To which she’d bitterly replied, “I’d’ve had you in my bed and you’d’ve had what you want. And off you’d’ve gone to your wife afterwards and what sort of life would either of us have then?”
What he’d thought then was how it always came down to this moment when one strayed outside the culturally and religiously imposed boundary of marriage. It always came down to one of the individuals wanting more and the other unwilling or unable to give it. What he’d told himself was that he should have known it would come to this moment, and he’d put his entire career on the line, and if he couldn’t somehow smooth over the entire situation he would have thrown everything away because he’d wanted her in a way that she clearly did not want him. He’d been and he still was a fool.
She’d left him then—alone in the Orbit as he was now—and he’d waited for her to make a move against him. But instead she’d departed quietly, as he’d obliquely requested. She’d given him that. She’d worked to bring Jade up to speed, she’d completed the action she’d begun in Kingsland, and after requesting a few days to sort herself out before reporting to her new job, she’d gone from his life.
Only she hadn’t, apparently. Not entirely.
He set his smartphone on the coffee table and he stared at it for a very long moment before he accessed his texts. He saw the trail he hadn’t wanted to see, one he hadn’t wanted to believe might even exist.
I think of you. It’s mad. I can’t stop
It can’t be over. I know how you feel. I know how I feel
I dreamed of us. I was searching for you. I couldn’t find you. Please. Will you see me?
Darling to be inside you once more once more
She’d not responded to any of them. But in the end, that had not mattered.
From his pocket he removed the rectangular, sturdy little ticket that he’d found. He placed it next to his smartphone. He’d needed some money that morning and he’d not had the time to stop at a cashpoint. So he fished in Pete’s bag, calling to her as she changed Lilybet’s nappy that he was taking two twenties. She called back to him, “That’s fine, Mark. You know where to find them,” and so he had. The ticket was tucked at the back of the notes.
He’d known at once what it was. He’d seen tickets such as this one all his life. Beige, they were, printed with a row of four numbers, serrated at the top for easy removal from a companion ticket upon which would be written a name, a date, an amount, and a generic description. Neatly filed away, this would be. Easy to locate when called upon to do so.
He wanted to rip it into pieces and to toss those pieces into the rubbish. It would be so easy to do it, there in the Orbit, which was, he forced himself to admit, what he’d intended to do when he’d come up to the building’s top floor with its spectacular views of the city he had bound himself to protect and to serve, as one among many, some of whom had given their lives doing their duty.
He took the ticket from his pocket, and he felt its near weightlessness in his palm as well as the burn of its presence. He considered the possible implications attendant to where he’d found it. He thought about loyalty. He thought about obligation. He compared both of these to responsibility.
Finally he stood and took up his smartphone. He put it into his pocket, and he left the Orbit. The ticket and what it meant went with him.
WESTMINSTER
CENTRAL LONDON
When Barbara Havers arrived at New Scotland Yard from her meeting with Ross Carver, she joined Lynley and Nkata in the former’s office. It turned out that Lynley had managed to corral two DCs from one of his colleagues, in this case DI Hale. This was all done on the down low, he explained to Barbara and Nkata. Assistant Commissioner Hillier was of the belief that having two detective sergeants—Barbara and Winston—should equate to having four DCs, and four DCs should be more than enough to deal with this matter of murder. This, from a man who’d never investigated a murder in his entire career.
Lynley assigned the DCs to Nkata. They would join in the thankless and wearisome task of viewing the CCTV footage. Their objective: to isolate the images of any faces of individuals ringing for entry into the building in which Teo Bontempi had lived, as well as to note down the number plates on cars captured by CCTV on the two closest businesses across the road from that building. Had there been an ANPR camera in the immediate vicinity, this would have been the easiest of all their activities relating to the death of Teo Bontempi, as the ANPR system offered real-time data on cars and their number plates. Since they had only CCTV available, however, the number plates would be sent to Swansea for identification. It was anyone’s guess whether joy would be produced from faces seen on CCTV or number plates captured by the camera, but watching what was available from the cameras had to be done.