Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [190]
She reckoned she could phone him, but that wouldn’t be the same. She needed to see what was on the screen as a result of his relentless Googling, clicking, and double-clicking.
So she took herself back to New Scotland Yard. She rang him from the lobby. Meet me in the library, she told him. They had a cloak-and-dagger state of affairs going on. The guv needed to be kept in the dark.
“Barb…,” he replied.
Barbara knew exactly what it meant when Winston used that tone. But she also knew how to quell his concerns.
“The inspector needs some information,” she said. Winnie, she knew, would do anything for Lynley. “You c’n break away, can’t you? It won’t take long.”
“What’re you doing?”
“Looking up dirty pictures.”
“On a Met computer? You gone dead mad?”
“Hillier’s orders,” she said. “Really, Winnie, d’you think I actually want to do this? The inspector’s following up on something. It’ll probably turn out to be a fat old cow modelling bras and knickers.”
He said he’d meet her in the library. But he also said— and this was Winston through and through— that if he ran into the guv and she wanted to know where he was heading, he would tell her the truth.
“But you will try to avoid her, won’t you?” Barbara clarified. “The inspector’s already in trouble with her for bringing me into this. I bring you into it as well and she’s going to go for his jugular.”
That did it, as she hoped it would. He would avoid Isabelle Ardery as best he could.
He was, apparently, successful in this. When Barbara reached the Met’s library on the twelfth floor, Nkata was waiting. He confessed that he’d run into Dorothea Harriman, however, and this wasn’t good news. The departmental secretary had methods of discovery so advanced that she’d probably read Winston’s intentions about the library by looking at his shoelaces. Well, it couldn’t be helped.
They set to work. Winston’s capable fingers flew across the keys. Once he had the spelling of Alatea Fairclough’s lengthy birth name, he was unstoppable. Screen after screen flashed by. Barbara didn’t attempt to keep up. Winston didn’t explain what he was doing or where they were heading on the Web. He just glanced at things, made a decision of some sort, hit a few more keys, and off they went. He would have done fine in forensic computer work, Barbara reckoned. She was about to tell him this, when a furious “Sergeants Havers and Nkata,” told her that Dorothea Harriman had let something drop and Isabelle Ardery had managed to unearth them.
Nkata swung round from the computer. If a black man could have been said to go pale, that was what happened. Barbara herself went empty. What was it with the bloody superintendent? she wondered. Was this about Lynley and where he was and why he wasn’t performing nightly between her legs? Or was it about holding the rest of them beneath her thumbnail, like insects about to be pinned to a board?
Winston stood slowly. He looked at Barbara. She said, “I borrowed Winston for a few minutes, guv. Something I needed to look up and he’s clever with this stuff. I can do it, but it takes me forever and I’m generally hopeless when it comes to figuring where to go next.”
Isabelle looked her over. Her gaze rested most meaningfully on Barbara’s tee-shirt, which was perfectly readable since she’d flung her donkey jacket on a nearby chair. Christ died for our sins… Let’s not disappoint him clearly did not amuse.
Ardery said, “Holiday’s over, Sergeant Havers. I want you back at work and wearing something appropriate within an hour.”
Barbara said, “Due respect, guv— ”
“Don’t push this, Barbara,” Isabelle told her. “You may have six days, six weeks, or six months of holiday time due, but it seems rather obvious that you’re not on holiday. That being the case, get back to work.”
“I was only going to say— ”
“Sergeant Havers!” Isabelle barked this time. “Do it now.”
Barbara said it in a rush. “Guv, I can’t get home