Aside from his own feelings in the matter, Hanken didn't particularly like the message it sent to the rest of his team, having New Scotland Yard involved on their patch. If there was a question about his competence or the competence of his officers, then he would have vastly preferred to be told so to his face. And no matter that having two more officers in on the action meant he could end up with time to put together Bella's surprise swing set in advance of her fourth birthday next week. He hadn't asked his CC for help, and he was more than just a little annoyed to have help thrust upon him.
DI Lynley appeared to take the measure of Hanken's irritation within thirty seconds of meeting him, which somewhat elevated Hanken's opinion of the man despite his upper-ten voice. He said, “Andy Maiden's asked for our help. That's why we're here, Inspector Hanken. Your CC told you the dead girls father retired from the Met, didn't he?”
The chief constable had done, but what anyone's working for the Met in his salad days had to do with Hanken's ability to get to the bottom of a crime without assistance was an issue that hadn't yet been clarified. He said, “I know. Smoke?” And he offered his packet of Marlboros to the other two. Both demurred. The black looked as if he'd been offered strychnine. “My blokes aren't going to like it much, having London breathing and peeing for them.”
“I expect they'll adjust,” Lynley said.
“Not bloody likely.” Hanken lit his fag. He took a deep drag and observed the other two officers over the cigarette.
“They'll follow your lead.”
“Yeah. Like I said.”
Lynley and the black exchanged a look. It said kid-glove treatment was called for. What they didn't know was that kid gloves, silk gloves, or chain mail gauntlets wouldn't make a difference to their reception in Hanken's office.
Lynley said, “Andy Maiden was an SO 10 officer. Did your CC tell you that?”
This was news. And the mild animosity Hanken had felt towards the London officers was immediately redirected towards his superiors, who'd apparently and deliberately kept the information from him.
“You didn't know, did you?” Lynley said. He dryly directed his next comment to Nkata. “Politics as usual, I expect.”
The DC nodded—his expression disgusted—and crossed his arms. Although Hanken had offered both men chairs when they'd entered his office, the black officer had chosen to stand. He was lounging at the window from which he had a bleak view of the football grounds across Silverlands Street. It was a stadium structure topped by barbed wire. It couldn't have offered a less pleasing prospect.
Lynley said to Hanken, “Sorry. I can't explain why they hold back information from the officer in charge. I expect it's some sort of power game. I've had it played on me once too often to like it.” He went on to fill in the missing information. Andy Maiden had worked undercover. He'd been highly respected and exemplarily successful during a thirty-year career. “So the Yard feels an obligation to one of its own,” Lynley finished. “We're here to fulfill that obligation. We'd like to work as part of a team with you, but Winston and I will stay out of your way as much as possible if that's how you prefer it. It's your case and your patch. We're well aware that we're the interlopers here.”
Each of the statements was graciously made, and Hanken felt a slight de-icing of his attitude towards the other DI. He didn't particularly want to like him, but two deaths and one unidentified body were unusual in this part of the world, and Hanken knew that only a fool would object to having two more minds sorting through the facts in the investigation, especially if both minds in question were absolutely clear about who was giving the orders and making the assignments in the case. Besides, the SO 10 detail was an intriguing one that Hanken was grateful to have passed his way. He needed to ponder it when he had a moment.
He twisted his cigarette down into a spotless ashtray, which he then emptied and cleaned thoroughly with a tissue, as was his custom. He said, “Come with me, then,” and took the Londoners to the incident room, where two of his uniformed WPCs were at computer terminals—apparently doing nothing save chatting to each other—and a third male constable was making an entry on the china board where Hanken had neatly penned assignments earlier in the day. This last constable nodded and left the room as Hanken walked the Scotland Yard officers over to the china board. Next to it, a large diagram of the murder site was hanging alongside two pictures of the Maiden girl—in life and in death—as well as several pictures of the second—and hitherto unidentified—body, and a line of photos of the murder scene.
Lynley put on a pair of reading spectacles to have a look at these as Hanken introduced him and Nkata to the others in the room. Hanken said to one of the WPCs, “The computer still down?”
“What else?” was her laconic response.
“Bloody invention,” Hanken muttered. He directed the Londoners' attention specifically to the diagram of Nine Sisters Henge. He pointed out the spot where the boy's body had been found within the circle. He indicated a second area some distance away from the henge, to the northwest. “The girl was here,” he said. “One hundred and fifty-seven yards from the birch copse where the standing stones are. She'd had her head bashed in with a chunk of limestone.”
“What about the boy?” Lynley asked.
“Multiple stab wounds. No weapon left behind. We've done a fingertip search for it but come up cold. I've constables out scouring the moor right now.”
“Were they camping together?”
“They weren't,” Hanken told them. The girl had gone to Calder Moor alone according to her parents, and the facts at the crime scene backed them up. It was apparently her belongings—and here he indicated the photograph that would document his words—that were strewn round the inside of the stone circle. For his part, the boy seemed to have nothing with him aside from the clothes on his back. So it appeared that, setting out from wherever he'd set out, he hadn't intended to join her for his own night under the stars.
“There was no identification on the boy?” Lynley asked. “My super told me no one can place him.”
“We're running the plates of a motorcycle through the DVLA, a Triumph found near the girl's car behind a wall on the road outside Sparrowpit.” He pointed out this location, using an Ordnance Survey map that was unfolded on a desk that abutted the wall holding the china board. “We've had the bike staked out since the bodies were discovered, but no one's come to claim it. It looks like it probably belongs to the kid. Once our computers are up and running again—”
“They're saying any minute,” one of the WPCs called out.
“Right,” Hanken scoffed, and went on with “We'll have the registration information from the DVLA.”
“Bike could be stolen,” Nkata murmured.
“Then that'll be on the computer as well.” Hanken fished out his fags and lit another.
One of the women officers said, “Have a heart, Pete. We're in here all day,” an entreaty which Hanken chose to ignore.
“What are your thoughts so far?” Lynley asked, his inspection of each of the photographs complete.
Hanken rustled under the Ordnance Survey map for a large manila envelope. Inside were photocopies of the anonymous letters found at the feet of the dead boy. He kept one back, said, “Have a look at these,” and handed the envelope over to Lynley. Nkata joined his superior officer as Lynley began to flip through the letters.
There were eight communications in all, each fashioned from large letters and words that had been clipped from newspapers and magazines and taped to sheets of plain white paper. The message on each was similar, beginning with YOUR GOING TO DIE SOONER THEN YOU THINK; continuing with HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW
YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED?; and concluding with WATCH YOUR BACK BECAUSE WHEN YOUR NOT READY FOR IT, I WILL BE THERE AND YOU WILL DIE. THERES NOPLACE TO RUN AND NOPLACE TO HIDE.
Lynley read every one of the eight letters before he finally raised his head, removed his glasses, and said, “Were these found on either of the bodies?”
> “Inside the stone circle. Near to the boy, but not on him.”
“They could have been directed to anyone, couldn't they? They may not even be related to the case.”
Hanken nodded. “My first thought as well. Except they appear to have come from an oversize envelope that was on the scene. With the name Nikki printed straight across it in pencil. And they had blood on them. That's what those dark smears are, by the way: places where our copy machine couldn't register red.”
“Prints?”
Hanken shrugged. “Lab's going through the exercise.”
Lynley nodded and reconsidered the letters. “They're threatening enough. But sent to the girl? Why?”
“The why's our motive for murder.”
“Do you see the boy involved?”
“I see some thick yobbo in the wrong place at the worst possible time. He complicated matters, but that's all he did.”
Lynley returned the letters to the envelope and handed the envelope over to Hanken. He said, “Complicated matters? How?”
“By making it necessary for reinforcements.” Hanken had had the day to evaluate the crime scene, to look over the photographs, to view the evidence, and to develop an idea of the events from what he'd seen. He explained his theory. “We've got a killer who knows the moors well and who knew exactly where to find the girl. But when he got there, he saw what he hadn't expected to find: She'd got someone with her. He had only one weapon—”
“The missing knife,” Nkata noted.
“Right. So he had one of two choices. Either separate the boy from the girl somehow and knife them one at a time …”
“Or bring in a second killer,” Lynley finished. “Is that what you're thinking?”
It was, Hanken told him. Perhaps the other killer was waiting in the car. Perhaps he—or she—set out to Nine Sisters Henge in the company of the other. In any case, when it became clear that there were two able-bodied victims to dispose of instead of just one and only a single knife with which to do the job, the second killer was called into action. And the second weapon—a chunk of limestone—was used.
Lynley went back for another look at the pictures and the site plan. He said, “But why are you marking the girl as the main victim? Why not the boy?”
“Because of this.” Hanken handed over the single sheet of paper that he'd held back from the anonymous letters in anticipation of Lynley's question. Again it was a photocopy. Again it was taken from another note. This one, however, had been scrawled by hand. THIS BITCH HAS HAD IT snaked across the page, the penultimate word underlined three times.
“Was this found with the others?” Lynley asked.
“It was on her body,” Hanken said. “Tucked into one of her pockets nice and neat.”
“But why leave the letters after the murders were done? And why leave the note?”
“To send someone a message. That's the usual purpose of notes.”
“I'll accept that for a note on her body. But what about the cut-and-paste letters? Why would someone have left them behind?”
“Consider the condition of the crime scene. There was rubbish everywhere. And I dare say it was dark when the killers struck.” Hanken paused to crush out his cigarette. “They wouldn't even have known the letters were there in all the mess. They made a mistake.”
At the other end of the room, the computer finally came to life. One of the WPCs said, “About time, that,” and began inputting data and waiting for responses. The other constable did likewise, working with the activity sheets and reports that the investigative team had already turned in.
Hanken continued. “Think about the killer's state of mind, the principal killer, that is. He tracks our girl to the stone circle, all set to do the job, only to find her with a companion. He's got to bring in help, which throws him off his stride. The girl manages to run off, which throws him off further. Then the boy puts up a hell of a fight, and the camping site is turned into a shambles. All he's worried about—this is the killer, not our boy—is dispatching the two victims. When the plan doesn't go smoothly, the last thing on his mind is whether the Maiden girl brought his letters with her.”
“Why did she?” Like his superior, Nkata had gone back to look at the crime scene photos. He turned from them now as he spoke. “To show the boy?”
“There's nothing to indicate that she knew the boy before they died together,” Hanken said. “The girl's dad saw the boy's body, but he couldn't put a name to him. Had never seen him, he said. And he knows her friends.”
“Could the boy have killed her?” Lynley asked. “And then inadvertently become a victim himself afterwards?”
“Not unless my pathologist had the times of death wrong. He puts them dying within an hour of each other. How likely is it that two completely unrelated killings would occur in a single location on a Tuesday night in September?”
“Yet that's what appears to have happened, isn't it?” Lynley said. He went on to ask where Nicola Maiden's car had been in relation to the stone circle. Had plaster impressions of tyre prints been taken from that location? What about footprints in the circle itself? And the boy's face … What did Hanken make of the burns?
Hanken fielded the questions, using the map and the reports that his men had compiled thus far in the case. From the other end of the room, WPC Peggy Hammer—whose countenance had always reminded Hanken of a shovel with freckles—called out, “Pete, we've got it. Here's the DVLA.” She copied something from her terminal's monitor at the far end of the room.
“The Triumph?” Hanken said.
“Right. Got it.” She handed over a slip of paper.
Hanken read the name and the address of the motorcycle's owner, and when he did so, he realised that the London detectives were going to turn out to be a godsend. For the address he was looking at was in London, and using either Lynley or Nkata to handle the London end of things would save him manpower. In these times of budget cuts, belt tightening, and the sort of fiscal responsibility that made him shout about “not being a bloody accountant, for God's sake,” sending someone out on the road was a manoeuvre that had to be defended practically all the way to the House of Lords. Hanken had no time for such nonsense. The Londoners made such nonsense unnecessary.
“The bike,” he told them, “is registered to someone called Terence Cole.” According to the DVLA in Swansea, this Terence Cole lived in Chart Street in Shoreditch. And if one of the Scotland Yard detectives didn't mind taking on that end of things, he'd send him back to London straightaway to find someone at that address who could make an i.d. of the second body from Nine Sisters Henge.
Lynley looked at Nkata. “You'll need to head back at once,” he said. “I'll stay. I want a word with Andy Maiden.”
Nkata seemed surprised. “You don't want London yourself? You'd have to pay me a bundle to stay up here if I was you.”
Hanken glanced from one man to the other. Lynley, he saw, was colouring slightly. This surprised him. Until that moment, the man had seemed utterly unflappable.
“Helen can cope for a few days without me, I expect,” Lynley said.
“No new bride ought to have to do that” was Nkata's rejoinder. He explained to Hanken that “the'spector got himself married three months ago. He's practically fresh from the honeymoon.”
“That'll do, Winston,” Lynley said.
“Newlywed,” Hanken acknowledged with a nod. “Cheers.”
“I'm afraid that's quite a moot sentiment,” Lynley replied obscurely.
He wouldn't have said so twenty-four hours earlier. Then, he had been blissful. While there were numerous rough edges of adjustment that had to be smoothed as he and Helen established their life together, nothing they had come across so far had seemed so scabrous that it couldn't be leveled through discussion, negotiation, and compromise. Until the Havers situation had come along, that is.
In the months since their return from the honeymoon, Helen had maintained a discreet distance from Lynley's professional life, and she'd merely
said, “Tommy, there must be an explanation,” when he'd returned from his only visit to Barbara Havers and reported the facts behind her suspension. After that moment, Helen had kept her own counsel, relaying telephone messages from Havers and others interested in the situation but always remaining an objective presence whose loyalty to her husband was beyond question. Or so Lynley had assumed the case to be.
His wife had disabused him of the notion when she'd returned from the St. James house earlier that day. He'd been packing for the journey to Derbyshire, tossing some shirts into a suitcase and rooting out an old waxed jacket and hiking boots for using on the moors, when Helen had joined him. In a departure from her usual more oblique manner of addressing herself to a delicate subject, she'd taken the bull directly by the horns, saying, “Tommy, why've you chosen Winston Nkata rather than Barbara Havers to work this case with you?”
He said, “Ah. You've spoken to Barbara, I see,” to which she replied, “And she practically defended you, although the poor woman's heart was clearly breaking.”
“Do you want me to defend myself as well?” he'd asked mildly. “Barbara needs to keep her head down at the Yard for a while. Taking her along to Derbyshire wouldn't have accomplished that. Winston's the logical choice if Barbara's unavailable.”
“But, Tommy, she adores you. Oh, don't look at me that way. You know what I mean. You can do no wrong in Barbara's eyes.”
He'd placed his last shirt into the suitcase, stuffed his shaving gear in among his socks, closed the case, and draped his jacket on top of it. He'd faced his wife. “Are you here as her intermediary, then?”
“Please don't patronise me, Tommy. I hate that.”
He'd sighed. He didn't want to be at odds with his wife and he thought fleetingly of the compromises one made in attaching another life to one's own. We meet, he told himself, we want, we pursue, and we obtain. But he wondered if the man existed who, caught up in the heat of desire, still managed to consider whether he could possibly live with the object of his passion before he was actually doing so. He doubted it.
He said, “Helen, it's a miracle that Barbara still has her job, considering the charges she was facing. Webberly went to the wall for her, and God only knows what he had to promise, give up, or compromise on in order to keep her in CID. At the moment, she ought to be thanking her lucky stars that she wasn't sacked. What she shouldn't be doing is looking for support in a grievance against me. And, frankly, the last person on earth she should be trying to set against me is my own wife.”
In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner Page 9