“Does any of that matter?”

“Of course it matters!” He jerked the gate open. He’d forgotten about the dog. Tess raced inside and greeted Gina ecstatically. Seeing this, Gordon told himself that it had to mean something if Tess liked Gina. Tess read people well, and if she read Gina as decent and good, what else mattered?

Gina knelt to rub the dog’s head. Tess wagged her tail and bumped closer to her for more. Gina looked up at him and said, “But you went to Holland. That’s all it was. If it comes to it, you can tell the police you lied because you don’t have the paperwork. And what does it matter anyway if you don’t have the itinerary or the ticket or whatever? You went to Holland, and you can prove it some way. Hotel records. Internet searches. The person you talked to about the reeds. Really, how difficult can it actually be?” And when he didn’t answer, “Gordon, wasn’t that the case? You were in Holland, weren’t you?”

“Why d’you want to know?” He spoke explosively. It was the very last thing he intended, but he wouldn’t be pressed.

She’d risen from the dog as she spoke, and she took a step away from him now. Her gaze drifted beyond him and he swung round to see who was there, but it was only her car she was looking at and it came to him that she was thinking about leaving. She seemed somehow to master this desire because once again she spoke calmly enough, although he could see from the way her mouth formed the words that she was on the alert and prepared to run from him. He wondered how they’d got to this point, but he knew at heart that this would always be the end point he reached with a woman. It might as well have been written in stone.

She said, “Darling, what’s going on? Who’s Ringo? What letters are you talking about? Have those police come to see you again today? Or, at heart, is this just about me? Because if it is, I had no idea…I didn’t intend harm. It only seemed to me that if we’re to be together-I mean permanently-then I need to get used to the New Forest animals. Don’t I? The horses are part of your life. They’re part of the holding. I can’t avoid them forever.”

It was, if not an olive branch, then at least a fork in the road that he could take if he wanted to take it. He thought about the choices that lay ahead before he finally said, “If you wanted to get used to them, I would have helped you.”

“I know that. But then it wouldn’t have been a surprise. And that’s what I wanted it to be.” Some small tension seemed to release within her before she went on. “I’m sorry if I’ve somehow overstepped the mark. I didn’t think it would actually hurt anything. Look. Will you watch?” She took the map and unfolded it. She said, “Will you let me show you, Gordon?”

She waited for his nod. When he gave it, she turned from him. She approached the trough slowly, the map held at her side. The ponies were drinking but they raised their heads warily. They were wild, after all, and meant to remain so.

Next to him, Tess whined for attention, and he grasped her collar. Near the trough, Gina raised the map. She waved it at the ponies, and cried, “Shoo, horse!” Tess gave a sharp bark as the ponies wheeled round and trotted to the far side of the paddock.

Gina turned back to him. She said nothing. Nor did he. It was another point of choice for him, but there were so many now, so many choices and so many paths and every day there seemed to be more. One wrong move was all it would take, and he knew that better than anything.

She came back to him. When she was outside the paddock once again, he released his hold on the dog and Tess bounded to Gina. A moment for another caress and the retriever was off in the direction of the barn, loping for the shade and her water dish.

Gina stood before him. As was his habit, he was wearing his dark glasses still, and she reached up and removed them, saying, “Let me see your eyes.”

“The light,” he said, although this wasn’t quite the truth, and, “I don’t like to be without them,” which was.

She said, “Gordon, can you be easy? Will you let me help you let everything go?”

He felt tight from head to foot, held in a vice of his own creation. “I can’t.”

“You can,” she said. “Let me, my darling.”

And the miracle of Gina was that how he had been with her moments before did not matter to her. She was now incarnate. The past was the past.

She slid one hand up his chest and her arm round his neck. She drew him near her while her other hand slid down and down in order to make him hard.

“Let me help you let everything go,” she repeated, this time close and against his mouth. “Let me, darling.”

He groaned helplessly and then he chose. He closed the remaining space between them.

“HE’S CALLED YUKIO MATSUMOTO,” ISABELLE ARDERY TOLD Lynley when he walked into her office. “His brother saw the e-fit and phoned in.” She fingered through some paperwork on her desk.

Lynley said, “Hiro Matsumoto?”

She looked up. “That’s the brother. D’you know him?”

“I know of him. He’s a cellist.”

“In a London orchestra?”

“No. He’s a soloist.”

“Well known?”

“If you follow classical music.”

“Which you do, I take it?” She sounded marginally piqued, as if he’d been intent upon demonstrating knowledge that she considered both arcane and offensive. She also seemed on edge. Lynley wondered if this had to do with whatever she might be thinking about his meeting with Hillier. He wanted to tell her to have no fear on that score. While he and Hillier had reached a point of personal rapprochement after Helen’s death, he had a feeling it wouldn’t last and soon enough they’d be back on their previous footing, which was at each other’s throats.

He said, “I’ve heard him play. If, indeed, that’s the Hiro Matsumoto who phoned you.”

“I can’t think there’re two blokes with that name, and anyway, he wouldn’t come to the Yard. He said he’d speak to us at his solicitor’s office. Some backing and forthing over that and we compromised with the bar at the Milestone Hotel. Not far from the Albert Hall. Do you know it?”

“It can’t be difficult to find,” he said. “But why not at his solicitor’s office?”

“I don’t like the image of cap in hand.” She looked at her watch. “Ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the car.” She tossed him her keys.

It was actually fifteen minutes later when she joined him. In the closer confines of the car, she smelled of mint. “Right,” she said as they headed up the ramp. “Tell me, Thomas.”

He glanced at her. “What?”

“Don’t be coy. Did Hillier order you to watch me and give him reports?”

Lynley smiled to himself. “Not in so many words.”

“But it was about me, wasn’t it, this meeting with Sir David.”

At the street he braked and looked in her direction. “You know, in some situations that conclusion would smack of narcissism. The appropriate response would be, ‘The world is not all about you, guv.’”

“Isabelle,” she said.

“Guv,” he repeated.

“Oh bother, Thomas. I don’t intend to let that go. The Isabelle bit. As to the other, are you going to tell me or shall I just assume? I want loyalists working for me, by the way. You’ll have to choose sides.”

“And if I don’t wish to?”

“Out on your handsome ear. You’ll be back to traffic warden in the blink of an eye.”

“I was never a traffic warden in the first place, guv.”

“Isabelle. And you damn well know what I mean, behind those impeccable manners of yours.”

He pulled out into Broadway and considered his route. He settled on making for Birdcage Walk and weaving over to Kensington from there.

The Milestone Hotel was one of the many boutique establishments that had been springing up round town in the last few years. Fashioned from one of the distinguished redbrick mansions that faced Kensington Gardens and the palace, it was oaken, quiet, and discreet, an oasis from the bustle of High Street Kensington, not far from the hotel’s front door. It was also air-conditioned, a real blessing.