In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 29

Although they'd been thorough, the police had also been moderately gentle in their treatment of the Maidens’ personal belongings and the Hall's furnishings. Andy Maiden had seen far worse searches in his time, and he tried to take comfort from the fact that his brother policemen hadn't decimated his dwelling in their search. Still, the Hall had to be put back into order again. When the police had left, Andy, his wife, and their staff each took a separate section to straighten.

Andy was relieved that Nan had agreed to this reasonable plan of action. It kept her away from him for a while. He hated himself for wanting to be away from her. He knew she needed him, but with the departure of the police, Andy found himself desperate for solitude. He had to think. He knew he wouldn't be able to do so with Nan hanging over him, displacing her grief by locking her mind on the fruitless endeavour of caring for him. He didn't want his wife's care right now. Things had progressed too far for that.

The wheel of Nicola's death was coming closer and closer to breaking them both. Andy realised he could protect Nan from it while the investigation was on-going, but he didn't know how he could continue to do so once the police made an arrest. That they were getting closer to doing just that had been made only too evident by his brief conversation with Lynley. And in Tommy's suggestion that Andy ask for his solicitor's help, there was fair indication of exactly what the detectives’ next move would be.

Tommy was a good man, Andy thought. But there was only so much you could ask of a good man. When that good man's limit was reached, you had to place your confidence in yourself.

This was a principle that Nicola had seen. Blended with her insatiable desire to be gratified-now-whenever she had an inclination towards something, her reliance on herself before others had led her down the path she'd taken.

Andy had long known that his daughter's ambition in life was, simply expressed, never to go without. She'd seen the economies her parents had employed both to save towards the purchase of a country home and to channel funds to Andy's father, whose pension didn't cover his profligate ways. And more than once, especially when met with her parents’ refusal to accede to one of her demands, she'd announced that she would never find herself in a position of having to scrimp and save and deny herself life's simple pleasures, eschewing them for such barren activities as repairing sheets and pillowcases, turning collars on shirts, and darning socks. “You'd better not end up like Granddad, Dad,” she'd said to Andy on more than one occasion. “'cause I plan to spend all my money on me.”

Yet it really wasn't avarice that dominated her behaviour. Rather, it seemed to be a profound vacuity at the heart of her that she sought to fill with material possessions. How often he'd tried to explain to her mankind's essential dilemma: We are born of parents and into families, so we have connections, but we're ultimately alone. Our primitive sense of isolation creates a void within us. That void can be filled only through the nurturing of spirit. “Yes, but I want that motorbike,” she'd respond as if he hadn't just attempted to explain to her why the acquisition of a motorbike would not soothe a spirit whose singular needs were restless for acknowledgement. Or that guitar, she'd reply. Or that set of gold earrings, that trip to Spain, that flashy car. “And if there's money enough to buy it, I don't see why we shouldn't. What's spirit got to do with whether one has the money to buy a motorbike, Dad? Even if I wanted to, I can't spend money on my spirit, can I? So what am I supposed to do with money if I've ever got it? Throw it away?” And she'd list those individuals whose achievements or position garnered them vast reserves of cash: the Royal Family, erstwhile rock stars, business magnates, and entrepreneurs. “They've got houses and cars and boats and planes, Dad,” she would say. “And they're never alone either. And they don't look like they've got some big hollow in the pit of their stomachs, if you ask me.” Nicola was a persuasive supplicant when she wanted something, and nothing he could say was sufficient to make her see that she was merely observing the exterior lives of these people whose possessions she so admired. Who they were inside-and what they felt-was something that no one but them could know. And when she acquired what she had begged to possess, she wasn't able to see that it satisfied her only briefly. Her vision was occluded from this knowledge because what stood in the way was always the desire for the next object that she believed would soothe her soul.

And all of this-which would have made any child difficult to rear-was combined with Nicola's natural propensity for living life on the edge. She'd learned that from him, from watching him shift from persona to persona over the years of undercover work and from listening to the tales told by his colleagues over family dinners when they'd all drunk too much wine. Andy and his wife had kept from their daughter the other side of those acts of bravado that so regaled her. She never knew the personal price her father paid as his health crumbled beneath his mind's inability to divide itself into separate arenas serving who he was and who his work forced him to pretend to be. She was supposed to see her dad as strong, complete, and indomitable. Anything else would shake her foundations, they assumed.

Thus, it was natural that Nicola had thought nothing of it when it came to telling him the truth about her future plans. She'd phoned and asked him if he would come to London. “Let's have a chick-and-Dad date,” she'd said. Delighted to think that his beautiful daughter would want to spend special time with him, he'd gone to London. They'd have their date-whatever she wanted to do, he told her-and he'd cart some of her belongings back to Derbyshire for her summer's employment. It was when he'd looked round her neat bed-sit and rubbed his hands together and asked what she wanted him to load into the Land-Rover that she told him the truth.

She began with “I've changed my mind about working for Will. I've had another think about law as well. That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Dad. Although”-with a smile, and God how lovely she was when she smiled-“our date was wonderful. I've never been to the Planetarium before.”

She made them tea, sat him down with a plate of sandwiches that she took from a Marks & Spencer container, and said, “Did you ever get into the bondage scene when you were undercover, Dad?”

He'd thought at first that they were making polite conversation: an ageing father's reminiscences prompted by his daughter's fond questions. He hadn't done much in's & M, he told her. That would have been handled by another division at the Yard. Oh, he'd had to go into the S 8c M clubs and shops a few times, and there was that party where an idiotic bloke dressed as a schoolgirl was being whipped on a cross. But that had been the extent of it. And thank God for that, because there were some things in life that left one feeling too filthy for a simple bath to cure, and sado-masochism was at the top of his list.

“It's just a lifestyle, Dad,” Nicola told him, reaching for a ham sandwich and chewing it thoughtfully. “After all you've seen, I'm surprised you'd condemn it.”

“It's a sickness,” he said to his daughter. “Those people have problems they're afraid to face. Perversion looks like the answer while all the while it's only part of what ails them.”

“So you think,” Nicola reminded him gently. “The reality could be something different though, couldn't it? An aberration to you might be perfectly normal to someone else. In fact, you might be the aberration in their eyes.”

He supposed this was the case, he admitted. But wasn't normality determined by the numbers? Wasn't that what the word norm meant in the first place? Wasn't the norm decided by what the most people did?

“That would make cannibalism normal, Dad, among cannibals.”

“Among cannibals, I suppose it is.”

“And if a group among the cannibals decides it doesn't like eating human flesh, are they abnormal? Or can we say they have tastes that might have undergone a change? And if someone from our society goes out and joins the cannibals and discovers he has a taste for human flesh that he wasn't aware he had, is he abnormal? And to whom?”

Andy had smiled at that. He'd said, “You're going to make a very fine lawyer.”

And that comment had led them to hell.

“As to that, Dad,” she'd begun, “as to the law…”

She'd started with her decision not to work for Will Upman, to remain for the summer in London instead. He'd thought at first that she meant she'd found a placement more to her liking with a firm in town. Perhaps, he'd thought hopefully, she's got herself established at one of the Inns of Court. That wasn't where he dreamed she'd end up, but he wasn't blind to the compliment such a position paid to his daughter. He'd said, “I'm disappointed, of course. Your mum will be as well. But we always looked at Will as a fallback if nothing better turned up. What has?”

She told him. He thought at first that she was joking, although Nicola had never been a child to joke when it came to what she wanted to do. In fact, she'd always stated her intentions exactly as she stated them that day in Islington: Here's the plan, here's why, here's the intended result.

“I thought you ought to know,” she'd concluded. “You have a right, since you were paying for law college. And I'll pay you back for that, by the way.” Again that smile, that sweet and infuriating Nicola smile which had always partnered whatever she announced as a fait accompli. I'm running away, she'd tell her parents when they'd refused an unreasonable request. I won't be here after school today. In fact, I'm not going to school at all. Don't expect me for dinner. Or for breakfast tomorrow. I'm running away. “I should have the money to pay you before the end of summer. I would have had it already, but we had to buy supplies and they cost quite a lot. Would you like to see them, by the way?”

He'd continued to believe it was some sort of joke. Even when she'd brought out her equipment and explained the use of each obscene item: the leather whips, the braces studded with small chrome nails, the masks and manacles, the shackles and collars. “You see, Dad, some people just can't get it off unless there's pain or humiliation involved,” she told her father as if he hadn't spent years exposed to just about every kind of human aberration. “They want the sex-well, that's natural, isn't it? I mean, don't we all want it?-but unless it's connected to something degrading or painful, they either don't get satisfaction from it or they can't even do it in the first place. And then there are others who seem to feel the need to atone for something. It's like they've committed a sin, and if they take their medicine like they're supposed to-six of the best to naughty little boys and all that-they're happy, they're forgiven, and they get on with their business. They go home to the wife and kiddies, and they feel, well, they feel… I suppose it sounds awfully odd to say it, but they seem to feel refreshed.” She appeared to read something on her father's face, then, that creased her own, because she reached across the table at which they sat and earnestly covered Andy's clenched fist with her hand. “Dad, I'm always the dom. You do know that, don't you? I wouldn't ever let someone do to me what I do to… Well, I'm just not interested. I do it because the money's fabulous, it's just beyond belief, and while I'm young and nice-looking and strong enough to do eight or nine sessions a day…” She smiled an impish smile, as she reached for the final object to show him. “The pony tail's the most ridiculous, actually. You can't imagine how silly a seventy-year-old bloke looks when he's got this thing hanging out of his… well, you know.”

“Say it,” he'd said to her, finding his voice at last.

She'd looked at him blankly, the black plastic plug with its black leather streamers dangling from her lovely slender hand. “What?”

“The word. Hanging from his what? If you can't say it, how can you do it?”

“Oh. That. Well, I only don't say it because you're my dad.”

And that admission had shattered something within him, some last vestige of control and an outdated restraint born of lifelong repression. “Arsehole,” he'd shouted. “It hangs from his God damn arse-hole, Nick,” and he swept from the dining table all the devices of torture that she'd assembled for him to see.

Nicola realised-finally-that she'd pushed him too far. She backed away from him as he let his rage, incomprehension, and despair take whatever form they chose. He upended furniture, broke crockery, and ripped her legal books from their bindings. He'd seen the fear in her, and he'd thought of the times that he could have inspired it in the past and had chosen not to. And that enraged him further until the roaring destruction he visited upon her bed-sit reduced his daughter to a cowering heap of the silk, suede, and linen that comprised her clothing. She huddled in the corner with her arms over her head, and that wasn't enough for him. He hurled her filthy equipment at her and bellowed, “I'll see you dead before I let you do it!”

It was only later, when he had time to think in the way that Nicola thought, that he realised there was another route to dissuading his daughter from her newly chosen vocation. There was the route of Will Upman and the possibility that he would do to her what he had the reputation for doing to so many other women. So he'd phoned her two days after his London visit and he'd offered her the deal. And

Nicola, seeing that she could make more money in Derbyshire than in London, was willing to compromise.

He'd bought time, he thought. And they didn't discuss what had occurred between them that day in Islington.

For Nancy's sake, Andy had spent the summer trying to pretend that everything would work out well in the end. Should Nick return to the College of Law in the autumn, in fact, he'd have been willing to go to his death acting as if Islington had never happened at all.

“Don't tell your mother any of this,” he'd said to his daughter when they made their arrangements.

“But, Dad, Mummy-”

“No. God damn it, Nick, I'm not going to argue. I want your word to keep silent about all of this when you come home. Is that perfectly clear? Because if one whisper reaches your mother, you'll not have a penny from me, and I mean it. So give me your word.”

She did. And if there was any saving grace in the ugliness of Nick's life and the horror of her death, it was that Nancy had been spared the knowledge of what that life had become.

But now that knowledge threatened to bring further destruction into Andy's world. He'd lost his daughter to degradation and defilement. He wasn't about to lose his wife to the anguish and grief of learning about it.

He saw that there was only one way to stop the wheel of Nicola's death in the midst of its cycle of destruction. He knew he had the means to stop it. He could only pray that at the last moment he would also have the will.

What did it matter that yet another life would pay the forfeit? Men had died for less if the cause was good. So had women.

By Monday midmorning Barbara Havers had increased her knowledge of archery by several degrees. In the future, she'd be able to discuss with the best of them the merits of Mylar instead of feathers for fletchings or the differences among long, compound, and recurve bows. But as to getting any closer to pinning the William Tell award on Matthew King-Ryder's jacket… she'd not had a breath of luck in that.

She'd been through Jason Harley's mailing list. She'd even tracked down by telephone every name from the Ust with a London address, to see if King-Ryder was using a pseudonym. But after three hours she was nowhere with the list, and the catalogue-while improving her backlog of trivia for those moments at la-dee-dah drinks parties when one racked one's brain for something to add to the conversation-had gained her nothing. So when her phone rang and it was Helen Lynley on the line, asking if she could come round to Belgravia, Barbara was happy to comply. Helen was nothing if not scrupulous about her mealtimes, and it was drawing towards lunch with nothing in the fridge but more reheatables in the rogan josh line. Barbara knew she could do with a change.

She arrived at Eaton Terrace within the hour. Helen herself answered the door. She was, as usual, perfectly turned out in neat tan trousers and a forest-green shirt. Seeing her, Barbara felt like a lump of mouldy cheese on the doorstep. Since she'd called in ill to the Yard, she'd dressed with even less care than was her norm. She wore an oversize grey T-shirt over black leggings and she was sockless in her red high-top trainers.

“Don't mind me. I'm traveling incognito,” she said to Lynley's wife.

Helen smiled. “Thanks for coming so quickly. I would have come to you, but I thought you might want to be in this part of town when we've finished.”

Finished? Barbara thought. Wonderful news. Then lunch was in the offing.

Helen beckoned Barbara inside, calling out, “Charlie? Barbara is here. Have you had lunch, Barbara?”

“Well. No,” Barbara said, and she added,“I mean not exactly,” because brutal honesty strong-armed her into admitting that having toast with Chicken Tonight creamy garlic sauce on it for her elevenses might be considered an early lunch in some quarters.

“I've got to go out-Pen's coming up from Cambridge sans children this afternoon and we've promised ourselves a meal in Chelsea-but Charlie can do you a sandwich or a salad if you're feeling light-headed.”

“I'll survive,” Barbara told her, although even to herself she sounded doubtful.

She followed Helen into the house's well-appointed drawing room, where she saw that the breakfront cabinet which housed Lynley's stereo system was standing open. All of its various components were lit, and a CD's jacket lay splayed on the tuner. Helen beckoned

Barbara to sit, and she took the same place she'd taken on the previous afternoon before Lynley had thrown her off the case.

She said, “I take it the inspector made it back to Derbyshire in one piece?” as a conversational opener.

Helen said, “I'm awfully sorry about the row between you two. Tommy is… well, Tommy's just Tommy.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Barbara admitted.

“We have something we'd like you to listen to,” Helen said.

“You and the inspector?”

“Tommy? No. He knows nothing about this.” Helen seemed to read something on Barbara's face, because she hastened to add rather obscurely, “It's just that we weren't certain how best to interpret what we had. So I said, ‘Let's phone Barbara, shall we?’”

“We,” Barbara said.

“Charlie and I. Ah. Here he is. Play it for Barbara, will you please, Charlie?”

Denton greeted Barbara and passed to her what he carried into the room: a tray on which sat a plate displaying a succulent-looking breast of chicken nestled in an arrangement of tri-coloured pasta. A glass of white wine and a roll accompanied this. A linen napkin cocooned cutlery in an artistic fashion. “Thought you might be able to do with a bite,” he told her. “I hope you like basil.”

“I consider it the answer to a young girl's prayer.”

Denton grinned. Barbara tucked in as he went to the cabinet. Helen joined Barbara on the sofa as Denton fiddled with buttons and dials, saying, “Have a listen to this.”

Barbara did so, munching Denton's excellent chicken and, as an orchestra began something heavy on the woodwinds, she thought that there were certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon.

A baritone began singing. Barbara caught some, but not all, of the words:

“It's nice,” Barbara said to Denton and Helen. “It's terrific, in fact. I've never heard it.”

“Here's why.” Helen handed over the very same manila envelope that Barbara herself had brought to Eaton Terrace.

When she slid the stack of papers out, Barbara saw that they were the hand-scored music Mrs. Baden had given her. She said, “I don't get it.”

“Look.” Helen directed Barbara's attention to the first of the sheets. In very short order, Barbara found herself following along with what the baritone was singing. She read the song's title at the top of the page, “What Dreams May Come,” and she took in the fact that the song had been written in his own hand with his very own signature scrawled across the top: Michael Chandler.

Her first reaction was a plummeting of her spirits. She said, “Damn,” as her theory of the motive behind the Derbyshire murders was shot straight to hell. “So the music's already been produced. That puts a serious screw in my thinking.” For there was certainly no point in Matthew King-Ryder's rubbing out Terry Cole and Nicola Maiden-not to mention beating up Vi Nevin-if the music he was purportedly after had already been produced. He couldn't mount a brand-new production with old music. He could only mount a revival. And that was nothing worth killing over, since the profits of a revival of anything by Chandler and King-Ryder would be governed by the terms of his father's will.

She started to flip the music onto the coffee table, but Helen laid a hand on her arm. “Wait,” she said. “I don't think you understand. Charlie? Show her.”

Denton handed over two items: One was the jacket of the CD that was playing; the other was a souvenir theatre programme of the type that generally set one back rather considerably in the lolly department. Hamlet was emblazoned on both the CD and the programme. And on the CD were the additional words: Lyrics and Music by David King-Ryder. Barbara stared at this latter announcement for a number of seconds as she came to terms with everything it meant.

And its meaning boiled down to a single lovely fact: She finally had Matthew King-Ryder's actual motive for murder.

Hanken was adamant. He wanted the Black Angel Hotels records and he wasn't going to be pleasant to be around until he got them. Lynley could accompany him on the expedition or he could tackle Brough-ton Manor by himself, which Hanken didn't advise, since he'd done nothing to get a warrant to search Broughton Manor and he didn't think the Brittons would take to their collective bosom anyone sifting through the muck and dross of a few hundred years of their family history.

“It's going to take a team of twenty to go through that place,” Hanken said. “If we have to, we'll do it. But I'll put money on the square that says we won't have to.”

They had the hotel records in their possession in extremely short order. While Lynley phoned London to track down Nkata for a fax of Havers' SO 10 findings, Hanken took the hotel's registration cards through to the bar, where pork with baked apples was on offer for lunch. When Lynley joined him with the fax of Havers' report, the other DI was dipping into the day's speciality with one hand and going through the registration cards with the other. A second plate-steaming with a similar meal-was set opposite him, a pint of lager next to it.

“Thanks,” Lynley said, handing over the report.

“Always go with the special of the day,” Hanken advised him and nodded at the paperwork Lynley was holding. “What've we got?”

Lynley didn't think they had anything, but he remembered three names that he had to admit, even beyond his own prejudices in the matter, bore looking into. One of them was a former snout of Maiden s. Two others were secondary shadowy figures who'd operated at the periphery of Maiden's investigations but never served time at their monarch's pleasure. Ben Venables was the snout. Clifford Thompson and Gar Brick were the others.

On their way back to the Black Angel, Hanken had perfected a new theory. Maiden, he said, had far too much nouse to be such a fool as to kill his own daughter personally, no matter how much he wanted her dead. He'd have hired the job out to one of the blighters from his past, and he'd have then misdirected the police by telling them it was a vengeance killing to keep them focused on the louts either in prison or on parole while all the others who'd rubbed elbows with Maiden but had no reason to revenge themselves upon him would escape police notice. It was a clever ploy. So Hanken wanted that SO 10 report to see if any names on it matched up with anyone who'd registered at the hotel.

“You see how it could happen, don't you?” Hanken asked Lynley. “All Maiden would need to do after hiring this bloke would be to put him in the picture where the girl was camping. And he knew where she was camping, Thomas. We've seen that from the first.”

Lynley wanted to argue, but he didn't. Andy Maiden, of all people, would understand how risky it was to arrange a contract killing. That he might have done so to rid himself of a child whose lifestyle he found intolerable was an unthinkable proposition. If the man had wanted to eliminate Nicola because he couldn't force her to change her ways, he wouldn't have looked for someone else to do the job, especially someone who might break easily under interrogation and point the finger back at him. No. If Andy Maiden had wanted to eliminate his daughter, Lynley knew, he would have done so himself. And they had sod all evidence to suggest that he'd done it.

Lynley picked at his food as Hanken read the report. The other DI wolfed down his own meal. He finished the report and the meal simultaneously and said, “Venables, Thompson, and Brick,” in an impressive show of reaching the same conclusion as Lynley himself had drawn. “But I say we check them all against the records.”

Which was what they did. They took the records for the previous week and checked the names of all the hotel's residents during that time against the names that were in Havers’ report. As the report covered more than twenty years of Andy Maiden's police experience, the project took some time. But the end of their endeavour left them in the same position as they'd been in in the beginning. No names matched.

It was Lynley who pointed out that someone coming to kill Nicola Maiden would hardly have registered in a local hotel and used his own name. Hanken saw the reason in this. But rather than use it to dismiss altogether the idea of a hired killer who'd stayed at the hotel and left the jacket and waterproof behind, he said obscurely, “Of course. Let's get on to Buxton.”

But what about Broughton Manor? Lynley wanted to know.

Were they going to let that slide in favour of… what? A chase for someone who might not exist?

“The killer exists, Thomas,” Hanken replied as he stood. “And I've an idea we'll track him down through Buxton.”

Barbara looked at Helen and said, “But why'd you phone me? Why not the inspector?”

Helen said, “Thank you, Charlie. Will you see about getting those wallpaper books back to Peter Jones? I've made my choice. It's marked.”

Denton nodded, saying, “Will do,” and took himself up the stairs after switching off the stereo and removing his CD.

“Thank God Charlie loves West End extravaganzas,” Helen said when she and Barbara were alone. “The more I get to know him, the more invaluable I find he's becoming. And who would have thought it, because when Tommy and I married, I wondered how I'd feel having my husband's valet-or whatever Charlie Denton actually is-lurking about like a nineteenth-century retainer. But he's indispensable. As you've just seen.”

“Why, Helen?” Barbara asked, not put off by the other woman's light remarks.

Helen's face softened. “I love him,” she said. “But he's not always right. No one is.”

“He won't like your having shared this with me.”

“Yes. Well. I'll deal with that as it comes.” Helen gestured to the music. “What do you make of it?”

“In light of the murder?” And when Helen nodded, Barbara considered all the possible answers. David King-Ryder, she recalled, had killed himself on the opening night of his production of Hamlet. From his son's own words, she'd heard that King-Ryder had to have known that very same evening that the show was a smashing success. Nonetheless, he'd killed himself, and when Barbara blended this fact not only with the real authorship of the music and lyrics but also with the story that Vi Nevin had told her about how the music had come to be in Terry Cole's hands, she could arrive at only one conclusion: Someone out there had known that David King-Ryder had not written either the music or the lyrics to the show he was mounting under his own name. That person had known because that same person had somehow got his hands on the original score. And considering that the phone call intercepted by Terry Cole in Elvaston Place had been made in June when Hamlet debuted, it seemed reasonable to conclude that that phone call had been intended not for Matthew King-Ryder-hot to produce a show that would not be governed by the terms of his father's will-but for David King-Ryder himself, who was desperate to get that music back and to hide from the world the simple fact that it wasn't his work.

Why else would King-Ryder have killed himself unless he'd arrived at the phone box just five minutes too late to receive that call? Why else would he have killed himself unless he believed that-despite having paid off a blackmailer who was supposed to phone him with directions where to “pick up the package”-he was going to be blackmailed ad infinitum? Or, worse yet, he was going to be exposed to the very tabloids who'd slagged him off for years? Of course he'd kill himself, Barbara thought. He'd have had no way of knowing that Terry Cole received the phone call intended for him. He'd have had no way of knowing how to make contact with the blackmailer to see what had gone wrong. So once that call hadn't come through in that phone box on Elvaston Place when he managed to get there, he'd have thought he was cooked.

The only question was: Who had blackmailed David King-Ryder? And there was only one answer that was remotely reasonable: his own son. There was evidence for this, if only circumstantial. Surely, Matthew King-Ryder had known before his father's suicide that he stood to get nothing when David King-Ryder died. If he was to head the King-Ryder Fund-and he'd admitted as much when Barbara spoke to him-he would have had to be told about the terms of his father's will. So the sole way he had to get his hands on some of his father's money was to extort it from him.

Barbara explained all this to Helen, and when she was finished, Lynley's wife asked, “But have you any evidence? Because without evidence…” Her expression said the rest, You're done for, my friend.

Barbara tossed the question round in her head as she finished her lunch. And she found the answer in a brief review of her visit to King-Ryder in his Baker Street flat.

“The house,” she said to Lynley's wife. “Helen, he was moving house. He said he'd finally got the money together to buy himself a property south of the river.”

“But south of the river…? That's not exactly…” Helen looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Barbara liked her for her reluctance to draw attention to Lynley's considerable wealth. One would need brass by the bucketful to buy even a cupboard in Belgravia. On the other hand, south of the river-where the lesser mortals bought their homes-would not present such a problem. King-Ryder could have saved enough to buy a freehold there. Barbara accepted that.

Nonetheless, she said, “There's no other explanation for what King-Ryder's been up to: lying about what happened when Terry Cole went to his office, searching Terry's flat in Battersea, buying one of Cilia Thompson's monstrosities, going to Vi Nevin's digs and trashing them. He's got to put his hands on that music, and he's willing to do anything to get it. His dad's dead, and he's to blame. He doesn't want the poor bloke's memory shot to bits as well. He wanted some of his lolly, sure. But he didn't want him destroyed.”

Helen considered this, smoothing her fingers along the crease in her trousers. “I see how you're fitting it together,” she admitted. “But as to proof that he's even a blackmailer, let alone a killer…?” She looked up and opened her hands as if to say, Where is it?

Barbara thought about what she had on King-Ryder besides what she knew about the terms of his father's will: Terry had been to see him; he had searched Terry's flat; he'd gone to the studio on Portslade Road… “The cheque,” she said. “He wrote Cilia Thompson a cheque when he bought one of her nightmare-in-the-railway-arches paintings.”

“All right,” Helen said cautiously. “But where does that take you?”

“To Jersey,” Barbara said with a smile. “Cilia made a copy of the cheque-probably because she's never sold a thing in her life and, believe me, she's going to want to remember the occasion, since it's never likely to happen again. That cheque was drawn on a bank in St. Helier. Now, why would our boy be banking in the Channel Islands unless he had money to hide, Helen? Like a major deposit of a few thousand quid-maybe a few hundred thousand quid bled out of his dad to keep a blackmailer's mug plugged-that he didn't want anyone asking questions about? There's your evidence.”

“But still, it's all supposition, isn't it? How can you prove anything?

You can't get into those bank records, can you? So where do you go from here?”

That was certainly a problem, Barbara thought. She could prove nothing. The police couldn't get their mitts on King-Ryder's bank records, and even if she herself could do that in some way, what would a hefty deposit made prior to the June phone call prove aside from someone's attempt to avoid the Inland Revenue's prying eyes?

There was that footprint in the muck in Vi Nevin's flat, of course, that shoe sole with its hexagonal markings. But if such a shoe sole proved to be as common as toast on the breakfast table, what did that add to the investigation? Of course, King-Ryder would have left trace evidence all over Vi Nevin's flat. But he wasn't likely to cooperate if the coppers asked him for a few strands of hair or a vial of blood for a DNA match-up. And even if he gave them everything from his toe jam to his dental floss, that did nothing to pin him to the Derbyshire murders unless the rozzers had a packet of trace evidence left at the scene up there as well.

Barbara knew she'd be more than just demoted and off the case if she phoned up DI Lynley for a little discussion about the Derbyshire evidence. She'd defied his orders; she'd gone her own way. He'd thrown her off the investigation. What he'd do if he discovered she'd put herself back on the investigation did not bear thinking of. So to bring King-Ryder down she had to go it more or less alone. There was only the small point of trying to figure out how to do it.

“He's been clever as the dickens,” Barbara said to Helen. “This bloke's no slouch in the brains department-but if I can come up with a way to get a step ahead of him… if I can use something that I know from everything I've gathered…”

“You've got the music,” Helen pointed out. “Which is what he's wanted from the first, isn't it?”

“He sure as bloody hell searched high and low for it. He tore apart that camping site. He went through the flat in Battersea. He ripped up Vis maisonette. He spent enough time in the studio with Cilia to suss out whether there was a hiding place there. I'd say we're safe in assuming he's after that music. And he knows it wasn't with Terry, Cilia, or Vi.”

“But he also knows it's somewhere.”

True, Barbara thought. But where and with whom? Who was it that King-Ryder didn't know who would convince the man that the music had switched hands more than once and that he-King-Ryder-would have to come forward to get that music? And how the hell could the act of just coming forward for some music-which he could deny knowing about once he saw it-also serve as the act that betrayed him as a killer?

Bloody hell, Barbara thought. It felt as if her brain were undergoing nuclear meltdown. What she needed was to talk to another professional. What she needed was a flaming good confab with someone who could not only see all the tentacles of this octopus crime but could also step forward, offer the solution, be part of the solution, and defend himself against King-Ryder should everything go to hell in an instant.

Inspector Lynley was the obvious choice. But he was out of the question. So she needed someone like him. She needed his clone. She needed-Barbara caught herself up and smiled. “Of course,” she said.

Helen raised an eyebrow. “You've got an idea?”

“I've got a bloody inspiration.”

It wasn't until one o'clock that Nan Maiden realised her husband was missing. She'd been occupied with putting the ground floor of Maiden Hall back in order, and she'd been making such an effort to act as if unexpected police searches were part of the normal routine that she hadn't noticed when Andy disappeared.

When he wasn't in the house, she first assumed he was in the grounds. But when she asked one of the kitchen boys to take a message out to Mr. Maiden offering him lunch, the boy told her that Andy had gone off in the Land-Rover not half an hour before.

“Oh. I see,” Nan said, and she tried to look as if this were perfectly reasonable behaviour under the circumstances. She even tried to tell herself as much: because it was inconceivable that Andy would have gone off without a word to her after what they both had been through.

She'd said, “A search?” to DI Hanken's unmoving face. “But a search for what? We've got nothing… we're hiding nothing… you'll find nothing…”

“Love,” Andy had said. He'd asked to see the search warrant and, once he'd seen it, he'd handed it back. “Go on, then,” he told Hanken.

Nan wouldn't consider what they were looking for. She wouldn't consider what their presence meant. When they left empty-handed, she felt such relief that her legs wobbled and she had to sit quickly or risk crumpling to the floor.

Her easing of nerves at the failure of the police to find what they were looking for quickly gave way to anxiety, however, when she learned that Andy was gone. Hanging over their heads was his declared willingness to find someone in the country who would give him a polygraph.

That's where he's gone, Nan decided. He's found someone to give him that bloody test. This search of the Hall pushed him to it. He means to have the test and prove himself to everyone by having it witnessed by someone from the investigation.

She had to stop him. She had to make him see that he was playing into their hands. They'd come with a warrant to search the premises knowing that such an action would unnerve him, and it had done so. It had unnerved them both.

Nan tore at her fingernails. Had she not felt momentarily faint, she could have gone to him, she told herself. They could have talked. She could have drawn him to her and soothed his sore conscience and-no. She would not think of that. Not of conscience. Never of conscience. She would think only of what she could do to turn the tide of her husband's intentions.

She realised that there was a single possibility.

She couldn't risk using the phone in Reception, so she went upstairs to the family floor to use the phone by their bed. She had the receiver in her hand, ready to punch in the number, when she saw the folded piece of paper on her pillow.

The message from her husband comprised one sentence. Nan Maiden read it and dropped the phone.

She didn't know where to go. She didn't know what to do. She ran from the bedroom. She clattered down the stairs with Andy's note clutched in her hand and so many voices inside her head shouting for action that she couldn't make out one coherent word that would tell her what step was the first to take.

She wanted to grab each person she saw: on the residents’ floor, in the lounge, in the kitchen, at work on the grounds. She wanted to shake them all. She wanted to shout Where is he help me what is he doing where has he gone what does it mean that he's… oh God don't tell me because I know I know I know what it means and I've always known and I don't want to hear it to face it to feel it to somehow come to terms with what he's… no no no… help me find him help me.

She found herself running across the car park before she knew she'd even gone there, and then she understood that her body had taken control of a mind that had ceased to function. Even as she realised what she was meant to do, she saw what she had already been told: The Land-Rover wasn't there. Andy had taken it himself because he'd intended to leave her powerless.

She wouldn't accept that. She spun and tore back into the hotel, where the first person she saw was one of her two Grindleford women-and why on earth had she always thought of them as the Grindleford women as if they had no names of their own?-and she accosted her.

Nan knew she looked wild. She certainly felt wild. But that couldn't matter.

She said, “Your car. Please,” which was as much as she could manage because she found that her breathing was erratic.

The woman blinked. “Mrs. Maiden? Are you ill?”

“The keys. Your car. It's Andy.”

Blessedly, that was message enough. Within moments Nan was behind the wheel of a Morris so old that its driver's seat consisted of a thin layer of stuffing covering springs.

She revved the engine and took off down the incline. Her only thought was to find him. Where he'd gone and why he'd gone there was something she would not dwell upon.

Barbara found that it was no mean feat convincing Winston Nkata to get involved. It had been one thing for him to invite her into the investigation when she had been just another DC waiting for an assignmerit while he himself trekked off to Derbyshire with Lynley. It was quite another for her to ask him to join her in a part of that same investigation once she'd been drop-kicked out of it. Her suggested little bout of hounds-chasing-the-fox wasn't authorised by their superior officer. So when she spoke to Nkata, she felt a little like Mr. Christian, while her fellow DC didn't sound much like a man who wanted to take a cruise on the Bounty.

He said, “No way, Barb. This's dodgy as hell.”

She said, “Winnie. It's a single phone call. And this's your lunch hour anyway, isn't it? Or it could be your lunch hour, couldn't it? You've got to eat, So just meet me there. We'll have a meal in the neighbourhood. We'll have anything you'd like. My treat. I promise.”

“But the guv-”

“-won't even have to know if it comes to nothing,” Barbara finished for him, and then she added, “Winnie, I need you.”

He hesitated. Barbara held her breath. Winston Nkata wasn't a man who rushed in with fools, so she gave him the time to think about her request from every possible angle. And while he did his thinking, she prayed. If Nkata didn't enter into her plan, she had no idea who else might be willing to.

He finally said, “Guv asked for a fax of your report from CRIS, Barb.”

“See?” she replied. “He's still barking up that bloody stupid tree and there's nothing in the branches. It's nowhere, Winnie. Come on. Please. You're my only hope. This is it. I know it. All I need from you is a single little phone call.”

She heard him sigh the sole word damn. Then, “Give me a half hour,” he said.

“Brilliant,” she said and began to ring off.

“Barb.” He caught her. “Don't make me regret this.”

She took off to South Kensington. After cruising up and down every street from Exhibition Road to Palace Gate, she finally found a place to park in Queen's Gate Gardens and walked over to the corner of Elvaston Place and Petersham Mews, which was where the only phone boxes on Elvaston Place were located. There were two of them, and they were hung with at least three dozen of the sort of advertising postcards that Barbara had found beneath Terry Cole's bed.

Nkata, having to travel the greater distance from Westminster, had not yet arrived, so Barbara took herself across Gloucester Road to a French bakery she'd spied on one of her circumnavigations of the neighbourhood in search of a parking space. Even from the street and inside her car, she'd smelled the siren fragrance of chocolate croissants. With time to kill in the wait for Winston, she decided there was no point to ignoring her body's desperate cry for the two basic food groups she'd so far denied herself that day: butter and sugar.

Twenty minutes after her own arrival in the South Kensington neighbourhood, Barbara saw Winston Nkata's lanky body coming up the street from the direction of Cromwell Road. She shoved the rest of her croissant into her mouth, wiped her fingers on her T-shirt, threw down the remains of a Coke, and dashed across the street just as he reached the corner.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

“If you're solid on this bloke, why don't we just nick him?” Nkata asked, adding, “You've got chocolate on your chin, Barb,” with the nonchalance of a man who'd long ago become familiar with the worst of her vices.

She used her T-shirt to take care of the problem. “You know the dance. What've we got for evidence?”

“Guv's found that leather jacket, for one.” Nkata gave her the details on Lynley's discovery at the Black Angel Hotel.

Barbara was glad enough to hear them, especially since they supported her conjecture that an arrow had been one of their killers weapons. But Nkata had been the one to pass along the arrow information to Lynley, and Barbara knew that if he were now to phone the inspector another time and say, “By the way, Guv, why don't we haul in this bloke King-Ryder for a lark and get his dabs while we grill him about leather jackets and trips to Derbyshire,” Lynley was going to see the name Havers written all over the suggestion, and he'd order Nkata to back off so far that he'd be in Calais before he stopped backing.

Nkata wasn't a bloke to defy anyone's orders for love or money. And he certainly wouldn't undergo a sudden personality change for Barbara's benefit. So they had to keep Lynley out of it at all costs, until the birdcage was built and King-Ryder was sitting inside it singing.

Barbara explained all of that to Nkata. The other DC listened without comment. At the end he nodded. But he said, “I still hate to go at it with him not knowing.”

“I know you do, Winnie. But I don't see how he's given us any other choice. Do you?”

Nkata had to admit not. He said with a nod to the phone boxes, “Which one do I use, then?”

Barbara said, “It doesn't matter for the moment, so long as we keep both of them vacant once you've made the call. But I'd go for the one on the left. It's got a brilliant card for Tantalising Transvestites in case you're looking for excitement some evening.”

Nkata rolled his eyes. He went into the booth, fished for some coins, and made the call. Over his shoulder Barbara listened to his side of the conversation. He did West Indian Yobbo from South of the River. Since that was the voice of his first twenty years of life, it was a stellar performance.

The script was simplicity itself once he got Matthew King-Ryder on the phone: “I think I got a package you want, Mistah King-Ryder,” Nkata said, and listened for a moment. “Oh, I 'xpect you know which package I mean… Albert Hall ring any special bells? Hey, no way, mon. You need the proof? You know the phone box. You know the number. You want the music? You make the call.”

He rang off and looked at Barbara. “Bait's on the hook.”

“Let's hope for a bite.” Barbara lit a cigarette and walked the few feet to Petersham Mews, where she leaned against the wing of a dusty Volvo and counted fifteen seconds before pacing back to the phone box, then once again to the car. King-Ryder would have to think before he acted. He would have to assess the risks and the payoffs of picking up the phone in Soho and betraying himself. This would take some minutes. He was anxious, he was desperate, he was capable of murder. But he wasn't a fool.

More seconds ticked by. They turned into minutes. Nkata said, “He's not going for it.”

Barbara waved him off. She looked away from the phone boxes, up Elvaston Place in the direction of Queen's Gate. Despite her own disquiet, she found that she could picture how it had happened on that night three months before: Terry Cole roaring up the street on his motorcycle, hopping off to Blu Tack a fresh batch of postcards into the two phone boxes, which were doubtless part of his regular route. It takes him a few minutes; he has a number of cards. As he's sticking them up, the telephone rings and, on a whim, he picks it up to hear the message intended for David King-Ryder. He thinks, Why not see what that's all about? and he goes to do so. Less than half a mile on his Triumph, and he's in front of the Albert Hall. In the meantime, David King-Ryder arrives, five minutes too late, perhaps even less. He parks in the mews, he strides to the phones, he begins his wait. A quarter of an hour passes. Perhaps more. But nothing happens, and he doesn't know why. He doesn't know about Terry Cole. Eventually, he thinks he's been had. He believes he's ruined. His career-and his life-are fodder for a blackmailer who wants to destroy him. They are, in short, history.

One single minute would be all that it took. And how easy it was to be late in London when so much depended upon the traffic. There was never really a way to know whether a drive from Point A to Point B would take fifteen minutes or forty-five. And perhaps King-Ryder hadn't been trying to get from A to B in town at all. Perhaps he'd been corning in from the countryside on the motorway, where anything could happen to throw a spanner into one's plans. Or perhaps he'd had car trouble, a dead battery, a flat tyre. What did the precise circumstance matter? The only fact that counted was that he'd missed the call. The call made by his son. The call not so different from the one which Barbara and Nkata were waiting for now.

Nkata said, “It's dead in the water.”

Barbara said, “God damn it.”

And the telephone rang.

Barbara threw her cigarette smouldering into the street. She leapt towards the phone box. It wasn't the same box from which Nkata had made the call in the first place, but the box standing next to it. Which could, Barbara thought, mean nothing or everything, since they'd never known which of the two had been the one where Terry Cole had intercepted the call.

Nkata lifted the receiver on the third ring. He said, “Mistah King-Ryder?” as Barbara held her breath.

Yes, yes, yes, she thought when Nkata gave her a thumbs-up. At last they were in business.

“God damn bloody computers! What's the point of having them if they break down daily? You tell me that, damn you.”

WPC Peggy Hammer had apparently heard this demand from her superior officer many times before. “It's not actually broken, sir,” she said with admirable patience. “It's just like the other day. We're off-line for some reason. I expect the problem's somewhere in Swansea. Or I suppose it could be in London, if it comes down to it. Then there's always our own-”

“I'm not asking for your analysis, Hammer,” Hanken snapped. “I'm asking for some action.”

They'd brought into the Buxton incident room the stack of registration cards from the Black Angel Hotel with what had seemed like simple instructions which would allow them to gather information in a matter of minutes: Get on-line to the DVLA in Swansea. Feed in the numbers on the plates of each car whose driver had stayed at the Black Angel Hotel within the last two weeks. Get the name of the legal owner of that car. Match that name to the registrant on the hotel card. Purpose: to see if anyone had checked into the hotel using a false name. Corroboration for that possibility: one name on the registration card, a different name in the DVLA's system indicating ownership of the vehicle. It was a simple task. It would take a few minutes because the computers were fast and the registration cards-considering the size of the hotel and the number of rooms it had-were not innumerable. It would have been fifteen minutes of labour, maximum. If the sodding system had worked for bloody once.

Lynley could see all of this reasoning going on in DI Hanken's mind. And he felt his own share of frustration. The source of his agitation was different, however: He couldn't loosen Hanken's mind from the lock it had on Andy Maiden.

Lynley understood Hanken's reasoning. Andy had motive and opportunity. Whether he also had the slightest idea how to use a long bow made no difference if someone who had checked into the Black Angel Hotel under a false name possessed that ability. And until they discovered whether any false identities had been used in Tideswell, Lynley knew that Hanken wasn't about to move on to another area of enquiry.

That logical area was Julian Britton. That logical area had always been Britton. Unlike Andy Maiden, Britton had everything they were looking for in their killer. He had loved Nicola enough to want to marry her, and on his own admission he'd visited her in

London. How likely was it that he'd never come across something that had clued him in to her real life? Beyond that, how likely was it that he'd never had the slightest idea he wasn't her only Derbyshire lover?

So Julian Britton had motive in spades. He also had no solid alibi for the murder night. And as for being able to shoot a long bow, he'd likely seen long bows aplenty at Broughton Manor during tournaments, reenactments, and the like. How much of a stretch was it to posit that Julian knew how to use one?

A search of Broughton Manor would tell that tale. Julian's fingerprints-matched to whatever prints forensic managed to pull off the leather jacket-would put a full stop to the piece. But Hanken wasn't about to budge in that direction unless the Black Angel's records proved a dead end. No matter that Julian could have planted that jacket at the Black Angel. No matter that he could have thrown that waterproof into the skip. No matter that doing this would have taken him five minutes off the direct route from Calder Moor to his home. Hanken would deal exhaustively with Andy Maiden, and until he had done, Julian Britton might as well not exist.

When he was faced with the computer misfiring, Hanken soundly cursed modern technology. He left the registration cards with WPC Hammer and ordered her onto that antique means of communication: the telephone. “Ring Swansea and tell them to do it by hand if they bloody have to,” he snapped.

To which Peggy Hammer said, “Sir,” in meek compliance.

They left the incident room. Hanken was fuming that all they could “bloody well do now” was wait for WPC Hammer and the DVLA to come up with the information they needed, and Lynley was wondering how best he could turn the spotlight onto Julian Britton, when a departmental secretary tracked them down to tell them that Lynley was being asked for in the reception area.

“It's Mrs. Maiden,” she said. “And I ought to warn you, she's in something of a state.”

She was. Ushered into Hanken's office a few minutes later, she was panic personified. She was clutching a crumpled piece of paper in her hand, and when she saw Lynley, she cried out, “Help me!” And to Hanken, “You forced him! You wouldn't leave it. You couldn't leave it. You didn't want to see that he'd eventually do something… He'd do… Something…” And she brought her fist with the crumpled paper in it up to her forehead.

“Mrs. Maiden,” Lynley began.

“You worked with him. You were his friend. You know him. You knew him. You must do something, because if you don't… if you can't… Please, please.”

“What the hell's going on?” Hanken demanded. He had, obviously, little enough sympathy for the wife of his number-one suspect.

Lynley went to Nan Maiden and took her hand in his own. He lowered her arm and gently removed the note from her fingers. She said, “I was looking… I went out looking… But I don't know where and I'm so afraid.”

Lynley read the words and felt a chill of apprehension.

I'm taking care of this myself Andy Maiden had written.

Julian had just finished weighing Cass's puppies when his cousin came into the room. She'd evidently been looking for him, because she said happily, “Julie! Of course. How silly of me. I should have thought of the dogs at once.”

He was using the aniseed oil on Cass's teats, readying her puppies for the twenty-four-hour test of their sense of smell. As harriers, they had to be excellent trackers.

Cass growled uneasily when Samantha entered. But she soon settled when Julian's cousin adjusted her voice to the soothing tone that the dogs were more used to.

Sam said, “Julie, I had the most extraordinary encounter with your father this morning. I thought I'd be able to tell you at lunch-time, but when you didn't turn up… Julie, have you eaten anything today?”

Julian hadn't been able to face the breakfast table. And his feelings hadn't much changed by lunch. So he'd busied himself with work instead: inspections of some of the tenant farmers’ properties, researching in Bakewell what hoops one had to jump through when making changes in a listed building, throwing himself into the myriad chores in the kennels. Thus, he'd been able to ignore everything that wasn't directly related to whatever he designated as the immediate task in hand.

Sam's appearance inside the kennels made any further efforts at distraction impossible. Nonetheless, in an effort to avoid the conversation he'd promised himself that he'd have with her, he said, “Sorry, Sam. I got caught up in work round here.” He tried to sound apologetic. And, in fact, he felt apologetic, when it came down to it, because Sam was working her heart out at Broughton Manor. The least he could do to demonstrate his gratitude, Julian thought, was to show up for meals in acknowledgement of her efforts.

He said, “You're holding us together, and I know it. Thanks, Sam. I'm grateful. Truly.”

Sam said warmly, “I'm happy to do it. Honestly, Julie. It's always seemed such a shame to me that we've never had much of a chance to-” She hesitated. She seemed to sense the need to change gears. “It's amazing when you think that if our parents had only mended their fences, you and I could have-” Another gear change. “I mean, we're family, aren't we. And it's sad not to get to know the members of your very own family. Especially when you finally do get to know them and they turn out to be… well, such fine people.” She fingered the plait that hung long and thick over her shoulder. Julian noticed for the first time how neatly it was braided. He saw that it very nearly caught the light.

He said, “Well, I'm not always what I should be when it comes to saying thanks.”

“I think you're great.”

He felt himself colour: the curse of his complexion. He turned from her and went back to the dog. She asked what he was doing and why, and he was grateful that an explanation of aniseed oil and cotton swabs provided them a means to get past an awkward moment. But when he'd said all there was to be said about Pavlov, conditioning, and how the association of an unpleasant scent with their dam's milk could be used to test the puppies’ developing sense of smell, he and his cousin were back in that awkward moment again. And again Samantha was the one to save them.

She said, “Oh Lord. I've completely forgotten why I wanted to talk to you. Your dad. Julie, it's remarkable what's happened.”

Julian rubbed the oil on Cass's last swollen teat and released the dog to her puppies. He recapped the bottle as his cousin related what had occurred between herself and Jeremy. She concluded with “It was every bottle, Julian. Every bottle in the house. And he was crying as well.”

“He did tell me he wants to give it up,” Julian said. And out of strict fairness and a resolve to be truthful, he added, “But he's said that before.”

“Then you don't believe him? Because he was… Julie, really, you should have seen him. It was like desperation came on him all at once. And, well, frankly, it was all about you.”

“Me.” Julian replaced the aniseed oil in the cupboard.

“He was saying that he'd ruined your life, that he'd driven off your brother and sister-”

That was certainly true enough, Julian thought.

“-and that he'd finally come to understand that if he didn't mend his ways, he'd drive you off as well. Of course, I told him that you'd never leave him. After all, anyone can see you're devoted. But the point is that he wants to change. He's ready to change. And I've been looking for you because… Well, I had to tell you. Aren't you pleased? And I'm not making up a word of what happened. It was bottle after bottle. Gin down the drain and bottle smashed in the sink.”

Julian knew at heart that there was more than one way to look at what his father had done. True as it might be that he wanted to get off the drink, like all good alcoholics he could also be doing nothing more than positioning his players where he wanted them. The only question was why he might be positioning his players at this precise moment. What did he want and what did wanting it now mean?

On the other hand, what if this time his father actually meant what he said? Julian wondered. What if a clinic and whatever it was that could follow a clinic would be enough to cure him? How could he-the only child Jeremy had left with enough concern to do something about the situation-begin to deny him that opportunity? Especially when it would take so damn little to obtain the opportunity for him.

Julian said, “I'm finished in here. Let's walk back to the house,” in a bid for time to gather his thoughts.

They left the kennels. They started down the overgrown lane. He said, “Dad's talked about giving up booze before. He's even done it. But he only makes it for a few weeks. Well… once it must have been three and a half months. But apparently now he's come to believe-”

“That he can do it.” Samantha finished the thought for him and linked her arm with his. She squeezed gently, “Julie, you should have seen him. If you had done, you'd know. I think that the key to success this time round is if we can come up with a plan that will help him. Obviously, it's done no good in the past to pour out the gin, has it?” She gave him an earnest gaze, perhaps seeking to see if she'd somehow offended him by pointing out what he'd previously done to attempt to wean his father from the piss. “And we can't exactly stop him going into an off-licence, can we?”

“Not to mention barring him from every hotel and pub from here to Manchester.”

“Right. So if there's a way… Julian, surely we can put our heads together and come up with something.”

Julian saw that his cousin had just given him the perfect opportunity to speak to her about money for the clinic. But the words that went with that opportunity were large and unpalatable, and they stuck in his throat like a piece of rotten meat. How could he ask her for money? For that much money? How could he say Could you give us ten thousand quid, Sam? Not lend us, Sam-because there wasn't a snowball's chance in the Sahara that he'd be able to repay her anytime soon-but give us the money. Lots of it. And soon, before Jeremy changes his mind. Please make an investment in a yammering drunk who's never kept his word in his life.

Julian couldn't do it. Despite his promises to his father, he found that face-to-face with his cousin, he couldn't even begin to try.

As they reached the end of the lane and crossed the old road to make for the house, a silver Bentley pulled round the side of the building. It was followed by a panda car. Two uniformed constables emerged first, peering round the grounds as if they expected ninja warriors to be lurking in the bushes. Out of the Bentley climbed the tall blond detective who'd first come to Broughton Manor with Inspector Hanken.

His cousin laid a hand on Julian's arm. Through it, he could feel how she'd stiffened.

“Make sure the house is secure,” DI Lynley said to the constables, whom he introduced as DCs Emmes and Benson. “Then do the grounds. It's probably best to start with the gardens. Then go on to the kennel area and the woods.”

Emmes and Benson ducked inside the courtyard gate. Julian watched, astonished. Samantha was the one who said, “Hang on, you lot,” and her tone was angry. “What the hell are you doing, Inspector? Do you have a warrant? What right have you to barge into our lives and-”

“I need you inside the house,” Lynley told her. “Quickly. And now.”

“What?” Samantha sounded incredulous. “If you think we're going to jump just because you say so, you'd better think again.”

Julian found his voice. “What's going on?”

“You can see what's going on,” Samantha said. “This twit has decided to search Broughton Manor. He's not got a single reason in hell to tear things apart, aside from the fact that you and Nicola were involved. Which, apparently, is some sort of crime. I want to see your warrant, Inspector.”

Lynley came forward and took her by the arm. She said, “Get your hands off me,” and tried to shake his grip.

He said, “Mr. Britton's in danger. I'd like him out of sight.”

Samantha said, “Julian? In danger?”

Julian blanched. “In danger from what? What's going on?”

Lynley said that he'd explain everything once the constables had ascertained that the house was safe. Inside, the three of them retired to the Long Gallery, which was, Lynley said when he saw it, an environment that could be well controlled.

“Controlled?” Julian asked. “From what? And why?”

So Lynley explained. His information was limited and direct, but Julian found that he couldn't begin to absorb it. The police believed that Andy Maiden had taken matters into his own hands, Lynley told him, which was always a risk if a member of a police officer's family became the victim of a violent crime.

“I don't understand,” Julian said. “Because if Andy's coming here… here to Broughton Manor…” He tried to come to terms with the implication behind what the inspector had told him. “Are you saying that Andy's coming after me?”

“We're not certain whom he's after,” Lynley replied. “Inspector Hanken's seeing to the safety of the other gentleman.”

“The other…?”

“Oh my God.” Samantha was standing next to Julian, and immediately she dragged him away from the Long Gallery's diamond-paned windows. “Let's sit down. Here. The fireplace. It's out of sight from the grounds, and even if someone barges into the room, we'll be too far from the doors… Julie… Julie. Please.”

Julian allowed himself to be led, but he felt dazed. He said, “What are you saying, exactly?” to Lynley. “Does Andy think I might have… Andy?”

Absurdly, childishly, he wanted to cry. Suddenly the last six terrible days since-heart brimming with love-he'd asked Nicola to marry him came crashing down like a landslide and he could not bear another thing: He was utterly defeated by this final fact that the father of the woman he'd loved might actually believe he had killed her. How strange it was: He hadn't been defeated by her refusal when he'd offered marriage; he hadn't been defeated by the revelations she'd made to him that night; he hadn't been defeated by her disappearance, his part in the search for her, or her actual death. But this simple thing-her father's suspicion-was for some reason the final straw. He felt the tears coming, and the thought of weeping in front of this stranger, in front of his cousin, in front of anyone, burned in his throat.

Samantha's arm went round his shoulders. He felt her rough kiss against his temple. “You're all right,” she told him. “You're safe. And who bloody cares what anyone thinks. I know the truth. And that's what matters.”

“What truth is this?” DI Lynley spoke from the window, where he appeared to be waiting for a sign that the police constables had completed their securing of the house. “Miss McCallin?” he said when Samantha didn't answer.

“Oh stop,” she returned acerbically. “Julian didn't kill Nicola. Neither did I. Neither did anyone else in this house, if that's what you're thinking.”

“So what truth is it that you're talking about?”

“The truth about Julie. That he's fine and good and that fine and good people don't go about murdering one another, Inspector Lynley.”

“Even,” DI Lynley said, “if one of them is less than fine and good?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I expect Mr. Britton does.”

She dropped her arm from his shoulders. Julian could feel her searching his face. She said his name more hesitantly than she had yet done, and she waited for him to clarify the detective's remarks.

And even now he could not do so. He could see her still-so much more alive than he himself had ever once been, grasping life. He could not speak a single word against her, no matter the cause he had for doing so. In the measure and judgement of their everyday world, Nicola had betrayed him, and Julian knew that if he told the tale of her London life as she'd revealed it to him, he could call himself the deeply wronged party. And so he would be seen by everyone he and Nicola had known. There was indeed some satisfaction to be taken from that. But the truth of the matter would always be that only in the eyes of those who possessed the mere facts could he ever be seen as a man with a grievance. Those who knew Nicola as she truly was and had always been would know he'd brought his grief upon himself. Nicola had never once lied to him. He'd merely blinded himself to everything about her that he hadn't wanted to see.

She wouldn't have cared half a fig if he told the real truth about her now, Julian realised. But he wouldn't do so. Not so much to protect her memory but to protect the people who had loved her without knowing all that she was.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Julian told the London detective. “And I don't understand why you can't leave us alone to get on with our lives.”

“I won't be doing that until Nicola Maiden's killer is found.”

“Then look somewhere else,” Julian said. “You won't find him here.”

At the far end of the room the door opened and a constable escorted Julian's father into the Long Gallery. He said to Lynley, “I found this one in the parlour, sir. Emmes has gone on to the gardens.” Jeremy Britton disengaged his arm from DC Benson's hand. He looked confused by the turn of events. He looked frightened. But he didn't look drunk. He came to Julian and squatted before him.

He said, “You all right, my boy?” and although the words were ever so slightly slurred, it occurred to Julian that the enunciation was prompted by Jeremy's concern for him and not the result of his addiction to drink.

This realisation made his heart suddenly warm. Warm to his father, warm to his cousin, and warm to the connections implied by family. He said, “I'm okay, Dad,” and he made room for Jeremy on the floor by the fireplace. He did this by scooting closer to Sam.

In response, she returned her arm to his shoulders. “I'm so glad of that,” she said.