No. She was getting ahead of herself. She was mixing too many possibilities into the brew. She was going to give herself a headache, and she was going to turn cloudy water to mud. She needed to think, to get out in the air, to have a brisk walk in Regent's Park so she could sort out everything that was piling up in—Barbara's thoughts stopped their tumble as her gaze settled on the collection of rubbish outside King-Ryder's door. She hadn't given it any notice on the way in, but now she did. They'd talked about artists, about not knowing much about modern art. And what she saw outside King-Ryder's door intruded upon her notice because they'd had that conversation.
A canvas was among the rubbish that King-Ryder was discarding. It leaned with its face against the wall, rubbish bags piled up against it.
Barbara looked left and right. She made the decision to see what went for art—discarded or otherwise—to Matthew King-Ryder. She eased the rubbish bags away from the canvas and eased the canvas away from the wall.
“Bloody hell,” she whispered when she saw what she'd uncovered: a grotesque blonde woman, her huge mouth gaping open to display a cat defecating on her tongue.
Barbara had seen a dozen or more variations on this questionable theme already. She'd seen and talked to the artist as well: Cilia Thompson, who'd announced proudly that she'd sold a painting “to a gent with good taste only last week.”
Barbara examined the closed door to Matthew King-Ryder's digs. A chill ran through her. A killer lived within, she decided. And she determined then and there that she was just the rozzer who would bring him to justice.
Lynley found Barbara Havers’ report on his desk when he arrived at the Yard at ten o'clock that morning. He read the summaries and conclusions she'd developed regarding the files she'd explored on CRIS, and he took note of the implication of grievance which coloured her choice of words. At the moment, though, he couldn't afford to give weight to her thinly veiled criticism of the orders he'd given her. The morning had already been a wrenching one, and he had other more pressing matters on his mind than a DCs unhappiness with her assignment.
He'd taken a detour from his normal route from Eaton Terrace to Victoria Street, dropping down to Fulham, where he checked on Vi Nevin's condition at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. The young woman's doctors had granted him quarter of an hour with her. But she'd been deeply sedated and during that time she hadn't stirred. A plastic surgeon had arrived to examine her, which necessitated the removal of her bandages, and she slept through this activity as well.
In the midst of the surgeon's attention to her friend, Shelly Platt arrived at the hospital in a linen trouser suit and sandals, her orange hair hidden beneath a wide-brimmed raffia hat and her eyes concealed by a pair of sunglasses. With the excuse of offering sympathy upon the death of Nicola Maiden, she'd been phoning Vi repeatedly since Lynley's visit to her Earl's Court bed-sit. Unable to raise her, she'd finally gone to Rostrevor Road, where the attack on her old flatmate was the talk of the neighbourhood.
“I got t'see her!” was what Lynley heard from within as the plastic surgeon studied the ruin of Vi's face and talked quietly about bones shattered like glass, skin grafts, and scar tissue with the disinterested air of a man more suited to medical research than to the treatment of patients. Recognising the glottal stops if not the voice itself coming from the corridor, Lynley excused himself and went out to find Shelly Platt trying to elbow past the police guard and a nurse from the floor.
“He did it, di'n't he?” Shelly Platt cried when she saw him. “I tol’ him and he found her, di'n't he? He did. And he got her just like I thought he would. And now he'll come for me if he knows I tol’ you the truth about his business. How is she? How's Vi?? Lemme see her. I got to.”
Her voice rose towards hysteria, and the nurse asked if “this creature” was a relative of the patient. Shelly took off her sunglasses, exposing bloodshot eyes that she rolled towards Lynley in mute appeal.
“She's her sister,” Lynley informed the nurse, guiding Shelly by the arm. “She's allowed inside.”
Within, Shelly threw herself at the bed, where another nurse was replacing Vi Nevin's bandages as the plastic surgeon washed his hands at the basin and then departed. Shelly began to cry. She said, “Vi. Vi. Vi, baby doll. I di'n't mean none of it. Not one single word,” and she took up the limp hand that lay on the bedclothes and pressed it to her heart as if the beating within her bony chest would somehow confirm what she was saying. “Wha's the matter with her?” she demanded of the nurse. “Wha've you done to her?”
“She's sedated, miss.” The nurse pursed her lips in disapproval as she put the final bit of tape on the gauze.
“But she'll be all right, won’ she?”
Lynley glanced at the nurse before saying, “She'll recover.”
“Bu’ her face. All them bandages. Wha's he done t'her face?”
“That's where he beat her.”
Shelly Platt wept harder. “No. No. Oh Vi. I'm that sorry. I di'n't mean no real harm on you. I was cheesed off, tha's all. You know how I am.”