In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 28

Hanken treated the black leather jacket with something akin to reverence: He donned latex gloves before handling the bag into which Lynley had deposited the garment, and when he laid the jacket onto one of the tables in the empty dining room of the Black Angel Hotel, he did it with the sort of ecclesiolatry that was generally reserved for religious services.

Lynley had phoned his colleague shortly after his futile interview with the Black Angel's employees. Hanken had taken the phone call at dinner and vowed that he'd be in Tideswell within the half hour. He was as good as his word.

Now he bent over the leather jacket and examined the hole in the back of it. Fresh-looking, he noted to Lynley, who stood across the table from him and watched the other DI scrutinise each millimeter of the perforation's circumference. Of course, they wouldn't know for certain until the jacket was placed under a microscope, Hanken continued, but the hole appeared recent because of the condition of the surrounding leather, and wasn't it going to be a treat if forensic came up with even a microscopic amount of cedar right on the edge of that hole?

“Once we have a match on that blood with

Terry Cole's, any more cedar is academic, isn't it?” Lynley pointed out. “We've got the sliver from the wound, after all.”

“We have,” Hanken said. “But I like my cake with icing.” He bagged the jacket after examining its blood-soaked lining. “This'll do to get us a warrant, Thomas. This'll do a flaming treat to get us a warrant.”

“It'll make things easier,” Lynley agreed. “And the fact that he allows the manor to be used for tournaments and the like ought to be enough to allow us to-”

“Hang on. I'm not talking about a warrant to shovel through the Brittons' territory. This”-Hanken lifted the bag-“gives us another nail to pound into Maiden's coffin.”

“I don't see how.” And then, when he saw that Hanken would expatiate on his reasons for seeking a warrant to search Maiden Hall, Lynley said quickly, “Hear me out for a moment. Do you agree that a long bow's probably our third weapon?”

“When I compare that suggestion to the hole in this jacket, I do,” Hanken said. “What're you getting at?”

“I'm getting at the fact that we already know of a location where long bows have probably been used. Broughton Manor's been the site for tournaments, hasn't it? For reenactments and fetes, from what you've told me. That being the case, and Julian being the man who hoped to marry a woman who-as we know-betrayed him in Derbyshire alone with two other men, why would we want to search Maiden Hall?”

“Because the dead girl's dad was the man who threatened her in London,” Hanken countered. “Because he was shouting that he'd see her dead before he'd let her do what she wanted to do. Because he took out a bloody bank loan to bribe her into living the way he wanted her to live, and she pocketed that money, played the game by his rules for three short months, and then said, ‘Right. Well, thanks mounds for the corn. It's been great fun, Dad, but I'm off to London to squeeze blokes' bollocks in a cylinder for a living. Hope you understand.’ And he didn't. Understand, that is. What dad would?”

Lynley said, “Peter, I know it looks bad for Andy…”

“Any way you rotate the roast on the spit, it looks bad for Andy.”

“But when I asked the hotel employees if any of them knew the Brittons, the answer was yes. Frankly, it was more than yes. It was ‘we know the Brittons by sight.’ Now, why would that be?” Lynley didn't wait for Hanken to respond. “Because they come here. Because they drink in the bar. Because they eat in the dining room. And it's easy enough for them to do that because Tideswell's practically on a direct route between Broughton Manor and Calder Moor. And you can't go charging off to search Maiden Hall without stopping to consider what all of that means.”

Hanken kept his gaze fixed on Lynley as he spoke. When Lynley had finished his polemic, he said, “Come with me, lad,” and led his colleague to the reception counter of the hotel, where he asked for a map of the White Peak. He took Lynley through to the bar and opened this map on a table top in the corner.

Lynley wasn't mistaken, he acknowledged. Tideswell sat on the east edge of Calder Moor. A decent hiker with murder in mind could start out from the Black Angel Hotel, climb to the top of the town, and set off across the moor to Nine Sisters Henge. It would take a few hours, considering the size of the moor, and it wouldn't be as efficient as simply following the route the girl herself had taken from the site just beyond the hamlet of Sparrowpit. But it could be done. On the other hand, that same killer could arguably have accomplished everything by car: parking in the same spot where Nicola had left her Saab behind the stone wall and, after the killings, returning home by way not only of the Black Angel Hotel but also by way of the hamlet of Peak Forest near which he got rid of the knife.

“Exactly,” Lynley said. “That's my point exactly. So you do see-”

But, Hanken argued, if his colleague would take a closer look at the map, he would see that the same short detour of less than two miles that their killer would have taken to drop the leather jacket at the Black Angel and then proceed homeward to the south towards Bakewell and Broughton Manor was the identical short detour of less than two miles that their killer would have taken to drop the leather jacket at the Black Angel and then proceed homeward to the north to Padley Gorge and Maiden Hall.

Lynley followed the two routes that Hanken indicated. He had to admit that the other DI had a point. He could see how their killer-having left the murder site, having driven through Peak Forest to dump the knife in the grit dispenser, having detoured briefly to Tideswell to place the jacket where it would hang unnoticed-could then have driven onwards to the junction that marked Wardlow Mires. From there, one road led towards Padley Gorge and the other towards Bakewell. And when means and opportunity aligned for two suspects in an investigation, the police were bound by everything from logic to ethics to look first at the stronger suspect. So a search of Maiden Hall was called for.

The event would be hell for Andy and his wife, but Lynley had to conclude that it was an unavoidable hell. Still, a remnant of the old loyalty he felt towards Andy prompted him to ask Hanken for a single assurance. The Maidens wouldn't be told, of course, what it was that the police were looking for in their search of Maiden Hall. It stood to reason, therefore, that there was no need to make any further discussion of Nicola's London life part of that inspection.

“You're only postponing the inevitable, Thomas. Unless Nan Maiden's dead before we make an arrest and go to trial, she's eventually going to know the worst about the girl. Even-and I don't believe this, but I'll give it to you for the moment-even if Dad didn't chop her. If Britton did the business on her…” Hanken made an aimless gesture with his hand.

The worst will still out, Lynley finished silently. He knew that. But if he couldn't save his former colleague from the humiliation of a formal search of his home and his business, at least he could spare him for the moment the added grief of having to be witness to the suffering of the only person left in his world.

“We'll set it for tomorrow,” Hanken said, folding the map and taking up the bag with its incriminating contents. “I'll take this to the lab. You get some sleep.”

It was hardly a directive he'd be able to comply with, Lynley thought.

In London, Lynley's wife also slept fitfully and awakened in a thoughtful mood on the following morning. Sleeping fitfully was an anomaly for Helen. Generally, she sank into something resembling unconsciousness shortly after her head touched her pillow, and she remained in that condition until morning. Thus, Helen found the fact of having slept poorly a sure indication that something was vexing her, and she didn't have to excavate very far into her psyche to uncover what that something was.

Tommy's reactions to and dealings with Barbara Havers had been, for the last few days, like a very small splinter festering beneath the surface of Helen's skin: something that she didn't necessarily have to confront in her normal routine, but something that was both troubling and painful when brought to her awareness. And brought to her awareness it had been-in neon lights, actually-during her husband's final confrontation with Barbara.

Helen understood Tommy's position: He'd given Barbara a series of directives, and Barbara had been less than cooperative in carrying them out. Tommy had seen this as an acid test which his former partner had failed; Barbara had seen this as an unfair punishment. Neither of them wished to acknowledge the other's point of view, and Barbara was the one who stood upon the less solid ground when it came to arguing her perspective. So Helen found no difficulty in admitting that Tommy's ultimate reaction to Barbara's defiance of his orders was justified, and she knew his superior officers would agree with the action he'd taken.

But that same action, when considered in conjunction with his earlier decision to work with Winston Nkata and not Barbara Havers, was what bothered Helen. What, she wondered as she rose from her bed and donned her dressing gown, was really at the heart of her husband's animus towards Barbara: the fact that she had defied him or the fact that she was a woman who'd defied him? Of course, Helen had asked him a variation on this very question prior to his departure on the previous day, and unsurprisingly he'd hotly denied that gender had anything to do with how he was reacting towards Barbara. But didn't Tommy's entire history give the He to any denial he might make? Helen wondered.

She washed her face, ran a brush through her hair, and thought about the question. Tommy had a past that was littered with women: women he'd wanted, women he'd had, women with whom he'd worked. His very first lover had been a school friend's mother with whom he'd carried on a tumultuous affair for more than a year, and, prior to his relationship with Helen, his most passionate attachment of the heart had been to the woman who was now the wife of his closest friend. Aside from that latter connection, all Tommy's associations with women had one characteristic in common as far as Helen could see: It was Tommy who directed the course of the action. The women cooperatively went along for the ride.

This exercise of command was simple for him to gain and maintain. Myriad women over the years had been so taken by his looks, his title, or his wealth that giving over to him not only their bodies but also their minds had seemed of little consequence in comparison with what they hoped they'd be getting in return. And Tommy had become used to this power. What human being wouldn't?

The real question was why he'd grasped the power that very first time with that very first woman. He'd been young, it was true, but although he could have chosen to meet that lover and every lover that followed her on a playing field that he himself made level despite the woman's reluctance or inability to insist upon that leveling, he had not done so. And Helen was certain that the why of Tommy's sway over women was behind his difficulties with Barbara Havers.

But Barbara was wrong, Helen could hear her husband insisting, and there's no damn way you can twist the facts to make them read that she was right.

Helen couldn't disagree with Tommy on that. But she wanted to tell him that Barbara Havers was only a symptom. The disease, she was certain, was something else.

She left the bedroom and descended to the dining room, where Denton had assembled the breakfast she preferred. She helped herself to eggs and mushrooms, poured a glass of juice and a cup of coffee, and set everything on the dining table, where her morning's copy of the Daily Mail lay next to her cutlery and Tommy's Times lay just beneath it. She flipped through the morning post idly as she added milk and sugar to her coffee. She set the bills to one side-no reason to spoil her breakfast, she thought-and she also set aside the Daily Mail upon whose front page the latest decidedly unattractive royal paramour was being acclaimed as looking “radiant at the annual Children in Need tea.” No reason, Helen thought grimly, to spoil her entire day as well.

She was just opening a letter from her eldest sister-its postmark from Positano telling her that Daphne had prevailed over her husband in terms of where to spend their twentieth wedding anniversary-when Denton came into the room. “Good morning, Charlie,” Helen said to him cheerfully. “You've excelled with the mushrooms today.”

Denton didn't return her greeting with similar enthusiasm. He said, “Lady Helen…” and hesitated-or so it seemed to Helen-somewhere between confusion and chagrin.

“I hope you're not going to scold me about that wallpaper, Charlie. I phoned Peter Jones and asked for another day. Truly, I did.”

Denton said, “No. It's not the wallpaper,” and he lifted the manila envelope he was holding, bringing it level with his chest.

Helen set down her toast. “What is it, then? You look so…” How did he actually look? she asked herself. He looked quite agitated, she concluded. She said, “Has something happened? You've not received bad news, have you? Your family's well, aren't they? Oh Lord, Charlie, have you got yourself into trouble with a woman?”

He shook his head. Helen saw that a duster hung over his arm, and the pieces fell into place: He'd been doing a spot of cleaning up, she realised, and no doubt he wished to lecture her on the messier of her habits. Poor man. He couldn't decide how best to begin.

He'd come from the direction of the drawing room, and Helen recalled that she hadn't picked up those sheets of music that Barbara had left upon her abrupt departure on the previous afternoon. Den-ton wouldn't like that, Helen thought. He was so like Tommy in his neatness.

“You've caught me out,” she confessed with a nod at the envelope. “Barbara brought that yesterday for Tommy to look at. I'm afraid I forgot all about it, Charlie. Will you believe me if I promise to do better next time? Hmm, I suppose not. I'm promising that constantly, aren't I?”

“Where did you get this, Lady Helen? This… I mean, this…?” And Denton gestured with the envelope as if he had no words to describe what it contained.

“I've just told you. Barbara Havers brought it. Why? Is it important?”

As an answer, Charlie Denton did the unexpected. For the first time since Helen had known the man, he drew a chair out from beneath the dining table and, completely unbidden, he sat.

“The blood matches” was Hanken's terse announcement to Lynley. He was phoning from Buxton, where he'd just got the word from the forensic lab. “The jackets the boy's.”

Hanken went on to tell him that they were moments away from getting a warrant to search Maiden Hall. “I've six blokes who can find diamonds in dog shit. If he's stashed the long bow there, we'll find it.” Hanken groused about the fact that Andy Maiden had had more than enough time since the night of the murders to rid himself of the bow in three dozen locations round the White Peak, which made their job of finding it doubly difficult. But at least he didn't know they'd twigged that an arrow was the missing weapon, which gave them the advantage of surprise if he hadn't rid himself of the rest of his equipment.

“We don't have the slightest indication that Andy Maiden's an archer,” Lynley pointed out.

“How many parts did he play undercover?” was Hanken's riposte. He rang off with “You're in if you want to be. Meet us at the Hall in ninety minutes.”

Heavy of heart, Lynley hung up the phone.

Hanken was right in his pursuit of Andy. When virtually every piece of information that was gathered led to one particular suspect, you proceeded with that suspect. You didn't avoid thinking the unthinkable because you couldn't disengage your mind from a memory of your twenty-fifth year and an undercover operation that you had so longed to be a part of. You did what you had to do as a professional.

Yet even though Lynley knew that DI Hanken was following procedures as they were meant to be followed in his search of Maiden Hall, he still found himself thrashing round in the quagmire of evidence, facts, and conjectures, seeking something that would vindicate Andy. It was, he stubbornly continued to believe, the least he could do.

There appeared to be only one usable fact: that Nicola's rain gear had been missing from among her belongings at Nine Sisters Henge. Alone in his room with the morning sounds of the hotel rising round him, Lynley considered nothing but that waterproof and what its absence from the murder scene meant.

They'd originally thought that the killer had taken the waterproof and worn it to cover his blood-stained clothes. But if he had called at the Black Angel Hotel on Tuesday after the murder, he would hardly have done so wearing rain gear on a fine summer's night. He wouldn't have been willing to run the risk of standing out, and there wasn't much that would have been more conspicuous than a man walking round in rain gear in the midst of Derbyshire's long spell of perfect weather.

To make certain, however, Lynley rang down to the Black Angel's proprietor. A single question-shouted round the ground floor from one employee to another-was sufficient for Lynley to be assured that nothing like that had been played out at the hotel on any night in recent memory. What, then, had become of the waterproof?

Lynley began to pace the room. He reflected on the moor, the murders, and the weapons, and he dwelt upon the mental image he'd constructed of how the crimes had been carried out.

If the killer had taken the garment from the scene but had not worn it from the scene, there seemed to be only two possibilities for its use to him. Either the waterproof had been fashioned into a sort of carrier for transporting something from the henge when the killer left or it had been used in some way by the killer during the commission of the crime.

Lynley dismissed the first prospect as unlikely: The two victims had gone to the henge on foot. What could they have carried in with them that would require something the size of a waterproof to transport out? He went on to the second possibility. And when he lined up all he knew about the killings, what he'd assumed about the killings, and what he'd discovered at the Black Angel Hotel, he finally saw the answer.

The killer had incapacitated the boy with an arrow. He'd then gone after the fleeing girl and dispatched her without much trouble. Returning to the henge, he'd seen that the boy's wound was serious but not mortal. He'd cast about for a quick way of doing him in. He could have stood the boy up-firing-squad fashion-and made of him a modern St. Sebastian, but the boy would hardly have cooperated in that plan. So the killer had torn through the equipment at the site and found the knife and the rain gear. He'd put on the waterproof to protect his clothes while he was knifing the boy Thus he could enter the Black Angel Hotel with impunity later.

A blood-stained waterproof couldn't be left hanging with the black leather jacket, however. The blood on the jacket had soaked into its lining, where it was camouflaged by the material's colour. So the jacket might have taken months to be noticed. But a blood-stained waterproof would not be so easily overlooked.

Yet the killer had to get rid of it. And sooner rather than later. So where…?

Lynley continued to pace as he pictured that night, the killings, and their aftermath.

The knife had been left along the killer's escape route. It was easy enough to bury in a few inches of grit in a roadside container, a process that would probably have taken no more than thirty seconds.

But the waterproof couldn't be buried there because there wasn't enough grit to do the job and, besides that, on a public road even at night it would have been sheer idiocy to stop for the length of time it would have taken to bury something so bulky in a roadside container.

Yet something very like a roadside container would have worked well as a depository for a garment, something that had an everyday use, something that one saw without thinking about, and something on the way to the hotel where-the killer knew-a black leather jacket could be stowed in plain sight with no one the wiser for ages…

A pillar box? Lynley wondered. But he dismissed the possibility almost as soon as he considered it. Aside from the fact that the killer wouldn't have wanted to go to the effort of cramming the waterproof inch by inch into the slot for letters, the post was collected every day.

Someone's rubbish bin? But there again he encountered virtually the same problem. Unless the killer managed to bury it at the bottom of someone's dustbin, the first time the bin's owner wished to discard a bag of rubbish, the waterproof would be found. Unless, of course, the killer managed to find a bin that was constructed in such a way that rubbish already within it couldn't be seen when someone deposited more. A bin in a public park might have worked for this, one where refuse was shoved through an opening in the cover or the side. But where on the route from Calder Moor to Tideswell did such a park with such a container exist? That's what he needed to find out.

Lynley descended the stairs and got from Reception the same map of the White Peak that Hanken had used on the previous evening. Upon examining the area, the closest Lynley could come to a public park was a nature reserve near Hargatewall. He frowned when he saw how far off the direct route it was. It would have taken the killer a number of miles out of his way. But it was worth a try.

The morning outside was much like the previous day: grey, windy, and rainy. But unlike the previous day when Lynley had arrived, the Black Angel's car park was virtually deserted since it was far too early for even the most inebriated of the hotel's regular patrons to be bellying up to the bar. So with his umbrella raised and the collar of his waxed jacket turned up, Lynley dodged puddles and hurried round the side of the building to the only spot that he'd been able to find for the Bentley on the previous afternoon.

Which was when he finally saw what he'd seen without acknowledging upon his arrival.

The spot he'd found for the Bentley had been vacant yesterday because it would always be the last spot chosen to park one's car. No one with half a care for his car's paint job would park it right next to an overloaded skip that was even now, in the wind and the rain, erupting with refuse.

Of course, Lynley thought as the grinding of gears behind him spoke of a lorry's approach.

As it was, he made it to the skip just a stride ahead of the local dustmen who'd arrived to pick up the Black Angel's week's worth of rubbish.

Samantha heard the noise before she saw her uncle. The sound of bottles clinking together echoed on the old stone stairway as Jeremy Britton descended to the kitchen, where Samantha was doing the washing up from breakfast. She glanced at her watch, which she'd set on a shelf near the kitchen's deep sink. Even by Uncle Jeremy's standards, it seemed too early in the day to be drinking.

She scoured the frying pan in which she'd cooked the morning's bacon, and she tried to ignore her uncle's presence. Footsteps shuffled behind her. The bottles continued to clank. When she could no longer avoid doing so, Samantha glanced round to see what her uncle was doing.

Jeremy had a large basket crooked over his arm. Into this he'd deposited perhaps a dozen bottles of spirits. They were mostly gin. He began going through the dole cupboards that they used for storage in the kitchen, rustling through their contents to pull out more bottles. These were miniatures, and he took them from the flour bin, from the containers of rice and spaghetti and dried beans, from among the assorted tins of fruit, from deep within the storage space for pots and pans. As the collection grew in the basket on his arm, Uncle Jeremy clanked and rattled round the kitchen like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

He murmured, “Going to do it this time.”

Samantha put the final pot on the drying rack and pulled the plug on the water in the sink. She dried her hands on the front of her apron and watched. Her uncle looked older than he had done since she'd been in Derbyshire. And the tremors that were jerking his body didn't help the overall impression he gave of serious illness in the offing.

She said, “Uncle Jeremy? Are you ill? What's wrong?”

“Coming off it,” he replied. “It's the bloody devil. Gives you temptation, then sends you to hell.”

He'd begun to perspire, and in the kitchen's meagre light his skin looked like a lemon coated with oil. With unsteady hands, he eased the loaded basket onto the draining board. He clutched at the first of the bottles. Bombay Sapphire, his one true love. He unscrewed the top and upended the bottle into the sink. The smell of gin rose up like leaking gas.

When the bottle was empty, Jeremy broke it against the lip of the sink. “No more,” he said. “Through with this poison. I swear. No more.”

Then he began to cry. He cried with dry, hard sobs that shook his body worse than the absence of alcohol in his veins. He said, “So scared. I can't do it alone.”

Samantha's heart went out to him. “Oh, Uncle Jeremy. Here. Let me help. I'll hold the basket, shall I? Or shall I open the bottles for you?” She took one out-Beefeater's this time-and offered it to her uncle.

“It'll kill me,” he cried. “'S what it's doing already. Look at me.” And he held up his hands to show her what she'd already seen: their terrible shaking. He grabbed the Beefeater's and broke the bottle against the lip of the sink without emptying it first. Gin splashed on both of them. He grabbed another. “Rotten,” he wept. “Miserable. Sot. Drove three of 'em off but that wasn't enough. No. No. He'll not be content till the last one's gone.”

Samantha sorted through this. His wife and the Britton children, she decided. Julian's sister, brother, and mother had fled the manor ages ago, but she couldn't believe that Julian would ever desert his father. She said, “Julian loves you, Uncle Jeremy. He won't leave you. He wants the best for you. You must see that's why he's been working so hard to bring the manor back,” as Jeremy dumped another half litre of gin into the sink.

“He's a wonderful boy. Always was. And I won't, I won't. No longer.” And another bottle's contents joined the others. “'S working so hard to make this place something, and all the while his sot of a dad's drinking everything away. But no more.”

The kitchen sink was rapidly filling with glass, but that didn't matter to Samantha. She could see that her uncle was in the throes of a conversion so important that one or two kilos of broken glass were of small account in comparison. She said, “Are you giving up drinking, Uncle Jeremy? Are you seriously giving up drinking?” She had her doubts about his sincerity, yet bottle after bottle went the way of the first. When Jeremy was finished with the lot of them, he leaned over the sink and began to pray with an earnestness that Samantha could feel in her bones.

He swore on the lives of his children and his future grandchildren that he would not take another drop of drink. He would not, he said, be an advertisement for the evils of life-long inebriation. He would walk away from the bottle here and now and he would never look back. He owed that much, if not to himself, then to the son whose love had kept him here in the rotting family home when he could have gone elsewhere and lived a decent, wholesome, normal life.

“Hadn't been for me, he'd be married now. Wife. Kids. A life. An’ I took that from him. I did it. Me.”

“Uncle Jeremy, you mustn't think that. Julie loves you. He knows how important Broughton Manor is to you at the end of the day, and he wants to make it a home again. And anyway, he's not even thirty yet. He's got years and years to have a family.”

“Life's passing him by,” Jeremy said. “An’ it'll go right by him while he struggles at home. An’ he'll hate me for that when he wakes up and sees it.”

“But this is life.” Samantha placed a comforting hand on her uncle's shoulder. “What we're doing here, at the manor, every day. This is life, Uncle Jeremy.”

He straightened from the sink, reaching in his pocket as he did so, bringing out a neatly folded handkerchief and honking into it before he turned to her. Poor man, she thought. When had he last wept? And why were men so embarrassed when they finally broke with the force of a reasonable emotion?

“Want to be part of it again,” he said.

“Part of it?”

“Life. I want life, Sammy. This”-he made a gesture towards the sink-“this runs away from everything living. I say enough.”

Odd, Samantha thought. He suddenly sounded so strong, as if nothing stood between him and his hope for sobriety. And just as suddenly she wanted that for him: the life he imagined for himself, happy in his home, occupied and surrounded by his darling grandchildren.

She could even see them, those lovely grandchildren still unconceived. She said, “I'm so glad, Uncle Jeremy. I'm so terribly terribly glad. And Julian… Julie'll be so delighted. He'll want to help you. I know he will.”

Jeremy nodded, his gaze fixed on her. “You think?” he said hesitantly. “After all these years… with me… like this?”

“I know he'll help,” she said. “I just know it.”

Jeremy straightened his clothes. He blew his nose noisily once again and folded his handkerchief back into his pocket. He said, “Y’ love him, don't you, girl?”

Samantha shuffled her feet.

“You're not like the other. You'd do anything for him.”

“I would,” Samantha said. “Yes. I would.”

When Lynley arrived in Padley Gorge, the search of Maiden Hall was in full swing. Hanken had brought six constables with him, and he'd deployed them economically as well as thoroughly. Three of them were searching the family's floor, the residents’ floor, and the ground floor of the Hall proper. One was searching the outbuildings on the property. Two others were searching the grounds. Hanken himself was coordinating the effort, and when Lynley pulled to a stop in the car park he found his fellow DI smoking moodily beneath an umbrella near a panda car as the family-floor constable made his report.

“Get out with the others on the grounds, then,” Hanken was instructing him. “If there's been any digging round here, I want you lot on it like hounds down a foxhole. Understand? And mind you dig up that new road sign at the bottom of the drive.” The constable trotted off in the direction of the slope that fell away towards the road. There Lynley could see two other policemen pacing along evenly beneath the trees in the rain.

“Nothing so far,” Hanken told Lynley. “But it's here somewhere. Or something related to it is. And we'll find it.”

“I've got the waterproof,” Lynley said.

Hanken raised an eyebrow and tossed his cigarette onto the ground. “Have you indeed? That's good work, Thomas. Where'd you find it?”

Lynley told him about the thought process that had led him to the skip. Under a week's worth of rubbish from the hotel, he'd found the rain gear by relying upon a pitchfork and the patience of the dustmen who'd arrived just behind him to collect the skip's contents.

“You don't much look like you've been doing some skip-trolling,” Hanken told him.

“I showered and changed,” Lynley admitted.

The rubbish in the skip-piled up on the waterproof for nearly a week-had ultimately protected it from the rain, which might have otherwise washed away any evidence left upon it. As it was, the plastic garment hadn't been touched by anything other than coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, plate scrapings, old newspapers, and crumpled tissues. And since it had been turned inside out anyway, even these had only smeared its insides, giving it the appearance of a discarded tarpaulin. Its exterior had been largely untouched, so the blood splatters on it remained as they had been on the previous Tuesday night: mute witnesses to what had occurred inside Nine Sisters Henge. Lynley had bundled the waterproof into a supermarket carrier bag. It was, he said, in the boot of the Bentley.

“Let's have it, then.”

“First,” Lynley said with a nod at the Hall, “are the Maidens here?”

“We don't need an ID on the rain gear if it's got the kid's blood on it, Thomas.”

“I wasn't asking professionally. How are they taking the search?”

“Maiden claims he's found some bloke in London who can do a lie detector on him. Runs a business called Polygraph Professionals, or something like that.”

“If he's willing-”

“Bollocks,” Hanken cut in irritably. “You know that polygraphs are worth sod all. So does Maiden. But they make one hell of a delaying tactic, don't they? ‘Please don't arrest me. I've got a polygraph organised.’ Bugger that for a lark. Let's have the waterproof.”

Lynley handed it over. It was turned inside out, as it had been upon his discovery of it. But one of its edges was exposed, where the blood made a purple deposit in the shape of a leaf.

“Ah,” Hanken said when he saw it. “Yes. We'll get this over to forensic, then. But I'd say everything's over bar the shouting.”

Lynley didn't feel so certain. But why? he wondered. Was it because he couldn't believe Andy Maiden had killed his daughter? Or was it because the facts truly led elsewhere? “It looks deserted,” he said with a nod at the Hall.

“Due to the rain,” Hanken told him. “They're inside though. The lot of them. Most of the guests're gone, it being Monday. But the Maidens are here. As are the employees. Except for the chef. He generally doesn't show up till after two, they said.”

“Have you spoken to them? The Maidens?”

Hanken appeared to read the underlying meaning, because he said, “I haven't told the wife, Thomas,” and then transferred the waterproof to the front seat of the panda car. “Fryer!” he shouted in the direction of the slope. The family-floor constable looked up, then came at a trot when Hanken gestured him over. “The lab,” he said with a jerk of his head towards the car. “Drive that bag over for a work-up on the blood. See if you can get the job done by a girl called Kubowsky. She doesn't let grass grow, and we're in a hurry.”

The constable looked happy enough to be out of the rain. He removed his lime-coloured windcheater and hopped into the car. In less than ten seconds he was gone.

“Exercise in going through the motions,” Hanken said. “The blood's the boy's.”

“Doubtless,” Lynley agreed. Still, he looked towards the Hall. “D'you mind if I have a word with Andy?”

Hanken eyed him. “Can't accept it, can you?”

“I can't get away from the fact that he's a cop.”

“He's a human being. Governed by the same passions as the rest of us,” Hanken said. Mercifully, Lynley thought, he didn't add the rest: Andy Maiden was better than most people at doing something about those passions. Instead, Hanken said, “Mind you, remember that,” and strode off in the direction of the outbuildings.

Lynley found Andy and his wife in the lounge, in the same alcove where he and Hanken had first spoken to them. They weren't together this time, however. Rather, they sat, silent, on the opposing sofas. They were in identical positions: leaning forward with their arms resting just above their knees. Andy was rubbing his hands together. His wife was watching him.

Lynley obliterated from his mind the Shakespearean image that was invoked by Andy's attention to his hands. He said his former colleague's name. Andy looked up.

“What're they looking for?” he asked.

Lynley didn't miss the pronoun or its implication of a distinction between himself and the local police.

He said, “How are you both doing?”

“How do you expect we're doing? It's not enough that Nicola's been taken from us. But now you come and tear apart our home and our business without having the decency to tell us why. Just waving a filthy piece of paper from a magistrate and barging inside like a group of hooligans with-” Nan Maiden's anger threatened to give way to tears. She clenched her hands in her lap and, in a movement not unlike her husband's, she beat them together as if this would allow her to maintain a poise she'd already lost.

Maiden said, “Tommy?”

Lynley gave him what he could. “We've found her waterproof.”

“Where?”

“There's blood on it. The boy's most likely. We assume the killer wore it to protect his clothes. There may be other evidence on it. He'd have pulled it on over his hair.”

“Are you asking me for a sample?”

“You might want to arrange for a solicitor.”

“You can't think he did this!” Nan Maiden cried.

“Do you think I need a solicitor?” Maiden asked Lynley. And both of them knew what he was really asking: How well do you know me, Thomas? And: Do you believe I am as I appear to be?

Lynley couldn't reply in the way Maiden wanted. Instead, he said, “Why did you ask for me specifically? When you phoned the Yard, why did you ask for me?”

“Because of your strengths,” Maiden replied. “Among which was always honour first. I knew that I could depend on that. You'd do the right thing. And, if it came down to it, you'd keep your word.”

They exchanged a long look. Lynley knew its meaning. But he couldn't risk being played for a fool. He said, “We're approaching the end, Andy. Keeping my word or not isn't going to make a difference then. A solicitor's called for.”

“I don't need one.”

“Of course you don't need one,” his wife agreed quietly, having taken some strength, it seemed, from her husband's sense of calm. “You've done nothing. You don't need a solicitor when you've nothing to hide.”

Andy's gaze dropped back to his hands. He went back to massaging them. Lynley left the lounge.

For the next hour the search of Maiden Hall and its environs continued. But at the end of it, the five remaining constables had come up with nothing that resembled a long bow, the remains of a long bow, or any item related to archery. Hanken stood in the rain with the wind whipping his mac round his legs. He smoked and brooded, studying Maiden Hall as if its limestone exterior were hiding the bow in plain sight. His search team waited for further instructions, their shoulders hunched, their hair flattened against their skulls, and their eyelashes spiked by the rain. Lynley felt vindicated by Hanken's lack of success. If the other DI was going to suggest that Andy Maiden as their killer had removed every last bit of evidence related to archery from his home-without knowing they'd connected one of the two killings to archery in the first place-he was prepared to do battle on that front. No killer thought of everything. Even if that killer was a cop, he was going to make a mistake, and that mistake would hang him eventually.

Lynley said, “Let's go on to Broughton Manor, Peter. We've got the team, and it won't take long to get a second warrant.”

Hanken roused himself. He said, “Get back to the station,” to his men. And then to Lynley, when the constables had departed, “I want that report from SO 10. The one your man in London put together.”

“You can't still be thinking that this is a revenge killing. At least not one that's connected with Andy's past.”

“I don't think that,” Hanken said. “But our boy-with-a-past might have used that past in a way we've not considered yet.”

“How?”

“To find someone willing to do a nasty spot of work for him. Come along, Inspector. I've a mind to have a look through the records at your Black Angel Hotel.”