Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

strong-looking and not at all slender. He knew what she would call them. Peasant hands, she would say. Or gypsy hands. Or tin-streamer hands. But not the hands one would expect of an aristo, which she most definitely was not.
    Suddenly it seemed there was nothing to say after all the time that had passed since last they’d met. He looked at her. She looked at him. He said, “Well,” and then he thought what an idiot he was. He had wanted to see her again and here she was and the only thing he could think of was to tell her that he never could quite make out if her eyes were hazel or brown or green. His own were brown, very dark brown at complete contrast to his hair, which was blond in the height of summer but which now, in mid-autumn, was washed-out brown.
    She smiled at him and said, “You’re looking quite well, Thomas. Very different from the night you and I met.”
    How true that was, he realised. For the night they’d met was the night he’d broken into her cottage, the only structure on Polcare Cove in Cornwall where an eighteen-year-old cliff climber had fallen to his death. Lynley had been looking for a phone. Daidre had been arriving for a few days’ respite from her job. He remembered her outrage at finding him there inside her cottage. He remembered how quickly that outrage had changed to concern for him from something she had read upon his face.
    He said, “I
am
well. Good days and bad days, of course. But most of them are good now.”
    “I’m glad of it,” she said.
    They fell into silence again. There were things that could have been said. Such as, “And you, Daidre? And what about your parents?” But he couldn’t say them, for she had two sets of parents and it would be cruel to force her to talk about one of them. He’d never met her adoptive parents. Her natural parents, on the other hand, he’d seen: at their ramshackle caravan by a stream in Cornwall. Her mother had been dying but hoping for a miracle. She may have passed at this point, but he knew better than to ask.
    She said suddenly, “So how long have you been back?”
    “At work?” he said. “Since the summer.”
    “And how do you find it?”
    “Difficult at first,” he replied. “But of course, it would be.”
    “Of course,” she said.
    Because of Helen
went unsaid between them. Helen his wife, a victim of murder, and her husband, a detective employed by the Met. The facts of Helen didn’t bear thinking about, much less commenting upon. Daidre wouldn’t go near that topic of conversation. Nor would he.
    He said, “And yours?”
    She frowned, obviously not knowing what he was referring to. Then she said, “Oh! My job. It’s quite fine. We have two of our female gorillas pregnant and a third not, so we’re watching that. We’re hoping it won’t cause a problem.”
    “Would it? Normally?”
    “The third one lost a baby. Failure to thrive. So things could develop because of that.”
    “Sounds sad,” he said. “Failure to thrive.”
    “It is, rather.”
    They were silent again. He finally said, “Your name was on the handbill. Your skating name. I saw it. Have you skated in London prior to this?”
    “I have,” she said.
    “I see.” He twirled his wineglass and watched the wine. “I do wish you’d phoned me. You have my card still, don’t you?”
    “I do,” she told him, “and I could have phoned but . . . It’s just that it felt . . .”
    “Oh, I know how it felt,” he said. “Same as before, I daresay.”
    She gazed at him. “My sort don’t say ‘I daresay,’ you see.”
    “Ah,” he said.
    She took a sip of wine. She looked at the glass and not at him. He thought of how different she was, how completely different to Helen. Daidre hadn’t Helen’s insouciant wit and carefree nature. But there was something compelling about her. Perhaps, he thought, it was everything that she kept hidden from people.
    He said, “Daidre,” as she said, “Thomas.”
    He let her go first. “Perhaps you might drive me to my hotel?” she said.
    BAYSWATER
    LONDON
    Lynley wasn’t stupid. He knew that driving her to her hotel meant exactly that. It was one of the things he liked about Daidre Trahair. She said exactly what she meant.
    She directed him to Sussex Gardens, which lay to the north of Hyde Park in the midst of Bayswater. It was a busy thoroughfare, heavily trafficked both day and night, lined with hotels differentiated one from the other only by their names. These were displayed on the