When he’d completed his recitation, Deborah told him about Monifa Bankole, Tani, the passports, and the women’s shelter. His reply was, “I’m glad of it. Winston will want to know.”
Then he was silent. He was looking at the flagstones. Slowly, he blew out a breath. Deborah knew him well enough—as did Simon—to understand there was more.
Simon was the one to say, “None of this appears to unburden you.”
“Except it’s not the investigation, is it, Tommy?” Deborah said.
“I think I may have lost my way,” he admitted.
“Daidre,” Deborah said. And when he acknowledged this with a tilting of his head, she went on with, “Has something happened? Well, how stupid of me. Obviously something’s happened. Can we help?”
“She’s moved her sister to London to share her flat. I find I’m at a loss. It’s the oddest thing.”
“That she’s moved her sister to London?” Deborah asked.
“No. That I can successfully run a murder investigation to its conclusion but I’m utterly incapable of reading between the lines when a woman is trying to tell me something.”
“Are you meant to read between lines?”
Simon said before Lynley could reply, “You’re not alone in that, Tommy. I’m hopeless as well. Deborah will be only too happy to attest to that fact.”
Lynley chuckled wearily. “It seems I’m Pygmalion without an Aphrodite to pray to. When I’m in the midst of things, I don’t see that. It’s only when they’re at an end that I’m able to take a few steps away and realise what I’ve been trying to do. I don’t intend to—”
“We never do,” Simon added.
“—but it happens to me nonetheless. I think in terms of someone—Daidre in this case—being what I want, what I need, what will fill the . . . the chasm. But then some part of me that, as of now, I can’t control begins to engage in a game of here-is-what-will-make-you-perfect-for-me. That’s what I’ve been doing to her. She’s made it clear and I can’t blame her for how she feels.”
“How does she feel?” Deborah asked.
“At her wits’ end. Is that a feeling?”
“Perhaps she needs time,” Simon said.
“I can tell myself that,” Lynley replied. “If nothing else, it’s an excellent way to avoid examining what I’ve been up to. I’ve gone badly wrong and it’s not the first time. God knows I did it to Helen as well.”
At her name, they fell silent. She was there, in the quiet: the terrible darkness—the infinite cavern—that her death had brought into his life. All of them had loved her. All of them missed her. But only Tommy had to bear the weight of the decision he’d been forced to make to let her go.
Deborah said, “And Helen always forgave you, didn’t she?”
“She did. Yes. She always did.”
“Daidre will as well, Tommy. But I think there’s something you’ve lost besides Helen and until you recapture it, the women you love will float away.”
“What’s that, then?” he asked her.
It was Simon who replied. “I daresay it’s your biggest lesson when it comes to . . . what did you call it? . . . going badly wrong. You have to learn to forgive yourself.”
CHALK FARM
NORTH LONDON
Barbara’s conversation with Dorothea had taken longer than she thought it would do, but it was nonetheless both crucial and necessary, if not completely satisfying. She liked Dee. Indeed, she always enjoyed the time she spent with her and, it had to be admitted, she actually found pleasure in their tap-dancing lessons, which was the last outcome she’d ever expected. Still, there was something that had to be said between them.
Before she left the Yard, she cornered the department’s secretary in the ladies’， engaged in repairing her makeup before she set off on a mercy date—as she named it—with a bloke who had nearly toppled her as she came out of Westminster tube station. In a film, Dorothea told her, it would have been called “a ‘meet-cute’。” In reality, she’d badly scuffed her stilettos, cried “Oh no! Watch where you’re going, you bloody fool,” and this had apparently endeared her to him. He would not be brushed off. He insisted upon drinks. He assured her that he was not a serial killer, that he was a bloke who had only honourable intentions “towards any lass,” and since he bore a startling resemblance to one of the royal princes—“when he had all of his hair”—she finally decided to have a go.