‘Mr Lawrence?’ Barnaby stared in amazement.
‘He does live here,’ said Jackson.
Barnaby, who had only rung the main house bell after getting no joy at the garage, said, ‘Why aren’t you at the hospital, sir?’
‘What . . . what?’
‘Haven’t you heard from Stoke Mandeville?’
‘Yes . . . that is . . .’ He turned to Jackson.
‘They said Mrs L was unconscious.’ Jackson spoke directly to Barnaby. ‘And that they’d ring if there was any change. If there is, naturally he’ll be straight down there.’
The patronising scorn with which he spoke was deeply disturbing. As was Lionel’s attitude. A dishevelled, shambolic figure covered in stains that looked appallingly like blood, he sat beaming at Jackson, nodding eagerly at everything he said.
‘Anyway,’ Barnaby made no effort to conceal his contempt, ‘it’s you I’m here to see, Jackson.’
‘Anything, Inspector. You’ve only got to ask.’
‘How are you on a bike?’
‘Never tried it. I went straight from skateboarding to TDA. Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ said Sergeant Troy. ‘We’re asking for your clothes. Top layer, underwear, socks, shoes. Contents of pockets. The lot.’
‘That’s fetishism, that is.’
‘Just get on with it.’ Barnaby seemed to have endless patience.
‘You mean . . .’ Jackson touched the edge of a beautiful leather jacket. ‘These clothes?’
‘If those are what you were wearing at three o’clock this afternoon,’ said Barnaby, ‘yes.’
‘I’ve told you earlier, I were gardening this afternoon. You don’t think I’d do a dirty job in clobber like this.’
‘So we’ll have the clobber you did do the job in,’ said Sergeant Troy. He was taking a leaf out of the chief’s book and speaking calmly and quietly. What he really wanted to do was run across the room, get his hands round the fucker’s throat and squeeze till moisture showered from his baby blues like rain.
‘It’s in the flat, Inspector.’
‘So get it,’ said Barnaby. ‘And stop calling me Inspector.’
‘No problem,’ said Jackson, strolling towards the door. ‘The cycle should be through by now.’
‘The what?’
‘The wash cycle. After I’d finished work I put everything in the machine. Like I say, it was a dirty job.’
Barnaby was twenty minutes late for his seven o’clock briefing and arrived flushed with annoyance after a wrangle with the money men on the top floor. The incident room was bristling with people lively and animated on two counts. First, the situation, which had appeared to be in grave danger of becoming totally moribund, had now taken a totally unexpected and dramatic turn. Secondly, the tape had arrived. Everyone had heard it except the chief and his bagman. Inspector Carter waited till they were seated, wound back and pressed Play.
The moment she spoke Barnaby knew who it was.
‘. . . help . . . you must help . . . me . . . someone has fallen—no, no, into the water . . . the river . . . she disappeared so fast . . . just swept . . . I ran up and down . . . all the way to the weir . . . What? Oh, Ferne Basset . . . I don’t know, half an hour, maybe less . . . For God’s sake! Does it matter when? Just come, you must come now . . .’
When asked for her name, the woman caught her breath. There was a moment of absolute silence then the receiver fell. They could all hear it, clattering and banging against the side of the box. Then she started to cry. Just over a minute later the phone was placed very gently back on the rest.
Barnaby sat very still, his eyes closed. There was no point in bemoaning the tragic twists and turns in the case that had kept Ann Lawrence from his grasp until it was too late. ‘If only’ were words outside his vocabulary. Even so, it was bloody hard.
The room was still. Someone switched the machine off. Sergeant Troy, struggling with a deep sense of unease, looked sideways at the brooding figure under the Anglepoise. He saw a profile that seemed to sag rather than relax, blue veins prominent in the wrists (why had he never noticed them before?) and a heavy droop of skin above each eyelid.
Of course the chief often looked knackered, that was nothing new. Sergeant Troy had seen him look tired and disappointed many times. Cheated. Betrayed even. But not beaten like this. And never old.
Barnaby lifted his head, heavily at first as if it was a ball of stone, then more freely. His burly shoulders, freed from tension, set themselves firmly back.
‘Well,’ he said and smiled, warming to life again before their very eyes. ‘Here’s a turn-up for the book.’