“Cole's hardly the point at the moment.”
“How can you say that? He's dead, Inspector. Do we need a bigger point?”
Lynley shot her a look. Nkata spoke quickly, as if to head off a hovering confrontation. “What if Cole was sent there to kill her? And he ended up getting killed himself? Or he was trying to warn her about something? Giving her the word to expect some kind of danger.”
“Then why not just phone her?” Barbara countered. “Does it even make sense that he'd hop on his motorcycle and roar up to Derbyshire to warn her about something?” She took a step away from the door, as if getting closer to them could somehow win them to her way of thinking. “The girl had a pager, Winston. If you're going to argue that Terry trekked all the way up to the Peaks because he couldn't get her by phone, why didn't he just page her? If there was danger that she needed to know about, there was too much of a chance it would get to her before Cole himself did.”
“Which is what happened,” Nkata pointed out.
“Right. The worst happened, and both of them died. Both of them. And I say we'd be wise to start thinking of them that way: as a unit, not as a coincidence.”
“And what I say,” Lynley said meaningfully, “is that your assignment's waiting for you, Havers. Thank you for your input. I'll let you know if I want more.”
“But, sir—”
“Constable?” The way he said the word made it more than her title. At Lynley's desk Nkata stirred. He seemed to be hoping Havers would look his way.
She didn't. But the hand holding her notebook fell to her side, and assurance was gone from her voice when she went on. “Sir, I just think we need to work out exactly what Cole was doing in Derbyshire. When we've got the reason for his trip, we'll have our killer. I can feel that. Can't you?”
“Your feeling has been noted.”
Her bottom teeth chewed at her upper lip. She looked towards Nkata at last, as if hoping for direction. The other DC raised his eyebrows slightly, with a cock of his head towards the office door, perhaps telling her that the course of wisdom suggested she hot-foot it back to the computer. She didn't take his meaning to heart. She said to Lynley, “Can I follow it, sir?”
“Follow what?”
“The Cole end of things.”
“Havers, you have an assignment. And you've been told to return to it. When you've completed your work with CRIS, there's a report I want you to deliver to St. James. After you accomplish that, I'll give you another assignment.”
“But don't you see that if he went all the way to Derbyshire to meet her, there's got to be something more between them?”
Nkata said, “Barb …” like a cautious admonition.
“He had wads of dosh,” she persisted. “Wads of it, Inspector. All right. Okay. It could have come from the card business. But he also had cannabis in his flat. And a big commission that he talked about. To his mum and sister, to Mrs. Baden, to Cilia Thompson. I thought at first he was blowing smoke, but since the card boy business can't even begin to explain what he was doing in Derbyshire—”
“Havers, I'm not going to tell you again.”
“But, sir—”
“God damn it. No.” Lynley felt the ground fracturing beneath his hold on his temper. The woman's obstinacy was working on him like a match put to dry tinder. “If you're trying to suggest that someone followed him all the way to Derbyshire with the express intention of slicing open his arteries, that isn't on. Every piece of information we've come across takes us straight to the Maiden girl, and if you can't see that, then you've lost more than merely your rank as a result of your day trip on the North Sea last June.”
Her mouth clamped shut. Her lips thinned like a spinsters hopes. Nkata let out a heavy breath on the word “damn.”
“Now.” Lynley used the word to gain time. He used the time to bring his temper to heel. “If you'd like to request placement with another DI, Havers, be plain about it. There's work to do.”
Five seconds ticked by. Nkata turned from the window. He and Havers exchanged a look that appeared to mean something to them but to Lynley was inscrutable.
“I'm not requesting another placement,” Havers finally said.
“Then you know what to do.”
She shared another look with Nkata. Then she gave her glance to Lynley. “Sir,” she said politely. And she left the office.
Lynley realised that he hadn't asked her one question regarding her search through the files. But it was a fact that didn't occur to him until he'd replaced Nkata behind his desk. And then he felt that to call her back would be to give her the advantage. Which was something he didn't want to do at that moment.
“We'll take the prostitution angle first,” he told Nkata. “That could give a man in love one hell of an incentive to kill.”
“It'd be ugly for a bloke, sussing out the fact that his woman's on the game.”