In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

  “Someone out on parole, tracking us down, hanging round long enough to get to know our movements—” He turned to her then. “You see how it could have happened, don't you? Someone out for revenge, Nancy, striking at Nick because he knew that to hurt my daughter—my girl—was to kill me in stages … to sentence me to a living death …”

  Lynley said, “It's a possibility that we can't rule out, can we? Because if, as you say, your daughter had no enemies, then we're left with the single question: Who had? If you put away someone who's out on parole, Andy, we're going to need the name.”

  “Jesus. There were scores.”

  “The Yard can pull all your old files in London, but you can help by giving us some direction. If there's a particular investigation that stands out in your memory, you could halve our work by listing the players.”

  “I've got my diaries.”

  “Diaries?” Hanken asked.

  “I once thought—” Maiden shook his head self-derisively. “I thought of writing after retirement. Memoirs. Ego. But the hotel came along, and I never got round to it. I've got the diaries, though. If I have a look through them, perhaps a name … a face …” He seemed to crumple then, as if the weight of responsibility for his daughter's death bore down on him heavily.

  “You don't know this for certain,” Nan Maiden said. “Andy. Please. Don't do this to yourself.”

  Hanken said, “We'll follow whatever leads turn up. So if—”

  “Then follow Julian.” Nan Maiden spoke as if determined to prove that there were other avenues to explore beyond the one that led to her husband's past.

  Maiden said, “Nancy. Don't.”

  “Julian?” Lynley said.

  Julian Britton, Nan told them. He'd just become engaged to Nicola. She wasn't suggesting him as a suspect, but if the police were looking for leads, then they certainly would want to talk to Julian. Nicola had been with him the night before she left for her camping trip. She might have said something to Julian—or done something even—that would result in another possibility for the police to explore in their investigation.

  It was a reasonable enough suggestion, Lynley thought. He jotted down Julian's name and address. Nan Maiden supplied the information.

  For his part, Hanken brooded. And he said nothing more until he and Lynley had returned to the car. “It may all be a blind, you know.” He switched on the ignition, reversed out of their parking space, and turned the car to face Maiden Hall. There, he let the engine idle while he studied the old limestone structure.

  “What?” Lynley asked.

  “SO10. This business of someone from his past. It's a bit too convenient, wouldn't you say?”

  “Convenient is an odd choice of words to describe a lead and a potential suspect,” Lynley said. “Unless you yourself already suspect …” He looked towards the Hall. “Exactly what is it that you suspect, Peter?”

  “D'you know the White Peak?” Hanken asked abruptly. “It runs from Buxton to Ashbourne. From Matlock to Castleton. We've got dales, we've got moors, we've got trails, we've got hills. This”—with a gesture at the environment—“is part of it. So's the road we came in on, for that matter.”

  “And?”

  Hanken turned in his seat to face Lynley squarely. “And in all this vast amount of space, on last Tuesday night—or Wednesday morning if we want to believe him—Andy Maiden managed to find his daughter's car hidden out of sight behind a stone wall. What would you say the odds are on that?”

  Lynley looked to the building, to its windows reflecting the last of the daylight like row upon row of shielded eyes. “Why didn't you tell me?” he asked the other DI.

  “I didn't think of it,” Hanken said. “Not till our boy brought up SO 10. Not till our Andy got caught out keeping the truth from his wife.”

  “He wanted to spare her as long as he could. What man wouldn't?” Lynley asked.

  “A man with nothing on his conscience,” Hanken said.

  Showered and changed into the most comfortable elastic-waisted trousers that she possessed, Barbara was back to grazing—on leftover take-away pork fried rice which, unheated, wasn't about to make it onto anyone's culinary top ten—when Nkata arrived. He announced himself with two sharp raps on the door. She swung it open, take-away container in hand, and leveled a chopstick at him.

  “Your watch stopped or something? What goes for five minutes in your book, Winston?”

  He stepped inside unbidden and flashed her the full wattage of his smile. “Sorry. Got another page before I could clear out. The guv. I had to phone him first.”

  “Of course. Can't keep his lordship waiting.”

  Nkata let the comment go. “Damned lucky that service is slow at the pub. I should've been out of there thirty minutes ago, which would've put me too close to Shoreditch to come back here for you. Funny, isn't it? Like my mum always says. Things work out exactly the way they're s'posed to.”

  Barbara stared at him, wordless. She felt nonplused. She wanted to tell him off for the note he'd left her—and for the letter C so prominent on it—but his air of ease stopped her. She couldn't explain his nonchalance any more than she could explain his presence inside her dwelling. He could at least look bloody uncomfortable, she decided.

  “We got two bodies in Derbyshire and a London angle that needs playing on the case,” Nkata said. He sketched in the details: a woman, a young man, a former SO 10 officer, anonymous letters assembled from newsprint, a threatening note written by hand. “I got to get over to an address in Shoreditch where this dead bloke might've come from,” he told her. “If someone's there who can i.d. the body, I'm on my way back to Buxton in the morning. But the Yard end of things'll need looking into. The spector just told me to set that up. That's why he paged.”

  Barbara couldn't hide her eagerness when she said, “Lynley asked for me?”

  Nkata's glance shifted away for an instant, but that was enough. Her spirits came to earth.

  “I see.” She carried her take-away container to the kitchen work top. The rice sat heavily on her stomach. Its flavour clung to her tongue like fur. “If he doesn't know you're asking me, Winston, I can refuse with no one the wiser, can't I? You can pass me by and get someone else.”

  “Can do, sure,” Nkata said. “I can check the rota. Or I can wait till morning and let the super make the call. But doing all that leaves you free to get assigned to Stewart, Hale, or MacPherson, doesn't it? And I didn't much think you'd want to go that way if you didn't have to.” He left unsaid what was legend in CID: Barbara's failure to establish a working relationship with the DIs he'd mentioned, her subsequent return to uniform from which she had only been elevated by her partnership with Lynley.

  Barbara swung around, perplexed by what appeared to be the other DCs inexplicable generosity. Another man in his position would have left her hanging in the wind, the better to improve his own position, and to hell with what she might have to face. That Nkata wasn't doing so made her doubly cautious.

  He was saying, “It's computer work the guv wants. On CRIS. Not your thing, I know. But I thought if you wanted to come to Shoreditch with me—which is why I was in your neighbourhood in the first place—I could drop you at the Yard afterwards and you could get onto Crime Recording straightaway. If you pull something good from the records quick, who knows?” Nkata shifted on his feet. His air of ease diminished slightly as he concluded. “It could go some distance to setting you right.”

  Barbara found an unopened packet of cigarettes wedged between the crumb-dusted toaster and a box of watermelon Pop-Tarts. She lit up, using one of the gas burners on the cooker, and she tried to make sense of what she was hearing. “I don't get it. This is your chance, Winston. Why don't you take it?”

  “My chance for what?” he said, looking blank.

  “You know for what. To climb the ladder, to ascend the mountain, to fly to the moon. My stock with Lynley couldn't be much lower. Now's your chance to break out of the pack. Why aren't you taking it? Or better
said, why're you taking the risk that I might do something to untarnish myself?”

  “The spector told me to bring in another DC,” Nkata said. “I thought of you.”

  And there they were, those two ugly letters once again. DC. And there was the nasty reminder as well: of what she had been and what she had become. Of course Nkata would have thought of her. What better way to rub her face in her loss of position and authority than by bringing her in as a fellow DC, his superior no longer?

  “Ah,” she said. “Another DC. As to that …” She scooped up the note from where she'd left it on the dining table next to her necklace. She said, “I guess I've got to thank you for this, haven't I? I'd been thinking about taking out an advert in the paper to inform the general public, but you've saved me the trouble.”

  Nkata's eyebrows knotted. “What're you on about?”

  “The note, Winston. Did you honestly think I might forget my position? Or did you just want to remind me that we're equals now, players on a level pitch, lest I forget?”

  “Hang on. You've got it dead wrong.”

  “Have I?”

  “Right.”

  “I don't think so. What other reason could there possibly be for you to address me as DC Havers? C for Constable. Just like you.”

  “Most obvious reason in the world,” Nkata said.

  “Really? What's that?”

  “I've never called you Barb.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I've never called you Barb,” he repeated. “Just Sarge. Always that. And then this …” He used his wide hands in a gesture that encompassed the room but meant the day, as she very well knew. “I didn't know what else. The name and everything.” He grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck, which lowered his head and ended eye contact. He said, “DCs only your title anyway. It's not who you are.”

  Barbara was struck dumb. She stared at him. His attractive face with its nasty scar looked unsure at the moment, which had to be a first. She thought back and relived in an instant the cases on which she'd worked with Nkata. And in reliving them, she was a witness to the truth.

  She covered her confusion with her cigarette, inhaling, exhaling, studying the ash, flicking grey flakes of it into the sink. When the silence between them became too much for her, she sighed and said, “Jesus. Winston. Sorry. Bloody hell.”

  “Right,” he said. “So are you in or out?”

  “I'm in,” she answered.

  “Good,” he said.

  “And, Winnie,” she added, “I'm Barbara as well.”

  CHAPTER 6

  t was dark by the time they cruised into Chart Street in Shoreditch and sought out a parking space along a pavement that was lined with Vauxhalls, Opels, and Volkswagens. Barbara had felt a distinct twinge in her gut when Nkata had led her to Lynley's sleek silver car, a possession so prized by the inspector that merely to have been handed its keys was an eloquent statement of Lynley's confidence in his subordinate officer. She herself had been casually tossed that key ring on only two occasions, but both had come long after she'd worked her first case as the inspector's partner. Indeed, reflecting upon her association with Lynley, she found that she couldn't begin to imagine him passing his car keys over to the person she'd been on the first investigation they'd worked together. That he'd given them so easily to Nkata spoke volumes about the nature of their relationship.

  Fine, she thought with resignation, that's just the way it is. She studied the neighbourhood through which they were driving, looking for the street address that the DVLA had listed as belonging to the owner of the motorcycle found near the murder scene in Derbyshire.

  Like so many of its sister districts in London, Shoreditch may have been down at one time or another, but it could never be counted fully out. It was a densely populated area comprising a narrow appendix of land that dangled from the greater body of Hackney in northeast London. Since it formed one of the boundaries of the City, some of Shore-ditch had been encroached upon by the sort of financial institutions one expected to see only within the Roman walls of old London. Other parts of it had been taken over by industry and commercial development. But there were still vestiges of the former villages of Haggeston and Hoxton in Shoreditch, even if some of those vestiges merely took the form of commemorative plaques marking the spots where the Burbages had plied their theatrical trade and where associates of William Shakespeare lay buried.

  Chart Street appeared to represent the history of the district in one brief thoroughfare. Forming a dogleg that stretched between Pit-field Street and East Road, it contained commercial establishments as well as residences. Some of the buildings were smart, modern, and new, and consequently they expressed the abundance of the City. Others awaited that miracle of London neighbourhoods—gentrification—which could take a simple street and transform it from slum into yuppie paradise within the space of a few short years.

  The address produced by the DVLA took them to a line of terraced houses that, in appearance, were somewhere between the two extremes of disintegration and renovation. The terrace itself was flat-fronted and constructed of brick, and while the woodwork of the house in question badly needed painting, its windows were hung with white curtains that, at least from the exterior, looked crisp and clean. Nkata found a parking space in front of the Marie Lloyd pub. He slid the Bentley into it with the sort of concentration that Barbara imagined a neurosurgeon giving to a patient's brain. She shoved open the door and clambered out the third time the other DC meticulously straightened the car. She lit a fag and said, “Winston. Bloody hell. You're not clocking on and neither one of us is getting any younger. Come on.”

  Nkata chuckled affably. “Giving you time to see to your habit.” “Thanks. But I don't need to smoke a whole packet.” The car finally parked to his satisfaction, Nkata eased out of it, locked it, and set its alarm. He checked scrupulously to make sure the doors were secured before joining Barbara on the pavement. They walked to the house, Barbara smoking and Nkata ruminating. At the yellow front door, he paused. Barbara thought he was giving her time to finish off her fag, and she puffed away, bulking up on the nicotine as she usually did before embarking on a task that could turn unpleasant.

  But when she finally tossed the burning end of the cigarette into the street, Nkata still didn't move. She said, “So? Are we going in? What's up?”

  He roused himself to answer, saying, “This's my first.”

  “First what? Oh. First time as the bearer of bad tidings? Well, take comfort. It doesn't get any easier.”

  He shot her a look, smiled ruefully. “Funny when you think,” he said quietly, the Caribbean in him coming out in his pronunciation of the final word. T'ink, he said.

  “Think what?”

  “Think how many times it could've been my mum getting a visit like this from the rozzers. If I'd kept on walking the path I was walking.”

  “Yeah. Well …” She jerked her head towards the door and mounted the single step. “We've all got blots on our copybooks, Winnie.”

  The faint sound of a child's crying seeped round the cracks in the doorjamb. When Barbara rang the bell, the crying approached. It intensified, a woman's harassed voice said, “Shush now. Shush. That's quite enough, Darryl. You made your point,” and then called through the panels, “Who's there, then?”

  “Police,” Barbara answered. “Can we have a word?”

  There was no response at first, other than Darryl's crying, which went unabated. Then the door swung open and they were confronted by a woman with a small boy on her hip. He was in the act of rubbing his running nose against the collar of the green smock she wore. The Primrose Path was embroidered on the left breast of this, along with the name Sal beneath it.

  Barbara had her warrant card ready. She was showing it to Sal when a younger woman came dashing down the narrow stairs that rose about nine feet from the entry. She wore a chenille dressing gown with one chewed-up sleeve. Her hair was wet. She said, “Sorry, Mum. Give him here. Thanks for the break. I
needed it. Darryl, what're you on about, luv?”

  “Da’,” Darryl sobbed, and reached a grimy hand towards Nkata.

  “Wanting his daddy,” Nkata remarked.

  “Not likely he'd be wanting that bloody bastard,” Sal muttered. “Give your granna kiss, then, darling boy,” she said to Darryl, who in his distress didn't oblige her. She bussed him noisily on one wet cheek. “It's his tummy again, Cyn. I made him a hot water bottle. It's in the kitchen. Mind you wrap it in a towel before you give it him.”

  “Thanks, Mum. You're a queen,” Cyn said. Her son on her hip, she disappeared down the corridor towards the back of the house.

  “What's this about, then?” Sal looked from Nkata to Barbara, not moving from her position by the door. She hadn't invited them to step inside. It was clear that she didn't intend to do so. “It's gone ten. I expect you know that.”

  Barbara said, “May we come in, Mrs.?”

  “Cole,” she said. “Sally Cole. Sal.” She stepped back from the door and scrutinised them as they crossed the threshold. She folded her arms beneath her breasts. In the better light of the entryway, Barbara saw that her hair—cut bluntly just below her ears—was streaked on either side of her face with panels of white-blonde. These served to emphasise her irregular and incongruous features: a broad forehead, a hooked nose, and a tiny rosebud mouth. “I can't cope with suspense, so tell me what you got to tell me straightaway.”

  “Could we … ?” Barbara nodded towards a door that opened to the left of the stairs. Beyond lay what appeared to be the sitting room, although it was dominated by a large and curious arrangement of gardening tools that stood in its centre. A rake with every other tine missing, a hoe with its edge turned inwards, and a blunted shovel all formed a teepee over a cultivator whose handle had been split in half. Barbara examined this curiosity and wondered if it had anything to do with Sal Cole's manner of dress: The green smock and the words embroidered on it did suggest a source of employment that leaned towards the floral, if not the agricultural.