decidedly minimal in the kitchen. As for St. James . . . If he managed marmite on toast, it was cause for massive celebration.
    “How old is Alaska?” he enquired, preparatory to giving his opinion.
    “Lord, I don’t know,” Deborah said. “I think we got him . . . Was I ten years old, Simon?”
    “He can’t possibly be seventeen,” Lynley said. “How many lives can he