In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

by Elizabeth George

  She would, Cilia said. She'd be home by five if Barbara wanted to pop round then. But Constable Havers had better have it straight in her head that whatever Terry Cole had been caught up in, Cilia Thompson had not been part of it.

  “I'm an artist. First, last, and always,” Cilia proclaimed. She rearranged the dead mouse and pulled the stuffed cat's paw into a more ominous and chasseur-like position.

  “Oh, I can see that,” Barbara assured her.

  At Buxton police station, Lynley and Hanken parted ways once the Buxton DI arranged for his Scotland Yard associate to pick up a car. Hanken planned to head for Calver, determined to corroborate Will Upman's alleged dinner date with Nicola Maiden. For his part, Lynley set out towards Padley Gorge.

  At Maiden Hall he found that afternoon preparations for the evening meal were going on in the kitchen, which backed onto the car park where Lynley left the police Ford. The bar in the lounge was being restocked with spirits, and the dining room was being set for the evening. There was a general air of activity about the place demonstrating that, as much as possible, life was going on at the Hall.

  The same woman who'd intercepted the DIs on the previous afternoon met Lynley just beyond the reception desk. When he asked for Andy Maiden, she murmured, “Poor soul,” and left to fetch the former police officer. While he waited, Lynley went to the door of the dining room, just beyond the lounge. Another woman—of similar age and appearance as the first—was placing slender white candles in holders on the tables. A basket of yellow chrysanthemums sat next to her on the floor.

  The serving hatch between dining room and kitchen was open, and from within the latter room came the sound of French, rapidly spoken and with some considerable passion. And then in accented English, “And no and no and no! I ask for shallots, it means shallots. These are onions for boiling in the pan.”

  There was a quiet response that Lynley couldn't catch, then a torrent of French of which he caught only, “Je t'emtnerde.”

  “Tommy?”

  Lynley swung round to see that Andy Maiden had come into the lounge, a spiral notebook in his hand. Maiden looked ravaged: He was drawn and unshaven and he wore the clothes he'd had on on the previous evening. “I couldn't wait for the pension,” he said, voice numb. “I lived to retire. I put up with the work without a word because it was leading to something. That's what I told myself. And them. Nan and Nicola. A few more years, I'd say. Then we'll have enough.” Rousing himself to trudge the rest of the way across the lounge to join Lynley seemed to take what few resources he had left. “And look where it's brought us. My daughter's dead and I've come up with the names of fifteen bastards who'd've willingly killed their own mothers if they'd gain by the act. So why the hell did I think they'd serve their time, disappear, and never bother to go after me?”

  Lynley glanced at the notebook, realising what it was. “You've got a list for us.”

  “I read through the night. Three times. Four. And here's where I ended. D'you want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I killed her. I was the one.”

  How many times had he heard that need to take blame? Lynley wondered. A hundred? A thousand? It was always the same. And if there was a glib response that could attenuate the guilt of those who were left behind after violence had done its worst to a loved one, he hadn't yet learned it. “Andy,” he began.

  Maiden cut him off. “You remember what I was like, don't you? Keeping society safe from the ‘criminal element,’ I told myself. And I was good at what I did. I was so bloody good. But I never once saw that while I was concentrating on our fucking society, my very own daughter … my Nick—” His voice began to waver. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Don't apologise, Andy. It's all right.”

  “It'll never be all right.” Maiden opened the notebook and ripped out the last page. He shoved this towards Lynley. “Find him.”

  “We will.” Lynley knew how inadequate his words were—as would be an arrest in the case—to mitigate Maiden's grief. Nonetheless, he explained that he'd assigned an officer to go through the SO 10 records in London, but he'd so far heard nothing. Thus, anything that Maiden provided them with—a name, a crime, an investigation—could well end up halving or quartering the London officer's time on the computer and freeing that officer to pursue likely suspects. The police would be in Maiden's debt for that.

  Maiden nodded dully. “How else can I help? Can you give me something, Tommy … something else to do … because otherwise …” He ran a large hand through hair that was still curly and thick, albeit quite grey. “I'm a textbook case. Looking for employment so I can stop going through this.”

  “It's a natural response. We all put up defences against a shock till we're ready to deal with it. That's part of being human.”

  “This. I'm even calling it this. Because if I say the word, that'll make everything real and I don't think I can stand it.”

  “You're not expected to cope right now. You and your wife are both owed some time to avoid what's happened. Or to deny what's happened. Or to fall apart altogether. Believe me, I understand.”

  “Do you.”

  “I think you know I do.” There was no easy way to make the next request. “I need to go through your daughter's belongings, Andy. Would you like to be present?”

  Maiden knotted his eyebrows. “Her things are in her room. But if you're looking for a connection to SO 10, what's Nicola's bedroom got to do with that?”

  “Nothing, perhaps,” Lynley told him. “But we spoke to Julian Britton and Will Upman this morning. There are several details we'd like to explore further.”

  Maiden said, “Good Christ. Are you thinking one of them … ?” and he looked beyond Lynley to the window, seeming to ponder what horrors a reference to Britton and Upman implied.

  Lynley said quickly, “It's too early for anything but guesswork, Andy.”

  Maiden turned back, examined him for a long thirty seconds. He finally seemed to accept the answer. He took Lynley to the second floor of the house and led him to his daughter's bedroom, remaining in the doorway and watching as Lynley began going through Nicola Maiden's belongings.

  Most of these comprised exactly what one would expect to find in the room of a twenty-five-year-old woman, and much of it supported points that either Julian Britton or Will Upman had made. A wooden jewellery case contained evidence of the body piercings with which Julian had declared that Nicola had decorated herself: Single gold hoops of varying sizes and without mates suggested rings that the dead girl had worn through her navel, her Up, and her nipple, single studs spoke of the hole in her tongue; tiny ruby and emerald studs with screw tips would have fitted her nose.

  The clothes cupboard contained designer clothing: The labels were a who's who of haute couture. Upman had declared that she couldn't have dressed herself on what he'd been paying her for her summers employment, and her clothing fully supported his contention. But there were other indications that Nicola Maiden's whims were being fulfilled by someone.

  The room was replete with items that could be associated only with either a considerable discretionary income or with a partner eager to prove himself through gifts. An electric guitar took up space in the cupboard, to the side of which were a CD player, a tuner, and a set of speakers that would have set Nicola Maiden back more than a month's wages. A nearby rotating oak stand designed solely for the occupation held two or three hundred CDs. A colour television in one corner of the room was the resting place for a mobile phone. On a shelf beneath the television stand, eight leather handbags were lined up precisely. Everything in the room spoke of excess. Everything also announced that, at least in one respect, Nicola's employer may have been telling the truth. Either that or the girl had come by her money in a way that ultimately led to her death: through drug pushing, blackmail, the black market, embezzlement. But thinking of Upman reminded Lynley of something else that the solicitor had said.

  He went to the chest and began sliding open its drawers upon si
lk underwear and nightgowns, cashmere scarves and designer socks yet to be worn. He found one drawer devoted solely to the outdoor life, stuffed with khaki shorts, folded jerseys, a small day pack, Ordnance Survey maps, and a silver flask engraved with the girls initials.

  The bottom two drawers in the chest contained the only items that didn't look as if they'd been purchased in Knightsbridge. But even they were filled to the very top like the others. They were a storage space for woollen sweaters of every possible style and hue, each bearing an identical label sewn into the neckline: Made with loving hands by Nancy Maiden. Lynley fingered one of the labels thoughtfully.

  He said, “Her pager's missing, Andy. Upman said she had one. Do you know where it is?”

  Maiden left his position by the door. “A pager? Is Will certain about that?”

  “He told us that she was paged at work. You didn't know she had one?”

  “I never saw her with one. It's not here?” Maiden did what Lynley had done: He examined the items on the top of the chest, then repeated the search through each of the drawers. He went further, however, by taking Lynley's place at the clothes cupboard, where he checked the pockets of his daughters jackets and the waistbands of her trousers and skirts. There were sealed plastic bags of clothing on the bed, and he went through these as well. Finding nothing, he finally said, “She must have taken it on the hike. It'll be in one of the evidence bags.”

  “Why take her pager but leave her mobile phone?” Lynley asked. “The one would be useless on the moor without the other.”

  Maidens glance went to the television where the mobile lay, then back to Lynley. “Then it's got to be here somewhere.”

  Lynley checked the bedside table. He found a bottle of aspirin, a packet of Kleenex, birth control pills, a box of birthday candles, and a tube of lip balm. He went to the leather handbags beneath the television, opening them, checking each compartment. All of them were empty. As were a satchel, he discovered, a briefcase, and an overnight bag.

  “It could be in her car,” Maiden suggested.

  “Something tells me not.”

  “Why?”

  Lynley made no reply Standing in the middle of the room, he saw the details with a vision that was heightened by the absence of a single, simple possession that could have meant nothing and might have meant everything. Doing so, he was able to see what he hadn't noticed before. There was a museumlike quality to everything round him. Nothing in the room was even remotely out of place.

  Someone had been through the girl's belongings.

  “Where's your wife this afternoon, Andy?” Lynley asked.

  CHAPTER 9

  hen Andy Maiden didn't reply at once, Lynley repeated the question and added, “Is she in the hotel? Is she somewhere in the grounds?”

  Maiden said, “No. No. She … Tommy, Nan's gone out.” His fingers shut into his palms, as if in a sudden spasm.

  “Where? Do you know?” “Onto the moor, I expect. She took the bike, and that's where she generally rides it.” “On Calder Moor?”

  Maiden moved to his daughter's bed and sat heavily on the edge of it. “You've not met Nancy before this, have you, Tommy?” “Not that I recall.”

  “She means nothing but well, that woman. She gives, and she gives. But there are times when I can't take any longer.” He looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers. He raised then dropped his hands to gesture with as he went on. “She was worried about me. Can you credit it? She wanted to help. All she could think about—or talk about or do something about—was getting this numbness out of my hands. All yesterday afternoon she was after me about them. All last night as well.”

  “Perhaps it's her way of coping,” Lynley said.

  “But it takes too much concentration for her to cut out the thoughts that she's trying to cut out, d'you see that? It takes every ounce of concentration she has. And I found that I couldn't breathe with her round me. Hovering there. Offering cups of tea and heat pads and … I began to feel like my skin wasn't even my own, like she couldn't rest till she'd even managed to invade my pores in order to—” He paused abruptly and in that pause he seemed to evaluate everything he'd said, unguarded, because his next words were hollow. “God. Listen to me. Selfish bastard.”

  “You've been dealt a death blow. You're trying to cope.”

  “She's been dealt the blow as well. But she thinks of me.” He kneaded one hand with the fingers of the other. “She wanted to massage them. That's all it was, really. And God forgive me, but I drove her off because I thought I'd suffocate if I stayed in the room with her a moment longer. And now … How can we need and love and loathe all at once? What's happening to us?”

  The aftershocks of brutality are happening to you, Lynley wanted to reply. But instead he repeated, “Has she gone out to Calder Moor, Andy?”

  “She'll be on Hathersage Moor. It's closer. A few miles. The other … ? No. She won't be on Calder.”

  “Has she ever ridden there?”

  “On Calder?”

  “Yes. On Calder Moor. Has she ever ridden there?”

  “Of course she has. Yes.”

  Lynley hated to do so, but he had to ask. Indeed, he owed it both to himself and to his Buxton colleague to ask: “You as well, Andy? Or just your wife?”

  Andy Maiden looked up slowly at this, as if finally seeing the road they were travelling. He said, “I thought you were pursuing the London angle. SO 10. And what goes along with SO 10.”

  “I am pursuing SO 10. But I'm after the truth, all of the truth. As you are, I expect. Do both of you ride on Calder Moor?”

  “Nancy's not—”

  “Andy, help me out. You know what the job's like. The facts generally come out one way or another. And sometimes the how of their coming out becomes more intriguing than the facts themselves.

  That can easily divert an otherwise simple investigation, and I can't believe you want that.”

  Maiden understood: An attempt at obfuscation could ultimately become more arresting than the information one sought to withhold. “Both of us ride on Calder Moor. All of us, in fact. But it's too far to bike there from here, Tommy.”

  “How many miles?”

  “I don't know exactly. But far, too far. We take the bikes out in the Land-Rover when we want to ride there. We park in a lay-by. Or in one of the villages. But we don't ride all the way to Calder Moor from here.” He canted his head in the direction of the bedroom window, adding, “The Land Rover's still out there. She won't have gone onto Calder this afternoon.”

  Not this afternoon, Lynley thought. He said, “I did see a Land Rover when I came through the car park.”

  Maiden hadn't been a police officer for thirty years without being capable of a simple act of mind reading. He said, “Running the Hall's a demanding life. It drains our time. We take our exercise when we can. If you want to track her on Hathersage Moor, there's a map in Reception that'll show you the way.”

  That wouldn't be necessary, Lynley told him. If Nancy Maiden had ridden her bike out onto the moors, she probably was seeking some time alone. He was happy enough to let her have it.

  Barbara Havers knew that she could have purchased some take-away from Uncle Tom's Cabin, a food stall on the corner of Portslade and Wandsworth roads. It occupied little more than a niche at the near end of the railway arches, and it looked just the sort of unhygienic place where one might purchase enough cholesterol-laden grub to guarantee concrete arteries within the hour. But she resisted the impulse—virtuously, she liked to think—and instead took herself to a pub near Vauxhall Station, where she indulged in the bangers and mash upon which she'd been meditating earlier. These went down a treat, eased on their way with half a pint of Scrumpy Jack. Sated with the food and drink and satisfied with the information she'd gathered during her morning in Battersea, she returned to the north side of the Thames and skimmed her way along the river. Traffic moved well on Horseferry Road. She was pulling into the underground car park at New Scotland Yard before she'd smoked
her second Player.

  She had two professional options at this point, she decided. She could return to CRIS and the hunt for a suitable ticket-of-leaver out for the blood of a Maiden. Or she could compile the information she'd gathered so far into a report. The former activity—boring and subservient though it was—would demonstrate her ability to take the medicine which certain officers of the law believed she ought to be swallowing. The latter activity, however, appeared to be the one likelier to take them towards some answers in the case. She opted for the report. It wouldn't take that long, it would allow her to set down information in a concrete and thought-provoking order, and it would postpone having to face the glowing screen for at least another hour. She took herself off to Lynley's office—no harm in using the space since it was going empty at the moment, right?—and set to work.

  She was thoroughly into it, just coming up to the salient points made by Cilia Thompson concerning Terry Cole's paternity and his propensity towards questionable means of support—BLACKMAIL? she'd just typed—when Winston Nkata strode into the room. He was wolfing down the last of a Whopper, the container of which he sailed into the rubbish. He wiped his hands thoroughly with a paper napkin. He popped an Opal Fruit into his mouth.

  “Junk food'll kill you,” Barbara said sanctimoniously.

  “But I'll die smiling” was Nkata's reply. He swung one long leg over a chair and took out his leather-bound notebook as he sat. Barbara glanced at a wall clock and then at her colleague. “Just how fast're you driving up and down the Ml? You're setting land speed records from Derbyshire, Winston.”

  He avoided answering, which was answer in itself. Barbara shuddered to think what Lynley would say had he known that Nkata was roaring along in his beloved Bentley at just under the speed of sound. “Been to the College of Law,” he told her. “Guv told me to look into the Maiden girl's doings in town.”

  Barbara stopped typing. “And?”

  “She dropped out.”