Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

part of Angelina’s planned escape from London, how terribly difficult would it have been for Angelina to use her sister’s passport for her travel, thereby covering the tracks of her own movements as she made her escape?
    “Our Bathsheba’s cage needs a bit of rattling,” Doughty said. “The question is, dear Sergeant, which of us is best able to do it?”
    BOW
    LONDON
    When Dwayne Doughty rang off, he waited for Em Cass’s inevitable commentary, which was not long in coming. They were in her office—the better to record the conversation with Sergeant Havers—and Em removed her earphones after checking the quality of the recording. She set them on the table with its bank of monitors. Today she was wearing a fawn-coloured man’s three-piece suit cut perfectly to fit her. She complemented it with two-toned shoes—tan and navy—which would have looked all wrong had she not chosen a necktie to balance the ensemble. She dressed like a man better than most men did, Doughty had to admit. No bloke on earth could beat Em Cass in a dinner jacket, that was certain.
    She said to him, “We shouldn’t’ve got involved in this mess, Dwayne. You know it, I know it, and every day we know it better. Soon’s I saw her with the professor, soon’s I reckoned she was a cop, soon’s I traced her to the Met . . .”
    “Hush,” Dwayne told her. “Things are in motion and other things are being handled.”
    As if in demonstration of this latter fact, a knock sounded on the door and it opened. Bryan Smythe slipped into Em Cass’s office. Doughty saw Em roll her desk chair away from the monitors as if this would distance her from the computer wizard. Before he could welcome the sex-starved bloke, Em said, “You said you’d warn me, Dwayne.”
    “The situation’s slightly altered,” Doughty said. “I think you’ve been making that very point.” And to Bryan with a glance at his watch, “You’re early. And we’re meant to be meeting in my office, not here.”
    Bryan blushed unattractively. He was not, alas, a being whose flesh took on rosy hues with any degree of complement to the rest of him. “Knocked over there,” he said in apparent reference to Doughty’s own office. “Heard you over here so . . .”
    “You should’ve waited over there,” Em told him.
    Bryan looked at her. “I wouldn’t’ve seen you, then,” he said frankly.
    Doughty groaned. The man knew nothing about playing women, about the chat, about anything to do with males and females and how they actually managed to end up in a horizontal position—or, in Em’s case, in any position—exchanging bodily fluids with each other. Doughty did wish that Em Cass would give the poor sod one decent go, though. A mercy bonk wouldn’t kill her, and it might allow Bryan to see that a chasm always existed between one’s dreams and the reality of those dreams coming true.
    “And,” Bryan went on, “wasn’t the point
not
to use the phones from now on?”
    “We all need disposable mobiles, then,” Emily said shortly. “Use once, toss it, buy another. That way this sort of encounter”—she made the words equate to
this visitation of the plague
—“wouldn’t need to happen.”
    “Let’s not get hasty,” Doughty said. “We’re not rolling in dosh here, Emily. We can’t be dashing out to buy disposable mobiles right and left.”
    “Yes, we can. Bill it to that slag from the Met.” Em swung round in her chair, her back to them. She pretended to tie her shoe.
    Doughty hazarded an evaluative look at Bryan. The young man wasn’t a permanent employee and they needed his amazing expertise. It was one thing for Emily Cass not to want to bed him. He couldn’t blame her for that. But to insult and estrange him to a degree that he ended up leaving them high and dry . . . ? That couldn’t be allowed.
    He said meaningfully to his assistant, “Bryan’s completely right, Emily. So let’s all get through this intriguing moment of each other’s company without permanent damage, yes?” He didn’t wait to have her cooperation. He said to Bryan, “Where are we?”
    “Phone records all have been dealt with,” Bryan said. “Going out, coming in. But it’s been expensive, more than I thought. Three blokes were involved in it by the time I was finished, and their rates’re going up.”
    “We’ll have to absorb the cost. There’s no way around that that I can see. What else?”
    “Still going after the rest. It takes a delicate hand and a