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“Yes.” Beyond the brick wall a line of gardens-each one defined by yet another brick wall-comprised the back of the houses on Cadogan Lane, itself another mews that was one of hundreds in the area, once housing stables for the sumptuous dwellings nearby, now housing homes converted from garages that themselves had been converted from the stables. It was a complicated area of streets and mewses. Anyone could fade into the woodwork there. Or make good an escape. Or anything.
St. James said, “It’s not what it sounds like, Tommy.”
“Why is that?” Lynley asked.
“Because an au pair on Cadogan Lane also reported a break-in, shortly after Helen…shortly after. Within the hour. She’s being interviewed. She was home when the break-in occurred.”
“What do they know?”
“Just about the break-in at the moment. But if it’s related-and good God, it has to be related-and if whoever broke in went out of the front of the house, then there’s further good news. Because one of the larger houses along Cadogan Lane has two CCTV cameras mounted on the front of it.”
Lynley looked at St. James. He wanted desperately to care about this because he knew what it meant: If the au pair’s housebreaker had gone in that direction, there was a chance the closed-circuit television cameras had caught him on film. And if he’d been caught on film, that was a step in the direction of bringing him to whatever justice there was, which was little enough, and what did it matter at the end of the day?
Lynley nodded, however. It was expected of him.
St. James said, “The house with the au pair?”
“Hmm. Yes.”
“It’s quite a distance from where the Range Rover was, in the mews, Tommy.”
Lynley struggled to think what this meant. He could come up with nothing.
St. James went on. “There’re perhaps eight-maybe fewer, but still a number of them-gardens along the route. Which means whoever went over the wall where the Range Rover stood had to continue going over walls. So Belgravia are doing a search of every one of the gardens. There’ll be evidence.”
“I see,” Lynley said.
“Tommy, they’re going to come up with something. It’s not going to take long.”
“Yes,” Lynley said.
“Are you all right?”
Lynley considered this question. He looked at St. James. All right. What did it really mean?
The door opened, and Deborah joined them. “You must go home now,” Lynley said to her. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He knew what he sounded like. He knew she would misread him, hearing the blame, which was there but not directed towards her. Seeing her merely reminded him that she’d been with Helen last, heard her talk last, laughed with her last. And it was the last of it that he couldn’t stand, just as earlier he’d not been able to tolerate the first of anything else.
She said, “If you like. If it’ll help you, Tommy.”
“It will,” he said.
She nodded and went to collect her things. Lynley said to St. James, “I’m going to her now. Do you want to come? I know you’ve not seen…”
“Yes,” St. James said. “I’d like to, Tommy.”
So they went to Helen, dwarfed in her bed by everything that kept her working as a womb. She looked waxen to him, Helen yes but even more Helen no and never again. While within her, damaged beyond hope or repair but who knew how much-
“They want me to decide,” Lynley said. He took his wife’s lifeless hand. He curled her flaccid fingers into his palm. “I can’t stand it, Simon.”
WINSTON DROVE, and for this Barbara Havers was grateful. After a day in which she’d determinedly not thought about what was happening at St. Thomas’ Hospital, she felt she’d been punched in the gut with the news about Helen Lynley. She’d known it was going to be a grim prognosis. But she’d told herself that people survived being shot all the time, and medicine being as advanced as it was meant Helen’s chances had to be good. But there was no current advance in medicine that compensated for a brain deprived of oxygen. A surgeon didn’t just go in and repair that damage like the Messiah laying hands on a leper. There was literally no coming back once the word vegetative was applied to a situation. So Barbara hunched against the door in Winston Nkata’s car and clenched her teeth so hard together that her jaw was pulsing and sore by the time they reached their destination in the darkness.
Fu
That was not the case at the corner of Fa
They’d phoned first. They’d decided they would go in the back door on this one, no storm-trooping but rather a collegial approach. There were facts to check and they’d come to check them.
The first thing Hamish Robson said to them when he answered the door was, “How is Superintendent Lynley’s wife? I’ve seen the news. They’ve apparently got a witness. Did you know? There’s some sort of film footage as well, although I don’t know from where. They say they may have an image to broadcast…”
He’d come to the door wearing rubber gloves, which seemed odd till he ushered them into the kitchen where he was doing the washing up. He appeared to be something of a gourmet cook, because there were pots and pans on the work top in amazing abundance, and crockery, cutlery, and glassware for at least four people, already standing wetly in the dish drainer. Suds galore mounded in the sink. The place looked like a set for a Fairy Liquid commercial.
“She’s brain dead.” Wi
Robson had plunged his hands into the sink, but he took them out and rested them on the edge of it. “I’m so sorry.” He sounded sincere. Perhaps he was at some level. Some people were good at creating compartments for the various parts of themselves. “How is the superintendent? He and I had made an arrangement to meet the day…the day this all occurred. He never turned up.”
“He’s trying to cope,” Winston said.
“How can I help?”
Barbara brought out the profile of the serial killer that Robson had provided for them. She said, “Can we…?” and indicated a neat chrome-and-glass table that defined a dining area just beyond the kitchen.
“Of course,” Robson said.
She laid the report on the table and pulled out a chair. She said, “Join us?”
Robson said, “You don’t mind if I carry on with the washing up?”
Barbara exchanged a glance with Nkata, who’d joined her at the table. He gave an infinitesimal shrug. She said, “Why not. We can talk from here.”
She sat. Winston did likewise. She gave the ball to him. “We took some second and third looks at this profile,” he told Robson, who went back to washing a pot he brought forth from the suds. He was wearing a cardigan and he hadn’t bothered to roll the sleeves up, so where the gloves ended, the wet began, weighing down the wool of his sweater. “I had a look at some of the guv’s handwritten notes ’s well. We got some conflicting information. We wanted to sort that with you.”
“What kind of conflicting information?” Robson’s face was shiny, but Barbara put that down to the steamy water.
“Le’ me put it this way,” Nkata said. “Why’d you come up with the age of the serial killer as twenty-five to thirty-five?”