In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

  She laughed. “All right. What do I know about the nines anyway?”

  He chuckled and started the car. Pulling away from the pavement, he said, “Seat belt, Barb.”

  Barbara said, “Oh. Right,” and turned in her seat to reach for it.

  Which was when she saw Tricia Reeve. The assistant director of MKR had taken herself nowhere near the Dorchester, as things turned out. She was skulking round the side of the building, hastening up the front steps, and heading straight for the door.

  CHAPTER 11

  he moment the cops were out of his office, Martin Reeve pressed the call button that was recessed into one of the shelves on which his collection of Henley photos were arranged. Just as the phony college diplomas were part of the Martin Reeve Story, the Henley photos were a vital piece of the Martin and Tricia Reeve Romance. It was part of their manufactured history that they'd first met at the Regatta. He'd been telling the apocryphal tale of their introduction for so long that he'd begun to believe it himself.

  His call was answered in less than five seconds, a record. Jaz Burns entered the room without knocking. “A real cow, she was,” he said with a smirk. “Fancy shagging her, Marty. You'd not soon forget it.”

  From his lair at the back of the house, it was Jaz's habit to play Peeping Tom with the surveillance equipment in Martin's office. He had an annoying tendency to voyeurism, which Martin was willing to overlook in the cause of employing his other talents.

  “Follow them,” Martin said. “The cops? There's a turnaround for you. What's up?”

  “Later. Get on it now.”

  Jaz was astute at reading nuances. He jerked his head in a nod, snatched up the keys to the Jaguar, and slipped soundlessly from the room on cat-burglar feet. The door hadn't been closed behind him for more than fifteen seconds, however, when it opened again.

  Martin swung round in agitation, saying, “God damn it, Jaz,” and ready to berate his employee for whatever dawdling had caused him to lose the cops’ trail before they'd even begun to lay it. But Tricia, not the spritelike Burns, stood there, and the expression on her face told Martin that a Scene was coming.

  Fuck it, he wanted to say, not now. At the moment he didn't have the resources to soothe Tricia through an attack of the Shrills.

  “What are you doing here? Tricia, you're supposed to be at the tea.”

  “I couldn't.” She shut the door behind her.

  “What do you mean, you couldn't? You're expected. This has been set up for months. I pulled a dozen strings to get you on that committee, and if you're on the committee, you're supposed to turn up. You've got the God damn list, Patricia. How're those women supposed to carry on this event—and, by the way, how are we supposed to maintain our good name—if you can't be relied upon to show up on time with a seating plan in your possession?”

  “What did you tell them about Nicola?”

  He blew out a breath on the word shit. “Is that why you're here? Am I clear on that? You've failed in your part to show open support for one of the worthiest causes in the UK because you want to know what I told the cops about a fucking dead bitch?”

  “I don't like that language.”

  “Which part? Fucking? Dead? Or bitch? Let's get it straight, because right at this moment there are five hundred women and photographers from every publication in the country waiting for you to appear and God knows you won't be able to manage it if we aren't clear on which part of my language bothers you.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them the truth.” He was so irritated that he could almost enjoy the expression of horror that crossed her face.

  “What?” When she asked, the question was hoarse.

  “Nicola Maiden was a trainee financial advisor. She quit last April. If she hadn't quit, I would have fired her.”

  Tricia relaxed noticeably. Martin went on. He vastly preferred his wife on edge. “I'd love to know where the little bitch took herself off to from here, and with any luck, I'll have that information from Jaz within the hour. Cops are nothing if not predictable. If she had a place in London—and my money says she had—then the cops're going to lead us straight to it.”

  The tension was, gratifyingly, back in an instant. “Why d'you want to know? What're you going to do?”

  “I don't like disrespect, Patricia. You of all people ought to know that. I don't like to be lied to. Trust is the bedrock of any relationship, and if I don't do something when someone screws me over, then it's open season for everyone to take Martin Reeve for all that he's worth. Well, I won't allow that.”

  “You had her, didn't you?” Tricia's face was pinched.

  “Don't be an idiot.”

  “You think I can't tell. You say to yourself, ‘Dear Trish's doped up to her eyeballs half the time. What could she possibly notice?’ But I do. I saw how you looked at her. I knew when it happened.”

  Martin sighed. “You need a hit. Sorry to put it so crudely, my dear. I know you'd prefer to avoid the topic. But the truth of the matter is that you always get weird in the head when you're coming down too fast. You need another hit.”

  “I know what you're like.” Her voice was rising, and he wondered idly if he could manage the needle without her cooperation. But how the hell much was she shooting up these days anyway? Even if he could cope with the needle and the syringe, the last thing he needed was his wife carted off in a coma. “I know how you like to be the boss, Martin. And what better way is there to prove you're in charge than to tell some college girl to drop her knickers and then watch how fast she's willing to do it.”

  “Tricia, this is such awesome bullshit. Are you listening to yourself?”

  “So you had her. And then she walked away. Poof. She was gone. Vanished.” Tricia snapped her fingers. Rather weakly, Martin noticed. “And that felt nasty, didn't it? And we know how you react when something feels nasty.”

  Speaking of which … Martin itched to strike her. He would have done so had he not been certain that, doped up or not, she'd run straight home to Daddy in an instant with the tale. Daddy would make certain demands if she did that. Detox first. Divorce after that.

  Neither of which was acceptable to Martin. Marriage into wealth—no matter that the money came from a successful antiques business and hadn't been passed down through successive generations in best blue-blood fashion—had garnered for him a degree of social acceptance that he'd never have acquired as a mere immigrant to the country, no matter how successful in business he might be. He had no intention of giving that social acceptance up.

  “We can have this discussion later,” he said with a glance at his pocket watch. “For now, you still have time to get to the tea without thoroughly humiliating yourself or me. Say it was the traffic: a pedestrian hit by a taxi in Notting Hill Gate. You stopped to hold his hand—no, make it a woman and a child—till the ambulance arrived. A hole in your stocking would support the story, by the way.”

  “Don't dismiss me like some mindless tart.”

  “Then stop acting like one.” He shot the retort back without thinking and immediately regretted it. What possible purpose could be served by escalating an idiotic discussion into a fully blown row? “Look, sweetheart,” he said, aiming for conciliation, “let's stop the bickering. We're letting ourselves get thrown by a simple, routine visit from the cops. As far as Nicola Maiden goes—”

  “We haven't done it in months, Martin.”

  He went steadily on. “—it's unfortunate that she's dead, it's unfortunate that she was murdered, but as we weren't involved in what happened to her—”

  “We. Haven't. Fucked. Since. June.” Her voice rose. “Are you listening to me? Are you hearing what I'm saying?”

  “I'm doing both,” he replied. “And if you weren't blitzed most hours of the day, you'd find your memory improving.”

  That, at least and thank God, stopped her. She, after all, had no more wish than he had to end their marriage. He served a purpose in her life that was as necessary to
her as the purpose she served was necessary to him: He kept her supply lines open and her secret safe; she increased his mobility and garnered from his fellows the sort of deference one man shows another when that other has possession of a beautiful woman. Thus, she very much wanted to believe. And in Martin's experience, when people desperately wanted to believe, they talked themselves into believing just about anything. In this case, however, Tricia's belief wasn't far from the truth. He did indeed do her when she was tripped out. She just didn't know he preferred it that way.

  She said in a smaller voice, “Oh,” and she blinked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Oh. All through June, July, and August. Last night as well.”

  She swallowed. “Last night?”

  He smiled. She was his.

  He went to her. “Lets not let the cops wreck what we have, Trish. They're after a killer. They're not after us.” He touched her lips with the battle-weary knuckles of his right hand. Left hand on her buttocks, he drew her near. “Now, isn't that right? Isn't it true that what the police are looking for, they won't find here?”

  “I've got to get off the stuff,” she whispered.

  He urged her down for a kiss. “One thing at a time,” he said.

  In his room at the Black Angel Hotel, Lynley discarded his suit and tie in favour of jeans, hiking boots, and the old waxed jacket that he generally wore in Cornwall, an ancient possession of his long-dead father. He kept glancing at the telephone as he dressed, alternately willing it to ring and willing himself to make the call from this end.

  There had been no message from Helen. He'd excused her silence that morning as a result of her late night with Deborah St. James and her probable subsequent lie-in, but he was having difficulty excusing a silence that had apparently continued well into mid-afternoon. He'd even phoned down to Reception, asking that they double-check on his messages, but an extended foray into pigeon holes and rubbish baskets hadn't produced anything different from what he'd had at the beginning: His wife hadn't phoned. Nor had anyone else, for that matter, but silence from the rest of the world didn't concern him. Silence from Helen did.

  In the way of people who believe they're in the right, he replayed their conversation of the previous morning. He checked it for subtext and nuance, but no matter how he examined it, he came out on top. The fact was simplicity itself. His wife had been interfering in his professional life, and she owed him an apology. She had no business second-guessing decisions that he made as part of his work any more than he had a place instructing her how and when she could assist St. James in his lab. In the personal arena they each had a vested interest in knowing the others hopes, resolutions, and desires. In the world of their individual occupations, they owed each other kindness, consideration, and support. That his wife—as was clearly indicated by her undeniably perverse refusal to phone him—didn't wish to adhere to this basic and reasonable manner of coexisting was a source of disillusionment to him. He'd known Helen for sixteen years. How could he have gone such a time without actually knowing her at all?”

  He checked his watch. He looked out of the window and made note of the sun's position in the sky. There were several good hours of daylight left, so he had no need to rush off right at the moment. Knowing this, and knowing what he could well do because of this, he procrastinated by checking to make sure he had a compass, a torch, and an Ordnance Survey map tucked into the various pockets of his jacket.

  Then, without further employment available, he heaved a sigh of defeat. He walked to the phone and punched in his home number. Might as well leave her a message if she's gone out, he thought. One can make a point with one's mate for only a limited period.

  He expected Denton. Or the answerphone. What he didn't expect—because if she was at home, why the devil wasn't she phoning him—was to hear his wife's soft voice on the other end of the line.

  She said hello twice. In the background he could hear music playing. It was one of his new Prokofiev CDs. She'd taken the call in the drawing room.

  He wanted to say “Hello, darling. We parted badly, and I'm longing to make it up with you.” But instead, he wondered how the hell she could sit there in London, blissfully enjoying his music, while they were at odds. And they were at odds, weren't they? Hadn't he just spent most of his working day successfully avoiding an obsessive contemplation of their disagreement, of everything that had led up to it, of what it indicated about the past, of what it presaged for the future, of what it might lead them to if one of them didn't wake up and realise that—Helen said, “This is very rude, whoever you are,” and rang off.

  Which left Lynley holding a dead receiver and feeling very foolish. Ringing her back at the moment would make him feel even more foolish, he concluded. So that was that. He replaced the receiver, removed the keys to the police car from his suit coat, and left the room.

  He drove northeast, cruising along the road that carved a gully between the limestone slopes upon which Tideswell was built. The land formed a natural siphon here. The wind gusted through it like a gushing river, whipping tree limbs and flipping leaves upside down in an unspoken promise of the season's first rain.

  At the junction, a handful of honey-coloured buildings marked the hamlet of Lane Head. Here Lynley veered to the west, where the road made a straight charcoal incision into the moor and drystone walls prevented the accretion of heather, bilberry, and ferns from reclaiming the road and returning it to the land.

  It was a wild country. Once Lynley left the last of the hamlets behind, the only signs of life—aside from the vegetation, which was profuse—were the jackdaws and magpies and the occasional sheep that stood serene and cloudlike, grazing among the pink and the green.

  Stiles provided access to the moor, and signposts marked the routes of public footpaths that had been used for centuries by farmers or shepherds traveling between the far-flung hamlets. Hiking and biking trails were a more recent addition to the landscape, however, and these carved through the heather and disappeared towards distant lichen-grey outcrops that formed the remains of prehistoric settlements, ancient places of worship, and Roman forts.

  Lynley found the spot a few miles northeast of the tiny hamlet of Sparrowpit, where Nicola Maiden had left her Saab upon setting off into the moor. There, a long and knobby border of wall was interrupted by a white iron gate, its thick skin of crusty paint eaten through in spots by blemishes of rust. When he arrived, Lynley did what Nicola Maiden herself had done: He opened the gate, pulled into a narrow paved lane within, and parked behind the stone wall on a patch of earth.

  He consulted the map before getting out of the car, opening it against the passenger seat and fixing his reading glasses on his nose. He studied the route he would need to take to get out to Nine Sisters Henge, making note of landmarks that would be useful in guiding him on his way. Hanken had offered him a detective constable as a guide, but he'd refused. He wouldn't have minded an experienced hiker as an escort, but he preferred not to be accompanied by a member of the Buxton police who could possibly take offence—and report such offence to Hanken—when Lynley scrutinised the crime scene with an attention suggesting that the local CID hadn't done its job.

  “It's a last possibility for that blasted pager, and I'd like to eliminate it,” Lynley had told Hanken.

  “If it had been there, my boys would have found it,” Hanken had replied, reminding him that they'd done a fingertip search for the weapon, which certainly would have turned up a pager even if it hadn't dislodged a knife from the site. “But if it puts your mind at rest to do it, then put your mind at rest and do it.” As for himself, he was off after Upman, champing at the bit to confront the solicitor.

  Feeling sure of his route, Lynley folded the map and returned his glasses to their case. He put map and glasses in his jacket pockets and climbed out into the wind. He set out southeast, with the collar of his jacket turned up and his shoulders hunched against the gusts that were blowing against him. The stretch of paved lane led in the direction he wanted,
so he started out on it, but after less than a hundred yards, it ended in a crumble of aggregate boulders comprising mostly gravel and tar. From there, the going became rougher, an uneven trail of earth and stones, creased by watercourses that were skeletally dry from a summer without rain.

  The walk took him nearly an hour, and he made it in utter solitude. His route followed stony paths that intersected with other, stonier paths. He brushed through heather, gorse, and fern; he climbed limestone outcrops; he passed the remains of chambered cairns.

  He was just coming upon an unexpected fork in the trail, when he saw a lone hiker walking his way from the southeast. As he was fairly certain that this was the direction of Nine Sisters Henge, Lynley remained where he was, waiting to see who had made this late-afternoon visit to the scene of the crime. As far as he knew, Hanken still had the stone circle taped off and guarded. So if the hiker was a journalist or press photographer, he would have found little joy in taking an extended walk across the moor.

  It wasn't a man, as things turned out. Nor was it either a journalist or a photographer. Instead, as the figure approached, Lynley saw that Samantha McCallin had, for some reason, decided to treat herself to an afternoon hike out to Nine Sisters Henge.

  Apparently, she recognised him at the same instant that he realised her identity, because her gait changed its rhythm. She'd been marching along with a whip tail of birch in her hand, flicking it against the heather as she stepped along the path. But seeing Lynley, she chucked the whip tail to one side, squared her shoulders, and came straight at him.

  “It's a public place,” she said at once. “You can tape off the circle and post guards out there, but you can't keep people off the rest of the moor.”

  “You're some miles from Broughton Manor, Miss McCallin.”

  “Don't killers return to the scenes of their crimes? I'm merely living the part. Would you like to arrest me?”

  “I'd like you to explain what you're doing here.”