In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 27

The rain was unrelenting. The wind had joined it. In the car park of the Black Angel Hotel, both the wind and the rain played a sodden game with the top layer of rubbish in an overloaded skip. The wind lifted and hurled cardboard boxes and old newspapers into the air; the downfall plastered both to the windscreens and wheels of the empty cars.

Lynley climbed from the Bentley and raised his umbrella against the late summer storm. He hurried with his suitcase in hand round the side of the building and through the front door. A coat rack just within the entrance sprouted the dripping coats and jackets of a dozen or more Sunday patrons whose shapes Lynley could see through the translucent amber glass of the upper half of the hotel bar's door. Next to the rack, a good ten umbrellas stood in an elongated iron stand and glistened wetly under the light of the entrance porch where Lynley stamped the damp from his shoes. He hung his coat among the others, shoved his umbrella in with the rest, and went through the bar to Reception.

If the proprietor of the Black Angel was surprised to see him back so soon, the man gave no indication. Tourist season, after all, was nearly at an end. He would be happy enough for whatever custom came his way in the coming months. He handed over a key-depressingly, it was for the same room he'd had earlier, Lynley saw-and asked if the inspector wanted his bags taken up or would he rather see to them himself? Lynley handed over his suitcase and went to the bar for a meal.

Sunday lunch was long since finished, but they could do him a cold ham salad or a filled jacket potato, he was informed, as long as he wasn't overly particular about the potato's filling. He said that he wasn't, and he asked for both.

When the food was in front of him, however, Lynley found that he wasn't as hungry as he'd thought. He dipped into the potato with its thatch of cheddar, but when he brought the loaded fork to his mouth, his tongue thickened at the thought of having to swallow anything solid, chewed or not. He lowered the fork and reached for the lager. Getting drunk was still an option.

He wanted to believe them. He wanted to believe them not because they were able to offer him the slightest bit of evidence in support of their statements but because he didn't want to believe anything else. Cops went bad from time to time, and only a fool denied that fact. Birmingham, Guildford, and Bridgewater were only three of the places that had numbers attached to them-six, four, and four respectively-in reference to the defendants convicted on spurious evidence, interrogation room beatings, and manufactured confessions with signatures forged. Each conviction had been the result of police malfeasance for which not a single excuse could possibly be made. So there were bad cops: whether one called them overly zealous, outright tendentious, thoroughly corrupt, or simply too indolent or ignorant to do the job the way the job was supposed to be done.

But Lynley didn't want to believe that Andy Maiden was a cop who'd gone bad. Nor did he even want to believe that Andy was simply a father who'd reached the end of his tether in dealing with his child. Even now, after talking to Andy, after watching the interplay between the man and his wife and having to evaluate what every word, gesture, and nuance between them meant, Lynley found that his heart and his mind were still in conflict over the basic facts.

Nan Maiden had joined them in the airless little office behind Reception in Maiden Hall. She'd shut the door. Her husband had said, “Nancy, don't bother. The guests… Nan, you're not needed in here,” and cast a beseeching look at Lynley in an unspoken request that Lynley did not grant. For needed was exactly what Nan Maiden was if they were to get to the bottom of what had happened to Nicola on Calder Moor.

She said to Lynley, “We weren't expecting anyone else today. I told Inspector Hanken yesterday that Andy was at home that night. I explained-”

“Yes,” Lynley agreed. “I've been told.”

“Then I don't see what further good can come from more questions.” She stood stiffly near the door, and her words were as rigid as her body when she went on. “I know you've come for that, Inspector: questioning Andy instead of offering us information about Nicola's death. Andy wouldn't look like that-like he's being chewed up inside-if you hadn't come to ask him if he actually… if he went onto the moor so that he could-” And there her voice faltered. “He was here on Tuesday night. I told Inspector Hanken that. What more do you want from us?”

The absolute truth, Lynley thought. He wanted to hear it. More, he wanted them both to face it. But at the last moment, when he could have revealed to her the real nature of her daughter's life in London, he didn't do it. All the facts about Nicola would come out eventually-in interrogation rooms, in legal depositions, and in the trial-but there was no reason to drag them out now, like the bones of a grinning skeleton forced from a cupboard that the girl's mother didn't even know existed. If nothing else, he could honour Andy Maiden's wishes in that matter, at least for now.

He said, “Who can support your statement, Mrs. Maiden? DI Hanken told me that Andy had gone to bed early in the evening. Did someone else see him?”

“Who else would have seen him? Our employees don't go into the private part of the house unless they're instructed to do so.”

“And you didn't ask one of them to check on Andy during the evening?”

“I checked on him myself.”

“So you see the difficulty, don't you?”

“No, I don't. Because I'm telling you that Andy didn't…” She clenched her fists at her throat and squeezed her eyes shut. “He didn't kill her!”

So the words were said at last. But even as they were said, the one logical question that Nan Maiden might have asked went completely unspoken. She never said the words, “Why? Why would my husband have killed his own daughter?” And that was a telling omission.

The question was the single best way that Nan Maiden could have challenged the police conjectures about her husband; it was a gauntlet that she could have thrown down, one which called upon the police to give a credible reason why an unthinkable crime against human nature had been committed. But she didn't ask it. And like most people who don't ask questions when questions are called for, she gave herself away. For to ask the question gave Lynley an opening to plant in her mind the seeds of a doubt that she obviously couldn't afford to let grow there. Better to deny and avoid than to have to think the unthinkable first, than to have to learn to accept it second.

“How much did you know about your daughter's plans for her future?” Lynley said to both of them, giving Andy Maiden the opportunity of revealing to his wife the worst there was to know about their only child.

“Our daughter has no future,” Nan answered. “So her plans-whatever they might have been-are irrelevant, aren't they?”

“I'll arrange to take a polygraph,” Andy Maiden said abruptly. Lynley saw in his offer how keen he was to keep his wife from hearing an account of their daughter's London life. “That can't be so difficult to set up, can it? We can find someone… I want to take one, Tommy.”

“Andy, no.”

“I'll arrange for both of us to take one, if you like,” Maiden said, ignoring his wife.

“Andy!”

“How else can we make him see that he's got it all?” Maiden asked her.

“But with your nerves,” she said, “with the state you're in… Andy, they'll turn you and twist you. Don't do it.”

“I'm not afraid.”

And Lynley could see that he wasn't. Which was a point he clung to all the way back to Tideswell and the Black Angel Hotel.

Now, with his meal in front of him, Lynley considered that lack of fear and what it might mean: innocence, bravado, or dissimulation. It could be any one of the three, Lynley thought, and despite everything he'd learned about the man, he knew which one he still hoped it was.

“Inspector Lynley?”

He looked up. The barmaid stood there, frowning down at his uneaten meal. He was about to apologise for ordering that which he hadn't been able to consume, when she said, “You've a call from London. The phone's behind the bar if you want to use it.”

The caller was Winston Nkata, and the constable's words were urgent. “We got it, Guv,” he said tersely when he heard Lynley's voice. “Post-mortem showed a piece of cedar found on the Cole boy's body. St. James says th'first weapon was an arrow. Shot in the dark. The girl took off running, so he couldn't shoot at her. Had to chase her down and cosh her with the boulder.”

Nkata explained: exactly what St. James had seen on the report, how he had interpreted the information, and what he-Nkata-had learned about arrows and long bows from a fletcher in Kent.

“Killer would've taken the arrow with him from the scene because most long bows're used in competitions,” Nkata finished, “and all the long bow arrows're marked to identify them.”

“Marked in what way?”

“With the shooter's initials.”

“Good God. That puts a signature on the crime.”

“Isn't that true. These initials c'n be carved or burned into the wood or put on with transfers. But in any case, at a crime scene, they'd be as good as dabs.”

“Top marks, Winnie,” Lynley said. “Excellent work.”

The DC cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well. Got to do the job.”

“So if we find the archer, we've got our killer,” Lynley said.

“Looks that way.” Nkata asked the next logical question: “You talk to the Maidens, spector?”

“He wants to take a polygraph.” Lynley told him about his interview with the dead girl's parents.

When he'd finished, Nkata said, “Make sure he gets asked if he plays the Hundred Years’ War on his free afternoons.”

“Sorry?”

“That's what they do with long bows. Competitions, tournaments, and reenactments. So is our Mr. Maiden fighting the French for a lark up there in Derbyshire?”

Lynley drew in a breath. He felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders at the very same moment that a fog bank cleared from his brain. “Broughton Manor,” he said.

“What?”

“Where I'll find a long bow,” Lynley explained. “And I've a very good idea who knows how to shoot it.”

In London, Barbara watched as Nkata rang off. He looked at her somberly.

“What?” She felt a clenching round her heart. “Don't tell me he didn't believe you, Winnie.”

“He believed me.”

“Thank God.” She looked at him more closely. He seemed so grave. “Then what?”

“'S your work, Barb. I don't like taking credit.”

“Oh. That. Well, you can't be thinking he'd have listened to me if I'd phoned him with the news. It's better this way.”

“Puts me in a better light than you. I don't much like it when I've done nothing to get there.”

“Forget it. It was the only way. Leave me out of it so his nibship can keep his knickers from twisting. What's he going to do?”

She listened as Nkata related Lynley's plans to seek the long bow at Broughton Manor. She shook her head at the futility of his thinking. “He's on a goose chase, Winnie. There's not going to be a long bow in Derbyshire.”

“How c'n you be so sure?”

“I can feel it.” She gathered up what she'd brought into Lynley's office. “I may phone in with the flu for a day or two, but you didn't hear that from me. Okay?”

Nkata nodded. “What'll you be up to, then?”

Barbara held up what Jason Harley had given her before she left his shop in Westerham. It was a lengthy mailing list of individuals who received his quarterly catalogues. He'd generously handed this over, along with the records of everyone who had placed orders with Quiver Me Timbers in the last six months. He'd said, “I don't expect these will be much help because there're plenty of archery shops in the country that your man might've ordered his arrows from. But if you'd like to have a go, you're welcome to take them.”

She'd jumped at the offer. She'd even taken along two of his catalogues for good measure. For some Sunday-evening light reading, she'd thought as she'd tucked them into her bag. As things were now, she certainly had Sweet FA. else to do.

“What about you?” she asked Nkata. “The inspector give you another assignment?”

“Sunday night off with my mum and dad.”

“Now, there's an assignment.” She saluted him and was about to stride off, when the phone rang on Lynley's desk. She said, “Uh-oh. Forget Sunday night, Winston.”

“Hell,” he grumbled, and reached for the phone.

His side of the conversation consisted of: “No. Not here. Sorry… Up in Derbyshire… DC Winston Nkata… Yeah. Right. Pretty much, but it's not 'xactly the same case, I'm 'fraid…” A lengthier pause as someone went on and on, followed by, “She is?” and a smile. Nkata looked at Barbara and, for some reason, gave her a thumbs-up. “Good news, that. Best news there is. Thanks.” He listened a moment longer and looked at the wall clock. “Right. Will do. Say thirty minutes?… Yeah. Oh, we definitely got someone who can take a statement.” He rang off a second time and nodded at Barbara. “That's you.”

“Me? Hang on, Winnie, you've got no rank to pull on me,” Barbara said in protest, seeing her Sunday-evening plans go down the sewer.

“Right. But I don't think you want to miss out on this.”

“I'm off the case.”

“I know that. But 'cording to the guv, this isn't exactly on the case any longer, so I don't see why you don't take it yourself.”

“Take what?”

“Vi Nevin. She's full conscious, Barb. And someone's got to take a statement from her.”

Lynley phoned DI Hanken at home, where he found him sealed within his small garage, apparently trying to make sense of instructions to assemble a child's swing set. “I'm not a bloody God damn engineer,” he fumed, and seemed grateful for anything that promised to take him away from a hopeless endeavour.

Lynley brought him into the picture. Hanken agreed that an arrow and its bow looked likely as their missing weapon. “Explains why it wasn't stowed in that grit dispenser with the knife,” he said. “And if it's initials that we're going to find on the arrow, I've a good idea whose they're likely to be.”

“I recall your telling me about the various ways Julian Britton makes money at Broughton Manor,” Lynley acknowledged. “It looks like we're finally closing in on him, Peter. I'm heading over there now to have a-”

“Heading over? Where the hell are you?” Hanken demanded. “Aren't you in London?”

Lynley was fairly certain in which direction Hanken would run when he learned why Lynley had returned so quickly to Derbyshire, and his fellow DI did not disappoint him. “I knew it was Maiden,” Hanken exclaimed at the end of Lynley's explanation. “He found that car on the moor, Thomas. And there's no way in hell he would have found it had he not known where she'd be in the first place. He knew she was on the game in London and he couldn't deal with it. So he gave her the chop. It was the only way-I dare say-that he could keep her from spilling the news to her mum.”

This was so close to what Maiden's actual desires were that Lynley felt chilled by Hanken's perspicacity. Still, he said, “Andy's said he'll arrange to take a polygraph. I can't think he'd make an offer like that if he had Nicola's blood on his hands.”

“The hell he wouldn't,” Hanken countered. “This bloke's an undercover cop, let's not forget. If he hadn't been able to lie with the best of them, he'd be a dead man now. A polygraph taken by Andy Maiden's going to be nothing more than a joke. On us, by the way.”

“Julian Britton's still got the stronger motive,” Lynley said. “Let me see if I can shake him up.”

“You're playing right into Maiden's hands. You know that, don't you? He's working you like you're wearing the same school tie.”

Which they were, in a manner of speaking. But Lynley refused to be blinded by their history. He refused to be blinded in either direction. It was as foolhardy to believe beyond doubt that Andy Maiden was the killer as it was to ignore the possible guilt of someone with a stronger motive.

Hanken rang off. Lynley had made the phone call from his hotel room, so he took five minutes to unpack his belongings before heading out to Broughton Manor. He'd left his umbrella and trench coat below in the entrance when he'd gone upstairs to place the call, so after tossing his room key onto the reception desk, he went to fetch them.

The Black Angel's earlier patrons had mostly departed, he saw. There were only three umbrellas left in the stand and, apart from his own coat, only a single jacket remained on the coat rack.

Under other circumstances, a jacket on a coat rack wouldn't have caught his attention. But as he endeavoured to untangle the hook of his umbrella from the gaping ribs of another, he knocked the jacket from its spot on the rack and thus felt obliged to pick it up from the floor.

The fact that the garment was leather didn't strike him at first. Nor did the fact that it was black make an immediate impression upon him. It was only when the silence and darkness of the previously occupied hotel bar told him all the patrons were gone that he realised the jacket had no owner.

He looked from the darkened bar door to the black leather jacket, feeling a tingling along his scalp. He thought, No, it can't be. But even as his mind formed the words, his fingers contacted the stiffened lining-stiffened the way only one substance can render an otherwise soft material stiff because the substance itself does not so much dry as coagulate…

Lynley dropped his umbrella. He took the jacket nearer to the entry porch's window, where he could better examine it under the light. And there he saw that in addition to that unnamed substance which had altered the texture of the lining, the leather was damaged in another way. A hole-perhaps the size of a five-pence coin-had pierced the back.

Apart from knowing that the lining of the jacket had once been soaked with blood, Lynley did not need to be a student of anatomy also to know that the hole in the jacket matched up precisely with the left scapula of the unfortunate person who'd been wearing it.

Nan Maiden found him in his lair near their bedroom. He'd left the office as soon as the detective was out of the hotel, and she hadn't followed him. Instead, she'd spent nearly an hour straightening the lounge after the last of the Sunday guests and setting up the dining room for residents and others who would be requiring a light Sunday supper. When she'd completed these tasks, checked the kitchen to see that the evening's soup was being prepared, and given directions to several American hikers who were apparently intent upon reenacting Jane Eyre at North Lees Hall, she went in search of her husband.

Her excuse was a meal: She hadn't seen him eat for days, and if he went on like this, he would certainly fall ill. The reality was something rather different: Andy couldn't be permitted to carry through his plan to be questioned with electrodes attached to his body. None of his responses could possibly be accurate when one considered the condition he was in.

She loaded a tray with anything he might find tempting. She included two drinks for him to choose from, and she climbed the stairs to make her offering.

He was sitting at the kneehole, and before him was a shoe box with its lid off and its contents spread across the secretaire drawer that was pulled out and open. Nan said his name, but he didn't hear her, so engrossed was he with the papers that had been in the box.

She approached. Over his shoulder she could see that he was looking at a collection of letters, notes, drawings, and greeting cards spanning nearly a quarter of a century. What had occasioned each one was different, but their source was the same. They represented every drawing or other communication that Andy had received from Nicola throughout her life.

Nan put the tray down next to the comfortable old overstuffed chair where Andy sometimes read. She said, “I've brought you something to eat, darling,” and was unsurprised when he didn't reply. She didn't know if he could not hear her or if he merely wished to be alone and wasn't willing to say so. But in either case, it didn't matter. She would make him hear her and she would not leave him.

She said, “Please don't take that lie detector test, Andy. Your condition isn't normal, and it hasn't been for months. I'm going to ring that policeman in the morning and tell him you've changed your mind. There's no sin in that. You're perfectly within your rights. He'll know it.”

Andy stirred. In his fingers he held a child's gawky drawing of “dady gets out of his bath” that had provoked in both of them such fond laughter so many years before. But now the sight of that little girl's rendering of her naked father-complete with a penis hilariously out of proportion-caused a shudder in Nan, followed by a shutting down of some basic function in her body and a shutting off of some essential emotion in her heart. “I'll take the polygraph.” Andy set the drawing to one side. “It's the only way.”

She wanted to say The only way to what? And she would have done had she been more prepared to hear the answer. Instead, she said, “And what if you fail?”

He turned to her then. He held an old letter between his fingers.

Nan could see the words Dearest Daddy in Nicola's bold, firm hand. “Why would I fail?” he asked.

“Because of your condition,” she answered. “If your nerves are going bad, they're going to send out incorrect readings. The police will take those readings and misinterpret them. The machine will say your body's not working. The police will call it something else.”

They'll call it guilt.

The sentence hung between them. It seemed to Nan suddenly that she and her husband were occupying different continents. She felt that she was the one who'd created the ocean between them, but she could not take the risk of diminishing its size.

Andy said, “A polygraph measures temperature, pulse, and respiration. There won't be a problem. It's nothing to do with nerves. I want to take it.”

“But why? Why?”

“Because it's the only way.” He smoothed the letter against the top of the secretaire drawer. He traced Dearest Daddy with his index finger. “I wasn't asleep,” he said to her. “I tried to sleep but I couldn't because I was so unnerved when my sight went bad. So why did you tell them you checked on me, Nancy?” And then he looked up and held her gaze with his.

“I've brought you something to eat, Andy,” she said brightly. “There's got to be something here to tempt you. Should I spread some pâté on a piece of baguette?”

“Nancy,” he said, “please tell me the truth.”

But she couldn't. She couldn't. He'd created her life. He'd watched her grow. He'd kept every missive and treasured every word. He'd seen her through childhood illnesses and adolescent tantrums, into an adulthood of which he'd been so proud. So if there was a chance-just the slightest possibility-that his physical condition was unrelated to Nicola's death, then she would live by that chance. She'd die by it as well, if that was necessary.

“She was wonderful, wasn't she?” Nan Maiden whispered, gesturing to the memories of Nicola that her husband had taken from their storage place. “Wasn't our little girl just the best?”

Vi Nevin wasn't alone in her room when Barbara Havers arrived at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Sitting next to her bed with her head pressed into the mattress like an orange-haired supplicant at the feet of a heavily bandaged goddess was a girl with limbs like bicycle spokes and the wrists and ankles of a starvation dieter. She looked up as the door swung shut behind Barbara.

“How'd you get in?” she demanded, rising and adopting a defensive stance with her inadequate body placed between the interloper and the bed. “That cop out there i'n't s'posed to let anyone-”

“Relax,” Barbara said, excavating in her bag for identification. “I'm one of the good guys.”

The girl sidled forward, snatched Barbara's warrant card, and read it: one eye on the card and the other on Barbara lest she make any precipitate moves. On the bed behind her, the patient stirred. She murmured, “'S okay, Shell. I saw her already. With the black, th’ other day. You know.”

Shell-who said she was Vi's best friend on earth, Shelly Platt, who meant to take care of Vi till the end of time and don't you forget it-returned Barbara's identification and slunk back to her seat. Barbara rustled out a notepad and a chewed-upon Biro and pulled the room's other chair into a position from which she and Vi Nevin could see each other.

She said, “I'm sorry about the beating. I got one myself a few months ago. Rotten business, but at least I could point the finger at the bastard. Can you? What d'you remember?”

Shelly went to the head of the bed, taking Vi's hand and beginning to stroke it. Her presence was an irritant to Barbara, like a sudden case of contact dermatitis, but the young woman in the bed seemed to take comfort from it. Whatever helps, Barbara thought. She sat with Biro poised.

Beneath the bandages, what could be seen of Vi Nevin's swollen face was her eyes, a small portion of her forehead, and a stitched-up lower lip. She looked like a victim of the sort of explosive that threw off shrapnel. She said in a voice so faint that Barbara strained to hear it, “Had a punter coming. Old bloke, this is. Likes honey on him. I coat him first… You know? Then I lick it off.”

What a treat, Barbara thought. She said, “Right. You say honey? Brilliant. Go on.”

Vi Nevin did so. She said she'd readied herself for her appointment in the schoolgirl costume that her client preferred. But when she'd brought out the honey jar, she'd realised that there wouldn't be enough to baste all the body parts he usually requested. “Plenty for the prong,” Vi said with the frankness of a professional. “But if he wanted more, I needed to have it to hand.”

“I've got the picture,” Barbara told her.

At the head of the bed, Shelly eased a skinny thigh onto the mattress. She said, “I c'n tell it, Vi. You'll wear yourself out.”

Vi shook her head and continued the story. There was little enough of it.

She'd popped out for the honey before her client's arrival. When she'd returned, she'd transferred the honey into its regular jug and she'd assembled a tray with the linens and other assorted goodies-all of which appeared to be either edible or potable-that she used in her regular sessions with the man. She'd been carrying the tray into the sitting room, when she'd heard a sound from one of the bedrooms upstairs.

All right, Barbara thought. Her interpretation of the pictures taken at the Fulham crime scene was about to be confirmed. But to be absolutely sure, she clarified with “Was it your client? Had he arrived ahead of you?”

“Not him,” Vi murmured.

Shelly said to Barbara, “You c'n see she's knackered. That's enough for now.”

“Hang on,” Barbara told her. “So a bloke was upstairs, but he wasn't a client? Then how'd he get in? You hadn't bolted the door?”

Vi raised the hand that Shelly wasn't clutching. It rose two inches off the bed and fell back. She reminded Barbara, “Only popped out for honey Ten minutes is all.” So she saw no reason to bolt the door. When she heard the noise above stairs, she explained, she went to investigate and found a bloke in her bedroom. The room itself was in shambles.

“You saw him?”

Only a shadowy glimpse of him as he lunged at her, Vi explained.

Fine, Barbara thought, because a glimpse might well do it. She said, “That's good. That's brilliant, then. Tell me what you can. Anything at all. A detail. A scar. A mark. Anything,” and she summoned into her mind the image of Matthew King-Ryder's face to match it up with whatever Vi Nevin said.

But what Vi gave her was a description of Everyman: medium height, medium build, brown hair, clear skin. And while it fitted

Matthew King-Ryder to a T, it also fitted at least seventy percent of the male population.

“Too fast,” Vi breathed. “Happened too fast.”

“But it wasn't the client you'd been expecting? You do know that?”

Vis lips curved, and she winced as they pulled against their stitches. “Eighty-one, that bloke is. On his best day… hardly can manage the stairs.”

“And it wasn't Martin Reeve?”

She shook her head.

“One of your other clients? An old boyfriend, perhaps?”

“She said-” Shelly Platt interrupted hotly.

“I'm clearing the decks,” Barbara told her. “It's the only way. You want us to nick whoever assaulted her, right?”

Shelly grumbled and petted Vis shoulder. Barbara tapped the pen against her notebook and considered their options.

They could hardly cart Vi Nevin to an identity parade, and even if that were possible, they had-at the moment-no reason in hell to trot Matthew King-Ryder into the local nick to stand in one. So they needed a picture, but it would have to come from a newspaper or a magazine. Or from King-Ryder Productions on some sort of spurious excuse. Because one hint that they were on to him, and King-Ryder would weigh down his long bow and arrows with concrete and dump them into the Thames faster than you could say Robin Hood's Merry Men.

But getting a photo was going to take some time because they needed the real thing-sharp and clear-and not something sent over to the hospital via fax. And fax or otherwise, where the hell were they going to get a photo of Matthew King-Ryder at-here Barbara looked at her watch-half past seven on a Sunday evening? There was no way. It was stab-in-the-dark time. She drew a deep breath and took the plunge. “D'you know a bloke called Matthew King-Ryder by any chance?”

Vi said the completely unexpected. “Yes.”

Lynley held the jacket by its satin lining. It had doubtless been touched by a dozen people since being removed from Terry Cole's body on Tuesday night. But it had been touched by the killer as well, and if he hadn't realised that fingerprints could be lifted from leather nearly as easily as they could be lifted from glass or painted wood, there was an excellent chance that he'd left an unintentional calling card upon the garment.

Once the proprietor of the Black Angel understood the import of Lynley's request, he fetched all the employees to the bar for some questions post haste. He offered the inspector tea, coffee, or other refreshment to go along with his queries, seeking to be helpful with the sort of anxiety to please that generally struck people who found themselves inadvertently living on the county line between murder and respectability. Lynley demurred at all refreshment. He just wanted some information, he said.

Showing the jacket to the hotels proprietor and its employees didn't get him anywhere however. One jacket was much like another to them. None could say how or when the garment that Lynley was holding had appeared at the hotel. They made suitable noises of horror and aversion when he pointed out the copious amount of dried blood on the lining and the hole in the back, and while they looked at him with properly mournful expressions when he mentioned the two recent deaths on Calder Moor, not an eyelash among them so much as fluttered at the suggestion that a killer might have been in their midst.

“I reckon someone left that thing here. Tha's what happened. No mistake about it,” the barmaid said.

“Coats hanging on the porch rack all winter long,” one of the room maids added. “I never take notice of them one day to the next.”

“But that's just it,” Lynley said. “It isn't winter. And until today, I dare say there hasn't been rain enough for macs, jackets, or coats.”

“So what s'r point?” the proprietor said.

“How could all of you fail to notice a leather jacket on a coat rack if the leather jacket is hanging there alone?”

The ten employees who were gathered in the bar shifted about, looked sheepish, or appeared regretful. But no one could shed any light on the jacket or how it had come to be there. They came in to work through the back door, not through the front, they told him. They left the same way. So they wouldn't have even seen the coat rack in the course of their normal workdays. Besides, things often got left behind at the Black Angel Hotel: umbrellas, walking sticks, rain gear, rucksacks, maps. Everything ended up in lost property, and until things got there, no one paid them much mind.

Lynley decided on a full frontal approach. Were they acquainted with the Britton family? he wanted to know. Would they recognise Julian Britton if they saw him?

The proprietor spoke for everyone. “We all know the Brittons at the Black Angel.”

“Did any of you see Julian on Tuesday night?”

But no one had.

Lynley dismissed them. He asked for a bag in which to stow the jacket, and while one was being fetched for him, he walked to the window, watched the rain fall, and thought about Tideswell, the Black Angel, and the crime.

He himself had seen that Tideswell abutted the eastern edge of Calder Moor, and the killer-vastly more familiar with the White Peak than Lynley-would have known that as well. So in possession of a jacket with an incriminating hole that would have told the tale of the crime in short order had it been found on the scene, he had to be rid of it as soon as possible. What could have been easier than stopping at the Black Angel Hotel on his way home from Calder Moor, knowing, as an habitué of the bar, that coats and jackets accumulated for whole seasons before anyone thought to have a look at them.

But could Julian Britton have managed to hang up the leather jacket in the entrance without being seen by anyone inside? It was possible, Lynley thought. Risky as the devil, but possible.

And at this point Lynley was willing to accept that which was possible. It kept that which was probable out of his thoughts.

Barbara leaned forward in her chair, saying, “You know him? Matthew King-Ryder. You know him?” and trying to keep the excitement from her voice.

“Terry,” Vi murmured.

Her eyelids were getting heavy. But Barbara pressed the young woman anyway, against the rising protestations of Shelly Platt. “Terry knew Matthew King-Ryder? How?”

“Music” Vi said.

Barbara felt immediately deflated. Damn, she thought. Terry Cole, the Chandler music, and Matthew King-Ryder. There was nothing new in this. They were nowhere again.

Then Vi said, “Found it in the Albert Hall, did Terry.”

Barbara's eyebrows knotted. “The Albert Hall? Terry found the music there?”

“Under a seat.”

Barbara was gobsmacked. She tried to get her mind round what Vi Nevin was telling her even as Vi continued to tell her.

In the course of his job as card boy, Terry put cards regularly in South Kensington phone boxes. He always did this work at night, since there was less likelihood of finding himself on the receiving end of police aggro after dark. He'd been on his regular rounds in the neighbourhood of Queen's Gate, when the phone in one of the boxes rang.

“On the corner of Elvaston Place and one of the mewses, this was,” Vi said.

For a lark, Terry answered to hear a male voice say, “The package is in the Albert Hall. Circle Q, Row 7, Seat 19,” after which the line went dead.

The mysterious nature of the call piqued Terry's interest. The word package-with its intimations of either a money drop, a drug drop, or a dead letter box-clinched the deal. Since he was so close to Kensington Gore, where the Royal Albert Hall overlooked the south border of Hyde Park, Terry went to investigate. A concert audience was just leaving, so the Hall was open. He tracked down the seat high in one of the balconies and found a package of music beneath it.

The Chandler music, Barbara thought. But what the bloody hell was it doing there?

He thought at first that he'd been sent off on a fool's errand intended for whatever fool was supposed to answer that phone on the corner of Elvaston Place. And when he'd met up with Vi to collect a fresh batch of phone box cards, he'd told her about his brief adventure.

“I thought there might be money to be made,” Vi told Barbara. “So did Nikki when we told her about it.”

Shelly dropped Vis hand abruptly, saying, “I don't want to hear nothing about that bitch.”

To which Vi replied, “Come on, Shell. She's dead.”

Shelly flounced over to the chair she'd been sitting on earlier. She plopped down and began to sulk, arms crossed over her bony chest. Barbara speculated briefly on the uneasy future of a relationship between two women when one of them was so perilously dependent. Vi ignored the demonstration of pique.

They all had ambitions, she told Barbara. Terry had his Destination Art and Vi and Nikki had plans to start up a first class escort business. They also had a need to support themselves once Nikki broke with Adrian Beattie. Both operations depended upon an infusion of cash, and the music looked like a potential source of it. “See, I remembered when Sotheby's-or whoever it was-was set to auction a piece by Lennon and McCartney. And that was just one single sheet that was supposed to fetch a few thousand quid. This was a whole packet of music. I said Terry ought to try to sell it. Nikki offered to do the research and find the right auction house. We'd split the money when the music sold.”

“But why cut you in?” Barbara asked. “You and Nikki. It was Terry's find, after all.”

“Yeah. But he was soft on Nikki,” Vi said simply. “He wanted to impress her. This was the way.”

Barbara knew the rest. Neil Sitwell at Bowers had opened Terry's eyes to copyright law. He'd handed over the address for 31-32 Soho Square and informed the boy that King-Ryder Productions would put him in touch with the Chandler solicitors. Terry had gone to Matthew King-Ryder with the music in hand. Matthew King-Ryder had seen it and had realised how he could use it to make himself the fortune that his father's will denied him. But why not just buy the music from the boy right then? she wondered. Why kill him to get it? Better yet, why not just buy the rights to the music from the Chandler family? If the production that resulted from the music was anything like the King-Ryder/Chandler productions from the past, there would have been plenty of lolly to go round in royalties even if fifty percent of it went to the Chandlers.

Vi was saying “-couldn't get the name,” when Barbara roused herself from her thoughts. She said, “What? Sorry. What did you say?”

“Matthew King-Ryder didn't give Terry the solicitor's name. Didn't even give him a chance to ask for it. He booted him out of his office as soon as he saw what Terry'd brought with him.”

“When he saw the music.”

She nodded. “Terry said he called security. Two guards came up straightaway and threw him out.”

“But Terry had gone there just for the Chandler solicitor's address, hadn't he? That's all he wanted from Matthew King-Ryder? He didn't want money? A reward or something?”

“Money's what we wanted the Chandlers to give him. Once we knew the music couldn't be auctioned.”

A nurse came into the room then, a small square tray in her hand. A hypodermic needle lay on it. Time for pain medication, the woman said.

“One last question,” Barbara said. “Why did Terry go up to Derbyshire on Tuesday?”

“Because I asked him to,” Vi said. “Nikki thought I was being a fool about Shelly-” Here the other woman raised her head. Vi spoke to her rather than to Barbara. “She kept sending these letters and hanging about and I was getting scared.”

Shelly raised a thin hand and pointed to her chest. “Of me?” she asked. “You 'as scared of me?”

“Nikki laughed them off when I told her about them. I thought if she saw them herself, we could plan to take care of Shelly some way. I wrote Nikki a note and asked Terry to take it and the letters up to her. Like I said, he was soft on her. Any excuse to see her. You know what I mean.”

The nurse interposed at this juncture, saying, “I really must insist,” and holding up the syringe.

“Yeah, okay,” Vi Nevin said.

Barbara stopped for groceries on her way back to Chalk Farm, so it was after nine by the time she got home. She unpacked her booty and stashed it within the cupboards and the munchkin-size fridge of her bungalow. All the time in her mind she picked through the information that Vi Nevin had given her. Somewhere within their interview was buried the key to everything that had happened: not only in Derbyshire but also in London. Surely, she thought, a mere assembling of the information in the right order would tell her what she needed to know.

With a plate of reheatable rogan josh from the grocery's precooked section-of which Barbara had quickly become an habitué nonpareil when she'd moved to the neighbourhood-she settled herself at her tiny dining table next to the bungalow's front window. She accompanied her meal with a lukewarm Bass and laid her notebook next to the coffee mug from which she was reduced to drinking, since several days of crockery, cutlery, and glassware had piled in her kitchen's diminutive sink. She took a gulp of the ale, forked up a portion of the lamb, and flipped to the notes from her interview with Vi Nevin.

Once the pain medication had been administered, the patient had drifted off to sleep, but not before answering a few more questions. In her role of Argos watching over Io, Shelly Platt had protested Barbara's continued presence. But Vi, lulled into a drug-induced ease, had whispered responses cooperatively until her eyes had closed and her breathing had deepened.

Reviewing her notes, Barbara concluded that the logical place to begin in developing a hypothesis about the case would have to be with the telephone call that Terry Cole had intercepted in South Kensington. That event had set all others in motion. It also stimulated enough questions to suggest that an understanding of the phone call-what had prompted it and what exactly had arisen from it-would lead inexorably to the evidence that would allow her to nab Matthew King-Ryder as a killer.

Although it was now September, Vi Nevin had been quite clear about the fact that Terry Cole had intercepted the phone call in South Kensington in the month of June. She couldn't give the exact date, but she knew it was early in the month because she'd collected a fresh batch of their phone box cards at the beginning of the month and she passed them to Terry on the same day that she picked them up. It was then that he told her about the curious call.

Not the beginning of July? Barbara enquired. Not August? Not even September?

June it was, Vi Nevin insisted. She remembered because they'd already moved house to Fulham-she and Nikki-and since Nikki had gone on to Derbyshire, Terry had questioned putting her cards in the phone boxes when she wasn't in town. Vi was quite sure of that. She'd wanted Terry to put up her own cards as soon as possible, she said, so that she could continue to build her clientele, and she'd told the boy to hold Nikki's cards for posting until the autumn, when he was to place them in boxes a day before the young woman returned.

But why, then, had it taken Terry so long to go to Bowers with the music he'd found?

First, Vi informed her, because she didn't tell Nikki straightaway about Terry's find. And second, because once she did tell Nikki and the plan was hatched among them to try to make some money from the music, it took some time for Nikki to research the best auction houses available to handle a sale of the sort they imagined. “Didn't want to pay lots of sellers’ fees,” she murmured, eyelids heavy. “Nikki thought 'f a country auction first. She made phone calls. Talked to people who knew.”

“And she came up with Bowers?”

“'S right.” Vi turned on her side. Shelly raised the blanket round her charge's shoulders and tucked her in up to her neck.

Now, munching her rogan josh in her Chalk Farm bungalow, Barbara reflected on that telephone call yet another time. No matter which way she considered it, however, she arrived at the same conclusion. The call had to have been intended for Matthew King-Ryder, who failed to be there at the designated hour to receive it. Hearing the single word yeah spoken by a male voice-by Terry Cole's voice-the caller had assumed that his message about the Albert Hall was being received by the right person. And since whoever had possession of the Chandler music wished to remain anonymous-why else make a call to a phone box?-it seemed reasonable to conclude that either the passing of the music from his hand to King-Ryder's constituted an illegality or the caller had come into possession of the music illegally or the music was going to be used by King-Ryder for a purpose that was itself illegal. In any case, the caller thought he'd passed the music along to King-Ryder, who'd no doubt paid a significant sum to get his mitts on it. With that sum in hand-probably paid in advance and in cash-the caller faded into the fog of obscurity, leaving King-Ryder out of the money, out of the music, and out of the picture as well. So when Terry Cole had dropped into his office flashing a page of the Chandler score, Matthew King-Ryder must have thought he was being deliberately ridiculed by someone who had already double-crossed him. Because if he'd arrived in South Keninsgton just one minute late for that telephone call, he'd have stood round for hours waiting for that phone to ring and assuming he'd been had.

He'd want revenge for that. He'd also want that music. And there was only one way to have both.

Vi Nevin's story supported Barbara's contention that Matthew King-Ryder was the man they were looking for. Unfortunately, it wasn't evidence, and without something more solid than conjecture, Barbara knew that she had no case to lay before Lynley. And laying before him irrefutable facts was going to be the only way she could ever redeem herself in his eyes. He'd seen her defiance as further proof of her indifference to a chain of command. He needed to see that same defiance as the dynamism that brought down a killer.

Pondering this, Barbara heard her name called from outside the bungalow. She looked up to see Hadiyyah skipping down the path that led to the back garden. The motion-detecting lights came on as she passed beneath them. The effect wasn't unlike a dancer being spotlit as she flew across the stage.

“We're back, we're back, we're back from the sea!” Hadiyyah sang out. “And look what Dad won me!”

Barbara waved at the little girl and closed her notebook. She went to the door and opened it just as Hadiyyah was finishing a pirouette. One of her long plaits had come loose from its restraining ribbon and was beginning to unravel, trailing a tail of silver satin like a comet in the sky Her socks were rucked and her T-shirt was stained with mustard and ketchup, but her face was radiant.

“We had such fun!” she cried. “I wish and I wish that you could've come, Barbara. We went on the roller coaster and the sailing ships and the airplane ride, and-oh, Barbara, wait'll you hear-I got to drive the train! We even went to the Burnt House Hotel and I visited Mrs. Porter for a bit, but not all day because Dad fetched me back. We ate our lunch on the beach and after we went paddling in the sea, but the water was so cold that we decided to go to the arcade instead.” She gulped for breath.

“I'm surprised you're still standing after a day packed like that.”

“I slept in the car,” Hadiyyah explained. “Almost all the way home.” She thrust her arm forward and Barbara saw that she was carrying a small stuffed frog. “See what Dad won me at the crane grab, Barbara? He's ever so good at the crane grab.”

“It's nice,” Barbara told her with a nod at the frog. “Good to practise with while you're young.”

Hadiyyah frowned and inspected the toy. “Practise with?”

“Right. Practise. Kissing.” Barbara smiled at the little girl's confusion. She put her hand on her tiny shoulder, ushered her to the table, and said, “Never mind. It was a daft joke anyway I'm sure dating will've improved enormously by the time you're ready to try it. So. What else have you got?”

What she had was a plastic bag whose handles were tied to one of the belt loops in her shorts. She said, “This is for you. Dad won it as well. At the crane grab. He's ever so-”

“Good at the crane grab,” Barbara finished for her. “Yeah. I know.”

“Because I already said.”

“But some things bear repeating,” Barbara told her. “Hand it over, then. Let's see what it is.”

With some effort Hadiyyah untangled the bag's handles and presented it to Barbara. She opened it to find inside a small, plush red velvet heart. It was trimmed with white lace.

“Well. Gosh,” Barbara said. She set the heart gingerly on the dining table.

“Isn't it lovely?” Hadiyyah gazed upon the heart with no little reverence. “Dad won it at the crane grab, Barbara. Just like the frog. I said, ‘Get her a froggie, Dad, so she'll have one as well and they can be friends.’ But he said, 'No. A frog won't do for our friend, little khushi! That's what he calls me.”

“Khushi. Yeah. I know.” Barbara felt a rapid pulse in her fingertips. She stared at the heart like the votary of a saint in the presence of relics.

“So he aimed for the heart instead. It took him three tries to get it. He could've got the elephant, I suppose, because that would've been a lot easier. Or he could've got the elephant first to get it out of the way and given it to me, except I already have an elephant, and I suppose he remembered that, didn't he? But anyway, he wanted the heart. I expect he might've brought it to you himself, but I wanted to and he said that was all right as long as your lights were on and you were still up. Was it all right? You look a bit peculiar. But your lights were on. I saw you in the window. Should I not have given it to you, Barbara?”

Hadiyyah was watching her anxiously. Barbara smiled and put an arm round her shoulders. “It's just so nice that I don't know what to say. Thanks. And thank your dad for me, won't you? Too bad expertise with the crane grab isn't a highly marketable skill.” He's ever so-

“Good. Right. I've seen that firsthand, if you recall.”

Hadiyyah recalled. She rubbed her stuffed frog against her cheek. “It's extra special to have a souvenir of a day at the sea, isn't it? Whenever we do something special together, Dad buys a souvenir for me, did you know? So I'll remember what a fine time we had. He says that's important. The remembering part. He says the remembering is just as important as the doing.”

“I wouldn't disagree.”

“Only, I wish you could'Ve come. What did you do today?”

“Work, I'm afraid.” Barbara gestured at the table where her notebook lay. Next to it sat the mailing list and the catalogues from Quiver Me Timbers. “I'm still at it.”

“Then I mustn't stay.” She retreated towards the door.

“It's okay,” Barbara said hastily. She realised how much she'd been longing for company. “I didn't mean-”

“Dad said I could only visit for five minutes. He wanted me to go straight to bed, but I asked if I could bring you your souvenir and he said, 'Five minutes, khushi! That's what he-”

“Calls you. Right. I know.”

“He was ever so nice to take me to the sea, wasn't he, Barbara?”

“The nicest there is.”

“So I must listen when he says, 'Five minutes, khushi! It's a way of saying thank-you to him.”

“Ah. Okay. Then you'd better scoot.”

“But you do like the heart?”

“Better than anything in the world,” Barbara said.

Once the child had left, Barbara approached the table. She walked carefully, as if the heart were a diffident creature who might be frightened away by sudden movement. With her eyes on the red velvet and the lace, she felt for her shoulder bag, rooted out her cigarettes, and set a match to one. She smoked moodily and she studied the heart.

A frog won't do for our friend, little khushi.

Never had nine words seemed so portentous.