In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 8

Barbara Havers was relieved to be able to leave the claustrophobic confines of the Met headquarters. Once Winston Nkata requested that she get onto the Battersea address of Terry Cole, she wasted little time in dashing for her car. She took the most direct route possible, heading for the river, where she followed the Embankment to Albert Bridge. On the south bank of the Thames she consulted her battered A to Z until she found the street she was looking for sandwiched between the two Bridge Roads: Battersea and Albert.

Terry Cole's digs were in a forest-green brick-and-bay-windowed conversion set among other similar conversions in Anhalt Road. A line of buzzers indicated that there were four flats in the building, and Barbara pressed the one that had Cole/Thompson taped next to it. She waited, glancing round at the neighbourhood. Terraced houses, some in better condition than others, were fronted by gardens. Some were neatly planted, some were overgrown, and more than one appeared to be used as a dumping place for everything from rusting cookers to screenless televisions.

There was no answer from the flat. Barbara frowned and descended the steps. She blew out a breath, not wanting to face another few hours at the computer, and considered her options as she studied the house. A spate of breaking and entering definitely wasn't going to cut the mustard, and she was thinking about a retreat to the nearest pub for a heaped plate of bangers and mash, when she noticed a curtain flick in the bay window of the ground floor flat. She decided to have a go at the neighbours.

Next to flat number one was the name Baden. Barbara pressed the buzzer. A tremulous voice came through the speaker almost at once in reply, as if the person in the corresponding flat had been preparing for a visit from the law. Once Barbara identified herself-and cooperatively held up her warrant card so that it could be observed at a distance through the ground floor window-the lock on the door was released. She pushed it open and found herself inside a vestibule that was the approximate size of a chess board. It was chess board in decoration as well: red and black tiles across which innumerable footprints were smudged.

Flat number one opened to the right of the vestibule. When Barbara knocked, she found that she had to go through the procedure all over again. She held her warrant card to the peep hole in the door this time. When it had been studied to the occupant's satisfaction, two dead bolts and a safety chain were released and the door opened. Barbara was faced with an elderly woman who said apologetically, “One can't be too careful these days, I'm afraid.”

She introduced herself as Mrs. Geoffrey Baden and quickly brought Barbara up to speed on the particulars of her life without being asked. Twenty years a widow, she had no children, just her birds-finches, whose enormous cage occupied one complete side of the sitting room-and her music, the source of which seemed to be a piano that occupied the other side. This was an antique upright and its top held several dozen framed pictures of the late Geoffrey while its music rack displayed enough hand-scored sheet music to suggest that Mrs. Baden might be channelling Mozart in her free afternoons.

Mrs. Baden herself suffered from tremors. They affected her hands and her head, which shook subtly but unceasingly throughout her interview with Barbara.

“No place to sit in here, I'm afraid,” Mrs. Baden said cheerfully when she was done sharing her personal particulars. “Come through to the kitchen. I've a fresh lemon cake, if you'd like a piece.”

She would have loved a piece, Barbara told her. But the truth was that she was looking for Cilia Thompson. Did Mrs. Baden know where Cilia might be found?

“I expect she's working in the studio,” Mrs. Baden replied, confiding, “They're artists, the two of them. Cilia and Terry. Lovely young people, if you don't mind their appearance, which I myself never do. Times change, don't they? And one must change with them.”

She seemed such a gentle, kind soul that Barbara was reluctant to tell her of Terry's death immediately. So she said, “You must know the two of them well.”

“Cilia's rather shy. But Terry's a dear boy, always popping round with the little gift or surprise. He calls me his adopted Gran, does Terry. He sometimes does the odd job when I need him. And he always stops to ask if I want something from the grocery when he pops out for his shopping. Neighbours like that are hard to come by these days. Don't you agree?”

“I'm lucky that way myself,” Barbara said, warming to the old woman. “I've good neighbours as well.”

“Then count yourself among the fortunate, my dear. May I say what a lovely colour your eyes are, by the way? One doesn't see such a pretty blue that often. I expect you've some Scandinavian in your blood. Ancestrally, of course.”

Mrs. Baden plugged in the electric kettle and pulled a packet of tea from a cupboard shelf. She spooned leaves into a faded porcelain pot and brought two mismatched mugs to the kitchen table. Her tremors were so bad that Barbara couldn't imagine the woman wielding a kettle of boiling water, and a few minutes later, when the kettle clicked off, she hastened to make the tea herself. For this activity Mrs. Baden thanked her graciously. She said, “One keeps hearing that young people have become virtual savages these days, but that's not been my experience.” She used a wooden spoon to stir the tea leaves round in the water, then she looked up and said quietly, “I do hope dear Terry's not in some sort of trouble,” as if she'd expected the police to come calling for quite some time, despite her earlier words.

“I'm awfully sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Baden,” Barbara said, “but Terry's dead. He was murdered in Derbyshire several nights ago. That's why I'd like to talk to Cilia.”

Mrs. Baden mouthed the word dead in some confusion. Her expression became stunned as the full implication behind that word made its way past her defences against it. “Oh my goodness,” she said.

“That lovely young boy. But certainly you can't think that Cilia-or even that unfortunate boyfriend of hers-had anything to do with it.”

Barbara filed away the information about the unfortunate boyfriend for future reference. No, she told Mrs. Baden, she actually wanted Cilia to let her inside the flat. She needed a look round the place to see if there was anything that might give the police a clue why Terry Cole had been murdered. “He was one of two people killed, you see,” Barbara told her. “The other was a woman-Nicola Maiden, she was called-and it may well be that the killings happened because of her. But in any event, we're trying to establish whether Terry and the woman even knew each other.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Baden said. “I understand completely. You have a job to do, as unpleasant as it must certainly be.” She went on to tell Barbara that Cilia Thompson would be in the railway arches that fronted Portslade Road. That was where she, Terry, and two other artists pooled their resources to have a studio. Mrs. Baden couldn't give Barbara the exact address, but she didn't think the studio would be difficult to find. “One can always ask along the street in the other arches. I expect the proprietors would know whom you're talking about. As to the flat itself…” Mrs. Baden used a pair of silver tea tongs-their plate worn through in spots-to capture a sugar cube. It took her three tries because of the shaking, but she smiled with real pleasure when she managed it and she dropped the cube into her tea with a satisfied plop. “I do have a key, of course.”

Brilliant, Barbara thought, and she mentally rubbed her hands together in anticipation.

“It's my house, you see.” Mrs. Baden went on to explain that when Mr. Baden had passed on, she'd had the house converted as an investment, to provide her with income in her twilight years. “I let out three flats and live in the fourth myself.” And she added that she always insisted on keeping a key to each of the flats. She'd long ago discovered that the potential of a landlord's surprise visit always kept her tenants on their toes. “However,” she concluded, sinking Barbara's ship with a nonetheless fond smile, “I can't let you in.”

“You can't.”

“I'm afraid it would be such a violation of trust, you see, to let you in without Cilia's permission. I do hope you understand.”

Damn, Barbara thought. She asked when Cilia Thompson generally returned.

Oh, they never kept regular hours, Mrs. Baden told her. She'd be wisest to run by Portslade Road and make an appointment with Cilia while she was painting. And by the way, could Mrs. Baden talk the constable into a slice of lemon cake before she left? One loved to bake but only if one could share one's creations with someone else.

It would balance the chocolate donut nicely, Barbara decided. And since immediate access to Terry Cole's flat was going to be denied her, she thought she might as well continue towards her personal dietary goal of ingesting nothing but sugar and fat for twenty-four hours.

Mrs. Baden beamed at Barbara's acceptance and sliced a wedge of cake suitable for a Viking warrior. As Barbara fell upon it, the older woman made the sort of pleasant chitchat at which her generation so excelled. Buried within it was the occasional nugget about Terry Cole.

Thus, Barbara gleaned that Terry was a dreamer, not entirely practical-to Mrs. Baden's way of thinking-about his future success as an artist. He wanted to open a gallery. But, my dear, the thought that someone might actually want to buy his pieces… or even those done by his colleagues… But then, what did an old woman know about modern art?

“His mother said that he was working on a big commission,” Barbara noted. “Had he mentioned it to you?”

“My dear, he did talk about a big project…”

“But there wasn't one?”

“I'm not quite saying that.” Mrs. Baden made the point hastily. “I think, in his mind, there truly was.”

“In his mind. You're saying that he was delusional?”

“Perhaps he was… just a little overly enthusiastic.” Mrs. Baden gently pressed the tines of her fork against a few cake crumbs and looked reflective. Her next words were hesitant. “It does seem like speaking ill of the dead…”

Barbara sought to reassure her. “You liked him. That's obvious. And I expect you want to help.”

“He was such a good boy. He couldn't do enough to help those he cared for. You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who'll tell you differently.”

“But…?” Barbara tried to sound encouraging.

“But sometimes when a young man wants something so desperately, he cuts corners, doesn't he? He tries to find a shorter and more direct route to get to his destination.”

Barbara seized on the final word. “You're talking about the gallery he wanted to open?”

“Gallery? No. I'm talking about stature,” Mrs. Baden replied. “He wanted to be someone, my dear. More than money and goods, he wanted a sense of having a place in the world. But one's place in the world has to be earned, hasn't it, Constable?” She set her fork by her plate and dropped her hands into her lap. “I feel terrible saying such things about him. He was, you see, so good to me. He gave me three new finches for my birthday. And only this week, some nice piano music… Flowers on Mothering Sunday as well. So considerate a boy. So generous, really. And helpful. He was so truly helpful when I needed someone to tighten a screw or change a bulb…”

“I understand,” Barbara reassured her.

“It's just that I want you to know he had more than one side to him. And this other part-the part in a hurry-well, he would have outgrown that as he learned more about life, wouldn't he?”

“Without a doubt,” Barbara said.

Unless, of course, his hunger for stature was directly related to his death on the moor.

Upon leaving Broughton Manor, Lynley and Hanken stopped in Bakewell for a quick pub meal not far from the centre of town. There, over a filled jacket potato (Hanken) and a ploughman's lunch (Lynley), they sorted through their facts. Hanken had brought with him a map of the Peak District, which he used to make his major point.

“We're looking for a killer who knows the area,” he said, indicating the map with his fork. “And you can't tell me some lag fresh out of Dartmoor prison took a crash course in trek-and-track in order to get revenge on Andy Maiden by killing his daughter. That kite won't fly.”

Lynley studied the map dutifully. He saw that hiking trails snaked all across the district, and destinations of interest dotted it. It looked like a paradise for a hiker or camper, but a huge paradise in which the unwary or unprepared walker could easily become lost. He also noted that Broughton Manor was of enough historical significance to be indicated as a point of interest just south of Bakewell and that the manor's land abutted a forest which itself gave way to a moor. Both across the moor and through the forest were a series of footpaths for the hiker, which led Lynley to say, “Julian Britton's family have been here for a few hundred years. I expect he's familiar with the area.”

“As is Andy Maiden,” Hanken countered. “And he has the look of someone who's been out and about on the land a fair amount. I wouldn't be surprised to learn his daughter inherited her penchant for trekking from him. And he found that car. All night out scouring the whole blasted White Peak, and he managed to find that bloody car.”

“Where was it, exactly?”

Hanken used his fork again. Between the hamlet of Sparrowpit and Winnat's Pass stretched a road that formed the northwest boundary of Calder Moor. A short distance from the track leading southeast towards Perryfoot, the car had been parked behind a dry-stone wall.

Lynley said, “All right. I see that it was a lucky shot-”

Hanken snorted. “Right.”

“-to find the car. But lucky shots happen. And he knew her haunts.”

“He did indeed. He knew them well enough to track her down, do her in, and dash back home with no one the wiser.”

“With what motive, Peter? You can't hang guilt on the man on the strength of his keeping information from his wife. That kite won't fly either. And if he's the killer, who's his accomplice?”

“Let's get back to his SO 10 years,” Hanken said meaningfully. “What old lag fresh out of Newgate would say no to making a few quid on the side, especially if Maiden made him the offer and guided him personally out to the site?” He forked up a mound of potato and prawns and shoveled them into his mouth, saying, “It could have happened that way.”

“Not unless Andy Maiden has undergone a transformation in personality since moving here. Peter, he was one of the best.”

“Don't like him too much,” Hanken warned. “He may have called in markers to get you sent up here for one very good reason.”

“I could take offence at that.”

“My pleasure.” Hanken smiled. “I've a fancy for seeing a nob cheesed off. But mind you, don't think too highly of this bloke. That's a dangerous place to be.”

“Just as dangerous as thinking too ill of the man. In either case, the vision goes to hell.”

“Touché” Hanken said.

“Julian has a motive, Peter.”

“Disappointment in love?”

“Perhaps something stronger. Perhaps an elementary passion. A base one at that. Who's this chap Upman?”

“I'll introduce you.”

They finished their meal and returned to the car. They headed northwest out of Bakewell, climbed upwards, and traversed the northern boundary of Taddington Moor.

In Buxton they cruised along the High Street, finding a place to park behind the town hall. This was an impressive nineteenth-century edifice overlooking The Slopes, a tree-shaded series of ascending paths, where those who once had come to Buxton to take the waters had exercised in the afternoons.

The solicitor's office was further along the High Street. Above an estate agent and an art gallery featuring water colours of the Peaks, it was reached by means of a single door with the names Upman, Smith, & Sinclair printed on its opaque glass.

As soon as Hanken sent his card into Upman's office in the hands of an ageing secretary in secretarial twin set and tweeds, the man himself came out to greet them and to usher them into his domain. He'd heard about Nicola Maiden's death, he told them somberly. He'd phoned the Hall to ask where he should send Nicola's final wages for the summer, and one of the dailies there had given him the news. The previous week had been her last in the office.

The solicitor seemed happy enough to cooperate with the police. He deemed Nicola's death “a damnable tragedy for all concerned. She had tremendous potential in the legal field and I was more than satisfied with her performance for me this past summer.”

Lynley studied the man as Hanken gleaned the background information on the solicitor's relationship with the dead woman. Upman looked like a newsreader for the BBC: picture perfect and squeaky clean. His oak-brown hair was greying at the temples, giving him an air of trustworthiness that probably served him well in his profession. This general sense of reliability was enhanced by his voice, which was deep and sonorous. He was somewhere in his early forties, but his casual manner and his easy bearing suggested youth.

He answered Hanken's questions without the slightest indication that he might be uncomfortable with any of them. He'd known Nicola Maiden for most of the nine years that she and her family had lived in the Peak District. Her parents’ acquisition of the old Padley Gorge Lodge-now Maiden Hall-had brought them into contact with one of Upman's associates, who handled estate purchases. Through him, Will Upman had met the Maidens and their daughter.

“We've been given to understand that Mr. Maiden arranged for Nicola to work for you this summer,” Hanken said.

Upman confirmed this. He added, “It was no secret that Andy hoped Nicola would practise in Derbyshire when she'd completed her articles.” He'd been leaning against his desk as they spoke, having not offered either detective a chair. He seemed to realise this all at once, however, because he hurried on to say, “I'm completely forgetting my manners. Forgive me. Please. Sit. Can I offer you coffee? Or tea? Miss Snodgrass?”

This last he called in the direction of the open door. There, the secretary reappeared. She'd donned a pair of large-framed spectacles that gave her the appearance of a timid insect. “Mr. Upman?” She waited to do his bidding.

“Gentlemen?” he asked Lynley and Hanken.

They declined his offer of refreshment, and Miss Snodgrass was dismissed. Upman beamed upon the detectives as they took seats. Then he remained standing. Lynley noted this, raising his guard. In the delicate game of power and confrontation, the solicitor had just scored. And the manoeuvre had been so smoothly handled.

“How did you feel about Nicola becoming employed somewhere in Derbyshire?” he asked Upman.

The solicitor regarded him affably. “I don't think I felt anything at all.”

“Are you married?”

“Never have been. My line of work tends to give one cold feet when it comes to matrimony. I specialise in divorce law. That generally disabuses one of one's romantic ideals in rather short order.”

“Could that be why Nicola turned down Julian Britton's marriage proposal?” Lynley asked.

Upman looked surprised. “I'd no idea he'd made one.”

“She didn't tell you?”

“She worked for me, Inspector. I wasn't her confessor.”

“Were you her anything else?” Hanken put in, clearly annoyed at the tenor of Upman's last remark. “Aside from her employer, naturally.”

From his desk, Upman picked up a palm-size violin that apparently served as a paperweight. He ran his fingers along its strings and plucked at them as if testing their tuning. He said, “You must be asking if she and I had a personal relationship.”

“When a man and a woman work at close quarters on a regular basis,” Hanken said, “these things do happen.”

“They don't happen to me.”

“By which we can take it that you weren't involved with the Maiden girl?”

“That's what I'm saying.” Upman replaced the violin and took up a pencil holder. He began removing those pencils whose lead was too worn, laying them neatly next to his thigh, which continued to rest against the desk. He said, “Andy Maiden would have liked it had Nicola and I become involved. He'd hinted as much on more than one occasion, and whenever I was at the Hall for dinner and Nicola was home from college, he made a point of throwing us together. So I saw what he was hoping for, but I couldn't accommodate him.”

“Why not?” Hanken asked. “Something wrong with the girl?”

“She wasn't my type.”

“What type was she?” Lynley asked.

“I don't know. Look, what does it matter? I'm… Well, I'm rather involved with someone else.”

“‘Rather involved?’” This from Hanken.

“We have an understanding. I mean, we date. I handled her divorce two years ago, and… What does it matter anyway?” He looked flustered. Lynley wondered why.

Hanken appeared to notice this as well. He began to home in. “You found the Maiden girl attractive though.”

“Of course. I'm not blind. She was attractive.”

“And did your divorcee know about her?”

“She's not my divorcee. She's not my anything. We're seeing each other. That's all there is. And there was nothing for Joyce to know-”

“Joyce?” Lynley asked.

“His divorcee,” Hanken said blandly.

“And,” Upman repeated, “there was nothing for Joyce to know because there was nothing between us, between Nicola and me. Finding a woman attractive and becoming caught up in something that can't go anywhere are two different things.”

“Why couldn't it go anywhere?” Lynley asked.

“Because we were both involved elsewhere. I am, and she was. So even if I'd thought about trying my luck-which I hadn't, by the way-I'd have been signing up for a course in frustration.”

“But she'd turned down Julian,” Hanken interposed. “That suggests she wasn't as involved as you supposed, that perhaps she'd set her sights on someone else.”

“If so, they weren't set on me. And as for poor Britton, I'd wager that she turned him down because his income didn't suit her. My guess is that she'd got her eye on someone in London with a hefty bank balance.”

“What gave you that impression?” Lynley asked.

Upman considered the question, but he appeared relieved to be himself let off the hook of a possible involvement with Nicola Maiden. “She had a pager that went off occasionally,” he finally said, “and once when it did, she asked me would I mind if she phoned London to give someone the number here to ring her back. And he did as much after that. Time and again.”

“Why would you conclude this was someone with money?” Lynley asked. “A few long distance phone calls aren't out of the question even for someone strapped for cash.”

“I know that. But Nicola had expensive tastes. Believe me, she couldn't have bought what she wore to work every day on what I was paying her. I'll lay twenty quid on it that if you trace her wardrobe, you'll find it came from Knightsbridge, where some poor sod's paying piles on an account that she was free to use. And that sod's not me.”

Very neat, Lynley thought. Upman had tied all the pieces together with an adroitness that was a credit to his profession. But there was something calculated in his presentation of the facts that made Lynley wary. It was as if he'd known what they would ask him and had already planned his answers, like any good lawyer. From Hanken's expression of mild dislike, it was clear that he'd reached the same conclusion about the solicitor.

“Are we talking about an affair?” Hanken asked. “Is this a married chap doing what he can to keep the mistress content?”

“I have no idea. I can only say that she was involved with someone, and I expect that someone's in London.”

“When was the last time you saw her alive?”

“Friday evening. We had dinner.”

“But you yourself had no personal relationship with her,” Hanken noted.

“I took her to dinner as a farewell, which is fairly common practice between employers and employees in our society, if I'm not mistaken. Why? Does this put me under suspicion? Because if I'd wanted to kill her-for whatever reason you might have in mind-why would I wait from Friday until Tuesday night to do it?”

Hanken pounced. “Ah. You seem to know when she died.”

Upman wasn't rattled. “I did speak to someone at the Hall, Inspector.”

“So you said.” Hanken got to his feet. “You've been most helpful to our enquiries. If you can just give us the name of Friday night's restaurant, we'll be on our way.”

“The Chequers Inn,” Upman said. “In Calver. But look here, why do you need that? Am I under suspicion? Because if I am, I insist on-”

“There's no need for posturing at this point in the investigation,” Hanken said.

There was also no need, Lynley thought, to put the solicitor any more on the defensive. He intervened with, “Everyone who knew the murder victim is a suspect at first, Mr. Upman. DI Hanken and I are in the process of eliminating possibilities. Even as a solicitor, I expect you'd encourage a client to cooperate if he wanted to be crossed off the list.”

Upman didn't embrace the explanation, but he also didn't press the issue.

Lynley and Hanken took themselves out of his office and into the street, where Hanken immediately said, “What a snake,” as they walked to the car. “What a slimy bugger. Did you believe his story?”

“Which part of it?”

“Any of it. All of it. I don't care.”

“As a lawyer, naturally, everything he said was immediately suspect.”

This effected a reluctant smile in Hanken.

“But he gave us some useful information. I'd like to talk to the Maidens again and see if I can get anything out of them that will corroborate Upman's suspicions that Nicola was seeing someone in London. If there's another lover somewhere, there's another motive for murder.”

“For Britton,” Hanken acknowledged. He jerked his head in the direction of Upman's office. “But what about him? D'you plan to list him among your suspects?”

“Till we check him out, definitely.”

Hanken nodded. “I think I'm starting to like you,” he said.

Cilia Thompson was in residence at the studio when Barbara Havers tracked it down, three arches away from the dead end of Portslade Road. She had the two big front doors completely open, and she was in the midst of what looked like a creative fury, slashing at a canvas with paint as what sounded like African drums emanated rhythmically from a dusty CD player. The volume was high. Against her skin and in her sternum, Barbara could feel the pulsations.

“Cilia Thompson?” she shouted, wrestling her identification from her shoulder bag. “Can I have a word?”

Cilia read the warrant card and put her paint brush between her teeth. She punched a button on the CD player, choked off the drums, and returned to her work. She said, “Cyn Cole told me,” and continued to smother the canvas with paint. Barbara sidled round to have a look at her work: It was a gaping mouth out of which rose a motherly looking woman wielding a teapot decorated with snakes. Lovely, Barbara thought. The painter was definitely filling a vacuum in the art world.

“Terry's sister told you that he was murdered?”

“His mum phoned her from the North soon as she saw the body. Cyn phoned me. I thought something was up when she rang last night. Her voice wasn't right. You know what I mean. But I wouldn't have guessed… I mean, like, who would've wanted to snuff Terry Cole? He was a harmless little prick. A bit demented, considering his work, but harmless all the same.”

She said this last with a perfectly straight face, as if all round her were canvases by Peter Paul Rubens and not depictions of countless mouths regurgitating everything from oil slicks to motorway pile-ups.

The work of her compatriots wasn't much better from what Barbara could see. The other artists were sculptors like Terry. One used crushed rubbish bins as a medium. The other used rusting supermarket trolleys.

“Yeah. Right,” Barbara said. “But I s'pose it's all a matter of taste.”

Cilia rolled her eyes. “Not to someone who's educated in art.”

“Terry wasn't?”

“Terry was a poser, no offence. He wasn't educated in anything except lying. And he'd got like a first in that.”

“His mum said he was working on a big commission,” Barbara said. “Can you tell me about it?”

“For Paul McCartney, I have no doubt” was Cilia's dry reply. “Depending on what day of the week you happened to have a chat with him, Terry was working on a project that would bring him millions, or getting ready to sue Pete Townshend for not telling the world he had a bastard son-that's Terry, mind you-or stumbling on some secret documents that he planned to sell to the tabloids, or having lunch with the director of the Royal Academy Or opening a topflight gallery where he'd sell his sculptures for twenty thousand a pop.”

“So there was no commission?”

“That's a safe bet.” Cilia stepped back from her canvas to study it. She applied a smear of red to the mouth's lower lip. She followed with a smear of white, saying, “Ah. Yes,” in apparent reference to the effect she'd attained.

“You're coping quite well with Terry's death,” Barbara noted. “For having just heard about it, that is.”

Cilia read the statement for what it was: implied criticism. Catching up another brush and dipping it into a glob of purple on her palette, she said, “Terry and I shared a flat. We shared this studio. We sometimes had a meal together or went to the pub. But we weren't real mates. We were people who served a purpose for each other: sharing expenses so we, like, didn't have to work where we lived.”

Considering the size of Terry's sculptures and the nature of Cilia's paintings, this arrangement made sense. But it also reminded Barbara of a remark that Mrs. Baden had made. “How did your boyfriend feel about the deal, then?”

“You've been talking to Prune-face, I see. She's been waiting for Dan to cut up rough with someone ever since she saw him. Talk about judging a bloke on appearances.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And has he ever? Cut up rough, that is. With Terry. It's not your everyday situation, is it, when one bloke's girlfriend is living with another bloke.”

“Like I said, we aren't-weren't-living with like in living with. Most of the time we didn't even see each other. We didn't hang out with the same group even. Terry had his mates and I have mine.”

“Did you know his mates?”

The purple paint went into the hair of the mouth-sprung woman who was holding the teapot in Cilia's painting. She applied it in a thick curving line then used the palm of her hand to smear it, after which she wiped her palm on the front of her dungarees. The effect on the canvas was disconcerting. It rather looked as if Mother had holes in her head. Cilia took up grey next and advanced on Mother's nose. Barbara stepped to one side, not wishing to see what the artist intended.

“He didn't bring them round,” Cilia said. “It was mostly phone chat and they were mostly women. And they phoned him. Not the other way round.”

“Did he have a girlfriend? A special woman, I mean.”

“He didn't do women. Not that I ever knew.”

“Gay?”

“Asexual. He didn't do anything. Except toss off. And even that's a real maybe.”

“His world was his art?” Barbara offered.

Cilia whooped. “Such as it was.” She stepped back from her canvas and evaluated it. “Yes,” she said, and turned it round to face Barbara. “Voila. Now, that tells a proper tale, doesn't it?”

Mother's nose was excreting an unsavoury substance. Barbara decided that Cilia couldn't possibly have spoken words more true about her painting. She murmured her assent. Cilia carried her masterwork to a ledge along which half a dozen other paintings rested. From among them she selected an unfinished canvas and carried it to the easel to continue with her work.

She dragged a stool to the right of her easel. She rustled in a cardboard box and brought forth a mousetrap with its victim still in place. She set this on a stool and made its companions a moth-eaten, taxidermic cat and ajar of pasta cheese. She shuffled these objects this way and that until she had the composition she required. Then she set upon the unfinished canvas, where the lower lip of a mouth had been harpooned by a hook and a tongue protruded.

“Can I assume Terry didn't sell much?” Barbara asked her.

“He sold sod all,” Cilia said cheerfully. “But then he wasn't, like, ever willing to put enough of himself into it, was he? And if you don't give your all to your art, your art isn't going to give anything back to you. I put my guts right onto the canvas and the canvas rewards me.”

“Artistic satisfaction,” Barbara said solemnly.

“Hey, I sell. A real gent bought a piece off me not two days ago. Walked in here, took one look, said he had to have his own Cilia Thompson straightaway, and brought out the chequebook.”

Right, Barbara thought. The woman had quite an imagination. “So if he never sold a sculpture, where did Terry get the beans to pay for everything? The flat. This studio…” Not to mention the gardening tools that he appeared to have amassed by the gross, she thought.

“He said his money was a payoff from his dad. He had enough of it, mind you.”

“Payoff?” Now, here was something that could lead them somewhere. “Was he blackmailing someone?”

“Sure,” Cilia said. “His dad. Pete Townshend, like I said. As long as old Pete kept the lolly rolling in, Terry wouldn't go to the papers crying, ‘Dad's floating in it and I've got sod all.’ Ha. As if Terry Cole had the slightest hope of convincing anyone he wasn't what he really was: a scam man out for the easy life.”

This wasn't too far from Mrs. Baden's description of Terry Cole, albeit spoken with far less affection. But if Terry Cole had been into a scam, what had it been? And who had been its victim?

There had to be evidence of something somewhere. And there seemed to be only one place where that evidence might be. She needed to have a look through the flat, Barbara explained. Would Cilia be willing to cooperate?

She would, Cilia said. She'd be home by five if Barbara wanted to pop round then. But Constable Havers had better have it straight in her head that whatever Terry Cole had been caught up in, Cilia Thompson had not been part of it.

“I'm an artist. First, last, and always,” Cilia proclaimed. She rearranged the dead mouse and pulled the stuffed cat's paw into a more ominous and chasseur-like position.

“Oh, I can see that,” Barbara assured her.

At Buxton police station, Lynley and Hanken parted ways once the Buxton DI arranged for his Scotland Yard associate to pick up a car. Hanken planned to head for Calver, determined to corroborate Will Upman's alleged dinner date with Nicola Maiden. For his part, Lynley set out towards Padley Gorge.

At Maiden Hall he found that afternoon preparations for the evening meal were going on in the kitchen, which backed onto the car park where Lynley left the police Ford. The bar in the lounge was being restocked with spirits, and the dining room was being set for the evening. There was a general air of activity about the place demonstrating that, as much as possible, life was going on at the Hall.

The same woman who'd intercepted the DIs on the previous afternoon met Lynley just beyond the reception desk. When he asked for Andy Maiden, she murmured, “Poor soul,” and left to fetch the former police officer. While he waited, Lynley went to the door of the dining room, just beyond the lounge. Another woman-of similar age and appearance as the first-was placing slender white candles in holders on the tables. A basket of yellow chrysanthemums sat next to her on the floor.

The serving hatch between dining room and kitchen was open, and from within the latter room came the sound of French, rapidly spoken and with some considerable passion. And then in accented English, “And no and no and no! I ask for shallots, it means shallots. These are onions for boiling in the pan.”

There was a quiet response that Lynley couldn't catch, then a torrent of French of which he caught only, “Je t'emtnerde.”

“Tommy?”

Lynley swung round to see that Andy Maiden had come into the lounge, a spiral notebook in his hand. Maiden looked ravaged: He was drawn and unshaven and he wore the clothes he'd had on on the previous evening. “I couldn't wait for the pension,” he said, voice numb. “I lived to retire. I put up with the work without a word because it was leading to something. That's what I told myself. And them. Nan and Nicola. A few more years, I'd say. Then we'll have enough.” Rousing himself to trudge the rest of the way across the lounge to join Lynley seemed to take what few resources he had left. “And look where it's brought us. My daughter's dead and I've come up with the names of fifteen bastards who'd've willingly killed their own mothers if they'd gain by the act. So why the hell did I think they'd serve their time, disappear, and never bother to go after me?”

Lynley glanced at the notebook, realising what it was. “You've got a list for us.”

“I read through the night. Three times. Four. And here's where I ended. D'you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I killed her. I was the one.”

How many times had he heard that need to take blame? Lynley wondered. A hundred? A thousand? It was always the same. And if there was a glib response that could attenuate the guilt of those who were left behind after violence had done its worst to a loved one, he hadn't yet learned it. “Andy,” he began.

Maiden cut him off. “You remember what I was like, don't you? Keeping society safe from the ‘criminal element,’ I told myself. And I was good at what I did. I was so bloody good. But I never once saw that while I was concentrating on our fucking society, my very own daughter… my Nick-” His voice began to waver. “Sorry,” he said.

“Don't apologise, Andy. It's all right.”

“It'll never be all right.” Maiden opened the notebook and ripped out the last page. He shoved this towards Lynley. “Find him.”

“We will.” Lynley knew how inadequate his words were-as would be an arrest in the case-to mitigate Maiden's grief. Nonetheless, he explained that he'd assigned an officer to go through the SO 10 records in London, but he'd so far heard nothing. Thus, anything that Maiden provided them with-a name, a crime, an investigation-could well end up halving or quartering the London officer's time on the computer and freeing that officer to pursue likely suspects. The police would be in Maiden's debt for that.

Maiden nodded dully. “How else can I help? Can you give me something, Tommy… something else to do… because otherwise…” He ran a large hand through hair that was still curly and thick, albeit quite grey. “I'm a textbook case. Looking for employment so I can stop going through this.”

“It's a natural response. We all put up defences against a shock till we're ready to deal with it. That's part of being human.”

“This. I'm even calling it this. Because if I say the word, that'll make everything real and I don't think I can stand it.”

“You're not expected to cope right now. You and your wife are both owed some time to avoid what's happened. Or to deny what's happened. Or to fall apart altogether. Believe me, I understand.”

“Do you.”

“I think you know I do.” There was no easy way to make the next request. “I need to go through your daughter's belongings, Andy. Would you like to be present?”

Maiden knotted his eyebrows. “Her things are in her room. But if you're looking for a connection to SO 10, what's Nicola's bedroom got to do with that?”

“Nothing, perhaps,” Lynley told him. “But we spoke to Julian Britton and Will Upman this morning. There are several details we'd like to explore further.”

Maiden said, “Good Christ. Are you thinking one of them…?” and he looked beyond Lynley to the window, seeming to ponder what horrors a reference to Britton and Upman implied.

Lynley said quickly, “It's too early for anything but guesswork, Andy.”

Maiden turned back, examined him for a long thirty seconds. He finally seemed to accept the answer. He took Lynley to the second floor of the house and led him to his daughter's bedroom, remaining in the doorway and watching as Lynley began going through Nicola Maiden's belongings.

Most of these comprised exactly what one would expect to find in the room of a twenty-five-year-old woman, and much of it supported points that either Julian Britton or Will Upman had made. A wooden jewellery case contained evidence of the body piercings with which Julian had declared that Nicola had decorated herself: Single gold hoops of varying sizes and without mates suggested rings that the dead girl had worn through her navel, her Up, and her nipple, single studs spoke of the hole in her tongue; tiny ruby and emerald studs with screw tips would have fitted her nose.

The clothes cupboard contained designer clothing: The labels were a who's who of haute couture. Upman had declared that she couldn't have dressed herself on what he'd been paying her for her summers employment, and her clothing fully supported his contention. But there were other indications that Nicola Maiden's whims were being fulfilled by someone.

The room was replete with items that could be associated only with either a considerable discretionary income or with a partner eager to prove himself through gifts. An electric guitar took up space in the cupboard, to the side of which were a CD player, a tuner, and a set of speakers that would have set Nicola Maiden back more than a month's wages. A nearby rotating oak stand designed solely for the occupation held two or three hundred CDs. A colour television in one corner of the room was the resting place for a mobile phone. On a shelf beneath the television stand, eight leather handbags were lined up precisely. Everything in the room spoke of excess. Everything also announced that, at least in one respect, Nicola's employer may have been telling the truth. Either that or the girl had come by her money in a way that ultimately led to her death: through drug pushing, blackmail, the black market, embezzlement. But thinking of Upman reminded Lynley of something else that the solicitor had said.

He went to the chest and began sliding open its drawers upon silk underwear and nightgowns, cashmere scarves and designer socks yet to be worn. He found one drawer devoted solely to the outdoor life, stuffed with khaki shorts, folded jerseys, a small day pack, Ordnance Survey maps, and a silver flask engraved with the girls initials.

The bottom two drawers in the chest contained the only items that didn't look as if they'd been purchased in Knightsbridge. But even they were filled to the very top like the others. They were a storage space for woollen sweaters of every possible style and hue, each bearing an identical label sewn into the neckline: Made with loving hands by Nancy Maiden. Lynley fingered one of the labels thoughtfully.

He said, “Her pager's missing, Andy. Upman said she had one. Do you know where it is?”

Maiden left his position by the door. “A pager? Is Will certain about that?”

“He told us that she was paged at work. You didn't know she had one?”

“I never saw her with one. It's not here?” Maiden did what Lynley had done: He examined the items on the top of the chest, then repeated the search through each of the drawers. He went further, however, by taking Lynley's place at the clothes cupboard, where he checked the pockets of his daughters jackets and the waistbands of her trousers and skirts. There were sealed plastic bags of clothing on the bed, and he went through these as well. Finding nothing, he finally said, “She must have taken it on the hike. It'll be in one of the evidence bags.”

“Why take her pager but leave her mobile phone?” Lynley asked. “The one would be useless on the moor without the other.”

Maidens glance went to the television where the mobile lay, then back to Lynley. “Then it's got to be here somewhere.”

Lynley checked the bedside table. He found a bottle of aspirin, a packet of Kleenex, birth control pills, a box of birthday candles, and a tube of lip balm. He went to the leather handbags beneath the television, opening them, checking each compartment. All of them were empty. As were a satchel, he discovered, a briefcase, and an overnight bag.

“It could be in her car,” Maiden suggested.

“Something tells me not.”

“Why?”

Lynley made no reply Standing in the middle of the room, he saw the details with a vision that was heightened by the absence of a single, simple possession that could have meant nothing and might have meant everything. Doing so, he was able to see what he hadn't noticed before. There was a museumlike quality to everything round him. Nothing in the room was even remotely out of place.

Someone had been through the girl's belongings.

“Where's your wife this afternoon, Andy?” Lynley asked.