Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

that he had been seeing someone.
If
it could actually be called seeing someone. For it appeared his social life post the Isabelle Ardery entanglement consisted of regular attendance at a sporting event she had never heard of.
    He’d insisted that she had to see it. An experience she was unlikely to forget, was how he’d put it. She’d avoided the dubious thrill of this attempt to broaden her social sphere for as long as she could. Ultimately, though, she’d caved in to his insistence. Thus, she’d found herself at a daylong roller derby elimination tournament in which the victors turned out to be a group of extremely athletic women from Birmingham who looked as if eating small children was their other extracurricular activity of choice.
    During the event, Lynley had explained all the fine points of the sport—such as they were—to Barbara. He’d named the positions, the responsibilities of the players, the penalties, and the points. He’d talked about the pack and the objective that the pack had in relation to the jammer. And along with everyone else—including her, it had to be said—he’d leapt to his feet in protest when someone got an elbow to the face and a penalty was not called.
    After several hours, she reached the point of wondering what the hell this entire experience was all about and she also reached the point of considering that Lynley might have brought her to witness the spectacle as a potential outlet for her aggressions. But then, it transpired that at the end of God only knew which bout it was, because at that point she had lost count, they were approached by a skater with lightning bolts painted on her cheeks, fire-red lipstick on her mouth, and glitter rising from her eyelids to her eyebrows. This vision of athleticism had removed her helmet, said, “How nice to see you again, Sergeant Havers,” and Barbara found herself looking upon Daidre Trahair. At which point things became remarkably clearer.
    At first Barbara thought she was meant to play the duenna. She reckoned Lynley needed someone whose presence would soothe the veterinarian into accepting a dinner invitation. But then it turned out that Lynley had been seeing Daidre Trahair regularly since first running into her the previous November. That was where he had been on the night he’d failed to return her phone call. First at a roller derby match and then out for drinks although, from the look of things, matters hadn’t got too much further than that between them lo these many months that had passed, a point that Lynley made clear as they waited for the skaters at the end of the tournament.
    Daidre Trahair came to join them. What happened next was, apparently, what had happened each of the times she and Lynley had met. She invited him—and Barbara—to attend a postgame celebration, which would take place in a pub called Famous Three Kings. Lynley demurred and instead invited her—and Barbara—out for an early dinner. Daidre claimed she was hardly dressed for a meal. Lynley—and Barbara twigged that this was the new bit in their routine—said that wouldn’t matter as he’d laid on something at his home. If Daidre—and Barbara, of course—would dance attendance there, he would be only too pleased to drive Daidre to her hotel afterwards.
    Clever man. Barbara decided not to be offended by his use of her. She only hoped he hadn’t cooked the food himself or they were in for a meal they would long remember, and for all the wrong reasons.
    Daidre hesitated. She looked from Lynley to Barbara. An Amazonian woman approached and asked them all if they were coming to tipple a few at the pub where someone called McQueen was waiting to challenge Daidre at darts again. Her moment of escape was at hand, but Daidre didn’t grasp at it. She said—her gaze flickering to the woman and then back to Lynley—that she would have to beg off. Her friends, she said, were insisting . . . if Lisa would make her excuses? Lisa tossed a knowing look Lynley’s way. Right, she said. Stay safe, not sorry.
    Barbara wondered if she was supposed to leg it, now that Daidre’s presence in Lynley’s home was assured, but he made it clear that she was to do nothing of the sort. Besides, she’d left her Mini blocking his garage in a mews round the corner from his digs, so one way or another she was going to have to get to it in order to scarper.
    On the way to Belgravia, they made polite conversation in the manner of their countrymen: They talked