In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 11

The moment the cops were out of his office, Martin Reeve pressed the call button that was recessed into one of the shelves on which his collection of Henley photos were arranged. Just as the phony college diplomas were part of the Martin Reeve Story, the Henley photos were a vital piece of the Martin and Tricia Reeve Romance. It was part of their manufactured history that they'd first met at the Regatta. He'd been telling the apocryphal tale of their introduction for so long that he'd begun to believe it himself.

His call was answered in less than five seconds, a record. Jaz Burns entered the room without knocking. “A real cow, she was,” he said with a smirk. “Fancy shagging her, Marty. You'd not soon forget it.”

From his lair at the back of the house, it was Jaz's habit to play Peeping Tom with the surveillance equipment in Martin's office. He had an annoying tendency to voyeurism, which Martin was willing to overlook in the cause of employing his other talents.

“Follow them,” Martin said. “The cops? There's a turnaround for you. What's up?”

“Later. Get on it now.”

Jaz was astute at reading nuances. He jerked his head in a nod, snatched up the keys to the Jaguar, and slipped soundlessly from the room on cat-burglar feet. The door hadn't been closed behind him for more than fifteen seconds, however, when it opened again.

Martin swung round in agitation, saying, “God damn it, Jaz,” and ready to berate his employee for whatever dawdling had caused him to lose the cops’ trail before they'd even begun to lay it. But Tricia, not the spritelike Burns, stood there, and the expression on her face told Martin that a Scene was coming.

Fuck it, he wanted to say, not now. At the moment he didn't have the resources to soothe Tricia through an attack of the Shrills.

“What are you doing here? Tricia, you're supposed to be at the tea.”

“I couldn't.” She shut the door behind her.

“What do you mean, you couldn't? You're expected. This has been set up for months. I pulled a dozen strings to get you on that committee, and if you're on the committee, you're supposed to turn up. You've got the God damn list, Patricia. How're those women supposed to carry on this event-and, by the way, how are we supposed to maintain our good name-if you can't be relied upon to show up on time with a seating plan in your possession?”

“What did you tell them about Nicola?”

He blew out a breath on the word shit. “Is that why you're here? Am I clear on that? You've failed in your part to show open support for one of the worthiest causes in the UK because you want to know what I told the cops about a fucking dead bitch?”

“I don't like that language.”

“Which part? Fucking? Dead? Or bitch? Let's get it straight, because right at this moment there are five hundred women and photographers from every publication in the country waiting for you to appear and God knows you won't be able to manage it if we aren't clear on which part of my language bothers you.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them the truth.” He was so irritated that he could almost enjoy the expression of horror that crossed her face.

“What?” When she asked, the question was hoarse.

“Nicola Maiden was a trainee financial advisor. She quit last April. If she hadn't quit, I would have fired her.”

Tricia relaxed noticeably. Martin went on. He vastly preferred his wife on edge. “I'd love to know where the little bitch took herself off to from here, and with any luck, I'll have that information from Jaz within the hour. Cops are nothing if not predictable. If she had a place in London-and my money says she had-then the cops're going to lead us straight to it.”

The tension was, gratifyingly, back in an instant. “Why d'you want to know? What're you going to do?”

“I don't like disrespect, Patricia. You of all people ought to know that. I don't like to be lied to. Trust is the bedrock of any relationship, and if I don't do something when someone screws me over, then it's open season for everyone to take Martin Reeve for all that he's worth. Well, I won't allow that.”

“You had her, didn't you?” Tricia's face was pinched.

“Don't be an idiot.”

“You think I can't tell. You say to yourself, ‘Dear Trish's doped up to her eyeballs half the time. What could she possibly notice?’ But I do. I saw how you looked at her. I knew when it happened.”

Martin sighed. “You need a hit. Sorry to put it so crudely, my dear. I know you'd prefer to avoid the topic. But the truth of the matter is that you always get weird in the head when you're coming down too fast. You need another hit.”

“I know what you're like.” Her voice was rising, and he wondered idly if he could manage the needle without her cooperation. But how the hell much was she shooting up these days anyway? Even if he could cope with the needle and the syringe, the last thing he needed was his wife carted off in a coma. “I know how you like to be the boss, Martin. And what better way is there to prove you're in charge than to tell some college girl to drop her knickers and then watch how fast she's willing to do it.”

“Tricia, this is such awesome bullshit. Are you listening to yourself?”

“So you had her. And then she walked away. Poof. She was gone. Vanished.” Tricia snapped her fingers. Rather weakly, Martin noticed. “And that felt nasty, didn't it? And we know how you react when something feels nasty.”

Speaking of which… Martin itched to strike her. He would have done so had he not been certain that, doped up or not, she'd run straight home to Daddy in an instant with the tale. Daddy would make certain demands if she did that. Detox first. Divorce after that.

Neither of which was acceptable to Martin. Marriage into wealth-no matter that the money came from a successful antiques business and hadn't been passed down through successive generations in best blue-blood fashion-had garnered for him a degree of social acceptance that he'd never have acquired as a mere immigrant to the country, no matter how successful in business he might be. He had no intention of giving that social acceptance up.

“We can have this discussion later,” he said with a glance at his pocket watch. “For now, you still have time to get to the tea without thoroughly humiliating yourself or me. Say it was the traffic: a pedestrian hit by a taxi in Notting Hill Gate. You stopped to hold his hand-no, make it a woman and a child-till the ambulance arrived. A hole in your stocking would support the story, by the way.”

“Don't dismiss me like some mindless tart.”

“Then stop acting like one.” He shot the retort back without thinking and immediately regretted it. What possible purpose could be served by escalating an idiotic discussion into a fully blown row? “Look, sweetheart,” he said, aiming for conciliation, “let's stop the bickering. We're letting ourselves get thrown by a simple, routine visit from the cops. As far as Nicola Maiden goes-”

“We haven't done it in months, Martin.”

He went steadily on. “-it's unfortunate that she's dead, it's unfortunate that she was murdered, but as we weren't involved in what happened to her-”

“We. Haven't. Fucked. Since. June.” Her voice rose. “Are you listening to me? Are you hearing what I'm saying?”

“I'm doing both,” he replied. “And if you weren't blitzed most hours of the day, you'd find your memory improving.”

That, at least and thank God, stopped her. She, after all, had no more wish than he had to end their marriage. He served a purpose in her life that was as necessary to her as the purpose she served was necessary to him: He kept her supply lines open and her secret safe; she increased his mobility and garnered from his fellows the sort of deference one man shows another when that other has possession of a beautiful woman. Thus, she very much wanted to believe. And in Martin's experience, when people desperately wanted to believe, they talked themselves into believing just about anything. In this case, however, Tricia's belief wasn't far from the truth. He did indeed do her when she was tripped out. She just didn't know he preferred it that way.

She said in a smaller voice, “Oh,” and she blinked.

“Yes,” he said. “Oh. All through June, July, and August. Last night as well.”

She swallowed. “Last night?”

He smiled. She was his.

He went to her. “Lets not let the cops wreck what we have, Trish. They're after a killer. They're not after us.” He touched her lips with the battle-weary knuckles of his right hand. Left hand on her buttocks, he drew her near. “Now, isn't that right? Isn't it true that what the police are looking for, they won't find here?”

“I've got to get off the stuff,” she whispered.

He urged her down for a kiss. “One thing at a time,” he said.

In his room at the Black Angel Hotel, Lynley discarded his suit and tie in favour of jeans, hiking boots, and the old waxed jacket that he generally wore in Cornwall, an ancient possession of his long-dead father. He kept glancing at the telephone as he dressed, alternately willing it to ring and willing himself to make the call from this end.

There had been no message from Helen. He'd excused her silence that morning as a result of her late night with Deborah St. James and her probable subsequent lie-in, but he was having difficulty excusing a silence that had apparently continued well into mid-afternoon. He'd even phoned down to Reception, asking that they double-check on his messages, but an extended foray into pigeon holes and rubbish baskets hadn't produced anything different from what he'd had at the beginning: His wife hadn't phoned. Nor had anyone else, for that matter, but silence from the rest of the world didn't concern him. Silence from Helen did.

In the way of people who believe they're in the right, he replayed their conversation of the previous morning. He checked it for subtext and nuance, but no matter how he examined it, he came out on top. The fact was simplicity itself. His wife had been interfering in his professional life, and she owed him an apology. She had no business second-guessing decisions that he made as part of his work any more than he had a place instructing her how and when she could assist St. James in his lab. In the personal arena they each had a vested interest in knowing the others hopes, resolutions, and desires. In the world of their individual occupations, they owed each other kindness, consideration, and support. That his wife-as was clearly indicated by her undeniably perverse refusal to phone him-didn't wish to adhere to this basic and reasonable manner of coexisting was a source of disillusionment to him. He'd known Helen for sixteen years. How could he have gone such a time without actually knowing her at all?”

He checked his watch. He looked out of the window and made note of the sun's position in the sky. There were several good hours of daylight left, so he had no need to rush off right at the moment. Knowing this, and knowing what he could well do because of this, he procrastinated by checking to make sure he had a compass, a torch, and an Ordnance Survey map tucked into the various pockets of his jacket.

Then, without further employment available, he heaved a sigh of defeat. He walked to the phone and punched in his home number. Might as well leave her a message if she's gone out, he thought. One can make a point with one's mate for only a limited period.

He expected Denton. Or the answerphone. What he didn't expect-because if she was at home, why the devil wasn't she phoning him-was to hear his wife's soft voice on the other end of the line.

She said hello twice. In the background he could hear music playing. It was one of his new Prokofiev CDs. She'd taken the call in the drawing room.

He wanted to say “Hello, darling. We parted badly, and I'm longing to make it up with you.” But instead, he wondered how the hell she could sit there in London, blissfully enjoying his music, while they were at odds. And they were at odds, weren't they? Hadn't he just spent most of his working day successfully avoiding an obsessive contemplation of their disagreement, of everything that had led up to it, of what it indicated about the past, of what it presaged for the future, of what it might lead them to if one of them didn't wake up and realise that-Helen said, “This is very rude, whoever you are,” and rang off.

Which left Lynley holding a dead receiver and feeling very foolish. Ringing her back at the moment would make him feel even more foolish, he concluded. So that was that. He replaced the receiver, removed the keys to the police car from his suit coat, and left the room.

He drove northeast, cruising along the road that carved a gully between the limestone slopes upon which Tideswell was built. The land formed a natural siphon here. The wind gusted through it like a gushing river, whipping tree limbs and flipping leaves upside down in an unspoken promise of the season's first rain.

At the junction, a handful of honey-coloured buildings marked the hamlet of Lane Head. Here Lynley veered to the west, where the road made a straight charcoal incision into the moor and drystone walls prevented the accretion of heather, bilberry, and ferns from reclaiming the road and returning it to the land.

It was a wild country. Once Lynley left the last of the hamlets behind, the only signs of life-aside from the vegetation, which was profuse-were the jackdaws and magpies and the occasional sheep that stood serene and cloudlike, grazing among the pink and the green.

Stiles provided access to the moor, and signposts marked the routes of public footpaths that had been used for centuries by farmers or shepherds traveling between the far-flung hamlets. Hiking and biking trails were a more recent addition to the landscape, however, and these carved through the heather and disappeared towards distant lichen-grey outcrops that formed the remains of prehistoric settlements, ancient places of worship, and Roman forts.

Lynley found the spot a few miles northeast of the tiny hamlet of Sparrowpit, where Nicola Maiden had left her Saab upon setting off into the moor. There, a long and knobby border of wall was interrupted by a white iron gate, its thick skin of crusty paint eaten through in spots by blemishes of rust. When he arrived, Lynley did what Nicola Maiden herself had done: He opened the gate, pulled into a narrow paved lane within, and parked behind the stone wall on a patch of earth.

He consulted the map before getting out of the car, opening it against the passenger seat and fixing his reading glasses on his nose. He studied the route he would need to take to get out to Nine Sisters Henge, making note of landmarks that would be useful in guiding him on his way. Hanken had offered him a detective constable as a guide, but he'd refused. He wouldn't have minded an experienced hiker as an escort, but he preferred not to be accompanied by a member of the Buxton police who could possibly take offence-and report such offence to Hanken-when Lynley scrutinised the crime scene with an attention suggesting that the local CID hadn't done its job.

“It's a last possibility for that blasted pager, and I'd like to eliminate it,” Lynley had told Hanken.

“If it had been there, my boys would have found it,” Hanken had replied, reminding him that they'd done a fingertip search for the weapon, which certainly would have turned up a pager even if it hadn't dislodged a knife from the site. “But if it puts your mind at rest to do it, then put your mind at rest and do it.” As for himself, he was off after Upman, champing at the bit to confront the solicitor.

Feeling sure of his route, Lynley folded the map and returned his glasses to their case. He put map and glasses in his jacket pockets and climbed out into the wind. He set out southeast, with the collar of his jacket turned up and his shoulders hunched against the gusts that were blowing against him. The stretch of paved lane led in the direction he wanted, so he started out on it, but after less than a hundred yards, it ended in a crumble of aggregate boulders comprising mostly gravel and tar. From there, the going became rougher, an uneven trail of earth and stones, creased by watercourses that were skeletally dry from a summer without rain.

The walk took him nearly an hour, and he made it in utter solitude. His route followed stony paths that intersected with other, stonier paths. He brushed through heather, gorse, and fern; he climbed limestone outcrops; he passed the remains of chambered cairns.

He was just coming upon an unexpected fork in the trail, when he saw a lone hiker walking his way from the southeast. As he was fairly certain that this was the direction of Nine Sisters Henge, Lynley remained where he was, waiting to see who had made this late-afternoon visit to the scene of the crime. As far as he knew, Hanken still had the stone circle taped off and guarded. So if the hiker was a journalist or press photographer, he would have found little joy in taking an extended walk across the moor.

It wasn't a man, as things turned out. Nor was it either a journalist or a photographer. Instead, as the figure approached, Lynley saw that Samantha McCallin had, for some reason, decided to treat herself to an afternoon hike out to Nine Sisters Henge.

Apparently, she recognised him at the same instant that he realised her identity, because her gait changed its rhythm. She'd been marching along with a whip tail of birch in her hand, flicking it against the heather as she stepped along the path. But seeing Lynley, she chucked the whip tail to one side, squared her shoulders, and came straight at him.

“It's a public place,” she said at once. “You can tape off the circle and post guards out there, but you can't keep people off the rest of the moor.”

“You're some miles from Broughton Manor, Miss McCallin.”

“Don't killers return to the scenes of their crimes? I'm merely living the part. Would you like to arrest me?”

“I'd like you to explain what you're doing here.”

She looked over her shoulder in the direction from which she'd come. “He thinks I killed her. Isn't that rich? I speak out in defence of him this morning, and by afternoon he's decided I did it. It's an odd way to say ‘Thanks for taking my part, Sam,’ but there you have it.”

It could have been the wind, of course, but it looked to Lynley as if she'd been crying. He said, “So what are you doing here, Miss McCallin? You must know that your presence-”

“I wanted to see the place where his fantasy died.” The wind had loosened hair from her plait, and wispy tendrils of it blew round her face. “He'd say, of course, that his fantasy died on Monday night when he asked her to marry him. But I don't think so. I think as long as Nicola walked the earth, my cousin Julian would have held on to his obsession of having a life with her. Waiting for her to change her mind. Waiting for her to-as he would say-really see him. And the funny thing is, if she'd crooked her finger at him just the right way-or even the wrong way, for that matter-he would've interpreted it as the sign he was waiting for, proving to him that she loved him in spite of everything she said and did to the contrary.”

“You disliked her, didn't you?” Lynley asked.

She gave a short laugh. “What difference does it make? She was going to get what she wanted no matter how I felt about her.”

“What she got was death. And she can't have wanted that.”

“She would have destroyed him. She would have sucked out his marrow. She was that sort of woman.”

“Was she?”

Samantha's eyes narrowed as a gust of wind spat chalky bits of earth into the air. “I'm glad she's dead. I won't lie about that. But you're making a mistake if you think that I'm the only person who'd dance on her grave, given half the chance.”

“Who else is there?”

She smiled. “I don't intend to do your job for you.”

That said, she stepped past him and walked off down the path, taking the direction he himself had traveled from the northern boundary of the moor. He wondered how she had come to be on the moor at all, as he'd seen no cars parked on the verge when he'd turned off the road. He also wondered if she parked elsewhere either out of ignorance of the presence of the hard-packed little plot of land behind the drystone wall or to hide her knowledge of the plot's existence.

He watched her, but she didn't turn back to see if he was doing so. She must have wanted to-it was human nature-and the fact that she didn't spoke worlds about her self-discipline. He himself walked on.

He recognised Nine Sisters Henge by the separate stone-the King Stone, he'd been told-that marked its location within a thick copse of birches. He came at the monument from the opposite side, however, and didn't realise that he was actually upon it till he circled the copse, took a compass reading just beyond it, reckoned that the stone circle had to be nearby, and turned back to see the pockmarked monolith rising beside a narrow path into the trees.

He retraced his steps, hands shoved into his pockets. He found DI Hanken's posted guard a few yards from the site, and he admitted Lynley to it, allowing him to duck beneath the crime scene tape and approach the sentry stone alone. Lynley paused by this and examined it. It was weather-worn, as one would expect, but it was man-worn as well. At some time in the past, indentations had been carved into the back side of the enormous column. They formed handholds and footholds so that a climber could ascend to the top.

To what use had the stone been put in ancient times? Lynley wondered. As a means of calling a community to assemble? As a lookout post for someone responsible for the safety of shamans performing rituals within the stone circle? As the reredos of an altar for sacrifice? It was impossible to say.

He slapped his hand against it and went under the trees, where the first thing he noticed was that the birches-growing so thickly together-acted as a natural windbreak. When he finally made his way into the prehistoric circle, not a breath of air was stirring.

His first thought was that it was nothing like Stonehenge, which was when he realised how firmly the word henge was rooted in his mind with a particular image. There were standing stones-nine of them, as the place name suggested-but these were far more roughly hewn than he'd expected. There were no lintel stones as there were at Stonehenge. And the external bank and the internal ditch that enclosed the standing stones were far less distinct.

He entered the circle. It was quiet as death. While the trees prevented the wind from reaching into the circle, the stones appeared to prevent the sound of the leaves being rustled from reaching into the circle either. It wouldn't be difficult for someone at night to come upon the monument unheard, then. He-or she or they-would merely have had to know where Nine Sisters Henge was or to follow a hiker there from a distance in daylight and wait for nightfall. Which in itself would not have been difficult. The moor was vast, but it was also open. On a clear day one could see for miles.

The circle's interior consisted of dying moor grass beaten lateral by a summer of visitors to the site, a flat slice of rock at the base of the northernmost standing stone, and the remains of half a dozen old fires built by campers and worshippers. Starting at the circle's perimeter, Lynley began a systematic search for Nicola Maiden's pager. It was a tedious activity, involving an inch-by-inch scrutiny of the bank, the ditch, the base of each stone, the moor grass, and the fire rings. When he'd completed his inspection of the site without finding a thing and knew he'd next have to trace Nicola's route to the location of her death, he paused to pick out the path of her flight. In doing so, he found his gaze drawn to the central fire ring.

He saw that the ring was distinguished from the rest in three ways. It was fresher-with hunks of charred wood not yet disintegrated into ashes and lumps, it bore the unmistakable marks of having been sifted through by the scenes of crime team, and the stones that encircled it had been disturbed roughly, as if someone had stamped on the fire to put it out and dislodged the barrier in the process. But seeing these stones brought to Lynley's mind the photographs of the dead Terry Cole and the burns that charred one side of the young man's face.

He went to squat by the fire remains, and he thought for the first time about that face and what was indicated by its burnt skin. He realised that the extent of the burning suggested that the boy had had a fairly lengthy contact with the fire. But he hadn't been held down into the flames, because if he had been, there would have been defensive wounds on his body as he struggled to free himself from someone's grasp. And according to Dr. Myles, there had been no such wounds on Terry Cole: no bruising or scratching of his hands or knuckles, no distinctive abrasions on his torso. And yet, Lynley thought, he'd been exposed to the fire long enough to be severely burnt, indeed to have his skin blackened. There seemed to be only one reasonable answer. Cole must have fallen into the fire. But how?

Lynley rested on his haunches and let his gaze wander round the circle. He saw that a second, narrower path led out of the thicket-opposite the path he'd come in on-and from his position by the fire ring, that path was in a direct line with his vision. This, then, had to be Nicola's route. He pictured the young people on Tuesday night, sitting side by side at the fire. Two killers wait outside the stone circle, unheard and unseen. They bide their time. When the moment is right, they charge towards the fire, each of them taking one of the two and making short work of them.

It was plausible, Lynley decided. But if that was what happened, he couldn't see why short work hadn't been made of Nicola Maiden. Indeed, he couldn't see how the young woman had managed to get one hundred and fifty yards from her killer before she was even attacked. While it was true that she could have fled the circle and taken off on the second path that he himself could see cutting through the trees, with the advantage of surprise on the killers' part, how had she managed to elude capture for such a distance? She was an experienced hiker, of course, but what did experience really count for in darkness, with someone in a panic and running for her life? And even if she wasn't in a panic, how could her reflexes have been so good or her understanding of what was happening so acute? Surely, it would have taken her at least five seconds to realise that harm was intended her, and that delay would have been her undoing right then, within the circle and not one hundred and fifty yards away.

Lynley frowned. He kept seeing the photograph of the boy. Those burns were important, a critical point. Those burns, he knew, told the real tale.

He reached for a stick-part of the kindling of the fire-and aimlessly shoved it into the ashes as he thought. Nearby, he spotted the first of the dried splatters of blood that had come from Terry Cole's wounds. Beyond those splatters, the dry moor grass was gouged and torn up in a zigzagging path that led to one of the standing stones.

Slowly, Lynley followed this path. It was speckled with blood for the entire distance.

There were no great gobs of gore though, and not the sort of blood evidence one would expect from someone bleeding to death from an arterial wound. In fact, as he moved along it, Lynley realised that the trail did not offer the sort of blood evidence one would expect to find from the multiple stab wounds that Terry Cole had had inflicted upon him. At the base of the standing stone, however, Lynley saw that the blood had pooled. Indeed, it had splashed onto the stone itself, leaving tiny rivulets from a height of three feet, dribbling down to the ground below.

Lynley paused here. His gaze moved from the fire ring to the beaten path. In his mind he saw the picture of the boy that the police photographer had taken, his flesh eaten black by the flames. He considered all of it point by point:

Blood by the fire in daubs and splatters.

Blood by the standing stone in pools.

Blood in rivulets from a height of three feet.

A girl running off into the night.

A chunk of limestone bashing in her skull.

Lynley narrowed his eyes and drew a slow breath. Of course, he thought. Why hadn't he seen from the first what had happened?

The address they'd been given in Fulham took Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata to a maisonette in Rostrevor Road. They expected to have to deal with a landlady, custodian, or concierge in order to gain access to Nicola Maidens rooms. But when they went through the pro forma business of ringing the bell next to the number five, they were surprised to hear a woman's voice on the speaker, asking them to identify themselves.

There was a pause once Nkata made it clear that Scotland Yard had come calling. After a moment, the disembodied voice said, “I'll be down shortly,” in the cultured accent of a woman who spent her free time reading for parts in costume dramas on the BBC. Barbara expected her to appear in full Jane Austen regalia: done up in a slender Regency dress with ringlets round her face. Some five minutes later-“Where's she coming from, exactly?” Nkata wanted to know, with a glance at his watch, “Southend-on-Sea?”-the door opened and a twelve-year-old in a vintage Mary Quant mini-dress stood before them.

“Vi Nevin,” the child said by way of introduction. “Sorry. I'd just got out of the bath and had to pull on some clothes. May I see your identification, please?”

The voice was the same as the woman's on the speaker, and coming from the pixielike creature in the doorway, it was quite disconcerting, as if a female ventriloquist were lurking somewhere nearby, throwing her voice into a pre-adolescent child for a bit of a lark. Barbara caught herself sneaking a glimpse round the door jamb to see if someone was hiding there. The expression on Vi Nevin's face said that she was used to such a reaction.

After looking over their warrant cards to her satisfaction, she handed them back and said, “Right. What can I do for you?” And when they told her that her rooms had been given as a forwarding address for the post when a student from the College of Law had moved house from Islington, she said, “There's nothing illegal in that, is there? It sounds the responsible thing to do.”

Did she know Nicola Maiden, then? Nkata asked her.

“I don't make a habit of taking up lodgings with strangers” was her reply. And then, glancing from Nkata to Barbara, “But Nikki isn't here. She hasn't been for weeks. She's up in Derbyshire till next Wednesday evening.”

Barbara saw that Nkata was reluctant to do the dubious honours of announcing death to the unsuspecting yet another time. She decided to show mercy upon him, saying, “Is there a place we can talk privately?”

Vi Nevin heard something beyond the simple question, as her eyes indicated. “Why? Have you a warrant or a decree or something? I know my rights.”

Barbara sighed inwardly. What damage the last few revelations of police malfeasance had done to public trust. She said, “I'm sure you do. But we're not here to conduct a search. We'd like to talk to you about Nicola Maiden.”

“Why? Where is she? What's she done?”

“May we come in?”

“If you tell me what you want.”

Barbara exchanged a glance with Nkata. Oh well, her look told him. There was nothing for it but to give the young woman the nasty news on her own front step. “She's dead,” Barbara informed her. “She died in the Peak District three nights ago. Now, may we come in, or should we keep talking out here in the street?”

Vi Nevin looked completely uncomprehending. “Dead?” she repeated. “Nikki's dead?. But she can't be. I spoke to her on Tuesday morning. She was going hiking. She isn't dead. She can't be.”

She searched their faces as if looking for evidence of a joke or a lie. Apparently not finding it, she stood back from the door. She said, “Please come in,” in a hushed and altered voice.

She led them up a flight of stairs to a door that stood gaping on the first floor. This gave into an L-shaped living room, where french windows opened onto a balcony. Below it, water played in a garden fountain, and a hornbeam threw late-afternoon shadows on a pattern of flagstones.

At one side of the room, a sleek chrome and glass trolley held at least a dozen bottles of spirits. Vi Nevin chose an unsealed Glenlivet, and she poured herself three fingers in a tumbler. She took it neat, and any lingering doubts that Barbara had had about her age were put to rest when she tackled the whisky.

While the young woman gathered herself together, Barbara took stock of the living situation… what she could see of it. On the first floor of the maisonette were the living room, the kitchen, and a loo. The bedrooms would be above them, accessed via a staircase that rose along one wall. From where she was standing just inside the front door, she could see to the top of the stairs as well as into the kitchen. This was fitted out with a surfeit of mod cons: refrigerator with ice maker, microwave oven, espresso machine, gleaming copper-bottomed pots and pans. The work tops were granite, and the cupboards and the floor were bleached oak. Nice, Barbara thought. She wondered who was paying for it all.

She glanced at Nkata. He was taking in the low, butter-coloured sofas with their profusion of green and gold cushions tumbling across them. His gaze went from there to the luxurious ferns by the window to the large abstract oil above the fireplace. It was a bloody far cry from Loughborough estate, his expression said. He looked Barbara's way. She mouthed La-dee-dah. He grinned.

Having downed her drink, Vi Nevin appeared to do nothing more than slowly breathe. Finally, she turned to them. She smoothed back her hair-this was blonde and breast-length-and she fixed it in place with a hair band that made her look like Alice in Wonderland.

She said, “I'm sorry. No one phoned. I've not had the television on. I had no idea. I talked to her only Tuesday morning and… for God's sake, what happened?”

They gave her two pieces of information. Her skull had been fractured. Her death hadn't been an accident.

Vi Nevin said nothing. A tremor passed through her.

“Nicola was murdered,” Barbara finally said when Vi requested no details. “Someone beat in her skull with a boulder.”

The fingers of Vis right hand closed tightly on the hem of her mini-dress. She said, “Sit down,” and motioned them to the sofas. She herself sat rigidly on the edge of a deep armchair opposite, knees and ankles together like a well-trained schoolgirl. Still, she didn't ask any questions. She was clearly stunned by the information, but she was equally clearly waiting.

What for? Barbara wanted to know. What was going on? “We're working the London end of the case,” she told Vi. “Our colleague-DI Lynley-is in Derbyshire.”

“The London end,” Vi murmured.

“There was a bloke found dead with the Maiden girl.” Nkata removed the leather notebook from his jacket and twirled a bit of lead from his propelling pencil. “Name's Terry Cole. He's got digs in Battersea. You acquainted with him?”

“Terry Cole?” Vi shook her head. “No. I don't know him.”

“An artist. A sculptor. He's got a studio in some railway arches in Portslade Road. He shares that and a flat with a girl called Cilia Thompson,” Barbara said.

“Cilia Thompson,” she echoed. And shook her head again.

“Did Nicola ever mention either of them? Terry Cole? Cilia Thompson?” Nkata asked.

“Terry or Cilia. No,” she said.

Barbara wanted to point out that there was no Narcissus present, so she could abjure her role in the mythical drama, but she thought the allusion might fall on unappreciative ears. She said, “Miss Nevin, Nicola Maiden's skull was smashed in. This might not break your heart, but if you could cooperate with us-”

“Please” she said as if she couldn't bear to hear the news again. “I haven't seen Nikki since the beginning of June. She went north to work for the summer, and she was due back in town next Wednesday, like I said.”

“To do what?” Barbara asked.

“What?”

“To do what when she got back into town?”

Vi gave no answer. She looked at both of them as if searching the waters for hidden piranhas.

“To work? To take up a life of leisure? To what?” Barbara asked. “If she was coming back here, she must have intended to do something with her time. As her flatmate, I expect you'd know what that was.”

She had intelligent eyes, Barbara saw. They were grey with black lashes. They studied and assessed while her brain doubtless weighed every possible consequence to every answer. Vi Nevin knew something about what had happened to Nicola; that was a certainty.

If she'd learned nothing else from working with Lynley for nearly four years, Barbara had learned that there were times to play hardball and times to give. Hardball produced the intimidation card. Giving offered an exchange of information. Having nothing to use as intimidation with the other woman, the interview was beginning to look like a time to give. Barbara said, “We know she dropped out of law college round the first of May, telling them she'd taken a full-time job with MKR Financial Management. But Mr. Reeve-that's her guv-informed us that she left the company just before that, telling him she was moving home to Derbyshire. Yet when she moved house, she gave this address-not a Derbyshire address-to her landlady in Islington. And, from what we've been able to gather, no one in Derbyshire had an inkling that she was up there for anything more than a summer's visit. What does this suggest to you, Miss Nevin?”

“Confusion,” Vi said. “She hadn't yet made up her mind about her life. Nikki liked to keep her options open.”

“Leaving college? Quitting her job? Telling tales unsupported by the facts? Her options weren't open. They were manufactured. Everyone we've talked to has a different idea of what she intended to do with herself.”

“I can't explain it. I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to say.”

“Did she have a job lined up?” Nkata looked up from his notebook.

“I don't know.”

“Did she have a source of income lined up?” Barbara asked.

“I don't know that either. She paid her share of the expenses here before she left for the summer, and-”

“Why'd she leave?”

“And as it was in cash” Vi plunged on, “I had no reason to question her source of income. Really, I'm sorry, but that's all I can tell you.”

Fat chance, Barbara thought. She was lying through her pretty, baby-sized white teeth. “How did you come to know each other? Are you at the College of Law yourself?”

“We met through work.”

“MKR Financial?” And when Vi nodded, “What d'you do for them?”

“Nothing any longer. I left in April as well.” What she had done, she told them, was work as Tricia Reeve's personal assistant. “I didn't much care for her,” she said. “She's a bit… peculiar. I handed in my notice in March and left once they found a replacement for me.”

“And now?” Barbara asked.

“Now?”

“What d'you do now?” Nkata clarified. “Where d'you work?”

She'd taken up modeling, she told them. It had long been her dream, and Nikki had encouraged her to go for it. She produced a portfolio of professional photographs which depicted her in a variety of guises. In most of the pictures she looked like a waif: thin and large-eyed with the sort of vacant expression that was currently de rigueur in fashion magazines.

Barbara nodded at the photos, aiming for appreciation but inwardly wondering for a fleeting moment when Rubenesque figures-such as her own, frankly-would ever be in vogue. “You must be doing well. A place like this… I don't expect it comes cheap, does it? Is it your own, by the way? This maisonette?”

“It's rented.” Vi gathered up her pictures. She tapped them together and replaced them in their portfolio.

“From who?” Nkata asked the question without looking up from his meticulous note-taking.

“Does it matter from whom?”

“Tell us and we'll make up our minds,” Barbara said.

“From Douglas and Gordon.”

“Mates of yours?”

“Its an estate agency.”

Barbara watched as Vi replaced the portfolio on a shelf beneath the television. She waited till the young woman had turned back to them before she went on. “Mr. Reeve told us that Nicola Maiden had a problem with the truth and a bigger problem keeping her mouth shut about his clients’ finances. He said he was going to sack her, when she left.”

“That's not true.” Vi remained standing, arms folded beneath diminutive breasts. “If he was going to sack her, which he wasn't, it would've been because of his wife.”

“Why?”

“Jealousy. Tricia wants to eliminate every woman he looks at.”

“And he looked at Nicola?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Listen. We know she had a lover,” Barbara said. “We know he's in London. Could that have been Mr. Reeve?”

“Tricia doesn't give him ten minutes out of her sight.”

“But it's possible?”

“No. Nikki was seeing someone, it's true. But not here. There. In Derbyshire.” Vi went into the kitchen and returned with a handful of picture postcards. They depicted various sites in the Peak District: Arbor Low, Peveril Castle, Thor's Cave, the stepping stones in Dovedale, Chatsworth House, Magpie Mine, Little John's Grave, Nine Sisters Henge. Each was addressed to Vi Nevin, and each bore an identical message: Oooh-laAa. This was followed by the initial N. That was all.

Barbara handed the postcards over to Nkata. She said to Vi, “Okay. I'll bite. Clue me in on the meaning behind these.”

“Those are the places she had sex with him. Every time they did it in a new location, she bought a postcard and sent it along to me. As a joke.”

“A real scream,” Barbara agreed. “Who's the bloke?”

“She never said. But I expect he's married.”

“Why?”

“Because aside from the postcards, she never once mentioned him when we talked on the phone. That's how I'd expect her to act if she had a relationship that wasn't on the up and up.”

“Made a habit of that, did she?” Nkata set the cards on the coffee table and made a note in his book. “She did other married blokes?”

“I didn't say that. Just that I think this one was married. And he wasn't in London.”

But someone was, Barbara thought. Someone had to be. If Nicola Maiden had intended a return to town at the end of the summer, she would have been coming with some means of supporting herself once she got here. With this ultramodern, recently redecorated, plush, posh, and pleasant maisonette having try sting place written all over it, how unreasonable was it to assume that a punter deep in dosh had set her up in style to be at his disposal day and night?

That begged the question of what the hell Vi Nevin was doing there. But perhaps that had been part of the deal. A flatmate with whom the mistress could while away the boring hours while waiting for her lord and master to appear.

It was a stretch. But no more than that which was needed to accommodate the vision of Nicola Maiden as Sir Richard Burton, hiking across the moors to discover new and exciting bonking locations to share with a married lover.

What the hell am I doing in police work, Barbara wondered acerbically, when the rest of the world is having so much fun?

They'd like to have a look at Nicola Maiden's room and belongings, she told Vi Nevin. Somewhere there was going to be concrete evidence that Nicola was up to something, and she was determined to find it.