She said, “Acting superintendent only. I’ve not been given the position permanently. I’m auditioning for it, for want of a better word. Much like you did.”

“Ah.” He entered the room. He was one of those men who always managed to move with an air of assurance, looking as if they’d fit in anywhere. She reckoned it had to do with his breeding. “There would be something of a difference,” he said as he joined her at the table. “I wasn’t auditioning, just helping out. I didn’t much want the position.”

“I’ve heard that, but I’ve found it difficult to believe.”

“Why? Climbing the greasy pole never interested me.”

“Climbing the greasy pole interests everyone, Inspector.”

“Not if they don’t want the responsibility, and certainly not if they’ve a marked preference for woodwork.”

“Woodwork? What woodwork?”

He smiled faintly. “The kind one can fade into.”

He looked at her hands, and she realised she was still holding his wedding picture. She set it back on the table and said, “Your wife was lovely, Thomas. I’m sorry about her death.”

“Thank you,” he said. And then with a perfect frankness that startled Isabelle, so appealing was it, “We were completely wrong for each other, which ultimately made us right for each other. I quite adored her.”

“How lucky to love so much,” she said.

“Yes.” Like Charlie Denton, he offered her a drink, and again she demurred. Also like Charlie Denton, he gestured towards a seating area, but this one not before the fireplace. Rather, he chose two chairs on either side of a chessboard where a game was in progress. He glanced at this, frowned, and after a moment made a move with his white knight that captured one of the two black bishops. “Charlie only appears to be showing mercy,” Lynley noted. “That means he’s got something up his sleeve. What can I do for you, Superintendent? I’d like to think this is a social call, but I’m fairly sure it’s not.”

“There’s been a murder in Abney Park. Stoke Newington. It’s a cemetery, actually.”

“The young woman. Yes. I heard the report on the radio news. You’re investigating? What’s wrong with having a local team?”

“Hillier pulled strings. There’s also another cock-up with SO5. I think it’s more of the former and less of the latter, though. He wants to see how I compare with you. And with John Stewart if it comes to it.”

“I see you’ve pegged Hillier already.”

“Not a difficult task.”

“He wears a lot on his sleeve, doesn’t he?” Lynley smiled again. Isabelle noted, however, that the smile was more form than feeling. He was well guarded, as she supposed anyone would be in the same situation. She had no real cause to call upon him. He knew it and was waiting to hear the reason for her visit.

She said, “I’d like you to join the investigation, Thomas.”

“I’m on leave,” he replied.

“I realise that. But I’m hoping to persuade you to take a leave from your leave. At least for a few weeks.”

“You’re working with the team I worked with, aren’t you?”

“I am. Stewart, Hale, Nkata…”

“Barbara Havers as well?”

“Oh yes. The redoubtable Sergeant Havers is among us. Aside from her deplorable fashion sense, I’ve a feeling she’s a very good cop.”

“She is.” He steepled his fingers. His gaze went to the chessboard and he seemed to be calculating Charlie Denton’s next move although Isabelle knew it was more likely that he was calculating hers. He said, “So clearly, you don’t need my presence. Not as an investigating officer.”

“Can any murder team have enough investigating officers?”

That smile again. “Facile response,” he told her. “Good for the politics of the Met. Bad for…” He hesitated.

“A relationship with you?” She stirred in her chair and leaned towards him. “All right. I want you on the team because I want to be able to say your name without a reverential hush falling over the incident room and this is the likeliest route to get me there. Also because I want to get on some sort of normal footing with everyone at the Met, and that’s because I very much want this job.”

“You’re forthright enough when your back’s against the wall.”

“And I always will be. With you and with everyone else. Before my back’s against the wall.”

“That’ll play good and bad for you. Good for the team you’re directing, bad for your relationship with Hillier. He prefers kid gloves to the iron fist. Or have you already discovered that?”

“It seems to me the crucial association at the Yard is between myself and the team and not between myself and David Hillier. And as for the team, they want you back. They want you as their superintendent-well, all except John Stewart, but you’re not to take that personally-”

“Nor would I.” He smiled, genuinely this time.

“Yes. Good. All right. They want you back and the only thing that will satisfy them is to know you don’t want to be what they want you to be and you’re quite happy with someone else in the position.”

“With you in the position.”

“I think you and I can work together, Thomas. I think we can work very well together if it comes down to it.”

He seemed to study her, and she wondered what he was reading on her face. A moment passed and she let it hang there and extend, thinking how completely quiet it was in the house and wondering if it had been so when his wife was living. They’d had no children, she recalled. They had been married less than a year at her death.

“How are your boys?” he asked her abruptly.

It was a disarming question and likely intended to be so. She wondered how on earth he knew that she had two sons.

He said as if she had spoken, “You were on your mobile one day when we met in Kent. Your former husband…you were having a discussion with him…you mentioned the boys.”

“They’re near Maidstone, with him as it happens.”

“That can’t be a happy arrangement for you.”

“It’s neither happy nor unhappy. There was simply no point moving them to London if I’ve no idea whether this job is going to be permanent.” She realised after she’d spoken that the words had come out more stiffly than she’d intended. She tried to ameliorate the effect by adding, “I miss them, naturally. But their summer holidays are probably better spent with their father in the countryside than with me here in London. They can run a bit wild there. Here, that would be out of the question.”

“And if you’re appointed permanently to this job?”

He had a way of watching one when he asked a question. He could probably sort out truth from lie quickly enough, but in this particular case there was simply no way he would be able to suss out the reason for the lie she was about to tell him. “Then, of course, they would join me in London. But I don’t like to make premature moves. That’s never seemed wise, and in this case it would be completely foolhardy.”

“Like counting your chickens.”

“Exactly like,” she said. “So that’s another reason, Inspector-”

“We’d got to Thomas.”

“Thomas,” she said. “All right. I’m laying out the truth for you. I want you to be involved in this case because I want to improve my chances for a permanent assignment here. With you working with me, it will set minds at rest and put an end to speculation at the same time as it will demonstrate a form of cooperation that will act as…” She looked for the appropriate term.

He supplied it. “As an endorsement of you.”

“Yes. If we work together well, it will do that. As I said, I’ll never lie to you.”

“And my part would be played out at your side? Is that how you see it?”

“For the present, yes. It may alter. We’d take it as it comes.”

He was quiet, but she could tell he was considering her request: setting it against his life as he was currently living it, evaluating how things would alter and whether that alteration would make a difference to whatever he was coping with now.