In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 23

It was part blessing and part curse that a good number of the forensic scientists at the police lab were lads and lasses of insatiable curiosity. The blessing rose from their willingness to work days, nights, weekends, and holidays if they were intrigued enough by evidence that was presented for their evaluation. The curse rose from one's personal knowledge of the existence of the blessing. For realising that the forensic lab employed scientists whose inquisitive natures prompted them to remain at their microscopes when saner individuals were at home or out on the town, one felt obliged to gather the information that those scientists were so willing to provide.

Thus on a Saturday night, DI Peter Hanken found himself not in the bosom of his family in Buxton but, rather, standing before a microscope while Miss Amber Kubowsky-chief evidence technician of the moment-waxed enthusiastic about what she'd discovered regarding the Swiss Army knife and the wounds that had been made on the body of Terry Cole.

The blood on the knife-she was happy to confirm as she went at her scalp with the rubber end of a pencil, as if wishing to erase something that was scribbled on her skull-was indeed Cole's. And, upon carefully prising apart the knife's various blades and devices, she'd been able to ascertain that the left blade of the scissors was, as reported by Andy Maiden, broken off. Thus, the ineluctable conclusion one would normally reach was that the knife in question not only inflicted the wounds found upon Terry Cole's body, but also bore a marked resemblance to the knife that Andy Maiden had allegedly passed on to his daughter.

“Right,” Hanken said.

She looked pleased at his affirmation of her remarks. She said, “Have a look at this, then,” and nodded towards the microscope.

Hanken squinted through the lens. Everything Miss Amber Kubowsky had said was so achingly obvious that he wondered at her level of excitement. Things must be as bland as yesterday's porridge in the laboratory-not to mention in her life-if the poor lass got herself worked up over this. “What exactly am I supposed to be looking for?” he asked Miss Kubowsky, raising his head and gesturing at the microscope. “This doesn't much look like a scissor blade to me. Or blood, for that matter.”

“It isn't,” she said happily. “And that's the point, DI Hanken. That's what's so damned intriguing about everything.”

Hanken glanced at the clock on the wall. He'd been working nonstop for more than twelve hours, and before the day was through he still wanted to coordinate his information with whatever was being accumulated at the London end of the case. So the last entertainment he was willing to engage in was a guessing game with a frizzy-haired forensic technician.

He said, “If it's not the blade and it's not Cole's blood, why am I looking at it, Miss Kubowsky?”

“It's nice you're so polite,” she told him. “Not every detective has your manners, I find.”

She was going to find out a hell of a lot more if she didn't start elucidating, Hanken thought. But he thanked her for the compliment and indicated that he'd be happy to hear whatever else she had to tell him as long as she told him post haste.

“Oh! Of course,” she said. “That's the scapula wound you're looking at there. Well, not all of it. If you magnified the whole thing, it would be twenty inches long, probably. This is just a portion of it.”

“The scapula wound?”

“Right. It was the biggest gash on the boy's body, did the doctor say? On his back? The boy, not the doctor, that is.”

Hanken recalled Dr. Myles's report. One of the wounds had chipped the left scapula and come near to one of the heart's arteries.

Miss Kubowksy said, “I wouldn't have bothered with it normally, except I saw on the report that the scapula-that's one of the bones in the back, did you know?-had a weapon mark on it, so I went ahead and compared the mark with the knife blades. With all the knife blades. And what do you know?”

“What?”

“The knife didn't make that mark, Inspector Hanken. No way, not for a minute, uh-uh, and forget it.”

Hanken stared at her. He tried to assimilate the information. More, he wondered if she'd made a mistake. She looked so scatty-her lab coat had half its hem ripped out and a coffee stain on the front of it-that it was hardly beyond the realm of possibility that she was less than proficient in her own line of work.

Amber Kubowsky apparently not only saw the doubt on his face but also understood the necessity for dispelling it. When she went on, she'd become perfect science, speaking in terms of x-rays, blade widths, angles, and micro-millimeters. She didn't complete her remarks until she was certain he understood the import of what she was saying: The tip of the weapon that had pierced Terry Cole's back, chipped his scapula, and scored the bone was shaped unlike the tip of any of the Swiss Army knife's blades. While the knife blades’ tips were pointed-obviously, because how could they be knife blades if they weren't pointed, she asked reasonably-they broadened out at an entirely different angle from the weapon that had marked the bone in Terry Cole's back.

Hanken whistled tonelessly She'd given an impressive recitation, but he had to ask. “Are you sure?”

“I'd swear to it, Inspector. We would've all missed it if I didn't have this theory about x-rays and microscopes that I won't go into at the moment.”

“But the knife made the other wounds on the body?”

“Except for the scapula wound. Yes. That's right.”

She had other information to impart as well. And she took him to another area of the lab, where she held forth on the topic of a pewterlike smear she'd also been asked to evaluate.

When he'd heard what Amber Kubowsky had to say on this final subject, Hanken headed immediately for a phone. It was time to track down Lynley.

Hanken rang the other DI's mobile and found Lynley in the casualty ward of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Lynley put him into the picture tersely: Vi Nevin had been brutally attacked in the maisonette that she and Nicola Maiden had shared.

“What's her condition?”

There was noise in the background, someone shouting, “Over here!” and the increasingly loud howl of an ambulance's double-note siren.

“Thomas?” Hanken raised his voice. “What's her condition? Have you got anything from her?”

“Nothing,” Lynley finally replied from London. “We haven't been able to manage a statement yet. We can't even get close. They've been working on her for an hour.”

“What do you think? Related to the case, what's happened?”

“I'd say that's likely.” Lynley went on to catalogue what he'd learned since their last conversation, beginning with his interview of Shelly Platt, continuing with a precis of his experience at MKR Financial Management, and ending with his meeting with Sir Adrian Beattie and his wife. “So we've managed to unearth the London lover, but he's got an alibi-still to be confirmed, by the way. Even if he hadn't an alibi, I have to say I can't see him slogging across the moors to knife one victim and chase down the other. He must be over seventy.”

“So Upman was telling the truth,” Hanken said, “at least in regard to the pager and those phone calls that the Maiden girl took while she was at work.”

“It looks that way, Peter. But Beattie claims there had to be someone in Derbyshire supplying her with money, or she wouldn't have gone there in the first place.”

“Upman can't be making that much from his divorcees. He said he wasn't in London in May, by the way. He said his diary could prove it.”

“What about Britton?”

“He's still on my list. I got waylaid by the Swiss Army knife.” Hanken brought Lynley up-to-date in that respect, adding the news about the scapula wound. Another weapon, he told Lynley, had evidently been used upon the boy.

“Another knife?”

“Possibly. And Maiden's got one. He even produced it for my inspection.”

“You aren't thinking Andy's fool enough to show you one of the murder weapons. Peter, he's a cop, not a cretin.”

“Wait. When I saw it at first I didn't think Maiden's knife could have been used on the boy because the blades are too short. But I was thinking of the other wounds then, not the blow to the scapula. How far is the scapula beneath the skin anyway? And if Kubowsky dismissed one Swiss Army knife for the scapula wound, does it follow that none other could have done the job?”

“We're back to motive, Peter. Andy hasn't got one. But every other man in her life-not to mention one or two women-has.”

“Don't be so quick to dismiss him,” Hanken objected, “because there's more. Listen to this. I've identification on the substance we found on that odd chrome cylinder from the boot of her car. What d'you expect it is?”

“Tell me.”

“Semen. And there were two other semen deposits on it as well. We've two from secretors-that's counting the one you and I saw-and the other not. The only thing Kubowsky couldn't tell me is what the damn cylinder is in the first place. I've never seen anything like it and neither has she.”

“It's a ball stretcher,” Lynley told him.

“A what?”

“Hang on, Pete.” At the other end of the line, Hanken heard the rumble of male voices with continued hospital noises as counterpoint. Lynley got back to him, saying, “She'll pull through, thank God.”

“Can you get to her?”

“Unconscious at the moment.” And then to someone else, “Round-the-clock protection. No visitors without first clearing them with me. And ask for their IDs if anyone shows up… No. I have no idea… Right.” Then he was back. “Sorry. Where was I?”

“A ball stretcher.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Hanken listened as his colleague explained the device of torture. He felt his own testicles shrink in response.

“My guess is that it rolled out of one of her cases when she was en route to or from a client while she worked for Reeve,” Lynley concluded. “It could have been in the boot of her car for months.”

Hanken reflected on this and saw another possibility. He knew Lynley would fight it, so he broached the subject with care. “Thomas, she might have used it in Derbyshire. Perhaps on someone who's not admitting it.”

“I don't see either Upman or Britton going in for the whips-and-chains routine. And Ferrer seems more likely to use something on his women rather than vice versa. Who else is there?”

“Her dad.”

“Christ. Peter, that's a bloody sick thought.”

“Isn't it just. But the whole S & M scene's sick, and from what you've just told me, its major players look normal as hell.”

“There is no way-”

“Just listen.” And Hanken reported his interview with the dead girl's parents, including Nan Maiden's interruption of that interview and Andy Maidens feeble alibi. “So who's to say beyond doubt that Nicola wasn't servicing her dad along with everyone else?”

“Peter, you can't keep reinventing the case to fit your suspicions. If she was servicing her father-which, by the way, I would go to the rack protesting-then he can't have killed her because of her lifestyle which-as you recall-was your earlier position.”

“Then you agree he has a motive?”

“I agree that you're twisting my words.” A new spate of noise then ensued: sirens and a babble of voices. It sounded to Hanken as if the other DI were conducting their conversation in the middle of a motorway. When the noise abated slightly, Lynley said, “There's still what happened to Vi Nevin to consider. What happened tonight. If that's related to the doings in Derbyshire, you've got to see that Andy Maiden isn't involved.”

“Then who?”

“My money's on Martin Reeve. He had a bone to pick with both of the women.”

Lynley went on to say that their best hope was having Vi Nevin regain consciousness and name her attacker. Then they would have immediate grounds to drag Martin Reeve into the Met, where he belonged. “I'll stay for a while to see if she comes to,” he said. “If she doesn't in an hour or two, I'll have them ring me the moment her condition changes. What about you?”

Hanken sighed. He rubbed his tired eyes and stretched to ease the tension he was feeling in the muscles of his back. He thought of Will Upman and his stress management massages at the Manchester Airport Hilton. He could have done with one of those himself.

“I'll get on to Julian Britton,” he said. “Truth to tell, though, I can't see him as anyone's killer. A bloke dandling puppies in his spare time doesn't strike me as someone who'd bash in his lover's skull. And as for knifing a bloke into minced beef… more likely he'd sick the harriers on someone.”

“But if he believed he had powerful cause to kill her…?” Lynley asked.

“Oh, to be sure.” Hanken agreed. “Someone believed he had powerful cause to kill Nicola Maiden.”

The doctor had given her sleeping pills, but Nan Maiden hadn't taken them after the first night. She couldn't afford to be less than vigilant, so she did nothing to encourage slumber. When she went to bed at all, she dozed. But most of the time she either walked the corridors in a corporeal haunting or sat in the overstuffed armchair in their bedroom and watched her husband's fitful rest.

This night, her pyjama-clad legs curled beneath her and a hand-knitted blanket drawn round her shoulders, Nan huddled into the armchair and observed her husband thrashing round in the bed. She couldn't tell if he was really asleep or just feigning sleep, but in either case, it didn't matter. The sight of him there roused within her a complicated tangle of emotions more important to consider at the moment than the authenticity of her husband's repose.

She still wanted him. Odd after all these years that she still felt desire for him in the same old way, but she did. And that desire had never abated for either of them. Rather, it seemed to have increased over time, as if the length of their marriage had somehow seasoned the passion they felt for each other. So she'd noticed when Andy first stopped turning to her at night. And she'd noticed when he stopped reaching for and claiming her with the assurance and familiarity that were born of their long and happy marriage.

She dreaded what that change in him meant.

It had happened once before-this loss of interest on Andy's part in what had always been the most vital area of their relationship-and so long ago that Nan liked to believe she'd nearly forgotten it had happened at all. But that wasn't the real fact of the matter, and Nan could admit that much in the safety of darkness as her husband did or did not sleep some six feet away from her.

He'd been undercover in a drugs operation. Seduction had been called for as the drama played out. Remaining true to his assigned role required him to accept all advances made in his direction no matter the nature those advances took. And when several of them were overtly sexual… What else could he do that would keep him in character? he asked her later. How else could he act so as not to betray the entire operation and endanger the lives of the officers involved?

But he took no pleasure from any of it, he'd said as he confessed to her. There had been nothing for him in the firm young beautiful flesh of girls young enough to be his daughters. What he'd done, he'd done because it had been required of him, and he wanted his wife to grasp that fact. There was no joy in such an act of coupling. There was only getting through the act itself, which was robbed of feeling when it was done without love.

They were lofty words. They demanded of an intelligent woman her compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and understanding. But they were also words which made Nan wonder at the time why Andy had felt it necessary to confess his transgression to her at all.

But she'd learned the answer to that question through the years as she slowly developed a knowledge of her husband's ways. And she'd seen the alterations that had come upon him whenever he was untrue to who he actually was. Which was why SO 10 had ultimately become such a nightmare: because he was forced, day in and day out and month after month, to be someone who he simply was not. Required by his job to live through great periods of untruth, he found that his mind, his soul, and his psyche would not permit dissimulation without making a demand for some sort of payment from his body.

That payment had shown itself in ways that had been extremely easy to ignore at first, to label as an allergic reaction to something or the initial harbinger of approaching old age. The tongue grows old so the food stops tasting right and the only way to give it flavour is to soak it in sauce or blizzard it with pepper. And what did it really mean when one failed to catch the subtle scent of night-blooming jasmine? Or the musty odour of a country church? Those little occasions of sensory deprivation were easy to overlook.

But then the more serious deprivations began, the sort that couldn't be ignored without risk to one's well being. And when the doctors and the specialists had run their tests, tried out their diagnoses, and finally shrugged their shoulders in a maddening combination of fascination, perplexity, and defeat, the psychiatric warriors had boarded the ship of Andy's condition, setting sail like Vikings towards the uncharted waters of her husband's psyche. There was never a name applied to what ailed him, just an explanation of the human condition as some people experienced it. So he fell apart by inches and degrees, with confession the only means by which he could put his life in order once again, reclaiming who he was through an act of purgation. But ultimately, all the diary writing, analysing, discussing, and confessing were not enough to make him completely well.

Unfortunately, considering the type of work he does, your husband simply can't live a dichotomous life, she was told after months and years of visiting doctors. Not, that is, if he wishes to be completely integrated as an individual.

She'd said, What? A dichotomous… what?

Andrew can't live a life of contradictions, Mrs. Maiden. He can't compartmentalise. He can't assume an identity at odds with his central persona. It's the adoption of a succession of identities that appears to be causing this failure of part of his nervous system. Another man might find that sort of life exciting-an actor, for example, or, at the other extreme, a sociopath or a manic-depressive-but your husband does not.

But isn't it just like playing dressing-up? she'd asked. When he's undercover, I mean.

With enormous attendant responsibility, she'd been told, and even more enormous stakes and costs.

She'd thought at first how lucky she was to be married to a man who could only be exactly what he was. And in all the years since he'd taken his retirement from New Scotland Yard, the future that they'd worked upon in Derbyshire had obliterated every one of the lies and the complicated subterfuges that Andy had been forced to make part of his life in the past.

Until now.

She should have realised when he hadn't noticed those burnt pine nuts in the kitchen, despite the way the smell had permeated the air of the Hall like overloud music played enthusiastically and in every wrong key. She should have realised then that something was wrong. But she hadn't noticed, because everything had been right for so many years.

“Can't say…” Andy murmured from the bed.

Nan leaned forward anxiously. She whispered, “What?”

He turned, burrowing his shoulder into the pillow. “No.” It was sleep talk. “No. No.”

Nan's vision blurred. She cast back through the last few months in a desperate attempt to find something that she might have done to alter this ending that they had reached. But she could come up only with having had the courage and the willingness to ask for honesty in the first place, which had not been a realistic option.

Andy turned again. He punched his pillow into shape and flopped from his side onto his back. His eyes were closed.

Nan left her chair and went to the bed, where she sat. She reached forward and brushed her fingertips across her husband's forehead, feeling his skin both clammy and hot. For thirty-seven years he'd been at the centre of her world, and she wasn't about to lose her world's centre at this autumnal date in her life.

But even as she made that determination, Nan knew that life as she currently experienced it was filled with uncertainties. And it was in her uncertainties that her nightmares lay, another reason for her refusal to sleep.

Lynley unlocked his front door just after one in the morning. He was exhausted and heavy of heart. It was difficult to believe that his day had begun in Derbyshire, and more difficult to believe that it had ended in the encounter he'd just experienced in Notting Hill.

Men and women possessed limitless potential to astonish him. He'd long ago accepted that fact, but he realised now that he was getting weary of the constant surprises they had to offer. After fifteen years in CID, he wanted to be able to say he'd seen it all. That he hadn't-that someone could still do something to amaze him-was a fact that weighed in his gut like a boulder. Not so much because he couldn't understand a person's actions but because he continually failed to anticipate them.

He'd remained with Vi Nevin until she regained consciousness. He'd hoped she'd be able to name her attacker and thus provide him with an immediate reason for arresting the bastard. But she'd shaken her swollen, bandaged head as Lynley questioned her. All he was able to glean from the injured woman was that she'd been set upon too suddenly to manage a clear look at her assailant. Whether that was a lie that she told to protect herself was something that Lynley couldn't discern. But he thought he knew, and he cast about for a way to make it easier for her to say the necessary words.

“Tell me what happened, then, moment by moment, because there may be something, a detail you recall, that we can use to-”

“That's quite enough for now” The sister in charge of casualty intervened, her blunt Scot's face a picture of steely determination.

“Male or female?” Lynley pressed the injured woman.

“Inspector, I made myself clear,” the sister snapped. And she hovered protectively over her childlike patient, making what seemed like unnecessary adjustments to bedclothes, pillows, and drips.

“Miss Nevin?” Lynley prodded nonetheless.

“Out!” the sister said as Vi murmured, “A man.”

Upon hearing that, Lynley decided enough identification had been established. She wasn't, after all, telling him anything that he didn't already know. He'd merely wanted to eliminate the possibility that Shelly Platt-and not Martin Reeve-had come calling on her old flatmate. Having done that much, he felt justified in taking matters to the next level.

He'd begun that process at the Star of India in Old Brompton Road, where a conversation with the maitre d’ established that Martin Reeve and his wife, Tricia-both of whom were regulars in the restaurant-had indeed taken a meal there earlier in the week. But no one could say on what evening they'd occupied their table by the window. The waiters were evenly divided between Monday and Tuesday while the maitre d’ himself seemed able to recall only that which he had written evidence of in his reservations folder.

“I see they did not book,” he said in his lilting voice. “Ah, one must book at the Star of India to guarantee a seating.”

“Yes. She claims they didn't book,” Lynley told him. “She said that was the cause of a row between you and her husband. On Tuesday night.”

“I do not row with the customers, sir,” the man had said stiffly. And the offence he took at Lynley's remark had coloured the rest of his memory.

The indefinite nature of the corroboration from the Star of India gave Lynley the impetus to call upon the Reeves despite the hour. And as he drove to do so, he fixed in his mind the image of Vi Nevin's ruined face. When finally he'd negotiated his way to the top of Kensington Church Street and made the turn into Notting Hill Gate, he was feeling the sort of slow-burning anger that made it easy for him to persist at the doorbell of MKR Financial Management when no one answered his initial ring.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” was Martin Reeves greeting to him upon jerking open the door. He didn't even need to identify himself for Lynley to know who he was. The overhead light which illuminated his face and glowed brightly against four fresh deep scratches on his cheek told the tale well enough.

He strong-armed Reeve backwards into the entry corridor of the house. He muscled him into the wall-easy enough to do since the pimp was so much smaller than Lynley had anticipated-and held him there with one cheek pressed into the tastefully striped wallpaper.

“Hey!” Reeve protested. “What the hell do you think you're-”

“Tell me about Vi Nevin,” Lynley demanded, wrenching his arm.

“Hey! If you think you can barge in here and-” Another wrench. Reeve howled. “Fuck you!”

“Not even in your dreams.” Lynley pressed up against him and jerked his arm upwards. He spoke into his ear. “Tell me about your afternoon and your evening, Mr. Reeve. Give me every detail. I'm done in and I need a fairy tale before I go to bed. Oblige me. Please.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Reeve twisted his head towards the stairs. He shouted, “Trish… Tricia… Trish! Phone the cops.”

“Nice try,” Lynley said, “but the cops have arrived. Come along, Mr. Reeve. Let's talk in here.” He shoved the smaller man in front of him. Inside the reception office he threw Reeve into a chair and switched on a light.

“You'd better have an eighteen karat reason for this,” Reeve snarled. “Because if you don't, you can anticipate a lawsuit the likes of which you've never seen in this country.”

“Spare me the threats,” Lynley replied. “They might work in America, but they're not going to get you a cup of coffee here.”

Reeve massaged his arm. “We'll see about that.”

“I'll count the moments till we do. Where were you this afternoon? This evening as well? What happened to your face?”

“What?” The word was spoken incredulously. “D'you think I'll answer those questions?”

“If you don't want this building boarded up by the vice squad, I expect you'll give me chapter and verse. And don't push me, Mr. Reeve. I've had a long day, and I'm not a reasonable man when I'm tired.”

“Fuck you.” Reeve turned his head to the door and shouted, “Tricia! Get your ass down here. Phone Polmanteer. I'm not paying through the nose for his sorry butt-”

Lynley grabbed a heavy ashtray from the reception desk and hurled it at Reeve. It skimmed past his head and slammed into a mirror, shattering it.

“Jesus!” Reeve shouted. “What the hell-”

“Afternoon and evening. I want the answers. Now.”

When Reeve didn't reply, Lynley advanced on him, grabbed the collar of his pyjama top, yanked him backwards into the chair, and twisted the collar till it was tight round his neck. “Tell me who scratched you, Mr. Reeve. Tell me why.”

Reeve made a choking sound. Lynley found that he liked it.

“Or shall I fill in the blanks myself? I dare say I know the dramatis personae.” Another twist with each name as he said, “Vi Nevin. Nicola Maiden. Terry Cole. Shelly Platt as well, if we come down to it.

Reeve gasped, “F… king… out… of… mind.” His hands clawed his throat.

At which Lynley released him, flinging him forward like a discarded rag. “You're trying my patience. I'm beginning to think a phone call to the local station isn't a bad idea. A few nights with the boys in the Ladbroke Grove lock-up might be just what we need to oil your tongue.”

“Your ass is history. I know enough people who'll-”

“I've no doubt of that. You probably know people from here to

Istanbul. And while every one of them would happily rise to your defence were you brought up on charges of pandering, you're going to find that assaulting women doesn't go down such a treat among the big public profiles. Not when you think of the fodder they'd be giving the tabloids if word got out that they came to your aid. As it is, they're going to find it a delicate enough business lending you a hand once I run you in as a pimp. To expect more from them… I wouldn't be so unwise, Mr. Reeve. Now answer the question. What happened to your face?”

Reeve was silent, but Lynley could see his mind working. The other man would be assessing what facts the police had. He hadn't lived on the periphery of the law for as long as he had without acquiring some knowledge about the law's application to his own life. He would know that had Lynley possessed anything solid-like an eyewitness or the signed statement of his victim-he would have made an immediate arrest. But he would also know that living outside the law as he did, he had fewer options when caught up in a dicey situation.

Reeve said, “All right. It's Tricia. She's on the shit. I came home from looking in on two of my girls whose work's fallen off. She was smacked out. I lost it. Jesus. I thought she was dead. I got physical with her, slapped her around, part fear and part anger. And I found out she wasn't as out of it as I'd thought. She got physical back.”

Lynley didn't believe a word. He said, “You're trying to tell me that your wife-strung out on drugs-did that to your face?”

“She was upstairs in a nod, the worst she's been in months. I couldn't deal with it on top of the girls and their troubles. I can't be everyone's daddy. So I lost it.”

“What troubles?”

“What?”

“The girls. Their troubles.”

Reeve looked towards the reception desk and upon it the display of brochures that ostensibly advertised MKR's financial services. “I know you know about the business. But you probably don't know what lengths I go to to keep them healthy. Blood tests every four months, drug screening, physical exams, balanced diet, exercise…”

“A real drain on your financial resources,” Lynley noted dryly.

“Hell. I don't care what you think. This is a service industry, and if someone doesn't offer it, someone else will. I'm not apologising. I supply clean, healthy, educated girls in a decent environment. Any guy who spends time with one of them gets value for his money and no threat of disease to take home to the ball-and-chain. And that's what I was uptight about when I got home: two girls with trouble.”

“Disease?”

“Genital warts. Chlamydia. So I was pissed off. And then when I saw Tricia, I snapped. That's it. If you want their names, addresses, and numbers, I'm happy to oblige.”

Lynley watched him carefully, wondering if it was all a calculated risk on the part of the pimp or an actual coincidence that he'd bear his wife's defensive marks on his face on the very same evening that Vi Nevin had been attacked. He said, “Let's have Mrs. Reeve down here to tell her side of the story, then.”

“Oh come on. She's asleep.”

“That didn't appear to bother you a moment ago when you were howling for her to phone the police. And Polmanteer… your solicitor, is that? We can still phone him if you'd like.”

Reeve stared at Lynley, disgust and dislike on his features. He finally said, “I'll get her.”

“Not alone, I'm afraid.” The last thing Lynley wanted to do was to give Reeve an opportunity to coerce his wife into supporting his story.

“Fine. Then come along.”

Reeve led the way up two flights of stairs to the second floor. In a bedroom overlooking the street he walked to a bed the size of a playing field and switched on the bedside lamp. Light from it fell upon the form of his wife. She lay on her side, curled foetally, deeply asleep.

Reeve flipped her onto her back, grabbed her under the armpits, and pulled her upright. Her head lolled forward like a rag doll's. He tipped her backwards and propped her up against the headboard. “Good luck,” he said to Lynley with a smile. He pointed out a string of nasty bruises round her throat, saying, “I had to get rougher than I wanted with the bitch. She was out of control. I thought she'd kill me.”

Lynley jerked his head away from the woman, indicating he wanted Reeve to back off. Reeve did so. Lynley took his place at the bed. He reached for Tricia's arm, saw the angry tracks of injections, felt for a pulse. As he did this, she heaved in a deep breath, making his gesture unnecessary. Lightly, he slapped her face. “Mrs. Reeve,” he said. “Mrs. Reeve. Can you wake up?”

Reeve moved behind him, and before Lynley realised what he intended, he'd grabbed a vase of flowers, tossed the blooms to the floor, and dashed the water across his wife's face. “God damn it, Trida. Wake up!”

“Stand back,” Lynley ordered.

Tridas eyes fluttered open as the water dripped down her cheeks. Her dazed glance went from Lynley to her husband. She flinched. That reaction said it all.

Lynley said through his teeth, “Get out of here, Reeve.”

“Fuck that,” Reeve said. And he went on tersely, “He wants you to tell him we fought, Tricia. That I went after you and you went after me. You remember how it happened. So tell him that you went for my face and he'll clear the hell out of our house.”

Lynley surged to his feet. “I said get out!”

Reeve stabbed a finger at his wife. “Just tell him. He can see we fought when he looks at us, but he's not about to take my word unless you tell him it's the truth. So tell him.”

Lynley threw him from the room. He slammed the door. He returned to the bed. There, Tricia sat as he'd left her. She made no move to dry herself.

There was an en suite bathroom, and Lynley went to this and fetched a towel. He used it gently against her face, against her damaged neck, against her sopping chest. Tricia looked at him numbly for a moment before she turned her head and gazed at the door through which he'd ejected her husband.

He said, “Tell me what happened between you, Mrs. Reeve.”

She turned back to him. She licked her lips.

“Your husband attacked you, didn't he? Did you fight back?” It was a ludicrous question and he damn well knew it. How, he wondered, could she possibly have done so? The last thing heroin users were good for was a vigorous round of self-defence. “Let me phone someone for you. You need to get out of here. You must have a friend. Brothers or sisters? Parents?”

“No!” She grabbed his hand. Her grip wasn't strong, but her nails-long and as artificial as the rest of her-dug into his flesh.

“I don't believe for a moment that you put up a fight against your husband, Mrs. Reeve. And my failure to believe that is going to make things difficult for you once your husband bails himself out of custody. I'd like to get you out of here before all that happens, so if you'll give me a name of someone to phone…”

“Arrest?” she whispered, and she seemed to be making a monumental effort to clear her head. “You'll… arrest? But you said-”

“I know. But that was earlier. Something's happened this evening that makes it impossible for me to keep my word. I'm sorry, but I have no choice in the matter. Now, I'd like to phone someone for you. Will you give me a number?”

“No. No. It was… I hit him. I did. I tried… bite.”

“Mrs. Reeve. I know you're frightened. But try to see that-”

“I scratched him. My nails. His face. Scratched. Scratched. Because he was choking me and I wanted him… stop. Please. Please. I scratched… face. I made him bleed. I did.”

Lynley saw her rising agitation. He cursed silently: He cursed Reeve's slippery and successful insinuation of himself into the interview with his wife; he cursed his own damnable inadequacies, the largest of which was the loss of temper that always obscured his vision and clouded his thinking. As it had done on this night.

Now, in his house in Eaton Terrace, Lynley reflected on everything. His sense of grievance and his need to avenge Vi Nevin had got in his way, allowing Martin Reeve to outmanoeuvre him. Tricia's fear of her husband-probably in combination with a heroin addiction which he no doubt fed-had prompted her at long last to confirm Reeve's every word. Lynley still could have run the soulless little rat into the nick for six or seven hours of interrogation, but the American hadn't got where he was by being ignorant of his rights. He was guaranteed legal representation, and he would have claimed it before he'd left the house. So what would have been gained was a sleepless night for everyone concerned. And in the end Lynley would have found himself no closer to an arrest than he'd been upon his arrival in London that morning.

But things had ended in Notting Hill the way they had ended because of a miscalculation on Lynley's part, and he had to admit that. In his anxiety to have Tricia Reeve conscious and coherent enough to take part in a conversation, he'd allowed her husband enough time in her presence to give her the script she needed in her interview with Lynley. Thus, he'd lost whatever advantage he might have established over Martin Reeve in arriving at his home in the dead of night. It was a costly mistake, the sort of error that was made by a rank beginner.

He wanted to tell himself that the miscalculation was the product of a long day, a misguided sense of chivalry, and out-and-out exhaustion. But the disquiet in his soul, which he'd begun feeling the moment he saw the card with Nikki Temptation's advertisement on it, spoke of another source altogether. And because he didn't wish to consider either the source or the implications of the source, Lynley descended to the kitchen, where he rooted round in the refrigerator until he found a container of leftover paella.

He fetched a Heineken to go with his makeshift meal, and he cracked it open and carried it to the table. He dropped wearily into one of the chairs and took a deep swig of the lager. A slim magazine lay next to a bowl of apples, and while he waited for the microwave to work its magic on his food, Lynley reached in his pocket for his spectacles and had a look at what turned out to be a souvenir theatre programme.

Denton, he saw, had managed to prevail over the masses who were attempting to obtain tickets to the season's hottest show in the West End. The single word Hamlet made a bold graphic design in silver on an ebony cover, along with a rapier and the words King-Ryder Productions tastefully arranged above the play's title. Lynley shook his head with a chuckle as he flipped through the pages of glossy photographs. If he knew Denton, the next few months in Eaton Terrace were going to be an endless exposure to whatever melodies from the pop opera resonated within his stage-struck soul. As he recalled, it had taken nearly nine months for Denton to stop warbling “The Music of the Night” at the drop of a hat.

At least this new production wasn't Lloyd-Webber, he thought with some gratitude. He'd once considered homicide the only viable alternative to having to listen to Denton crooning the main-and what seemed like the only-melody from Sunset Boulevard for weeks on end.

The microwave signaled, and he scooped out the container and dumped its contents unceremoniously onto a plate. He tucked into his late-night meal. But the action of forking up the food, chewing, and swallowing was not enough to divert his thoughts, so he cast about for something else to distract him.

He found it in the consideration of Barbara Havers.

She must have managed to gather something useful by now, he thought. She'd been on the computer since the morning, and he could only assume that he'd finally managed to pound into her skull the message that he expected her to continue at CRIS until she had something valuable to report.

He reached for the phone that sat on the work top and, mindless of the hour, he punched in her number. The line was engaged. He looked at his watch. Christ. Who the hell would Havers be talking to at one-twenty in the morning? No one that he could name, so the only conclusion was that she'd taken her phone off the hook, the bloody woman. He dropped his own receiver into the cradle and gave idle thought to what he was going to do with Havers. But going down that path only promised him a tempestuous night, which would do nothing to improve his performance in the morning.

So he finished his meal with his attention on the Hamlet programme once again, and he thanked Denton silently for having provided him with a diversion.

The photographs were good. And the text made interesting reading. David King-Ryder's suicide was still fresh enough an event in the public consciousness to give an air of romance and melancholy to anything associated with his name. Besides, it was no arduous task, having to gaze upon the voluptuous maiden who'd been cast as the production's Ophelia. And how clever of the costume designer to have her go to her death in a gown so diaphanous as to make the wearing of it practically unnecessary. Back-lit, she stood poised to drown herself, a creature already caught between two worlds. The gauzy gown claimed her soul for heaven while her earthbound body chained her-in all her sensual beauty-firmly to the earth. It was the perfect combination of-“Are you actually leering, Tommy? Married three months and I've already caught you leering at another woman?” Helen stood in the doorway, blinking, sleep tousled, tying her dressing gown belt at the waist.

“Only because you were asleep,” Lynley said.

“That reply came too readily. I expect you've used it a bit more often than I'd like to know.” She padded across the room to him, looked over his shoulder, placing one slender cool hand on the back of his neck. “Ah. I see.”

“A little light reading with dinner, Helen. Nothing more than that.”

“Hmm. Yes. She's beautiful, isn't she?”

“She? Oh. Ophelia, you mean? I hadn't really noticed.” He flipped the programme closed and took his wife's hand, pressing her palm against his mouth.

“You make a poor liar.” Helen kissed his forehead, disengaged her hand from his, and went to the refrigerator, where she took out a bottle of Evian. She leaned against the work top as she drank, watching him fondly over the top of her glass. “You look ghastly,” she noted. “Have you eaten today? No. Don't answer. That's your first decent meal since breakfast, isn't it?”

“Am I meant to answer or not?” he asked reasonably.

“Never mind. I can read it all over your face. Why is it, darling, that you can forget to eat for sixteen hours while I can't manage to put food from my mind for ten simple minutes?”

“It's the contrast between pure and impure hearts.”

“Now, that's a new slant on gluttony.”

Lynley chuckled. He rose. He went to her and took her into his arms. She smelled of citrus and sleep, and her hair was as soft as a breeze when he bent his head to press his cheek against it. “I'm glad I woke you,” he murmured, and he settled into their embrace, finding within it enormous comfort.

“I wasn't asleep.”

“No?”

“No. Just making an attempt but not getting very far with it, I'm afraid.”

“That's not like you.”

“It isn't. I know.”

“Something's on your mind, then.” He released her and looked down at her, smoothing her hair away from her face. Her dark eyes met his and he made a study of them: what they revealed and what they tried to hide. “Tell me.”

She touched his lips with the tips of her fingers. “I do love you,” she said. “Much more than when I married you. More, even, than I loved you the first time you took me to bed.”

“I'm glad of it. But something tells me that's not what's on your mind.”

“No. That's not what's been on my mind. But it's late, Tommy. And you're far too exhausted for conversation. Let's go to bed.”

He wanted to do so. Nothing sounded better than sinking his head into a plump down pillow and seeking the soothing oblivion of sleep with his wife, warm and comforting, by his side. But something in Helen's expression told him that would not be the wisest course to take at the moment. There were times when women said one thing when they meant another, and this appeared to be one of those times. He said, half truth and half lie, “I am done in. But we've not talked properly today, and I won't be able to sleep till we do.”

“Really?”

“You know how I am.”

She searched his face and seemed satisfied with what she saw. She said, “It's really nothing much. Mental gymnastics, I suppose. I've been thinking all day about the lengths people go to when they want to avoid confronting something.”

A shudder passed through him.

“What?” she asked.

“Someone walking on my grave. What brought all this up?”

“The wallpaper.”

“Wallpaper?”

“For the spare rooms. You remember. I narrowed the choices down to six-which seemed quite admirable, considering what a muddle I was in about having to choose in the first place-and I spent all afternoon pondering them. I pinned them to the walls. I set furniture in front of them. I hung pictures round them. And still, I couldn't make up my mind.”

“Because you were thinking of this other?” he asked. “About people not confronting what they need to confront?”

“No. That's just it. I was consumed with wallpaper. And making a decision about it-or, rather, finding myself incapable of making a decision-became a metaphor for living my life. Do you see?”

Lynley didn't. He was too wrung out to see anything at all. But he nodded, looked pensive, and hoped that would do.

“You would have chosen and had done with it. But I couldn't do that, no matter how hard I tried. Why? I finally asked myself. And the answer was so simple: because of who I am. Because of who I was moulded to be. From the day of my birth to the morning of my wedding.”

Lynley blinked. “Who you were moulded to be?”

“Your wife,” she said. “Or the wife of someone exactly like you. There were five of us and each of us-every one of us, Tommy-was assigned a role. One moment we were safe in our mother's womb and the next we were in our father's arms and he was looking down at us, saying, ‘Hmmm. Wife of a count, I think.’ Or ‘I dare say she'll do as the next Princess of Wales.’ And once we knew what role he'd assigned us, we played along. Oh, we didn't have to, of course. And God knows neither Penelope nor Iris danced to the music he'd written for them. But the other three-Cybele, Daphne, and I-why, the three of us were nothing more than warm clay in his hands. And once I realised that, Tommy, I had to take the next step. I had to ask why.”

“Why you were warm clay.”

“Yes. Why. And when I asked that question and took a hard look at the answer, what do you expect it was?”

His head was spinning and his eyes burned with fatigue. Lynley said, reasonably enough, he thought, “Helen, what does this have to do with wallpaper?” and knew a moment later he'd failed her in some way.

She released herself from his embrace. “Never mind. This isn't the moment. I knew that. I can see you're exhausted. Let's just go to bed.”

He tried to regroup. “No. I want to hear this. I admit that I'm tired. And I got lost following all the dancing warm clay But I want to talk. And to listen. And to know…” To know what? he wondered. He couldn't have said.

She frowned at him, a clear warning sign that he should have heeded and did not. “What? Dancing warm clay? What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about nothing. It was stupid. I'm an idiot. Forget it. Please. Come back. I want to hold you.”

“No. Explain what you meant.”

“Helen, it was nothing. It was just an inanity.”

“Just an inanity rising from my conversation.”

He sighed. “I'm sorry. You're right. I'm done in. When I get like this, I say things without thinking. You said that two of your sisters didn't dance to his tune while the rest of you did, which made you warm clay. I took that and wondered how warm clay could dance to his music and… Sorry. It was a stupid remark. I'm not thinking right.”

“And I'm not thinking at all,” she said. “Which, I suppose, shouldn't come as a surprise to either of us. But that's what you wanted, isn't it?”

“What?”

“A wife who couldn't think.”

He felt slapped. “Helen, that's not only bloody nonsense. It's an insult to us both.” He went to the table for his plate and cutlery, which he carried to the sink. He rinsed them, spent far too much time watching the water swirl round the drain, and finally said on a sigh, “Damn.” He turned to her. “I'm sorry, darling. I don't want us to be at odds with each other.”

Her face softened. “We aren't,” she said.

He went back to her, pulled her to him once again. “Then what?” he asked.

“I'm at odds with myself.”