He smiled. “You see? You’re learning quickly.”
“What did you agree to?”
“Something I was likely to do anyway.”
“You’re coming back permanently.”
“For my sins. Yes.”
“Why?”
“As I said, I was likely-”
“No. I mean why did you do this for me?”
He fixed his eyes on her. She didn’t look away. “I’m not sure,” he finally said.
They sat in silence for another moment, observing each other. At last, she opened the centre drawer of her desk. She took out a metal ring that she’d placed there earlier in the day. From this dangled a single key. She’d had it made but hadn’t been sure and she still wasn’t sure, if the truth had to be told. But she’d long been adept at avoiding truths, so she did so now.
She slid the ring across her desk to him. He looked from it to her.
“There can never be more between us than there is just now,” she told him. “We need to understand that from the first. I want you, but I’m not in love with you, Tommy, and I never will be.”
He looked at the key. Then her. Then the key again.
She waited for him to make his decision, telling herself it didn’t matter, knowing the truth was that it always would.
Finally, he reached for what she’d offered. “I understand,” he said.
THE LOOSE ENDS took hours, so Barbara Havers didn’t arrive back in London till quite late. She’d considered staying the night in Hampshire, but at the last moment she decided that home was more appealing despite the fact that her bungalow was likely to be the temperature of a sauna after being closed up in the heat for two days. On the drive back, she replayed what had occurred in the paddock, and she looked at it from every angle, wondering if any other ending had been possible.
At first, she hadn’t recognised the name. She’d been a young teenager at the time of John Dresser’s murder and while the name Ian Barker was not completely unfamiliar to her, she had not immediately connected it with that death in the midlands and with the man standing in the paddock with a gun in his hand. Her more immediate concern had been Meredith Powell’s injury, Frazer Chaplin’s condition, and the distinct possibility that Gordon Jossie was going to shoot someone else.
She hadn’t expected him to turn the gun on himself. Afterwards, however, his reason for doing so was more than clear. He was, at that point, hemmed in on all sides. There would be no escaping the public revelation of his true identity in one way or another. When that occurred, the incomprehensible evil act of his childhood would be once more dissected before a public who always, eternally, and understandably, demanded payment.
With the dog barking, herself shouting, Whiting roaring, and Georgina Francis screaming, he’d put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. And then utter silence. The poor damn dog crawled on its belly then, like a soldier in battle. She reached her master, whimpering, while the rest of them raced to look to the injured.
A helicopter came from the air support unit near Lee-on-Solent to fetch Meredith to hospital. Officers arrived from the Lyndhurst station. Hot on their heels, as always, came the journalists, and to attend to them the duty press officer manned a position at the end of Paul’s Lane. Georgina Francis was taken off to the custody suite at the Lyndhurst station, while everyone waited two hours for the forensic pathologist to arrive. Eventually, matters came to a close as far as Barbara’s participation was concerned. She spent some time on her mobile with Lynley in London, some time with Whiting going over the situation in Hampshire, and then she was finished. Time to stay the night or time to go. She chose to go.
She was completely done in by the time she arrived in London. She was surprised to see that lights were still on inside the ground-floor flat of the Big House as she trudged through the gate, but she didn’t give much thought to it.
She saw the note on her door as she used her key in the lock. It was too dark outside to read it, but she could see her name written in Hadiyyah’s hand, with four exclamation marks after it.
She opened the door and flipped on the lights. She half-expected another fashion offering to be laid out on the daybed. There was nothing, however. She slung her shoulder bag on the table where she took her meals, and she saw that the message light on her answer phone was blinking. She went for the phone as she unfolded Hadiyyah’s note to her. Both contained the same communication: Come to see us, Barbara! No matter what time!!
Barbara was knackered. She didn’t much feel like a spate of socialising but, as it was Hadiyyah making the request, she thought she could survive a few minutes of conversation.
She returned the way she’d come. As she was crossing the patch of lawn to the French windows that served as entrance to Taymullah Azhar’s flat, one of those doors opened. Mrs. Silver emerged, calling back over her shoulder, “Delighted. Truly,” with a happy wave. She saw Barbara, then, and said, “Really quite charming,” and she patted her turbanned head and went on her way to the front steps of the house.
Barbara thought, What the hell…? as she approached the door. She reached it at the same moment that Taymullah Azhar was about to close it.
He saw her. He said, “Ah, Barbara.” And then he called back over his shoulder, “Hadiyyah. Khushi. Here is Barbara.”
“Oh yes, yes, yes!” Hadiyyah cried. She appeared beneath her father’s arm, beaming so much that her face alone could have lit a room. “Come see! Come see!” she called out to Barbara. “It’s the surprise!”
Then a woman’s voice from within the flat and Barbara knew who it was before she appeared: “I’ve never been called a surprise before. Introduce me, darling. But at least call me Mummy.”
Barbara knew her name. Angelina. She’d never seen a photograph of her, but she’d allowed herself to imagine what she might look like. She hadn’t been far wrong. The same height as Azhar and thin like him. Transluscent skin, blue eyes, dark brows and lashes, fashionably cut hair. Slim trousers, crisp blouse, narrow feet in heelless shoes. They were the sort of shoes a woman wore when she didn’t want to be taller than her partner.
“Barbara Havers,” Barbara said to Angelina. “You’re Hadiyyah’s mum. I’ve heard volumes about you.”
“She has!” Hadiyyah crowed. “Mummy, I’ve told her lots about you. You’ll be such friends.”
“I hope we will.” Angelina put her arm round her daughter’s shoulders. Hadiyyah put her arm round her mother’s waist. “Will you come in, Barbara?” Angelina asked. “I’ve been hearing volumes about you as well.” She turned to Azhar. “Hari, do we have-”
“Dead knackered,” Barbara cut in. Hari. No. She couldn’t take part in the moment. “I only just got back from work. Rain check? Tomorrow? Whatever? That okay with you, kiddo?” to Hadiyyah.
Hadiyyah hung from her mother’s waist and gazed up at her. She spoke to Barbara but looked at her mother. “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes,” she declared. “We’ve lots of time tomorrow, don’t we, Mummy?”
Angelina replied, “Lots and lots of time, darling.”
Barbara said good night. She gave a mad little salute to them all. She was far too done in to process all this. Tomorrow would be time enough to do so.
She was heading for her bungalow when he called her name. She paused on the path at the side of the house. She didn’t want to have this conversation, but she reckoned there wasn’t much hope of avoiding it.
“This is-” Azhar began, but Barbara stopped him.
“You’ll never get her to sleep tonight,” she said cheerfully. “I expect she’ll be dancing round till dawn.”
“Yes. I expect.” He looked back the way he had come and then at Barbara. “She wanted to tell you earlier, but I thought it best that she wait until…” He hesitated. There was an entire relationship between him and Hadiyyah’s mother that rested in the pause.
“Absolutely,” Barbara said, to rescue him.
“If she did not return, you see, as she said she would do, I didn’t wish Hadiyyah then to have to explain. It seemed to me it would make her disappointment that much worse.”