Read Online With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George - Free Book Online

simultaneously. He’d be pleased as punch to announce to the press that thirty-plus officers were working the case. But he’d hate like the dickens having to authorise the overtime for them all.
    Such, however, was Hillier’s lot in life. Such were the disadvantages of ambition.
    BY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Lynley had in hand from SO7 the complete autopsies of the first three victims and the preliminary postmortem information from the most recent killing. He combined this with an extra set of photographs from all four of the murder scenes. He packed this material into his briefcase, went for his car, and set out from Victoria Street in a light mist that was blowing in from the river. Traffic was stop and start, but when he finally got over to Millbank, he had the river to contemplate…or what he could see of it, which was mostly the wall built along the pavement and the old iron street lamps that cast a glow against the gloom.
    He veered to the right when he came to Cheyne Walk, where he found a place to park that was being vacated by someone leaving the King’s Head and Eight Bells at the bottom of Cheyne Row. It was a short distance from there to the house at the corner of this street and Lordship Place. Less than five minutes found him ringing the bell.
    He anticipated the barking of one very protective long-haired dachshund, but that didn’t happen. Instead the door was opened by a tallish red-haired woman with a pair of scissors in one hand and a roll of yellow ribbon in the other. Her face brightened when she saw him.
    “Tommy!” Deborah St. James said. “Perfect timing. I need help and here you are.”
    Lynley entered the house, shedding his overcoat and setting his briefcase by the umbrella stand. “What sort of help? Where’s Simon?”
    “I’ve already roped him into something else. And one can only ask husbands for so much assistance before they run off with the local floozy from the pub.”
    Lynley smiled. “What am I to do?”
    “Come with me.” She led him to the dining room, where an old bronze chandelier was lit over a table spread with wrapping materials. A large package there was already brightly wrapped, and Deborah seemed to have been caught in the midst of designing a complicated bow for it.
    “This,” Lynley said, “is not going to be my métier.”
    “Oh, the plans are laid,” Deborah told him. “You’re only going to need to hand over the Sellotape and press where indicated. It shouldn’t defeat you. I’ve started with the yellow, but there’s green and white to add.”
    “Those are the colours Helen’s chosen…” Lynley stopped. “Is this for her? For us? By any chance?”
    “How vulgar, Tommy,” Deborah said. “I never saw you as someone who’d hint round for a present. Here, take this ribbon. I’m going to need three lengths of forty inches each. How’s work, by the way? Is that why you’ve come? I expect you’re wanting Simon.”
    “Peach will do. Where is she?”
    “Walkies,” Deborah said. “Rather reluctant walkies because of the weather. Dad’s taken her, but I expect they’re battling it out somewhere to see who’s going to walk and who’s going to get carried. You didn’t see them?”
    “Not a sign.”
    “Peach has probably won, then. I expect they’ve gone into the pub.”
    Lynley watched as Deborah coiled the lengths of ribbon together. She was concentrating on her design, which gave him a chance to concentrate on her, his onetime lover, the woman who’d been meant to be his wife. She’d found herself face-to-face with a killer recently, and she still hadn’t healed completely from the stitches that had patched up her face. A scar from the sutures ran along her jaw and, typical of Deborah—who’d always been a woman almost completely devoid of ordinary vanity—she was doing nothing to hide it.
    She looked up and caught him observing her. “What?” she said.
    “I love you,” he told her frankly. “Differently from before. But there it