Lynley glanced at Ardery. She had her hands clasped round her vodka and tonic, and her fingers tapped against the cool sides of the glass. She’d drunk most of it during their conversation, and now she drained the rest. She said, “I acknowledge that we’ll take care. You’ll be there. A specialist will be there. The Pope, the Home Secretary, and the Prime Minister will be there if you want it. You’ll have as many witnesses as you like if that’s your pleasure, but if he admits to murder, he’s going to be charged.”

“He’s seriously ill,” the solicitor said.

“And we have a legal system that will make that determination.”

There was a little silence as the cellist and his solicitor thought this over. Ardery leaned back in her chair. Lynley waited for her to remind them that they were at the moment sheltering someone who could be a material witness to a crime or, worse, the actual killer. But she didn’t play that card and she looked as if she knew she didn’t need to.

Instead she said, “There’s a simple reality you must face, Mr. Matsumoto. If you don’t give your brother up to us, someone else will eventually.”

Another silence before Hiro Matsumoto spoke. He looked so pained that Lynley felt a powerful surge of compassion for him, a surge so strong that he wondered if he was actually meant to do police work at this juncture in his life. The whole point was to manoeuvre people into a corner. Ardery was perfectly willing to do this, he could see, but he thought he himself might not have the stomach for it any longer.

Matsumoto said quietly, “He is in Covent Garden. He plays his violin there, as a busker, for money.” He dropped his head, as if the admission were somehow a humiliation, as perhaps it was.

Ardery rose. She said, “Thank you. I have no intention of frightening him.” And to his solicitor she went on with, “When we have him in custody, I’ll ring you and tell you where he is. We won’t speak to him until you’re there. Contact whatever mental health expert you need and bring her along.”

“I will want to see him,” Hiro Matsumoto said.

“Of course. We’ll arrange that as well.” She gave him a nod and indicated to Lynley that they needed to be off.

Lynley said to the cellist, “You’ve done the right thing, Mr. Matsumoto. I know it wasn’t easy.” He found he wanted to go on, forging a fellowship with the man because his own brother had in the past been deeply troubled. But Peter Lynley’s difficulties with both alcohol and drugs were insignificant compared to this, so he said nothing else.

ISABELLE MADE THE phone call once they were on the pavement in front of the hotel, heading back to her car. They had their man, she told DI Hale brusquely. Get over to Covent Garden at once and take a team with you. Five blokes should do it. Fan out when you get there, look for a middle-aged Japanese man sawing away on a violin. Box him in. Do not approach him. He’s barking mad and just as dangerous. Phone me with his exact location. I’m on my way.

She snapped her phone off and turned to Lynley. “Let’s pick up the miserable shite.”

He looked surprised or taken aback or something that she couldn’t quite make out. She said, “This bloke is very likely a killer, Thomas.”

“Right, guv.” He spoke politely.

She said, “What? I’ll give them their bloody psycho-whatever-they-want-kind-of-expert and I’ll not say a word to him till Ms. Stiletto Heels is sitting in his lap, if necessary. But I’m not about to risk his getting away from us when we’ve finally got him.”

“You’ll get no objection from me.”

But she knew he objected to something and she pressed him. “I daresay you have a better approach?”

“Not at all.”

“God damn it, Thomas, if we’re to work together, you’re going to be frank with me even if I have to twist your arm.”

They were at the car and he hesitated before unlocking his door. At least, she thought, she’d apparently cured him of opening her door for her. He said, “You’re certain about that?”

“Well, of course I’m certain. Why else would I say it? I want to know what you think and I want to know it when you think it.”

“Have you a drinking problem, then?” he asked her.

It wasn’t what she’d been expecting, but she knew she should have been prepared. The fact that she hadn’t been caused her to explode. “I had a bloody vodka and tonic. Do I look like I’m staggering drunk to you?”

“And before the vodka and tonic?” he asked. “Guv, I’m not a fool. I expect you’ve got it in your bag. Likely it’s vodka because most people think that has no odour. You’ve got breath mints as well, or chewing gum, or whatever else you use to hide the smell.”

She said in automatic response, gone icy to her fingertips, “You’re out of order, Inspector Lynley. You are so bloody far out of order that I ought to send you packing to walk a patch in South London.”

“I can understand that.”

She wanted to strike him. It came to her that it didn’t matter to him and that likely it had never mattered to him: what threats were used against him to control him as a cop. He was unlike the rest because he didn’t need the job, so if they took it from him or threatened to take it from him or acted in a way that met with his aristocratic displeasure, he could walk away and do whatever it was that earls of the bloody realm did if they were not otherwise gainfully employed. And this was more than maddening, she realised. It made him a loose cannon, with loyalties to no one.

“Get in the car,” she told him. “We’re going to Covent Garden. Now.”

They drove in absolute silence, along the south side of Kensington Gardens and then Hyde Park. And she wanted a drink. The vodka and tonic had been a typical hotel bar vodka and tonic: a meagre finger and a half of vodka in the glass with the tonic provided alongside in a bottle so she could make the drink as strong or as weak as she wished. Because of Lynley’s presence, she’d used the entire tonic, and now she regretted it. She bloody, sodding regretted it. She also went over her movements feverishly, in her mind. She’d been perfectly careful. He was making a guess and waiting to see what she would do about it.

She said to him, “I’m going to forget we had that exchange on the pavement, Thomas.”

He said, “Guv,” in a tone that telegraphed as you wish.

She wanted to go further. She wanted to know what, if anything, he would say to Hillier. But to make any additional mention of the topic could give it a credence she couldn’t afford.

They were attempting to negotiate Piccadilly Circus when her mobile rang. She barked, “Ardery,” into it, and Philip Hale spoke. They’d found the Japanese bloke with the violin, he told her. “Down a set of stairs in a courtyard just beyond-”

“The cigar shop,” Isabelle said, for she recalled that she and Lynley had seen the damn busker themselves. He’d been playing to the accompaniment of a boom box. With long salt-and-pepper hair, he’d been wearing a tuxedo and standing in the lower courtyard in front of a wine bar. Why the hell hadn’t she remembered the man?

That was the bloke, Philip Hale said when she’d described him.

“Have you uniforms with you?”

No. Everyone was in plainclothes. Two blokes were sitting at tables in the courtyard and the rest were-

Hale broke off. Then he said, “Damn. Guv, he’s packing up. He’s shut off the boom box and he’s putting the violin…You want us to nab him?”

“No. No. Do not approach him. Follow him, but keep everyone away. And keep well back. Do not let him see he’s being tailed, all right?”

“Right.”

“Good man, Philip. We’ll be there presently.” She said to Lynley, “He’s on the move. Get us there, for God’s sake.”

She could feel her nerves jangling to the tips of her toes. He, on the other hand, was perfectly calm. But once they made it through Piccadilly Circus, a tailback of taxis seemed to stretch into infinity.