“You can. Simple as anything. Three little words. And they won't kill you. Words, that is. Words don't kill. But I fancy you know that already, don't you?”
She couldn't look away. She wanted to, she was desperate to, and yet she couldn't.
The words came from her at last without volition, as if he drew them from her and she was powerless to stop him. “All right. I want him.”
Jeremy smiled. “Don't tell me anything else.”
Barbara Havers felt as if someone had planted thorns beneath her eyelids. It was her fourth hour into her adventure with the SO 10 files on CRIS, and she was mightily regretting her promise to Nkata that she'd work nights and dawns to fulfill her obligations to the assignment given her by Inspector Lynley. She wasn't getting anywhere with this rubbish, aside from becoming aware of her potential for arriving at destinations marked Damaged Retinas and Imminent Hypermetropia.
Following their recce of Terry Cole's flat, Nkata and Barbara had driven to the Yard. There, after transferring the cannabis and the box of postcards to the front seat of Barbara's Mini—to be dealt with later—they had parted ways. Nkata drove off to return the inspector's Bentley to his home in Belgravia. Barbara reluctantly trudged off to keep her promise to Nkata to do her duty in the Crime Recording Information System.
She'd come up with sod bloody all so far, which hardly surprised her. As far as she was concerned, after the discovery of the postcards in the Battersea flat, neon arrows had begun pointing to Terry Cole as the killer's main target—not to Nicola Maiden—and unless there was some manner in which she could tie Cole to Andy Maiden's time in SO 10, this business of delving through files was a waste of her time. Only a name leaping off the screen, drooling blood, and screaming “I'm the one, baby!” was going to convince her otherwise.
Still, she'd known it was in her best interest to comply with Lynley's orders. So for the fifteen names he had given her, she'd read the cases and organised each into arbitrary—albeit useless—categories that she'd called Drugs, Potential for Blackmail, Prostitution, Organised Crime, and Murder for Hire. Dutifully, she'd placed the names from Lynley's list into these categories and she'd added the prisons to which each malefactor had been sent to while away a few years at Her Majesty's pleasure. She'd tracked down terms of imprisonment and added those to the mix, and she'd begun the process of determining which of the convicts were now on parole. Locating the former lags, however, was something which she knew would be impossible at the time. So feeling that she'd been virtuous, obedient, and responsive to her superior's order to return to CRIS, she decided, at half past twelve, to call it a night.
Traffic was light, so she was home by one. With Terry on her mind and a motive for his murder to be fished from the evidence, she scooped up the box of postcards and carried them through the dark garden to her digs.
Inside, her phone was blinking its message light when she shouldered open the door of her bungalow and heaved the cardboard box onto the table. She switched on a lamp, gathered up a selection of the postcards—which were bundled together with elastic bands—and crossed the room to listen to her calls.
The first was Mrs. Flo, telling her that “Mum looked right at your picture this morning, Barbie dear, and she said your name. Bright and clear as ever was. She said, ‘This is my Barbie.’ What do you think of that? I wanted you to know because … Well, it is distressing when she's got herself into one of her muddles, isn't it? And that silly business about … what was she called? Lilly O'Ryan? Well, no matter. She's been right as rain all day. So don't you worry that she's forgotten you, because she hasn't. All right, dear? I hope you're well. See you soon. Bye now, Barbie. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.”
Praise God for small favours, Barbara thought. A day of lucidity weighed against weeks of dementia was little enough to celebrate, but she'd learned to take her triumphs in teaspoonfuls when it came to her mother's fleeting moments of coherence.