In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 21

Least we're running round incognito,” was DC Winston Nkatas announcement as they pulled into the Boltons, a small neighbourhood shaped like a rugger ball, sandwiched between the Fulham and Old Brompton roads. It consisted of two curving, leafy streets that formed an oval round the central church of St. Mary the Boltons, and its predominant characteristics were the number of security cameras that were mounted on the exterior walls of the mansions and the ostentatious display of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes-Benz, and Range-Rovers that were tucked behind the iron gates of many of the properties.

When Lynley and Nkata pulled into the Boltons, the streetlamps had not yet switched on and the pavements were largely deserted. The only sign of life came from a cat who slinked along the gutter in pursuit of another slinking feline, and a Filipina-dressed in the anachronistic black-and-white garb of a housemaid-who tucked a handbag under her arm and slid into a Ford Capri across the street from the house that Lynley and Nkata were seeking.

Nkata's remark was in reference to Lynley's Bentley, as perfectly at home in this neighbourhood as it had been in Notting Hill. But other than being in possession of the car, the two detectives couldn't have been more out of place in the area: Lynley for his choice of occupation, so unlikely in a man whose family could trace its roots back to the Conqueror and whose more recent ancestors would have considered the Boltons a step down from their usual haunts, and Nkata for the obvious Caribbean-via-South-Bank-of-the-Thames sound of his voice.

“Don't spect they see much rozzer action here,” Nkata said as he stood surveying the iron railings, the cameras, the alarm boxes, and the intercoms that appeared to be the feature of every dwelling. “But it makes you wonder what the point is-all that money-if you got to wall yourself up to enjoy it.”

“I wouldn't disagree,” Lynley said, and he accepted an Opal Fruit from the detective constable's portable stash, unwrapping it and carefully folding the paper into his pocket so as not to foul the pristine footpath with litter. “Let's see what Sir Adrian Beattie has to say.”

Lynley had recognised the name when Tricia Reeve had spoken it in Notting Hill. Sir Adrian Beattie was the UK's answer to Christiaan Barnard. He'd performed the first heart transplant in England and he'd successfully kept performing them round the world for the last several decades, establishing a record of success that had assured his place in medical history and guaranteed his wealth. This latter was on display in the Boltons: Beattie's home was a fortress of glacially white walls and gridiron windows with a front gate barring entrance to anyone who couldn't provide its inhabitants with an acceptable identity through an intercom from which a disembodied voice demanded, “Yes?” in a tone suggesting that not just any answer would do.

Assuming that New Scotland Yard would have a cachet unavailable to the simple word police, Lynley used their place of employment along with their ranks when he identified himself and Nkata. In reply, the gate clicked ajar. By the time Lynley and Nkata had mounted the six front steps, the door had been opened by a woman wearing an incongruous cone-shaped party hat.

She introduced herself as Margaret Beattie, daughter of Sir Adrian. The family were having a birthday party at the moment, she explained hastily, unhooking the hat's elastic strap from her chin and removing the cone from her head. Her daughter was this very evening celebrating the happy negotiation of five years among her fellow men. Was there something wrong in the neighbourhood? Not a burglary, she hoped. And she glanced past them anxiously, as if breaking and entering in the Boltons were a daily occurrence that she might inadvertently encourage by holding the front door open for longer than necessary.

They were there to see Sir Adrian, Lynley explained. And no, their visit had nothing to do with the neighbourhood and its vulnerability to professional thieves.

Margaret Beattie said doubtfully, “I see,” and admitted them into the house. She said that if they'd wait in her father's study upstairs, she would fetch the man himself. “I hope it won't take too long, what you've come to see him about,” she said with the sort of gentle smiling insistence a well-bred woman always uses to imply what she wants without stating it directly. “Molly's his favourite grandchild and he's told her she can have him all to herself tonight. He's promised to read her a whole chapter of Peter Pan. He asked her what she wanted for her birthday, and that was it. Remarkable, don't you think?”

“Quite.”

Obviously pleased, Margaret Beattie beamed, directed them to the study, and went seeking her father.

Sir Adrian's study was on the first floor of the house, at the top of a wide staircase. Decorated with burgundy leather armchairs and fitted with forest-green carpet, the room contained a plethora of volumes from the medical to the mundane, and it acted as a silent testimony to the two disparate aspects of Sir Adrian's life. The professional side was represented by medallions, certificates, awards, and mementos as diverse as antique surgical instruments and centuries-old engravings of the human heart. The personal side showed itself in dozens of photographs. They stood everywhere-on the mantelpiece, tucked into random spaces in the bookshelves, lined up like dancers ready to high kick across the top of the desk. Their subjects were the doctor's family: on holiday, at home, at school, and through the years. Lynley picked up one picture and examined it as Nkata bent to scrutinise the antique instruments that were arranged on the top of a dwarf break-front bookcase.

The doctor had four children, it seemed. In the picture Lynley held, Beattie posed among them and among their spouses, a proud paterfamilias with his wife standing next to him and eleven grandchildren clustered about him like tiny beads of oil round a larger central drop that seeks to absorb them. The occasion of the photograph had been a Christmas celebration, with each of the children holding a gift and Beattie himself decked out as Father Christmas sans beard. Everyone in the picture was either smiling or laughing, and Lynley wondered how their expressions would have read should Sir Adrian's liasion with a dominatrix have become public-or even familial-knowledge.

“Detective Inspector Lynley?”

Lynley swung round at the sound of the pleasant tenor. It should have been voiced by a younger man, but it came from the rotund surgeon himself, who stood in the doorway, a papier mâché captain's hat on his head and a flute of champagne in his hand. He said, “We're about to toast our little Molly. She's going to open her presents. Can this wait another hour?”

“I'm afraid not.” Lynley replaced the photograph and introduced Nkata, who reached in his jacket pocket for his notebook and pencil.

Beattie saw this with apparent consternation. He entered the room and shut the door behind him. “Is this a professional call? Has something happened? My family…” He looked in the direction from which he had come and dismissed whatever it was that he'd intended to say. Bearing bad news about a member of his family could not be the reason that the police had come calling. His family members were all in his house.

“A young woman called Nicola Maiden was murdered in Derbyshire on Tuesday night,” Lynley told the surgeon.

In reply, Beattie was stillness itself, waiting incarnate. His eyes were on Lynley. His surgeon's hands-an old man's hands that still looked as nimble as the hands of a man three decades younger-neither trembled, grasped the glass more tightly, nor moved in any visible way. His glance went to Nkata, dropping to the little leather notebook in the DCs big palm, then back to Lynley.

Lynley said, “You knew Nicola Maiden, didn't you, Sir Adrian? Although perhaps you knew her by her professional name only: Nikki Temptation.”

Beattie advanced across the carpet and set his champagne glass upon the desk with studied care. He placed himself behind the desk in a high-back chair and canted his head at the leather armchairs. He finally said, “Please sit, Inspector. You as well, Constable.” And when they had done so, he went on with “I've not seen a paper. What happened to her, please?”

It was the sort of question that a man who was used to being in charge might have asked of a subordinate. In reply, however, Lynley sought to communicate which of them would be controlling the direction of the conversation. He said evenly, “You did know Nicola Maiden, then.”

Beattie's fingers folded round each other. Two of them, Lynley saw, had nails that were blackened, both of them deformed by some sort of fungus that apparently grew rampant beneath them. It was a disconcerting sight in a man of medicine, and Lynley wondered that Beattie didn't do something about it.

“Yes. I knew Nicola Maiden,” Beattie said.

“Tell us about your relationship.”

Behind gold-framed spectacles, the eyes were wary. “Am I a suspect?”

“Everyone who knew her is a suspect.”

“You said Tuesday night.”

“I did say that, yes.”

“I was here on Tuesday night.”

“In this house?”

“Not here. But in London. At my club in St. James's. Shall I arrange for corroboration, Inspector? That's the word I want, isn't it? Corroboration”

Lynley said, “Tell us about Nicola. When did you see her last?”

Beattie reached for his champagne and drank. To gain time, to still nerves. It was impossible to tell. “The morning of the day before she left for the North.”

“This would be last June?” Nkata asked. And when Beattie nodded, Nkata added, “In Islington?”

“Islington?” Beattie frowned. “No. Here. She came to the house. She always came to the house when I… when I needed her.”

“Your relationship was sexual, then,” Lynley said. “You were one of her clients.”

Beattie turned his head away from Lynley, looking towards the mantelpiece with its copious display of family photos. “I expect you know the answer to that question. You'd hardly have come calling on a Saturday evening had you not been told exactly where I fitted in Nikki's life. So, yes, I was one of her clients, if that's what you'd like to call it.”

“What would you call it?”

“We had a mutually beneficial arrangement. She provided an indispensable service. I paid her generously for it.”

“You're a man with a high public profile,” Lynley pointed out. “You've a successful career, a wife and children, grandchildren, and all the external trappings of a fortunate life.”

“I've all the internal trappings as well,” Beattie said. “It is a fortunate life. So why would I risk losing it by having a liaison with a common prostitute? That's what you want to know, isn't it? But that's just the point, you see, Inspector Lynley. Nikki wasn't common in any way.”

Music started somewhere in the house, a furious and proficient playing on a piano. Chopin, it sounded like. Then the tune broke off abruptly amid some shouting, to be replaced by a spritely Cole Porter piece that was accompanied by exuberant voices not bothering to aim for the appropriate key. “‘Call me irreSPONsible, call me unreLIable,’” the group partly howled, partly laughed, partly sang. Much guffawing and good-natured derision followed this: the happy family in celebration.

“So I'm learning,” Lynley agreed. “You're not the first person to mention the fact that she was a cut above the ordinary. But actually, why you were willing to risk everything with an affair-”

“That's not what it was.”

“With an arrangement, then. Why you'd risk everything for that isn't what I want to know. I'm more interested in discovering exactly what you'd be willing to do to safeguard what you have-these external and internal trappings of your life-if the continuing possession of them was threatened in some way.”

“Threatened?” Beattie's voice was too perplexed for Lynley to believe the reaction was ingenuous. Surely the man knew how much he put at jeopardy by having a prostitute operating on the periphery of his life.

“Every man has enemies,” Lynley told him. “Even you, I dare say. Should someone untrustworthy have found out about your arrangement with Nicola Maiden, should someone have decided to harm you by revealing that arrangement, you would have lost a great deal, and not all of it tangible.”

“Ah. I do see: the traditional outcome of societal defiance. ‘Who steals my purse,’” Beattie murmured. Then he went on more conversationally, giving Lynley the oddest sensation that they might have been discussing the next day's weather forecast. “That couldn't have happened, Inspector. Nikki came to the house, as I said. She dressed conservatively, carried a brief case, and drove a Saab. To all appearances, she was arriving to take dictation or to help plan a party. And as our encounters took place well away from windows, there was absolutely nothing for anyone to see.”

“She herself didn't wear a blindfold, I expect.”

“Of course she didn't. She could hardly do that and be of any satisfactory service to me.”

“So you'll no doubt agree that she might have been in possession of certain details about you. Details, which if revealed, could confirm a story-perhaps one sold to a tabloid?-that would prove whatever facts she might choose to lay before a public for whom gossip can never be salacious enough.”

Beattie said, sounding pensive, “Good my God.”

“So corroboration is in order, as you guessed,” Lynley said. “We'll need the name of your club.”

“Are you suggesting that I killed Nikki because she wanted more from me than I was paying? Or because I'd decided I didn't need her any longer and she was threatening to go public if I didn't keep paying her?” He drank a final mouthful of his champagne, afterwards giving a rueful laugh and shoving the glass away. He lumbered to his feet, saying, “Mother of God, if that had only been the case. Wait here please.” And he left the room.

Nkata rose quickly in response. “Guv, sh'll I…?”

“Wait. Let's see.”

“He could be on the phone setting up his alibi.”

“I don't think so.” Lynley couldn't have explained why he had that feeling, save the fact that there was something decidedly odd in Sir Adrian Beattie's reactions, not only to the news of Nicola Maiden's murder but also to the logical implication that his involvement with her had vast potential to destroy everything he appeared to value.

When Beattie returned some two minutes later, he brought with him a woman whom he introduced to the detectives as his wife. Lady Beattie, he titled her, and then to the woman herself, “Chloe, these men are here about Nikki Maiden.”

Lady Beattie-a thin woman with Wallis Simpson hair and skin made shiny by too many face-lifts-reached for the triple-strand pearls that were slung round her neck like souvenir golf balls. She said, “Nikki Maiden? She's not in some kind of trouble, I hope.”

“Unfortunately, she's been murdered, my dear,” her husband said, and he placed a hand at her elbow, perhaps on the chance that she'd find the news distressing.

Which she apparently did, saying, “Oh my God. Adrian-” and reaching for him.

He slid his hand down her arm and took her own, clucking at it with what looked to Lynley like genuine tenderness. “Awful,” he said. “Ghastly, rotten. These policemen have come because they think I might be involved. Because of the arrangement.”

Lady Beattie disengaged her hand from her husband's. She raised a shapely eyebrow, saying, “But isn't it much more likely that Nikki could have hurt you, and not the opposite? She didn't allow anyone to dominate her, did she? I remember her being quite specific about that the very first time we interviewed her. ‘I won't be the bottom’ is exactly what she said. ‘I only tried it once, and I found it revolting.’ And then she pardoned herself, thinking she might have offended you. I remember that perfectly, don't you, dear?”

“I don't expect she was killed during a session,” Beattie told his wife. “They've said it was in Derbyshire, and she'd got that summer job with the solicitor, you remember.”

“And in her free time she didn't…?”

“That was only in London, as far as I know.”

“I see.”

Lynley found himself feeling as if he'd just stepped through the looking glass. He glanced at Nkata and saw that the DC, his face a study in stupefaction, felt the same. Lynley said, “Perhaps you'd explain the arrangement to us, Sir Adrian, Lady Beattie. The background will allow us to see what we're dealing with.”

“Of course.” Lady Beattie and her husband were pleased as punch to give a full account of Sir Adrian's sexual proclivities. Lady Beattie sat gracefully on a sofa near the fireplace. The men went back to their original positions. And while her husband outlined the exact nature of his relationship with Nicola Maiden, she added salient details wherever he forgot them.

He'd met Nicola Maiden round the first of November the previous year, perhaps nine months after his Chloe's arthritis had become too painful in her hands for her to be able to perform the rites of discipline that they'd learned to enjoy throughout their marriage. “We thought at first that we'd simply go without,” Sir Adrian said. “The pain, I mean. Not the sex itself. We thought we'd just cope. Be traditional and all that. But it wasn't long before we saw that my need-” He paused, as if seeking an abbreviated way to explain that would not take them through the cobwebbed labyrinth of his psyche. “It is a need, you see. You must understand that if you're to understand anything.”

“Go on,” Lynley said. He shot a look at Nkata. The DC had resumed his scrupulous note-taking, although his expression was telegraphing Oh Lord, what's my mum going to say 'bout this as eloquently as if he were speaking it.

Realising that Sir Adrian's need was going to have to be met if the Beatties wanted to continue their own sexual relations, they'd sought someone young, healthy, strong, and-most important-entirely discreet to minister to him.

“Nicola Maiden,” Lynley said.

“Discretion was-is-critical,” Sir Adrian said. “For a man in my position.” Obviously, he couldn't select a dominatrix blindly by choosing someone from a phone box card or a magazine advert. He could hardly ask friends and colleagues for recommendations. And going to an's & M club-or even to one of the lesser flesh pits in Soho in the hope of meeting a likely candidate-wasn't a wise option, since there was always the chance of being seen, being recognised, and consequently being subjected to the sort of tabloid treatment guaranteed to cause excruciating agonies to his children, the spouses of his children, and their offspring. “And to Chloe, of course,” Sir Adrian added with a nod. “For while she knew-has always known, in fact-about the hunger, her friends and relations don't know. And I expect she'd like to keep it that way.”

“Thank you, darling,” Chloe said.

So Sir Adrian had contacted an escort service-Global Escorts, to be precise-and through that institution had ultimately met Nicola Maiden. Their first interview-consisting of tea, scones, and satisfactory conversation-had been followed by a second, in which the initial deal had been struck.

“Deal?” Lynley asked.

“When her services would be required,” Chloe explained. “What they would entail and what she would be paid for them.”

“Chloe and I talked to her together for both interviews to make the arrangements,” Sir Adrian said. “It was crucial that she understand there would be nothing gained by holding over my head a liaison potentially painful to my wife.”

“Because it wasn't painful,” Chloe said. “At least not to me.”

“Will you show them the chamber, darling?” Sir Adrian asked his wife. “I'll pop down to the children and let them know we'll be with them before too much longer.”

“Of course,” she replied. “Come with me, Inspector, Constable.” And as gracefully as she'd sat, she rose, leading them to the door and up two flights of stairs as Sir Adrian went off to have a few words with his partying offspring. They were, ironically, crooning “I Get No Kick from Champagne.”

Lady Beattie showed them up to the top floor of the house. From deep within an old clothes press that stood in the narrow corridor there, she took a key, which she used on one of the doors. She swung it open, preceded the police into the room, and switched on a low-wattage light.

“He actually wanted only discipline at first,” she explained, “which, while I found it a bit odd, frankly, I was able to give him. Rulers on the palm, paddles on the bottom, the strap against the back of his legs. But after a few years he wanted more, and when it got to the point that I wasn't strong enough… Well, he's already explained that, hasn't he? At any rate, here's where they had their sessions-where he and I had them as well when I was able.”

The chamber, as they'd called it, had been fashioned out of several of the erstwhile servants' bedrooms. By knocking out walls, padding them, installing a ventilation system that obviated the use of windows-which were themselves shuttered against potential outside curiosity-the Beatties had created a fantasy world that was in part headmaster's office, operating theatre, dungeon, and mediaeval torture chamber. A line of cupboards had been fitted under the eaves, and Lady Beattie opened these to display the various costumes and devices of discipline, as she called them, that had been used on Sir Adrian.

It was clear why the Maiden girl had brought nothing with her to the house save her desire to be useful to Sir Adrian and to be paid well for her usefulness: The costumes in the cupboards ranged from a heavy wool nuns habit to a prison guards uniform complete with truncheon. There was, of course, the more traditional garb associated with the's & M game: PVC get-ups of red or black, leather teddies and masks, high-heeled boots. And the instruments of Sir Adrian's discipline, tidily arranged like the antique surgical instruments in the study, also explained why she'd been able to make her calls so lightly burdened. Everything necessary for discipline, pain, and humiliation had been collected and housed together.

From his years in policing, Lynley knew that he should by now have seen it all. But every time he thought he had, something in life caught him by surprise. And in this case, it wasn't so much the presence of the chamber in the Beatties' house that took his breath away. It was the attitude to it taken by the couple themselves, particularly the wife. She might have been showing them a state-of-the-art kitchen.

She seemed to realise this. Watching Lynley from her position in the doorway, observing Nkata wandering the length of the room with an expression on his face that suggested how actively his imagination was supplying him with images of the uses to which the costumes and the equipment were put, she said quietly, “I wouldn't have had it this way had I been given a choice. One does expect a traditional marriage. But loving someone means compromise occasionally. And once he explained why it was so important to him…” She gestured at the room with a hand whose knuckles were enlarged from the disease that had necessitated Nicola Maiden's entrance into the Beatties’ private world. “Need is just need. So long as judgement remains apart from it, need has no real power to hurt us.”

“Did you mind another woman seeing to the need?”

“My husband loves me. I've never had any doubt about that.”

Lynley wondered.

Sir Adrian rejoined them, saying to her, “You're wanted below, darling. Molly's not to be denied her presents another five minutes.”

“But will you-”

They communicated in that way peculiar to couples who'd been married for more than a generation. “As soon as I finish here. It won't be long.”

When she'd left them, Sir Adrian waited for a moment before he said quietly, “There's a part, of course, that I'd rather Chloe didn't know. It would only hurt her unnecessarily.”

Nkata made his notebook ready as Lynley thought about what the surgeon's statement implied. He said, “You paged her-Nicola-throughout the summer. But as she couldn't have serviced you with discipline from Derbyshire, I've a feeling your ‘arrangement’ was something more than you wanted to say in front of your wife.”

“You're very good, Inspector.” Beattie closed the chamber door. “I was in love with her. Not at first, naturally. We didn't know each other. But within a month or two, I realised how strongly I was feeling about her. Initially, I told myself it was only addiction: A new woman doing the discipline heightened my excitement, and I wanted that excitement more and more often. But it went beyond that in the end because she was far more than I expected. So I wanted to keep her.”

“As your wife?”

“I love Chloe. But there's more than one kind of love in a man's life-which you may know already or will come to know eventually-and selfishly, I hoped to experience it.” He dropped his gaze to the deformed nails at the ends of his fingers. He said, “I felt sexual love for Nikki, the sort that has to do with physical possession. Animal craving. My love for Chloe, on the other hand, is the stuff of our history. When I knew I had this other love for Nikki-this sexual thing that I found I couldn't get out of my mind the more we met-I told myself it was natural to feel it. She was meeting a tremendous need of mine. And no matter what I wanted, she was willing to do it to me. But when I saw there was so much more to her than domination…”

“You became reluctant to share her with other men.”

“An intuitive leap. Yes, you are very good.”

Nicola visited the Boltons at least five times a week, Beattie told them. And he explained the frequency of their sessions to Chloe by talking about the heightened stress of his work as younger doctors and advances in medicine had increased his level of anxiety to the point that only discipline could relieve it.

“I told Nikki that when the craving came upon me, I wanted her available to gratify it at once,” he said.

“But the reality was more complicated than that?”

“The reality was infinitely simple. I couldn't cope with imagining

Nikki doing to others-and being to others-what she was doing and being to me. Thinking of her with anyone else was a quick descent into hell. And I didn't expect that, to feel that way about a tart. But then, when I took her on, I didn't know how much more than a tart she was going to be.”

Without his wife's knowledge, he'd offered Nicola a special deal. He would pay to keep her-and pay her, more than she'd ever dreamed of being paid-in whatever situation she fancied for herself: a flat, a house, a hotel suite, a country cottage. He didn't care, just so long as she promised him that her time would be kept open solely for him. “I claimed that I didn't want to stand in a queue or book an appointment any longer,” Beattie explained. “But if I wanted her available to me at any hour, I had to place her in a position where she was free.”

The maisonette in Fulham gave her that position. And since Nicola always came to Sir Adrian and not the reverse, it was of little account to him that she asked to be allowed a flatmate as company for the periods of time when he didn't want her services. “That was fine with me,” he told them. “All I wanted was her to be available whenever I phoned. And for the first month that's what she was. Five or six days a week. Sometimes twice a day. She'd arrive within an hour of being paged. She'd stay as long as I wanted her to be here. The arrangement worked well.”

“But then she returned to Derbyshire. Why?”

“She claimed that she needed to honour a commitment to work for a solicitor up there, that she'd be gone only for the summer. I was a fool in love, but not so much of a fool as to believe that. I told her I wouldn't go on paying for the Fulham place if she wasn't going to be in town for me.”

“But she went anyway. She was willing to risk losing what she had from you. What does that suggest?”

“The obvious. I knew that if she was returning to Derbyshire despite what I was paying her-and providing her-to be here in London, there had to be a reason and the reason was money. Someone there was paying her more than I was. Which meant, of course, another man.”

“The solicitor.”

“I accused her. She denied it. And I have to admit that an ordinary solicitor couldn't have afforded her, not without an independent source of income. So it was someone else. But she wouldn't name him no matter what I threatened. ‘It's only for the summer,’ she kept saying. And I kept bellowing, ‘I don't bloody care.’”

“You quarreled.”

“Bitterly. I withdrew my support. I knew she'd have to go back to the escort service-or perhaps even to the street-if she wanted to keep the maisonette when she returned to London, and I was betting that she wouldn't want to do that. But I bet wrong. She left me anyway. And I lasted four days before I was on the phone, ready to give her anything to return to me. More money. A house. God, even my name.”

“But she wouldn't return.”

“She didn't mind being on the street, she said. Casually, this was. As if I'd asked her how she was finding Derbyshire. ‘We've got cards printed and Vi's are already out there,’ she said. ‘Mine'll be out there as well when I get back to town. I have no hard feelings about what's happened between you and me, Ady. And anyway, Vi says the phone's ringing day and night, so we'll be fine.’”

“Did you believe her?”

“I accused her of trying to drive me mad. I railed. Then I apologised. Then she played up to me on the phone. Then I wanted her desperately and couldn't bear to think of what she was giving him, whoever he was. Then I railed at her again. Stupid. Bloody stupid. But I was desperate to have her back. I would have done anything-” He stopped, seeming to realise how his words could be interpreted.

Lynley said, “On Tuesday night, Sir Adrian?”

“Inspector, I didn't kill Nikki. I couldn't have harmed her. I haven't even seen her since June. I'd hardly be standing here telling you all this if I'd… I couldn't have hurt her.”

“Your club's name?”

“Brooks s. I met a colleague there for dinner on Tuesday. He'll confirm, I dare say. But, my God, you won't tell him that I… No one knows, Inspector. It's something that's between Chloe and me.”

And anyone Nicola Maiden chose to tell, Lynley thought. What would it mean to Sir Adrian Beattie to have his most closely guarded secret held over his head like Damocles’ sword? What would he do if threatened with exposure?

“Did Nicola ever introduce you to her flatmate?”

“Once, yes. When I gave her the keys to the maisonette.”

“So Vi Nevin, the flatmate, knew about the arrangement?”

“Perhaps. I don't know.”

But why even take the risk of someone knowing? Lynley wondered. Why allow a flatmate into the mix and face the dangers inherent in an outsider's having knowledge of a sexual proclivity that could cause such humiliation to a man in Beattie's position?

Beattie himself seemed to read the questions in Lynley's eyes. He said, “Do you know what it feels like to be that desperate for a woman? So desperate that you'll agree to anything, do anything to have her? That's what it was like.”

“What about Terry Cole? How did he fit in?”

“I don't know a Terry Cole.”

Lynley tried to gauge the level of veracity in the statement. He couldn't do so. Beattie was too good at maintaining his expression of guilelessness. But that alone increased Lynley's suspicion.

He thanked the surgeon for his time, and he and Nkata took their leave, giving Beattie back into the arms of his family. Incongruously, the man had kept his papier mâché captain's hat on throughout their interview. Lynley wondered if the wearing of that hat kept him firmly anchored in his family life or acted as a spurious symbol of a devotion that he did not feel.

Once out on the street, Nkata said, “My sweet Lord. What people get themselves into, spector.”

“Hmm. Yes,” Lynley agreed. “And what they get themselves out of as well.”

“You don't believe his story?”

Lynley answered indirectly. “Talk to the people at Brooks s. They'll have records showing when he was there. Then head over to Islington. You've seen Sir Adrian Beattie in the flesh. You've seen Martin Reeve as well. Talk to the Maiden girl's landlady, the neighbours. Let's see if anyone can recall glimpsing either of those gentlemen there on the ninth of May.”

“Asking a lot, Guv. Four months back.”

“I've faith in your powers of interrogation.” Lynley disarmed the Bentley's security system, saying over the car's roof, “Climb in. I'll drop you at the tube.”

“What's on for yourself?”

“Vi Nevin. If anyone can confirm Beattie's story, she's going to be the one.”

Azhar wouldn't hear of Barbara walking the seventy or so yards alone to her bungalow at the bottom of the garden. She might be mugged, raped, accosted, or attacked by a cat with a proclivity for thick ankles.

So he tucked his daughter into her bed, scrupulously locked the door of his flat, and ushered Barbara round the side of the house. He offered her a cigarette. She accepted and they paused to light up, the flaring match emphasising the contrasting colours of their skin as she held the cigarette to her lips and he sheltered the flame near to her mouth.

“Nasty habit,” she said conversationally. “Hadiyyah's after me all the time to stop.”

“After me as well,” Azhar said. “Her mother is-at least she was-quite a militant non-smoker, and Hadiyyah has apparently inherited not only Angela's dislike of tobacco but also her crusading spirit.”

The words constituted the most Azhar had yet said about the mother of his child. Barbara wanted to ask him whether he'd informed his daughter that her mother was gone for good or if he was still holding firmly to the fairy tale of Angela Weston's holiday in Canada, one which had now extended itself for nearly five months. But she said nothing beyond “Yeah. Well. You're her dad, and I expect she'd like to keep you round for a few more years.” They followed the path that led to her digs.

“Thanks for the dinner, Azhar. It was lovely. When I get beyond re-heating pizza, I want to return the favour, if you'll let me.”

“That would be a pleasure, Barbara.”

She expected him to turn back for his flat-her own small hovel being well in view, so there was little chance that she'd come to trouble in a five-second saunter down the rest of the garden path to it. But he continued to walk along with her in his quiet way.

They reached her front door. She hadn't locked it and, when she swung it open, Azhar frowned and said that her sense of security was not as heightened as it ought to be. She said Yeah, but she'd intended only to pop round for a moment and apologise to Hadiyyah for having forgotten the sewing lesson that she'd promised to attend. She hadn't intended to stay for dinner. And thank you for that meal, by the way. You are a brilliant cook. Or have I said that already?

Azhar politely pretended that she hadn't mentioned his cooking until that moment, after which he insisted that he be allowed inside to make certain there were no unwanted visitors lurking in the shower or under the day bed. Having examined the bungalow to his satisfaction, Azhar advised her to lock her door carefully when he left. But then he didn't leave. Instead, he glanced at the dining room table, where Barbara had flung her belongings upon arriving home from work. These consisted of her shapeless old shoulder bag and a manila folder into which she'd tucked the roster of employees from 31-32 Soho Square, her own surreptitiously duplicated copy of the post-mortem that she'd delivered to St. James, and the rough draft of the report she'd crafted for Lynley, delineating the information she'd gleaned from reading the SO 10 files of Andy Maiden.

Azhar said, “This new investigation keeps you busy. You must be gratified to be back among your colleagues.”

“Yeah,” Barbara said. “It was a long patch of waiting. Regents Park and I were becoming a bit more acquainted than I'd thought we might be when it all began.”

Azhar drew in on his cigarette, watching her over it and then through the smoke. She never liked it when he looked at her this way. It was a look that always left her wondering what was supposed to happen next.

She said, “Thanks again for the meal.”

“Thank you for sharing it with us.” But still he made no move to leave, and she realised why when he finally said, “The letters D and C, Barbara. They're an indication of rank in the police force, are they not?”

Her heart sank. She wanted to divert the conversation they were about to have, but she couldn't think of a quick way to do so. So she said, “Yeah. Generally. I mean, I suppose it depends on what they're attached to, those letters. Like Washington, D.C. That's not a rank. But, of course, it's not a police force either.” She smiled. Far too brightly, she decided.

“But attached to your name. DC. Detective Constable. Yes?”

Damn, Barbara thought. But what she said was “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“Then you've been demoted. I saw the letters on that note that the gentleman left for you. I thought at first there was some sort of mistake, but as you've not been working with Inspector Lynley-”

“1 don't always work with the inspector, Azhar. Sometimes we take different parts of a case.”

“Do you.” But she could see he didn't believe the story. Or at least that he thought there was something more to it. “Demotion. And yet there's been no reduction in the force, has there? I believe you told me that earlier, didn't you? And if that's the case, it seems that you must be avoiding a truth. With me, that is. I find myself wondering why.”

“Azhar, I'm not avoiding anything. Hell. We don't exactly live in each other's knickers, do we?” Barbara said, and then found her face blazing with the implication of an intimacy which she hadn't intended. Bloody hell, she thought. Why was conversation with this man such a verbal minefield? “I mean, we don't do a lot of job talk, you and I. We never have done. You teach your classes at the university. I saunter round the Yard and try to look indispensable.”

“Demotion is serious in any profession. And in this case I expect that it comes from your time in Essex, doesn't it? What happened there, Barbara?”

“Whoa. How'd you make that jump?”

He crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray from which at least ten dog ends of Players protruded from the burnt tobacco like burgeoning vegetables. He regarded her. “I am correct in the surmise, am I not? You were disciplined because of your work in Essex last June. What happened, Barbara?”

“It's sort of a private situation,” she temporised, “I mean, you know, it's a personal thing. Why d'you want to know?”

“Because I find myself in a state of confusion about British law, and I wish to understand it better. How can I be of assistance to my people when they have legal difficulties if I don't clearly see how the laws of your country are applied to the individual who breaks them?”

“But this wasn't a case of breaking a law,” Barbara said. And that, she told herself, was merely a mild prevarication. After all, she hadn't been in the dock defending herself against a charge of assault or attempted murder, so she'd been able to convince herself that, law-wise, she'd always been in the clear.

“Nonetheless, as you are my friend-at least I hope that you are-”

“Of course I am.”

“Then perhaps you'll help me to understand more about your society.”

Bollocks, Barbara thought. He understood more about British society than she herself did. But she could hardly take the discussion in that direction, where it would soon enough crumble into a Punch and Judy of Yes you do, No I don't. So she said, “Its nothing much. I had a row with the DCI in charge of the case out in Essex, Azhar. We were in the middle of a chase. And the one thing an underling isn't supposed to do is to question an order in the middle of a chase. That's what happened and that's why I lost my rank.”

“For questioning an order.”

“I tend to question more forcefully than the average bird,” she said airily. “It's a habit that I learned in school. I'm short. I get lost in a crowd if I don't make myself heard. You ought to hear me order a pint of Bass in the Load of Hay when the football crowd's watching an Arsenal match on the telly But when I used the same approach with DCI Barlow, she didn't much like it.”

“Yet to lose your rank… It's a draconian measure, certainly. Are you being made an example of? Can you not protest it? Is there not a union or organisation who might represent you aggressively enough to-”

“In a situation like this,” Barbara cut in, “it's best not to make waves. Let the smoke clear, you know. Let sleeping dogs lie.” She groaned inwardly, the Queen of Cliché. “Anyway, when enough time passes, it'll sort itself out. The situation. You know.” She smashed her own cigarette among the others, putting an end to their discussion. She waited for him to bid her goodnight.

Instead, he said, “Hadiyyah and I go to the seaside tomorrow.”

“She told me. She's looking forward to it. The pleasure pier, especially. And she's expecting a big win from the crane grab, Azhar, so I hope you've been practising with the pincers.”

He smiled. “She asks for so little. And yet life appears to give her so much.”

“P'haps that's why,” Barbara pointed out. “If you don't spend your time looking for something particular, what you end up finding suits you just fine.”

“Wise words,” he acknowledged.

Wisdom's cheap, Barbara thought. She rustled in the manila folder on the table and brought out the roster of names from Soho Square. Duty was calling, her action told him. And Azhar was nothing if not astute at drawing inferences from unspoken implications.

The journey from Sir Adrian Beattie's home to Vi Nevin's maisonette was little more than a cruise down the Fulham Road in rather light traffic. It didn't take long. But it was long enough for Lynley to consider what he'd heard from Beattie and what he felt about what he'd heard. After years in CID, he realised that there was no real place in the investigation for him to be dwelling upon what he felt about anyone's revelations, least of all Sir Adrian's. But he found that he couldn't help himself. And he justified the direction his thoughts were taking by declaring them natural: Sexual deviance was as much a curiosity as a two-headed kitten. One might shudder at the sight of such an anomaly. But one still looked at it, however briefly.

And that's what he was doing: looking at the deviant behaviour for its anomaly quotient first, then evaluating the possibility that sexual deviance in itself was the relevant detail that would allow him to unearth Nicola Maiden's killer. The only problem he was having with attempting to use sexual deviance as a means of finding a killer was that he was discovering himself incapable of moving beyond the mere presence of the deviance in the first place.

Why was this? he wondered. Was he titillated by it? Sententiously condemnatory? Intrigued? Appalled? Seduced? What?

He couldn't have said. He knew it existed, of course: what some would call the dark side of desire. He was aware of at least some of the theoretical frameworks that students of the psyche had constructed to explain it. Depending upon what school of thought one wished to enroll in, sado-masochism could be considered an erotic blasphemy born of sexual dissent; an upper-class vice growing out of spending one's formative years in boarding schools where corporal punishment was the order of the day-and the more ritualised the better; a defiant reaction to a rigidly conservative upbringing; an expression of personal loathing for the simple possession of sexual drives; or the sole means of physical intimacy for those whose terror of the mere prospect of intimacy was greater than their willingness to overcome it. But what he didn't know was why, at the moment, the thought of deviancy was eating away at him. And it was the why of that eating away that plagued his mind.

What has all this to do with love? Lynley had wanted to ask the surgeon. What did being bruised, beaten, bloodied, and humiliated have to do with the ineffable and-yes, all right, it was absurdly romantic but he'd use the term anyway-transcendent joy that was attached to the act of possessing and of being possessed by another person? Wasn't that joy the outcome to which sexual partners ought to aspire when they engaged in intercourse? Or was he too new a newlywed to be making any assessments at all about what went for devotion between consenting adults? And did sex have anything to do with love anyway? And should it, for that matter? Or was that where everyone went wrong in the first place, assigning an importance to a bodily function that should have no more importance than cleaning one's teeth?

Except that direction of thought was sophistry, wasn't it. One didn't need to clean one's teeth. One didn't even feel the need. And it was the feeling of that need-the slow building up of a tension at first subtle and ultimately impossible to ignore-that told the real tale in life. Because it was that feeling of need which led to a hunger that insisted upon gratification. And it was the desire for gratification that caused one to abjure everything that rose up to forbid the satiety one sought: One willingly disregarded honour, responsibility, tradition, fidelity, and duty in pursuit of one's passion. And why? Because one wanted.

If he cast himself back more than twenty years, Lynley could see how the wanting had rent his own family. Or at least how he himself had allowed the wanting-which he had then only imperfectly understood-to rend it. Honour had bound his mother to his father. Responsibility and tradition had tied her to the family home and to the more than two hundred and fifty years of Asherton countesses who had overseen its maintenance and its glory. Duty had demanded that she concern herself with her husband's failing health and her children's welfare. And fidelity had required that she do it all without openly, inwardly, or privately acknowledging that she herself might want something different-or at least something more-than the lot she'd chosen as an eighteen-year-old bride. She'd coped with everything well until disease began to gnaw at her husband. Even then she'd managed to hold together life as the family had always known it, until the very act of having to cope, of having to act a role instead of simply being able to live it, had made her long for rescue. And rescue had come, if only temporarily.

Bitch, whore, tart, he'd called her. And he would have struck her-the mother he'd adored-had she not struck him first, and with a violence, a frustration, and an anger that had given to the blow a force which split open his upper lip.

Why had he reacted so violently to the knowledge of her infidelity? Lynley wondered now as he braked to avoid a pack of cyclists who were negotiating the right turn onto North End Road. He watched them idly-all business in their helmets and spandex-and considered the question, not only for what it revealed about his adolescence but also for what its answer implied about the case in hand. The answer, he decided, had to do with love and with the insidious and often unreasonable expectations that always seemed to attach themselves to the very fact of loving. How often we want the love object to be an extension of ourselves, he thought. And when that doesn't happen-because it never can-our frustration demands that we take action to alleviate the turmoil we feel.

But, he realised, there was more than one kind of turmoil that was becoming apparent in the relationships that Nicola Maiden had had. While thwarted desire played a part in her life-and very possibly in her death-he couldn't overlook the place that was occupied by jealousy, revenge, avarice, and hate. All those crippling passions caused turmoil. Any one of them could drive someone to murder.

Rostrevor Road was a mere half mile south of Fulham Broadway, and the door of Vi Nevin's building was propped open when Lynley climbed the steps. A hand-lettered sign on the jamb explained why, as did the noise coming from a ground floor flat whose door was also propped open. Tildy and Steve's Digs at the Rear were the words written out in multi-coloured felt pen on a sheet of heavy paper. Smoke Outside, Please! was the request made beneath.

The noise from within was considerable as the partygoers were enjoying the musical talents of an unidentifiable group of males who were gutturally advising members of their sex to use her, abuse her, have her, and lose her, all to the accompaniment of percussion, electric guitar, and brass. None of this sounded particularly mellifluous in combination, Lynley decided. He was getting older-and, alas, stuffier-than he thought. He headed for the stairs and dashed upwards.

The corridor lights were on a timer, with a push button at the bottom of the stairs. There were windows on the landing, but as darkness had fallen, these did very little to dispel the gloom above the ground floor of the building. So Lynley punched for the lights on Vi Nevin's floor and strode towards her door.

She hadn't been willing to tell the truth about how she'd come to meet Nicola Maiden in the first place. She hadn't been willing to name the man who had originally financed the rooms in which she lived. There were probably a score of other facts that she could part with if the psychological thumb-screws were applied with enough finesse.

Lynley felt up to the task of applying them. Although Vi Nevin was nobody's fool and unlikely to be tricked into revealing information, she was also living at the edge of the law and, like the Reeves, she'd be willing to compromise if compromise was what would keep her in business.

He rapped sharply on her door. There was a brass knocker, so he knew she'd be able to hear his knock despite the music and shouting from the party below. However, there was no answer from within, which upon reflection was hardly a circumstance worthy of suspicion since it was a Saturday night and-whether she was out servicing a client or otherwise engaged-a woman away from home on a Saturday night was nothing to raise the alarm about.

He removed one of his cards from his jacket, put on his glasses, and slid a pen from his pocket to leave her a note. He wrote and returned the pen to his pocket. He fixed the card to the door at the height of the knob.

And then he saw it.

Blood. An unmistakable thumbprint upon the door knob. A second smear some eight inches higher, rising at an angle on the door from the jamb.

“Christ.” Lynley used his fist against the door. “Miss Nevin?” he called. Then he shouted, “Vi Nevin!”

There was no answer. There was no sound from within.

Lynley pulled his wallet from his trouser pocket, extracted a credit card, and applied it to the old Banham latch.