In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

He said, “Nicola Maiden's movements in the months preceding her death seem at odds with each other, Miss Nevin. Was she using prostitution for a quick source of income to tide her over till her law work was profitable?”

  “No law work is as profitable as this,” Vi said. “At least not when you're young. That's why Nikki dropped out of law college in the first place. She knew she could go back to the law when she was forty. But she couldn't be turning tricks at that age. It made sense to her to get the money while she could.”

  “Then why did she spend the summer working for a lawyer? Or was she doing more than merely working for him?”

  Vi shrugged. “You'll have to ask the lawyer.”

  • • •

  Barbara Havers worked the computer till midday. She'd left Lynley's office in the thrall of an effort to maintain such a strict control upon her anger that for an hour at the glowing screen, she'd been completely incapable of assimilating a single piece of information. But by the time she'd read through the seventh report, she'd calmed down. What had been rage metamorphosed into blind intent. No longer was her performance in the investigation a case of redeeming herself in the eyes of a man she'd long respected. It was now a matter of proving to them both—to herself as well as to Lynley—that she was right.

  She could have dealt with anything other than the professional indifference with which he was making her current assignments. Had she seen the slightest indication on his patrician face of scorn, impatience, disregard, or loathing, she could have confronted him and they could have battled openly as they'd battled in the past. But he'd obviously concluded that she was criminally inadequate, marginally hysterical, and hence beneath his notice, and nothing she could say by way of explaining her actions was going to make him think otherwise. Her only option was to prove to him how incorrect his assessment was.

  There was a single way to accomplish this. Barbara knew that to do it was to put her entire career on the line. But she also knew that she had no career of value at the moment. And she never again would be able to have one unless she freed herself from the shackles of judgement that were currently binding her.

  She began with the idea of lunch. She'd been at the Yard since early morning, and she was due a break. So why not, she thought, take a stroll during the time that was due her? Nowhere was it written that she had to take all her meals in Victoria Street. Indeed, a little hike through Soho would be just the ticket to prime her with a bit of exercise before she faced a few more hours sifting through the SO 10 cases on CRIS.

  She wasn't, however, so wedded to the idea of Soho and exercise that she considered walking there. Time was of the utmost importance. So she toddled out to her Mini in the Yard's underground car park, and she zipped up to Soho via Charing Cross Road.

  The crowds were out. In an area of London that blended everything from book shops to skin shows, from street markets offering vegetables and flowers to sex shops selling vibrating dildos and pulsating ersatz vaginas, there would always be crowds on the pavements of Soho. And on a sunny Saturday in September with the tourist season not yet on the wane, those crowds spilled from pavements into the streets, making the going treacherous once one turned off the theatre-oriented congestion of Shaftesbury Avenue and began heading up Frith Street.

  Barbara ignored the restaurants that called to her like sirens. She inhaled through her mouth so as to avoid the beguiling fragrances of garlic-laden Italian food that were carried on the air. And she allowed herself a sigh of relief when at last she saw the timbered structure—part arbour and part tool shed—that marked the centre of the square.

  She made a circuit once, looking for a place to park. Finding nothing available, she located the building she was seeking and resigned herself to giving half a day's wages to a car park a short distance from Dean Street. She hoofed it back in the direction of the square, digging from her shoulder bag the address that she'd found on the crumpled bit of paper she'd taken from a pair of Terry Cole's trousers in his flat. She verified the address: 31-32 Soho Square.

  Right, she thought. So let's see what little Terry was up to.

  She rounded the corner from Carlisle Street and sauntered to the building. It stood at the southwest corner of the square, a modern structure of brick with a mansard roof and transom windows. A portico supported by Doric columns sheltered the glass-doored entrance, and above this entrance in brass were identified the occupants of the building: Triton International Entertainment.

  Barbara knew little enough about Triton, but what she did know was that she'd seen their logo at the end of television dramas and at the beginning of cinema films, which made her wonder if Terry Cole had hoped to have a career as an actor, in addition to his other questionable pursuits.

  She tried the door. It was tightly locked. She muttered, “Damn,” and peered through the tinted glass to see what, if anything, she could deduce by having a look at the lobby of the building. Not much, as she discovered.

  It was a marble plane, its surface interrupted by sepia-coloured leather chairs that apparently served as a waiting area. At the plane's centre, a kiosk stood, on which Triton's latest films were advertised. Near to the door curved a chest-high walnut reception station, and across from this a bank of three polished bronze lift doors reflected Barbara's image for her personal—albeit dubious—viewing pleasure.

  On a Saturday there were no signs of life in the lobby. But as Barbara was about to curse her luck and turn tail for the Yard, one of the lift doors opened and revealed a grey-haired uniformed security guard in the act of zipping his trousers snugly and bobbing to adjust his testicles. He stepped into the lobby, started when he saw Barbara at the door, and waved her off.

  “Not open,” he called out. And even from behind the glass, Barbara could hear the glottal stop of the North Londoner, born and bred.

  She dug out her warrant card and raised it to the glass. “Police,” she called in turn. “Could I have a word, please?”

  He hesitated, looking towards an enormous brass-faced clock that hung above a line of celebrity photographs on the wall to the left of the door. He called, “It's my lunch break.”

  “Better still,” Barbara responded. “Its mine as well. Come on out. I'll buy, if you like.”

  “What's this about, then?” He approached the door, but he maintained his distance across a rippled rubber door mat.

  “Murder enquiry.” Barbara wiggled her warrant card meaningfully. Please note, her gesture told him.

  He noted. Then he brought out a ring of what looked like two thousand keys and took his time about inserting the right one in the front door.

  Once inside, Barbara got directly to the point. She was investigating the Derbyshire murder of a young Londoner called Terence Cole, she told the guard whose name tag announced him, unfortunately, as Dick Long. Cole had had this address among his things, and she was attempting to uncover the reason why.

  “Cole, you say?” the guard repeated. “Terence the Christian name? Never had nobody here called that. Far as I know. Which isn't saying much, as I only work at the weekends, I do. Weekdays, I'm security at the BBC. Doesn't pay much either way, but it keeps me from sleeping rough somewhere.” He pulled on his nostrils and investigated his fingers to see if he'd mined anything of interest.

  “Terry Cole had this address among his belongings,” Barbara said. “He could have come here passing himself off as an artist of sorts. A sculptor. Does this sound familiar?”

  “No one here's an art buyer. What you want is one of them posh galleries, luv. Over in Mayfair or places like that. Though it does look a bit like a gallery in here, eh? What about that? What d'you think?”

  What she thought was that she didn't have time to discuss Triton Entertainment's interior decoration. She said, “Could he have had a meeting with someone at Triton?”

  “Or at any of the other companies,” Dick said.

  “There're more groups than Triton at this address?” she asked.

  “Oh yeh. Triton's only one. They ge
t their name above the door 'cause they take up the most space. T'others don't mind, as their rent's lower.” Dick jerked his head in the direction of the lifts and led Barbara to a notice board between two of them. On this she saw names, departments, and lists of companies. They represented publishing, film making, and theatre. It would take hours—perhaps days—to talk to everyone whose name was Usted. And to everyone else whose name wasn't included because he or she played a supporting role.

  Barbara turned away from the lifts and caught sight of the reception desk. She knew what such a desk meant at the Yard where security was paramount. She wondered if it meant the same here. She said, “Dick, do visitors sign in?”

  “Oh yeh. They do.”

  Excellent. “Can I have a look at the book?”

  “Can't do that, miss … er, Constable. Sorry.”

  “Police business, Dick.”

  “Right. But 'tis locked up at the weekend, like. You can have a try of the desk drawers to make sure though.”

  Barbara did so, slipping behind the walnut counter and pulling on the drawers to no avail. Damn, she thought. She hated having to wait till Monday. She was itching to slap handcuffs on a guilty party and to parade him in front of Lynley, shouting, “See? See?” And waiting nearly forty-eight hours to take another step closer to the perpetrator of the Derbyshire homicides was like asking hounds on the scent of a fox to have a bit of a kip once their quarry was in sight.

  There was only one alternative. She didn't much like it, but she was willing to put in the time to give it a try. She said, “Tell me, Dick, have you a list of the people who work here?”

  “Oh, miss … er, Constable … as to that …” He pulled on his nostrils again and looked uneasy.

  “Yes. You do. Right? Because if something's dodgy in part of the building, you need to know who to contact. Yes? Dick, I need that list.”

  “I'm not supposed to—”

  “—give it out to anyone,” she concluded. “I know. But you're not giving it out to anyone. You're giving it to the police because someone's been murdered. And you understand that if you don't assist in the enquiry, it might look like you're involved in some way.”

  He looked affronted. “Oh no, miss. I never been to Derbyshire.”

  “But someone here may have been. On Tuesday night. And to be a party to protecting that someone … That never looks very good to the CPS.”

  “Wha'? You think there's a murderer works here?” Dick glanced at the lifts as if expecting them to disgorge Jack the Ripper.

  “Could be the case, Dick. Could very well be.”

  He thought it over. Barbara let him think. He looked from the lift doors to Reception once again. He finally said, “As it's the police …” and joined Barbara behind the reception desk, where he opened what looked like a broom cupboard containing reams of paper and coffee supplies. He took from the top shelf a stapled sheaf of papers. He handed it over. “These're them,” he said.

  Barbara thanked him fervently. He was making his mark for the cause of justice, she told him. She would need to take a copy of the document with her though. She was going to have to phone all of the employees listed, and she didn't expect that he wanted her to do so sitting in the empty lobby of the building.

  Dick gave his reluctant permission and disappeared for five minutes to make a copy of the paperwork. When he returned, Barbara did her best to stride with dignity—and not dance with delight—out of the building. Maintaining her poise, she didn't take a look at the list until she rounded the corner into Carlisle Street. But once there, she dropped her gaze to it eagerly.

  Her spirits plummeted. It was page after page. No fewer than two hundred names were printed.

  She groaned at the thought of the job ahead of her.

  Two hundred phone calls with no one to help her.

  There had to be a more efficient way to serve up humble pie for Lynley's dining pleasure. And after a moment's thought, she decided what it might be.

  CHAPTER 17

  I Peter Hanken's plan was to carve an hour out of his Saturday to work on Bella's new swing set, a plan that he had to abandon not twenty minutes after his return from Manchester Airport. He'd got back home by midday, having used up his morning tracking down the Airport Hilton masseuse who had worked on Will Upman on the previous Tuesday night. She'd sounded sultry, sexy, and seductive over the phone when Hanken had spoken to her from the Hilton lobby. But she'd turned out to be a thirteen-stone Valkyrie in medical whites with the hands of a rugby player and hips the width of a lorry's front bumper.

  She'd confirmed Upman's alibi for the night of the Maiden girl's murder. He had indeed been “seen to” by Miss Freda, as she was called, and he'd given her his usual generous tip when she'd finished tenderising his knotted tendons. “Tips just like a Yank,” she informed Hanken in a friendly fashion. “Has done from the first, so I'm always glad to see him.”

  He was one of her regulars, Miss Freda explained. He made the drive twice a month, at least. “Lots of stress in his line of work,” she said. Upman's appointment had been for one hour only. She'd seen to the solicitor in his room, from half past seven.

  That, Hanken reckoned, gave Upman plenty of time to trot from Manchester back to Calder Moor afterwards, to dispatch the Maiden girl and her companion easily by half past ten, and to scurry back to the Airport Hilton to resume his stay and firm up his alibi. All of which kept the solicitor in the game.

  And a phone call from Lynley made Upman a principal player, at least to Hanken.

  He got the call on his mobile at home, where he'd just laid out the pieces of Bella's swing set on the floor of the garage and was standing back to study them as he counted the number of screws and bolts that had been included in the package. Lynley reported that his officers had tracked down a young woman who was Nicola Maiden's new flatmate, and he himself had just completed an interview with her. She'd maintained that there was no lover in London—an assertion that Lynley appeared to dispute—and she'd also suggested that the police have another chat with Upman if they wanted to know why Nicola Maiden had decided to spend the summer in Derbyshire. To this, Hanken said, “We only have Upman's word for it that the girl had a lover in the South, Thomas.” To which Lynley replied, “But it doesn't make sense that she'd drop out of law college in May yet spend the summer working for Upman … unless the two of them had something going on together. Do you have time to wring more information from him, Peter?”

  Hanken was happy—delighted, in fact—to wring away at the smarmy sod, but he sought some firm ground on which to base another interview with the Buxton solicitor, who so far hadn't called on his own lawyer to stand by his side during questioning but was likely to do so should he begin to believe that the investigation was tunneling in his direction.

  “Nicola had a visitor just before she moved house from Islington to Fulham. This would have been on the ninth of May,” Lynley explained. “A man. They had an argument. They were overheard. The man said he'd see her dead before he let her do it.”

  “Do what?” Hanken asked.

  And Lynley told him. Hanken listened to the story with a fair amount of incredulity. Midway through, he said, “Hell's bells. Damn. Hang on, Thomas. I'll need to take some notes,” and he went from the garage into the kitchen, where his wife was supervising his two daughters’ lunch while his infant son dozed in a baby carrier that was set on the work top. Clearing off a space next to Sarah, who'd separated her egg sandwich into halves, which she was smearing on her face, he said, “Right. Go on,” and began jotting down places, activities, and names. He whistled softly as Lynley told the tale of Nicola Maiden's clandestine life as a London prostitute. Dazed, he looked at his own young daughters as Lynley explained the dead girl's speciality. He found that he felt torn by the need to make accurate notes and the desire to crush Bella and Sarah to his heart—grimy with egg mayonnaise though they were—as if by that action he could ensure that their future would be blessed with the safety of normalcy. It was, in fac
t, in consideration of his girls that Hanken said, “Thomas, what about Maiden?” when Lynley had concluded his remarks by explaining that his next move was going to be to track down Vi Nevin's former flatmate Shelly Platt, sender of the anonymous letters. “If he somehow found out that his daughter was turning tricks in London … Can you imagine what that would have done to him?”

  “I think it's more profitable to consider what that knowledge would have done to a man who thought he was her lover. Upman and Britton—even Ferrer—seem far more likely than Andy for the role of Nemesis.”

  “Not when you consider how a father thinks: ‘I gave her life.’ What if he also thought her life was his to take away?”

  “We're talking about a cop, Peter, a decent cop. An exemplary cop without a single black mark on his whole career.”

  “Right. Fine. But this situation has sod all to do with Maidens career. What if he went to London? What if he stumbled on the truth? What if he tried to talk her out of her lifestyle—and I want to be sick even calling it a lifestyle—but failed and knew there was only a single way to end it? Because, Thomas, if he didn't end it, the girl's mum would have discovered it eventually and Maiden couldn't abide the thought of what that would do to the woman he loves.”

  “That goes for the others as well,” Lynley countered. “Upman and Britton. They'd want to talk her out of it. And with far more reason. Christ, Peter. Sexual jealousy goes a greater distance than protecting a mother from having to hear the truth about her child. You must see that.”

  “He found that car. Out of sight. Behind a wall. In the middle of the God damn bloody White Peak.”

  “Pete, the children …” Hanken's wife admonished him, delivering glasses of milk to their daughters.

  Hanken nodded in acknowledgement as Lynley said, “I know this man. He doesn't have a violent bone in his body. He had to leave the Yard, for God's sake, because he couldn't stomach the job any longer. So where and when did he develop the capacity—the blood lust—to beat in his own child's skull? Let's do some digging on Up-man and Britton—and Ferrer if we have to. They're unknown quantities. There are at least two hundred people at the Yard who can testify that Andy Maiden isn't. Now, the flatmate—Vi Nevin—is insisting we talk to Upman again. She may be temporising, but I say we start with him.”